EURIPIDEAN PARACOMEDY
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
Craig Timothy Jendza, M.A
Graduate Program in Greek and Latin
The Ohio State University
2013
Dissertation Committee:
Thomas Hawkins, Advisor
Fritz Graf
Dana Munteanu
Copyright by
Craig Timothy Jendza
2013
Abstract
This dissertation explores the relationships between the dramatic genres of Greek comedy,
tragedy and satyr drama in the 5th century BCE. I propose that Athenian tragedians had
the freedom to appropriate elements and tropes drawn from comedy into their plays, a
process that I call ‘paracomedy’. While most scholars do not admit the possibility of
paracomedy, I suggest that there are numerous examples of paracomedy to be found in all
three tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides), though I focus on providing
examples between Euripides and Aristophanes. In Chapter 1, I demonstrate the extent of
paracomedy in tragedy, explore the theoretical background behind the interplay of genres
and intertextuality, and provide a methodology for determining paracomedy based on
distinctive correspondences, the priority of the comedic element, and the motivation for
adopting features from outside the genre. In Chapter 2, I explore the rivalry between
Euripides and Aristophanes concerning plots and scenes involving ‘sword-bearing’ and
‘razor-bearing’ men, arguing that the numerous references to ‘sword-bearing’ men in
Euripides’ Orestes respond to Aristophanes’ parody of a ‘razor-bearing’ man in
Thesmophoriazusae. In Chapter 3, I suggest that the parodos to Euripides’ Orestes is
modeled on the parodos of Aristophanes’ Peace, due to the adoption of the comedic
element ‘varying levels of choral volume in a madness scene’. Furthermore, I analyze the
evidence from satyr drama, ultimately proposing the possibility of a two-pronged response
to Aristophanes in 408 BCE in Euripides’ Orestes and Cyclops. In Chapter 4, I analyze the
tragedic and comedic traditions of ‘hostage scenes’ developing from Euripides’ Telephus,
ii
arguing that Aristophanes innovated the addition of a ‘incineration plot’ to the hostage
scene tradition, which Euripides subsequently adopted into the hostage scene at the
conclusion of Orestes. In Chapter 5, I treat the paratragic and paracomic use of costume
dealing with rags and cross-dressing, proposing a back-and-forth rivalry between
Aristophanes’ Acharnians, Euripides’ Helen, Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, and
Euripides’ Bacchae.
iii
For my wife Chelsea, who has helped me in more ways than she knows
iv
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful for all the support I have received in the writing of this dissertation. I
am above all indebted to Tom Hawkins, who has been a constant source of inspiration
and extraordinary feedback and who encouraged me to keep striving and pushing further.
I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Fritz Graf and Dana
Munteanu, for their intellectual and moral support. I am grateful for the support of all the
faculty in the Classics Department, and I would like to especially thank Sarah Iles
Johnston, Brian Joseph, and Will Batstone, who have broadened my knowledge greatly in
their respective fields. I am grateful to the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
for their generous fellowship support, the Classics Department for supporting me as a
Graduate Teaching Associate, and to the Arts and Humanities Graduate Research Small
Grants Program as well as the Classics Department for providing the financial support that
allowed me to present my research at various conferences. Last but not least, I can never
thank enough my family, especially my wife Chelsea for her support and encouragement
especially over the last year with its numerous trials and sudden deadlines.
v
Vita
2002 ...............................................................Agawam High School, Agawam MA
2007 ...............................................................B.A. Classical Civilization, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst
2007 ...............................................................B.B.A. Management, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst
2010 ...............................................................M.A. Greek and Latin, The Ohio State
University
2010 to present ..............................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department
of Classics, The Ohio State University
Fields of Study
Major Field: Greek and Latin
vi
Table of Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................ii
Dedication...........................................................................................................................iv
Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................v
Vita .....................................................................................................................................vi
Table of Contents...............................................................................................................vii
List of Tables.....................................................................................................................viii
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Euripidean Paracomedy..................................................... 1
Chapter 2: Bearing Razors and Swords: Rivalry Between Aristophanes and Euripides ... 55
Chapter 3: Tragedic and Comedic Madness in Euripides’ Orestes ................................... 78
Chapter 4: Hostages and Incineration in Euripides and Aristophanes............................ 114
Chapter 5: From Rags to Drag: Paracomic Costuming in Euripides and Aristophanes . 140
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 177
Bibliography.................................................................................................................... 181
Appendix A: Dates of Relevant 5th Century Dramas ...................................................... 195
Appendix B: Proposed Examples of Paracomedy ........................................................... 196
Appendix C: Further Potential Connections Between Acharnians and Helen ................ 198
vii
List of Tables
Table 1. My Methodology for Arguments Involving Paracomedy................................... 33
Table 2. Herington’s Correspondences Between Eumenides and Comedy....................... 38
Table 3. Verbal Correspondences Between Aristophanes' Birds 209-216 and Euripides'
Helen 1107-1113 .............................................................................................................. 41
Table 4. Process of Typicalization in Aristophanes' Coinage............................................ 57
Table 5. Predicaments, Escape Attempts and Resolutions in Thesmophoriazusae........... 68
Table 6. Characteristics of Sleep-Scenes in Sophocles and Euripides ............................... 87
Table 7. Verbal Correspondences between Heracles 1042-1087 and Orestes 132-210.... 88
Table 8. Characteristics of Tragedic and Comedic Madness ............................................ 95
Table 9. Summary of Madness Scenes ........................................................................... 112
Table 10. Summary of Hostage Scenes .......................................................................... 115
Table 11. Increasing Levels of Menelaus' Wretchedness in Euripides' Helen ................. 158
Table 12. Proposed Examples of Paracomedy................................................................ 196
viii
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Euripidean Paracomedy
This dissertation explores the muddy interfaces between 5th century Athenian
tragedy and comedy, and to a lesser extent, satyr drama. My primary contention is that
Athenian tragedians had the freedom to incorporate elements drawn from comedy into
their plays, pushing beyond the widespread view among classicists and scholars of Greek
drama that any allusive relationships between 5th century BCE tragedy and comedy were
limited to comedy poaching from tragedy and not the other way around. Most scholars
entirely ignore the issue of tragedy appropriating elements from contemporary and
previous comedy; what follows summarizes some views of scholars who do address it. In a
discussion of influences within and across dramatic genres, Silk writes: “it makes sense to
discuss, for example, Aeschylus’ influence on Euripides, or epic influence on tragedy or
tragic influence on Aristophanes’ Clouds, or the question of possible comic influence on
tragedy, or Menandrian New Comedy as a convergence of Old Comedy and Euripides’
‘romantic melodrama’.”1 Whereas the other options are presented as certainties, the idea
of comic influence on tragedy gets removed to the realm of theoretically possible, though
unproven, through Silk’s use of the words “the question of possible comic influence on
tragedy [my emphasis]”. Even though Silk goes on to suggest that “the kind of example
one might choose to argue for specific influence from κωµῳδία would be Pentheus’ crossdressing at Bacch. 913-44, in comparison with Ar. Thesm. 213-268,” he describes this in
1
Silk 2013, 30.
1
hypothetical terms.2 Similarly, in the same volume on genres and Greek comedy as Silk,
Wright adds, “Whether the genres [sc. of tragedy and comedy] are interdependent or
whether we should talk in terms of a one-way process (of comedy’s dependence on
tragedy) is a somewhat separate problem,” thus avoiding the issue of tragedy’s dependence
on comedy, while acknowledging it as a possibility.3 Mastronarde sidesteps the issue as
well, writing, “The more delicate question is whether the influence and rivalry operated in
the opposite direction, with tragic poets taking their cue from comedy,” concluding that
“there is still ample room for disagreement among scholars” and that “Euripides is a
precursor in respect to the relevant points of comparison [sc. the Western tradition of a
comic genre] and not a borrower from a contemporary comic tradition.”4 Seidensticker
notes that “possible influences of comedy on tragedy are not easy to determine” and later
suggests that “with a few exceptions, however, the comic character of the numerous comic
elements [sc. in tragedy] is as un-Aristophanic as is its function,” thus distancing tragedy
from contemporary comedy.5 In a chapter titled “Tragedy, Comedy, and Euripides”,
Torrance devotes three sentences to the possibility of Euripides being influenced by
Aristophanes.6 Dobrov, in his investigation across tragedy and comedy, notes an example
of “rare but incontrovertible evidence that tragedy could ‘talk back’”, but his remark
indicates how scarce this evidence seems to be.7
Given that the comic technique of appropriating plots and tropes from tragedy is
called ‘paratragedy’, the term I use for tragedy’s appropriation of plots and tropes from
Silk 2013, 32 n. 62. In Chapter 5, I analyze this example as a part of a cross-generic
series of dramatic appropriations concerning costuming.
3
Wright 2013, 210 n. 22.
4
Mastronarde 2010, 58.
5
Seidensticker 2005, 51-53.
6
Torrance 2013, 298.
7
Dobrov 2001, 105.
2
2
comedy is ‘paracomedy’, following the terminology of Scharffenberger (as opposed to that
of Sidwell).8 My dissertation seeks to demonstrate that paracomedy not only existed but
also was quite prevalent in 5th century BCE tragedy, spanning our extant corpus of
dramatic texts. I believe that paracomedy can offer sound, and in many cases, more
preferable explanations of certain scenes or elements in tragedy that scholars have often
found perplexing. As paracomedy has been suggested as a possible interpretation only for
a few scattered episodes in tragedy, my dissertation seeks to provide a proper methodology
for detecting and analyzing paracomedy, to present further evidence for and examples of
paracomedy, and to treat the topic thoroughly and comprehensively, as no book-length
investigation has yet been written.9 Whereas Seidensticker’s book Palintonos Harmonia
explores humorous elements in tragedy, my work examines elements drawn from comedy
and incorporated into tragedy, and thus our approaches differ greatly.10 Dobrov’s Figures
of Play is the closest to my approach in exploring connections between tragedy and
comedy, though he only provides a few examples of paracomedy, focusing more on
metatheatricality and metafiction.11 While paracomic relationships are certainly possible
with all 5th century drama, I will focus on the connections between Euripides and
Aristophanes, partly due to the fact that these are the two representatives of tragedy and
comedy with the largest corpora of analyzable texts, and partly due to the fact that they
Scharffenberger 1996, 65-72. What I mean by the term ‘paracomedy’ differs from
Sidwell 1995, 65 who uses ‘paracomedy’ for a comic poet’s ventriloquial technique of
satirizing other comic poets by “presenting his plays as though by another poet.” See
Storey 2003, 299 and Rosen 2000, 36-37 n. 13, 17 for a response to Sidwell’s concept of
paracomedy.
9
Examples of scholarship dealing with paracomedy are Dover 1972, 148-149,
Scharffenberger 1995a and 1996, Marshall 2001 and 2009, Sommerstein 2002,
Kirkpatrick and Dunn 2002, Foley 2003, 349-351 and 2008 and Diamantakou-Agathou
2012, 15-29.
10
Seidensticker 1982.
11
His examples of what I call paracomedy are located at Dobrov 2001, 23, 77-82, 126132.
3
8
seem to have a distinctive relationship between them.12 Cratinus coins the word
“Euripidaristophanizing” (εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζειν, fr. 342 PCG), which at the very least
shows that he saw some sort of connection notable enough that the creation of such a
compound made sense to him and the audience.13 I submit that the relationship between
Aristophanes and Euripides was one of cross-generic literary rivalry (a subject which I will
discuss in depth below), much in the same vein as the back-and-forth rivalry within the
genre of comedy between Aristophanes and Cratinus, as Biles discusses.14 Considering that
an investigation of Euripidean paracomedy works on the boundaries of the genres of
Comedy was instituted in 486 BCE in Athens at the City Dionysia, and therefore this
date might serve as the terminus ante quem for paracomedy. However, it is certainly
possible that tragedy engaged in some sort of interaction with proto-comic material such as
the genre of iambos, phallic dances, or Athenian rituals such as the gephyrismos during the
Eleusinian Mysteries involving personal abuse.
13
Interpretations of this unique word range broadly. The compound
εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζειν offers a number of linguistic interpretations based on the way one
interprets the relationship between the two elements of the compound. Thus, Sidwell
2009, 88-89 treats it as an exocentric (‘bahuvrihi’) compound with an unexpressed head
‘poet’, suggesting that the compound ‘Euripidaristophanizing’ represents a poet who
mixes Euripides and Aristophanes, in Sidwell’s view, Eupolis. The LSJ entry treats it as a
copulative (‘dvandva’) compound, “to write in the style of Euripides and Aristophanes”.
Nesselrath 1993, 185 treats it as an endocentric (‘tatpuruṣa’) compound ‘to parody
Euripides in the style of Aristophanes’, or perhaps more literally, ‘to Aristophanize (pull an
Aristophanes on) Euripides’. One might even think of an endocentric compound where
the first element of the compound is the head, ‘to Euripidize Aristophanes’, based off
comparisons with forms like Cratinus’ title Dionysalexandros, where it is clear that
Dionysus is the head, since Dionysus is acting like Alexander (Paris) in the play. A similar
type of compounding is ‘Choerilecphantides’, comprised of the elements Ecphantides (an
early comic poet) and Choerilus (an early tragic poet) in Hesychius ε 1439, which perhaps
suggests the same type of relationship as ‘Euripidaristophanizing’. The meaning of the
word εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζειν varies depending on whether editors choose to place
‘Euripidaristophanizing’ in quotation marks or not as Wright 2012, 7-9 notes. The
scholiast from whom we possess this fragment claims that Cratinus is criticizing
Aristophanes for mocking Euripides while at the same time imitating him, an
interpretation accepted by Foley 1988, 47 and Luppe 2000, 19. Miles 2009, 31-33
believes Cratinus is attacking Aristophanes’ and Euripides’ shared sophistic tendencies, and
Bakola 2010, 24-29 suggests that this fragment attests to Cratinus portraying a relationship
between himself and Aeschylus in the same vein as the one he attributes to Aristophanes
and Euripides.
14
See Biles 2002, 169-204, and his revised version at Biles 2011, 134-166.
4
12
tragedy and comedy, an explanation of the theoretical frameworks regarding genre and
methodology I will use is in order. After exploring the relevant theories pertaining to genre,
I will examine the various types of poetic appropriation possible in 5th century drama and
will conclude with my methodology regarding paracomedy, which I will use to review an
illustrative variety of other scholars’ proposals.
THEORIES OF GENRE
Tragedy and comedy were certainly distinct entities in 5th century Athens with
different poetic conventions and different sets of competitions in which the plays could be
performed before an audience.15 A tragedian could not compete against a comedian for a
prize in a festival, only against other tragedians. Tragedians wrote only tragedies and satyr
plays, and comedians wrote only comedies, as there are no examples drawn from the 5th
century BCE of a dramatist composing a play in the opposite genre.16
Yet there were areas of overlap between the two genres: both were performed in
the same theatrical space during the same festivals, and both were subject to the same
conditions of production. Both used similar dramaturgy involving painted backdrops, trap
doors, the eccyclema, ‘outroller’, and the mechane, ‘crane’. Both had actors who generally
spoke in iambic trimeters, and both had choruses who sang songs using the same lyric
meters and danced to the music of an aulos ‘reed-pipe’.17 Tragedians and comedians were
members of the same intellectual circle and probably knew each other quite well, especially
On the distinctions and similarities between tragedy and comedy see Seidensticker 2005,
39-43.
16
Contrast a writer like Ion of Chios who wrote in a myriad of genres, such as tragedy,
elegy, history, biography, mythography and philosophy, on whom see Jennings and
Katsaros 2007.
17
On the aulos, see Kovacs 2013, 477-99.
5
15
given the small size of Athens. At the very least, we can say that they knew each other’s
plays very well.
At the same time, distinctive contextual differences between tragedy and comedy
allow us to clearly determine the genre to which a play belonged. Both tragedies and
comedies were performed in different slots during the Greater and Lesser Dionysia, and
only comedies occurred at the Lenaia. Some shared features actually served as marks of
distinction between tragedy and comedy. Whereas both genres used masks and costuming,
vase painting shows clear differences between comic and tragic masks, and contrary to
tragic actors, comic actors were equipped with padded stomachs and buttocks and wore a
detachable leather phallus.
Beyond visual and performative cues such as these, which clearly designate a
particular play as a tragedy or a comedy, it is difficult to furnish an absolute list of
characteristics that define tragedy or comedy from the text itself. Some characteristics are
at least partially diagnostic for us: if a play features obscenity, then it is certainly not a
tragedy (as explicit obscenity of the type βινεῖν ‘fuck’ does not occur in tragedy),18 and
must be either a comedy or satyr drama (which both allow varying degrees of obscenity).
Similarly, if a play features a chorus of satyrs, then one might believe that the play
necessarily is a satyr drama. However, the picture is more complicated than this, as a
number of comedies had choruses of satyrs as well, surely nodding in some way toward
satyr drama. In this example, we at least can discern that the play certainly was not a
tragedy, as there are no extant examples for a chorus of satyrs occurring in a tragedy. We
may even be able to fine-tune our arguments concerning choruses of satyrs and which
genre they belong to, since according to vase painting, the satyr-choruses that appeared in
Though even for this rule see Sommerstein 2002, 154-157 for several cases of sexual
innuendo in Aeschylus’ Eumenides.
6
18
comedy were visually different that those in satyr drama, almost a ‘comedified’ chorus of
satyrs.19 Even if we cannot tell the difference between a comic chorus of satyrs and a
satyric chorus of satyrs in our texts, in antiquity, the performative cues would dictate
which type of satyr-chorus it is. From our perspective, limited to texts and without the
contextual cues of a performance, even a feature such as a chorus of satyrs, normally
thought to be a diagnostic element of satyr drama, cannot determine without question that
the play in fact was a satyr drama.
This discussion calls into question the assumption that one can classify a text into a
genre using a list of characteristics. No matter how finely-tuned and specific we make the
mass of characteristics we use to define a genre, this taxonomical approach, ultimately
derived from the categorical method originated by Aristotle, is always problematic due to
the presence of counter-examples.20 For example, if one sets as a defining characteristic of
tragedy the feature ‘the primary character’s prosperity is reduced to suffering’, then one
would have to discount the plays where this does not occur, say Euripides’ Iphigenia
among the Taurians, Ion or Helen (as some earlier scholars have done, designating them
as lesser or un-tragic tragedies).21 Yet this cannot be true, since the Greeks actually
conceived of Ion and Helen as tragedies (τραγῳδίαι), if only because they were
performed as such. Aristotle’s praise at Poetics 1454a4-7 and 1455b1-13 of Iphigenia
among the Taurians, a play at times regarded in this category of lesser tragedies by
modern scholars, certainly signifies that for Aristotle, Iphigenia among the Taurians was a
tragedy, and an exemplary one at that, despite the play not featuring ‘prosperity reduced
See especially Revermann 2006, 153-154 on the “Cleveland Dionysus” crater, where
Papposilenus wears attire distinctive to comedy, a comic mask and a long phallus.
20
For a summary of various ways of categorizing genre, and some finely-tuned distinctions
about genre, see Genette 1992.
21
On this problem in general see Wright 2005, 6-13.
7
19
to suffering’.22 On the other hand, one can make a generalization so broad that it also is
not diagnostic, as in Hall’s working definition of tragedy as “the dramatic expression of an
enquiry into suffering”.23 Even if an inquiry into suffering did occur in every single
tragedy, by this criteria, additional dramatic texts that inquire into suffering from comedy
and satyr drama might be classified as tragedies as well.
A further concern is if a tragedy seems to feature an element that does not belong
to the genre. Does that mean we should discharge the text from the genre? To take a
hypothetical example, what would scholars do if a text had all the features of a tragedy but
additionally had a chorus of satyrs instead of a chorus of humans? Would we cease to call
it a tragedy? Would it become a satyr drama? A tragedy under the influence of satyr
drama? A ‘bad’ tragedy? A hybrid satyritragedy? A tragisatyric drama? Such an example
would problematize the taxonomical categorizations normally used for tragedy. An
informative parallel situation can be seen in Aristotle when he says that while most
tragedies adhere to the standard mythological families, some plays have only one or two
familiar characters, and some plays have entirely new characters, as in Agathon’s Antheus
(Poet. 1451b.15-23).24 It is important that Aristotle does not remove Antheus from the
corpus of tragedies. Under the taxonomical view, the tendencies of a genre, such as
tragedy containing characters drawn from mythology, cannot diagnose a genre.25
See Belfiore 1992, 359-378.
Hall 2010, 6.
24
Additionally, other tragedies have historical characters, as in Aeschylus’ Persians and
Phrynichus’ Sack of Miletus.
25
Choruses of satyrs, accounts of historical events (Aeschylus’ Persians and Phrynichus’
Sack of Miletus), and non-mythological characters, also act as ‘black swans’ in tragedy.
Swans were always presumed to be white, as no black swans had ever been discovered, and
had even become a proverbial expression at least since Juvenal 6.165 ‘a rare bird in the
lands, like a black swan (nigro simillima cygno)’. When black swans were first discovered
in Australia, the definition of a swan had to be re-written to include the possibility of black
swans. For tragedy, historical events and non-mythological characters are attested black
8
22
23
Another approach to genre lies in Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ model.26
This view uses the analogy of family members, who all have some features in common
with each other, but do not necessarily have a set of traits that are common to all. Applied
to texts, this model calls for a genre comprising a ‘family’, whereby the individual
members are related in various ways, but there is no unifying trait present in all members.
Since any given text tends not to have all of the characteristics of the genre, this model can
account for a broader range of features in a genre without needing to worry about the
generic status of a particular text if it omits an element or adds one that does not belong.
This allows for tendencies within a genre to become diagnostic elements.27 If a play depicts
‘prosperity reduced to suffering’, then it supplies information towards defining that play as
a tragedy, without needing every single tragedy to have that trait. Of course, this notion is
quite fuzzy – how many traits are needed to verify that a play is a tragedy and not, for
example, a comedy? Are all traits weighed equally or do some traits count more than
others? For example, under the family resemblance model, would a hypothetical chorus of
satyrs in a play immediately remove it from tragic status? How many tragedies would need
to have a chorus of satyrs before that characteristic would be recognized as a trait of
tragedy? An additional problem is that such an analysis is not replicable, as different
scholars could come to different conclusions about a text’s generic status in the course of
swans, and therefore included in the definitions of tragedy, yet it is possible that it is only
an accident of history that no extant evidence exists for choruses of satyrs in tragedy.
26
On the application of the family resemblance model to genre, see Fowler 1982, 41-42.
For family resemblance models and ancient genres, see Swift 2010, 11-17 on lyric genres
and Scodel 2010, 13 on tragedy. Rotstein 2010 provides a more extensive demonstration
of this approach for iambic poetry.
27
This also allows for the inclusion within the genre of what may at first seem like very odd
exceptions to the genre.
9
weighing different qualities of the text.28 One attempt to come to terms with such fuzziness
assigns differing levels of prototypicality to traits. Under this view, the trait in tragedy
‘prosperity reduced to suffering’ would be regarded as having a high degree of prototypicality, as it occurs frequently in extant Greek tragedy, whereas the trait ‘varying
degrees of choral volume’ (discussed in Chapter 3) would have a low degree of
prototypicality, as it occurs only once in extant tragedy, in the parodos to Orestes. While
different scholars may vary in terms of how many extant examples of a trait in the genre
correspond to what level of prototypicality, as a general rule, features that occur once or
twice can be designated as having low prototypicality, and features that occur frequently
can be designated as having high prototypicality. Prototypicality, then, provides a better
framework for applying the family resemblance model to genres (see below for how
prototypicality can be used to detect paracomedy).
Another problematic issue is the fact that genres change over time. Since genres are
communicative ways of instilling expectations in the audience, every instantiation of a new
member of the genre redefines the genre by broadening or transforming those
expectations. The first time a third actor was brought onstage in a tragedy, it changed the
way tragedies work, and subsequent tragedians, recognizing the effectiveness of this
However, the taxonomical approach can lead to vastly more conclusions. Euripides’
Orestes, for example, has been labeled as a tragicomedy (Dunn 1996, 158-179), a
melodrama (Verrall 1905, 210, and Kitto 1961, 279-312, first edition published 1939),
and pro-satyric (Müller 1984, 66-69). For criticism of the application of the terms
‘tragicomedy’, ‘melodrama’ and ‘romance’ to tragedy, see Mastronarde 1999-2000, 3638, Mastronarde 2010, 58-62 and Wright 2005, 9-11. All are anachronistic terminology
retrojected back to an earlier time – ‘tragicomedy’ comes from Plautus’ Amphitryo 59,
where it represents a play with a blend of gods and mortals; ‘melodrama’ as a term was not
used before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE; ‘romance’ stems from the
subsequent Hellenistic romances. For differing views of Orestes as pro-satyric, see Porter
1994, 291-297.
10
28
innovation, used a third actor as well.29 Generic innovations occur in every tragedy,
however, they range in their level of adoption by others. The innovation of adding a third
actor had a high level of adoption, whereas the innovation of using non-mythological
characters, as evidenced in Agathon’s Antheus, seems to have been utilized rarely, if ever
again. It is impossible to predict whether any given trait will catch on and become
incorporated into a genre. There is some question as to the extent to which genres can
truly change, as members of the genre both respond to and vary recurrent tropes, but also
re-affirm them.
Genre theorists dealing with modern literary works add further complications
when they accept the flexibility of the family resemblance model. Texts on the periphery
of a genre (in that they contain more traits with a low degree of prototypicality or fewer
traits with a high degree of prototypicality) may show affinities with more than one genre.
Indeed, for some theorists, post-classical works may belong to two or more genres at the
same time. For our purposes, when considering Greek tragedy and comedy, we have the
advantage of historical performance context, knowing how the Greeks labeled plays due to
their performance.30 Sophocles’ Antigone is a τραγῳδία ‘tragedy’ due to the fact that it
was billed as such at the festival, whereas Cratinus’ Pytine is a κωµῳδία ‘comedy’ for the
same reason. Using the emic terminology of the Greeks, while potentially misleading due
to the fact that the ancients can misapply terminology or use terms in different senses (as
Swift notes for lyric genres) or due to diachronic changes in the genre (as Silk notes for
Given the lack of historical evidence and context Aristotle provides in his narrative when
he says that Aeschylus added a second actor and Sophocles a third actor at Poetics
1449a15-19, it is equally possible that this was an external regulation imposed on tragedy
by Athenian officials.
30
For an excellent analysis of context as opposed to genre, see Silk 2013, 19-30.
11
29
κωµῳδία), it is still preferable to the etic attempts of applying modern terms such as
tragicomedy or melodrama.31
Some of these broad questions dealing with the taxonomical approach or the
family resemblance model can be avoided by thinking concretely of the differences
between tragedy and comedy (and one could do the same with satyr drama). One
influential approach is that of Oliver Taplin, who, in a response to the Zeitlin’s and Segal’s
analyses of certain tragic scenes as metatheatrical, and in line with ancient theorists such as
Aristotle, argued that tragedy and comedy were diametrically opposed with regard to
certain traits.32 These five traits were: 1) explicit audience address and explicit reference to
audience, 2) explicit reference to the writing of texts, 3) explicit metatheatricality, 4)
explicit meta-references to costuming, and 5) explicit parody of other texts. For the most
part, Taplin’s assessments are true; whatever of these five elements that can be detected in
tragedy are implicit, not explicit.33
It may be illustrative to more carefully examine one of his criteria,
metatheatricality, to determine how permeable Taplin's lines between tragedy and comedy
are. Metatheater comprises those self-conscious aspects of a theatrical production that
afford audience reflection on the methods by which dramatists create and produce
drama.34 While most scholars of drama define metatheater in similar ways, some scholars,
such as Rosenmeyer, argue for maintaining a more restricted definition of metatheater
drawn from its original development in the study of Shakespeare, under which a “play
within a play” must actually present a play within a play, as for example when Hamlet has
Swift 2010, 6-26. Silk 2013, 24.
Taplin 1986, 163-174. See Zeitlin 2003, 309-341 (originally published in 1980) for
metatheater in Orestes and Segal 1982, 215-270 for metatheater in Bacchae.
33
Torrance 2013, 268, 300.
34
For a discussion of the various definions that have been applied to metatheater see Witt
2013, 1-18, Slater 2002, 1-22, Slater 2000, 10-12, and Ringer 1998, 1-19.
12
31
32
actors depict his father’s murder in a play to gauge Claudius’ reaction (Hamlet Act III.
Scene ii.), and not simply what he calls a dramatic situation within a play.35 Rosenmeyer's
definition would disallow examples from tragedy such as the escape scene in Euripides'
Helen (discussed in Chapter 5), in which Menelaus and Helen change costumes, feign new
identities, and act out a scene for various internal audiences. Metatheater in Greek tragedy
is certainly more implicit than the metatheatrical reflection that can appear in other
drama, such as Elizabethan drama and Athenian Old Comedy, but it is still metatheater,
since the scene in Helen, for example, comments on the creative process of dramatic
composition and involves the adoption of not only new costumes but new identities, a far
cry from general scenes of role-playing that Rosenmeyer rightly excludes, such as the
pretense that Clytemnestra is a faithful wife in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.36 Taplin's overall
distinction between explicit and implicit metatheater is certainly valid, and his boundaries
between tragedy and comedy that cannot be crossed might be seen as a form of mutual
exclusion, but the implicit gestures in tragedy towards these boundaries suggest that while
they technically still stood, the boundaries in effect were more permeable than Taplin
indicates.37
In addition to these five traits, for which Taplin sees the genres as entirely
conflicting in their usage, there are other elements that completely overlap and are
prevalent in both genres.38 I will draw on two articles to illustrate how slightly different
formulations theorize some of the overlapping features in tragedy and comedy. One
conception is to treat a feature that appears prominently in both tragedy and comedy as
Rosenmeyer 2002, 99-100.
