The multiple Phrynichoi problem is an acknowledged conundrum of Greek prosopography: LGPN lists thirty-eight Phrynichoi, among whom nine were active in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries.Footnote ² Debate on the Phrynichus question has focussed primarily on Aristophanes’ Wasps (= Vesp.) where there is uncertainty about the identity of Phrynichus in three passages.Footnote ³ In most scholarly discussions on Wasps there is a persistent assumption that each time ‘Phrynichus’ is named Aristophanes intends one unambiguous referent. Roos has, however, proposed the possibility of a double parody at Vesp. 1490 entailing the simultaneous mockery of two different Phrynichoi.Footnote ⁴ In this paper I analyse the possibilities for double (and even triple) mockery of this kind in Frogs (= Ran.), where the Phrynichus problem remains largely unexplored. I argue that Aristophanes exploits the ambiguity of the name ‘Phrynichus’ in order to mock his rival at the Lenaea of 405, Phrynichus comicus, by comically equating him with the ‘bad’ tragic poet and the oligarchic politician both of whom bear the same name.

Arguments for ‘double mockery’ (the simultaneous mockery of two targets) are not alien to Aristophanic studies, and various forms of it have been proposed:Footnote ⁵ Platter discusses the ‘double dialogism’ of Aristophanes’ Telephus parody in Thesmophoriazusae, which, he argues, parodies both Euripides’ Telephus and Aristophanes’ own earlier parody of this play in Acharnians. Footnote ⁶ Sidwell argues that Dicaeopolis paracomically caricatures Eupolis and Cratinus simultaneously.Footnote ⁷ The concept also underlies some of Vickers's arguments for extensive political allusions to Pericles in Aristophanic comedy.Footnote ⁸ Double mockery via homonymy, however, remains—so far as I can tell—a relatively unexplored realm.Footnote ⁹

The name Phrynichus appears four times in Frogs. Footnote ¹⁰ At line 13, Aristophanes calls out his comic rival, mocking him for indulging in a hackneyed, baggage-carrying routine. At line 689, the chorus advises forgiveness for those ‘tripped up by the wrestling tricks of Phrynichus’. Though scholars always understand this passage with reference to those exiled for involvement in the oligarchic coup, I demonstrate that an ancient audience may equally well have understood it as a literary sentiment advising the forgiveness of spectators with bad taste, both those who used to enjoy Phrynichus tragicus and the fans of Phrynichus comicus. At lines 910 and 1299, Aristophanes names Phrynichus tragicus as an inspiration to and rival of Aeschylus. Both passages are highly metatheatrical and serve to link Aeschylus’ rivalry with Phrynichus tragicus to Aristophanes’ contemporary rivalry with his comic namesake.

Demand is the only scholar to identify the interconnection of the three Phrynichoi. She argues that Aristophanes associates the name ‘Phrynichus’ with the notion of struggle, forming a minor theme in Frogs: Phrynichus comicus competed against Aristophanes; Phrynichus the politician opposed the Athenian citizens; and Phrynichus tragicus was a rival to Aeschylus.Footnote ¹¹ I go beyond Demand's observation to argue that each mention of ‘Phrynichus’ ultimately leads back to Phrynichus comicus.Footnote ¹² To speak of ‘Phrynichus’ is not merely the articulation of a minor theme but rather a competitive strategy.

Aristophanes announces his agonistic stance against Phrynichus comicus in the prologue to Frogs. The slave Xanthias asks Dionysus whether he should tell ‘one of the usual jokes that the audience always laugh at’ (1–2). Dionysus responds by enumerating a list of the crude, overused jokes that Xanthias should avoid. In doing so, he tells all the forbidden jokes, allowing Aristophanes to express disdain for such low-brow humour while still exploiting its popularity.Footnote ¹³ During this scene Xanthias complains (12–15):

Aristophanes mocks three comic poets for using a popular stock routine in which someone carries a load so heavy it makes them fart.Footnote ¹⁵ Phrynichus is mentioned first in emphatic position at the end of line 13.Footnote ¹⁶ Given the prime position of his name and his participation in the contest of 405, the accusation should be read as principally directed against him.Footnote ¹⁷ Lycis and Ameipsias are cited to bolster this accusation: not only does Phrynichus always do baggage-carrying scenes, but he also copies them from second-rate poets such as Lycis and Ameipsias.Footnote ¹⁸ A similar accusation of plagiarism was also made by Hermippus in his (presumably) baggage-carrying-themed comedy Basket-Bearers, where he mocked Phrynichus ‘for passing off other people's poetry as his own’ (ὡς ἀλλότρια ὑποβαλλομένου ποιήματα).Footnote ¹⁹

