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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
- Sprache: Englisch
Provides a comprehensive and systematic treatment of the life and work of Aristophanes A Companion to Aristophanes provides an invaluable set of foundational resources for undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars alike. More than a basic reference text, this innovative volume situates each of Aristophanes' surviving plays within discussion of key themes relevant to the study of the Aristophanic corpus. Throughout the Companion, an international panel of contributors incorporates material culture and performance context, offers methodological and theoretical insights into the study of Aristophanes, demonstrates the relevance of Aristophanes to modern life, and more. Each chapter focused on a particular play is paired with a theme that is exemplified by that play, such as gender, sexuality, religion, ritual, and satire. With an emphasis on understanding Greek comedy and its ancient Athenian context, the text includes approaches to Aristophanes through criticism, performance, translation, and teaching to encourage and inform future work on Greek comedy. Illustrating the vitality of contemporary engagement with one of the world's great literary figures, this comprehensive volume: * Helps new readers and teachers of Aristophanes appreciate the broader importance of each play within the study of antiquity * Offers sophisticated analyses of the Aristophanic corpus and its place in literary and cultural history * Includes chapters focused on teaching Aristophanes, including one emphasizing performance * Provides detailed syllabi and lesson plans for integrating the material into high school and college curricula A Companion to Aristophanes is an essential resource for advanced students and instructors in Classics, Ancient Literature, Comparative Literature, and Ancient Drama and Theater. It is also a must-have reference for academic scholars, university libraries, non-specialist Classicists and other literary critics researching ancient drama, and sophisticated general readers interested in Aristophanes, Greek drama, classical Athens, or the ancient Mediterranean world.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introductionintroduction
A Companion to Aristophanes
The Organization of This Volume
General Resources for Reading Aristophanes
REFERENCES
PART I: The World of Aristophanes
CHAPTER 1: Aristophanes Among Athenians
Introduction
Aristophanes and the Peloponnesian War
The Failed Peace (420–410 bce)
Aristophanes and the End of the War
Aristophanes and the Restored Democracy
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 2: The Staging of Old Comedy
Introduction
Aristophanes' Creative Reuse of the Athenian Theater
Material Agency and Affordances in
Women at the Thesmophoria Festival
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 3: Meter and Song
Introduction
Dialog Meters
Songs and Lyric Meters
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 4: Style, Language, and Obscenity
Introduction
Aristophanes’ Style: A Modern and Ancient View
“Aristophanic” Style in the Other Comedians
Some Close Readings
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 5: Images of Greek Comedy
Introduction
Contemporaneous Athenian Evidence
Pre‐ and Proto‐comic Performances in Athens
West Greek Comic Vases
Aristophanes'
Frogs
, Before and After 405
BCE
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 6: Politics and Aristophanic Comedy
Critics and Complexities
The Plays in their Specific Contexts
Citizen Supermen
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
PART II: The Comedies of Aristophanes
CHAPTER 7:
Acharnians
: Tragedy and Epic
Aristophanes, Literature, and Politics
Aristophanes, Euripides, and the
Telephus
Themes in
Acharnians
: Us versus Them
Themes in
Acharnians
: Epic Values and Democracy
Themes in
Acharnians
: The Public and the Private
Themes in
Acharnians
: Identity
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 8:
Knights
: Political Satire
Introduction*
Paphlagon/Cleon Versus the Sausage Seller/Agorakritos
Demos/the
dēmos
Political Satire in Aristophanic Comedy
Aggressive/Offensive Humor in Aristophanes' Political Comedies
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 9: Clouds: Intellectuals and Philosophy
Introduction
The Plot of
Clouds
Socrates and the Intellectuals: Science, Rhetoric, Sophistry, and Philosophy
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 10:
Wasps
Introduction
Politics and the Athenian Justice System
The Unity of the Plot and the Power of Rhetoric
The Father–Son Conflict
The Cleon Satire
The Poet and His Audience
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 11: Peace: War
Introduction
Men and Gods
Politicians and Farmers, or, War Versus Peace
The Social Divide
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 12: Birds: Utopia
Introduction
Utopia and Dystopia
Cloud‐Cuckoo‐Land
Comic Utopias
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 13:
Lysistrata
: Sexuality
Introduction
Ancient Greece and the History of Sexuality
Greek Comedy, Constraints, and Incitements
Sexuality and Place
The Prostitute and The Priestess
Temporality and Sexuality
Consuming Women: Sex and Food
Reconciliation
Civic and Sexual Reproduction on the Comic Stage
Feminine Sexuality: Subject and Object
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 14:
Women at the Thesmophoria
: Religion and Ritual
Introduction
Men Playing Women
Paratragedy
Festival and Choral Performance
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 15:
Frogs
: Metaphor and Allegory
Introduction
Studies on Metaphor: Some Preliminary Assumptions
Conceptual Metaphors for DEATH
Allegory in the
Frogs
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 16:
Assemblywomen
: Gender
Introduction
Praxagora and the Chorus
The New City
New Sexual Norms in Praxagora’s Athens
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 17:
Wealth
: Economic Fantasies
Introduction: Aristophanes' “Latest” Play
Literary Background and Plot
Set Pieces and Notable Scenes
Cario and Slavery
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
PART III: The Fragments of Greek Comedy
CHAPTER 18: Aristophanes' Lost Plays
Introduction
Preserved and Lost Plays
The Transmission of the Fragments
Two Case Studies:
Babylonians
and
Anagyros