On the implicitness of Athenian tragic metatheater and metapoetics, see Torrance 2013,
268, 300. For Clytemnestra and role-playing, see Rosenmeyer 2002, 104.
37
Foley 2008, 28-33.
38
Silk 2000a, 54-97 presents the view that tragedy and comedy should not be truly
conceived of as opposites.
13
35
36
genre-neutral. In a discussion of the door-keeper scenes in tragedy, Peter Brown
determines that while there are minor differences between such scene in tragedy and
comedy, overall, door-keeper scenes do not belong to one genre or the other, but rather,
tragedy and comedy can utilize door-keeper scenes equally.39 While this example may
account for many scenes at the door in drama, it may not be a suitable answer for some, as
for example, between the doorkeeper scenes at Euripides’ Helen 430-482 and
Aristophanes’ Acharnians 393-479 (discussed in Appendix C). In line with Brown’s
approach of genre-neutrality is an article by Daniel Levine, who studies similarities
between the plots of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Euripides’ Bacchae, in which rebellious
groups of women obey a strong and persuasive leader, retreat to a holy mountain, resist
imprisonment, expel invading groups of men, and finally defeat the main male antagonist,
who is dressed in women’s clothes.40 Levine attributes such similarities to “the use by both
Aristophanes and Euripides of the same literary tropes” and concludes that “this rolereversal theme had a basic expression which allowed comedian and tragedian to adapt it to
meet their individual needs”, an idea which makes sense in a culture that had rituals
involving role-reversal.41 Levine, therefore, unlocks an ‘underlying representation’ (a term
I borrow from generative linguistics) from which different manifestations occur in each
genre.42 In addition to the ‘women on top’ trope, the ‘underlying representation’ model
adequately explains the different generic materializations for broad themes such as war:
Aristophanes’ personification of war as an ogre figure in Peace contrasts greatly with the
Brown 2000, 1-3 on scenes at the door in tragedy and 2008, 349-373 which discusses
scenes at the door in Aristophanes. Also see Revermann 2006, 183-185.
40
Levine 1987, 29.
41
Levine 1987, 30, 36. On role-reversal rituals, see for example Burkert 1985, 230 on the
Skira, where women are on top, or Burkert 1985, 231-2 on the Kronia, where slaves are
on top.
42
Chomsky and Halle 1968, 6-12.
14
39
serious treatment of war throughout tragedy, and as such, the underlying theme of war is
depicted differently in each genre. As a whole, the approach whereby a cross-generic
similarity is described as genre-neutral or a literary trope that can be used equally by either
genre can explain a number of shared features between the genres, but not all.
INTERTEXTUALITY
Genre-neutrality cannot account for every feature that is present in both tragedy
and comedy, as another major explanation consists of an author’s appropriation of a
feature, at times from a different genre, and consciously inserting it into the text. Often
such appropriations are tied to notions of intertextuality, the idea that texts exist in relation
to other texts beyond the conventional groupings of genre.43 Kristeva originally introduced
this theory: “Any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption
and transformation of another”, and Barthes further refined the theoretical underpinnings
of intertextuality, conceiving of a text that is “woven entirely with citations, references,
echoes, cultural languages (what language is not?) antecedent or contemporary, which cut
across it through and through in a vast stereophony.”44 For Kristeva and Barthes,
intertextuality at its heart problematized the concept of authorship, given that
communication (whether through writing or speech) must utilize existing language and
conventions, and out of this, Barthes declared the “death of the author”.45 Yet in the hands
of their successor, Genette, intertextuality became transformed more towards a complex of
conscious allusions, and his understanding and codification of intertextuality became more
prominent, such that when scholars use the term ‘intertextuality’, they often refer more
For an overview of the history of intertextuality, see Allen 2000.
Kristeva 1980, 66. Barthes 1977, 160.
45
Barthes 1977, 142-148 (originally published in 1967 in Aspen 5-6, ed. Brian
O’Doherty).
15
43
44
towards the idea of an author’s conscious allusions than to the concept that all literature is
unconsciously reworking previous literature.46 Using the overarching term ‘transtextuality’
instead of the Kristeva’s and Barthes’ ‘intertextuality’, Genette subdivides transtextuality
into five parts: intertextuality (not to be confused with the overarching category used by
Kristeva and Barthes), paratextuality, architextuality, metatextuality, and hypertextuality
(or hypotextuality). For Genette, intertextuality contains only quotation, plagiarism and
allusion; paratextuality comprises all the elements on the threshold of a text which guide
the reader, such as titles, headings or reviews; architextuality marks the designation of a
text as part of a genre; metatextuality is the process of a text engaging in a commentary
upon another text; and hypertextuality is “any relationship uniting a text B (which I shall
call the hypertext) to an earlier text A (I shall, of course, call it the hypotext) upon which it
is grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary.”47 Examples of a hypertextual
relationship are those texts that transform, modify, or elaborate the model (hypotext), for
example, a parody, a sequel, or a translation. Genette’s categories are heuristic and not
mutually exclusive. When Aristophanes’ Frogs 1471 quotes a memorable half-line from
Euripides’ Hippolytus 612 “My tongue swore...”, it is difficult to accurately specify
whether this is a form of Genette’s 1) intertextuality, since it is a quotation; 2)
metatextuality, since it may engage in a form of commentary upon the line; or 3)
hypertextuality, since it may present a parodic view of Euripides’ original line. Though far
from perfect, Genette’s codification does allow more precision in discussing intertextuality
(a term which I will henceforth use in the common scholarly sense of ‘system of conscious
allusions’ and not in Genette’s restricted sense).
46
47
Genette 1997.
Genette 1997, 5.
16
Genette’s terms ‘hypotext’ and ‘hypertext’ provide some advantages for the
scholar. In addition to the fact that they are clearer and easier to use than other
terminology, they also immediately characterize an allusion as having a certain type of
relationship. Genette himself deals primarily with hypertextuality in which “the shift from
hypotext to hypertext is both massive (an entire work B deriving from an entire work A)
and more or less officially stated,” though he notes the obvious existence of other kinds
that are not necessarily massive and not necessarily officially stated, which he avoids
discussing, placing an arbitrary limit on his book.48 I adapt Genette’s use of hypertextuality
in order to apply the concept to the study of Greek drama, as in Greek drama there are no
examples of an “entire work B deriving from an entire work A” and very few examples
that are officially stated (the three titles of Euripides’ plays cited in Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae notwithstanding). In the context of Greek drama, a “massive”
allusive relationship is better understood in terms of scenes, with scene B deriving from
scene A, and instead of relying on Genette’s criterion of “more or less officially stated”
which occurs rarely in comedy and never in tragedy, I suggest that the criterion for the
existence of a hypertextual relationship consists of demonstrating distinctive
correspondences between the two scenes (on distinctive correspondences, see below). As a
number of my examples of paracomedy concern allusions to entire scenes or plotlines,
Genette’s hypertextuality, with its varying effects and motivations, can provide a good
model for certain examples of paracomedy.
Any given intertext will achieve different effects through its position on a variety of
continuums: explicitness of the reference (Is the hypotext named or is it obvious through
some other means? Would only a portion of the audience catch the reference?), extent of
48
Genette 1997, 9.
17
the reference (Does it last for two lines or the entire play?), and distance of the reference
(how great is the size of the gap between the hypotext and the hypertext?). They can also
vary in the tone of the appropriation: a positive homage, a neutral reference, or a negative
parody. For example, Euripides’ satyr drama Cyclops responds intertextually to Book 9 of
Homer’s Odyssey. Though the reference is never explicitly mentioned, it is nevertheless
recognizable and obvious, extending throughout the entire play, and the gap between the
two texts is quite large (Homer’s serious episode contains different characters, plots,
personifications, and scenes than those in Euripides’ version). Many scholars would
consider Euripides’ Cyclops to be negatively parodic, since it reduces Homer’s serious epic
to a ludic satyr-play.49 Yet a note of caution is in order, since for any given intertext,
scholars may quibble over the passage’s tone. Unfortunately, this is largely a matter of the
individual scholar’s taste and in many cases, tone cannot be proven by any scholarly
means.
When considering these forms of appropriation in the closed-system context of
Greek dramatic literature, one might expect scholars to equally uncover every permutation
of intertextuality possible. In principle, comedy could reference tragedy, satyr drama or
other comedy; tragedy could reference comedy, satyr drama and other tragedy; and satyr
drama could reference tragedy, comedy, and other satyr drama. Yet as a whole, scholars
do not accept many of these options, or at least, have not uncovered many good examples
of them. As my investigation concerns tragedy’s appropriation of comedy, a brief
While many scholars would count this as an example of negative parody, not all parody
need be negative. As Genette 1997, 27 writes in a discussion of ‘serious parody’: “Parody
does not actually subject the hypotext to a degrading stylistic treatment but only takes it as
a model or template for the construction of a new text, which once produced, is no longer
concerned with the model.”
18
49
summary of each of these intertextual possibilities is in order, to better provide context for
the claims I am making.50
Comedy appropriating comedy
A good place to begin is with comedy, as it continually and overtly references other
plays. Comedy constantly positions itself against other comedy, as theorized, for example,
in the scholarship of Hubbard, Biles, and Wright. Hubbard gives examples and case
studies for Aristophanic auto-allusion in many of his parabases, whereby Aristophanes
responds to his own earlier work.51 Biles, on the other hand, extends the analysis to include
comedians responding to other comedians, by presenting the evidence for an intertextual
relationship between Aristophanes and Cratinus.52 According to Biles, Cratinus had
developed a stage persona of an indulgent drinker, which Aristophanes mocked in
Knights.53 Later, Cratinus responded to Aristophanes’ caricature in Pytine, and
subsequently, Aristophanes responded back in Wasps. The back-and-forth intertextuality
(or, perhaps more accurately, inter-performativity, since we are dealing with performances
responding to performances) signals a competitive rivalry between the two comedians.
This sort of rivalry is not limited to Aristophanes and Cratinus, as comparisons with one’s
competitors occur frequently in comedy.54 In the parabasis from Clouds (revised version
dating to c. 417 BCE), for example, Aristophanes attacks fellow comic poets Eupolis,
Seidensticker 2005, 49-53 also examines the possibilities of mutual influence between
the dramatic genres, including dithyramb.
51
Hubbard 1991, 33-35, 88-139.
52
Biles 2011, 134-166, a revision of Biles 2002, 169-204.
53
Bakola 2008, 1-29 suggests that each of the big three comic playwrights had a
recognizable persona: Eupolis the poet-teacher, Cratinus the inspired drunk and
Aristophanes the innovative and clever reformer.
54
Silk 2000b, 299-315. Competitive rivalry extends beyond comedy, for example, in the
fragments of Archilochus, Hawkins 2008, 93-114 detects the presence of a rivalry between
Archilochus and Lycambes, either in actuality or created to suit the needs of Archilochus’
poetry.
19
50
Phrynichus, Hermippus and Plato, and in Frogs (405 BCE), Aristophanes insults
Phrynichus, Lykis and Ameipsias, reflecting a changing body of comic rivals.55 For Wright,
the intra-generic literary criticism of comedians on comedians can be seen through their
claims of novelty and cleverness, and their use of a body of metaphors to assert claims
about each other.56 I suggest that the rivalries between comic poets can serve as a model for
the cross-generic rivalry between comic and tragic poets.
Comedy appropriating tragedy
The gold standard for dramatic appropriation is paratragedy, broadly and
generally defined as comedy’s reference to and appropriation of lines, scenes, and
dramaturgy from tragedy, at times with clear parodic intent. Aristophanes, for example,
often brings tragedians onstage in his comedies and humorously exaggerates their tragic
characters, scenes and methods of composition.57 Scholars generally accept the notion of
paratragedy, since at times the paratragedy is explicit, citing tragedies or tragic characters
by name.58 More than that, a comic playwright’s motives for co-opting elements from
tragedy are easily understood. Foley lists a wide variety of manifestations of and
motivations for paratragedy: “incongruous juxtapositions, ironic inversions, repetition to
create critical distance, pointed contradictions and illogicalities, satire and mockery,
avoidance of censorship, subversion of hierarchy, more neutral forms of intertextuality, or
Biles 2011, 181-187.
Wright 2012.
57
For example, Agathon appears as a character at Thesmophoriazusae 95-265. Aeschylus
appears alongside Euripides in Frogs 830-1533, and Euripides appears by himself at
Acharnians 394-488 and throughout Thesmophoriazusae.
58
Aristophanes mentions specific tragedies at Thesmophoriazusae 770 and 848 (Euripides’
Palamedes); Thesmophoriazusae 850 (Euripides’ Helen); and Thesmophoriazusae 1012
(Euripides’ Andromeda). The rag costumes from specific characters from Euripidean
tragedies (Oineus, Phoenix, Philoctetes, Bellerophon, Telephus, Thyestes, and Ino) are
mentioned at Acharnians 418-434.
20
55
56
examinations of the role of imitation and representation”.59 Much of the time the
comedian is parodying tragedy in a negative way for some kind of humorous effect in an
attempt to earn the favor of the judges and win the dramatic contest.60 However, at times,
the borrowing is neutral, or even positive, as occurs when Dicaeopolis takes on the tragic
pose of Telephus in Aristophanes’ Acharnians.61 Even being the target of a substantial
Aristophanic parody could serve as a mark of prestige, as the truly bad poets were ignored
or dismissed with a comment. It is possible for paratragedy to target both specific tragedies
as well as a more general tragic mode, as for example Aristophanes’ Clouds 1452-1462,
which has been described as having a “generalized tragic coloration”.62
In many ways, Rau’s comprehensive study Paratragodia marks the beginning of
serious investigation into paratragedy.63 In addition to analyzing scenes in comedy that are
modeled on specific tragic models (Aristophanes’ Acharnians and Thesmophoriazusae on
Euripides’ Telephus; Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae on Euripides’ Palamedes, Helen
and Andromeda; Aristophanes’ Peace on Euripides’ Bellerophon; Aristophanes’ Frogs on
the playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides and Thesmophoriazusae on Agathon), Rau
provides a database, with hundreds of examples, of tragic lines that Aristophanes
parodies.64 While Rau focused primarily on Aristophanes, further studies demonstrated
that other comic poets engaged in paratragedy as well. Bakola suggests that Cratinus was
Foley 2008, 21.
Biles 2011, 97-133, though see Wright 2012, 31-69 for the view that festival prizes were
not a primary goal of comic competition.
61
Foley 1988, 33-47. See Platter 2008, 153-156 for a view on how the scene trivializes
Euripides’ play.
62
Silk 2000a, 352-356. The generally tragic nature of the passage is also noted by
Zimmermann 2006, 327-335.
63
Rau 1967.
64
Rau 1967, 185-212. For further source material on comic quotations of Aeschylus, see
Olson 2007, 175; for Sophocles, see Olson 2007, 176; and for Euripides, see Olson 2007,
178-179.
21
59
60
actively involved in paratragedy, primarily directed at the plays of Aeschylus, as when
Cratinus’ Plutoi responds to Aeschylus’ Prometheus plays and the Oresteia.65 Miles
enlarges the scope of paratragedy by discussing numerous examples of non-Aristophanic
comedy, culminating with a close dissection of paratragedy in Strattis, a comic poet who
flourished in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE.66 Scholarship on discovering
new examples of paratragedy and the interpretation thereof has been growing steadily for
the past fifty years, and increasingly so in the last fifteen.67
Comedy appropriating satyr drama
Comedy’s appropriation of satyr drama is less clear due to the scarcity of evidence
for satyr drama.68 Dobrov has argued that “for some reason, comic drama, while
committed to an explicit and creative rivalry with tragedy, eschews the satyr-play
entirely,”69 while Bakola claims the exact opposite: “just as comedy was constantly
interested in tragedy, so it maintained a consistent interest in satyr play as well.”70 Largely
at stake is Cratinus’ comedy Dionysalexandros, in which Dobrov sees less and Bakola sees
more appropriations of satyric elements, and to my mind, Cratinus’ play does seem to
appropriate enough tropes from satyr drama to speak of intertextuality. Other examples of
the appropriation of satyric elements exist in comedy. As Bakola notes, two Aristophanic
passages also seem modeled on scenes from satyr play, Birds 1196-1261 and Peace 459519, which are enough to prove that comedy has the potential to appropriate satyr
Bakola 2010, 118-179. Cratinus’ narrow focus on Aeschylus suggests that paratragedy
may work best when the target playwright is famous and easily recognizable by the
audience.
66
Miles 2009.
67
See also Rosen 2005, Silk 2000a, Dobrov 2001, Bowie 2000, 322-324.
68
Bakola 2010, 102-104.
69
Dobrov 2007, 259.
70
Bakola 2010, 102.
22
65
drama.71 There are a number of comedies entitled Satyroi, and a number of vase paintings
depicting comedies with a “comedified” chorus of satyrs, but we know little about either of
these.72 Given the scarcity of evidence for satyr drama, it is a reasonable extrapolation that
these few detectable examples of comedy appropriating satyr drama are only the tip of the
iceberg, and that undoubtedly more examples would be found if our evidence were less
fragmentary.
Satyr drama appropriating satyr drama, comedy and tragedy
The same paucity of data causes only a few opportunities for us to detect cases of
intertextuality in satyr drama. While there are plenty of examples of shared tropes across
satyr drama, to my knowledge there are no examples of a satyr drama intertextually
alluding to another satyr drama.73 This may be due to the fact that we only have one
complete satyr drama, Euripides’ Cyclops, though in principle, there is no reason to doubt
the possibility that a satyr drama could allude to another satyr drama. There are, however,
a few cases where a satyr drama intertextually refers to comedy or tragedy. Zagagi has
argued that Sophocles’ satyr drama Trackers adopts a number of general comedic motifs,
not all of which are convincing.74 One of Zagagi’s better examples is the argument that
Trackers 93-123, in which the chorus searches for lost cattle, is modeled on certain pursuit
scenes from comedy, such as Acharnians 204-236 and Thesmophoriazusae 655-687.
Another example of a satyr drama adopting elements from comedy comes from
For Birds 1196-1261, see Bakola 2010, 104-108 and Scharffenberger 1995b. For Peace
459-519, see Bakola 2010, 108-112, Dobrov 2007, 261-265, and Hall 2006, 340-341.
72
See Storey 2005, 201-218 on the evidence for comedies that had a satyr chorus.
73
On the standard tropes of satyr drama, see Sutton 1980, 145-159 and Seaford 1984, 3344.
74
Zagagi 1999, 191-196. By drawing parallels to New Comedy (late 4th-3rd centuries BCE)
and Roman Comedy (3rd -2nd centuries BCE), Zagagi ignores chronological explanations
for the correspondences, on which see the section on the priority of the comedic element
below.
23
71
Astydamas, a 4th century BCE tragedian who allegedly incorporated a parabasis into his
Heracles, a satyr play.75 More importantly, if Euripides’ Cyclops dates to 408 BCE, then it
has two examples of intertextual quotations from comedy and tragedy:76
1) Euripides’ Cyclops 222: ἔα: τίν᾽ ὄχλον τόνδ᾽ ὁρῶ πρὸς αὐλίοις; “Ah, what is
this crowd I see here near my cave?” responding to Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae
1105, dated to 411 BCE: ἔα· τίν᾽ ὄχθον τόνδ᾽ ὁρῶ καὶ παρθένον... “Ah, what is this
rock I see here and what maiden...?”
2) Euripides’ Cyclops 707: δι᾽ ἀµφιτρῆτος τῆσδε “through this pierced-through
thing” responding to Sophocles’ Philoctetes 19, dated to 409 BCE: δι᾽ ἀµφιτρῆτος
αὐλίου “through this pierced-through cave.”
Even though there are only a few attested examples in satyr drama, to my mind,
they are enough to prove that the genre did, at least on some occasions, allude to tragedy
and comedy. However, the fact that there are only a few examples have led some scholars
to doubt the whole construct, and they argue against such evidence as the two allusions
from Cyclops cited above.77
Tragedy appropriating tragedy
Scholars have long noted commonalities between lines appearing in different
tragedies. Little significance was attached to these potential allusions, and some simply
attributed the similarity to a common tragic language. The first sustained catalogue of
allusions in tragedy was that of Garner, who analyzed a vast number of tragic allusions,
though many of them were to previous lyric and epic poetry.78 When the conception of
Revermann 2006, 279-80.
Marshall 2001, 226-238. For the particular arguments regarding the date of Cyclops, see
below.
77
See for example Wright 2006, 23-27.
78
Garner 1990.
24
75
76
tragic intertexts expanded to include plots and scenes responding to previous plots and
scenes, scholars took opposing sides. To take one example, a number of scholars have
asserted that Euripides’ recognition scene at Electra 518-544 alludes to the recognition
scene in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers 205-228, and an equal number have argued that it
does not, with some attempting to excise some or all of the scene in Electra, partially on
syntactical grounds and partially on the preconception that tragedy cannot (or perhaps
should not) refer to other tragedy in such an obvious vein.79 The most recent scholarly
treatments, however, to my mind settle the issue by demonstrating the necessity of the lines
in Electra.80
Furthermore, such heated debates were more common when scholars were
originally confronted only with the passage from Electra. Torrance, for example, detects
an extended set of Euripidean responses to Aeschylus’ Oresteia beyond the allusion in
Electra.81 She exposes a series of inversions and responses to the Oresteia in Iphigenia
among the Taurians and a reversal of the ordering of the plots of Oresteia in Orestes: an
opening and recurrent response to Eumenides, a triple re-working of Libation Bearers, a
remake of Agamemnon, and finally a replay of Aeschylus’ Oresteia in miniature in the
exodos.82 Previously, when it seemed that only one scene was interacting with another
tragedy (Electra 518-544), it was easy to attack and excise it, since this would remove the
only counterexample to the apparent rule that scenes in tragedy do not allude to other
Fraenkel 1950, Vol. 3, Appendix D, 815-826, Bain 1977, 104-116, West 1980 and
Kovacs 1989, 67-78 have tried to show that the scene is an interpolation. For those in
favor of keeping the lines, see the footnote immediately below.
80
Davies 1998, 389-403, Gallagher 2003, 401-415, and Torrance 2011, 177-204 and
Torrance 2013, 13-33.
81
Torrance 2011, 13-62.
82
Torrance 2011, 45-57.
25
79
scenes in tragedy.83 Yet as scholars have discovered more and more examples, it has
become a better practice to revise the rule and conclude that generic constraints do not
preclude tragedy from appropriating tragedy.
Tragedy appropriating satyr drama
Discussions of the interactions between tragedy and satyr drama are generally
limited to Euripides’ so-called ‘pro-satyric’ play Alcestis, which was performed as the
fourth play in the tetralogy of 438 BCE. Based on the fact that Alcestis was staged as the
last play in its tetralogy and given the contextual norm that satyr dramas occur in the last
slot of a tetralogy, we (as well as the audience in the theater) are expecting Alcestis to be a
satyr drama, and consequently, the audience would be torn and twisted as they gazed
upon a play that countered their contextual expectations.84 There is no direct referent to a
specific satyr drama for the satyric tropes that appear in Alcestis, thus whatever reference
to satyr drama that appears is on a general level. Based on a taxonomical approach of
assigning a genre to the text, we might label it primarily as a tragedy, albeit with a number
of affinities with standard motifs from satyr drama, but such a statement depends on the
validity of the taxonomical approach, and it is unclear in what way Alcestis is a tragedy at
all. Still, this ‘prosatyric’ play is the best candidate for a generalized appropriation of satyr
drama into tragedy, as the other candidates (Bacchae, Ion, Helen, Iphigenia among the
Taurians) that have been put forth are less than compelling, partially due to the vagueness
of satyr drama motifs and their omnipresence in tragedy as well as satyr drama.85
However, there are distinctive differences between the appropriation of satyr drama in
The modeling of the scene in Euripides’ Electra on the scene in Aeschylus’ Libation
Bearers is an excellent example for demonstrating how Genette’s concept of
hypertextuality can be applied to drama.
84
Slater 2005, 83-101.
85
On Alcestis as ‘prosatyric’, see Sutton 1980, 180-181. For the difficulties in attempting
to detect satyric elements in tragedies, see Sansone 1978, 40-46.
26
83
Alcestis, which depends on withholding the element of the highest prototypicality in satyr
drama (the chorus of satyrs) from an audience who is expecting to see a satyr drama due
to the play’s position in the tetralogy, and the appropriation of satyr drama in a tragedy
which was presented in the first three spots of a tetralogy (thereby contextually
determining it as a tragedy), which depends on including prototypical elements of satyr
drama in the play. To my knowledge, there are no examples of intertexts with satyr drama
cited in the literature on tragedy (though Chapter 3 presents arguments for one example of
tragedy appropriating elements from satyr drama). As is always the case with satyr drama,
this overview is problematized by the fact that our only complete satyr drama (Cyclops)
dates to 408 BCE, and there are very few tragedies that post-date this, leaving little
opportunity for allusions to arise.
Tragedy appropriating comedy
Before continuing onto my primary investigation of tragedy’s appropriation of
comedy, it is necessary to make a few broad points about how tragedy fits in with the
general state of scholarship on drama that I just described. Comedy, with its
“carnivalesque” background, is conceived of as able to consume other genres.86 Indeed,
some scholars have argued that genre-consumption and a constant positioning against
other texts are primary traits of comedy.87 Satyr drama, seen as a midpoint between the
two genres of comedy and tragedy, could possess the ability to appropriate other genres,
but unfortunately we cannot detect enough evidence to confirm this. Tragedy, on the
other hand, is seen almost as sacrosanct, and the inherent inappropriateness of comedic or
86
87
Platter 2007, 1-41.
See for example the new compilation of Bakola, Prauscello, and Telò 2013.
27
satyric elements in tragedy is enough to disqualify those traits from being present.88 To
quote Croally: “In Euripides, then, it is not merely the presence of inappropriate elements
(bad taste, the grotesque) which makes Euripidean tragedy self-referential, but the
appearance of elements not only inappropriate to tragedy but strictly appropriate to
another genre, namely comedy.”89 Such conceptions inevitably go back to the idea of an
inherent quality of tragedy, sometimes labeled ‘the Tragic’, which comprises a bleak
worldview supported by a certain level of decorum and grandeur. Yet ‘the Tragic’ is a
concept dating at its earliest to Aristotle’s Poetics, written about seventy-five years after
Euripides and Sophocles died. The Poetics represents one man’s views about tragedy,
which do not necessarily conform to the realities of fifth century drama or to later notions
of ‘the Tragic’. While the Poetics’ reliability as testimony to 5th century BCE drama can
always be questioned due to its posteriority, the real problem lies not with Aristotle’s text,
which does not make extensive claims about ‘the Tragic’, but rather with the longperpetuated views of later scholars who misread, exaggerated and extrapolated from
Aristotle’s text.90 Rather than reading Greek drama through these lenses, it is better to let
the plays speak for themselves.
On the ‘inappropriateness’ of comedy, see Taplin 1986 and Croally 1994, 235-247. On
the ‘sacrosanct’ status of tragedy, see Silk 2000a, 79-82.
89
Croally 1994, 241.
90
Allen 2008, 66. Most 2000, 23 writes, “In ancient philosophy and literary criticism,
there seems to have been nothing whatsoever corresponding to the modern philosophical
notion of ‘the Tragic’ as a fundamental dimension of human experience; there were
instead only theories of ‘tragedy’ as a specific genre.” Yet as Silk 2013, 27 suggests,
Aristotle gestures towards a distinction between ‘tragedies’ and a quality associated with
them that Aristotle calls ‘tragic’. By claiming that Euripides is the ‘most tragic’
(τραγικώτατος, Poetics 13) of the poets, Aristotle is asserting that Euripides’ plays have
more of a certain quality to them than the plays of others, as this word cannot mean ‘most
tragedic’, a concept that cannot exist in different degrees (i.e. a play cannot be ‘more
performed in the tragedy lineup of a festival’ than another play). It is unclear what
Aristotle thought this ‘tragic’ quality was and consequently, it is unclear whether it was
similar at all to later conceptions of ‘the Tragic’. Whatever this quality was, it must not
28
88
When scholars think of tragedy appropriating comedy, they often think of ‘comic’
elements in tragedy, that is to say, light-hearted or funny passages appearing in tragedy
that seem to differ in tone from the rest of the ‘tragic’ play. The main proponent of this
view is Seidensticker, whose examples include Trojan Women 1050, an alleged ‘fat joke’
towards Helen; Heracleidae 630-747, in which the elderly Iolaus arms himself for battle;
Bacchae 170-369, in which the elderly Tiresias and Cadmus dress as Bacchants; Bacchae
912-970, in which Pentheus is dressed in women’s clothes; and Orestes 1369-1536, in
which the Phrygian slave engages in outrageous discourse with Orestes.91 Yet for these
examples, the criteria for establishing them as comic are subjective, and based largely on
our modern understanding of comedy. It is our culture, not that of the Greeks, that thinks
that a woman putting on weight or male cross-dressing is funny. If a passage in tragedy
makes a particular scholar laugh, then he may deem the passage comic; at best, this is an
anachronistic means of defining ancient laughter. There are no valid means for
establishing whether a passage in Euripides was thought of as humorous at the time of its
performance or even more broadly in antiquity, and it may be that some examples that
have been proposed are actually not meant as jokes at all. Let us examine the alleged joke
about Helen’s weight (Trojan Women 1049-1050):
Hecuba: µή νυν νεὼς σοὶ ταὐτὸν ἐσβήτω σκάφος.
Menelaus: τί δ' ἔστι; µεῖζον βρῖθος ἢ πάροιθ' ἔχει;
Hecuba: Well, then do not let her embark on the same vessel as you.