In the Frogs prologue, therefore, Aristophanes accuses Phrynichus not only of staging hackneyed stock routines but even of copying the routine from others. It may be objected that one can hardly plagiarize a stock routine that had long been the common property of comic poets, but the absurdity of the accusation is, I suspect, precisely Aristophanes’ point: he accuses Phrynichus of ‘stealing’ the same scene that everyone else always uses. Some scholars view such accusations as mere ‘standard comic abuse’.Footnote ²⁰ However, emphasis on the genre-typical, even ritualized nature of comic abuse underplays its agonistic significance.Footnote ²¹

Whether or not Phrynichus really included such plagiarized routines in his comedy, Aristophanes’ mockery of him as doing so sets up a competitive stance that recurs in Frogs. He bills Phrynichus as a bad comedian who steals other poets’ bad routines. He bills himself as a poet above such trivial comic method, but simultaneously and ironically as one who likewise steals the bad comic routines of his rival. He, however, reperforms them in (what he implicitly claims is) a competitively superior manner. In the prologue, Aristophanes, like Phrynichus, ‘steals’ the baggage-carrying routine, but he uses it to critique Phrynichus’ theft of baggage-carrying routines.Footnote ²² The prominence of Phrynichus as comic rival, thematized in the opening lines of Frogs, directs the spectator to look out for further Phrynichean agonistics. In most readings of Frogs engagement with Phrynichus comicus begins and ends at line 13; in the rest of this paper I dispute this assumption and demonstrate Aristophanes’ competitive attitude towards Phrynichus throughout the play.

We next encounter Phrynichus in the parabatic epirrhema spoken by the chorus of mystic initiates (686–91):Footnote ²³

Modern commentators consistently identify the Phrynichus of line 689 with the son of Stratonides, ex-general and leader of the oligarchic coup.Footnote ²⁵ There is no doubt that read with the benefit of hindsight, in full knowledge of the political leanings of the rest of the epirrhema, he is the primary referent. But the first six lines are ambiguous. To understand them we must put ourselves in the shoes of an audience experiencing the play sequentially and for the first time.

The major theme of Frogs up until this point has been drama and the search for a tragic poet. Politics has not been entirely absent from the play, but rather programmatically bound to its poetics. The parodos (354–71) outlaws from the audience corrupt politicians and people with bad poetic taste.Footnote ²⁶ The chorus humorously declines to distinguish the aesthetically from the politically corrupt, but moves seamlessly from excluding ‘those who enjoy buffoonish words on inappropriate occasions’ (βωμολόχοις ἔπεσιν χαίρει, μὴ ᾽ν καιρῷ ποιούντων, 358) to ‘those who do not resolve conflict and are not at peace with the citizens (στάσιν ἐχθρὰν μὴ καταλύει, μηδ᾽ εὔξολος ἐστι πολίταις, 359). In the final lines of the parodos, the excluded constitute those whose crimes combine the poetic and the political: poets who desecrate religious rites (366) and politicians who curtail poetic freedom (367–8).

Politics and poetics are further entwined in the ode (674–85) directly preceding our epirrhema. The chorus invokes the spectators qua theatrical audience, but in political language: ‘Muse, come to my holy dances, to delight in my song and to see the huge crowd of people’ (Μοῦσα, χορῶν ἱερῶν ἐπίβηθι καὶ ἔλθ᾽ ἐπὶ τέρψιν ἀοιδᾶς ἐμᾶς, | τὸν πολὺν ὀψομένη λαῶν ὄχλον, 674–6). The audience are called λαῶν ὄχλον, words with political and military undertones.Footnote ²⁷ The spectators are described as intelligent (οὗ σοφίαι μυρίαι κάθηνται, 675–6), but their intelligence is qualified politically: it is more worthy of honour than Cleophon, a contemporary politician and the titular target of the third play competing against Frogs. The insult attacks Cleophon's oratorical skills, which—to bring us full circle back to the theme of poetics—are compared to a nightingale's song.

