1. I have used the text and commentary of R. G. Bury (Cambridge, 1932). Most scholars have concerned themselves with the function of Aristophanes’ myth within the Symposium, hence pass over the ‘Aristophanic’ elements quickly; Dover, K. J., ‘Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium’, JHS 86 (1966) 41–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that the myth’s chief affinities are with folklore generally, not comedy. I am contesting this.

2. Symposium 189B.

3. Among them: lampooning of individuals and types; parody of literary genres; plays on words; buffoonery (the hiccups, outside the speech); mock-didacticism; parodic use of scientific, technical, and conceptual language; straight-faced telling of nonsense; wild fantasy; ridiculous explanations of things; irreverence toward the gods; comic moralizing; mixture of colloquial and ‘high’ language; funny images and comparisons; sexual humor; topical reference and anachronism; and delight in bodily functions and circular motion.

4. Symposium 192A; cf. Knights 333ff; Clouds 1093. There is an abridged quotation from the Clouds later, at Symp. 221B.

5. The ‘contest of Dionysus’ is suggested at Symp. 175E and 213E, and Socrates’ Dionysian victory over the comic and tragic poets implied throughout; see Bacon, Helen, ‘Socrates Crowned’, Va. Quarterly Review 35, 3 (1959) 415–30Google Scholar.

6. The famous topical reference to the dioikismos of Mantineia in 385/4 may be playful anachronism by Plato, outdoing Aristophanes at his own game: see Dover, , ‘The Date of Plato’s Symposium’, Phronesis 10 (1965) 2–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. The Greek word is eudaimonia, sometimes translated ‘blessedness’ or ‘bliss’.

8. Aristophanes is also parodying Pausanias’ account (181C) of Eros’ double descent, from an Aphrodite who shared in male-female heredity and one partaking only of the male.

9. Symposium 193B. Socrates had linked Pausanias and Agathon together at 177E; their physical relationship is strongly implied in Pausanias’ speech but never, somehow, admitted.

10. We are meant to recall how in the comic tale of Odyssey 8, 266–366, Hephaestus trapped the lovers Ares and Aphrodite and punished them (within comic limits) for their adultery. This time Hephaestus stands benignly over the entwined lovers, holding his tools, asking what he can do for them. A beautiful picture!

11. Symposium 192E.

12. Weil, Simone, “The Symposium of Plato”, in Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks, ed. and trans, by E. C. Geissbuhler (London, 1957) 106–31Google Scholar. Although Weil disparages the positive value of carnal union in Aristophanes’ myth, she is very perceptive about the sin-grace pattern.

13. Symposium 177E (Aristophanes ‘spends all his time on Dionysus and Aphrodite’, or ‘makes them his entire business’).

14. See Edmonds, J. M., The Fragments of Attic Comedy, I (Leiden, 1957) 72–80Google Scholar: Cratinus’ Ploutoi seems to have unleashed a flood of competitive Golden Age or Land of Cockaigne descriptions, which Athenaeus lovingly preserved; see Crates, frr. 14, 15 (where politicians may be playing on popular gullibility); Telecleides, Amphictions, fr. 1; Pherecrates, Miners, frr. 108–9, and Persians, fr. 130; also Metagenes, fr. 6. All these are low comic versions (with self-parody) of Hesiod’s Golden Age or Homer’s loci amoeni (Calypso’s island, the land of the Phaeacians, etc.).

15. See Lynch, William F., S. J., Images of Hope (Baltimore, 1965Google Scholar), and May, Rollo, Love and Will (New York, 1969Google Scholar).

16. See Symposium 190C and 191B, and Diotima’s myth of Poros, Penia, and their son Eros (esp. 203 B-D).

17. To a Freudian, the slicing in half will naturally suggest castration; but curiously (this being a comic myth), it leads to, not follows from, the discovery of genital sexuality. Differently, the hybris of the Wholepeople suggests ‘infantile omnipotence’ and ‘polymorphous perversity’.

18. The punishment of souls in limbo is (Inferno, 2,52): che senza speme vivemo in disio (cf. also Purgatorio 3,40–45; 7,4–9). By contrast, throughout the Purgatorio disio is closely associated with speme or speranza; desire always points, that is, to its joyful fulfillment in heaven. (See, e.g., Purg. 4,28–30; 5,85–86; 11,37–39; 15,49–54; 18,28–33; 19,64–67; 21,37–39; 26,61–63; 27,115–23.)