Menelaus: What is wrong? Is she heavier than she was?
have been impeded or nullified by the paracomedic issues I am raising in this dissertation.
One could be highly paracomedic and still be τραγικώτατος.
91
Seidensticker 1982, 89-128.
29
Regarding this passage, Gregory has noted the problems inherent in ascertaining
ancient humor, and furthermore, notes that for the Greeks, having extra weight is more
likely a sign of attractiveness, contrary to our cultural views.92 However, the ‘joke’ may
have a different referent entirely. One possibility is that the concern about Helen being
heavier than she was may indicate that Menelaus’ fear that she is pregnant, perhaps better
translated as "Does she have a heavier load than before?".93 This proposal may have some
linguistic support, since there may be a connection between βρῖθος, the word used for
Helen’s weight at Trojan Women 1050, and Latin gravis, which means both ‘heavy’ and
‘pregnant’.94 If this proposal is true, this ‘joke’ actually raises serious questions about
Helen’s potential adultery.
Attempts to uncover comic passages in tragedy import later (and even modern)
conceptions of comedy, and therefore utilize an idea of ‘the Comic’, a universal source of
humor which transcends genre, crosses cultures and is uniform throughout time. It is clear
that ‘the Comic’ suffers from the same problems as those afflicting ‘the Tragic’, discussed
above. No matter how much certain of Euripides’ plays or scenes look like the New
Comedy of Menander, or Roman comedy, or Shakespeare, or modern films such as Some
Like it Hot, such comparanda cannot be used to determine the tone of a particular scene
or line in Euripides.95 Rather than treating trans-historical and cross-cultural concepts of
‘the Tragic’ or tragedy as a whole, or ‘the Comic’ or comedy as a whole, I will focus
See Gregory 1999-2000, 59-74.
Torrance 2013, 284, who cites an unfortunately uncredited student of Matthew
Wright’s for this idea.
94
Both words may come from the same Indo-European root *gwrH- ‘heavy, pregnant’,
though there are some problems with the Greek outcome, since through a regular sound
change in Greek *gwrH- should give an unattested form βαριθος* (cf. βαρύς ‘heavy’).
95
Seidensticker 1978, 317, Knox 2001, 18-22, and Segal 2001, 133-134, 151-152 all use
evidence from other genres, time periods, and cultures to establish ‘the Comic’.
30
92
93
strictly on the historical arena of 5th century Greek drama, specifically on intertextual
appropriations drawn from contemporary Greek comedy.
PARACOMEDY
While the scholarly focus has been on paratragedy, recently a number of scholars
have been open to the possibility of paracomedy. Even if one admits the possibility of a
tragedian appropriating elements drawn from comedy into a tragedy, problems still arise
which must be overcome before paracomedy is accepted as the relationship between a
‘tragedic element’ and a ‘comedic element’.96 By a ‘tragedic element’ or ‘comedic element’,
I mean a particular word, line, manner of expression, motif, theme, character type, scene,
plot, pattern, staging, costuming, or delivery etc. that specifically belongs to tragedy or
comedy. I use the term ‘tragedic element’ instead of ‘tragic element’ and ‘comedic element’
instead of ‘comic element’ because I do not wish to make any claims regarding the tragic
seriousness or comic humor of these elements in the vein of Seidensticker.97 A comedic
element may or may not be comic (in the modern sense of humorous or funny), and a
tragedic element may or may not be tragic (in the modern sense of grave or serious, which
ultimately derives from later interpretations of an Aristotelian view of tragedy). When
referring to elements drawn from satyr drama, I will use the term ‘satyric’, which does not
Sometimes scholars develop elaborate scenarios involving re-productions or revisions of
plays in order to allow an explanation for paratragedy, when an explanation through
paracomedy could have provided a (possibly) more straightforward option. See Beta
1999, 135-157.
97
For the distinction between ‘comedic elements’ and ‘comic elements’ see Seidensticker
1978, 305-306, who rejects investigation into ‘comedic elements’ in favor of ‘comic
elements’, defining the two as follows: “Euripides makes extensive use of structural forms,
characters, dramatic situations, motifs, themes, and story patterns which were already or
were soon to become typical elements of comedy. These I shall call comedy elements.
Comic elements, on the other hand, – and the adjective comic – will be used as a general
term for the ‘laughable’ (τὸ γέλοιον) in its various manifestations and tones.”
Seidensticker 1982, 44 uses the terms ‘komische Elemente’ and ‘Komödienelemente’.
31
96
suffer from confusion with modern meanings as ‘tragic’ and ‘comic’ do (as modern
‘satyric’ signifying ‘possessing strong sexual desires’ is not likely to confuse anyone).
Distinguishing between a ‘comedic element’ and a ‘comic element’ can be difficult to do.
When Diamatakou-Agathou suggests that Euripides’ Ion appropriates a scene from
Aristophanes’ Birds, she argues that it is primarily a comedic element that is being
appropriated (a sequence of various birds arriving), yet uses this to confirm “one more
comic trace” in Ion, where the “comic and the serious or tragic are conceived not in
isolation but as components of the same theatrical experience”, drawing one of her
conclusions close to Seidensticker’s understanding of ‘the Comic’.98
I propose that one should fulfill three criteria in developing an argument for
paracomedy: distinctive correspondences between the two elements, the priority of
comedic element, and a suitable motivation for adopting the comedic element. To help
illustrate this process of reasoning, I will apply these criteria to what I consider to be a
successful demonstration of paracomedy in Sommerstein’s “Comic Elements in Tragic
Language: the Case of Aeschylus’ Oresteia”, in addition to various other arguments which
can serve as examples.99 To briefly summarize the article: Sommerstein tabulates a number
of lexical items (comprising sexual innuendos and vulgar bodily functions such as
vomiting and belching) in Aeschylus’ Oresteia that he establishes as being foreign to
tragedy and prevalent in comedy. He then goes on to demonstrate that this intrusion from
the language of comedy is used to characterize the hideous and horrifying Erinyes in the
Oresteia, concluding that Aeschylus purposefully drew upon comedic language for a
specific purpose in tragedy, namely to “heighten the blackness and bleakness of the vicious
98
99
Diamantakou-Agathou 2012, 23, 25.
Sommerstein 2002, 151-168.
32
cycle of retaliatory violence.”100 I draw upon Sommerstein’s well-reasoned arguments as a
model of sound methodology in determining paracomedy.
Distinctive
Correspondences
Priority of Comedic
Element
Motivation
A parallel should be unique, rare, or marked (exhibit a low degree of
prototypicality) within the genre of tragedy, and conversely, be
frequent (exhibit a high degree of prototypicality) or prominent in the
genre of comedy.
The comedic element should precede the tragedic element, obtained
either by secure dates or if dates are unknown, through inference based
on which ordering (paratragedy or paracomedy) makes more sense.
An explanation should be provided as to why the tragedian would
desire to adopt an element from comedy.
Table 1. My Methodology for Arguments Involving Paracomedy
Distinctive Correspondences
Sommerstein shows distinctive correspondences that are sufficiently strengthened
through specific and marked parallels in language so as to diminish the likelihood of all
other explanations. One could extend this criterion beyond language to include elements
of plots, scenes, motifs and the like. But immediately, one must deal with a methodological
problem: how does one determine a tragedic, comedic or satyric element present in
another genre? Regarding the incorporation of general features of comedy into tragedy, a
good starting point is Wright’s reaction to Seidensticker’ comic elements in tragedy:
It is clear that there are certain features in comedy and satyr-play (use of less
elevated or colloquial language, certain plot features, etc.) which are also to be
found in tragedies of various dates. These features are sometimes used to ‘prove’
that certain tragedies – including the escape-plays – are not properly, or purely,
tragic. But if certain elements appear in two or three genres, then they cannot be
said to be defining characteristics of only one genre – cannot be said, for example,
100
Sommerstein 2002, 163.
33
to be ‘comic elements incorporated into tragedy’ – but must rather be seen as cross-
generic features which tragedies, comedies or satyr-dramas may include without
sacrificing their respective natures. It is what remains apart from these crossgeneric features that defines comedy or tragedy.101
In an attempt to defend the tragic status of the escape plays of Helen, Iphigenia among the
Taurians and Andromeda, often accused of being less than tragic, Wright elides the
distinction between features that are allowed in a genre and features that are common to
the genre. Here, the principle of prototypicality from genre studies may again be adduced
to elucidate the problem. Audiences generally feel that features with high-prototypicality
(‘prosperity reduced to suffering’ in tragedy) “belong” to the genre whereas features with
low-prototypicality (‘characters drawn not from mythology’ in tragedy) do not. This is not
to say that they cannot exist in the genre – Agathon’s Antheus contains characters not
drawn from mythology and was still a tragedy, and Aristophanes’ Clouds (1452-1462)
contains a protagonist, Strepsiades, who discovers his own responsibility in causing his
downfall (in a passage clearly modeled on the highly prototypical theme in tragedy) and
was still a comedy.102 However, a strict taxonomical definition utilizing only the bare
attestation of a feature in a genre cannot be sufficient. If one labeled ‘prosperity reduced to
suffering’ as a feature of comedy or ‘characters not drawn from mythology’ as a feature of
tragedy, it would run counter to the expectations of every audience member who had seen
comedies and tragedies. Considering that genre is a theoretical construct composed
primarily of audience expectation, using the concept of prototypicality seems a more
accurate way to model features borrowed from another genre. However, we do not have
Wright 2005, 23.
See Silk 2000a, 352-356. The passage at Clouds 1452-1462 prefigures Aristotle’s
conceptions of anagnorisis ‘recognition, discovery’ and peripeteia ‘reversal of fortune’ in
Poetics 1452a14-1452b13.
34
101
102
direct access to the audience’ opinions regarding certain features and whether they are
conceived of as belonging to a certain genre or not, as these would ideally be obtained
through interviewing a representative sample of the audience, an impossibility for the
ancient world. Since we cannot directly ascertain the responses of the audience, I believe
that assigning a feature along a spectrum of high-prototypicality to low-prototypicality
can be used to approximate audience viewpoints. Under this view, highly prototypical
features of comedy would be designated as comedic, and features with low-prototypicality
would not.
In attempting to determine a case of paracomedy, that is, if a comedic element has
been appropriated into tragedy, the element in tragedy must meet the following criteria: 1)
low-prototypicality in tragedy and 2) either high-prototypicality or high ‘prominence’ in
comedy.103 By ‘prominence’, I mean a notable or memorable element from a specific play
that (at least a portion of) the audience would recognize (for example, the hauling of the
statue of Peace in Aristophanes’ Peace or Euripides’ shop of rags in Acharnians). Here I
invoke a distinction used in the methodology of paratragedy, which differentiates between
1) the appropriation of general features of a genre (for example, ‘obscenity’ in comedy or
‘prosperity reduced to downfall’ in tragedy) and 2) the appropriation of a specific model,
or in the terms of Genette, the relationship between a hypertext and a hypotext (for
example, the allusion to Euripides’ Bellerophon in the beginning of Aristophanes’ Peace).
Both options are possible for paratragedy – in addition to the hundreds of examples that
target a specific tragedic line, scene or plot, there are examples for which no clear model
can be detected, and while it is possible that some of these may have referents that are no
Kirkpatrick and Dunn 2002 admirably demonstrate low prototypicality for tragedy
and high prototypicality for comedy with regards to their element ‘talking object’ at
Heracles 1380-1381.
35
103
longer extant, most seem to be a pastiche of general features of tragedy. Considering that
what is being invoked is the audience’s reception of a feature from a different genre, the
same effect can occur equally from tragedy’s allusion to a specific target in comedy or
from a trope that appears frequently in the genre.
This aligns with the view expressed by Sommerstein in a discussion of comedic
language: “a comic figure of language, for this purpose, is a feature that is common in
comedy (and/or in other low-register forms of verse, such as iambus) but very rare or
unknown in tragedy.”104 Though he does not use the framework of prototypicality, the
same methodology is present. It should be noted that this model applies in all respects to
satyr drama as well, and one could easily substitute ‘satyr drama’ for either ‘tragedy’ or
‘comedy’ in the above discussion. In fact, the scholarly discussion should incorporate the
ability for all dramatic genres to appropriate all other genres.
A case study may suffice to illuminate the issue of distinctive correspondences.
Castellani has argued that Sophocles’ Oedipus in Colonus responds to Aristophanes’ Birds
in characters, themes and plot.105 He provides many correspondences between the two
plays in his article, from which I have extracted the following list:
1) Play begins with a pair in exile
2) Non-architectural setting with vegetation
3) The pair meets an inhabitant of the land
4) The chorus is unwelcome
5) Prophecies occur
6) A character brings secret information
7) Poseidon is mentioned
104
105
Sommerstein 2002, 153.
Castellani 2010, 47-58.
36
8) The visitors must convince the locals that they will be beneficial
9) Physical violence occurs
10) Someone is arrested
11) Theme of doubling
12) Conclusion with an apotheosis
13) Colonus described as “well-nightingaled”
14) Birds mentions the city of Colonus
Unfortunately, none of these correspondences is distinctive. Often, the common
ground between the two elements elides over the important differences between them, and
thus is too vague to mark paracomedy. For point 1 (the play begins with a pair in exile),
Peisetairos and Euelpides have voluntarily left Athens, whereas Oedipus and Antigone
have been expelled. For point 4 (the chorus is unwelcome), the chorus of Birds actually
attacks the pair physically, whereas the chorus of Oedipus at Colonus just does not receive
the pair hospitably. Such differences detract from the commonalities between the plays,
and it seems unlikely that an audience would detect a corresponding theme of ‘pair in
exile’ or ‘unwelcome chorus’ between the two plays. These two elements could equally
point to the Oresteia, as Orestes and Pylades enter as a ‘pair in exile’ in Libation Bearers
and the chorus is hostile towards Orestes in Eumenides, showing that the relationship
between Oedipus at Colonus and Birds may not have been as meaningful as the author
claims. Other correspondences are quite frequent in tragedy and are not diagnostic since
they have high prototypicality, for example, the theme of doubling (point 11) or the
mention of nightingales (point 13). The fact that both plays end with an apotheosis, even
though these scenes have a low level of prototypicality within their genres and are
therefore marked, is simply not distinctive enough to provide a persuasive account that
Sophocles is responding to Aristophanes’ Birds in Oedipus at Colonus.
37
Priority of the comedic element
The second issue at stake for paracomedy is the priority of the comedic element.
While acknowledging that we have little evidence of the comedy of the 460s BCE,
Sommerstein states that, “it is reasonable to suppose that the typical linguistic register of
comedy at that time was at any rate no higher than that of comedy in Aristophanes’
time.”106 This assumption is likely to be true, based on what we can determine from
comedic fragments from the time. Due to the lack of evidence of complete plots of
comedies from the 460s BCE, it is harder to make such assumptions for plot types or
scenes, as Herington did, when he attempted to show that the structure of Aeschylus’
Oresteia was influenced by Athenian Old Comedy.107
Eumenides
Comedy
Chorus of supernatural females (Erinyes)
Chorus of supernatural females: Phrynichus’
Muses, Hermippus’ Fates, Cratinus’ and
Aristophanes’ Hours
Chorus characterized as animals: Aristophanes’
Wasps, Frogs, Birds, Eupolis’ Goats
Antagonism then conversion: Aristophanes’
Acharnians, Wasps, Birds, Thesmophoriazusae
Contemporary political concerns: Aristophanes’
Acharnians, Knights, Wasps, Peace, Birds,
Lysistrata, Ecclesiazusae
Prologue consists of three scenes: Acharnians
(monologue of Dicaeopolis, meeting of the
ecclesia, and dialogue between Dicaeopolis and
Amphitheus)
Change of scene: Aristophanes’ Acharnians,
Knights, Peace, Birds, Thesmophoriazusae,
Frogs, Eupolis’ Demoi
Torchlight procession: Aristophanes’ Peace,
Wasps, Clouds, Lysistrata, Frogs, Ecclesiazusae,
Wealth
Chorus characterized as animals (Erinyes as
beasts)
Chorus antagonistic towards a main character,
but then converted to character’s point of view
Reference to contemporary political concerns
(Areopagus reforms)
Prologue consists of three scenes (speech by
priestess, dialogue between Apollo and Orestes,
dialogue between Clytemnestra’s ghost and
sleeping Furies)
Change of scene from Delphi to Athens
Torchlight procession in the conclusion
Table 2. Herington’s Correspondences Between Eumenides and Comedy
106
107
Sommerstein 2002, 153.
Herington 1963, 113-125.
38
The parallels he adduced for Eumenides could be persuasive in and of themselves, since
they have low levels of prototypicality in tragedy and high levels of prototypicality in
comedy. Despite such convincing parallels, two aspects detract from Herington’s
argument: the fact that the Oresteia (458 BCE) was performed well before our earliest
attested complete play of Old Comedy (Aristophanes’ Acharnians, 425 BCE), and the fact
that we have little knowledge of full comedic plots before those of Aristophanes. While it
may be the case that Old Comedy that was contemporary to Eumenides had these
features, causing this to be an example of paracomedy, it is also possible that they were
absent completely. If they were absent, a possible explanation for how features from
Eumenides ended up as commonplace generic features of comedy after 425 BCE would
parallel the route Nesselrath proposed for how elements of the ‘light-hearted’ tragedies
such as Electra, Ion, Helen, and Orestes ended up as generic features of Middle Comedy,
whereby a certain comedy parodied the elements from the notable tragedy (Eumenides;
Helen or Ion) and then from that comedy the traits diffused to other comedies, and
eventually became associated with the genre of comedy as a whole.108
The best scenario for establishing the priority of the comedic element is when both
plays are securely dated and the comedy precedes the tragedy. This is the case for the
allusion between Aristophanes’ Birds 209-216 (414 BCE) and Euripides’ Helen 11071113 (412 BCE).109
Aristophanes’ Birds 209-216:
Tereus: Ἄγε σύννοµέ µοι, παῦσαι µὲν ὕπνου,
λῦσον δὲ νόµους ἱερῶν ὕµνων,
Nesselrath 1993, 181-195. Alternatively, the presence of ‘torchlight processions’ may
have been due to comedy’s influence from rustic komos rituals which included a
procession, on which see Csapo 2013, 69.
109
Dover 1972, 148-149.
39
108
οὓς διὰ θείου στόµατος θρηνεῖς
τὸν ἐµὸν καὶ σὸν πολύδακρυν Ἴτυν,
ἐλελιζοµένη διεροῖς µέλεσιν
γένυος ξουθῆς. Καθαρὰ χωρεῖ
διὰ φυλλοκόµου µίλακος ἠχὼ
πρὸς Διὸς ἕδρας,
Tereus: Come, my songmate, leave your sleep, and loosen the strains of sacred
songs, that from your divine lips bewail deeply mourned Itys, your child and mine,
trilling forth fluid melodies from your vibrant throat. Pure the sound that ascends
through green-tressed bryony to Zeus’ abode… (Trans. Henderson)
Euripides’ Helen 1107-1113:
Chorus: σὲ τὰν ἐναύλοις ὑπὸ δενδροκόµοις
µουσεῖα καὶ θάκους ἐνίζουσαν ἀναβοάσω,
τὰν ἀοιδοτάταν
ὄρνιθα µελωιδὸν
ἀηδόνα δακρυόεσσαν,
ἔλθ' ὦ διὰ ξουθᾶν γενύων ἐλελιζοµένα
θρήνων ἐµοὶ ξυνεργός,
Ἑλένας µελέους πόνους
Chorus: You that in your steading among the leaves keep your house of song, I call
aloud to you, most gifted in music, bird of song, nightingale of tears: come, you
that through your tawny throat trill your lay of woe, share in my lamentation as I
sing of Helen’s grievous troubles… (Trans. Kovacs)
40
A large number of lexical words correspond between the two passages, especially the rare
middle-voice usage of the verb ἐλελίζοµαι ‘trill’, which occurs only in these two passages
in extant Greek literature.
Aristophanes’ Birds 209-216
Euripides’ Helen 1107-1113
σύννοµέ (209)
ξυνεργός (1112)
θρηνεῖς (211)
θρήνων (1112)
πολύδακρυν (212)
δακρυόεσσαν (1110)
ἐλελιζοµένη (213)
ἐλελιζοµένα (1111)
γένυος ξουθῆς (214)
ξουθᾶν γενύων (1111)
φυλλοκόµου (215)
δενδροκόµοις (1106)
Table 3. Verbal Correspondences Between Aristophanes' Birds 209-216 and Euripides'
Helen 1107-1113
Alongside these distinctive correspondences comes the knowledge that Aristophanes’
comedy precedes Euripides’ tragedy, and thus the priority of the comedic element is
established.
However, in a case where the chronology is unclear, one must rely on whether
paratragedy or paracomedy makes the most sense in terms of ordering. The arguments
that Marshall makes regarding the order of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (458 BCE),
Aristophanes’ Birds (414 BCE) and Sophocles’ Chryses (undated) are worth noting in
detail.110 The question is whether Chryses was performed before or after Birds. At the
heart of the problem are three intertwined lines, and it is up to the scholar to detect which
ordering is preferable:
110
Marshall 2009, 145-149.
41
Aeschylus’ Agamemnon 525-526:
Τροίαν κατασκάψαντα τοῦ δικηφόρου
Διὸς µακέλληι
“[Agamemnon] has leveled Troy with the mattock of justice-bringing Zeus.”
Aristophanes Birds 1239-1240:
ὅπως µή σου γένος πανώλεθρον
Διὸς µακέλλῃ πᾶν ἀναστρέφῃ Δίκη
“lest Justice, with the mattock of Zeus, overthrow thy whole race.”
Sophocles Chryses fr. 727:
< x - > µακέλλῃ Ζηνὸς ἐξαναστραφῇ
“... may be utterly overthrown by the mattock of Zeus.”
With the passages set up in this order, the linguistic connections between the passages are
linear, since one can point to the repetitions and changes from Aeschylus to Aristophanes,
and then from Aristophanes to Sophocles. Aeschylus’ phrase Διὸς µακέλληι ‘with the
mattock of Zeus’ is repeated in Aristophanes, and though the general semantics of
destruction are similar in both passages, Aristophanes uses the word ἀναστρέφῃ instead of
κατασκάψαντα, and thus we can see Aristophanes’ modification of Aeschylus’ line.
Sophocles continues the same verb Aristophanes uses and intensifies it with the prefix ἐξ(ἐξαναστραφῇ instead of ἀναστρέφῃ), and modifies the phrase Διὸς µακέλλῃ by
substituting a variant genitive of Zeus’ name (µακέλλῃ Ζηνὸς). This linear progression of
successive appropriations is clear and reasonable. If we hypothesize the alternate order,
where Chryses precedes Birds, it would result in Aristophanes needing to collate and
integrate two allusions: 1) an allusion to Agamemnon (Birds’ Διὸς µακέλληι responding to
42
Agamemnon’s Διὸς µακέλλῃ) and 2) an allusion to Chryses (Birds’ ἐξαναστραφῇ
responding to Chryses’ ἀναστρέφῃ). The situation is further complicated by the fact that
Chryses itself might be considered an allusion to Agamemnon, although perhaps a bit
looser as the only thing in common is the word µακέλλῃ and a genitive form of Zeus
(though with different variant forms). This complicated scenario of synthesizing two
allusions between which an allusion already exists seems unlikely (and at the very least,
undetectable by the audience), and thus the preferable interpretation is an example of
Sophoclean paracomedy.
A similar process of reasoning occurs with contrasting views on three intertwined
passages from Euripides’ Andromeda (412 BCE), Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (411
BCE) and Euripides’ Cyclops (likely 408 BCE). The relationship between Andromeda and
Thesmophoriazusae is well known, as Aristophanes parodies the entire play of
Andromeda, artfully condensed and rearranged into a single scene at Thesmophoriazusae
1010-1132.111 As in the previous circumstances with Agamemnon, Birds, and Chryses, the
question is where Cyclops falls. The passages run as follows:
Euripides’ Andromeda (fr. 125):
ἔα· τίν᾽ ὄχθον τόνδ᾽ ὁρῶ περίρρυτον...;
“Ah, what is this rock I see here, washed around...”
Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae 1105:
ἔα· τίν᾽ ὄχθον τόνδ᾽ ὁρῶ καὶ παρθένον...
“Ah, what is this rock I see here and what maiden...?”
On Aristophanes’ rearrangement of the scenes he is parodying from Helen in
Thesmophoriazusae, see Nieddu 2004, 349. The same methods probably applied to
Aristophanes’ staging of Andromeda.
43
111
Euripides’ Cyclops 222:
ἔα: τίν᾽ ὄχλον τόνδ᾽ ὁρῶ πρὸς αὐλίοις;
“Ah, what is this crowd I see here near my cave?”
One interpretation was briefly suggested by Parry, and more fully explained by Seaford
and Marshall.112 The resonance revolves around the similarity in sound between ὄχθον
(Andromeda fr. 125 and Thesmophoriazusae 1105) and ὄχλον (Cyclops 222), a
trademark of parody.113 Parry suggested that Euripides was “answering Aristophanes’
mockery by mocking himself”, a view that accords with my conception of a literary rivalry
between Aristophanes and Euripides, discussed below.114 Under Parry’s, Seaford’s, and
Marshall’s views, Cyclops should be dated to 408 BCE. Austin and Olson briefly noted a
second view, which Wright more fully developed, that Cyclops was performed at the same
time as Andromeda in 412 BCE, allowing for a more pointed and direct allusion to the
play.115 Yet there seem to be no other examples of such self-parody in Euripides, and while
typological grounds do not exclude the possibility of it occurring here (as in this
dissertation I am attempting to remove such typological grounds for excluding the
possibility of paracomedy), I fail to see the motivation for Euripides to do so, whereas a
response to Aristophanes’ parodic portrayal of Andromeda would accord with theories of
Parry 1930, 140-2 = Parry 1971, 319-20. Seaford 1982, 163-172 and 1984, 48-51.
Marshall 2001, 226-228.
113
On parody based on similarities ‘of the same sound’, see the Tractatus Coislinianus, a
10th century manuscript which follows a Peripatetic tradition derived from Aristotle’s
Poetics, analyzed by Janko 1984, 30-33, 183-186. For another example based on
similarities ‘of the same sound’ and ‘of the same genus’, see ξυροφορεῖς modeled on
ξιφηφόρος in Chapter 2.
114
Parry 1930, 140-2 = Parry 1971, 319-20.
115
Austin and Olson 2004, lxiii - lxiv. Wright 2006.
44
112
literary rivalry (discussed below).116 Despite Wright’s attempts to forge thematic links with
the ‘escape-tragedy’ trilogy of Helen, Andromeda, and Iphigenia among the Taurians, it is
not enough to conclude that it was performed in a tetralogy alongside them.117
One last example comes from Diamantakou-Agathou’s analysis of the relationship
between Aristophanes’ Birds (414 BCE) and Euripides’ Ion, whose date is unknown but
estimates range from 419 BCE to 411 BCE.118 The lack of secure date for Ion means that
the relationship between Birds and Ion might be one of paracomedy or paratragedy. As
Diamantakou-Agathou notes, “it is far more plausible to envisage this particular sequence
of scenes in Ion citing the Birds with no explicit reference to its sub-textual source, rather
than a typical ancient comedy of the 5th century, such as the Birds, citing more or less
parodically a recently performed tragedy with no direct or indirect indication interfering in
its textual field.”119 While I take issue with the idea that Old Comedy always indicates
paratragedy (either directly or indirectly) and believe that it sometimes leaves the
identification of paratragedy for the audience to determine at times, Diamantakou-
As far as I can tell, apparent examples of Euripidean self-parody can be reinterpreted as
reclamations of an Aristophanic attack. I have not found a true example of auto-allusion
in Euripides without a specific Aristophanic parody that targets the first text between
them.
117
On the escape-tragedy trilogy, see Wright 2005, especially 6-55. Wright is correct to
emphasize that tetralogies could be focused thematically instead of continuing the
mythological storyline (see also Seaford 1984, 21-26 who points out how tetralogies tend
to be connected via shared themes, not by continuing the storyline after the third tragedy
in a somehow satyric mode). As evidence for his position, Wright 2006, 27-30 adds the
shared feature of displaying ‘metamythology’, a narrative technique whereby
mythological characters show awareness of their own myths beyond what they should
know during the plot itself, thus emphasizing the fictionality of myth (on metamythology,
see also Wright 2005, 133-57). Yet Wright 2006, 32 n. 42 also readily admits that Orestes
too is metamythological, though he explains this away due to Orestes’ relationship as a
sequel to Helen. By the same metamythological reasoning that links Cyclops to the escapetragedies of 412 BCE, Cyclops is linked to Orestes of 408 BCE, and thus using common
themes to date the play is inconclusive.
118
Diamantakou-Agathou 2012, 21-22.
119
Diamantakou-Agathou 2012, 22.
45
116
Agathou’s process of reasoning and evaluating both options is sound, and should be used
when dates are insecure. At all times when investigating allusions and potential cases of
paratragedy or paracomedy, we should be aware of the fact that we only have a small
fraction of plays from classical Athens, and that any given aspect of a play may allude to
something which is no longer extant, or allude to nothing at all.
Motivation
Finally, one must explain the motivation behind the particular instance of
paracomedy, and there may be a wide variety of reasons, which can broadly be divided
into 1) the tragedian attempting to achieve a certain effect in the tragedy, and 2) the
tragedian displaying a concern for poetics and the construction of literature. These
categories are not mutually exclusive, as the tragedian may wish to achieve a certain affect
while similarly contemplating dramaturgy. For the effect, I distinguish three separate
types: ‘light-heartedness’, ‘disquieting confusion’, and ‘ugliness’. For the concern for
poetics, I distinguish two types: ‘appreciation of another’s poetics’ and ‘literary rivalry’.
