Article contents
Salvation and female heroics in the parodos of Aristophanes' Lysistrata
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2012
Abstract
The separate entrances of the male and female semi-choruses in Aristophanes' Lysistrata are marked by an unusual bit of stagecraft whose importance to a general theme of the play the salvation of Athens–has never been fully appreciated. The old men enter the stage at v. 254 each carrying a pair of olive-wood logs, a vine torch and a small pot of live embers. Having heard that Lysistrata and her comrades have taken control of the Acropolis, they come intent on burning down the gates of the citadel and removing the women, whom they liken to the Spartan general Cleomenes who occupied the citadel in 510. The men pile their logs before the closed gate, ignite their torches in the hot coals and then try to set fire to the logs (vv. 307-11). But after a few minutes of hilarious bumbling their plans are foiled for good by the sudden appearance of a semi-chorus of old women who rush in with water-jars on their shoulders or in their hands; these women threaten the men and then finally–with an invocation of the river-god Achelous douse them and their fire (vv. 381-82), thus effectively ending the threat of incineration. In the past, this entire choral routine has been explained in one of two ways: either it is a standard bit of slapstick humour with no importance whatsoever to the development of the comic plot, or it is part of an elaborate sexual pun of Freudian proportions in which the closed entranceway to the Acropolis assaulted by men symbolically prefigures the battle of the sexes that is about to ensue. Of course given the wonderful richness and polyvalence of Aristophanic comedy, it is extremely difficult to deny either of these interpretations. I shall argue here, however, that the staging of the parodos also reflects a very popular type of Greek salvation myth, known to the Athenians from the tragic stage, from the visual arts and from rituals associated with local mystery cults. In light of these parallels drawn from the theatrical and religious life of the city, I shall argue that when the audience saw the women rush onto the stage with their hydriai, they would have undoubtedly seen them in a very positive light as saviours of the city–precisely the role they claim for themselves later in the play.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1997
References
1 Old Comedy need not, of course, have a consistent plot or general theme to be successful, but in this respect, the Lysistrata is an unusually compact and well structured play; see, e.g. : Grene, D., ‘The comic technique of Aristophanes’, Hermathena i (1937) 122–3Google Scholar; Hulton, A.O., ‘The women on the Acropolis: a note on the structure of the Lysistrata’, G&R xix (1972) 32–6Google Scholar; Vaio, J., ‘The manipulation of theme and action in Aristophanes' Lysistrata’, GRBS xiv (1973) 369–80Google Scholar; Rosellini, M., ‘Lysistrata: une mise en scène de la féminité’ in Aristophanes: les femmes et la cité, Les cahiers de Fontenroy xvii (1979) 11–32Google Scholar; Henderson, J., ‘Lysistrate: the play and its themes’ in Henderson, J. (ed.), Aristophanes: essays in interpretation, YCS xxvi (1980) 153–218Google Scholar; Loraux, N., ‘L'acropole comique’, Anc. Soc. xi/xii (1980/1981) 119–50Google Scholar [slightly revised and translated = N. Loraux, The children of Athena, trans. Levine, C. (Princeton 1993) 147–83Google Scholar]; Martin, R., ‘Fire on the mountain: Lysistrata and the Lemnian women’, CA vi (1987) 77–105Google Scholar; and Bowie, A.M., Aristophanes: myth, ritual and comedy (Cambridge 1993) 178–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 See Henderson, , Aristophanes: Lysistrata (Oxford 1987) 98–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the staging. I use his text throughout.
3 Vv. 277-280. Unless otherwise noted, all dates mentioned in this essay are BC. The Athenians besieged the Spartan garrison for two days and then let them depart under a treaty (Hdt. v 72). Later in the play at vv. 672-81 the old men assimilate the women on the Acropolis to Artemisia (the Carian queen who helped Xerxes with his invasion) and the Amazons, the mythical precursors of the Persians, who invaded Attica and besieged the Acropolis (see Bowie (n.l) 184-85 and 200).
4 Henderson, (n.2)107, points out that the lively iambic-choriambic rhythm of the old women's song suggests that they rush onto the stage with their jugs on their shoulders. These water jugs are called hydriai at v. 327 and then kalpides at vvs. 358, 370, 400 and 539. In archaic and classical Greek kalpis is a poetic equivalent of Attic hydria see LSJ s.v. and Richardson (n.45) 184–that may have ritual associations. Aristophanes, for example, uses it only five times in his extant plays, four times in the parodos of the Lysistrata and once at Frogs 1339, where Aeschylus parodies a Euripidean monody in which someone, upon awaking from a terrifying dream, orders some servants to ‘draw water with their kalpides’, heat it up and prepare a purificatory bath.
5 Aristophanes does not give the name of the crowded well or fountain from which they have come. Henderson (n.2) ad 328-9 and 377-8, suggests that ‘an inquisitive spectator’ might imagine that the women rush in from the Enneakrounos or the Kallirrhoe at the foot of the Acropolis. The location of this water source (over which Pisistratus built a famous fountainhouse) is a notorious crux, because Thucydides (ii 15.5) equates it with the Kallirrhoe, a spring southeast of the Acropolis near the banks of the Ilissus river, while Pausanias (i 14.1) says he saw the Pisistratid building in the ‘new’ agora to the northwest. There is, in fact, archaeological evidence for an archaic well-building in both places; see, e.g., Travlos, J., A pictorial dictionary of ancient Athens (New York 1971) 204Google Scholar. Owen, E.J., ‘The Enneakrounos Fountain House’, JHS cii (1982) 222-25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that the disagreements between the sources reveal a change in designation over time: in the fifth-century Enneakrounos refers to a fountain house near the Ilissus but in the fourth century the same name is attached to a fountain house in the agora. There are two indications that in 411 Aristophanes is thinking of a spring associated (like the Kallirrhoe) with a river and that this might be important to our interpretation of the parodos: (1) the joke about the λουτρὸν νυμΦικόν at vv. 377-78 probably refers to the bridegroom's traditional bath in a river (below n.59); and (2) the woman invoke a (male) river god Achelous (i.e. not a female water nymph) when they pour out their jugs on the old men (v. 381). Although most modern editors and lexicographers think that the equation Achelous = water is simply a grandiloquent expression (e.g. LSJ s.v. or Dover apud Henderson [n.2] ad loc., who points to its use in Euripides), Ephorus (FGrH 70 F20) suggests that this equation belongs to the language of prayer, oaths and other forms of ritual speech. It is, I think, dangerous to ignore Ephorus on this point, since Thucydides mentions the special use of the waters of Kallirrhoe (which he equates with the Enneakrounos) in bridal baths and other rituals (see also n.63 for the special bath of the initiate in the water of the Ilissus at the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries), and we know from Plato that Achelous and the nymphs were worshipped at a spring on the banks of the Ilissus (n.64).