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 19: Aristophanes' Predecessors
Introduction
The Obscure Prehistory of the Genre
The First Generation of Comic Poets
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 20: Aristophanes’ Contemporaries
Introduction: A Culture of Comedy
Survival and Scholarship: Always a Fragmentary Lens: From Aristophanes to Theopompus
Aristophanes and His Contemporaries: Individual Comedians with Common Characteristics
Snapshots of a Lost Culture of Comedy
Comedy Snapshots 1: Eupolis, Biography, and Politics: Questioning Aristophanic Exceptionalism
Comedy Snapshots 2: Tragedy and Euripides in Eupolis and Strattis
Comedy Snapshots 3: Pherecrates, Social Insects, Satire, and Myth
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 21: Aristophanes’ Successors
Introduction
Dramatis Personae
A Comic Feast
Words of Wisdom
A Chorus of Ancient Scriveners
Speaking Objects and Nameless Scripts
The Underground Comedian
All Difficulties Are Resolved by a Happy Ending
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
PART IV: Aristophanes and His Readers
CHAPTER 22: Aristophanes Between Plato and Aristotle
Introduction
Plato and the Emulation of Aristophanes
Aristotle, or the Appreciation of Sophisticated Jokes à la Aristophanes
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 23: Ancient Scholarship on Aristophanes
Introduction
The Sources
A Historical Sketch
Scope and Themes
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 24: Aristophanes in Roman Literature
Introduction
Greek Comedy in Rome
Aristophanes in Roman Literature
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 25: Aristophanes and the Second Sophistic
Introduction
The Atticists' Aristophanes
Critics: Plutarch and Aristides
Dio Chrysostom
Lucian of Samosata
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 26: Renaissance and Early Modern Reception of Aristophanes
Introduction
Editing
Translating
Imitating, Adapting, and Performing Aristophanes
Conclusion
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
PART V: Aristophanes Today
CHAPTER 27: Performing Aristophanes
Introduction
Remembering
Venom in Verse
: Innovative Methods and Conclusions
In the Shadow of
Venom in Verse
: A Scholarly Survey
Process, Not Perfection: An Integrated Arts Performance in the Era of COVID‐19
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
CHAPTER 28: Teaching Aristophanes
Comedy Tonight!
1
In the Background (General)
In the Background (
Lysistrata
)
Lysistrata: Starting the Conversation
Women, War, Etc.: Approaches, Assignments, and Topics
Beyond
Lysistrata
: More Approaches, Assignments, and Projects
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
REFERENCES
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Comic actor portraying Perseus onstage before two seated audience...
Figure 5.2 Actors portraying (Di)onysus and Phor(mio) from Eupolis'
Taxiarch
...
Figure 5.3 Actor dressed as a fighting cock, Attic red‐figure Pelike, ca. 42...
Figure 5.4 (a) Oversized komast riding phallus Pole (Side A), Attic Black‐Fi...
Figure 5.5 Aulos player with actors dressed as horses and riders, Attic blac...
Figure 5.6 Representation of Aristophanes'
Thesmophoriazusae
, Apulian red‐fi...
Figure 5.7 Dionysus (dressed as Heracles) and Xanthias from Aristophanes'
Fr
...
Figure 5.8 “New York Goose Vase,” Apulian red‐figure calyx krater attributed...
Chapter 27
Figure 27.1 Elizabeth Rainey,
Socrates
. Print.
Guide
Introduction
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
Begin Reading
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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A COMPANION TO ARISTOPHANES
Edited by
Matthew C. Farmer
Jeremy B. Lefkowitz
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Farmer, Matthew C., editor. | Lefkowitz, Jeremy B., editor.Title: A companion to Aristophanes / edited by Matthew C. Farmer, Jeremy B. Lefkowitz.Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley‐Blackwell, 2024. | Series: Blackwell companions to the ancient world | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2023050542 (print) | LCCN 2023050543 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119622888 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119622925 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119622956 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Aristophanes–Criticism and interpretation. | LCGFT: Essays.Classification: LCC PA3879 .C557 2024 (print) | LCC PA3879 (ebook) | DDC 882/.01–dc23/eng/20231130LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023050542LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023050543
Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © Terracotta statuette of an actor, Greek, Attica, late 5th–early 4th century BCE,The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection API (Public Domain)
To our students
List of Illustrations
Figure 5.1
Comic actor portraying Perseus onstage before two seated audience members. Attic red‐figure chous, Painter of the Perseus Dance, ca. 420, Athens NM B∑ 518
Figure 5.2
Actors portraying (Di)onysus and Phor(mio) from Eupolis’
Taxiarchoi
(ca. 415), Attic polychrome oinochoe, c. 400, Agora P23985. Drawing by Piet de Jong
Figure 5.3
Actor dressed as a fighting cock, Attic red‐figure Pelike, ca. 425, Atlanta 2008.4.1. Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University
Figure 5.4
(a) Oversized komast riding phallus Pole (Side A), Attic Black‐Figure lip cup, unattributed. Florence 3897: Soprintendenza alle Antichità. (b) Oversized satyr riding phallus Pole (Side B), Attic Black‐Figure lip cup, unattributed. Florence 3897: Soprintendenza alle Antichità
Figure 5.5
Aulos player with actors dressed as horses and riders, Attic black‐figure amphora, ca. 540. Berlin Painter. Inv. F 1697
Figure 5.6
Representation of Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae
, Apulian red‐figure bell krater, Schiller painter, ca. 370, Würzburg H5697. Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg
Figure 5.7
Dionysus (dressed as Heracles) and Xanthias from Aristophanes’
Frogs
approach Heracles’ door, “Berlin Heracles,” ca. 375–350, lost (probably destroyed or stolen during World War II), Formerly Berlin Staatliche Museen F3046
Figure 5.8
“New York Goose Vase,” Apulian red‐figure calyx krater attributed to the Dolon Painter, ca. 400, New York, MMA 24.97.104. Fletcher Fund, 1924
Figure 27.1
Elizabeth Rainey,
Socrates
. Print.