There always is the possibility that we cannot tell what sort of effect the comedic element
would produce in a tragedy, or for what other reason a tragedian would decide to include
a comedic element, due to the limits of our knowledge of authorial intent. Due to this state
of aporia, we should regard all attempts to ascertain motivation as educated guesses on the
part of the scholar.
When a comedic element appears in tragedy, one possibility is that it confers a
light-hearted or comic feeling imported from the original comedy it was drawn from. This
provides a sort of comic relief, which can act as a foil for the production of tragic emotions
such as pity and fear. An example of this type is Seidensticker’s analysis of the Cadmus
and Teiresias scene at Bacchae 170-369, whereby the light-hearted scene provides a
46
diversion that sets the stage for the future horror of the play.120 This technique relies on the
principle that emotional responses are relative, and that horror arising from an original
state of light-heartedness creates a deeper effect on the audience member than horror
arising from a state of neutrality. Ultimately, this can increase the emotional effects of the
tragedy on the audience.
A second effect that can occur from a comedy element appearing in tragedy is a
sense of disquieting confusion. The audience member’s recognition of the comedic element
in tragedy causes a sense of confusion, due to the mismatch between the generic
expectations arising from the fact that he is viewing a tragedy and the comedy element
before him. This can result in the feeling that something ‘feels off’ or is ‘not right’ with the
scene, creating a sense of disturbance. Disquieting confusion may produce laughter in the
audience, but it is the sort of uncomfortable laughter that erupts when something is wrong
and beyond one’s understanding. This sort of effect accounts for the scene in Euripides’
Heracles, when Heracles has been afflicted with madness and believes he is riding a chariot
to Mycenae to kill Eurystheus. Heracles’ attendants, seeing the odd spectacle, are torn
between mirth and fear (γέλως φόβος θ᾽ ὁµοῦ, 950). As Kirkpatrick and Dunn say when
analyzing this scene, “When events exceed our implicit rules for comprehending them, the
generic categories of comedy and tragedy can no longer be kept discrete.”121 The concept
of disquieting confusion, which simultaneously blends the emotions of light-heartedness
and horror, must be distinguished from the concept of comic relief, which presents lightheartedness and then horror. Disquieting confusion may be behind the scene where
Pentheus cross-dresses as a maenad at Bacchae 912-970, where the audience may be
laughing, but uneasily, since Pentheus’ ultimate destiny has already been foreshadowed.
120
121
Seidensticker 1982, 122.
Kirkpatrick and Dunn 2002, 47.
47
The third type of imported effect that can arise when dealing with paracomedy is
ugliness. As Revermann notes, “ugliness is a pervasive and ubiquitous feature of Old
Comedy.”122 Ugliness (αἰσχρότης or τὸ αἰσχρόν) was perceived as funny and was a
point of distinction between comedy and tragedy. Yet Sommerstein demonstrates that
when Aeschylus uses comedic language in the Oresteia, he draws primarily on stock
comedic vocabulary dealing with bodily functions (vomiting, belching, shitting, sexual
innuendo, bleeding, digesting), that is to say, words associated with ugliness. By using this
vocabulary, Aeschylus characterizes the Erinyes as disgusting and horrifying figures. There
is no comic relief at all in these descriptions, and though it does create a sense of discord,
the source of the emotion differs from that associated with the disquieting confusion effect.
All three of these effects (light-heartedness, disquieting confusion, and ugliness) should be
seen as working alongside tragic tropes to create an overall sense of seriousness and gravity.
The first type of concern for poetics deals with an author’s appreciation of
another’s use of dramaturgy. A tragedian may come to the realization that a comedian
used an element that was simply effective drama, and may wish to model his play in some
way off the excellent craftsmanship of another. This is the explanation offered by
Scharffenberger when she argues that Euripides modeled the staging and dramaturgy of
Phoenician Women off elements from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata: “It seems entirely credible
that Euripides, upon finding something intriguing and important in Lysistrata, may have
been moved and inspired to appropriate and adapt it, a year or two later, into his
Phoenician Women,” something which “indicates the tragedian’s admiration for and
appreciation of what the comedic poet presents.”123 This view would treat comedy no
differently than any other poetic source of inspiration for a tragedian. Just as Euripides
122
123
Revermann 2006, 147.
Scharffenberger 1995a, 315.
48
could model an aspect of a play on (or in response to) previous tragedy, epic, or lyric
poetry, so could he utilize the genre of comedy. However, the appropriation of an
exemplary scene of comedy would suppress any other aspects of comedy such as humor or
ugliness that came along with it, and thus the outcome in tragedy would be a version of the
comedic element, whitewashed of all comic effects.
LITERARY RIVALRY
While the above four explanations can account for some cases of paracomedy, I
believe that other cases warrant a different approach, namely, understanding paracomedy
as part of a system of literary rivalry. I believe that rivalry extends beyond the definition of
‘competition for prizes at a festival’, which limits the concept so that dramatists can only
be rivals with other dramatists within the same genre.124 For rivalry, I have in mind the
definition of van Wees, who argues that four primary elements are likely to be present in
rivalries: escalation of the competition between rivals, regulation by an external force if it
poses a threat, exclusion of others from competition to make themselves unassailable, and
rejection of the winners’ claims by the loser.125 More can be gained by considering van
Wees’ definition of rivalry as a contest for social superiority, as opposed to competition,
which is the act of striving to gain something under conditions of scarcity.126 Consequently,
Euripides engaged in competition with a tragedian such as Sophocles because they are
competing for the same scarce resource (a prize in a festival), but Euripides engaged in
rivalry with Aristophanes, via a struggle for a limitless and uncountable resource (social
and cultural superiority pertaining to artistic and dramatic skill). Both can co-exist in
Revermann 2006, 19-24 focuses solely on the institutionalized festival competition
within genres.
125
van Wees 2011, 3.
126
van Wees 2011, 1-36.
49
124
different ways within the same play – Aristophanes’ Frogs portrays a literary competition
between Aeschylus and Euripides with a scarce resource as a prize, in that only one can
return from the underworld, and at the same time offers a forum for Aristophanes to
engage in rivalry between his own work and those of the tragedians Aeschylus and
Euripides.127 Competition demands one clear winner and clear losers, whereas rivalry has
more vaguely defined aspirations since there is no clear objective that marks one’s
superiority over the other (as opposed to procuring the prize in a festival, which designates
a clear winner). As an outcome of this difference between competition and rivalry,
competition can lead to a high degree of antagonism between participants due to the
scarcity of the resources, whereas rivalry, at least potentially, is more collaborative, because
both participants are not limited by the prize one earns in a competition but rather can
gain prestige through their rivalry. These diverging outcomes may account for the
differences between ‘comedy vs. comedy’ rivalry and ‘tragedy vs. comedy/comedy vs.
tragedy’ rivalry. This may accord with what Dobrov calls an ‘imaginary rivalry’ between
Aristophanes and Euripides, since for Dobrov, ‘comedy vs. tragedy’ rivalry is a strictly
mimetic form of rivalry with no stakes, whereas what he terms ‘actual rivalry’ with other
comedic poets is ‘deadly serious’.128 But under Dobrov’s conception, the ‘imaginary
rivalry’ is a one-sided vehicle for Aristophanic self-definition, with tragedy unaware of the
rivalry’s existence, and without any true stakes in the ‘tragedy vs. comedy rivalry’, it feels
frivolous and inconsequential. However, there is some evidence that for Aristophanes,
poetic rivalry was not limited to other comedians, but also tragedians, making the rivalry
more than an imaginary one. Olson has shown that the evidence more likely supports the
For Aristophanes staging a literary competition to critique to the Athenian prizeawarding system, see Wright 2012, 54-55.
128
Dobrov 2001, 89-90, 102-3, 159-160.
50
127
idea that the playwright Carcinus composed tragedies, not comedies, and when
Aristophanes describes Carcinus and his sons as rivals for the gifts of the Muses (Peace
782-795), the implication is that poetic rivalry in comedy extends across the generic divide
to tragedy.129 The social prestige obtained by cross-generic rivalry may have been equally
as serious as the formalized competition was.
The “culture war” between Aristophanes and Euripides was waged on the
battlefields of motifs, plots, scenes, phrases, and words. Any and all of these could be
appropriated by a dramatist to one-up his rival. At times we can see a triangle of
appropriation – first, a tragedic motif appears which is noticeable enough to be parodied;
second, a comedic appropriation of the motif, and third, a tragedic re-appropriation of the
motif (for applications of the triangle of appropriation, see Chapter 2, Chapter 4 and
Chapter 5). In its essence, this is the same viewpoint expressed by Biles in his intertextual
biographies of Aristophanes and Cratinus, with each comedian responding in turn to the
other’s challenges. In principle, this back-and-forth relationship between dramatists of any
genre could continue ad infinitum. The application of the concept of a literary rivalry
makes sense because one playwright may wish to reclaim what was parodied by the other.
However, it is impossible for a modern scholar to determine whether this rivalry was
positive or negative. Dobrov’s term ‘contrafact’ is useful precisely for the reason that it
does not connote anything positive or negative, only that an intertextual reference is being
made from one text to the other.130
Perhaps this sort of literary rivalry was what Cratinus had in mind when he coined
the word “Euripidaristophanize’ (fr. 342).
“τίς δὲ σύ;” κοµψός τις ἔροιτο θεατής.
129
130
Olson 2000, 65-74.
Dobrov 2001, 16.
51
“ὑπολεπτολόγος, γνωµιδιώτης, εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων.”
“Who are you?” some clever spectator might ask,
“a quibbler of words, a maker of maxims, a Euripidaristophaniser?”
Euripides and Aristophanes are joined together by shared intellectualism and a preference
for subtle ideas, but more important is the simple fact that Cratinus saw something similar
in both of them. Euripides and Aristophanes can be doing the same thing, but in the
different modes of tragedy and comedy. The different genres generate different outcomes,
in that Aristophanes can be directly funny, putting Euripides in his comedies and explicitly
saying that he will put on parodies of Euripides’ plays. Due to the constraints of the genre,
Euripides can only respond indirectly, working on the lexical and plot level to respond to
Aristophanes’ claims. This corresponds to Taplin’s views regarding the explicit
metatheatricality of comedy versus the implicit metatheatricality of tragedy.131
It is necessary to re-evaluate the generic boundaries between comedy, tragedy, and
satyr play. Part of the problem that critics have with the concept of paracomedy is the idea
that the audience would be watching the play and suddenly, a moment of comic relief
would intrude and ruin the tragedy. Taplin believes that “it was essential for tragedy, if it
was to succeed, that the audience should not interrupt,” and laughter would break the
spell that overcomes an audience member in the middle of viewing a performance.132 In
my opinion, the adoption of a comedic element into tragedy need not transport the humor
from its model any more than the adoption of a tragedic element into comedy need
transport the gravity of its model. Sometimes when engaging in paratragedy, comedy may
desire to appropriate the gravity associated with tragedy, as is the case when Dicaeopolis
131
132
Taplin 1986.
Taplin 1986, 172-173.
52
assumes the guise of Telephus from Euripides’ Telephus.133 Likewise, tragedy may at times
wish to appropriate a sense of light-heartedness associated with comedy, as Seidensticker
claims for, say, the cross-dressing of Pentheus in Bacchae. Yet in both of these examples,
the goal is still the primary aim of the genre – in Acharnians, tragedic costuming is
ultimately used in part because it makes the audience laugh, and in Bacchae, comedic
costuming is used ultimately to evoke a serious result, the murder of Pentheus by his
mother. Most often paratragedy naturalizes the tragedic element into comedy, creating a
uniform comic mood. To take one example, the appropriation of Euripides’ Bellerophon
in Aristophanes’ Peace contains little seriousness, rather, the scene is filled with jokes, and
presumably, audience laughter throughout the appropriation, as one would expect for a
comedy. Paracomedy as well naturalizes the comedic element and internalizes it
thoroughly into tragedy, a process which makes it more difficult for scholars to detect
examples of paracomedy. Often there are no explicit markers, as can occur in comedy,
which at times names tragedians and tragedies outright. Often there is not a significant
departure in tone or mood along the lines that Seidensticker, Knox, and Segal ascribe to
the tragedies they analyze.134 Paratragedy and paracomedy work along the same lines and
achieve similar goals. The methodology for paracomedy and paratragedy should be to
establish distinctive correspondences between tragedy and comedy, establish the priority of
either the comedy or tragedy, and determine the most likely motivation for adopting the
foreign trope. Consequently, we should consider paratragedy and paracomedy as
opportunities for dramatic criticism that are available to all dramatists, including authors
of comedy, tragedy and satyr-drama, rather than primarily belonging to authors of
comedies.
133
134
Foley 1988, 33-47.
Seidensticker 1978, Seidensticker 1982, Knox 2001, and Segal 2001.
53
In a 2008 article, Foley described a ‘loosening’ of generic boundaries as the fifth
century drew to a close.135 Certainly, more examples exist from the later plays of
Euripides, but these also come at the end of almost a century of drama to use as models. In
the Orestes of 408 BCE, Euripides had more plays to allude to than Aeschylus did in 468
BCE in the Oresteia. This could account for why more examples of paracomedy are
detected in plays dating from the end of Euripides’ career (see Appendix B): Heracles (c.
416 BCE), Helen (412 BCE), Antiope (possibly 409 BCE), Phoenician Women (409
BCE), Orestes (408 BCE), Cyclops (408 BCE likely), and Bacchae (405 BCE). Yet it must
be made clear that there is not an elimination of generic codes at the end of the century.
Taplin’s views about the mutually exclusiveness of comedy and tragedy are correct insofar
as tragedy’s examples of metatheater are implicit, not explicit.136 Some generic rules could
not be broken, for example, while tragedies could deal with historical concerns, such as in
Aeschylus’ Persians or Phrynichus’ Sack of Miletus, there seems to have been a rule that
Euripides could not have a character named Aristophanes appear in a tragedy. Other
generic rules can be bent, such as adopting a comedic trope either from features of high
prototypicality or from a notable comedic model. The goal of this dissertation is to
demonstrate that tragedy is able to incorporate elements from comedy (and satyr drama)
into it, to establish that the practice is more widespread than many scholars admit, and to
provide a methodology for use in determining examples of paracomedy.
135
136
Foley 2008.
Taplin 1986. See also Torrance 2013, 285-286.
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Chapter 2: Bearing Razors and Swords: Rivalry Between Aristophanes and Euripides
This chapter will demonstrate that Aristophanes’ use of a seemingly trivial word
reveals a dialogue between tragedy and comedy, involving an unnoticed verbal and plot
parody in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (411 BCE) based off his coinage ξυροφορεῖς
‘razor-bearing’ (Thesmophoriazusae 218), which I argue skewers Euripides’ recent usage
of ξιφηφόρος ‘sword-bearing’. Furthermore, I will suggest that Euripides responds to the
Aristophanic parody in his subsequent tragedy Orestes (408 BCE) through a reappropriation of the ‘razor-bearing’ parody in Thesmophoriazusae. From these lexical
details I will draw larger-scale arguments, ultimately illustrating that these correspondences
can best be interpreted through the lens of an escalating literary rivalry between
Aristophanes and Euripides that comprises both paratragedy and paracomedy.
Aristophanes begins Thesmophoriazusae with the character Euripides in trouble,
as the women at the Thesmophoria have decided that he should die due to the treatment
of women in his plays. Euripides and his Kinsman try to convince the playwright Agathon
to infiltrate the woman’s festival. Agathon refuses, despite being a prime candidate for
such a task due to his effeminacy, and Euripides’ hyper-masculine Kinsman is sent instead.
In order to make the Kinsman pass for a woman, Euripides needs to shave him, and he
asks Agathon (Thesmophoriazusae 218-220):
Euripides: Ἀγάθων, σὺ µέντοι ξυροφορεῖς ἑκάστοτε,
χρῆσόν τί νυν ἡµῖν ξυρόν.
Agathon: Αὐτὸς λάµβανε ἐντεῦθεν ἐκ τῆς ξυροδόκης.
55
Euripides: Agathon, you’ve always got razors with you.
How about lending us one?
Agathon: Take one yourself from my razor case.
A lexical parody is present in the hapax legomenon ξυροφορεῖς, and I argue that
the word has a meaning different from standard translations, which tend to render it along
the lines of “you have razors”. The verb ξυροφορέω is easily derived from the two
elements ξυρόν ‘razor’ and φέρω ‘bear’. These elements can be productively compounded
to create an ο-grade denominative adjective ξυροφόρος ‘razor-bearing’, which can in turn
be used as a substantive noun, meaning ‘a razor-bearing man’.
Along with any nominalization comes a process called ‘typicalization’, which Willi
describes as the generalization that happens when, for example, a verb that possesses
person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect loses some or all of these specifications in
the process of becoming a noun.137 The verb describes a specific action located in a certain
place and time, performed by a certain person, while the noun simply describes the person
as being the agent of the verb. That is, a phrase such as Σωκράτης γράφει, which
specifies when the writing is taking place, is not the same as Σωκράτης γράφευς, which
simply says that Socrates was a writer (but we do not know when). Σωκράτης γράφευς
imbues the relationship between ‘Socrates’ and ‘writing’ with a general, typical, or
habitual meaning, and characterizes Socrates as someone who generally, typically or
habitually writes. This can be contrasted with Σωκράτης γράφει, which indicates that
Socrates is writing at the present moment and no further claim is made about his typical
tendencies towards writing. The substantive noun ξυροφόρος ‘a razor-bearing man’,
being derived from ξυρόν φέρω ‘I carry a razor’, provides the same sort of typicalized
137
Willi 2003, 121.
56
relationship as between Σωκράτης γράφευς and Σωκράτης γράφει. Since the verb
ξυροφορέω is derived from ξυροφόρος, it typicalizes as well (as is the case for all
compound epsilon-contract verbs), and the verb therefore is not the equivalent of ξυρόν
φέρω ‘I carry a razor’, but rather ξυροφόρος εἰµί ‘I am a razor-bearer’. Using the
untypicalized phrase ξυρόν φέρω ‘I carry a razor’ would imply that the subject currently
has a razor, with no further indication about his general tendencies towards carrying
razors. On the other hand, using the typicalized verb ξυροφορέω ‘I am a razor-bearer’
suggests that the speaker regularly carries razors, whether he is currently carrying one now
or not.
Greek Form
Meaning
Grammatical Category
Implication
1. ξυρὸν φέρω
‘I bear a razor’
Verb and object
2. ξυροφόρος
‘Razor-bearing’ (‘razorbearer’)
‘I am a razor-bearer’
Adjective
(substantive noun)
Verb
Untypicalized; no
general or habitual
tendency
Typicalized; general
or habitual
Typicalized; general
or habitual
3. ξυροφορέω
Table 4. Process of Typicalization in Aristophanes' Coinage
Aristophanes coined this typicalized word ξυροφορεῖς on purpose, especially
considering that he could have used the metrically correct ξυρόν ἔχεις if he desired to
mean ‘you have a razor’ without any implication on his razor-bearing habits in general. I
would suggest that Aristophanes created the word ξυροφορεῖς for two reasons. On one
level, the audience may have found it funny when the character Euripides speaks in
ostentatious tragedic compounds. But more than that, I propose that Aristophanes
parodied a specific Euripidean word, ξιφηφόρος ‘sword-bearing’. The word ξιφηφόρος
57
appears only in tragedy, once in Aeschylus and seven times in Euripides.138 There are no
other attestations from the 5th century BCE, though the word does reappear in later
authors and commentators, who most likely based their usage on the tragedians.139
This connection between ξυροφορεῖς and ξιφηφόρος is a prototypical example of
how puns and parodies work in comedy. According to an ancient view expressed in the
Tractatus Coislinianus, a 10th century manuscript which analyzes comedy in a manner
following Aristotle’s Poetics, a punning metaphor only works if it draws from the ‘same
species’ or the ‘same sound’.140 Aristophanes’ pun works on both levels, since in terms of
species, both belong to the category of ‘metal blades’, and in terms of sound, both have a φορος ending, a disyllabic first element of the compound, and an initial ξ-, which is
comparatively rare at word-initial position.
I argue that Aristophanes parodies ξιφηφόρος due to Euripides’ innovative
treatment of the word, which deviates markedly from the earlier abstract usage of
Aeschylus. In Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers (468 BCE), Orestes invokes a deity to ensure a
favorable outcome in his imminent struggles (583-584):
Orestes: τὰ δ' ἄλλα τούτῳ δεῦρ' ἐποπτεῦσαι λέγω,
ξιφηφόρους ἀγῶνας ὀρθώσαντί µοι.
Orestes: I charge this one here [the deity] to watch over the rest and see that all
Attestations of ξιφηφόρος in tragedy: Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers 583-4, Euripides’
Heracles 728-731, 809-814, Ion 980, Helen 1072, Orestes 1504, Bacchae 991-996 =
1011-1016.
139
The earliest post-5th century BCE attestations of ξιφηφόρος appear in the 4th century
BCE comic poet Antiphanes fr. 217.19, where it modifies the hands (χέρσιν) of a squid
and in the Hellenistic poet Lycophron’s Alexandra 143, where it is an obscure cult epithet
of Demeter. The related verb ξιφηφορέω is late with the earliest attestation in Philo’s On
the Unchangeableness of God 60, dating to the 1st century CE.
140
Tractatus Coislinianus V. 4-6, in Janko 1984, 30-33, 183-186.
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138
goes right in the contest into which I take my sword.141
Sommerstein’s translation grapples with Aeschylus’ abstract phrase, literally
‘sword-bearing contests’ (ξιφηφόρους ἀγῶνας). What this means precisely is a matter of
debate. Contests cannot literally carry swords, and thus translators render it in various
ways: ‘direct the contest of the sword’ (Smyth), ‘guide the actions of my sword’
(Lattimore), and ‘guide my sword through struggle’ (Fagles). Aeschylus deliberately uses
language that is metaphorical and abstract.
Euripides was well aware of this Aeschylean usage; indeed, he pilfered the entire
phrase in Heracles (c. 416 BCE), his first play that uses the word ξιφηφόρος (809-814):
Chorus: κρείσσων µοι τύραννος ἔφυς
ἢ δυσγένει' ἀνάκτων,
ἃ νῦν ἐσορῶντι φαίνει
ξιφηφόρων ἐς ἀγώνων
ἅµιλλαν εἰ τὸ δίκαιον
θεοῖς ἔτ' ἀρέσκει.
Chorus: You are more kingly in my eyes
than the ignoble tyrant.
His fate makes plain, to anyone who looks
at this sword-bearing contest of arms,
whether the gods still
take pleasure in righteous conduct.
Euripides uses identical vocabulary as Aeschylus in his phrase ‘sword-bearing contests’
(ξιφηφόρων ἀγώνων), signaling that he is continuing the tragedic diction inherited from
141
Translation from Sommerstein 2008.
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Aeschylus. Euripides’ abstract usage of ξιφηφόρος persists in another passage from
Heracles (728-731):
Amphitryon: ὦ γέροντες, ἐς καλὸν
στείχει, βρόχοισι δ' ἀρκύων κεκλήισεται
ξιφηφόροισι, τοὺς πέλας δοκῶν κτενεῖν
ὁ παγκάκιστος.
Amphitryon: Old friends, his going is most opportune,
and he will be caught fast in the trap, a trap of cold steel,
the knave who thought he would kill others.
In this passage, Euripides’ phrase, literally ‘sword-bearing snares of nets’ (βρόχοισι
ἀρκύων ξιφηφόροισι), reflects a metaphorical usage similar to that of Aeschylus. Not only
is the metaphorical usage of ξιφηφόρος the same as in Aeschylus, but the imagery of
swords, snares and nets is perpetuated from the Oresteia as well. Swords and nets are
inextricably linked at the death of Agamemnon, for example in the passage when Orestes
wonders whether Clytemnestra actually killed Agamemnon (Libation Bearers 10101011):142
ἔδρασεν ἢ οὐκ ἔδρασε; µαρτυρεῖ δέ µοι
φᾶρος τόδ᾽, ὡς ἔβαψεν Αἰγίσθου ξίφος.
Did she do it or did she not? My witness is this
great robe. It was thus she stained Aegisthus’ sword.
Other relevant passages regarding nets and the death of Agamemnon in the Oresteia are
Agamemnon 1382-1384, 1492-1496 = 1516-1520, Libation Bearers 980-984, 997-1004,
Eumenides 634-635. On net imagery in general in Aeschylus’ Oresteia see Lattimore
1953, 15-18. There is some scholarly debate whether Clytemnestra was killed with a sword
or an axe, on which see Davies 1987, 65-75. While some evidence argues for the axe, other
passages such as Libation Bearers 1010-1011, Agamemnon 1262-1263, 1525-1529
mention swords, and these are the passages that Euripides forms connections with.
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142
Euripides uses ξιφηφόρος structurally in Heracles, in that the two passages containing
ξιφηφόρος work as a framing device to connect the two halves of the play, much in the
same way as the oft-cited example ἐφολκίδες, ‘towed vessels’, which appears at 631 and
again at 1424.143 At 728-731, ξιφηφόρος marks the conclusion of the first half of the play
when Amphitryon sends Lycus off to be killed, whereas ξιφηφόρος at 809-814 serves to
introduce the second half of the play, immediately before the arrival of Lyssa and Iris. In
Heracles, Euripides uses ξιφηφόρος both as a structural device and as a signal that he is
drawing upon the tragedic tradition inherited from Aeschylus.
After so clearly and precisely preserving Aeschylean usage in Heracles, Euripides
breaks away from this tradition in Ion (c. 414 BCE), the next extant play that contains
ξιφηφόρος. In this passage, Euripides implements two innovations: 1) he concretizes the
meaning to modify human agents rather than abstractions, and 2) he presents swordbearing men as a plot device designating a solution to a character’s current crisis. Creusa
has just told the Old Man that she had been raped by Apollo in a cave (939-941), and the
Old Man urges her to take revenge on someone, suggesting Apollo himself, then her
husband Xuthus, then her son Ion (972-978). At this point, the Old Man suggests a plot
device to solve her problem (978-980):
Creusa: πῶς; εἰ γὰρ εἴη δυνατόν· ὡς θέλοιµί γ' ἄν.
Old Man: ξιφηφόρους σοὺς ὁπλίσασ' ὀπάονας.
Creusa: How? May it be possible! How much I wish to!
Old Man: Arm your servants with weapons.
Mastronarde 2010, 69-71, discusses the links and connections between two halves of the
double structure of Heracles: the etymological connection between Lycus (< *luk-os) and
Lyssa (< *luk-ya), scenic motifs such as the uncovering of one’s head (562-564, 12141217), thematic links such as friendship and loyalty (φιλία), and connections in the
imagery of a race with two legs (δίαυλος) at 662 and 1102.
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143
The “sword-bearing attendants” (ξιφηφόρους ὀπάονας) represent Euripides’ shift to
human agency instead of the previously abstract “sword-bearing contests”. Considering
that Aeschylus used ξιφηφόρος in such a way as to resist a literal interpretation, it is
significant that Euripides abandons the metaphorical use in favor of a discussion about
putting real swords into human hands. Creusa swiftly rejects the idea on the grounds that
murder is difficult to hide, and instead decides upon a plot to poison Ion with blood from
the Gorgon. While an alternate plan is ultimately accepted, Euripides presents the swordbearing attendants as a viable plot device.
In Helen (412 BCE), produced in the year prior to the performance of
Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, Euripides offers his most notable plot device involving
sword-bearing men. Helen and Menelaus need to escape from the Egyptian king
Theoclymenus, and after rejecting Menelaus’ proposals to flee on a chariot or to kill the
king, Helen hits upon a master escape plan. They will pretend that Menelaus is dead,
disguise him as the messenger reporting his own death, and escape with a ship captured by
sword-bearing men (1069-1072):
Helen: σὲ καὶ παρεῖναι δεῖ µάλιστα τούς τε σοὺς
πλωτῆρας οἵπερ ἔφυγον ἐκ ναυαγίας.
Menelaus: καὶ µὴν ἐάνπερ ναῦν ἐπ' ἀγκύρας λάβω,
ἀνὴρ παρ' ἄνδρα στήσεται ξιφηφόρος.
Helen: Yes, it is most important that you be there, and also those of your sailors
who have escaped from the shipwreck.
Menelaus: If I am provided with a ship at anchor, my men will stand by each other
with ready swords.
The catalyst of the entire escape that Euripides orchestrates is the word ξιφηφόρος,
without which the attempt would have failed. Rather than toying with the idea of literal
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sword-bearing men as he did in Ion, Euripides actually stages men with swords in their
hands, which shows the furthest extent of his deviation from Aeschylus’ metaphorical
usage. In Helen, Euripides’ literalization of ξιφηφόρος is not only present, but almost
flaunted, since sword-bearing men are used as a major escape plot device to drive the
action of the play.
Aristophanes surely noticed these Euripidean developments in language and plot.
Throughout his dramas, the comedic playwright shows a constant and in-depth knowledge
of Euripidean usage and plot constructions. Indeed, the sheer complexity of the way in
which Aristophanes parodies Euripides’ Helen in Thesmophoriazusae led Nieddu to argue
that Aristophanes had access to a written script of Euripides’ play from which he was able
to contrive an elaborate comic scene involving some lines of Helen replicated exactly, other
lines replicated but with parodic variations, and further lines composed in a generally
Euripidean style.144 From such a complex Aristophanic reinterpretation of Euripides, we
can conclude that Aristophanes read Euripides closely and was not solely relying on his
memory of the performance of the dramas.145 As such, Aristophanes certainly had the
means to notice the development in Euripidean language and plot structure I am
describing.