6 Campo, L., I drammi satireschi delta Grecia antica (Milan 1940) 196–8Google Scholar, and MacDowell, D.M., ‘Clowning and slapstick in Aristophanes’, in Redwood, J. (ed.), Themes in drama x (1988) 10–11Google Scholar. Martin, (n.l) 84, describes the scene as in the style of a Punch-and-Judy farce.
7 Whitman, C., Aristophanes and the comic hero (Cambridge MA 1962) 203Google Scholar with n.9, Spatz, L., Aristophanes (Boston 1974) 96Google Scholar, Henderson, J., The maculate muse: obscene language in Attic comedy (Oxford 1991) 95–6Google Scholar, Foley, H., ‘The ‘female intruder’ reconsidered: women in Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae’, CP lxxvii (1982) 7Google Scholar, and Loraux (n.l) 138-9, who discusses the repeated double entendre of the words for door and gate in vv. 246-81. Vaio (n.l) 371, expresses a similar idea somewhat differently when he refers to the ramparts of the Acropolis as a ‘gigantic chastity belt.’
8 Henderson (n.2) xxxvi-vii.
9 The division of female characters by generation and the generally more positive presentation of the older generation is a feature of Old Comedy; see Henderson, J., ‘Older women in Attic Old Comedy’, TAPA cxvii (1987) 105–29Google Scholar.
10 Henderson, (n.2) ad loc., discusses in detail the specific verbal parallels between the parodos in the Lysistrata and the Euripidean plays, noting, for instance, that the description of the assembly of the pyre by the old-men in the Lysistrata recalls the language of Lycus' threat to Megara and her children at Euripides’ Heracles 240-46. This stage tradition of threatened immolation is picked up in later comedy; see Gomme, A.W. and Sandbach, F.H., Menander: a commentary (Oxford 1973) 535–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for discussion. Such threats must have been dramatically plausible, as fire could force suppliants to flee without actually harming them or polluting the site. Indeed, the scholiast at Andromache 257 reports that this use of fire was ‘common practice’.
11 Some readers may think inappropriate my comparison of Lysistrata and company with helpless fugitives and suppliants, since the former have seized the Acropolis by force and will hold it successfully throughout the play. In the larger scope of the drama this is true, but it is significant that during the parodos itself, at least, the superior position of women on the Acropolis is ignored, especially in the emotionally charged entrance of the chorus of old women (vv. 319-49), who are clearly motivated by a very real fear that their comrades might be burned at any minute, see, e.g.: πέτου, πέτου, … ∣ πρὶν ἐμπεπρῆσθαι καλύκην ∣ τε καὶ Κρίτυλλαν(321-22); their plea to Athena: ἀραμένη ταῖσιν ἐμαῖς ∣ δημότισιν καομέναις ∣ ϕέρουσʼ ὔδωρ βοηθώ (333-35); the reported threats of the men ώς πυρὶ τὰς … γυναῖκας ἀνθρακεύειν (340); a second plea to Athena: ὠ θεά, μή ποτʼ ἐγὼ πιμπραμένας ἴδοιμι (341); and their final plea: καἰ σε καλῶ ξύμμαχον, ὠ ∣ Τριτογένειʼ, ἢν τις ἐκεί-∣νας ὑποπιμρῆσιν, ∣ ϕέρειν ὔδωρ μεθʼ ἡμῶν (346-49). These repeated and fearful references to the fire are, moreover, imbedded in a particularly serious prayer; see n.21 below.
12 Engelmann, R., Archäologische Studien zu den Tragikern (Berlin 1900) 52–62Google Scholar; Séchan, L., Études sur la tragédie grecque dans ses rapports avec la céramique (Paris 1926) 242–8Google Scholar; Webster, T.B.L., Studies in later Greek comedy2 (Manchester 1970) 87–98Google Scholar.
13 LIMC s.v. ‘Alkmene’ nos. 5-7 (= ‘Hyades’ nos. 1-3). For discussion, see: Murray, A.S., ‘The Alcmene vase formerly in Castle Howard’, JHS xi (1890) 225–30 pl. VICrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cook, A.B., Zeus: a study in ancient religion iii (Cambridge 1940) 506–24Google Scholar; Trendall, A.D. and Webster, T.B.L., Illustrations of Greek drama (London 1971) nos. III.3.6-8Google Scholar; and Diehl, E., Die Hydria: Formgeschichte und Verwendung im Kult des Altertums (Mainz am Rhein 1964) 174Google Scholar. Cook is generally very good on this material, but he goes wrongly astray when he argues that the hydria-pouring maidens are merely an artistic convention indicating the golden rain of Zeus, which in later sources is thought to impregnate Alcmene with Heracles. Diehl, ibid. 173-76, rightly connects the Hyades with Zeus in his traditional role as sender of rain. According to fifth-century sources, the Hyades were five or seven in number (see n.18 below), but see Beazley (n.23 below) for the convention in Greek vase painting of using two or three individuals to indicate a larger group.
14 Webster (n.12) 87-96 and Murray (n.13) 229-30.
15 For Aeschylus' lost Semele or Hydrophoroi see frags. 219-24 (Radt) and for Sophocles' lost Hydrophoroi see frags. 670-74 (Radt). Plays in which the chorus enter the orchestra holding containers of liquid are actually quite rare. The most famous extant example is, of course, Aeschylus’ Choephoroi, where the chorus march on stage holding libations to be poured at Agamamnon's grave. See LIMC s.v. ‘Electra I’ nos. 1-49 for the scene on vase paintings of the meeting of Electra and Orestes at the tomb of their father. Electra and her companions are shown holding a variety of vases and baskets, including hydriai (e.g. nos. 15, 19, 35, 39, 41).
16 For each play we have only three or four tiny fragments consisting of a single word or phrase. Only one preserves a complete trimeter. Bergk and Vürtheim (see the bibliography cited by Radt ad fr. 674) have argued that Sophocles' version was a satyr play. See Diehl (n.13) 193-94 for the most recent discussion of the fragments. If H. Lloyd-Jones, ‘Appendix’ to Smyth, H.W., Aeschylus 2 (Cambridge MA 1981) 566–71Google Scholar, is correct in assigning Xantriae frag. 168 (Radt) to Aeschylus' Hydrophoroi, then the chorus of water-bearers was already on stage when the disguised Hera enters, i.e. long before the fiery birth of Dionysus. According to this reading, then, the chorus is simply coming back from the well or fountain (cf. the chorus returning from their laundry in the Hippolytus) and then later on make use of the fortuitous presence of the water to wash the child, or (as I suggest below) to extinguish the fire and save the child.