Notes on Contributors
Malika Bastin‐Hammou is Professor of Greek at the Université Grenoble Alpes (France). She has written widely on Aristophanes and his reception. Her most recent book is Translating Greek Drama in Early Modern Europe. Theory and Practice (15th–16th c.) (De Gruyter 2023), co‐edited with Giovanna di Martino, Cécile Douduyt, and Lucy Jackson. Her forthcoming book focuses on translations of Aristophanes in early modern France.
Gwendolyn Compton‐Engle is Professor of Classics at John Carroll University, where she teaches Latin and Greek language, literature, and culture. She has published articles on costume and performance in Greek comedy, as well as the relationship between comedy and tragedy in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE. She is the author of Costume in the Comedies of Aristophanes (Cambridge 2015).
Pierre Destrée is a research fellow of the Fondation Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (Belgium) and a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain, where he teaches ancient philosophy. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on ancient ethics, politics, and aesthetics, as well as a French translation and commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics (Paris, Flammarion 2021). He has co‐edited several books, most recently: (with Penelope Murray) The Blackwell Companion to Ancient Aesthetics, Wiley‐Blackwell, 2015; (with Zina Giannopoulou) Plato: Symposium – A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press, 2017; (with Radcliffe Edmonds) Plato and the Power of Images, Brill, 2017; (with F. Trivigno) Laughter, Humor and Comedy in Ancient Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2019; (with D. Munteanu and M. Heath) The Poetics in Its Aristotelian Context, Routledge, 2020. He is currently completing a monograph on “Aristotle on Laughter.”
A. C. Duncan is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research concerns the experience, evaluation, and impact of Greek drama, from its origins in ancient Athens to its reception in our modern, globalized world. In his recent and forthcoming work, he seeks to incorporate non‐literary evidence and analytical methods to place the ancient theater within ever‐wider cultural and historical contexts. As a director, translator, and occasional performer of Aristophanic comedy, he is particularly concerned with the material, social, and cognitive means through which theater fosters and showcases human creativity.
Elena Fabbro is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Udine (Italy). She has published numerous studies in the fields of archaic and early lyric poetry (riddles and symposial poetic repertories) and Greek drama, focusing on the comic hero’s relationship with divinity, generational conflicts, and the representation of democratic power. She is also interested in classical reception, in particular, Pasolini’s re‐reading of Greek tragedy and his re‐mythologization of the archaic world. She is the author of Carmina convivalia attica (Roma Edizioni dell’Ateneo 1995); Il mito greco nell’opera di Pasolini (conference proceedings, Udine Forum 2004); and Aristofane, Le Vespe (Milano Rizzoli 2012).
Matthew C. Farmer is Associate Professor of Classics at Haverford College. His research focuses on Greek comedy, with a particular emphasis on the study of comic fragments and on the relationships comedy forms with other genres. He is the author of Tragedy on the Comic Stage (2017) and Theopompus: Introduction, Translation, Commentary (2022).
Jennifer Ferriss‐Hill is Professor of Classics at the University of Miami, where she has also held various academic administrative positions. She is the author of three books – Roman Satire and the Old Comic Tradition (Cambridge 2015), Horace’s Ars Poetica: Family, Friendship, and the Art of Living (Princeton 2019), and Roman Satire (Brill 2022) – and in addition to her work on Old Comedy, Roman Satire, and Horace, she has also published on Virgil, Varro, and Catullus.
Helene P. Foley is Claire Tow Professor of Classics, Emerita at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of books and articles on Greek epic and drama, on women and gender in antiquity, and on modern performance and adaptation of Greek drama including Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, Reimagining Greek Tragedy on the American Stage, and Euripides: Hecuba.
Kate Gilhuly is Professor of Classical Studies at Wellesley College. She is the author of The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens (Cambridge 2009), Erotic Geographies in Ancient Greek Literature and Culture (Routledge 2017), and co‐editor with Nancy Worman of Place, Space, and Landscape in Ancient Greek Literature and Culture (Cambridge 2014).
Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at the University of Durham. Her research specialisms are ancient epic and drama, Aristotle, the reception of classical civilization, gender, ethnicity, and class. She has published more than thirty books, including Adventures with Iphigenia in Tauris (OUP 2013), winner of an SCS Goodwin Award for Merit, and (with Henry Stead) A People’s History of Classics: Class and Greco‐Roman Antiquity in Britain and Ireland 1660–1939 (Routledge 2020). In 2017, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens, and in 2022, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
Olimpia Imperio is Full Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Bari (Italy) and author of books and articles on comic and tragic theater – particularly Aristophanic comedy – and its reception. Her publications include the monographs Parabasi di Aristofane: Acarnesi, Cavalieri, Vespe, Uccelli (2004), Aristofane tra antiche e moderne teorie del comico (2014), the volume Fragmenta Comica 10.6: Aristophanes fr. 305–391 for the project KomFrag: Kommentierung der Fragmente der griechischen Komödie (2023), and the translations of Aristophanes’ Frogs (2017) and Knights (2018) sponsored by INDA (Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico) for the Greek theatre of Syracuse.