Furthermore, in a passage from Frogs, Aristophanes mocked Euripides’ diction and
relationship to his predecessor Aeschylus in the exact way that I have outlined for his
adoption and adaption of ξιφηφόρος. In the middle of the agon between Aeschylus and
Euripides, Aeschylus asks Euripides what sort of things Euripides wrote about in his
dramas. Euripides replies (937-943):
Nieddu 2004, 351.
One may compare Dionysus reading Euripides at Aristophanes’ Frogs 52-54, on which
see Sfyroeras 2008, 299-317.
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144
145
Euripides: Οὐχ ἱππαλεκτρυόνας µὰ Δί' οὐδὲ τραγελάφους, ἅπερ σύ,
ἃν τοῖσι παραπετάσµασιν τοῖς Μηδικοῖς γράφουσιν·
ἀλλ' ὡς παρέλαβον τὴν τέχνην παρὰ σοῦ τὸ πρῶτον εὐθὺς
οἰδοῦσαν ὑπὸ κοµπασµάτων καὶ ῥηµάτων ἐπαχθῶν,
ἴσχνανα µὲν πρώτιστον αὐτὴν καὶ τὸ βάρος ἀφεῖλον
ἐπυλλίοις καὶ περιπάτοις καὶ τευτλίοισι λευκοῖς,
χυλὸν διδοὺς στωµυλµάτων ἀπὸ βιβλίων ἀπηθῶν.
Euripides: Certainly not horsecocks or goatstags, like you,
the sort of things they embroider on Persian tapestries.
No, as soon as I first inherited the art from you,
bloated with bombast and obese vocabulary,
I immediately put it on a diet and took off the weight
with a regimen of wordlets and strolls and little white beets,
administering chatter-juice pressed from books.
First, Aristophanes recognizes that Euripides is following Aeschylus within an
established tragedic tradition, since Euripides says ‘as soon as I inherited the art from you’
(ὡς παρέλαβον τὴν τέχνην παρὰ σοῦ τὸ πρῶτον, 939). This artistic inheritance
corresponds to the first citation of ξιφηφόρος in Euripides, which explicitly follows the
Aeschylean tradition by modifying abstractions, especially in the phrase ‘sword-bearing
contests’, seen in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers and replicated in Euripides’ Heracles.
Second, Aristophanes discerns a method that Euripides uses to differentiate his
language from the received diction of Aeschylus, which Aristophanes describes as ‘bloated
with bombast and obese vocabulary’. Aristophanes’ observation can be verified in
Aeschylus’ bloated verbosity present in the phrase ‘sword-bearing contests’. I would argue
that the difficulty of modern translators in rendering the expression is the same difficulty
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that an ancient Greek would have had in comprehending it. After all, what does ‘swordbearing contests’ even mean?
Aristophanes next claims that Euripides put Aeschylus’ bloated language on a diet
and took the weight off of it. I believe that Aristophanes must be commenting on a process
like the one Euripides uses with ξιφηφόρος, which makes the abstract and abstruse
expression of Aeschylus more easily understood by the audience through the modification
of human agents. The phrase ‘sword-bearing men’ is transparent, a Euripidean
literalization, whereas ‘sword-bearing contests’ is opaque. Considering that Aristophanes
noticed and mocked this relationship between Aeschylean and Euripidean language usage
in Frogs, there is no reason to doubt that he parodied the same process with his coinage
ξυροφορεῖς in Thesmophoriazusae.
Yet how is ξυροφορεῖς utilized in the comedy? Aristophanes constructs the plot of
Thesmophoriazusae so that the character Euripides is in the same sort of trouble that
Euripides’ own characters are plagued with, and consequently Aristophanes stages
Euripides as a character playing a role in one of his own plays. Due to Euripides’ recent
and notable excursus into the realm of escape-tragedies (Iphigenia Among the Taurians,
Andromeda, and Helen), quite naturally, Euripides develops a plot to escape his situation
in Thesmophoriazusae.146 Aristophanes even uses tragic terms for escape plots (µηχανή
‘plot, trick, strategy’, τέχνη ‘art, craft, contrivance’ and their respective cognates)
throughout Thesmophoriazusae, especially at the beginning of the play when the plot is
established.147 When Euripides informs his Kinsman that the women of the Thesmophoria
are plotting his destruction, the Kinsman asks what strategy (µηχανή) he has against the
women (Thesmophoriazusae 87). After Euripides explains that he will persuade Agathon
146
147
On the escape tragedies, see Wright 2005.
For further examples where Euripides uses µηχανή, see Mastronarde 2010, 274.
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to infiltrate their festival, the Kinsman exclaims (Thesmophoriazusae 94): “A pretty cute
bit, and just your style. We take the cake for craftiness (τοῦ τεχνάζειν)!”
Aristophanes is not basing the escape plots in Thesmophoriazusae on general
Euripidean tendencies. Rather, Aristophanes is targeting a specific play, Helen, by
replicating the two main escape plots that Euripides used in that play: first, an attempt
through supplication, and second, an attempt through ‘sword-bearing men’.148 In Helen,
Helen realizes that they must deal with the omniscient Theonoe, who, she fears, will report
their plans to king Theoclymenus. Helen removes the threat that Theonoe represents by
entreating her through supplication (825, 831, 894, 939). Once Theonoe agrees not to
disclose their plans to Theoclymenus, Helen and Menelaus can commence with their
second plan revolving around the sword-bearing men (ἀνὴρ παρ' ἄνδρα...ξιφηφόρος at
1072), which comes to fruition in the messenger speech (1526-1612).149
Aristophanes utilizes the same two plot devices from Helen in Thesmophoriazusae,
constructing Euripides’ first attempt to escape his situation through approaching Agathon
as a tragedic suppliant and subsequently engaging in a ‘razor-bearing’ plotline to replace
Euripides’ ‘sword-bearing’ plot. In Thesmophoriazusae, Euripides addresses Agathon
(178-179): “Smitten by fresh misfortune (καινῇ ξυµφορᾷ), I am come a suppliant
(ἱκέτης) to thy door.” This suppliant speech uses the tragedic register with vocabulary such
as καινῇ ξυµφορᾷ, with the meaning of ξυµφορά as ‘misfortune’, as is often the case in
tragedy, as opposed to the meaning of ‘event’ in prose. The tragedic aspect of the scene is
bolstered since the line appears immediately after a quotation from Euripides’ Aeolus
(Thesmophoriazusae 177-178 = Euripides’ Aeolus fr. 28). The scene also evokes what
Euripidean characters often go through numerous ideas before hitting the best option,
as in Iphigenia among the Taurians 1017-1028, Ion 971-983, and Helen 802-1048.
149
The phrasing of the plan at Helen 1072 (ἀνὴρ παρ' ἄνδρα…ξιφηφόρος) is repeated
when the plan actually occurs at Helen 1574 (ἀνὴρ παρ' ἄνδρ’…ξίφη).
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148
Bakola calls a suppliant ‘story-pattern’, which contains a vulnerable suppliant who seeks
protection and is received by a virtuous foreign ruler.150 By calling upon the suppliant
motif, Aristophanes is suggesting that Euripides flees to Agathon in the manner of Helen to
Theonoe. Yet Agathon is not taken in by Euripides’ tricks, and says that he has heard this
plot before, in Euripides’ Alcestis (Thesmophoriazusae 194 = Alcestis 691). Just as
Admetus’ father Pheres refuses the suppliant’s request, so does Agathon, and Euripides’
attempt to escape his situation as a tragedic suppliant falls apart. Aristophanes even makes
Agathon recognize that Euripides is undertaking a tragedic plot, using the tragedic code
word τέχνασµα ‘trick, contrivance’, when Agathon says that it is “just to bear one’s
difficulties not with contrivances (τεχνάσµασιν) but with a spirit of suffering”
(Thesmophoriazusae 198-199).
Aristophanes next moves onto the second tragedic escape plot Euripides had used a
year earlier in Helen. However, instead of having Euripides engage in the typically
Euripidean escape plot involving ‘sword-bearing men’, Aristophanes has Euripides use the
comedic word and plot device ‘razor-bearer’. The use of a razor where there should be a
sword is funny on a number of levels. First, comedy’s use of a little razor for a tragedic
sword flattens the high register of tragedy, in that the hero wielding a sword is exchanged
for a trip to the barber. Second, it pokes fun at effeminate Agathon who does not have a
sword lying around, but who does have enough razors to need a ξυροδόκη ‘razor-rack’,
an Aristophanic hapax legomenon coined off Odysseus’ δουροδόκη ‘spear-rack’ at
Odyssey 1.128.151
Bakola 2009, 150-151.
The epic use of the –δόκη suffix meaning ‘carrying case for multiple weapons’ is not
only attested by δουροδόκη ‘spear-rack’ (Odyssey 1.128), but also later on in Apollonius
of Rhodes by ὀϊστοδόκη (1.1194) and ἰοδόκη (2.679, 3.156, 3.279) ‘quiver’, a case for
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150
151
Unfortunately for him, Euripides’ escape plot does not go according to the tragedic
plan, and Aristophanes constructs a complex series of predicaments, escape attempts, and
resolutions. I’ve summarized these in the following table.
Predicament 1
Attempt 1
Attempt 2
Euripides must escape the women of the Thesmophoria, who want to kill him
due to the mistreatment of women in his plays (82-85).
Euripides attempts the suppliant plot device on Agathon (87-92, 177-208).
Attempt 5
Euripides implements the razor-bearing plot device on his Kinsman (209279).
The Kinsman is caught and must escape from the women of the
Thesmophoria (650-654).
The Kinsman holds a ‘baby’ hostage in a scene from Euripides’ Telephus to
compel the women to let him go (655-764)
Kinsman tries to communicate with Euripides by using the communication
method of oar-blades from Euripides’ Palamedes (769-784, 846-848).
Kinsman and Euripides stage Euripides’ Helen (849-928).
Predicament 3
Euripides must free his Kinsman from the Scythian archer (929-946).
Attempt 6
Kinsman and Euripides stage the rescue of Andromeda from Euripides’
Andromeda (1009-1132).
Euripides enacts a permanent peace treaty with the women, promising to
never again slander women, and threatening to disclose their secrets to their
husbands (1160-1171).
Euripides implements a comedic plot device, involving a naked dancing girl
and an aulete playing a Persian dance song (1172-1225).
Predicament 2
Attempt 3
Attempt 4
Resolution of
Predicament 1
and 2
Resolution of
Predicament 3
Table 5. Predicaments, Escape Attempts and Resolutions in Thesmophoriazusae
Euripides’ and the Kinsman’s adoption of the ‘razor-bearing’ plot device motivates the
action of the entire play. Euripides ultimately resolves Predicament 1 and 2 with a quick
promise and a threat, though this resolution is predicated upon the razor-bearing plot and
the Kinsman’s infiltration of the Thesmophoria. The comedic ‘razor-bearing’ device
resolved Euripides’ predicament in a way that the tragedic ‘sword-bearing men’ could not,
much like the way in which the comedic device of the naked dancing girl and the aulete
solved problems that the tragedic escape plots from Palamedes, Helen, and Andromeda
multiple arrows. The closest lexical form for swords is ξιφηθήκη, only attested in the
lexicographers and the scholiasts, and thus cannot serve as a model for ξυροδόκη.
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could not.
One of the primary concerns of Thesmophoriazusae is the construction of
dramatic plots, which both comedic and tragedic playwrights targeted through their use of
two forms of literary criticism. One revolved around concepts of ‘clever’ (σοφός, δεξιός,
κοµψός) and the other around concepts of ‘new, novel’ (καινός) and its opposite ‘old, oldfashioned’ (παλαίος).152 Aristophanes uses these terms to describe both his own works
(Wasps 65-66, 1044, 1049-50, 1052-59, Clouds 520, 547-548, Acharnians 628-630) as
well as those of the tragedians, as he calls both Euripides and Aeschylus σοφός (Frogs 896)
and δεξιός (Frogs 1075). On the one hand, Euripides and Aeschylus are clever because,
for Aristophanes, all tragedic poets are by definition clever. However, throughout the
comedic corpus, Euripides is the tragedian who is the cleverest, as Aristophanes himself
states, “There is no poet cleverer (σοφώτερος) than Euripides” (Lysistrata 378). In
Frogs, Dionysus is searching for Euripides because he is a δεξιός ποιητής (72) and
γόνιµος ‘creative’ (96); in Clouds, Euripides is described as σοφώτατος (1377); and in
Thesmophoriazusae, Euripides’ plots are both δεξιός (9) and κοµψός (93). Other comedic
playwrights recognized this as well, as Strattis, a comedic playwright who began his career
in the late fifth-century BCE, labeled Orestes as the ‘cleverest play of Euripides’
(Εὐριπίδου δρᾶµα δεξιώτατον, fr. 1). Euripides even is contrasted with other tragedic
playwrights in terms of novelty, as Aristophanes implicitly makes Euripides the proponent
of ‘the novel’ (τὰ καινά, Frogs 1107) and Aeschylus the proponent of ‘the old-fashioned’
(τὰ παλαιά, Frogs 1107).
While comedic poets can use these terms explicitly, tragedic poets must use them
On these concepts in comedy and tragedy, see Wright 2008, 115-137, Bakola 2008, 810, Silk 2002, 45-48, Dover 1993, 12-14, 19, and Winnington-Ingram 1969, 127-142.
On comedy’s use of cleverness and novelty deemed as ironic and ambivalent see Wright
2012, 25-30, 70-102.
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152
more subtly due to the generic constraints of tragedy, which do not allow for direct
reference to another comedic or tragedic poet. Torrance has shown the extent to which
Euripides uses καινός ‘novel’ and καινότης ‘novelty’ to mark his own innovations in plot
over previous authors’ renditions, with examples drawn from Hecuba, Suppliants, Ion,
Orestes, Medea, Heacles, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Electra, Alcestis, Hippolytus,
Iphigenia at Aulis, and Trojan Women.153 Conversely, Euripides can implicitly label other
playwrights’ plots as ‘old-fashioned’ (παλαιότης). In Helen, Menelaus comments on the
escape plot that Helen proposes (1049-1056):
Helen: ἄκουσον, ἤν τι καὶ γυνὴ λέξηι σοφόν.
βούληι λέγεσθαι µὴ θανὼν λόγωι θανεῖν;
Menelaus: κακὸς µὲν ὄρνις· εἰ δὲ κερδανῶ, λέγε.
ἕτοιµός εἰµι µὴ θανὼν λόγωι θανεῖν.
Helen: καὶ µὴν γυναικείοις <σ'> ἂν οἰκτισαίµεθα
κουραῖσι καὶ θρήνοισι πρὸς τὸν ἀνόσιον.
Menelaus: σωτηρίας δὲ τοῦτ' ἔχει τί νῶιν ἄκος;
παλαιότης γὰρ τῶι λόγωι γ' ἔνεστί τις.
Helen: Listen, in case a woman, too, might have something clever to say. Are you
willing to be said to have died - in word only, since you are not dead?
Menelaus: A bad omen, but if I stand to gain, say it. I am ready to die - in word
only, since I am not dead.
Helen: In that case, I shall mourn you with a woman’s shorn head and dirges in
front of that unholy man.
153
Torrance 2013, 295-316.
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Menelaus: What saving remedy is there for us in that? There is something old
fashioned about your suggestion.154
This scene can be read as a paratragic allusion to the extant examples of Aeschylus’
Libation Bearers (680-687) where Orestes reports that he is dead and Sophocles’ Electra
(670-764) where the Tutor reports that Orestes is dead.155 Additionally, the language of
‘dying in word’ has a parallel at Sophocles’ Electra 62-63.156 Euripides draws attention to
the traditional, and even old-fashioned nature of others’ plots, and though he begins Helen
on a similar path involving a feigned death, Euripides deviates from this course and
concludes by highlighting his ingenuity with his addition of the ‘sword-bearing’ plotline
discussed above.157
These forms of literary criticism targeting previous tragedic plots occur often in
Orestes. One example creates a two-level attack, layering a new jab on top of Euripides’
earlier criticism of Aeschylus’ plots in Electra (518-544). In the Electra scene, Electra
explicitly rejects the likelihood of siblings having the same footprint, which responds to
Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers (205-228), the famous recognition scene where Electra
identifies Orestes by his footprints.158 In Orestes (233-234) Euripides takes the allusions to
Kovacs’ Loeb text accepts Cobet’s emendation of παλαιότης (Manuscript L) to
µαταιότης ‘foolishness’, yet there is no reason to emend a word that makes perfect sense
within the play and has a strong pedigree in the manuscripts.
155
The relative dating of Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Helen is impossible to
determine, and therefore we do not know which poet is alluding to the other. On the
connection between these passages, see Dale 1967, 133-134 note on Helen 1050 and Allan
2008, 259-260 note on Helen 1050-6.
156
Ringer 1998, 141-142.
157
See Chapter 5 for a similar example of how Euripides’ Helen begins with traditional
rags in the style of Euripides’ Telephus, and then adapts the trope as the play progresses.
158
Some scholars, such as Fraenkel 1950, 815-826, Bain 1977, 104-116 and Kovacs 1989,
67-78 have tried to show that the scene is an interpolation. Others, such as Davies 1998,
71
154
another level by making a metapoetic statement that draws attention to both the
Aeschylean recognition scene and his own earlier response in Electra: “Would you like me
to place your feet on the ground? It has been a long time since you made a footprint
(ἴχνος). A change (µεταβολή) of all things is sweet.”159 Orestes and Electra discussing
footprints recalls the other two recognition scenes in Libation Bearers and Electra, and the
word µεταβολή ‘change’ highlights Orestes’ reversal of the earlier plots. This is not out of
character for Euripides, as Torrance has shown that Euripides utilizes µεταβολή ‘change’
to signal metapoetically a new direction the plot has taken (Bacchae 1266-1267, Iphigenia
among the Taurians 719-722, Iphigenia at Aulis 500 and 1101, Trojan Women 615,
Heracles 735, Orestes 233-234, Auge fr.272a).160 Zeitlin has described Orestes as
‘palimpsestic’ in its allusions, whereby “one layer can be deciphered under another; each
one makes its own contribution, but the total effect is one of a bewildering and cumulative
complexity...”161 The allusion at Orestes 233-234 about footprints joins a long list of other
references in Orestes to tragedy that Zeitlin cites (Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Sophocles’
Philoctetes, Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians, Medea, Helen, Andromache,
Electra, Heracles etc.).162
Yet Orestes has been shown to allude to comedy as well by altering and reclaiming
Aristophanes’ attacks at Euripides. When the Kinsman stages a play to make his escape at
Thesmophoriazusae 850, he calls Euripides’ Helen καινός, referring not only to the fact
that it was performed recently, but also that it was innovative, “I’ve got it! I’ll do a take-off
389-403, Gallagher 2003, 401-415, and Torrance 2011, 177-204 argue for its
authenticity, successfully in my mind.
159
Wright 2008, 121-122.
160
Torrance 2013, 58-61. See Chapter 4 for Aristophanes’ metapoetic use of the related
verb µεταβάλλω.
161
Zeitlin 2003, 314.
162
Zeitlin 2003, 313.
72
on his new-fangled (καινός) Helen.” The Helen was novel for all sorts of reasons: the
overturning of expectations about which mythic variants to use, the unusual staging of the
play in Egypt, and the philosophical themes that pervade the work.163 Wright has argued
that Euripides responded to Aristophanes’ ‘new-fangled’ Helen by asserting in Orestes that
Helen is ‘old-fashioned’ (πάλαι) instead.164 After Helen leaves, sending Hermione to bring
libations and hair clippings to the tomb of Clytemnestra, Electra describes Helen as still
having long hair (Orestes 128-129):
ἴδετε γὰρ ἄκρας ὡς ἀπέθρισεν τρίχας,
σώιζουσα κάλλος· ἔστι δ' ἡ πάλαι γυνή.
See how she cut off just the ends of her hair,
trying to keep her beauty unchanged! She is the old Helen still.
Wright argues that this recalls the earlier portrayal in Helen, when Helen (whom
Aristophanes deemed καινός) cut off her hair in feigned mourning for Menelaus’ death
(Helen 1186-1190), using the same verb for ‘shear, cut off’ (ἀπέθρισεν in Helen,
ἀπέθρισας in Orestes).
Despite having Orestes include an ‘old-fashioned’ long-haired Helen, the play
exceeds the earlier play Helen in terms of novelty. In Orestes, Euripides overturns myths,
he brings them into contact with other mythic cycles, and he further implements
philosophical thought.165 In addition, he uses the same ‘sword-bearing men’ that
Aristophanes had parodied, except this time Euripides does so to a much greater extent.
In Orestes, Euripides’ characters Orestes, Electra, and Pylades are in a jam, facing
a death sentence, much as was Aristophanes’ character Euripides in Thesmophoriazusae.
See Wright 2005, 82-113, 163-167, 260-337, and Allan 2008, 18-28.
Wright 2006, 36-37.
165
On Orestes’ interaction with philosophy, see Wright 2008, 133-137, Egli 2003, 258272, Hall 1993, 263-285, and Scodel 1984, 13-24.
73
163
164
Instead of Aristophanes using the comedic ‘razor-bearing’ device to escape death,
Euripides uses ‘sword-bearing men’ and adds them to the traditional feigned death plot in
the same way he had in the Helen. Pylades, traditionally a silent character, breaks his
silence and explains the escape plot: “We will enter the house as if about to die (ὡς
θανούµενοι, 1119).”166 So far, the plot runs along traditional lines, in that it involves false
claims about death. But soon after, Euripides adds the element of sword-bearing men:
“We’ll have swords (ἕξοµεν ξίφη, 1125) hidden in these garments of ours.” The plan is
implemented, and the Phrygian slave reports what happened to the chorus in an amazing
aria of New Music. Immediately following this novel messenger speech, the chorus says
(1503-1505):
καὶ µὴν ἀµείβει καινὸν ἐκ καινῶν τόδε·
ξιφηφόρον γὰρ εἰσορῶ πρὸ δωµάτων
βαίνοντ' Ὀρέστην ἐπτοηµένωι ποδί.
But see, one novel thing succeeds another:
I see Orestes, armed with a sword, coming out
in front of the house with agitation in his step.
I suggest that the words “one novel thing succeeds another” (ἀµείβει καινὸν ἐκ καινῶν)
can be read metapoetically. The first novelty is the aria of the Phrygian slave, and the
second is Orestes being ‘sword-bearing’, marked in emphatic first position in line 1504,
even before the audience realizes the identity of the sword-bearing man rushing onstage.
This, then, is Euripides’ response. After Aristophanes had mocked both the novelty
of the Helen and its innovation in plot devices, Euripides responded by increasing both
166
On Pylades’ speaking and silence in Orestes, see Davies 1999, 227-230.
74
aspects in Orestes. Scholars have long noted the extreme novelty of the play.167 Yet what
has not been noticed is the sheer amount of ‘sword-bearing’ that occurs in the play.
Euripides uses forms with ξιφ- (the root for ‘sword’) a solid 23 times in play, compared to
5 in Ion and 12 in Helen, the other two Euripidean plays which presented ξιφηφόρος as a
plot device.168 φάσγανον appears 13 times, and σιδήρον and its cognates appear 5 times
in Orestes.169 Almost all of the occurrences of swords appear in the second half of the play
after Orestes, Electra and Pylades are sentenced to death and are in need of their escape
plot. Euripides amps up the quantity of swords to an extreme level just at the point where
the predicament of the characters in Orestes corresponds to the predicament of Euripides
in Thesmophoriazusae.
I argue that the complex development of 5th century dramatic usages of swordand razor-bearers shows a back-and-forth literary rivalry between Euripides and
Aristophanes. The escalation of a certain trope, for example, the amount of sword-bearing
men used in an escape plot in a tragedy, conforms to van Wees’ conceptions of literary
rivalry.170 We can see a triangle of appropriation – first, a notable tragedic motif (an
escape plot enacted by sword-bearing men in Helen); second, a comedic appropriation of
the motif (an escape plot enacted by a razor-bearing man in Thesmophoriazusae), and
third, a tragedic re-appropriation of the motif (Orestes, with an escape plot enacted by
men whose sword-bearing is emphasized). A further hallmark of Euripidean paracomedy
is that it is not limited to responses to comedy involving the same word, rather, Euripides
Wright 2008, 115-137. See Arnott 1983, 13-28, and Arnott 1973, 56-60, for Euripides’
novel dramatic techniques in Orestes.
168
ξιφ- in Orestes: 291, 822, 1036, 1041, 1052, 1125, 1133, 1193, 1235, 1272, 1287,
1369, 1346, 1398, 1457, 1472, 1478, 1504, 1506, 1531, 1575, 1627, 1656.
169
φάσγανον in Orestes: 51, 953, 1063, 1101, 1148, 1223, 1305, 1349, 1482, 1519,
1608, 1633, 1653. σιδήρον and its cognates in Orestes: 864, 966, 1309, 1399, 1518.
170
van Wees 2011, 3.
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167
could also use the opposite word as well to allude to comedy. This was shown above when
Euripides responds to Aristophanes by calling Helen ‘old-fashioned’ (πάλαι) instead of
using the same term Aristophanes uses in Thesmophoriazusae, ‘new-fangled’ (καινός).
Euripides’ increase of sword-bearing men (ξιφηφόρος) responds to Aristophanes’ ‘you are
a razor-bearer’ (ξυροφορεῖς) through corresponding opposites in much the same way.
While this practice makes detecting the allusion more difficult for the scholar, in that one
must examine parallelism not only using the same words but also their opposites and
related words, it makes more sense in terms of a literary rivalry, since Euripides’ increased
use of swords reclaims Aristophanes’ use of razors. Tragedy and comedy present differing
outcomes, as Aristophanes can be explicitly funny by putting Euripides in his comedies,
making Agathon have an epic rack of itty-bitty razors, and forcing the Kinsman to get
dressed in drag, but Euripides can only respond implicitly by exceeding Aristophanes’ and
the audience’s expectations in the amount of sword-bearing occurring in his plays.
However, it is impossible to ascertain whether the escalation of the ‘sword-bearing’ trope
in Orestes indicates a negative rivalry (in which the historical Euripides actually despised
Aristophanes) or a positive one (which was marked by mutual appreciation).
The connections in language, scenes, and plot between ξυροφορεῖς and
ξιφηφόρος seem distinctive enough to discount other explanations and support the idea
that the two playwrights are in dialogue with each other. The priority of the comedy is
assured because the dates of the plays are securely known, with Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae performed in 411 BCE and Euripides’ Orestes in 408 BCE. As for the
tragedian’s motivation for including paracomedy, I have suggested that Euripides does so
in Orestes to re-appropriate the very thing that Aristophanes parodied in
Thesmophoriazusae, and on a broader level, this chapter marks the first piece of evidence
76
for a back-and-forth literary rivalry between the two dramatists (on which see further
arguments in Chapter 5 concerning costuming).
77
Chapter 3: Tragedic and Comedic Madness in Euripides’ Orestes
Madness was omnipresent in 5th-century Greek drama. Both tragedians and
comedians incorporated recent developments in medicine, such as those of the Hippocratic
movement, into their plots and scenes, yet dramatists could use the theme of madness,
much like they could use any other literary motif, to interact with other texts and engage in
poetic rivalry with other dramatists, poets, and even themselves through reference to
earlier work.171 While the characteristics that mark the madness of Euripides’ character
Orestes in Orestes (408 BCE) are traditional and highly prototypical of tragedy, other
aspects of the madness scene are of very low prototypicality in tragedy. More specifically, I
argue that the parodos (132-210) of Orestes, in which the chorus enters loudly and must
be shushed by Electra, serves as an intertextual paracomic allusion to the parodos (292360) of Aristophanes’ Peace (421 BCE), in which the chorus enters loudly and must be
shushed by Trygaeus, who is suffering from madness himself. The case for intertextuality
may be made due to the confluence of certain distinctive traits: a mad character connected
with a chorus who undergoes an ebb and flow of silence and loudness. To demonstrate
this, I will analyze the madness scene in Euripides’ Orestes, elucidating both the highly
prototypical aspects of its tragedic madness and the low prototypicality of a chorus with
varying levels of loudness. Second, I will investigate comedic madness, drawing broad
On madness as depicted in Greek drama, see Holmes 2010, Papadopoulou 2005, 58128, Kosak 2004, and Padel 1995. On madness more generally, see Padel 1992. On the
background of the Erinyes who afflict Orestes throughout Greek tragedy, see SewellRutter 2007, 78-109.
78
171
comparisons between madness as it appears in tragedy and madness as it appears in
comedy, commenting on specific examples of comedic madness and illustrating the
distinctive parallels between the parodos of Aristophanes’ Peace and that of Euripides’
Orestes. Third, I will argue that the trope of a loud chorus with varying levels of volume
may be a generic feature of satyr drama, as shown by passages from Sophocles’ Trackers
and Euripides’ Cyclops, and that the satyric trope was appropriated by Aristophanes and
subsequently Euripides. This chapter, then, presents evidence that Euripides is poaching
elements from outside the genre of tragedy, by drawing upon a satyric motif presented in a
notable scene in Aristophanes’ Peace. On a broader level, this investigation will serve to
demonstrate one way that Euripides and Aristophanes engage in cross-generic literary
rivalry, and provide further evidence for poetic appropriations across all dramatic genres.
THE MADNESS SCENE IN EURIPIDES’ ORESTES
In the prologue of Orestes, Orestes is characterized in terms of his madness.
Electra, distraught over her brother’s affliction, offers a brief description of Orestes’
madness (Orestes 35-45): Orestes is “wasting away with a cruel disease” (ἀγρίᾳ
συντακεὶς νόσῳ νοσεῖ);172 he has “taken to his bed”; he is “whirled in madness
(τροχηλατεῖ µανίαισιν) by the blood of his mother”;173 he has not eaten nor bathed; he
lies under a blanket; at times he is “sane and weeps”, and at times he “runs around like an
The pleonastic νόσῳ νοσεῖ need not be emended to δέµας, as Kovacs’ Loeb does
(following Hermann 1841), as the phrase is quite common in Greek. In addition to the
citations in Willink 1986, 86 on Orestes 34, add Aristophanes’ Birds 31 νόσον νοσοῦµεν
τὴν ἐναντίαν Σάκᾳ, “We’re sick with the opposite sickness of Sakas.”