Given, therefore, that Aristophanes programmatically entangles political and poetic themes in the lead-up to the epirrhema, that tragedy has been announced as the play's theme, and that the comic Phrynichus has already been highlighted, there is no necessary reason why an audience would, or indeed should, jump immediately to the conclusion that the Phrynichus of line 689 is the politician—at least not until the mention of disenfranchisement (ἄτιμον) in line 692. Until that point, ‘Phrynichus’ is ambiguous. An audience may expect the chorus’ advice to be political or poetic, and they have already been primed by the phrase λαῶν ὄχλον to equate their theatrical and civic roles (πολίτας, 688).Footnote ²⁸ The appearance of the name ‘Phrynichus’ at the beginning of the epirrhema unites the poetic and political themes of the play and, like the parodos, introduces a joke equating political and poetic crimes.

The scholia and the Suda furnish further evidence that the interpretation of ‘Phrynichus’ in antiquity was not cut-and-dry. Ancient scholars cannot be assumed to have accurate knowledge of how fifth-century spectators reacted to Frogs, but their debate about the identity of Phrynichus at Ran. 689 helps destabilize that unanimous modern conviction that the epirrhema's opening is exclusively political.Footnote ²⁹

The scholia and the Suda contain three interpretations of the phrase Φρυνίχου παλαίσματα:

1. 1. Phrynichus is the comic poet, wrongly equated with the general (Suda π 62 Adler, cf. Σ Ran. 689e–f).Footnote ³⁰

2. 2. Phrynichus is the tragic poet, and the phrase ‘the wrestling tricks of Phrynichus’ refers to his memorable tragedy (or satyr play) Antaeus,Footnote ³¹ in which Heracles was depicted wrestling the eponymous Libyan giant. (Σ Ran. 689c–d).Footnote ³²

3. 3. Phrynichus is the ex-general famous for his political machinations, here metaphorically referred to as ‘wrestling tricks’ (Suda π 62 Adler, Σ Ran. 689e–f).Footnote ³³

Where they discuss the first two interpretations at all, modern scholars are quick to dismiss them. True, the Suda's identification of Phrynichus with the comic poet is erroneous, impossibly equating the comic poet and the politician.Footnote ³⁴ The scholiast's error should not, however, deter us from seriously considering whether a fifth-century audience may have understood line 689 to be a reference to the comic poet. Halliwell has identified a consistent tendency among ancient scholars’ explications of kōmōidoumenoi to assimilate the unknown to the known and to translate satire into historical reality in their commentaries.Footnote ³⁵ The Suda's note demonstrates that the scholar had recognized an ambiguity in the name Phrynichus—the political content of the passage suggested the general, but a different Phrynichus had already been mentioned earlier in Ran. 13. His attempt to resolve the ambiguity was to assimilate the two Phrynichoi and claim that the comic poet was the general. Therefore, rather than using the Suda's error as an excuse to uncritically ignore Phrynichus comicus as a valid interpretation of Ran. 689, we ought to acknowledge the interpretative problem of the ambiguity that he perceived even if his scholarly method for resolution is less than satisfactory to us.Footnote ³⁶

The notes proposing Phrynichus tragicus as referent at line 689 are coherently argued, yet none the less rejected.Footnote ³⁷ Chantry maintains that παλαίσματα cannot refer to Antaeus because, if they did, then they should be correctly called ‘the wrestling tricks of Heracles’. It suffices to note in response that it was idiomatic in Greek to refer to the actions of a play as belonging to the playwright rather than to his characters.Footnote ³⁸ Chantry further argues that scholiasts have taken the word παλαίσματα too literally and failed to understand the word's metaphorical significance.Footnote ³⁹ I would argue, however, that Aristophanes chose the word precisely because it has both a literal and a figurative sense that contribute to the multivalent possibilities intrinsic to the name ‘Phrynichus’. Finally, Chantry argues that Phrynichus must be a political figure because the parabasis is political. But, as I argued above, the parodos and the odes preceding our passage have entangled politics and poetics enough to render the epirrhema's opening lines ambiguous.