Nikoletta Kanavou is Associate Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the University of Athens. Her research interests are in fictitious prose narratives, archaic Greek poetry, comedy, literary theory, papyrology, epigraphy, and onomastics. Her work on comedy includes a book on comic personal names as well as articles on the ideology of Aristophanic comedies and the poet’s use of myth. One of her current projects explores the comic element in the novel of Achilles Tatius.
Stephen Kidd is Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University, where he specializes in Greek literature of the classical and imperial periods. He is the author of two books – Nonsense and Meaning in Ancient Greek Comedy (Cambridge 2014), which asks why comedy, unlike other genres, gives rise to the perception that some part of it is not meaningful; and Play and Aesthetics in Ancient Greece (Cambridge 2019), which explores the ancient Greek concept of play (paidia). Now he is writing a book about Lucian of Samosata.
David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University. He is the author of books on ancient comedy, the novel, friendship, the emotions of the ancient Greeks, the classical conception of beauty and its influence, forgiveness, and Greek and Roman ideas of love and affection. His most recent book is The Origin of Sin. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a past president of the American Philological Association.
Inger N.I. Kuin is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. Her research concerns the intellectual history of ancient Greece and Rome. Her most recent books are Lucian’s Laughing Gods: Religion, Philosophy, and Popular Culture in the Roman East (University of Michigan Press 2023) and (in Dutch) Diogenes. Leven en denken van een autonome geest (Athenaeum – Polak & Van Gennep 2022), and she co‐authored a new (also in Dutch) companion to classical literature, Muze, vertel. De Griekse en Latijnse literatuur van de oudheid (Amsterdam University Press 2023).
Donald Lateiner, Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Classics at Ohio Wesleyan University, usually researches the historiography of Herodotos (Historical Method of Herodotos) and Thoukydides and fifth‐century Aegean history, recently misinformation and disinformation in these historians. He also examines ancient narratives, especially Homer (Sardonic Smile), Heliodoros’ Aithiopika, and Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, topics such as expression of emotions, nonverbal behaviors, particularly affect displays or “leakage” (e.g. blushes, tears), laughter, humiliation and stupefaction, forms of insult, and gendered self‐advancement. He once performed one‐man scenes from Lysistrata for Banned Books Day and appeared as Donald Trump in the 2016 SCS production of The Nerds/Birds.
Jeremy B. Lefkowitz is Associate Professor of Classics at Swarthmore College. He has published a number of studies on Aesop and the ancient fable tradition, and he is the co‐editor, with Caterina Mordeglia, of La favola tra Oriente e Occidente (forthcoming from SISMEL editrice).
Anne Mahoney is Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at Tufts University, where she teaches a variety of courses including historical linguistics, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and ancient mathematics. She has published articles and reviews on Greek and Indo‐European meter, Neo‐Latin, drama, and pedagogy, and several textbooks.
Sarah Miles is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham, UK, where she teaches Greek literature and language. Her research interests and publications focus on Greek comedy, comic fragments, and Greek tragedy; interplay in performance genres from comedy and tragedy to mime and Platonic dialogue; contemporary receptions of Greek myth and Greek epic in popular culture, especially in children’s media and animation.
Rosaria Vignolo Munson is the J. Archer and Helen C. Turner Professor of Classics at Swarthmore College. She is the author of Telling Wonders: Ethnographic and Political Discourse in the Work of Herodotus (2001); Black Doves Speak: Herodotus and the Language of Barbarians (2005); and several articles on Herodotus and Thucydides. She has edited Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Herodotus (2013). Most recently, she has co‐edited (with Carolyn Dewald) the “Green and Yellow” commentary on Herodotus Book I for the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics (2022).
Stephanie Nelson is Professor in the Department of Classical Studies and in the Core Curriculum at Boston University. She teaches widely in Greek and Latin literature and the classical tradition and has written on subjects from Plato and aesthetic theory to translation and literary reception. She is the author of God and the Land: the Metaphysics of Farming in Hesiod and Vergil and of Aristophanes’ Tragic Muse: comedy, tragedy and the polis in Classical Athens. She has also written extensively on Joyce and Homer, including Time and Identity in Ulysses and the Odyssey, published by the University Press of Florida in spring 2022.
Anna A. Novokhatko is Associate Professor of Classical Philology at the Aristotle University Thessaloniki. She has published numerous articles on comedy and is the author of a monograph on the embodiment of scholarly discourse on comic stage (De Gruyter 2023). She is a co‐editor of, among others, Measurement and Understanding in Science and Humanities: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Palgrave Macmillan 2023), Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama (De Gruyter 2020), Digitale Altertumswissenschaften: Thesen und Debatten zu Methoden und Anwendungen (Propylaeum Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg 2020), Antikes Heldentum in der Moderne: Konzepte, Praktiken, Medien (Rombach Verlag 2019), and Gaze, Vision, and Visuality in Ancient Greek Literature (De Gruyter 2018). In her recent research, she has concentrated on the interaction of cognitive sciences and classics as well as digital classics.