173
The plural form µανίαισιν may be colloquial. See the comment of Olson 1998, 80 on
Peace 65.
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172
unyoked colt” (πῶλος ὣς ὑπὸ ζυγοῦ).174 While Orestes is already in a sorry state, to
make matters worse, Argos has decreed that no one is allowed to help Electra and Orestes
because they have murdered their mother. Their only possible source of aid is Menelaus,
who has recently arrived from Troy. In a typically Euripidean reversal, it is Helen who
appears rather than Menelaus, whom we were led to expect, and in her conversation with
Helen, Electra describes Orestes as a “luckless corpse (ἄθλιος νεκρός, 83-84)”, further
characterizing Orestes as incapacitated due to his madness.175 Helen sends her daughter
Hermione to bring libations and a hair offering to the tomb of Clytemnestra, and both exit
(125), setting the stage for the parodos (132-210) and the scene depicting Orestes’ mad fit
onstage (211-315).
The arrival of the chorus of Argive women in the parodos contains a feature
unique in all of extant Greek tragedy, in that the chorus enters loudly while being
repeatedly shushed by a main character, Electra.176 Scholars have tended to see this scene
in one of two ways: 1) as metatheater, using an impossible demand for silence to illustrate
the dramatic absurdity of placing fifteen singing dancers in the role of unobtrusive
Euripides’ description connecting illnesses with horses accords with contemporary
beliefs regarding medicine, and is paralleled in the Hippocratic text On the Sacred Disease,
which claims that charlatans observe their patients’ symptoms and compare them to traits
of a certain animal. In section 1 of the text, we read: “But if they speak in a sharper and
more intense tone, they resemble this state to a horse, and say that Poseidon is the cause.”
One can also compare Aristophanes’ Clouds which portrays Pheidippides as suffering
from ἵππερόν ‘galloping trots’ (Clouds 74), a coinage formed on the medical term ἵκτερος
‘jaundice’ (on which see the comment of Dover 1968, 103 on Clouds 74), and a νόσος
ἱππική ‘horsy sickness’ (Clouds 243). For a similar comparison of a madness-afflicted
tragedic hero with an animal, see Euripides’ Heracles 869 ταῦρος ὣς ἐς ἐµβολὴν ‘like a
bull about to charge’. For a similar grammatical construction, though more elliptical, see
Aeschylus 1316 θάµνον ὡς ὄρνις ‘like a bird (in a) bush’.
175
On Euripides setting up and reversing expectations, see the work of Geoffrey Arnott:
Arnott 1973, 55-64 with examples from Electra, Orestes, Medea, and Helen; Arnott 1978
1-24 on Heracles; Arnott 1982, 35-43 on off-stage cries; and Arnott 1983, 13-28 on
Orestes. On this passage in particular, see Arnott 1983, 19-20.
176
On Euripides exploiting the conventions of dramaturgy, see Arnott 1973, 49-54.
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174
commentators; 177 or 2) as creating tension by avoiding a formal introduction of the
characters, so that the audience is unsure who these people are (Electra identifies herself at
23 and Orestes at 35), where the setting is staged (Argos is not mentioned until 46), and
what circumstances they are in (Orestes’ madness is revealed in 34-5). In support of the
second interpretation, Orestes is silent for the first 210 lines of the play, and the chorus
constantly discusses whether he is living or dead, leaving the audience to wonder whether
Euripides will allow his main character to succumb to a disease at the beginning of the
play.178 For the play to get off the ground, Orestes needs to wake up, and therefore the
chorus needs to rouse him. Electra’s attempts to thwart the chorus from entering and
awakening Orestes are doomed to fail.
The silence of the chorus is unusual enough in tragedy, but what is truly unique
about the passage is its apparent ebb and flow of choral silence and loudness.179 The first
wave of noise occurs when the chorus enters loudly (Orestes 132-135), and Electra
commands them to be quiet and not make a clatter (136-143). The chorus tries to be
silent, “There, I am doing as you say (ἰδού, πείθοµαι)” (144). Electra attempts another
time: “Please speak no louder than the breath of a panpipe’s slender reed, my friends”
(145-6), to which the chorus replies, “See how gentle is the voice I bring indoors” (147).
They do become silent, since Electra says, “Yes, that’s the way!” (148). They remain quiet
for a while, but increase in volume enough for Electra to say: “You’ll destroy me (ὀλεῖς) if
you disturb his closed eyes while he enjoys the sweet gift of sleep” (157-8). The chorus is
On the metatheatricality of this scene, see Chong-Gossard 2008, 121-4 and Kosak
2004, 137 n. 15. On metatheater in both Greek comedy and tragedy, see Dobrov 2001,
and in Sophocles, see Ringer 1998.
178
Arnott 1983, 22. The lengthy initial silence of a main character makes Orestes appear
surprisingly like Aeschylus’ Niobe, whose title character sat covered up without speaking
for the beginning of the play, at least according to Aristophanes’ Frogs 911-920.
179
On the broader theme of silence and noise, see Dunn 1996, 161-169.
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177
briefly quiet, then shouts: “Look! He stirs in his blankets!” (166), followed by Electra’s
accusation that they drove him from sleep by their shouting (167-8). They are still noisy at
170-2, as evidenced by the fact that Electra tells them to, “ply your steps backwards and
stop this clattering”. Following this, they must quiet momentarily, since in the middle of
Electra’s speech, she suddenly bursts out with, “Ah, you made a clatter! Won’t you guard
your tongues in silence, silence, my friends, making no noise, far from his bed, and grant
him the boon of quiet sleep?” (182-6). No further comment is made on their volume until
Orestes wakes up and the main plot of the play can commence in earnest.
THE TRAGEDIC TRADITION
The symptoms of the madness that Orestes suffers correspond closely to other
tragedic characters that suffer from madness and sickness – Cassandra, Io, Heracles, Ajax,
Bellerophon, Phaedra, Medea, Philoctetes, and Agave.180 Orestes foams at the mouth at
Orestes 219-220, a symptom of epileptic madness also afflicting Heracles (Heracles 934),
Agave (Bacchae 1122), and Orestes elsewhere in tragedy (Iphigenia among the Taurians
308-311). Orestes’ panting at Orestes 277 is similar to Heracles’ irregular breathing at
Heracles 1092-1093. The wild agitated movements of Orestes as he rushes around
shooting arrows at the Furies (Orestes 268-272) correspond to the frenzies of Heracles
(Heracles 953), Cassandra (Trojan Women 307), and Agave and the maenads (Bacchae
1088-1152). Orestes’ hallucinations and delusions (Orestes 255-277) can be compared
with many other depictions of madness in tragedy: previous presentations of Orestes, who
sees the Furies though the chorus cannot (Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers 1048-1062) and
For the standards of tragedic madness, though with a focus on how they relate to
Heracles, see Papadopoulou 2005, 58-70. See also Holmes 2010, 246-252 specifically on
Orestes. For a comparison between the symptoms and scenes of Heracles and Orestes see
Theodorou 1993, 32-46.
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180
believes he is attacking the Furies but actually strikes cattle (Iphigenia among the Taurians
285-300); Ajax, who similarly strikes cattle instead of his enemies (Sophocles’ Ajax 51-58);
Heracles, who thinks he is riding a chariot to Mycenae and killing the family of Eurystheus
instead of his own (Heracles 936-1000); and Agave, who thinks she is killing a beast
instead of her son (Bacchae 1174, 1182, 1185-1191, 1196, 1204, 1210).181
While the madness scene as a whole (Orestes 132- 315) decidedly works within the
conventions of tragedy, I submit that the parodos differs from norms in Greek tragedy in a
number of ways, and should be regarded as having a low level of prototypicality for the
genre of tragedy. This is due to three reasons, and each will be discussed in turn: Orestes
132-210 differs from the highly prototypical tragedic standards of 1) choruses that are
complicit with the character hushing them, 2) choruses engaging in ‘choral projection’,
and 3) sleep-scenes containing a mad character.
First, the parodos does not follow the standard typology of scenes wherein a named
character hushes the chorus so that they will keep his or her secret, becoming complicit
with the character’s actions.182 Numerous examples of this trope exist: Orestes asks that the
chorus be silent about his plan to kill Aegisthus (Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers 581-2);
Phaedra demands that the chorus be silent about her plan to kill herself (Euripides’
Hippolytus 710-2 and presumably Sophocles’ Phaedra fr. 679);183 Medea obtains the
goodwill of the female chorus and asks them to be silent about her plan to punish Jason
(Euripides’ Medea 260-3); Electra needs the chorus to wait in silence about the upcoming
Not all aspects of Orestes’ madness are entirely traditional, however. Rather than
displaying a divine agency for the madness, Orestes presents a new model of causation
involving a psychological understanding (σύνεσις, 396) of the wrongs committed, perhaps
best conceived of as a ‘guilty conscience’. See Porter 1994, 298-313.
182
On the complicity of the silent chorus, see Chong-Gossard 2008, esp. 155-204.
183
Sophocles fr. 679: “Be sympathetic and maintain silence (σύγγνωτε κἀνάσχεσθε
σιγῶσαι)!
For a woman should cover up what brings shame on women.”
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181
murder of Clytemnestra (Sophocles’ Electra 1398); Iphigenia desires complicity in her
escape with Orestes and Pylades (Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians 1063-76);
Xuthus asks the chorus to remain silent about the fact that Ion is his son (Euripides’ Ion
666-7);184 Helen wants the chorus to be silent about the plot to escape from Egypt
(Euripides’ Helen 1387-9); and Agamemnon orders the chorus to remain silent about his
plan to sacrifice Iphigenia (Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis 542). The madness scene in
Euripides’ Orestes is markedly unusual since the command for silence reveals the
character’s desire to control the volume of the chorus rather than to safeguard his or her
secrets, a highly prototypical element in tragedy.185
Second, despite the fact that the chorus refers to its own singing and dancing, it
differs from other self-referential choruses that call attention to their own choral actions, in
the way that Henrichs has proposed for many choral passages from tragedy.186 When
choruses refer metatheatrically to their own singing and dancing, Henrichs argues, they
temporarily expand their dramatic role by assuming a ritual performance that crosses over
into the imaginary cultic world of the tragedy.187 That is to say that when the chorus is
dancing onstage in Athens, it can transcend the stage and ‘project’ into some other
In this play the chorus ignores his wishes because they are loyal to his wife Creusa more
than to him.
185
One other request for the chorus to be silent is in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes 233263, when the chorus of women is terrified and in hysterics about the war outside the
gates. Eteocles demands (262): “Be silent, you poor fool, and don’t terrify your own side
(σίγησον, ὦ τάλαινα, µὴ φίλους φόβει).” The chorus responds (263): “I’ll be silent;
along with the rest I will endure what fate may bring (σιγῶ: σὺν ἄλλοις πείσοµαι τὸ
µόρσιµον).” Although he demands silence, there is no secret nor complicity. Due to their
fear, the chorus of women is constantly loud, similarly to Heracles, on which see below.
186
Henrichs was preceded by Davidson 1986, 38-46, who isolates at least two distinct
types of choral dancing – 1) the chorus referring to their own dancing while they execute
it, and 2) the chorus referring to dancing that is happening or which has already
happened.
187
Henrichs 1995, 58-60 and 68-70.
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184
religious world, such as Delos. Henrichs’ term is ‘choral projection’, 188 and the three
criteria he notes are 1) divine invocation, 2) Dionysiac cult, and 3) extra-dramatic khoreia
on a ritual occasion.189 Henrichs, Easterling, Kaimio and Nikolaidou-Arabatzi have
applied this model to a large number of passages from tragedy.190 Henrichs even goes so
far as to say that “the entire range of ritual performance, as dramatized by the tragedians,
functions as the common denominator that underlies all [my italics] instances of choral
self-reference in extant tragedy.”191 Yet in the madness scene in Orestes, there is no link to
Dionysus, nor any choral projection into an imaginary ritual setting. Henrichs is correct in
his assertion that choral projection seems to be the rule in tragedy, but the scene in the
parodos of Orestes violates that rule. This pattern is particularly marked for Euripides,
who uses choral projection at least thirty-eight times in his extant tragedies, certainly
making ‘choral projection’ a highly prototypical feature of Euripidean tragedy.192 The only
Henrichs 1996, 49.
Henrichs 1995, 58.
190
Henrichs 1995, 56-111 and Henrichs 1996, 48-62. Easterling 1997a, 42-44 and
Kaimio et alii 2001, 35-45 apply the model to satyr-play. Nikolaidou-Arabatzi 2010, 1-32
discusses the examples in Euripides not mentioned by Henrichs, and Davidson 1986, 3846 provides a few examples as well.
191
Henrichs 1995, 69.
192
The following passages have been proposed in conjunction with the model of ‘choral
projection’, and there may be others that scholars have not discussed.
Satyr drama
Aeschylus (3 times) Prometheus the Fire-Kindler fr. 204b; Theoroi or Isthmiastai fr.
78a, 32-4 and fr. 78c, 37-8.
Sophocles (1 time)
Trackers 217-20
Euripides (5 times) Cyclops 36-40, 63-81, 94, 156, 204
Comedy
Aristophanes (4 times) Clouds 264-313; Lysistrata 1279-1321; Thesmophoriazusae 9471000; Frogs 324-415
Tragedy
Aeschylus (1 time)
Eumenides 307-11
Sophocles (8 times) Oedipus Tyrannus 895-6, 1086-97; Ajax 693-705; Antigone 152-4,
963-5, 1146-52; Trachiniae 205-21, 640-3
Euripides (38 times) Heracleidae 358, 777-83, 892-3; Hecuba 455-474; Electra 167-80,
434-37, 467, 712-18, 859-79; Heracles 348-402, 673-695, 761-89,
85
188
189
passages I have found that are self-referential and do not contain choral projection are
Orestes 132-210 and Heracles 1042-1087 (on which see below). With only two examples
in extant tragedy of a self-referential chorus without choral projection, and thirty-eight
examples of self-referential choruses with choral projection in Euripidean tragedy, it seems
safe to say that this feature is of low prototypicality.
Third, while the structure of the passage corresponds closely to the ‘sleep-scenes’ in
tragedy (labeled in this way by Dieterich and Jouanna), in which the sleep of a dangerous
character provides a reprieve from his threat to others, Orestes 132-210 differs
substantially from all other sleep-scenes.193 The corpus of extant ‘sleep-scenes’ contains
scenes from four plays, Sophocles’ Trachiniae and Philoctetes, and Euripides’ Heracles
and Orestes, with one considerably different predecessor in Aeschylus’ Eumenides (64142), in which the dangerous but sleeping Furies afford Orestes the opportunity to escape.
Jouanna detects a chronological progression of the sleep-scene topos from Aeschylus’
Eumenides to Sophocles’ Trachiniae and Euripides’ Heracles (the next sleep-scenes
chronologically), and then to Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Euripides’ Orestes (the final sleepscenes chronologically).194 For Trachiniae and Heracles, the sleep overwhelms a hero
(Heracles) after a crisis, whereas in Aeschylus, sleep overpowers a chorus (Furies) with no
crisis directly preceding.195 The final stage, according to Jouanna’s course of development,
871-98, 925-7, 1025-28, 1303-4; Trojan Women 325-42, 544-59,
1071-6; Iphigenia in Tauris 218-228, 427-9, 1089-1152 (esp.114352); Ion 463, 492-502, 1074-86; Helen 381-3, 1312-14, 1338-68,
1451-70; Phoenician Women 226-38, 649-56, 784-92; Bacchae
105-119, 402-8, 409-16, 556-75, 862-876; Iphigenia in Aulis 103697
193
Jouanna 1983, 49-62 and Dieterich 1891, 25-46. See also Kosak 2004, 135-141.
194
Jouanna 1983.
195
Though in the trilogy as a whole, a crisis certainly precedes in terms of Orestes’ and the
Furies’ harrowing race to Delphi.
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occurs in Philoctetes and Orestes where the audience sees the entire episode onstage instead
of through reported action.196
While the chronological development of sleep-scenes among various tragedians is
certainly valid, I’d like to highlight another distinction between the ways that Sophocles
and Euripides treat the sleep scene. Two differences set apart Sophocles’ scenes from those
of Euripides: 1) whether the character tells the chorus or another character to be silent, and
2) whether or not there is a focus on metatheater. Uniquely among sleep-scenes, Euripides’
Orestes has a character tell the chorus to be silent, while focusing on metatheater and
presenting a chorus with varying levels of volume.
Trachiniae
Philoctetes
Heracles
Orestes
Mad character
sleeping
Chorus told to be
silent
Metatheater
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Ebb and flow of
choral silence
and loudness
No
No
No
Yes
Table 6. Characteristics of Sleep-Scenes in Sophocles and Euripides
The short and straightforward scene in Sophocles’ Trachiniae (964-982) differs
from the sleep-scene in Orestes in two important ways: first, the recipient of the order to be
quiet is not the chorus, but another character, as it is the Doctor who tells Hyllus to be
silent (971-982). Second, there is no focus on metatheatricality, since Sophocles does not
refer to the impossibility of a silent chorus, as Euripides does in Orestes.
196
Jouanna 1983, 55-7.
87
Sophocles’ Philoctetes (821-866) depicts a character telling the chorus, instead of
another character, to be silent, a feature which aligns with Euripides’ Orestes. Right before
Philoctetes wakes up again, Neoptolemus (865) tells the chorus to be quiet (σιγᾶν
κελεύω). Still, there is nothing overtly metatheatrical about the scene. Sophocles’
portrayals of sleeping characters are quite different from the scene in Euripides’ Orestes,
since the only similarity is that a potentially dangerous character is sleeping and that there
is a command for silence. In the specifics of each scene, the circumstances differ as to who
receives the command to be silent and whether metatheater is present.
The closest parallel to the madness scene in Orestes is Euripides’ Heracles (10421087), despite the fact that the scene in Heracles is not a parodos. There are numerous
verbal correspondences between the scenes.197
1) Heracles 1043 τὸν ὕπνῳ παρειµένον
2) Heracles 1047 πρόβατε
3) Heracles 1047 µὴ κτυπεῖτε
4) Heracles 1052 διά µ᾽ ὀλεῖτε
5) Heracles 1054 οὐκ ἀτρεµαῖα θρῆνον
αἰάξετ’
6) Heracles 1059, 1068 σῖγα σῖγα
Orestes 210 τῷ λίαν παρειµένῳ
Orestes 142 ἀποπρὸ βᾶτ᾽
Orestes 137 µηδ᾽ ἔστω κτύπος
Orestes 141 µὴ κτυπεῖτ᾽
Orestes 172 µεθεµένα κτύπου
Orestes 182 κτύπον ἠγάγετ’
Orestes 157 ὀλεῖς
Orestes 147 ἴδ᾽, ἀτρεµαῖον ὡς ὑπόροφον
φέρω βοάν,
Orestes 149 κάταγε κάταγε, πρόσιθ'
ἀτρέµας, ἀτρέµας ἴθι·
Orestes 140 σῖγα σῖγα
Orestes 182-3 σῖγα σῖγα
Table 7. Verbal Correspondences between Heracles 1042-1087 and Orestes 132-210
Both scenes feature a sleeping character, whose body is slack (#1 in Figure 2). This
person must not be woken up, because he is conceived of as dangerous; both plays feature
These correspondences are modeled on those found in Bond 1981, 332-333 on
Heracles 1042-1087.
88
197
a phrase “you’ll destroy me (sc. if you wake him up)” (#4 in Figure 2).198 The methods for
not awakening the dangerous figure are the same – go away from him (#2), don’t clatter
(#3), be gentle (#5), and be silent (#6).
By drawing attention to the impossibility of a silent chorus, both scenes are
distinctly metatheatrical in a way that Sophocles’ scenes are not, as in Sophocles’ plays the
audience is not extended the opportunity to reflect upon the dramatist’s methods of
theater production. Many of the preventative methods seen in Heracles and Orestes could
occur if just one person were involved. For example, at Orestes 71-125, immediately prior
to the entry of the large chorus, Electra has a conversation with just one person, Helen,
while Orestes is sleeping onstage. With only Helen walking and talking, Electra is not
afraid that Orestes will awaken. Yet when the chorus enters, with its fifteen members and
its tradition of song and dance, it is impossible for them to remain quiet. Due to these
similarities, Bond argues in his commentary that Euripides based the Orestes scene on his
earlier Heracles scene.199
While this may be true, there is an important distinction to be made between the
two scenes. In the madness scene in Heracles, the chorus makes no attempt to be silent,
despite Amphitryon’s frequent requests. They simply comment on the impossibility of
being silent, since they are, after all, a chorus of fifteen members. After Amphitryon asks
them to be quiet, the chorus responds: ‘It’s impossible, impossible for me (ἀδύνατ᾽
ἀδύνατά µοι, Heracles 1057).” This is the only comment the chorus makes about their
loudness. It is also important to note that almost everything Amphitryon says in this scene
The two phrases Heracles 1052 διά µ᾽ ὀλεῖτε and Orestes 157 ὀλεῖς are equivalent, as
Willink 1986, 110 on Orestes 158-9 notes. The gapped µε is standard for colloquial Greek,
as an expression such as ἀπολεῖς µε and ἀπολεῖς are used with the same sense. See
Stevens 1976, 11-2 and Willink 1986, 110 on Orestes 158-9 for more parallels.
199
Bond 1981, 332-333 on lines 1042-87.
89
198
includes a command for the chorus to be silent: “Won’t you in silence, silence, allow the
man relaxed in sleep to forget his woes?” (1042-4); “Come further away, make no sound,
do not shout, do not awaken from his bed one in the peace of sleep” (1047-51); “Stop!
You’ll destroy me!” (1052); “Make your lament softly, old sirs!” (1053-4); “Hush! Let me
hear his breathing” (1060); “Hush, hush! He turns about and stirs to wakefulness!
(1068).” This would imply that the chorus is constantly loud and does not attempt to be
quiet at all. In comparison to this, the chorus in the Orestes madness scene makes
numerous attempts to be quiet, and the scene ebbs and flows with silence and loudness.
To conclude: in the parodos of Orestes, the chorus is constantly asked to be quiet to
avoid waking a character suffering from madness. The chorus attempts to do so, but then
continues to raise a ruckus in repeated waves. This pattern is an element of the sleep-scene
that is unique to Orestes, and has no parallel in Greek tragedy. To find a parallel, we must
look beyond tragedy to comedy and satyr drama.
THE COMEDIC TRADITION
As the primary concern of the first several hundred lines of Orestes (and the main
comparandum for my argument) is madness, an examination of the relevant Aristophanic
passages is in order, showing the various ways that comedic madness appears onstage,
ranging from short references to madness to forms of madness that are more fully
integrated into the structure of the play. At Birds 31-5, Euelpides and Peisetairos describe
themselves in the expository prologue as being “sick with the opposite of Sacas’ sickness
(νόσον νοσοῦµεν): he’s a non-citizen trying to force his way in, while we...have up and
left our country with both feet flying.” This brief mention couches the main characters’
90
problem in medical terms, as if they were suffering from an ailment, using the same word
(νόσος) that appears so often in Euripides and tragedy in general to describe madness.200
Clouds also features two main characters suffering from sickness and madness,
though different ailments appear for each. Pheidippides suffers from ἱππερός ‘horsy
disease’ (Clouds 74), a coinage, as noted above, formed from the medical term ἵκτερος
‘jaundice’.201 At a later point in the play, Pheidippides’ father Strepsiades informs Socrates
that he fell into debt due to a ‘horsy sickness’ (νόσος ἱππική, 243), referring to his son’s
gambling on horses.202 While Pheidippides’ horsy sickness is the setup for the play, the truly
mad character turns out to be Strepsiades, who becomes crazy once he is educated at the
Thinkery, at least according to his son.203 Pheidippides refers to him as crazy in four
different ways throughout his confrontation with him in lines 814-868: οὐκ εὖ φρονεῖς
“you’re mentally ill” (817); µανιῶν (833) and µανίαν “madness” (846);
παραφρονοῦντος “off his rocker” (844); παρανοίας “insane” (845). This continues in
their final argument when in 1475 Pheidippides again calls him “off his rocker”
(παραφρόνει), and even Strepsiades admits that he went crazy while under Socrates’ spell:
οἴµοι παρανοίας: ὡς ἐµαινόµην “What lunacy – how crazy I was” (1476). Despite the
fact that both main characters are sometimes described as mad, the role of madness is
comparatively small in the play and does not permeate the structure of the play, as it does
Nosos and its cognates appear frequently in Euripides, for example, 24 times in
Hippolytus and 45 times in Orestes. See Mitchell-Boyask 2008, 29.
201
See the comment of Dover 1968, 103 at Clouds 74.
202
On comedy’s tendency to literalize metaphors for comic effect, see Hunter 2009, 4-5,
who adds the examples of ‘weighing of lines’ in the Frogs, off the metaphor of a line
having a heavy quality to it, as well as the King’s Eye in Acharnians. For another example,
see Chapter 2, for Euripides’ literalization of ‘sword-bearing’.
203
Strepsiades’ madness at the Thinkery is an obvious commentary on the practices and
teachings of the Sophists, to whom Socrates is assimilated. See Clouds 1478-80, when
Strepsiades asks Hermes for forgiveness for “taking leave of his senses because of their
[Socrates and the others at the Thinkery] idle talk (ἀδολεσχίᾳ)”.
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200
for Wasps and Peace (discussed below). For the passages from Birds and Clouds, comedic
madness is closely tied to contemporary ideas about medicine and uses medical vocabulary
for comic effect.
Two other Aristophanic plays, Wasps and Peace, display a form of comedic
madness that is explicitly measured against the standard of tragedic madness. In Wasps,
the view of comedic madness provides the structure and setup of the entire play. The slave
Xanthias reveals the upcoming plot to the spectators (Wasps 54-5): “It’s time I let the
audience in on the plot. But first I’ll give them the following short preface.” After Xanthias
uses a priamel (56-63) to explain all of the things that will not appear - nothing grand, no
Megarian jokes, no slaves throwing nuts to the audience, no Heracles cheated of his dinner,
no Euripides getting abused, no attacks on Cleon - he states at 64-6 that “ours is a simple
plot with a point, no brainier that you are yourselves, but more artistic than lowbrow
comedy.” He then explicates the plot: their master (Bdelycleon) is asleep on the roof, while
“his father (Philocleon), you see, suffers from a bizarre sickness, which no one here will be
able to recognize or diagnose unless we tell you” (71-3).204 After a series of staged attempts
by the audience at diagnosis, all involving φιλο- ‘addicted to’: φιλόκυβον ‘addiction to
gambling’ (75), φιλοπότην ‘addiction to drink’ (79), φιλοθύτην ‘addiction to sacrificing’
(82), φιλόξενον ‘addiction to entertaining guests’ (82), Xanthias finally announces that
the illness is φιληλιαστής ‘addiction to jury service’ (88). Philocleon is described as having
a νόσος often (71, 87, 114), and his symptoms are comedic replacements for the list of
symptoms present for tragedic madness. His sleep is disrupted (91-2); he has physical
The inability of the audience in Wasps to diagnose Philocleon’s madness may be a
parody of the chorus’ inability to diagnose Phaedra’s madness in Hippolytus 269, “It is
unclear (ἄσηµα) to us what is wrong with her.” See also Hippolytus 173-5, 236, 346, and
more broadly 270-303 for further desires and the inability to ascertain what is wrong with
Phaedra. On the madness of Phaedra see Holmes 2010, 252-60. On the comic madness in
Wasps parodying Hippolytus, see Harvey 1971, 362-5.
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204
abnormalities such as his three fingers pressed together, so as to hold a voting pebble (946); he has erratic behavior, such as claiming the rooster had been bribed not to crow (1002); and he has obsessive fears, like keeping a whole beach of voting pebbles at his house so
as to avoid running out (109-110). His son has tried a variety of healing methods –
soothing words (115), immersion (117), and trips to Asclepius’ temple (122-3), but to no
avail. The sickness is indeed the driving force of the play, and the audience understands it
only if they already have tragedic descriptions of madness in mind.
With this exposition, Aristophanes positions his play between two extremes.205 The
plot will be clever, but not too clever, and therefore he bifurcates his audience and targets
both halves – the clever and well-educated members of the audience who would
understand Aristophanes’ clever positioning, and the remaining portion who would
appreciate the lowbrow comedy and wouldn’t grasp the more subtle jokes.206 Aristophanes
targets both audiences, and the plot involving a jury-crazy Philocleon could simply be a
funny and satirical portrayal of the old men who frequented the courts; however, for the
in-crowd, it could also be an appropriation and reversal of the tragedic motif of madness.
Platter 2007, 84-107 shows how Aristophanes positions Wasps between two poles: The
‘Megarian jokes’ (Wasps 57) are lowbrow comedy, much like the double entendres on
χοῖρος ‘piglet, vagina’ in the Megarian farmer scene at Acharnians 729-835, whereas
‘anything grand’ (Wasps 56) refers to Aristophanes’ ‘wisest’ comedy Clouds, self-described
as such at Clouds 522. Platter argues that the classification of Wasps as a moderate play
‘functions as a rhetorical tool to position Wasps as the kind of play an audience, even a
rather dull one, should like’ (Platter 2007, 106). Despite the claim that Wasps is moderate,
Aristophanes attempts to surpass both extremes in its use of vulgarity and intellectual
aspirations, by subtly aligning its values with those of Clouds.