19. 1.Cor., 13,11.

20. Mt 18,2.

21. See Lewis, C. S., An Experiment in Criticism. (Cambridge, 1961Google Scholar), chs, 6,7.

22. See Pieper’s, Josef beautiful book, Leisure the Basis of Culture, trans. A. Dru (New York, 1952Google Scholar).

23. Phaedrus 244A-245A.

24. For my conception of the comic hero and the power and fun of Aristophanic comedy generally, I am much indebted to Whitman, Cedric H., Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, Mass., 1964CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

25. Cox, Harvey, The Feast of Fools (Cambridge, Mass., 1962Google Scholar), is especially encouraging because it reflects the spirit of the times (I hope, not just a passing phase).

26. Thucydides 1,70,3.

27. On discouragement during the plague (athymia, leading to ‘hopelessness’, to anelpiston) see Thucydides 11,51 (but ‘light hopes’ can also be misleading and empty: 11,51,6); on Pericles’ encouragement, see 11,13,3,6; 11,22,1; 11,59,3; 11,65,9. Taken as a whole, Thucydides’ History shows the Athenians as somewhat manicdepressive, yet with an enormous vitality and power of resistance, which they showed especially when things went against them.

28. Acharnians, 646–655. Testing the Spartans, who want an alliance, the Persian king asks: (a) who controls the sea? and (b) who is most criticized (=best advised) by this poet? The Spartans are therefore scheming to seize Aigina – and Aristophanes!

29. See Forrest, W. G., The Emergence of Greek Democracy (New York and Toronto, 1966Google Scholar).

30. See Jones, H. M., The Pursuit of Happiness (Cambridge, Mass., 1953CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

31. Charlie day-dreams that he and his girl have a cozy house. There is a hot roast on the table; grapes and oranges hang outside the window, ready for picking; a friendly cow comes by and, at Charlie’s signal, squirts milk into a pail (cf. Virgil, Eel. 4, 21–22, ipsae lacte domum referent distenta capellae/ubera, ‘of themselves, shegoats will bring back home udders swollen with milk’). Other Chaplin movies offer many comparable dream- and waking- visions of riches and abundance, in contrast with life’s ordinary poverty, destitution, and struggle. So do Marx Brothers’ movies; see esp. Harpo’s deliriously happy expression as, in Night at the Opera, he wanders into a ship’s buffet and spaghetti, pineapple, bread and Chianti bottle are heaped onto his plate.

32. Acharnians 885–94. Notice the repetition: pothoumenê 885, potheinê 886, pothoumenên 890.

33. See Whitman’s comments on the monstrous, lyrical, grotesque and comic in his chapter, ‘Discourse of Fantasy’ (259–80). He compares Dali’s paintings; I would prefer to see the Acharnians illustrated by Chagall.

34. Knights 1011–13, 1086–87. For related dreams of glory, competing with and undercutting one another, and ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, see Knights 797–98, 965–66, 967–69, 1088–89, 1090–91, 1094–95.

35. One thinks, inevitably, of Mr Toad.

36. Peace 301 ff. (the parodos). ‘Don’t rejoice just now,’ cries Trygaeus, but he hasn’t a chance. Compare the ‘Yes, but you dor’t go!’ joke in Pirates of Penzance, and those wonderfully irrepressible D’Oyly Carte encores, usually once in each performance.

37. Yet it was Lucy who objected, on another occasion, to the usual cycle of ‘ups and downs’: ‘Why not,’ she demanded, ‘go from ups to upper-ups?’

38. C. L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (Princeton, 1959), 4–10 (‘through release to clarification’) and passim.