Christian Orth is Professor in the Seminar für Griechische und Lateinische Philologie at the Albert‐Ludwigs‐Universität Freiburg. He is a member of the project Kommentierung der Fragmente der griechischen Komödie (KomFrag) and author of several volumes in the series, including Alkaios – Apollophanes (2013), Aristomenes – Metagenes (2014), Nikochares – Xenophon (2015), Aristophanes: Aiolosikon – Babylonioi (frr. 1‐100) (2017), and Aristophon – Dromon (202). With Stylianos Chronopoulos, he edited the volume Fragmente einer Geschichte der griechischen Komödie – Fragmentary History of Greek Comedy (Studia Comica 5; Heidelberg 2015).
Serena Perrone is Associate Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Genoa. Her main research interests lie in papyrology and ancient Greek comedy. Her publications include first editions of papyri, particularly fragments held at the University of Genoa, the volume concerning comedy and mime of unknown authorship within the series Commentaria et Lexica Graeca in Papyris reperta (CLGP), and the comment on the fragments of the comic poet Crates within the project Kommentierung der Fragmente der Griechischen Komödie (KomFrag).
Ralph M. Rosen is the Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous articles and books on ancient comedy, satire, and medicine, including Aristophanes and Politics: New Studies (Brill 2020l; ed., with Helene P. Foley), Hip Sublime: Beat Writers and the Classical Tradition (Ohio State 2018; ed., with Sheila Murnaghan), and Making Mockery: The Poetics of Ancient Satire (Oxford U. Press 2007).
Elizabeth Scharffenberger is a senior lecturer in the Department of Classics at Columbia University in New York City. Her research interests include Greek drama and comic literature. Among her publications are papers on dramas by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aristophanes and their modern reception.
Carl A. Shaw is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at New College, the honors college of Florida. His scholarly interests lie broadly in the areas of Greek literature and culture, with a particular focus on drama and archaic performance. His monograph, Satyric Play: The Evolution of Greek Comedy and Satyr Drama, was released by Oxford University Press in 2014, and his book on Euripides’ Cyclops was published by Bloomsbury Press in 2018.
Natalia Tsoumpra is Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University. Her research concentrates on Greek comedy and tragedy, but she is also interested in political theory, gender and sexuality, theories of humor, and ancient medicine. She has published various articles on Greek drama and is the editor of Costume Change in the Comedies of Aristophanes (ICS special issue 2020) and co‐editor of Morbid Laughter: Exploring the Comic Dimensions of Disease in Classical Antiquity (ICS special issue 2018). From September 2024, she will be a Senior Humboldt Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, finishing her book on The Politics of Power in Aristophanes: Populism, Affect, and Humour.
Anna Uhlig is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Davis. She is author of Theatrical Reenactment in Pindar and Aeschylus (Cambridge University Press 2019) and coeditor (with Richard Hunter) of Imagining Reperformance in Ancient Culture: Studies in the Traditions of Drama and Lyric (Cambridge University Press 2017) and (with Lyndsay Coo) of Aeschylus at Play: Studies in Aeschylean Satyr Drama, a themed issue of the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (2019).
Philip Walsh is Chair of the Department of Classics at St. Andrew’s School (Middletown, DE). He teaches Latin and ancient Greek at all levels, an advanced history seminar on Thucydides and ancient Athens, and sections of English. He is the editor of The Classical Outlook, the leading, peer‐reviewed publication for teachers of Latin, Greek, and the ancient Mediterranean world. He also edited Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristophanes (Brill 2016). His work has appeared in Eidolon and in the Classical Receptions Journal.
Andreas Willi holds the Diebold Chair in Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the language‐literature interface in the ancient world, Ancient Greek sociolinguistics and dialectology, and Greek, Latin, and Indo‐European historical‐comparative grammar; pertinent book publications include The Languages of Aristophanes: Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek (Oxford 2003), Sikelismos: Sprache, Literatur und Gesellschaft im griechischen Sizilien (Basel 2008), and Origins of the Greek Verb (Cambridge 2018). He is also one of the editors of Glotta: Zeitschrift für griechische und lateinische Sprache.
Acknowledgments
We would like to begin by thanking the twenty‐nine authors who contributed chapters to this volume. Many of them agreed to join the project just before the outbreak of the pandemic; despite the extraordinary disruptions, delays, and tragedies of these years, our contributors persevered, offered us support and guidance, and cheered one another on throughout the process.
Thanks also to the many dedicated editors, project managers, and other staff at Wiley who steered the project through to completion: Haze Humbert, who solicited the initial proposal for this volume; Todd Green; Ajith Kumar; Andrew Minton; Skyler Van Valkenburgh; Katherine King; Will Croft; Monica Chandrasekar; Pascal Raj Francois; Praveen Kumar Bondili; Sarah Milton; and doubtless many others who supported our work behind the scenes.
Matt would like to thank Haverford College for supporting a sabbatical leave during which much of the work on this volume was completed. He must also express his gratitude to his colleagues Bret Mulligan, Deborah Roberts, Ava Shirazi, and Hannah Silverblank for their generosity, support, expertise, and good cheer throughout the past five years.
Jeremy would especially like to thank the Swarthmore students in his honors seminar on “Aristophanes and the Comic Tradition” who read excerpts from the volume and offered their insights on the needs of students approaching Greek comedy: Kiran McDonald, Kodie Bastian, and Pablo Salvatierra.
Finally, Jeremy and Matt would like to offer their thanks to one another. Looking back over the vicissitudes of the past five years, it’s somewhat hard to believe that the project we conceptualized over a lunch at Sang Kee in Philadelphia in August 2018 has in fact become this book. But throughout those years, we’ve relied on each other for mutual support, camaraderie, and good humor, and I think it is safe to say that neither of us could have done the work without the other.