17 Bacchae 519-25. My translation follows Roux, J., Euripide: les Bacchantes (Paris 1972)Google Scholarad loc., who sensibly interprets μηρῷ here as a dative that indicates the ultimate destination of the infant. R. Seaford, Euripides: Bacchae (Warminster 1996) ad loc., citing Ginouvès (n.63) 235-38, suggests that Dirce simply washed the blood and placental material from the new-born baby. Given the fiery birth of the (still mortal) infant and the echatologically charged meaning of the ‘second birth’, a closer parallel might be the rites of passing the child through fire and then washing him (see n.49).
18 For the Nysai, see Nilsson, M.P., The Dionysiac mysteries of the Hellenistic and Roman age (Lund 1957) 111–12Google Scholar. Hesiod, frag. 291 (M-W), names five Hyades, while Pherecydes, FGrHist 3 F90, and Hippias, FGrHist 6 F9, say there were seven and identify them closely with the stars in the head of the bull in the Pleiades constellation, whose heliacal rising was traditionally thought to signal the start of the rainy season in Greece. According to later sources, the Hyades were the nurses of Dionysus whom Zeus metamorphosed into stars because they saved his son. See RE s.v. ‘Hyaden’ and LIMC s.v. ‘Hyades’ for a full survey of the later literary sources, especially the astronomical writings. The precise moment when the Hyades or nurses save Dionysus is not (to my knowledge) actually depicted in early Greek art, but in later Roman art we find two or more nymphs pouring water from a hydria over the head or feet of the infant Dionysus; see Merkelbach, R., Die Hirten des Dionysos: Die Dionysos-Mysterien der römischen Kaiserzeit und der bukolische Roman des Longus (Stuttgart 1988) plates 30, 43, 56, 58 and 83Google Scholar. Nonnus calls the Hyades ‘the daughters of Lamus’, who was a Boeotian river-god (e.g. Dion, ix 28 and xiv 146; see RE s.v. ‘Hyaden’ 2621-22).
19 I use the text, translation and interpretation of Gow, A.S.F. and Page, D.L., (eds.), The Greek anthology. Hellenistic epigrams (Cambridge 1965) 252 no. 127Google Scholar.
20 Stein, , Herodotos (Berlin 1882)Google Scholar, suggests ad loc. that the story was an aetiology for the hot baths at Thermopylae. There is evidence that in the fifth century Athenians regularly connected hot baths with Heracles; see Ar. Clouds 1050 and the scholia. The hot springs at Himera on Sicily were said to have appeared (in the form of water nymphs) to refresh Heracles when he was weary from his labours in the West (Diod. Sic. iv 23), a story apparently known elsewhere in the West Greek world, judging by the connection of Heracles and water-nymphs at curative springs. See Bieber, M., ‘Archaeological contributions to Roman religion’, Hesperia xiv (1945) 272–77Google Scholar, who argues that a type of Roman fountain relief depicting Heracles reclining on rocks (see LIMC s.v. ‘Herakles’ nos. 1322-28) is related iconographically to a much earlier series of fourth-century coins from Himera that depict Heracles reclining near the springs mentioned by Diodorus.
21 Horn, W., Gebet und Gebetsparodie in den Komödien des Aristophanes, Erlanger Beitrage zur Sprach- und Kunstwissenschaft xxxviii (Nürnberg 1970) 60Google Scholar, includes this invocation among his examples of ‘echten Gebete’, while Henderson (n.2) ad loc. notes the sincerity of the prayer, unmarred as it is by any ridiculous asides. The corresponding lines in the antistrophe of their hymn (346-49, quoted above in n.ll) again urge Athena, in the guise of Tritogeneia, to help bring water to the fire. Farnell, L.R., Cults of the Greek city states i (1906) 265–9Google Scholar, argues that the most plausible etymology for ‘Tritogeneia’ is ‘Water-born’ and that Aristophanes uses it here to stress Athena's connection with fresh water (e.g. lakes and rivers).
22 LIMC s.v. ‘Herakles’ no. 2909 (= ‘Hyades’ no. 4). For detailed discussion, see Clairmont, C., ‘Studies in Greek mythology and vase painting. 1: Heracles on the pyre’, AJA lvii (1953) 85–89, plates 45-48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 LIMC s.v. ‘Herakles’ nos. 2916-20 (= ‘Hyades’ nos. 5-9). For detailed discussion and bibliography, see Cook, (n.13) 512-16, and Beazley, J.D., Etruscan vase painting (Oxford 1947) 103–5Google Scholar, who reviews all the known examples in his discussion of two similar Faliscan vases in the Villa Giulia and suggests that the scene is an extract of a larger, many-figured traditional depiction (a lost wall painting perhaps?) of the apotheosis of Heracles. For the most recent assessment of these paintings, see: Shapiro, H. A., ‘Heros theos: the death and apotheosis of Heracles’, CIV lxxvii (1983) 7–18Google Scholar; and Boardman, J., ‘Heracles in extremis’ in Bohr, E. and Martini, W. (eds.), Studien zür Mythologie und Vasenmalerei: Festschrift für K. Schauenburg (Mainz am Rhein 1988) 127–32Google Scholar.
24 Cook (n.13) 513-15. Sutton, D.F., The Greek satyr play, Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie xc (Meisenheim am Glan 1980) 90Google Scholar, dates the vase in my figure 5 more narrowly to 430-420 and suggests that it might depict Sophocles' Heracles satyricus.
25 Hesychius s.v. Πρεμνουσία. κρήνη ὲν τῇ Άττικῇ. Arethousa is a popular name for a water nymph or a natural spring in many parts of Greece. Beazley (n.23) criticizes the traditional interpretation–see, e.g., Cook (n.13) 515 and LIMC ‘Hyades’ nos. 4-9–that these young women were the ‘Hyades’, arguing instead that the names ‘Arethousa’ and ‘Premnousa’ designate springs, while the Hyades can only rightly be said to pour down rain water from the sky (as in the Alcmene paintings). Maas (n.36) 38 n. 25, similarly distinguishes between rain- and ground-water when he calls the water-pourers in the Alcmene paintings (my figures 1-2) ‘Clouds’ and those in the Heracles' scenes (my figures 3-5) ‘well-nymphs’. This distinction cannot be maintained, however, in the (admittedly late) literary sources where, e.g., the Hyades are identified as the daughters of a river and the saviours of Dionysus (see n.18).