39. What Aristotle meant by tragic catharsis has been argued endlessly by scholars; the most comprehensive and satisfying account I have come across is that of Lain Entralgo, P., The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity, ed. and trans. by L. J. Rather and J. M. Sharp (New Haven and London, 1970Google Scholar), ch. 5. This is not to say that we should not develop Aristotle’s account further according to our own understanding: for such an attempt, see Kaufmann, Walter, Tragedy and Philosophy (New York, 1968Google Scholar). As for comedy: although Aristotle was further removed from Old Comedy than Plato, its severe critic, and indeed seems to have found Aristophanes an embarrassment to his schematic view of the evolution of comedy (see Else’s commentary, 183–203), he may have had insight into some of the methods and aims of Old Comedy and its cathartic power. For an attempted reconstruction of these ideas, see Lane Cooper, An Aristotelian Theory of Comedy (New York, 1922). Possibly, Aristotle made anger and envy the proper objects of the comic catharsis: so Cooper thinks (64–70), and Freud would partly agree. My own stress on wishing and hoping in the present essay is one-sided: it ignores or plays down many other aspects of Aristophanes’ comedy, which I hope to bring out in the full series of essays, and the progressively unfolding definition of comic catharsis, of which ‘Desire with Hope’ forms (after the religious, before the artistic essay) the second stage. For the present, my chief concern with the comic ‘catharsis’ is itself comic, to enjoy free association, break through constraining definitions, and pay tribute to Dionysus, the founder.

40. See Aristophanes, fr. 579 Edmonds (the Athenians dislike harsh poets and wines that contract the eyebrows and the belly); also Theopompus, fr. 62 (wine-lees clear the belly and wits). Freud would have appreciated the association.

41. This is a key metaphor of the philosophic Symposiian (see 176 A-E); cf. also Plato’s praise of wine in Laws II, and Aristophanes’ in Knights 89–96 (it brings inspirations, delusions, joys, and splendid actions).

42. Purgatorio 27, 131. (On a less lofty plane, compare Rabelais’ Abbaye de Thélème, with its rule and motto, Fay ce que vouldras.)

43. In Purgatorio 28, Dante re-enters the Earthly Paradise, a place of play, laughter, and joy from which (as Eden) man’s sinful disobedience had exiled him. The Golden Age of which ancient poets sang was, Matilda explains, a dream of this place. My own view is that Aristophanes should have been the local guide (though Dante would have placed him in limbo, probably, with Plautus, Terence, Caecilius and the rest; see Purg. 22, 97–99). Earlier, throughout Dante’s ascent, the purging away of sins is implicitly compared to a purging-away of mist and fog; at each turn, the wings of desire grow stronger and surer of the goal, as Dante gains the spiritual freedom necessary for the attainment of joy.

44. Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3.

45. This view applies, not just to the traffickers in indulgences and purification-rites that (as in many ages) one met in the streets, but to the more established churches, so to speak: the Orphics, the Pythagoreans, the followers of Heraclitus or Empedocles or other philosopher-mystics – and presumably Socrates too, whose follower Plato uses the language and imagery of ‘purification’ so consistently in his dialogues. The Phaedo, ascetic and death-centered, is a prime example of what the comic poet must oppose (although curiously, the practice of spiritual-intellectual detachment from the prison-house of the body leads to the enjoyment of a splendidly described Earthly Paradise in the myth, 107A-114D). Note the recurrence of the term katharos, ‘pure’, in its various forms (cf. 67A and C-D, 69A-C, 79D, 80E, 107–8, 114BC).

46. Clouds 126.

47. See Bacon, 424: ‘Socrates is continually playing the roles of comic and tragic poet.’ He doesn’t wish to be laughed at (199B) – but is laughed at, ironically, by Diotima and Alcibiades. When he forces Aristophanes and Agathon to admit that knowledge of comedy- and tragedy-writing properly belongs to the same person (223D), the clear implication is that Socrates is such a Wholeperson, as well as master of ‘satyr drama’ (168).

48. Symposium 205DE. Rather insultingly, Aristophanes is not named as author of the ‘account’ here refuted. See Dover, 50: ‘Plato believed that popular values, as assumed and exemplified in comedy and folklore, were committed to the individual, the particular and the familiar, and that such a morality was irreconcilable with the practice of philosophy.’

49. Is this a hint that, given sufficient reason, people should castrate themselves? Cf. Mt. 22,27–30 (‘If thy right eye offend thee …’).

50. Symposium 212C. Aristophanes’ attempt to reply is frustrated by a comic device, the sudden entrance of a band of revellers!