Introduction
Matthew C. Farmer and Jeremy B. Lefkowitz
A Companion to Aristophanes
It seems that there is now a companion for just about every Greek author and every topic under the sun. Until now, however, Aristophanes had been companionless. To be sure, there have been excellent companions to ancient comedy published in recent years.1 But this Companion to Aristophanes is the first of its kind – a volume dedicated specifically to Aristophanes with updated, sophisticated analyses of the Aristophanic corpus and its place in literary and cultural history. How would Aristophanes have responded to this state of affairs? Would he perhaps have relished being left out of the companion wave, preferring, with Groucho Marx, not to join any club that would have him as a member? Or would he have proudly defended comedy’s reputation, claiming that its poets deserve to be taken just as seriously as those working in other genres? We think he probably would have done both.
In recent decades, work on ancient Greek comedy has moved away from an “Aristophanocentric” approach by emphasizing the rich corpus of comic fragments. By offering this volume to Aristophanes, we are by no means seeking to disrupt this trend: as you will see, the fragments of Greek comedy receive extensive attention in the essays that follow, and even in chapters focused on Aristophanes himself, our contributors have consistently drawn on the expansive view of the genre of Greek comedy provided by work on fragmentary authors. Companions, however, are for beginners: whether that means a student reading Greek drama for the first time, a lay reader curious about the state of interpretation and criticism on familiar comedies, or a seasoned classicist or literary critic moving into the subfield of comic studies from some other area of specialization. Almost everyone begins their journey into the world of Greek comedy with the plays of Aristophanes, and for that reason, we believe – whatever Aristophanes himself may have thought of the idea – that his work deserves a companion of its own.
Several goals unite the work of the team of scholars and teachers who have contributed to this volume. Firstly, our purpose has been to make Greek comedy accessible to beginners. Aristophanes’ plays are hilarious and compelling, despite the gulf of time that separates our world from his, but they are also offensive, bewildering, frustrating, deliberately contradictory – in need of a guide, or rather, several dozen guides. But secondly, in inviting and selecting authors to serve as guides to our beginning readers of Aristophanes, we have sought to include a wider range of scholarly voices and perspectives than have sometimes been heard on these subjects.2 We have asked our authors to open up worlds of possibility for the reader of Aristophanes, to welcome the budding Aristophanist not by cementing old opinions but by gesturing broadly to new horizons. We hope that this volume will equip readers with the tools they need to enter into interpretive conversations and debates about Aristophanes’ plays, the lost comedies of his fellow comedians, and the nature of ancient and modern laughter.
The Organization of This Volume
This volume is divided into five sections; collectively, they provide a foundation for reading and interpreting Aristophanes’ plays in their literary and historical contexts. Of course, even a volume of this size cannot provide a comprehensive picture of the state of Aristophanic studies, but we hope our contributors’ 28 essays offer both a sense of the history of work on Aristophanes and open up new pathways and possibilities for teachers, critics, and readers of the great comedian.
Part I: The World of Aristophanes seeks to establish the historical, political, and literary circumstances in which Aristophanes created his plays. Our opening chapter sets forth the historical situation of Athens in the closing decades of the 5th century BCE and the beginning years of the 4th. The three chapters that follow establish Aristophanes’ plays as scripts for performance, with discussions of staging, costumes, actors and choruses, verse and song, and Aristophanes’ famously varied language and style. We pair this attempt to reconstruct the Aristophanic stage with a discussion of ancient vase images depicting comedy, a vital source for understanding the plays in performance. This section then closes with an essay that unites the historical and the literary with a focus on Aristophanes’ engagement with politics, a topic that has long been central to debates on the interpretation of Greek comedy.
Part II: The Comedies of Aristophanes examines the eleven surviving plays of the Aristophanic corpus. In this section, in many ways the heart of the volume, we set our authors an unusual challenge: to examine one of the extant plays of Aristophanes by pairing it with a particular theme exemplified by that play, and then to explore the ways that theme connects the play to other Aristophanic comedies or the world of Greek comedy as a whole. Each of these chapters can be read as a guide to its play but can also be used as an orientation to particular topics (such as “Gender,” “Utopia,” or “Religion and Ritual”) across Greek comedy. These chapters stand on their own, and we hope they will be widely used by students and teachers approaching individual plays for the first time; but read collectively, they also provide a sweeping overview of what we see as the central interpretive themes of work on Greek comedy in the present and, we hope, the future.
Although Aristophanes is the only comic poet of his period whose plays survive intact, we know of dozens of other authors who competed with him in Athens’ dramatic festivals; for many of these authors, we possess substantial bodies of textual fragments and other types of evidence that permit us to broaden our perspective on the literary context in which Aristophanes wrote. In Part III: The Fragments of Greek Comedy, our authors provide overviews of this fragmentary evidence while also sketching out a variety of interpretive principles and approaches that can be used to make sense of this challenging material. We survey here both the fragments of Aristophanes’ own lost plays – only about a quarter of his literary output survives to the present – and those of his fellow Athenian comic poets, grouping them into broad chronological categories relative to Aristophanes’ career. Critical work in recent decades has made it clear that no reader can make complete sense of Aristophanes’ plays without the context the fragments of Greek comedy provide.