26 LIMC sv. ‘Herakles’ no. 2917 is the one exception: Nike drives Heracles away, while Athena appears to be ordering the nymphs who–in a somewhat animated manner–douse the remains of Heracles' armour as it smoulders on the pyre. T.H. Carpenter points out to me the curious fact that in the earlier version Heracles wears his traditional garb (the lion skin), while the later Attic and South Italian pots show a breastplate on the embers of the fire- despite the fact that Heracles is never depicted wearing hoplite armour in Attic or South Italian red-figure vase-paintings.
27 See most recently, e.g.: Holt, P., ‘The end of the Trachiniai and the fate of Herakles’, JHS cix (1987) 69–80Google Scholar (he discusses these vase paintings briefly on p. 73); and Davies, M., Sophocles: Trachiniae (Oxford 1991) xx–xxiiGoogle Scholar.
28 Herodotus i 86-87 and Bacchylides 3. For a roughly contemporary vase painting of the same scene, see Smith, A.H., ‘Illustrations to Bacchylides’, JHS xviii (1898) 267–69Google Scholar with fig. 1, and Cook (n.13) 519-22 with fig. 328. J.D. Beazley, ‘Hydria-fragments in Corinth’, Hesperia (1955) 305-19 (esp. 319) and Morris, S., Daidalos and the origins of Greek art (Princeton 1994) 285–86Google Scholar, discuss an Attic red-figure scene that may depict a tragic performance of the salvation of Croesus on the pyre.
29 Segal, C., ‘Croesus on the pyre: Herodotus and Bacchylides’, WS lxxxiv (1971) 38–51Google Scholar, argues that Bacchylides' Croesus (like the vase-painting discussed by Smith (n.28)) is a proud epic hero who refuses to endure a humiliating fate, while Herodotus presents a man tragically stripped of his external, royal goods and forced to acquire a more permanent inward vision. Although Segal does not discuss the differing versions of the rescue of Croesus, one could easily extend his comparison by noting that Bacchylides gives a traditional (albeit non-Iliadic) ‘epic’ version: the man is whisked away to the Elysian fields (see the next note).
30 For the non-lliadic version of Achilles and the White Island and similar cases of translation (e.g. Memnon), see Rohde, E., Psyche: the cult of the souls and belief in immortality among the Greeks, trans. Hillis, W.B. (London 1925) 55–67Google Scholar, and Slatkin, L.M., The power of Thetis: allusion and interpretation in the Iliad (Berkeley 1992) 26-7 and 42Google Scholar, who notes the paradox of how snatching a hero like Achilles or Memnon from the pyre ‘preserves’ him from death, while at the same time it denies him his former heroic life.
31 Samothracian initiates, for example, were thought to have special protection against shipwreck or drowning, and Mithraic initiates, many of whom were professional soldiers, believed themselves to be safer in battle. See Stewart, Z., ‘L'ascesa delle religioni soteriologiche’, in Bandinelli, R.B. (ed.), La società ellenistica: economia, diritto, religione, Storia e civilità dei greci 8 (Milan 1977) 530–61Google Scholar, and Burkert, W., Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge MA 1987) 12–29Google Scholar.
32 LSJ, s.v. σῴζω, imply wrongly that the ‘eschatological’ meaning is a later Christian development; see, e.g., my discussion (below in n.35) of Frogs 378-81 and Orphic frag. 31. In their discussion of the related noun (s.v. σωτηρία, definition I 4) LSJ do, however, allow that the generalized meaning ‘salvation’ appears earlier in the Septuagint (a Hellenistic production). The word σωτηρία clearly had a similar meaning in the Orphic tradition as well; see West, M.L., The orphic poems (Oxford 1985) 28 n.79Google Scholar.
33 Graf, F., Eleusis und die orphische Dichtung Athens in vorhellenisticher Zeit, RGVV xxxiii (Berlin 1974) 40–50Google Scholar and Dover, K.J., Aristophanes: Frogs (Oxford 1993) 61–63Google Scholar.
34 The precise identity of this goddess is uncertain. Since Demeter is addressed in the antistrophe, the most logical candidate here in the strophe would be Kore. There are, however, reasons for believing that Soteira could refer to Demeter, and Haldane, J.A., ‘Who is Soteira (Aristophanes Frogs 379)?’, CQ 14 (1968) 207–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar, building on the claim of the scholia, argues plausibly that Soteira is Athena. For a recent discussion, see Graf (n.33) 47-8 n. 37 and Dover (n.33) ad loc.
35 West (n.32). At vv. 378-81, the chorus exhort each other to pray to the goddess Soteira, ‘she, whom people say will keep our chorus safe (σώσειν) from one season to the next,’ and then at v. 388 they pray to Demeter: σῷζε τὸν σαυτῆς χορόν. See the similar cultic use of σῴζειν in a late third-century papyrus (P. Gûrob 1 = Orphic frag. 31 [Kern] col. i lines 5 and 20), which directs the imperative σῶισομ με at Brimo (= Persephone) and several other deities connected with ‘Orphic’ and ‘Dionysiac’ cults. For discussion of this important and frequently overlooked document, see West, ibid. 170-71, and Burkert (n.31) 70-71, who note the eclectic nature of this document which has Eleusinian, Orphic, and Dionysian elements and refers to the ‘Orphic’ myth of Dionysus Zagreus.
36 I give the hexameters as they have been restored and supplemented by Maas, P., ‘The Philinna papyrus’, JHS lxii (1942) 33–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Koenen, L., ‘Der brennende Horosknabe: zu einem Zauberspruch des Philinna-Papyrus’, Chr. d'E. xxxvii (1962) 167–74Google Scholar. The square brackets indicate restorations of lacunae in the papyri, while the diamond brackets at the beginning of line 1 and the end of line 2 contain supplements added by Koenen to render the first two lines as full hexameters.
37 For the most recent discussion and numerous examples, see: Brashear, W.M., ‘The Greek magical papyri: an introduction and survey’, ANRW ii 18.5 (1995) 3438–40Google Scholar; and Frankfurter, D., ‘Narrating power: the theory and practice of the magical historiola in ritual spells’, in Meyer, M. and Mirecki, P. (eds.), Ancient magic and ritual power, Religions of the Graeco-Roman World cxxix (Leiden 1995) 457–76Google Scholar.