51. See Roger Hornsby, ‘Significant Action in the Symposium,’ CJ 52 (1956–57) 37–40.

52. See O’Brien, D., Empedocles’ Cosmic Cycle (Cambridge, 1969Google Scholar), esp. ch. 9, ‘The Zoogonical Stages’ (196–236; 227–9 discuss the Symposium myth). Apparently, the splitting-up of Aristophanes’ Wholepeople imitates the splitting-up of Empe-docles’ ‘wholenatures’ under the (growing) power of Strife. A further Empedoclean separation into limbs is threatened. And the halves’ search to be reunited probably reflects Empedocles’ description of how the scattered limbs strive to come together under the (growing) rule of Love. Since Empedocles’ wholenatures were bisexual or asexual, sexual intercourse was probably a creation of Strife and sign of dividedness: contrast Aristophanes’ view (but sex may have taken on a more positive rule under E.’s rule of Love, bringing male and female together again).

53. The analogy must have existed, as Jaeger and many others have argued; but just how it worked remains highly uncertain.

54. Plato shows the strong influence of E’s cycle elsewhere, especially in the Politicus myth (a movement from unity and harmony and control to near-chaos and back again, with a corresponding sense of man’s spiritual fall from a simpler, better existence, to which he may yet return); a similar background, moral and cosmological, is implied in the Republic, Critias, Timaeus, and Laws.

55. My Plato-Aristophanes conversation was inspired by similar conversations about love in Gould, Thomas, Platonic Love (London, 1963Google Scholar). Aristophanes would side with Freud about the importance of the lower drives, with Plato (in part) about the relation of desire to Reality; see Gould, 16.

56. On the Socratic catharsis, see above, note 45, and Alcibiades’ incisive description in Symposium 215C-216C. A form of logotherapy, it was analogous to the psychiatric catharsis, under Dionysus’ patronage, described in Phaedrus 244D; but Plato regarded it as being on a higher level than current psychiatry (Phaedrus 248DE). See Lain Entralgo, Therapy of the Word, ch. 3.

57. See also the many perceptive comments in Levin, Harry, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (Bloomington, Ind., 1969Google Scholar); esp. 172, on the peasant’s heaven, Schlaraffenland, and the Land of Cockaigne, as Pieter Breughel portrays it.

58. Cf. Empedocles, fr. 128: ‘Cypris alone was queen’, also fr. 130.

59. But however inspired their prophecies, one feels that Aristophanes would have treated McLuhan and Charles Reich as charlatans and expelled them from the feast.

60. The threat, averted in Hesiod’s account and Aeschylus’, that Zeus will be supplanted by a more powerful son (successor), came to pass in various comedies; see the ‘revolution’ of Dinos in the Clouds; also Cratinus, fr. 162 A (Edmonds): a chorus of Titans or Plutuses is freed from bondage, Zeus is overthrown, and Demos (who else?) now takes on the sovereignty of heaven (as Peisthetairos does in the Birds). Cf. Agathon’s proclamation in Symposium 195C: Eros is now King of the Gods! See also the fine statement by Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism (New York, 1969Google Scholar), 171:

The total mythos of comedy, only a small part of which is regularly presented, has regularly what in music is called a ternary form: the hero’s society rebels against the society of the senex and triumphs, but the hero’s society is a Saturnalia, a reversal of social standards which recalls a golden age in the past before the main action of the play begins. … This ternary action is, ritually, like a contest of summer and winter in which winter occupies the middle action; psychologically, it is like the removal of a neurosis or blocking point and the restoration of an unbroken current of energy and memory.

61. Cornford, F. JVI., The Origins of Attic Comedy (Cambridge, 1934) 20–33Google Scholar.

62. Virgil, Eel. 4,4–7: Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas, Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. Iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna, . iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto… The final Age of the Cumaean prophecy is now upon us; Periods marshal, the great Cycle turns itself to a new beginning. Now at last the Virgin returns, now is renewed old Saturn’s kingdom, Now at last new offspring is sent down to us from the heights of heaven.

Virgil’s imagination is Empedoclean here as well as Messianic; the rule of Strife, culminating in the present Iron Age, has begun to reverse itself in the direction of love, harmony, and peace. Virgil’s vision, colored sheep and all, is deeply comic as well as religious; the intuition that a Golden Age lies ahead, not just behind, appears also in Georgics 2 and in the Aeneid.

63. C. S. Lewis somewhere compares the difficulty most people have in picturing the joy of heaven to that which a young boy, fond of candy, might have were he told about the delights of sexual intercourse. ‘But,’ he would ask, ‘could I eat chocolates while I’m doing it?’

64. The response is at once to Socrates and to Plato.