206
An audience divided upon intellectual capacity is how Aristophanes, at least, does it.
The bifurcated audience that Aristophanes presents is in reality a sliding scale, as welleducated people might also like lowbrow comedy and less-educated people would catch at
least some of the clever jokes. Some portion of the audience would grasp any given joke or
allusion, and the members of this in-crowd would be different for each joke, since each
person in the audience, both highbrow and lowbrow, could understand it if they had the
right background and competence to understand it. Since different jokes require different
types of competence from the audience, the in-crowd would constantly be shifting for each
joke.
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205
As a result of Philocleon’s madness, his son imprisons him inside the house (112113). Philocleon tries to escape from the sleeping Bdelycleon, who immediately wakes up,
catches him and puts him in prison (198-202). The attempted escape from a sleeping
character is repeated a second time. The chorus enters, singing, “I think we should pause
here and sing him out of the house. Maybe when he hears my song he’ll be happy to
hobble outside (270-2).” The chorus sings loudly to wake up Philocleon, who, they
believe, has not yet gotten up for the morning. Philocleon tells the chorus not to shout (µὴ
βοᾶτε, 336-337), since his son, who had imprisoned him, is sleeping in front of the house.
The command to be silent is repeated later on in the scene: “But absolutely no cheering
(µὴ βοᾶτε µηδαµῶς), let’s see that we don’t alert Bdelycleon (371-2).” Philocleon adopts
the staging of a sleep-scene from tragedy, telling the chorus to be silent to avoid awakening
a dangerous enemy, in this case his son.207
While Wasps provides an example of a comedic appropriation of tragedic
madness, there are, however, aspects that differ between the madness of comedy and the
madness of tragedy. Tragedic madness scenes always show the sick or crazy hero sleeping,
while others avoid waking him up out of fear, as in Sophocles’ Trachiniae and Philoctetes
and Euripides’ Heracles and Orestes. Such scenes tend to provoke in the audience certain
emotions that the playwright finds desirable, such as pity and fear.208 In comedy, it is the
exact opposite: in Aristophanes’ Wasps, the crazy person (Philocleon) is very much awake
(and trying to escape) whereas the sane person (Bdelycleon) is asleep. As in tragedy, the
sleeping character in Wasps is still dangerous, at least to Philocleon, who is prevented from
indulging his addiction by the sleeping Bdelycleon.
Compare Heracles 1049 µὴ βοᾶτε ‘don’t shout’.
See Munteanu 2012 for a thorough discussion of the emotions of pity and fear in Greek
tragedy, especially 208-237 where she portrays Orestes is very unusual exception
regarding the two emotions.
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207
208
There are generic differences in the tone of the madness. In order for a mad hero in
comedy to move the plot forward, often with the “Great Idea”, they must be zany and
quirky at the very least.209 Whereas tragedic madness is languished and depressed, comedic
madness is frenetic and manic. The ‘underlying representation’ of the theme ‘madness’ can
produce different outcomes in tragedy and comedy due to the effects and constraints of
the genre.210 Underlying representations can coincide with poetic appropriation, as a
comedian can appropriate a sleep-scene motif from tragedy while ‘naturalizing’ the scene
into the generic needs and conventions of comedy. A manic character offers plenty of
comedic potential, whereas a depressed one does not.
Tone of Madness
Asleep or Awake?
Dangerous Enemy
Tragedic Madness
Languid, depressed
Asleep
Mad character is the
dangerous enemy
Comedic Madness
(Wasps, Peace)
Frenetic, manic
Awake
Mad character escapes
dangerous enemy
Table 8. Characteristics of Tragedic and Comedic Madness
At the end of the Wasps, Philocleon remains mad, despite the chorus’ insistence
that the old man has changed (µετέστη) from his previous ways (1449-1460). This inverts
a standard tragedic madness motif, which uses the verb µεθίσταµαι ‘change’ to mark the
crazy person coming to his or her senses, for example, Agave at Bacchae 1270, “I’ve
abandoned (µετασταθεῖσα) my former frame of mind.” Rather than coming to his senses
as a tragedic hero would, the comedic mad hero Philocleon increases his madness by
dancing frenetically (a sign of Corybantic and maenadic madness) and Xanthias declares
On the “Great Idea”, see most recently Given 2009, 107-127 with bibliography.
On ‘underlying representations’ see my introductory chapter and the example of Levine
1987, 30, 36.
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209
210
that it is the onset of ‘madness’ (µανία, 1486) and suggests that he drink hellebore (1489)
and be pelted with stones (1491), both actions associated with curing madness. Philocleon
keeps dancing, and Xanthias calls it ‘crazy business’ (µανικὰ πράγµατα, 1496). The
dancing continues to the end of the play, with the Sons of Carcinus invited onstage to have
a dance-off with him. The last lines of the play call for the chorus to be led offstage
dancing, something that the chorus says has never happened before in comedy (1535-7).211
In this exodos, madness becomes closely connected with continuous dancing, in a
portrayal of madness augmented beyond the point that a tragedic character would return
to sanity.212
The validity of this claim is impossible to prove. Macdowell 1971, 332 on Wasps 1537
suggests that Acharnians ended with a song, but not necessarily a dance, and adds that a
scholiast on Clouds claims that there was a dance called the κόρδαξ used in Wasps.
Perhaps it was used in this scene.
212
Beta 2001, 135-7 sees parallels between the mad characters Philocleon in Aristophanes’
Wasps (422 BCE) and Heracles in Euripides’ Heracles (c. 416 BCE), yet rather than
entertain the idea of paracomedy, the author posits an earlier version of the play, Heracles
II, which was, he theorizes, produced before Wasps. This would allow Aristophanes’
Wasps to engage in paratragedy of the first Heracles play (which would account for the
similarities between the two plays), and Euripides’ later revision of Heracles would
account for the standard dating of the play to c. 416 BCE by metrics. There is, potentially,
independent confirmation of a Heracles II, attested by the papyrus fragments contained in
P. Hibeh 179, however it is unclear when this version was staged in relation to
Aristophanes’ Wasps and our extant Heracles, and what the content of the play was. In
such a situation where the chronological relationship between dramas is uncertain due to a
lack of secure dates for the plays and possible re-performances or revisions, the criteria for
determining whether a set of correspondences is paratragedy or paracomedy must rest
with the ways in which the similarities are expressed. Unfortunately, the evidence for
Wasps and Heracles is ambiguous. Some elements could be either paracomedy or
paratragedy: both feature a mad character who dances continuously (at Heracles 867-71,
Lyssa describes how soon she will make Heracles dance still more [τάχα...µᾶλλον], and in
the exodos of Wasps, Philocleon dances nonstop). Some evidence seems to be irrelevant,
such as the reference in the parabasis of Wasps to the ὀργή ‘anger, courage’ of Heracles,
which rather than pointing to the play Heracles Mainomenos points to the hero as
Heracles Kallinikos, with its elements of epic monster-slaying (compare the parody a few
lines later of Homer’s description of the Chimera at Iliad 6.181). Other evidence seems to
have a common origin in society and reference general customs related to madness, as the
pelting of the madman with stones (Heracles 1004-6, Wasps 1491) does not seem specific
enough to argue for any form of paradrama, but rather points towards general treatment
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211
In Peace, much like in Wasps, Aristophanes presents comedic madness that
permeates the entire character of Trygaeus.213 The slave Xanthias provides ‘a list of
symptoms of his madness’ (τὸ γὰρ παράδειγµα τῶν µανιῶν, Peace 65):214 Trygaeus
rants at Zeus and has tried to reach him by scaling ladders to Olympus. Xanthias suggests
that this is due to Trygaeus’ excessive bile (χολή, 66), a standard medical cause for
madness,215 and further claims that Trygaeus is deranged (παραπαίεις, 90) and unhealthy
(οὐχ ὑγιαίνεις, 95). Yet these attributions of madness to Trygaeus are based on tragedic
madness, as evinced when Xanthias remarks (54-55): “My master is mad in a novel way
(µαίνεται καινὸν τρόπον); not the way you all are, but another, quite novel way.” Here,
the words for ‘to be mad’ and ‘novel’ are particularly marked. The verb µαίνοµαι ‘to be
of madmen. One element seems to argue for paratragedy, if it is strong enough of a
connection: Aristophanes’ few quick jokes about a statue of Lycus are more likely to be
parodying Euripides’ innovative figure of Lycus rather than the other way around, i.e.
having Euripides insert a new character named Lycus into the story on the basis of a few
jokes in Aristophanes. One element seems to argue for paracomedy (here my analysis
differs from those of Beta and Rau 1967, 192): the relationship between Pindar fr. 189
Sn.-M. (πανδείµαντοι µὲν ὑπὲρ πόντιον Ἕλλας πόρον ἱερον), Heracles 80-1 (νῦν οὖν
τίν᾽ ἐλπίδ᾽ ἤ πόρον σωτηρίας ἐξευµαρίζῃ, πρέσβυ;), and Wasps 306-8 (ἔχεις ἐλπίδα
χρηστήν τινα νῷν ἤ πόρον Ἕλλας ἱερόν;). Pindar’s fragment is clearly the earliest, and
the most logical ordering of the lines is that Wasps is the first drama of the two, and it
parodies Pindar, with its clear appropriation of three words (Ἕλλας, πόρον, and ἱερον)
from Pindar. Heracles must be the second drama, which lifts the combination of ἐλπίδ᾽ ἤ
πόρον from Wasps. Rau’s contention that there was a contamination or blending of the
two phrases in Wasps is improbable. For parallels to this process, see the examples from
my Chapter 1 on 1) Andromeda fr. 125, Thesmophoriazusae 1105 and Cyclops 222, and
2) Aeschylus’ Agamemnon 525-6, Aristophanes’ Birds 1239-40, and Sophocles’ Chryses
fr. 727. In the case of Wasps and Heracles, it is impossible to evaluate the evidence in favor
of paratragedy or paracomedy, and instead one wonders if there is any interplay at all
between the two plays. However, it is not outside the realm of possibility that tragedic
portrayals of Heracles at times evoked portrayals of Heracles from comedy and satyr
drama, on which see Kirkpatrick and Dunn 2002, 39-42.
213
On the madness of Trygaeus, see Hall 2006, 334.
214
Compare the comedic list of symptoms at Wasps 89-111, discussed above.
215
The fact that Trygeus suffers from χολή ‘bile’ serves to deepen the overtly paratragic
scene, which parodies Euripides’ Bellerophon, whose titular hero suffered from
melancholia ‘melancholy’, on which see Dobrov 2001, 92-101. For a broader view of
melancholy, see Padel 1995, 47-57, and for χολή ‘bile’ see Padel 1992, 23-4.
97
mad’, which comes from the same Greek root as µανία, is the same word used of
numerous heroes from tragedy who suffer from madness.216 The adjective καινός ‘novel’ is
a coded metapoetic word, with which an author draws attention to the fact that he is
innovating upon an expressed or implied standard pattern, as Torrance demonstrates for
Euripides.217 In addition to his joke about the audience being crazy, Aristophanes is
highlighting his own literary creativity by using the trigger word καινός ‘novel’. On the
metapoetic level, Aristophanes’ use of καινός shows that he is modeling his literary
portrayal of madness on something else, and the use of µαίνοµαι shows that, as occurs so
often in Greek comedy, the source material for his innovation is the madness from
tragedy.218
The basic idea that comedic madness is modeled on tragedic madness was first,
albeit briefly, explicated by Harvey in a three-page article.219 He gathers a number of
passages where the hero of comedy suffers from madness (from Wasps, Birds, Clouds, and
Peace) and then suggests that Aristophanes is slyly parodying Euripides’ Medea,
Hippolytus (and perhaps other plays) where the tragedic hero suffers from µάνια
‘madness’ or νόσος ‘sickness’.220 Harvey argues that the slave’s speech in Peace is
Euripides uses forms of µαίνοµαι 38 times in his plays, and forms of µάνια 13 times.
Here, the words occur primarily in the plays that feature a mad character – Medea,
Hippolytus, Heracles, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Iphigenia at Aulis, Bacchae, and
Orestes.
217
Torrance 2013, 222-245, especially 222-227.
218
See for example the posing of Acharnians 500 - τὸ γὰρ δίκαιον οἶδε καὶ τρυγῳδία.
“For even comedy knows about justice.” The καὶ ‘even’ shows that comedy is being
positioned against tragedy. See the comment in Olson 2002, 201 on Acharnians 500,
Revermann 2006, 95-106, Platter 2007, 35-37 and Silk 2000a, 42-97.
219
Harvey 1971, 362-5.
220
While µάνια and νόσος are two distinct concepts, they are equivalent enough in their
use for a comedian such as Aristophanes to lump them together into a concept of tragedic
madness. See for example Sophocles’ Ajax 59 µανιάσιν νόσοις, or, outside of drama,
Plato’s Laws 864d2, which argues for an equivalence between the two concepts: “a man
98
216
interrupted by Trygaeus’ cry from offstage, displaying the same staging that Euripides
puts on in the Medea, a plausible enough suggestion.221 Harvey closes by noting that
Euripides must not have noticed Aristophanes’ parodies, because in Orestes, another
character suffers from a similar madness, marked by the same words µάνια and νόσος. I
will argue exactly the opposite, namely, that Euripides did notice the parodies, and that in
Orestes Euripides is responding directly to the madness scene in Aristophanes’ Peace.
In Peace, the mad Trygaeus, in a parody of Euripides’ Bellerophon, mounts his
dung-beetle and flies to Olympus. Upon arriving, Hermes informs him that the gods have
disappeared and their homes are inhabited by War, who has thrown Peace into a deep
cavern (223). Trygaeus hides while War and Hubbub arrive onstage, about to grind all the
cities of Greece with a mortar and pestle. When they depart, Trygaeus emerges from
concealment, the chorus enters in the parodos, and they prepare to haul Peace out of the
cavern. After the chorus speaks their first lines, Trygaeus responds with “Won’t you be
quiet? Don’t be so overjoyful about our business that you fire up War with your shouting
(309-10).” He further cautions them to beware of “Cerberus below ground” (313) – a
reference to Cleon, a sure obstacle to obtaining Peace.222 Soon after, he continues (318-9),
“You’ll be my undoing (ἐξολεῖτέ µ᾽), men, if you don’t abate your shouting (εἰ µὴ τῆς
βοῆς ἀνήσετε). He’ll rush out and trample everything underfoot.” The chorus responds
to this by stating that they will not stop rejoicing, and they begin to dance. Trygaeus
who commits one of these crimes might be suffering from insanity (µανείς), or be as good
as insane because of disease (νόσος).”
221
Harvey further argues that Wasps 751 ‘What I yearn for is over there. There is where I
want to be (κείνων ἔραµαι, κεῖθι γενοίµαν)’ parodies Hippolytus 219 ἔραµαι ... 230 εἴθε
γενοίµαν. The fact that the target in the Hippolytus is spread out across 11 lines argues
against treating the lines as a unit, and therefore, a distinctive correspondence between the
texts is unlikely.
222
On Cleon as Cerberus, see Knights 1030, and as the ‘watchdog of the people’ see Wasps
894-994.
99
commands them to stop, but they respond that their legs are dancing on their own (325).
Trygaeus tells them to stop again (326), and the chorus says (327): “There then, look, I
have stopped” (ἢν ἰδοὺ καὶ δὴ πέπαυµαι). Yet the chorus continues to dance despite
having said they had stopped, as Trygaeus points out. The back-and-forth happens once
again, with Trygaeus commanding them to stop, the chorus agreeing to stop, and the
chorus still continuing to dance (329-331).
Aristophanes’ parodos from Peace has strong similarities to the parodos in Orestes,
granting the differences in the underlying representations of tragedic and comedic madness
discussed earlier. First, a character (Trygaeus, Electra) needs to avoid alerting another
dangerous figure (War, Orestes). Second, there is a direct order to the chorus to be silent
during the parodos (Peace 309-310 ~ Orestes 136-9). Third, the character expresses a
fear, using a second person form of the verb ὄλλυµι, that if the chorus is not silent they
will destroy the character (Peace 318 - ἐξολεῖτέ µ᾽ ~ Orestes 157 ὀλεῖς, cf. Heracles 1052
διά µ᾽ ὀλεῖτε). Fourth, the chorus does not stop shouting and dancing, but continues even
after stating that they have stopped, using similar vocabulary in both passages (Peace 327 ἢν ἰδοὺ καὶ δὴ πέπαυµαι “There, then, look I have stopped.” ~ Orestes 144 - ἰδού,
πείθοµαι “Look, I’m obeying.”).
These comparisons are too strong and specific to ignore. Given that the role of the
chorus in the madness scene in Orestes is unique in extant tragedy, I argue that in the
Orestes, Euripides appropriated and utilized this scene featuring a mad character and a
loud chorus from Aristophanes’ Peace. The dating of the plays is secure: Aristophanes put
on Peace at the Dionysia in 421 BCE, and Euripides staged Orestes in 408 BCE, and
therefore, this serves as an example of paracomedy.223 It is always possible that another
223
See Henderson 1998, 419 and Kovacs 2002, 400 for the dates of these plays.
100
drama (or dramas), which is now fragmentary or lost, existed that served as a model for
some or all of the scenes discussed here (in my next section, I examine the potential
evidence for just such a model taken from satyr drama).
When contemplating a case of paracomedy between Peace and Orestes, one might
object that Peace was performed thirteen years prior to Orestes, which might inhibit
audience recognition of the scene. If the target of the allusion looms large enough in
cultural memory, however, virtually any length of time between the target and the allusion
is feasible.224 For example, Euripides’ Telephus was performed in 438 BCE, parodied in
Aristophanes’ Acharnians of 425 BCE, and re-parodied in Thesmophoriazusae in 411
BCE. The innovative staging of the hostage scene in Telephus was certainly notable, so
much so that Aristophanes did not even need to name the play, performed 27 years earlier,
in the allusion in Thesmophoriazusae.225 He simply assumed that (at least part of) the
audience would catch the reference. Platter has argued that the scene in
Thesmophoriazusae needs to be read in response to the parody in Acharnians.226 If this is
true, perhaps the audience only needed think back to Aristophanes’ earlier parody in
Acharnians, and not all the way back to the original production of Telephus.
Much like the hostage scene in Telephus, the hauling scene in Peace was eminently
notable in its staging. A scholiast on Plato’s Apology 19c states that the comedic poet
Eupolis in Autolycus (420 BCE, with a later re-performance sometime before Eupolis’
To cite a modern comparison from film, allusions to the 1939 films Gone with the
Wind or Wizard of Oz are likely to be well-received by the audience, whereas allusions to
the winner of “Best Picture” and the highest-grossing film in 1938 (You Can’t Take It
With You) will likely flop, due to the simple fact that Gone with the Wind and Wizard of
Oz have continued relevance for Americans despite having premiered many years ago.
225
See for example the scene’s popularity in vase painting, in Taplin 2007, 205-10.
226
Platter 2007, 162-175.
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224
probable death in 411 BCE)227 and Plato Comicus in Victories (likely early 410s BCE)
mocked Aristophanes’ staging of the scene, because he “lifted up a κολοσσικὸν ἄγαλµα
of Peace”.228 The adjective κολοσσικὸν might mean ‘colossal’, as it tends to in later Greek,
but at the time the word could refer to a statue of any size. Thus the problem that Eupolis
and Plato Comicus saw in the staging might have something to do with the large size of the
statue, the type of statue Aristophanes used (perhaps a crude and archaic wooden one), or
the manner in which the statue was lifted.229 The fact that Peace was performed thirteen
years earlier need not concern us, especially in light of the re-performance of Peace II, with
a date certainly subsequent to Peace, and according to Olson, possibly after 413 BCE,
which would allow the audience to have a better recall of the play.230
Yet what motivation might Euripides have had in appropriating this scene from
Peace? I would argue that the intrusion of this element from comedy into Orestes falls
under the category of ‘disquieting confusion’.231 When the audience entered the theater to
see a tragedy by Euripides called Orestes, certain expectations arose from knowing these
paratexts, Genette’s term for external guides for the audience (the title and author of a
play being some of the few paratexts available to an ancient Greek audience). Orestes lies
onstage, suffering from madness, a ‘luckless corpse’, not speaking for 210 lines. Some
audience members might have felt unsure as to whether Euripides was going to kill off the
title character. Given Euripides’ penchant for subverting audience expectation, this may
have seemed possible. In this context, Orestes’ parodos, with its appropriation of the scene
from Peace, intensifies the horror of the scene, by juxtaposing its typical tragedic elements
For a brief biography of Eupolis, see Storey 2011b, 26-29.
Eupolis fr. 62 (Autolycus) in Storey 2011b, 76-7; Plato Comicus fr. 86 (Victories) in
Storey 2011c, 130-1. See Olson 1998, xliii-xliv for further discussion of the statue.
229
For the different possibilities on how this scene was staged, see Olson 1998, xliii-xlvi.
230
Olson 1998, xlviii-li. On issues of re-performance, see Revermann 2006, 66-94.
231
On this category, see Chapter 1.
102
227
228
with something markedly foreign to the genre. Due to this generic confusion, the audience
would feel unsettled and have a sense of imminent dread, feeling that something was
deeply wrong.232 In this scene, then, Euripides appropriates elements from comedy to
increase certain emotions of horror in the audience, all with the goal of achieving victory
in dramatic competitions. Perhaps paradoxically, the inclusion of a comedic element in
this tragedy actually increased the emotions pertaining to modern ideas of ‘the Tragic’.233
We can see a triangle of appropriation – first, a tragedic motif appears which is
noticeable enough to be parodied (a tragedic mad hero); second, a comedic appropriation
of the motif (a comedic mad hero in Wasps and Peace), and third, a tragedic reappropriation of the motif (Orestes, with an excessively tragedic mad hero in a scene
utilizing elements from comedy). The back-and-forth rivalry is marked by escalation – the
word nosos and its cognates appear forty-five times in Orestes, the highest in any drama.234
Quite the contrary to Harvey’s proposition that Euripides was “not in the least affected by
Aristophanes’ sly allusions” since he subsequently staged Orestes which featured an
opening scene with an insane hero, Euripides directly responded to Aristophanes’ portrayal
A modern parallel lies in the South Korean short horror film “Cut” (directed by ChanWook Park), seen in the 2004 film Three Extremes. A film director and his wife have been
taken hostage on a movie set that looks exactly like their own house. The director cannot
remember who the villain is until he puts on a number of silly costumes, such as flippers
and goggles, which remind the director that the man was an extra who appeared in five of
his films. Amidst the horror of the torture of the director and his wife, scenes straight out of
comedy appear with a marked shift in tone. In one example, the villain says he will let
them go if the director makes him laugh, and the director lets out a slow, loud fart.
Objectively, this is funny and could belong to comedy, especially if one saw the scene in
isolation (much as we might think that the parodos of Orestes might be from a comedy if
we had it in isolation in fragmentary form without the context of its place in a tragedy). In
the context of a horror movie, however, the goofy costuming and farts do not provoke
laughter from the audience. Rather, the audience feels unsettled and horrified, and the
horrific mood continues uninterrupted throughout the film.
233
For another example of a comedic element increasing tragic emotions, see Sommerstein
2002.
234
Mitchell-Boyask 2008, 29.
103
232
of the crazy, sick hero Trygaeus by including a component of Aristophanes’ madness scene
into the depiction of his own excessively mad tragedic hero.235
THE SATYRIC TRADITION
One must always be open to the possibility that any allusion may have resonances
beyond the relationship between hypertext and the hypotext, no matter how obvious that
relationship may be. For example, Thesmophoriazusae’s parody of Euripides’ Telephus
also alludes to Aristophanes’ previous parody in Acharnians, and thus the web of allusions
becomes more intricate, with three texts engaging in intertextuality.236 We are fortunate in
this case to have all three texts extant, and consequently we are able to investigate the ways
that the texts respond to one another. Yet fragmentary or lost plays in all likelihood
participated in paradrama (paratragedy, paracomedy, parasatyr drama) as much as our
extant plays. While these lost plays must be kept in mind, often the evidence they offer
may be misleading and can provide uncertain results. Still, with regard to the passages
from Peace and Orestes, one avenue of exploration, a connection with satyr drama,
affords enough solid evidence to suggest that the intertextuality may not be limited to a
relationship between hypertext (Orestes) and hypotext (Peace).
Some scholars have suggested that elements of the broader scene that contains the
parodos, Peace 301-519, evoke satyr drama.237 Hall argues that Aristophanes organizes the
internal structural order of Peace in such a way that it corresponds to the order of the
performances at the Dionysia: tragedy, satyr drama, and comedy.238 Under this model, the
parody of Euripides’ Bellerophon at the beginning of Peace corresponds to tragedy, the
Harvey 1971, 365.
Platter 2007, 162-175.
237
Bakola 2010, 108-110 and Hall 2006, 340-1.
238
Hall 2006, 338-41.
104
235
236
scene where the chorus hauls out the statue of Peace corresponds to satyr-play, and the
rousing finale corresponds to comedy. Among the myriad of genres Aristophanes refers to
in Peace, the comedian appropriates lyric and epic between the satyr drama and the
comedy sections of Peace.
One piece of evidence to support Hall’s designation of Peace 301-519 as modeling
satyr drama is that the summons to the chorus in Peace alludes to a similar summons from
Aeschylus’ satyr drama Net-Fishers:
Peace 296-8:
ἀλλ᾽ ὦ γεωργοὶ κἄµποροι καὶ τέκτονες
καὶ δηµιουργοὶ καὶ µέτοικοι καὶ ξένοι
καὶ νησιῶται, δεῦρ᾽ ἴτ᾽ ὦ πάντες λεῴ
“You farmers and merchants and carpenters
and craftsmen and immigrants and foreigners
and islanders, come here, all you people...”
Net-Fishers fr. 46a, 18-20:
]π̣άντες γεωργοὶ δϵῦτε | κ̣ἀµπελοσκάφοι
]ε ποιµήν τ εἴ τίς ἐστ᾽|[ἐ]γχώριος
]ο̣ι τε κα̣ὶ ̣µ̣α̣|[ριλ]ε̣υτῶν ἔθνο̣ς
“Come here, all you farmers and vine-diggers,
[and] any [goatherd or oxherd] or shepherd there is in these parts,
and [...]s and you tribe of charcoal-burners!”
The structures of both passages are very similar. Both passages call for the chorus’ help in
lifting an object, and both begin by mustering γεωργοὶ ‘farmers’ and go on to summon a
long list of available people. This topos is not confined to Net-Fishers but extends to other
105
satyr drama (Sophocles’ Trackers 39-42, and to some extent Aeschylus’ Theoroi or
Isthmiastai 18-9 and 72-4).
Another area of overlap between Peace 301-519 and satyr drama is the trope of
hauling an object. One example occurs in Aeschylus’ satyr drama Net-Fishers, when a
chorus of satyrs hauls the chest containing Danae out of the sea. A more specific parallel of
‘hauling’ is shown in the passages known as anodos scenes, which feature the emergence of
a divinity, usually a goddess, from the earth, accompanied by fertility and increased
agricultural production.239 Anodos scenes were not limited to the hauling of the statue of
Peace in Aristophanes’ play. While anodos scenes were widespread throughout Greek
literature and myth (for example, Persephone, Semele, Pandora, Aphrodite,240 and
Dionysus on the “Cleveland Dionysus” vase all have anodos scenes), three pieces of
evidence point to a connection between anodos scenes with satyr play.241 First, the
“Cleveland Dionysus” vase, a 4th century Apulian bell crater, features a gigantic head of a
statue of Dionysus rising out of the ground in the center, a comedic slave on the left, and a
Papposilenus on the right in a scene from a comedy featuring satyrs. Second, in vase
painting, unnamed goddesses (though one is labeled Aphrodite) often appear in anodos
scenes surrounded by satyrs.242 The hauling of the goddess Peace would fit in with such
scenes from vase painting, whereby a divinity, often a goddess, rises from the earth
surrounded by a chorus of satyrs. Third, Dobrov has argued for a specific connection with
Sophocles’ satyr drama Pandora or Sphyrokopoi ‘Hammer-wielders’, which, though
On anodos dramas in Greek tragedy, defined as dramas that adopt the mythical plot of
Persephone’s descent to and ascent from the underworld (Alcestis, Helen, and Iphigenia
among the Taurians), see Foley 2001, 301-332.
240
Olson 1998, xxxv-xxxviii.
241
Bérard 1974, 1-181.
242
See Olson 1998, xxxvii on anodos scenes in general.
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239
promising, is not provable, as no substantial fragments of the play survive.243 Dobrov’s
evidence consists of 1) a number of vase paintings of anodos scenes with satyrs holding
hammers, mesmerized by the goddess arising from the earth (though we cannot tell if these
reflect Sophocles’ lost satyr drama because the play is so fragmentary), 2) the mention of
sphyra ‘hammers’ at Peace 566 (sphyra is an unusual word which certainly may allude to
Sophocles’ lost satyr drama, as the play is called Sphyrokopoi), and 3) the description of
the goddess as smelling of ‘Sophoclean song’ at Peace 531 (though ‘Sophoclean song’
could refer to tragedy as well).244 It is difficult to ascertain if there was one satyr-play in
particular which served as the model for Aristophanes’ scene. In fact, the evidence for a
direct model is ambiguous, pointing variously to Aeschylus’ Net-Fishers, Sophocles’
Pandora or Sphyrokopoi ‘Hammer-wielders’, Sophocles’ Trackers and Euripides’ Cyclops,
Dobrov 2007, 263-5 suggests that Aristophanes’ motivation would be to appropriate
the primordial realm of the satyr-play utopia, with the discovery of a Pandora-like goddess
who can confer political benefits instead of the evils that she traditionally brings.