38 Maas (n.36) 38: ‘…the two soft-flowing hexameters about the seven maidens have a true Hellenic ring; ἐπῳδαί of this kind may have been those which appealed to Aeschylus, Pindar and Plato.’ Maas knew about the later vase paintings of the salvation of Heracles, but dismissed them because only two or three nymphs take part in the rescue. But see Beazley (n.23) for the convention in Greek vase-painting of using two or three individuals to indicate a larger group.
39 The adjective literally means ‘receiving the mysteries’ or ‘receiving the initiates’ and only appears in one other place in extant Greek (Arist. Clouds 303), where it apparently refers to Eleusis. Eitrem, S., ‘Varia’, SO 29 (1952) 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggested unconvincingly that the Aristophanic passage actually referred to Socrates’ phrontistêrion, which is destroyed by fire at the end of the play, and argued that if we restore δόμος or οἰκος, in line 1 of the incantation, we can understand a reference to Aristophanes' play.
40 The groundbreaking study was by Koenen (n.36), who was followed by, e.g.: Henrichs, A., ‘Zum Text einiger Zauberpapyri’, ZPE 6 (1970) 204–9Google Scholar and O'Neil, E.N. in Betz, N.D. (ed.), The Greek magical papyri in translation (Chicago 1986) 258Google Scholar.
41 Burkert, (n.31) 20-21, and C.A. Faraone, ‘The Mystodokos and the dark-eyed maidens: multicultural influences on a late-Hellenistic charm’ in Meyer and Mirecki (n.37) 297-333 (esp. 330-32), point out that much earlier traditions of very similar historiolae (mostly in spells designed to cure fever, skin rashes or eye complaints) were popular in Egypt, Assyria and the Levant.
42 Burkert (n.31) 21 concludes: ‘This would suggest some Egyptian influence on Eleusinian cult or at least Eleusinian mythology right at the beginning of the sixth century, in a context of practical “healing magic”’.
43 Faraone, (n.41) 321-4, points out that their influence on Greece probably predates the similar Heraclean and Dionysian rescue myths discussed in the first section of this essay.
44 Faraone (n.41) 321-2. In a late-antique version of this same spell, the phrase ἀκάματον πῦρ is replaced by αἰθέριον πῦρ, suggesting that in one version of this story the mystodokos, like the baby Dionysus, was threatened by a lightning blast. See Faraone ibid. 297-8 n.2 and 323-4 n. 84.
45 Richardson, N., The Homeric hymn to Demeter (Oxford 1974) 6Google Scholar, noting the poem's linguistic affinities to Hesiod and the references to Eleusinian rituals cautiously suggested an Attic audience for the poem, a position that is rigorously challanged by Clinton, K., ‘The author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter’, Opuscula atheniensia xiv (1986) 43–9Google Scholar. Foley, H.P., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Princeton 1993) 169–178, reviews the ensuing controversy in detail and argues that the poem, although it is Panhellenic in style and scope, was most probably designed for an Eleusinian audienceGoogle Scholar.
46 Hes. Th. 135, 248-58, 1017-18; see West's commentary ad loc. For the assimilation of legendary virgin princesses to local springs, compare the Argive nymphs Hippe, Automate, Amymone and Physadeia, who are also called ‘the daughters of Inachus’ or ‘the daughters of Danaus’ (Aesch. frag. 279; Plato Rep. 381d; Diogenes Ep. 34.2 and Sch. Aristophanes, Frogs 1344). For discussion, see Latte, K., ‘De tragoedia quadam Aeschylea (P. Oxy. 2164)’, Philologus 97 (1948) 47–56Google Scholar. The nymphs who saved Dionysus at Thebes (see n.18), were in some traditions likewise called the ‘daughters of Cadmos’ (FGrHist 3 F 90). 41
47 Earlier commentators suspected v. 288 on the grounds that bathing an hysterical infant would be inappropriate; Allen, T.W., Halliday, W.R. and Sikes, E.E., The Homeric Hymns (Oxford 1936)Google Scholarad loc., however, rightly defend the line by recalling that the child had been in the fire and by adducing the Meleager epigram discussed above (n.19).
48 For example, the presence of Heracles in the underworld in the Odyssey or Pindar's correction of popular stories concerning the disappearance of Pelops. See Griffiths, M., ‘Contest and contradiction in early Greek poetry’, in Griffith, M. and Mastronarde, D.J. (eds.), Cabinet of the Muses (Atlanta 1990) 185–207Google Scholar.
49 See, e.g., Diehl (n.13) 203, who discusses the scene briefly under the heading of ‘Kourotrophic Nymphs’.
50 A decorated altar of Athena Alea at Tegea (Paus. viii 47.3) probably depicted a similar scene. Both may reflect or explain an ancient protective ritual performed at birth-discussed in detail by Frazer (n.63) 311-7 -that involved passing a newborn through or over a fire or bringing a torch or glowing ember near to it. These repeated scenes of fire followed by rescue at the hands of water-bearing nymphs (e.g. Hymn to Demeter 288-90, the Philinna charm, and the Arcadian tableau of Zeus' birth) apparently offer an elaboration of the pattern discerned by Frazer.
51 For a detailed catalogue, see Diehl (n.13) 188-93, who suggests that the water was used in purificatory rituals generally. S.G. Cole, ‘The uses of water in Greek sanctuaries’ in Hagg, R. et al. (eds.), Early Creek Cult Practice (Stockholm 1988) 264–65Google Scholar, discusses the ‘hundreds of thousands’ of miniature votive hydriai and the numerous figurines of hydrophoroi found in Demeter sanctuaries all over the Greek world. By a process of elimination, she concludes that these were probably ‘associated with local cults of the mysteries throughout the Greek world.’ She also, ibid. 164-5, discusses a similar constellation of hydrophoria rites and secret mysteries at Hera sanctuaries in Argos and Nauplia and at the temple of Artemis at Didyme.
52 Richardson (n.45) 18-20 and 180-81, for example, suggests that worship of Demeter at Eleusis developed from a local cult of Kore, who was worshipped as the leader of a group of kourotrophic nymphs associated with the important Kallichoron spring.
53 Hommel, H., ‘Aristophanes über die Nilschwelle’, RhM xciv (1951) 315–27Google Scholar, argues that Νείλου … προχοαῖς is the indirect object of the verb (‘…drawing water for the mouths of the Nile’), but I follow Dover, K.J., Aristophanes: Clouds (Oxford 1970)Google Scholarad loc., who interprets the dative as a locative.