If we accept that initially an ancient audience could have recognized any one or more of our three Phrynichoi in the epirrhema's opening, we must next consider how each might fit in the context of the passage. Broadly, the parabasis calls for all citizens (the audience) to be equal and not to fear. Even if one of them was ‘tripped up’ by Phrynichus, they must be allowed to atone for the mistake (λῦσαι τὰς πρότερον ἁμαρτίας). The chorus, therefore, asks those who supported Phrynichus to admit their mistake and for the other citizens to forgive them and once again consider them equals (ἐξισῶσαι).

If the παλαίσματα were taken to refer to Antaeus of Phrynichus tragicus, the parabasis would be mocking, and advising us to forgive, those who enjoy the old style of tragedy. In Antaeus, the wrestling tricks may have been described in a particularly vivid and enjoyable way, or perhaps even choreographed. During the agōn between Aeschylus and Euripides, Euripides accuses his older rival of being a trickster (ἀλαζὼν καὶ φέναξ, 909) who deceives (ἐξηπάτα, 910) his audience with dramatic devices such as staging a silent character and then surprising the spectators with sudden choral lyrics (911–15). The audience fell for such deception, Euripides says, because they were ‘stupid, educated by the plays of Phrynichus’ (μώρους … παρὰ Φρυνίχῳ τραφέντας, 910). Euripides’ snub is built on a stereotype that audiences of early tragedy were impressed by stage devices rather than by the cerebral content or rhetorical prowess that Euripides claims for his own tragedy. The chorus calls for spectators who enjoyed this old form of tragedy to admit their mistake so that they can once again be counted among the spectators of good taste. This interpretation of the opening lines of the epirrhema is consistent with the overall theme of Frogs, which, so far as the audience know at this stage, is the quest for a new-style tragedian (γόνιμος ποιητής, 96–102).

Any spectator with experience in the comic theatre might have expected an attack on a rival comic poet from the parabasis and on this basis alone may have assumed Phrynichus to be Aristophanes’ Lenaean co-competitor. Further, if the reference to Cleophon in the preceding ode was read as an allusion to the titular character of the comedy of Plato comicus—the third entry at the Lenaea of 405—the audience would have been primed to recognize the other competitor of Frogs in line 689. In this context παλαίσματα would take on the metaphorical sense of rhetorical competitive strategies.Footnote ⁴⁰ Frogs itself furnishes us with an example of the word πάλαισμα deployed in this way. When the chorus announces the agōn between Euripides and Aeschylus, they characterize them as ‘arguing against each other with wily wrestling moves’ (στρεβλοῖσι παλαίσμασιν ἀντιλογοῦντες, 878). Indeed, the pointed use of the word πάλαισμα for the second time also serves to link the fictional agōn between poets in Frogs to the external agōn between Aristophanes and Phrynichus. In the context of the parabasis, παλαίσματα would in this case refer to any competitive devices Phrynichus comicus had employed (against Aristophanes) in earlier comedies. The chorus would be mocking spectators who were convinced by Phrynichus that his comedy was superior and would be asking them to admit that they were wrong to fall for Phrynichus’ agonistic rhetoric. In the competitive comic context, to admit that it was wrong to like Phrynichus is tantamount to accepting Aristophanes’ superiority and so this advice comically transforms fans of Phrynichus into fans of Aristophanes.

Spectators may also take Phrynichus, as modern scholars do, to be the deceased ex-general and oligarch. The wrestling tricks in this case are a metaphor for the political machinations for which this Phrynichus was famous.Footnote ⁴¹ The call to forgive those ‘tripped up’ by Phrynichus is the demand for the re-enfranchisement of those exiled for participation in the coup.Footnote ⁴²

The ambiguity is short-lived: in line 692 and following, it becomes clear that the chorus is indeed making a political point about disenfranchised citizens (ἄτιμον). But for those who perceived the initial ambiguity, the confirmation that Phrynichus is indeed the oligarch serves to reify the competitive joke: the dramatic Phrynichoi, both the comicus and the tragicus, are comically presented as being as evil as Phrynichus the oligarch.

