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Politics in the Frogs of Aristophanes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

J. T. Sheppard
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Extract

The construction of the Frogs of Aristophanes is of a normal conventional type. From the appearance of Dionysus in his strange garb, appropriate to the patron of a heroic stage run mad on realism, to a Dionysus whose wine is new and his bottles old, the customary series of comic incidents develops the conventional situation. This introduction presents us with the antecedents, the background, and the grouping of a comic dispute, The contest forms the main part of the drama; and, quite conventionally, it is separated from the introduction by a parabasis which offers a mixture of serious and comic advice. That the background is the nether world: that the disputants are so eminent a pair as Aeschylus and Euripides: that the judge is the god of all tragedy and comedy himself, and the chorus blessed spirits of the sanctified—all this illumines the old forms with a fresh and unrivalled originality. But the mechanical structure is simple and conventional, as has been said.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , 1910 , pp. 249 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1910

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References

1 January, 1909.

2 Line 886.

3 Line 324; cf. also 337.

4 Line 398.

5 Line 851.

6 Line 832.

7 Line 911, Mr. Rogers' translation. Notice incidentally the reference to Achilles. We shall see later that it is not altogether without significance.

8 E.g. the late Sir Richard Jebb, essay on Sophocles in Essays and Addresses. Dr. Verrall in the article already mentioned.

9 Croiset's, M. remarks on the fact that Plato competed against Aristophanes with the ‘Cleophon’ in this year are notable in this connexion (Aristophane et les Partis à Athène, p. 244)Google Scholar.

10 It is profitable to follow throughout the play.

11 Mr. Rogers.

12 Professor Tucker has argued convincingly, I think, against the pedantry which would make the chorus represent all the stages of the autumnal procession from Athens to Eleusis. But his argument is weaker when he attempts to show that the festival at Agrae alone is suggested. Spring-time and flowers are perpetual for the initiate in the other world. ‘Where is this meadow?’ asks Professor Tucker (Introduction, p. xxix) on l. 325. The answer is not ‘at Agrae’—but The difficulty of a theory of exact representation is shown by Professor Tucker's note on l. 445.

13 Langhorne, Plutarch. Professor Tucker objects to the ‘current theory that Athens was exulting over the exploit of Alcibiades,’ and points out, with admirable humour, that ‘people do not exult over a thing which they managed to do the year before last, but which they have been unable to do last year.’ It is, of course, not a question of ‘exulting over the exploit.’ Simply the representation of the Initiate at a time when Alcibiades is in the popular mind is enough.

14 See especially the closing scene, ll. 1504–1513.

15 This consideration explains the comparative mildness of the attack on Euripides to which I have referred above.

16 Line 991.

17 Class. Rev. 1903, p. 248.

18 Line 1126.

19 Reference to Achilles in ll. 912, 991, 1264, 1400; cf. Plutarch, , Alcibiades, xxiii, 203Google Scholar (of Alcibiades).

20 On l. 1434 Professor Tucker writes ‘commentators have naturally been at a loss to decide which has spoken σαϕῶς, or rather which has not’ I think that in the circumstances the audience would feel no doubt at all. Euripides, the σοϕός, has made a remark which is highly characteristic, and, as a piece of practical advice, quite unsatisfying. The advice of Aeschylus is σαϕές, clear and good. It makes clear what the whole play has hinted.

21 J.H.S. vol. xxvi. Pt. 11, 1906, p. 268.