54 Dover, ibid.
55 It is notable that the Greeks, contrary to their usual practice of equating rivers with male deities, seem (in the fifth-century at least) to think that the Nile–given the fact of its many mouths–was comprised of a number of female divinites. In Aristophanes' The women at the Thesmophoria, for instance, the ‘Kinsman’ quotes the opening lines of Euripides’ Helen: ‘These beautifully virgin streams (καλλιπάρθενοι ῤοαί) of the Nile, who water the plain of white Egypt instead of the holy raindrops…’, (Thesm. 855-57).
56 There is, however, no agreement as to which cult precisely. Dieterich, A., ‘Über eine Szene der aristophanischen Wolken’, RhM xlviii (1893) 275–83Google Scholar, Harrison, J., Prolegomena3 (Cambridge 1922) 511–16Google Scholar, and Gelzer, T., ‘Aristophanes und sein Sokrates’, MH xiii (1956) 67–8Google Scholar, all refer to these rituals with the long popular term ‘Orphic.’ Guthrie, W.K.C., Orpheus and Greek religion2 (Cambridge 1952) 212Google Scholar, cautiously calls it a melange of different mystery rites. Lehmann, P.W., Samothrace 3.2 (Princeton 1969) 26Google Scholar, suggests that the Samothracian mysteries are alluded to here, as at Peace 277-8, but Cole, S. Guettel, Theoi megaloi: the cult of the great gods at Samothrace (Leiden 1984) 32-3 and 116 n. 272CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues effectively to the contrary. Burkert, W., Homo necans (trans. Bing, P.) (Berkeley 1983) 268–9Google Scholar, interprets the scene as an explicit parody of the enthronement of the initiate at the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries, while Byl, S., ‘Parodie d'une initiation dans les Nuées d'Aristophane’, Rev. Belg. Phil. Hist. lviii (1980) 5–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar -with addenda in Revue Philosophic Ancienne iii (1985) 32Google Scholar, Les Études Classiques lv (1987) 333–6Google Scholar and RHR cciv (1987) 239–48Google Scholar–has argued repeatedly for specific references to various aspects of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Most recently Bowie (n.l) 112-24 has suggested that Socrates is assimilated to disreputable goetai, who perform purifications and initiations of a vaguely Pythagorean stripe. The unending dispute suggests that Guthrie was correct in thinking that Aristophanes is purposely being vague here and alludes only in a very general manner to aspects that many of the mystery cults shared.
57 Indeed, it is no surprise that Strepsiades himself decides to go to Socrates to seek ‘salvation’ (line 72: σωθήσομαι) - in this case from personal bankruptcy brought on by the profligacy of his son.
58 At 376-77 the water is twice called a λουτρόν. After the Proboulos arrives, moreover, the men do not complain about the extinguished fire, but rather about being bathed in their clothes (399-402) and without the ancient Greek equivalent of soap (469-70): οὐκ οἱσθα λουτρὸν οἱον αἴδʼ ἡμᾶς ἄρτι / ἐν ἱματιδίοις, καὶ ταῦτʼ ἄνευ κονίας;
59 At Euripides Phoenissae 347, Jocasta laments her son's lost nuptials noting inter alia that he will never enjoy the traditional nuptial bath in the Theban river Ismenos. The scholiast reports: ‘For the bridegrooms of old were accustomed to bathe in local rivers and to take water from rivers and springs and sprinkle it about while praying for the generation of children, since water is life-creating ζωοποιόν) and fruitful (γονιμόν).’ See Ginouvès (n.63) 422 n. 5, and Oakley, I.N. and Sinos, R.H., The wedding in ancient Athens (Madison 1993) 15–16Google Scholar.
60 The phrase δίψῃ δʼ εἰμʼ αὐος καὶ ἀπόλλυμαι appears in a crucial portion of a well known late Classical and Hellenistic series of inscribed gold tablets found buried with the dead in Italy, Crete and Thessaly; see F. Graf, ‘Dionysian and Orphic Eschatology: New Texts and Old Questions’, in T.N. Carpenter and C.A. Faraone (eds.), Masks of Dionysus (Ithaca 1992) 257-8. In the same volume, S. Guettel Cole (p.276 n.3) reports the recent discovery of yet another text from Mytilene. In these texts and and in a popular version of the torment of Tantalus in the underworld (Lucian, On Funerals 8: αἁος … κινδεύων ὑπὸ δίψους … ἁποθανεῖν) the person is, however, withered from thirst (not fire) and salvation takes the form of a drink of cold water, not a cold bath as in the material under discussion.
61 At Frogs 194-95 Aristophanes mentions the Αὑαίνου λίθον (‘the Rock of Withering’–or as Stanford wryly translates: ‘Withering Heights’), apparently a place in Hades where the less fortunate dead grow dry and thirsty. See the discussion in the scholia, J.C. Lawson, ‘ΠΕΡΙ ΑΛΙΒΑΝΤΩΝ’, CR 40 (1926) 56, S. Srebrny, ‘Αὑαίνου λίθον’, Eos 43(1948) 48-52, and W.B. Stanford, Aristophanes: the Frogs (London 1958) 90. All three modern scholars note the use of εἰμʼ αὐος in the ‘Orphic’ tablets discussed in the previous note.
62 See the final lines of the parodos (382-86) with the comments of Henderson (n.2) on v. 382.
63 Polyaenus Strat. 5.17: τὸν Ίλισσόν, οὁ τὸν καθαρμὸν τελοῦσι τοῖς ἐλάττοσι μυστηρίοις. For a summary of the other sources and discussion, see: Frazer, J.G., Apollodorus: the Library vol. 2 (Cambridge MA 1921) 233 n.2Google Scholar; Mylonas, G.E., Eleusis and the Eleusinian mysteries (Princeton 1961) 240–41Google Scholar; and Ginouvès, R., Balaneutikè: recherches sur le bain dans l'antiquité grecque (Paris 1962) 375–77Google Scholar.
64 Isocrates reports that some people chilled their wine in the Enneakrounos (xv 287), probably a reference to the Ilissus itself, but there is conflicting testimony over the location of the Enneakrounos in the classical period (see n.5). In the Phaedrus (230b-c) Socrates describes a spring of very cold water (μάλα ψυχροῦ ὔδατος) on the banks of the Ilissus at a place sacred to some nymphs and to Achelous, the same river god that the female semi-chorus invoke when they fling their cold water on the men.