The Phrynichus jokes of Frogs come to a head in the agōn between Aeschylus and Euripides. Phrynichus is twice named, invoked on both occasions as inspiration for and rival to Aeschylus. Both passages are metatheatrically inflected. Spectators are thus enabled to see through the dramatic references to Phrynichus tragicus, to a joke about the homonymous comic poet present in the theatre. Aristophanes achieves such a metatheatrical atmosphere in the first instance by co-opting the external audience and equating them with the internal underworld crowd watching the Euripides vs Aeschylus debate. In the introduction to the agōn (755–817), Aeacus’ slave explains the forthcoming contest to Xanthias (755–817): Aeschylus had held the chair of tragedy in the underworld, but when Euripides arrived he claimed the chair for himself and the underworld public demanded a trial. On hearing this, Xanthias asks: ‘were there no other allies on Aeschylus’ side?’ (μετ᾽ Αἰσχύλου δ᾽ οὐκ ἦσαν ἕτεροι ξύμμαχοι;, 782), to which the other slave responds: ‘good citizens are few and far between down here, just as they are up there’ (ὀλίγον τὸ χρηστόν ἐστιν, ὥσπερ ἐνθάδε, 783). The phrase ὥσπερ ἐνθάδε compares and comically equates the fictional underworld audience with the real theatre audience priming the actual spectators to see themselves in any future reference to the underworld audience.

There is such a reference at line 910. Euripides berates Aeschylus (908–10):

In the agōn's setup, the underworld slave calls the few Aeschylean spectators ‘good citizens’ (τὸ χρηστόν, 783), while the majority, he says, are Euripides-supporting criminals (772–4). The praise of Aeschylus-fans primes individual spectators to consider themselves among this select few.Footnote ⁴³ Therefore, when Euripides tells Aeschylus at line 910 that his audience are stupid because he inherited them from Phrynichus, the audience, tricked into identifying with Aeschylus’ audience, understand themselves to be implicated in the accusation. In the contemporary metatheatrical realm, it is not the tragic but the comic Phrynichus who has most recently ‘educated’ the audience. As in the parabasis, the implication is that any spectator who allowed himself or herself to be ‘educated’ by Phrynichus comicus is stupid (μώρους). There is an unprovable, but intriguing, further possible layer to this joke: if the Muses of Phrynichus comicus was performed before Frogs, the actor playing Aeschylus will have literally inherited an audience who had just watched a Phrynichus play.

The culmination of Aristophanes’ anti-Phrynichus joke is found in the penultimate contest between Aeschylus and Euripides over musical inspiration and the quality of lyric composition.Footnote ⁴⁴ Euripides accuses Aeschylus of producing monotonously repetitive lyrics. Aeschylus responds (1298–300):

Aeschylus articulates an antagonistic relationship with Phrynichus tragicus. He highlights his own originality at his rival's expense, but does so in the context of an anxiety that an audience might suspect him of copying from Phrynichus. The implication of ἵνα μὴ … ὀφθείην is that he does in fact ‘reap the same meadow’ as Phrynichus, but he attempts to competitively surpass him by adding other songs from good sources.Footnote ⁴⁵ The claim Aeschylus makes here vis-à-vis Phrynichus tragicus is comparable to that made by Aristophanes in the prologue against Phrynichus comicus.

An aspect of this passage, however, has been overlooked: Phrynichus comicus was competing against Frogs with a comedy entitled Muses. It is difficult to assume that an audience hearing Aeschylus mention the Muses of Phrynichus tragicus, would not think also of the Muses of Phrynichus comicus, a comedy whose plot was, like that of Frogs, literary.Footnote ⁴⁶ Moreover, in the parody of Euripidean lyric that follows, Aeschylus invites a Muse of Euripides to accompany him in his performance.Footnote ⁴⁷ I argue that we ought to explore, rather than ignore, the agonistic possibilities inherent in the coincidences of Muses and Phrynichoi in this passage.

In considering whether there could be an intertextual relationship between Frogs and Muses, it is first necessary to deal with the feasibility of this scenario given that both comedies premiered on the same occasion. It is impossible now to reconstruct rehearsal processes or pre-festival opportunities for viewing a rival's work.Footnote ⁴⁸ Internal evidence from other comedies does, however, strongly suggest that a poet could plausibly gain enough insight into a rival performance at the same festival to parody or otherwise engage with it.Footnote ⁴⁹ In 414, Aristophanes’ Birds competed against Phrynichus’ Hermit and the plays shared a theme: the fantastical escape from Athens.Footnote ⁵⁰ Both staged the astronomer Meton and the stock character of Heracles.Footnote ⁵¹ There is even a verbal parallel in a quip about Nicias.Footnote ⁵² While no trace remains here of any agonistic attitude between poets, these parallel scenes suggest more than coincidence.Footnote ⁵³