Part IV: Aristophanes and His Readers showcases historical interpreters, commentators, and translators of Aristophanes’ work: ancient Greek philosophers and scholars; Greek and Latin authors of the Roman Republic and Empire; and Renaissance and Early Modern translators and printers of Aristophanes’ plays. Our understanding of Aristophanes’ plays has been irrevocably shaped by his reception in the works of these many readers who stand between us and classical Athens, and together these chapters help us understand the creative and interpretive traditions that have developed around his work since antiquity.
Finally, in Part V: Aristophanes Today we focus on encounters with Aristophanes in the two settings we most frequently find him today: the stage and the classroom. Both of the chapters in this section speak eloquently to one another: we see the place of performance in the teaching of Aristophanes and the importance of teaching Aristophanes’ works as performative texts.
General Resources for Reading Aristophanes
The student of Aristophanes today is well served by resources to support either reading his works in their original Greek or reading them in translation. We offer a few suggestions below to get you started; each of the individual chapters in this volume concludes with a “Guide to Further Reading,” which contains much more thorough suggestions.
For the reader of Greek, Wilson’s 2007 Oxford Classical Text is the standard edition of Aristophanes’ eleven extant plays. Most of the plays are well‐served by relatively recent Oxford commentaries; these can be supplemented helpfully by the notes in Sommerstein’s Aris and Phillips editions (from which we cite only Wealth below) and by the newly appearing volumes of the Michigan Classical Commentaries series. The standard edition of the fragments of Greek comedy, including the fragmentary plays of Aristophanes, is Kassel and Austin’s Poetae Comici Graeci. The volumes of the project Kommentierung der Fragmente der Griechischen Komödie (often known as “KomFrag” and still continuing to appear) provide copious notes and translations on these fragments; the bibliography below cites Orth 2017 as an illustrative example from this extensive series. Olson’s Broken Laughter provides a thematically arranged selection of fragments with extensive notes.
For the reader of English, there are many translations available. Henderson’s Loeb editions are highly readable, hew close to the Greek, and include translations of Aristophanes’ fragments. Sommerstein’s Aris and Phillips translations are another good starting point, with more substantial notes (particularly for the later plays). Halliwell’s Oxford World’s Classics translations offer affordable, readable versions in collected printings. In general, we counsel students and teachers to avoid relying on the out‐of‐copyright translations that can be readily found online, as these tend to bowdlerize Aristophanes’ language and to deliberately obscure precisely those features of his plays, such as their lively portrayal of Greek sexual culture, that a modern reader might be most interested in exploring. Instead, see the suggested readings in Chapter 28 (“Teaching Aristophanes”) for better, freely available translations. For the fragments of Old Comedy, Storey’s Loeb editions are a standard point of entry; Rusten et al.’s Birth of Comedy collects and translates many of the most interesting fragments, including fragments of Middle and New Comedy, as well as other textual and visual evidence for Greek comedy.
REFERENCES
Anderson, C.A. and Keith Dix, T. (2020).
A Commentary on Aristophanes’ Knights
. Ann Arbor: Michigan Classical Commentaries.
Austin, C. and Olson, S.D. (2004).
Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae
. Edited with Introduction and Commentary
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Biles, Z.P. and Olson, S.D. (2015).
Aristophanes Wasps
. Edited with Introduction and Commentary
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dobrov, G. (ed.) (2010).
Brill’s Companion to the Study of Greek Comedy
. Leiden: Brill.
Dover, K.J. (1968).
Aristophanes Clouds
. Edited with Introduction and Commentary
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dover, K.J. (1993).
Aristophanes Frogs
. Edited with Introduction and Commentary
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dunbar, N. (1998).
Aristophanes Birds
. Edited with Introduction and Commentary
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fontaine, M. and Scafuro, A.C. (ed.) (2014).
The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Halliwell, S. (1998).
Aristophanes Birds and Other Plays
. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.
Halliwell, S. (2015).
Aristophanes Frogs and Other Plays
. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics.
Henderson, J. (1987).
Aristophanes Lysistrata
. Edited with Introduction and Commentary
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Henderson, J. (1998–2007).
Aristophanes
, vol. 1–5. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library.
Kassel, R. and Austin, C. (1983–2001).
Poetae Comici Graeci
. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
Orth, C. (2017).
Fragmenta Comica 10.3: Aristophanes, Aiolosikon ‐ Babylonioi (frr. 1–100)
. Göttingen: Verlag Antike.
Olson, S.D. (1998).
Aristophanes Peace
. Edited with Introduction and Commentary
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Olson, S.D. (2002).
Aristophanes Acharnians
. Edited with Introduction and Commentary
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Olson, S.D. (2007).
Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Olson, S.D. (2021).
Aristophanes’ Clouds: A Commentary
. Ann Arbor: Michigan Classical Commentaries.
Revermann, M. (ed.) (2014).
The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Robson, J. (2023).
Aristophanes: Lysistrata
. London: Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions.
Rusten, J.S., Henderson, J., Konstan, D., and Rosen, R.M. (2011).
The Birth of Comedy: Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic Competitions
, 486–280. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Sommerstein, A.H. (2001).
The Comedies of Aristophanes: Vol. 11: Wealth
. Warminster: Aris and Phillips.
Storey, I. (2011).
Fragments of Old Comedy
, vol. 1–3. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library.
Thonemann, P. (2019). Gender, subject preferences, and editorial bias in classical studies, 2001–2019.
CUCD Bulletin
48: 1–24.
Ussher, R.G. (1973).
Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae
. Edited with Introduction and Commentary
. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Walsh, P. (ed.) (2016).
Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristophanes
. Leiden: Brill.
Wilson, N.G. (2007).
Aristophanis Fabulae
. Oxford: Oxford Classical Texts.
Notes
1
For example, Dobrov 2010, Revermann 2014, Fontaine and Scafuro 2014, Walsh 2016; and see also the individual volumes of the
Bloomsbury Ancient Comedy Companions
series, e.g. Robson 2023.
2
See Thonemann 2019 on the traditionally skewed demographics of companions and handbooks, with 7–8 on companions to ancient comedy.
PART IThe World of Aristophanes
CHAPTER 1Aristophanes Among Athenians
Donald Lateiner and Rosaria Munson
Introduction
When in the 360s BCE the Sicilian tyrant Dionysios Junior asked his Athenian visitor and mentor Plato to describe vividly the people and institutions of Athens, the anti‐democratic philosopher allegedly sent him comedies of Aristophanes (Life of Aristophanes, Rusten et al., 7.1, p. 274). These critical but ambitious and affectionate portraits of a people could teach him how the Athenians organized (or disorganized) their once unexpectedly successful political life (politeia). Attic demes and the Athenian polis selected, arranged, and staged comic productions. Attic “Old Comedy,” with mockery of leading politicians – among its other targets, social, intellectual, ethnic, and female – was a civic institution, nearly as old as ostracism – and it perhaps shared the leveling intent (488/7; Sommerstein 2014, p. 292).
Aristophanes lived through his Athenians' best and worst years (450–385 BCE). From the age of twenty‐three, he wrote wacky plays with pissed‐off, disadvantaged, but plucky little‐man heroes (Whitman 1964), preposterous plots, raunchy and lyrical verse, inventively hilarious vocabulary, and outrageous obscenity. We can identify forty titles, although only eleven scripts and hundreds of fragments survive. His dramas furnish us with the only unmangled survivors from Athens' happier days when “Old Comedy” held the stage.1 Within a vivid portrait of daily life, comic poets participated in public discourse about civic affairs. In this sphere, Aristophanes claimed that he far surpassed his competitors because his ideas benefited the Athenians. As he translates reality into fantasy, his comedies, or rather “trugudies,” claim to teach what is right, to dikaion (Taplin 1983). The present chapter does not attempt to determine the nature of Aristophanes' overall “political ideology” (an unhelpful and controversial subject; see Rosen and Foley (2020)). It rather examines how the political message of his plays varies over time as it negotiates historical events, public opinion, and Aristophanes' own status in Athenian society, to the extent that we know these external facts from other ancient sources, especially his contemporaries Thucydides, Plato, and Xenophon.
Aristophanes and the Peloponnesian War
Almost the entirety of Aristophanes' career unfolds against the background of the Peloponnesian War and the internal political antagonisms of post‐Periklean Athens, but his last two plays, Ekklesiazousai and Ploutos, produced after this period are still politically significant. In spite of many, surely strategic, silences, Aristophanes makes his characters and choruses (Ehrenberg 1962) complain about present‐day circumstances and criticize in word or by example current policies and the handling of prominent institutions. At least until 411, his consistent message targets ever increasingly demanding Athenian imperialism and his fellow citizens' war appetite: just stop it. It perhaps began with the Babylonians (427 BCE), a play that survives only in fragments but appears to have expressed disapproval for, among other things, the Athenians' treatment of the members of their imperial alliance (Acharn. 641–42; Panagiotarakou 2009, p. 48–9). And it comes into full flower in the Acharnians (425 BCE), which fantasizes a private peace between Dikaiopolis, a local Attic farmer, and the Peloponnesians. Dikaiopolis – “Just City” or “the one who makes the city just” (Strauss 1966, p. 59; contra Bowie 1982, p. 38) – pines for the self‐sufficiency of his peaceful country life at the time when the rural population was crammed into the city during the annual Peloponnesian invasions of Attica.2 He satirizes the causes of the present war and accuses the Prytaneis – Councilors in charge of daily business – of wrongdoing for rejecting a god‐sponsored settlement (45–54; Henderson 1998, p. 61, n. 10); he ridicules the wasteful Athenian embassies to Persia,3 the hiring of mercenaries from Thrace, and the pugnacious Athenian general Lamakhos; he sympathizes with the impoverished Megarians and argues that the Spartans are not all in the wrong with regard to this war (61–134, 307–8, 513–19; cf. 646–54). In subsequent years, Cavalrymen (424 BCE) features Aristophanes' fellow demes – man from Kydathenaion, the warmongering and divisive demagogue Kleon, out‐demagogued by a fast‐food sausage seller (cf. Rhodes 2004). Peace (421 BCE) looks forward to the imminent end of the war after ten years. Shortly after, the Peace of Nicias was actually concluded, but it would soon become clear that, partly thanks to Alkibiades' machinations, the war had in no way ended. In Aristophanes' play, another sensible, salt‐of‐the‐earth Attic farmer, the vine‐grower Trygaios, flies on a feces‐chomping, giant, stinking dung beetle to escape from endless assemblies and war to the euphoric and ambrosial divine realm. Birds (414 BCE) subtly mocks his countrymen's irrepressible imperialistic overreach and empire. Finally, Lysistrata (411 BCE) makes an appeal for Panhellenic concord through the fictional voice of the women from city‐states on both sides of the conflict. The fantasies vary; the theme of peace and its benefits endures.