65 Vv. 655-58. After the mention of Wealth's purificatory bath in the sea, a character responds sarcastically: νὴ Διʼ εὐδαίμων ἄρʼ ἡν άνὴρ γέρων … ψυχρᾷ θαλάττη λούμενος. Here the context and phrasing clearly recalls the popular macarismos-formula used in a variety of mystery cults (see P. Sfyroeras, GRBS xxxvi [1996] 238-39) and sets up the same comic contradiction that we find in the dousing scene of the Lysistrata, where the old women claim that the ritual bath will cause the old men ‘to bloom again’, but for the present it comes close to killing them!
66 Mylonas, (n.63) 240 n. 85, collects the scant primary sources. Scholars have traced the tradition back to the end of the fifth century, and speculate about an even earlier source in a lost sixth-century epic katabasis of Heracles; see Lloyd-Jones, H., ‘Heracles at Eleusis: P. Oxy. 2622 and P.S.I. 1391’, Maia xix (1967) 206–229Google Scholar, Graf (n.33) 142-50, and Robertson, N., ‘Heracles’ “Catabasis”’, Hermes 108 (1980) 274-99 esp. 295–99Google Scholar. In the past, scholars have focused on a series of later Roman-era reliefs which show Heracles enthroned and veiled, while various females attend to him with lowered torches and winnowing fans, both of which are thought to be purificatory. The probable emphasis of the Agrae rite on water (see nn. 63-64), when combined with the widespread tradition of the immolation and salvation of Heracles, suggests to me at least that the mythological paradigm here might have been the salvation of Heracles by the timely arrival of native Attic waters.
67 Spatz (n.7) 96 and Martin (n.l) 77-8.
68 Kurtz, D.C. and Boardman, J., Greek burial customs (Ithaca NY 1971) 161Google Scholar, discuss the use of water generally in such funerary rites.
69 See A. Willems, ‘Notes sur la Lysistrate d'Aristophane’, Acad. Roy. Belg. Bull. Class. Lettres et Belles-Arts (1904) 620-22, for a full discussion.
70 See Pfohl, G., Greek poems on stone: vol. 1 Epitaphs from the seventh to fifth centuries BC (Leiden 1967) nos. 7 and 8Google Scholar. See also the similar phrases in two epitaphs preserved in the literary tradition and conventionally dated to the Persian Wars: Pfohl nos. 84 (ἰχθυόεσσαν / ợυόμενοι χώραν in an epigram attached to an Athenian casualty list for those who died at Byzantium) and 138 (πατρίδα ῤυομένους in the epitaph on a polyandrion at Ossa).
71 With one exception (see next note) I give the text and follow the interpretation of Page, D.L., Further Greek epigrams (Cambridge 1981) 207–11Google Scholar (‘Simonides’ xiv). The epigram is quoted by three late sources: [Plut.] Malig. Herod. 39.87la-b, the scholiast to Pindar Ol. 13.32b and Athen. xiii 573c.
72 At the end of v. 2, the Mss of all three sources give ΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΑΙ, a reading that editors have traditionally rendered as δαιμονία, a dative singular agreeing with Κύπριδι. Page (n.71) rightly baulks at using this adjective to describe a deity and prints the neuter plural δαιμόνια ( = δαιμονίας εὑχάς) Here, however, I follow Brown, C.G., ‘The Prayers of the Corinthian Women (Simonides Ep. 14)’, GRBS xxxii (1991) 5–14Google Scholar, who argues that the nominative plural δαιμόνιαι is the best reading, a designation for women who have been ‘dedicated’ to the goddess (see n.74).
73 This odd sort of pleonasm may also be part of the wider panhellenic tradition of Persian War memorials. The Megarians praised their war dead as those who died while desiring ‘the day of freedom for Greece and the Megarians’ (Έλλάδι καὶ Μεγαρεῦσιν; Pfohl no. 154—the text is preserved on a late-antique inscription from Megara, but is generally thought to quote an epigram dating nearly a millennium earlier c. 480-79).
74 Nor is this evocation of the Corinthian epigram without a touch of Aristophanic irony, for if Athenaeus (quoting Theopompus and Timaeus) is correct, the women praised by Simonides were hetairai, who were presumably the special devotees of Aphrodite in Corinth; see Brown (n.72). If we recall how in the Lysistrata Aristophanes consistently portrays the younger women on the Acropolis as sex-crazed wine-drinkers, the echo of the epigram is richly and humorously ambivalent.
75 Similar boasts for panhellenic salvation occur in the Peace: ὑπὲρ Έλλήνων πάντων πέτομαι (93) and ἒσωσα τοὺς ♥Ελληνας (866). See also the reference at Frogs 1419 to the dangerous circumstances of 405: ‘…so that the city, once it has been saved (σωθεῖσα), may stage its choruses’, with the discussion of H. Erbse, ‘Dionysos’ Schiedsspruch in den Fröschen des Aristophanes’ in Δώρημα Hans Diller zum 70. Geburtstag (Athens 1975) 56-7, who also notes the plea to Aeschylus as he leaves to return to the living: καὶ σῷζε πόλιν τὴν ἡμετέραν (1501). For the importance of the theme of soteria in the Women in the assembly, see below in n.81. Aristophanes often describes or stages the entrance of his comic heroes in ways that recall the epiphany of salvific gods in times of crisis, e.g.: Acharn. 567; Kn. 458 and 836; Peace 209; and Wealth 1189. For a wide-ranging discussion of the language used for such epiphanies, see Frey, V., ‘Zur Komodie den Aristophanes’, MH v (1948) 168–77Google Scholar, and Slater, W.J., ‘The Epiphany of Demosthenes’, Phoenix xlii (1988) 126-30, esp. 127–28Google Scholar, who is primarily interested in the use of σῴζω and σωτηρία in Demosthenes On the Crown 170-72.
76 For this dating see: Dover, K.J., Aristophanic comedy (London 1972) 16 and 69Google Scholar; Sommerstein, A., ‘Aristophanes and the Events of 411’, JHS xcvii (1977) 112–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Westlake (below n.79) 38-39; and Henderson (n.2) xv-xvi.
77 [Aris.] Ath. Pol. xxix 2 and 4; see Rhodes, P.J., A commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford 1981)Google Scholarad loc.
78 For discussion see Wilamowitz, , Aristoteles und Athen i (Berlin 1893) 102 n. 7Google Scholar, and Rhodes, P.J., The Athenian boule (Oxford 1985) 232–4Google Scholar. There is also evidence for special Athenian sacrifices performed ὑπὲρ τῆς σωτηρίας; see, e.g., Sokolowski, F., Lois sacrées des cités grecques: supplément (Paris 1962) no. 11Google Scholar.