With only five tantalizing fragments remaining of Muses, the plot lies beyond our grasp.Footnote ⁵⁴ We can be sure, however, that the comedy featured the Muses. The vast majority of plural titles name their comedy's chorus and this is the likeliest scenario for Phrynichus’ play too. The chorus could either have been individualized (and therefore featured a distinct Muse of Euripides) or have been represented as a generic group of Muses. Harvey maintains that they could not have been individualized because ‘so many idiosyncratic Muses might have presented him with material too rich to cope with’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Nevertheless, a comparison with the individualized choruses in Aristophanes’ Birds and Eupolis’ Cities demonstrates the concept's feasibility.Footnote ⁵⁶ In Birds, four birds are introduced at length with accompanying jokes at their expense and remarks on their costumes (267–93). The rest are simply named as they come on stage.Footnote ⁵⁷ Throughout the rest of the play, they act as a single undifferentiated chorus. A similar gimmick may have been used in Muses: the Muses would have been individually identified in the parodos, and several may have been singled out for more extensive mockery, but for the rest of the play they act in sync as a single group. If Phrynichus’ play did feature an identifiable Muse of Euripides, the joke in Frogs would be obvious: Aristophanes would have co-opted one of Phrynichus’ own chorus-members into being the physical representation of the degraded lyrics of a poet about to lose a dramatic agōn. For the Muse, sexualized, probably dressed as a prostitute, clanging some potsherds, is clearly not a flattering anthropomorphization of Euripidean music.Footnote ⁵⁸ It is also possible, of course, that there was no individualized Muse of Euripides in Phrynichus’ play; this would not preclude Aristophanes’ audience from detecting a parody of Phrynichus at Ran. 1299–324. In this case, Aristophanes would have transformed one of Phrynichus’ generic Muses into his own specific Euripidean Muse, thereby one-upping his rival by giving a plain old chorus member a starring role in his own play. In both configurations the joke would naturally work best if there were some additional verbal or sartorial parallel between Aristophanes’ prostitute Muse and Phrynichus’ chorus.

While the precise dynamics of Aristophanes’ parody of Phrynichus are now impossible to reconstruct, the verbal reference to ‘Phrynichus’ and ‘Muses’ at line 1299 together with the Lenaean context is sufficient to validate discussion of a parodic joke here. It is not clear whether Aristophanes’ or Phrynichus’ play was performed first, but the parody of Muses in Frogs would work even if Frogs preceded its competitor. In that case Aristophanes’ parody would function as a form of procatalepsis.Footnote ⁵⁹ By this point in the comedy, the audience has been sufficiently prepared to see references to Phrynichus comicus in any mention of ‘Phrynichus’; even if they had not yet seen Phrynichus’ Muses, they would have known the title and perhaps even a little about the plot. They may still have recognized, therefore, that Aristophanes’ scene was a pre-emptive parody of Muses. On this argument, when the audience actually saw Phrynichus’ play, it would have appeared as a worse version of Aristophanes’ scene.

The double reference to the comic and tragic Phrynichoi at line 1299 comically merges the competitive dynamics of real and fictional playwrights. Aeschylus’ historical rivalry with Phrynichus tragicus merges into Aristophanes’ historical rivalry with Phrynichus comicus. Aristophanes does indeed, elsewhere in the agōn, imbue Aeschylus with something of his own poetic persona, and so it is unsurprising to see their confluence here.Footnote ⁶⁰ Then there is the fictional rivalry between Aeschylus and Euripides. If the rivalries are mapped onto each other, Phrynichus merges with Euripides, Aeschylus’ fictional rival—an association made all the stronger by the fact that Euripides’ Muse is represented as one of Phrynichus’ Muses. By associating Euripides (the loser of the internal agōn) with Phrynichus comicus, Aristophanes comically projects the defeat of Phrynichus comicus in the external contest of that year's Lenaea. Aristophanes’ intergeneric rivalry with Euripides is also embedded in the comic conflation of Aeschylus–Aristophanes vs Euripides–Phrynichus tragicus–Phrynichus comicus.Footnote ⁶¹