79 See Westlake, H.D., ‘The Lysistrata and the war’, Phoenix xxxiv (1980) 39–40Google Scholar, Bieler, L., ‘A political slogan in ancient Athens’, AJP lxxii (1951) 181–84Google Scholar; and Henderson (n.2) xxi-xxiv. Even if the speech was given after the play, it probably reflects the framework of the ongoing political debate.
80 See also the beginning of his speech (viii 53.2) where he asks rhetorically if anyone had any hope of salvation (σωτηρία) for the city in the present circumstances of Sparta's alliance with Persia. A somewhat similar choice appears in the Melian debate where the haughty Athenians insist that the Melians consider how they can save (σῴζειν) their city from destruction (Thuc. v 87-88).
81 Bertelli, L., ‘L'utopia sulla scena: Aristofane e le parodia della città’, CCC iv (1983) 250–2Google Scholar, and Ussher, R.G., Aristophanes: Ecclesiazusae (Oxford 1973) xxxxviGoogle Scholar.
82 Bieler (n.79) and Westlake (n.79) 39 both note the importance of the verb σῴζειν in this exchange between Lysistrata and the Proboulos and both connect it with Peisander's speech.
83 For this meaning of σῴζειν in the fifth-century, see nn. 32 and 35.
84 There is a similar tension between these personal and public connotations of salvation in the speech at Women in the assembly 396-407, where the nearly blind politician Neoclides is deemed unfit to talk about saving the city, because he has failed to save his own eyesight. This is, in fact, yet another salvific sub-theme in the Lysistrata, where the members of the male semi-chorus are twice afflicted with eye injuries, first in the parodos by sparks that fly from the pot of embers (296-98) and then by an insect which similarly gnaws at their eyeballs (1025-26); see Martin (n.l) 94-5. In the second instance, the female semi-chorus once again ‘saves’ the old men by successfully removing the bug from their eyes.
85 For the mustering of the Athenians at Heracles' sanctuaries first at Marathon and then at Cynosarges, see Hdt. vi 116 and Woodford, S., ‘The cults of Heracles in Attica’, in Mitten, D.G., Pedley, J.G. and Scott, I.A. (eds.), Studies presented to G.M.A. Hanfmann ii (Mainz 1971) 217Google Scholar, who also discusses inter alia the post-war reorganization and expansion of the Marathonian games that were held at or near Heracles’ Marathonian temenos. The renewed interest in these games seems to reflect an increase in Heracles’ popularity, which itself was probably triggered by the perception that he had somehow aided the Greek fighters in the area. See also the possible connection between Heracles and Thermopylae (n.20), yet another Persian War battlefield.
86 Bowie, (n.l) 201, stresses how Aristophanes in the course of the Lysistrata manages to mention all of the major battles of the Persian Wars, except Plataea.
87 Vaio, (n.l) passim, and Rosellini, (n.1)15-19, both note how the women by taking control of the treasury turn public finance into a domestic concern and turn the Acropolis into a private household run by women. Foley (n.7) 6-1 focuses on the theme of women's work (e.g. woolworking, feeding, household finances) and their central role in the sphere of civic religion. In his chapter ‘Travaux féminins sur l'Acropole’ in La fille d'Athènes (Paris 1987) 99–115Google Scholar, P. Brulé stresses the domestic quality of female roles in Athenian civic cult connected with the Acropolis. Contrast this equation of married women's work and salvation, with the more traditional heroine found in Attic tragedy and in epichoric legends throughout Greece: a virgin who commits suicide in order to save her city; see Kearns, E., ‘Saving the city’ in Murray, O. and Price, S. (eds.), The Greek city from Homer to Alexander (Oxford 1990) 323–44Google Scholar.
88 Lewis, D.M., ‘Notes on Attic inscriptions (II) xxiii: Who was Lysistrata?’, ABSA i (1955) 1–12Google Scholar, who also claims that the character Myrrhine is modeled on a woman of that name who served in the temple of Athena Nike in the second half of the fifth-century. Dover, (n.76) 152 n. 3, dismisses both identifications, while Westlake (n.79) 52 n. 47, agrees with the identification of Lysistrata, but dismisses Lewis' further claims about Myrrhine, which is indeed a fairly common name. The communis opinio about the equation Lysimache = Lysistrata continues to gain support; see, e.g., Foley (n.7) 7, Loraux (n.l) 148-9 [= 179-81] and Sommerstein, A.H., Lysistrata (Warminster 1990) 5Google Scholar. Henderson, (n.2) xxxviii-xl, considers the identification plausible but unnecessary, while MacDowell, D.M., Aristophanes and Athens: an introduction to the plays (Oxford 1995) 239–40Google Scholar, supports the identification of both Lysistrata and Myrrhine, with further argument on the identification of the latter.
89 Foley (n.7) 9-10 and Loraux (n.l) 119-22 [= 161-65].
90 A duty that would have been overseen (in part) by the priestess of Athena Polias; see Elderkin, G.W., ‘Aphrodite and Athena in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes’, CPh xxxv (1940) 392Google Scholar; Foley (n.7) 9 n. 20; Loraux (n.l) 144-45; and Barber, E., ‘The Peplos of Athena’ in Neils, J. (ed.), Goddess and polis: the panathenaic festival in ancient Athens (Princeton 1992) 112–17Google Scholar. In a similar vein, the jokes at vv. 740-52, where Lysistrata turns back the five women trying to sneak back home, are filled with detailed allusions to Athena and her cult on the Acropolis. See Bodson, L., ‘Gai, gai! Sauvons-nous!: Procédés et effets du comique dans Lysistrata 740-52’, L'Ant. Class, xlii (1973) 5–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
91 For discussion of the text and ritual background, see: Foley (n.7) 11-12; Henderson (n.2) ad loc.; MacDowell (n.88); Loraux (n.l) 135-36 [= 164-65], and Bowie (n.l) 180.
92 I developed this essay while I was Junior Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C. during the academic year of 1991-92. I owe many thanks to my hosts Z. and D. Stewart, the other Junior Fellows, and the staff for making my stay a particularly enjoyable and productive one. I presented earlier versions of this paper at the following institutions: Amherst College, Columbia University, University of Cincinnati, Northwestern University and Boston University. I should like to thank my hosts at each venue for their hospitality and the various audiences for their many helpful suggestions. Many thanks, also, to T.H. Carpenter, S.G. Cole, K.J. Dover, F. Graf, J. Henderson, M. Jameson, R. Kotansky, D. Lateiner, S. Morris, D. Obbink, R. Sinos, L. Slatkin and an anonymous referee, who all made comments on various drafts or helped me in other important ways.
- 14
- Cited by