244
In my mind, the ‘Sophoclean song’ at Peace 531 more likely refers to tragedy, not satyr
drama. The full passage reads that the goddess smells of ‘harvest time, parties, festivals for
Dionysus, pipes, tragedians, songs by Sophocles, thrush meat, Euripides’ verselets...ivy, a
wine strainer, bleating flocks, the bosoms of women scampering to the fields, a drunken
slave girl, an upturned jug, and a host of other fine things’ (528-32, 535-8). Seen as a
whole, a number of potentially metapoetic themes appear: links to tragedies (tragedians,
songs by Sophocles, Euripides’ verselets), links to satyr play (ivy, a wine strainer, bleating
flocks) and links to comedy (bosoms of women scampering to the fields, drunken slave girl,
an upturned jug), ordered in such a way as to follow the overarching pattern Hall has
described for the play (tragedy, satyr play, comedy). There is a large amount of blending
between these categories, as certain elements apply to more than one genre – for example,
‘songs by Sophocles’ could refer to tragedy or satyr play, and the elements of drinking
could refer to both comedy and satyr play. If my analysis is correct, the blending of genres
in the list would correspond to Hall’s blending of generic elements (including lyric and
epic) in the play as a whole. The metapoetic argument may be further strengthened by
adding the potential metapoetics of Peace 694-97, when Trygaeus tells Peace that
Sophocles is turning into Simonides. Trygaeus explains that Sophocles is now making a
profit, the joke turning on Simonides’ reputation to be the first to compose poetry for a fee.
Yet if read metapoetically, Sophocles turning into Simonides could signal the play’s turn
from satyr-play (Sophocles) to lyric (Simonides), and indeed this is right before the section
which marks the transformation to lyric (775-817), part of which (775-780) parodies
Stesichorus’ lyric poem Oresteia.
107
243
leading one to conclude that Aristophanes was poaching generalized satyric motifs without
alluding to a specific hypotext, or at least, such a hypotext is not extant.
Aristophanes’ Peace is not unique in its borrowing from satyr drama, since other
precedents exist for comedy appropriating satyr drama. 245 The main comparison is with
Cratinus’ Dionysalexandros, which featured a chorus of satyrs.246 Other comedians wrote
comedies titled Satyroi ‘Satyrs’ (Cratinus, Callias, Ecphantides, Phrynicus, Timocles and
perhaps Ophelio), which must also have involved choruses of satyrs.247 Birds 1196-1261
shows the birds molesting Iris, which the audience may have registered as reminiscent of
satyr-play, considering that there are a number of vases depicting Iris being assaulted by
theatrical satyrs, though no extant plays show this theme.248 On the Cleveland Dionysus
vase, the Papposilenus is wearing a comedic mask and phallus, so the result is a
‘comedified’ character from a satyr play.249 There is also some evidence that satyr drama
could appropriate elements from comedy, as Astydamas, likely a 4th century tragedian,
incorporated a parabasis into his Heracles, a satyr play.250
All in all, it is quite likely that Aristophanes’ Peace (301-519), which contains the
parodos in question, evoked images of satyr drama for the audience. Following this line of
reasoning, it may be the case that one distinctive element in the comparison I made
between Peace and Orestes, namely, the chorus with varying degrees of volume, may have
been in its origin a trope from satyr drama. The generalized loudness of the satyrs, often
connected with dance, was a popular motif of satyr drama, for example, Cyclops 37-40
Bakola 2010, 81-88.
See especially Bakola 2010, 81-117.
247
Bakola 2010, 102-12 and Revermann 2006, 103.
248
Bakola 2010, 107-8 and Dunbar 1995, 612-614 on Birds 1196-1261.
249
See Bakola 2010, 110-2, Revermann 2006, 103-4, 153-4, and Green 1995, 93-120.
250
Revermann 2006, 279-80 suggests that Athenaeus, from whom we have Astydamas’
potentially parabatic passage (TrGF 60 F4), may have misidentified the fragment as
belonging to a satyr drama when it actually belonged to a comedy.
108
245
246
mentions the loud dance of the satyrs called the sikinnis; Cyclops 220-2 displays
Polyphemus’ fear that if he swallowed the satyrs, they would be the death of him due to
their dancing in his belly; and Sophocles’ Trackers 217-220, 222, 227, 237, 251-7
highlight the shouting, dancing, and general noise of the chorus.
However, two passages (Euripides’ Cyclops 608-662 and Sophocles’ Trackers 217257) hint at the idea that it was not simply a constant torrent of noise emanating from the
satyr chorus, but rather, their volume was used as metatheatrical commentary and could
increase or decrease based on the needs of the scene. Euripides’ Cyclops 608-662 presents
some evidence for a partial ebb and flow of choral volume. At this point in the play, the
chorus is singing a joyful ode about the imminent blinding of Polyphemus (608-624), and
presumably is doing so loudly, since Odysseus bursts in and orders the chorus of satyrs to
be silent (625-9):
Odysseus: σιγᾶτε πρὸς θεῶν, θῆρες, ἡσυχάζετε,
συνθέντες ἄρθρα στόµατος: οὐδὲ πνεῖν ἐῶ,
οὐ σκαρδαµύσσειν οὐδὲ χρέµπτεσθαί τινα,
ὡς µὴ 'ξεγερθῇ τὸ κακόν, ἔστ᾽ ἂν ὄµµατος
ὄψις Κύκλωπος ἐξαµιλληθῇ πυρί.
Chorus: σιγῶµεν ἐγκάψαντες αἰθέρα γνάθοις.
Odysseus: Silence, you savages, for heaven’s sake quiet! Let your lips be shut fast! I
forbid anyone even to breathe or to blink or to clear his throat lest the monster
wake up before the Cyclops’ eye can have its contest with the fire.
Chorus: We hold our peace, gulping down the air with our mouths.
In 629, the chorus says that they will be silent, and we have no reason to doubt their claim.
Odysseus does not rebuke them any further for their loudness, which lends credence to the
idea that they are in fact silent, as one might otherwise expect the staging seen in the
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constant shushing of Amphitryon in Heracles 1042-70. Finally, in 652, Odysseus asks the
chorus to cheer, which the chorus agrees to do (654). Following this is a loud choral ode
filled with hurrahs (656-662). The evidence points to a loud chorus becoming silent and
then loud again. While this is not quite the same, since the chorus does not say they will be
silent and then continue to be loud, this offers an example of a chorus of satyrs with an
increase and decrease of choral volume.
The second relevant passage comes from Sophocles’ Trackers. The chorus of satyrs
loudly threatens an unknown person (actually an offstage Hermes making noise on his
invention of the lyre), “...But I’ll quickly make the ground ring with swift jumps and kicks,
and force him to hear me, however deaf he may be (217-20).” Cyllene bursts in and
chastises them (221-242), and the chorus apologizes (243-250). The chorus must decrease
their volume, since Cyllene says (251-257), “That’s better, you sound gentler now...I
won’t put up with your loud, quarrelsome words. But calm down (ἥσυχος πρόφαινε) and
tell me what it is you need.” Here, Cyllene makes the loud satyrs become silent, but it is
unclear whether they become loud again afterwards.
While neither Euripides’ Cyclops 608-662 nor Sophocles’ Trackers 217-257
exploits the ebb and flow of choral volume to the extent that Peace or Orestes does, there is
some evidence to show that choral volume was a metatheatrical technique used by satyr
dramas, at least twice. There may have been a satyr drama, or many satyr dramas, which
contained an ebb and flow of choral volume. We must be careful in suggesting this was a
prototypical trope of satyr drama, because the fragments of satyr drama provide a very
small sample size with which to establish prototypicality. Consequently, this demonstration
that satyr dramas featured varying levels of choral volume is valid only as far as our
evidence will allow. The advent of new texts in the satyric corpus would undoubtedly alter
this argument (as it would alter all scholarship involving satyr drama).
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The best way to understand the layers of poetic appropriation between satyr
drama, comedy, and tragedy in all the passages discussed in this chapter is to claim first,
that Aristophanes adopted a general trope of satyr play (chorus with an ebb and flow of
volume, or at least, a chorus who metatheatrically had the ability to vary their volume)
into Peace and melded it with a parody of tragedic madness and second, that Euripides
adopted elements from the parodos in Aristophanes’ Peace wholesale into Orestes. A
second option is to claim that both Aristophanes’ Peace and Euripides’ Orestes were
responding to a no longer extant satyr drama that contained a number of these themes: a
mad character in a sleep scene with varying levels of choral volume. If such a play came to
light, it would of course clarify the situation immensely, but without it one can only raise
that possibility. A third hypothesis emerges, namely that both Euripides’ tragedy Orestes
and his satyr drama Cyclops respond to Aristophanes’ Peace. Both Orestes and Cyclops
were likely produced in the same tetralogy in 408 BCE, and it would afford a two-pronged
response to Aristophanes’ Peace, possibly re-initiated by the re-production (or re-working)
of Peace II, perhaps performed soon after 413 BCE.251 In addition to a possible ebb and
flow of choral volume, Cyclops contains other parallels with the scenes from Peace and
Orestes. Polyphemus is a dangerous character that appears to be suffering from madness
(µαινοµένου, 618).252 There is a focus on metatheatricality, when the chorus says that
they have become lame and sprained their feet while standing (637-40). Odysseus
commands the chorus to be silent (σιγᾶτε, 625) lest the dangerous Cyclops awaken (µὴ
'ξεγερθῇ τὸ κακόν, 628). The chorus says that they will be silent (σιγῶµεν ἐγκάψαντες
αἰθέρα γνάθοις, 630), and it is unclear if they continue their loudness or if they become
On Peace II, see Olson 1998, xlviii-li.
Lucian (Dialogues of the Sea Gods 2.4) may continue the tradition that the Cyclops
was mad, since the Cyclops complains to Poseidon about how the other Cyclopes did not
help him when he called for help because they thought he suffered from melancholy.
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251
252
silent. The one word reference to madness (µαινοµένου, 618), the metatheatrics, and the
command to be silent addressed to the chorus may have been enough to evoke the parodos
of Peace, especially with Orestes recalling the scene directly before Cyclops in the same
tetralogy. This hypothesis is somewhat speculative, but the possibilities are intriguing, as it
would provide an example of two cases of paracomedy within a tetralogy responding to a
single target, and would provide a hint of a unifying theme in a late-Euripidean
tetralogy.253
Trachiniae
Philoctetes
Heracles
Orestes
Peace
Cyclops
Madness/Sickness
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Chorus told to be
silent
Metatheater
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Ebb and flow of
choral silence and
loudness
No
No
No
Yes
Yes
Perhaps
Table 9. Summary of Madness Scenes
The parodos of Euripides’ Orestes (132-210) contains an element that is of very
low prototypicality, occurring only once in extant tragedy. The closest parallel is the
parodos of Aristophanes’ Peace, which similarly features a mad character, a command to
Arnott 1983, 21 briefly compares Orestes 131-210 and Cyclops 624-9 with Heracles
1042-1087 but not Aristophanes’ Peace. Arnott recognizes Euripides’ ‘calculated intent’,
and says his objective was to cause surprise and admiration at the novel treatment of
choral song. Furthermore, he adds, “Humour must have been far from the poet’s mind in
the Orestes and Heracles examples.” In another article, Arnott 1972, 224-26, the author
analyzes Cyclops 624-9 as burlesquing the conventions of ancient drama and engaging in
self-parody, though he does not name a direct target of the parody. Arnott is interested
primarily in Euripides’ interaction with dramatic conventions, drawing parallels in the
scene from Orestes and Hippolytus 575-580, in which the chorus refuses Phaedra’s request
to leave stage due to the convention that the chorus remains onstage the entire play once it
arrives in the parados.
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253
be silent, prominent metatheater, and an ebb and flow of choral volume while pretending
to stop. A further layer of borrowing from satyr drama is plausible, but ultimately
unprovable due to the nature of our evidence. Despite the complications that can arise
when contemplating the degrees to which these elements are comedic or satyric (and some
scholars may favor one option more than the other), the conclusion remains that Euripides
is adopting elements which derive from comedy, satyr drama, or both. The disquieting
confusion that arises from juxtaposing the comedo-satyric element with tragedy increases
the horror of the madness scene, and Euripides’ incorporation of a trope foreign to the
genre highlights the presence, and indeed the complexity, of the cross-generic
appropriation occurring within 5th century drama.
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Chapter 4: Hostages and Incineration in Euripides and Aristophanes
In the final scene (1567-1624) of Euripides’ Orestes, the protagonist Orestes, along
with Electra and Pylades, puts a sword to the neck of Hermione, the daughter of
Menelaus, on the roof of the skene. Orestes warns Menelaus that he will kill Hermione if
Menelaus does not allow them to escape. When this ploy fails, he threatens to incinerate
the building, killing everyone inside, an act that Apollo prevents at the last possible
moment. I propose that the combination of the tense hostage scene and the threat of
incineration can be read as Euripides drawing upon and fusing two interconnected literary
traditions of hostage scenes: one from tragedy, and the other from comedy. First I will
discuss the tragedic tradition of Euripidean hostage scenes, which we can first discern in
Telephus (438 BCE) and which reappear in Andromache (c. 425 BCE) and Orestes (408
BCE), by highlighting the ways in which Euripides repeatedly draws upon and reuses set
hostage and kidnapper character types taken from the mythology related to Menelaus and
his family.254 Second I’ll examine the comedic treatment of hostage scenes, from the
parody of Euripides’ Telephus in Aristophanes’ Acharnians (425 BCE) to the contrasting
parody of the same play in Thesmophoriazusae (411 BCE), showing ultimately how
Euripides appropriated comedic elements of the hostage scene in Thesmophoriazusae into
Orestes (408 BCE).255
The three tragic hostage scenes are mentioned without much analysis by Stevens 1971,
134-135 note at 309-463, and by Porter 1994, 87-8.
255
Platter 2007, 143-175 analyzes the two Aristophanic hostage scenes in conjunction with
Telephus.
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254
Date
Title
Kidnapper
Hostage
438
BCE
Euripides’ Telephus
Telephus
Baby Orestes
c. 425
BCE
425
BCE
411
BCE
Euripides’ Andromache
Menelaus
Andromache’s Son
Aristophanes’ Acharnians
Dicaeopolis
Charcoal Bucket
Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae
Kinsman
Mica’s “Baby”, the
winesack
408
BCE
Euripides’ Orestes
Orestes,
Electra,
Pylades
Hermione, daughter of
Menelaus
Threatened
Person
Agamemnon,
Clytemnestra,
Menelaus
Andromache
Chorus of
Acharnians
Mica, chorus of
Women at the
Thesmophoria
Menelaus
Table 10. Summary of Hostage Scenes
Both tragedic and comedic practices evolved, from what we can tell, from one
formative play – Euripides’ Telephus, which narrated the tale of Telephus, the king of the
Mysians, who was wounded in the thigh by Achilles’ spear in a battle preceding the Trojan
War.256 According to an oracle, the wound could only be cured by the weapon that
inflicted it, so Telephus traveled to Argos to request help from Achilles. Telephus begins
the play disguised in rags, enters the palace of Argos, and participates in a quarrel between
Agamemnon and Menelaus about whether the Greeks should re-invade Troy.257 The
Greeks realize that there is an intruder in their midst, begin a search for him, and
Telephus’ identity is uncovered. At this point in the play, the hostage scene occurs –
Telephus grabs baby Orestes (perhaps with the help of Clytemnestra), holds him hostage,
On Euripides’ Telephus, see Handley and Rea 1956, Heath 1987, Collard and Cropp
2008, 185-191 and Dobrov 2001, 37-43. For the myth of Telephus before and including
5th century BCE tragedy, see Gantz 1993, 428-431, 576-580. A recent fragment of
Archilochus (P.Oxy LXIX 4708) stresses Telephus’ martial exploits, on which most
recently see Swift 2012, 139-155.
257
On Telephus’ rags, see Chapter 5.
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256
and uses Orestes to compel the Greeks to listen to him. Finally, Telephus acquires the help
that he needs from Achilles, and the rust from Achilles’ spear cures his wound.
The hostage scene was the memorable highlight of Telephus, as we can tell from
the numerous vase paintings depicting the scene and the fact that Aristophanes staged two
elaborate parodies of it in Acharnians and Thesmophoriazusae.258 According to Csapo, the
scene where Telephus holds Orestes hostage using a short sword or a knife was a
Euripidean innovation, and did not appear in the earlier portrayals of the myth, including
Aeschylus’ Telephus, likely performed some twenty-odd years before.259 Csapo’s evidence
is drawn from vase painting, of which only two examples depict Telephus at the altar
before 438 BCE, the date of Euripides’ Telephus. The first (c. 470 BCE) is an Attic redfigured cup in Boston signed by Hieron (MFA 98.931) showing Telephus holding a spear
at the altar, and the second (c. 450 BCE) is an Attic red-figured pelike in the British
Museum (London E 382) showing Telephus at the altar calmly holding the baby Orestes
as well as his spear. All the vases that postdate Euripides’ Telephus (about thirty vases)
show Telephus with baby Orestes at the altar wielding a short sword, a weapon necessary
for taking the baby hostage, as the spear that was previously used was too long and
unwieldy for the task. As far as we can tell, Euripides’ Telephus was the first to introduce
the element of ‘a child held hostage with a knife on an altar’ to narratives involving
Telephus, and this must have been a revolutionary, emotionally stimulating, and highly
notable scene, precipitating a shift in depictions on vase painting and serving as a hypotext
Taplin 2007, 205-6, rightly refutes the idea that the hostage scene in Telephus occurred
offstage and was reported by a messenger. Why would Aristophanes parody a scene twice
with so much detail in the borrowing of lines and staging unless it actually occurred
onstage?
259
Csapo 1990, 41-52.
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258
for a wide variety of hypertexts.260 Indeed, all subsequent hostage scenes in Greek drama
were indebted to it.
The category of ‘hostage scenes’ may seem arbitrary, given that there was no
explicit category in antiquity named as such. However, hostage scenes in drama, ever since
Telephus, contain a number of elements that are easily identifiable: 1) the taking of a
hostage, 2) who is the child of a character onstage, 3) with a knife, 4) often at an altar.
These basic similarities, paired with the fact that the same cast of characters is involved in
Euripides’ presentations of hostage scenes (Orestes, Menelaus, Hermione), indicate that we
can read these hostage scenes as a unified grouping of texts, all presenting modifications of
the scene in Telephus. The hostage scenes represented by Telephus, Andromache,
Acharnians, Thesmophoriazusae and Orestes differ greatly from the only other potential
parallel, Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus (818-886), in which Creon, who already
abducted Oedipus’ daughter Ismene, abducts Oedipus’ other daughter Antigone in front
of the powerless hero. Whereas the perpetrators in Telephus, Andromache, Acharnians,
Thesmophoriazusae and Orestes hold the child of a character hostage onstage, threatening
immediate death with a knife or sword, Creon has Antigone dragged away without using a
blade, as evidenced by Creon’s constant use of ‘verbs of touching’ (ξυναρπάζω, 819,
ἄγω, 819, 832, ἐξάγω, 826, ἅπτω, 830) and Antigone’s cries that she is being dragged
away (ἀφελκοµαι, 844, πορεύοµαι, 845). While both the ‘hostage scenes’ and Oedipus at
Colonus 818-886 highlight a sense of violence towards the child of an onstage character,
they differ in their explicitness - in Oedipus at Colonus, the audience fears what will
Thesmophoriazusae 693-5, which features the Kinsman abducting Mica’s “baby”
(actually a winesack) and holding it hostage with a knife may attest to the presence of a
knife in Euripides’ Telephus if the scene maintains some of the staging from Telephus:
“Nay, here and now, smitten to his crimson veins by this knife (µαχαίρᾳ) atop the thigh
bones, shall he begore the altar!” (Trans. Henderson, adapted).
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260
happen offstage, whereas in the hostage scenes, the audience fears that a child will be
slaughtered onstage. The hostage scenes and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus may be
compared in other non-structural ways, for example, there are similar reasons for the
hostage-taking in Orestes and the abduction in Oedipus at Colonus, namely, a betrayal of
the code of friendship (philia).261 However, from the lack of direct parallels with the other
hostage scenes it is clear that Sophocles was not drawing upon the hostage scene prototype,
as exemplified in Euripides’ Telephus, in the same way. Consequently, these five scenes
(Telephus, Andromache, Acharnians, Thesmophoriazusae and Orestes) represent the
totality of hostage scenes in extant drama.
This is not to say that other dramas about Telephus had no affect on Aristophanes’
parodies and the other hostage scenes in tragedy. In addition to Aeschylus’ Telephus,
which as far as we can tell did not involve threats to Orestes or taking him hostage,
Sophocles wrote a Telepheia, which, according to a fourth century inscription, was likely a
tetralogy (or at least a trilogy) about Telephus, possibly including plays entitled Sons of
Aleus, Mysians, Telephus, and Eurypylus.262 We know next to nothing of these plays
about Telephus and even less about the other tragedies titled Telephus by Iophon (late 5th
century BCE), Agathon (late 5th century BCE), Kleophon (4th century BCE) and
Moschion (4th century BCE) and the Doric comedies by Deinolochos (early 5th century)
and Rhinthon (4th-3rd centuries BCE).263 Platter’s caveat must be taken seriously, that just
because we have no evidence about these plays about Telephus or about other hostage
Edmunds 1996, 118-121.
The inscription can be found at DID 5 in Snell 1986, 39. On Aeschylus’ Telephus, see
Csapo 1990, 41-52. On Sophocles’ Telephus plays, see Lloyd-Jones 1996, 32-33.
263
Olson 2002, lv. Iophon was the son of Sophocles, and was somewhat successful as a
tragic poet in his own right. Agathon was the fourth best tragic poet outside of the triad of
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (on Agathon, see Duncan 2006, 25-57). Little is
known about Kleophon, Moschion and Deinolochus. Rhinthon wrote texts called
hilarotragoidiai, on which see Taplin 1993, 48-52.
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261
262
scenes does not mean that they did not exist or were unimportant to 5th century dramatic
poets.264 However, we lack the evidence to suggest that these plays included hostage scenes
at all, and even if they did, we cannot draw comparisons to what these other possible
hostage scenes might have entailed.
THE TRAGEDIC TRADITION
After Euripides’ Telephus, the next attested hostage-taking scene in tragedy occurs
in lines 309-463 of Euripides’ Andromache (c. 425 BCE).265 Andromache begins the play
in difficult straits, as she has been captured and enslaved by Neoptolemus (12-15), and her
troubles continue as Neoptolemus’ wife Hermione and her father Menelaus are plotting to
kill Andromache and her child (39-40).266 Due to this threat, she has sent her son away
(47-8) and has taken sanctuary at the altar of Thetis, marked in the play by frequent
references to the altar, the statue, the shrine, and the temenos of Thetis (42-4, 115, 117,
129-30, 135, 161-2, 246, 253, 260, 262, 314, 380). Andromache is physically touching
the altar for sanctuary, as evidenced by the fact that she departs from the altar and
abandons its protection at Andromache 411. The hostage scene begins when Menelaus
brings in Andromache’s son as a hostage, threatening to kill the boy unless she leaves the
protection of Thetis (315-16, 380-3). The word most often used to describe the threatened
killing is the neutral word κτάνειν ‘to kill’, yet three times the root is σφάζ-/σφάγ- ‘to
slaughter by slitting the throat with a blade’ (315, 429, 547) which implies that Menelaus
is threatening them with a blade of some sort.267
Platter 2007, 149-50.
For an overview of the scene, see Allan 2000, 62-3.
266
Her child is unnamed in the play but is called Molossus in the mythological tradition,
on which see Gantz 1993, 689, 692.
267
See Stevens 1971, note 315 for the same conclusion.
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264
265
From this description of the plot of Andromache, I suggest that the hostage scene at
Andromache 309-463 responds to the hostage scene in Telephus on four levels, as both
plays involve 1) the taking of a hostage, 2) who is a young boy and the child of a character
onstage, 3) using a knife, 4) at an altar that is being used for protection. Euripides adapts
the elements of Telephus’ hostage scene and re-arranges them to create an alternate
staging of a hostage scene in Andromache. In Telephus, the hostage-taker (Telephus) uses
the altar for protection and in that sacred place threatens the child (Orestes) with the knife,
while the child’s mother (Clytemnestra) witnesses the incident away from the altar. In
Andromache, the hostage-taker (Menelaus) threatens the child with a knife away from the
altar, while the child’s mother (Andromache) witnesses the incident at the altar as she uses
it for protection.
This visual inversion of the hostage scene is but one of Andromache’s many
reversals of Telephus, as numerous transformations of character occur as well. In
Telephus, Menelaus seems to have taken a neutral role, participating in the discussion
about whether the Greeks should return to Troy or not, whereas in Andromache he is the
villainous aggressor. In Telephus, Orestes is the baby taken hostage, whereas in
Andromache he is the savior of Hermione.268 Euripides develops the hostage scene as a
whole while maintaining its most important elements for evoking a response from the
audience. Both Telephus’ and Menelaus’ actions are horrific, as threatening to kill a child
at an altar would have offended the audience in numerous ways, violating familial, social,
and religious codes of conduct.
Roughly eighteen years later, Orestes (408 BCE) presents a new hostage scene,
overturning Andromache in its plot, mythology, and dramaturgy. In Andromache, Orestes
Euripides will transform both characters once again in Orestes (408 BCE), on which see
below.
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268
rescues Hermione, but in Orestes he ends up holding her hostage (ὅµηρος, Orestes 1189).
In Apollo’s deus ex machina (1653-1657), the play’s new relationship between Orestes
and Hermione is overturned, and Hermione is compelled to marry Orestes instead of
Neoptolemus (the version of the myth Euripides uses in Andromache).269 Zeitlin has
remarked that in Orestes, Euripides’ own earlier play Andromache is a “play whose plot
we are told retroactively will never take place.”270 From the perspective of Andromache,
the hostage scene and the characters involved are also inverted. Orestes’ hostage scene as a
whole maintains the primary elements that identify this as a hostage scene – 1) the taking
of a hostage (ὅµηρος, 1189), 2) who is the child of a character onstage (Hermione’s father
Menelaus looks on with horror), 3) with a sword (ξίφος, 1575, ἐπισφάζω, 1596,
φάσγανον, 1608). Yet Euripides no longer locates the action at an altar, but instead
places it atop the skēnē, a dramatic choice that sensationalizes the hostage scene.271 We can
see Euripides deliberately remodeling the characters of Menelaus, Orestes, and Hermione
as he progresses from Telephus to Andromache and finally to Orestes. Menelaus is a
bystander in Telephus, the hostage-taker in Andromache, and the grieved father of the
hostage Hermione in Orestes. Orestes is the baby held hostage in Telephus, the savior of
Hermione in Andromache, and the one who takes Hermione hostage in Orestes.272
Hermione changes from aggressor in Andromache to victim in Orestes. Throughout the
plays, the size of the child threatened is enlarged, from baby Orestes in Telephus, to
Andromache’s child in Andromache, to the full-grown Hermione in Orestes. The
On the marriage of Neoptolemus and Hermione in Andromache, see
Papadimitropoulos 2006, 147-158.
270
Zeitlin 2003, 340-1.
271
Wright 2008, 48 notes that this is the only tragedy culminating with a roof-top hostage
scene.
272
Zeitlin 2003, 339 remarks that the hostage scene in Orestes is a ‘coming about full circle
to his own childhood experience in another Euripidean play as a hostage at the hands of
Telephus.”
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269
differences at various chronological points mark a progression for the hostage scenes,
whereby each scene directly adapts the one that precedes it.
The fact that Orestes in Orestes assumes the hostage-taking role that Menelaus
played in Andromache is suggested by Euripides’ reversal of the ‘gotcha moment’ that he
composed in Andromache.273 At the crucial point when Menelaus captures Andromache
when she leaves the altar, Menelaus says, “I’ve got you! (ἔχω σ’, Andromache 427).”274
The same phrasing, a form of ἔχω and a personal pronoun, is used in Orestes, when
Menelaus says, “You’ve got me! (ἔχεις µε, 1617),” at the point where Menelaus is outargued by Orestes and is left without any options or means to recover his daughter. While
it may be objected that ἔχω and a form of a personal pronoun are not distinctive enough
vocabulary to suggest an allusion between the plays, the combination of both elements
together is actually quite rare. In the context of a struggle, a phrase like ἔχω σ’ can only
refer to point at which one person defeats the other, as the remaining options the LiddellScott-Jones lexicon provides for the active transitive verb ἔχω taking a person as a direct
object do not give suitable semantics - ‘have as wife or husband’ (LSJ, ἔχω A.I.4),
‘entertain at one’s house’ (A.I.5), ‘support’ or ‘sustain’ (A.II.5), ‘check’ or ‘stop’ (A.II.9),
‘hinder’ (A.II.10), or ‘keep safe’ (A.II.12). Furthermore, these ‘gotcha moments’, using
ἔχω and a personal pronoun, are probably linguistically clipped forms of the fuller phrase
σε µέσον ἔχω, “I’ve got you by the middle”, a metaphor designating a particular
wrestling hold, seen for example at Clouds 1047, Acharnians 571, Knights 388, and Frogs
Due to absence of text for the hostage scene in Telephus, there is no evidence one way
or the other regarding the presence of a “gotcha moment” in that hostage scene.
274
This phrase is an emendation by Jackson 1955, correcting the manuscript reading of
ἔγω σ’, which makes little sense. Jackson’s emendation is accepted by Diggle’s OCT,
Kovacs’ Loeb, Lloyd’s 1994 commentary (upheld in his second edition in 2005), but is
questioned in Sansone 2007 on the grounds of asyndeton and an unusual use of ἵνα.
However, neither of these arguments is persuasive enough to discount the emendation.
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273
469.275 In Orestes, Euripides stages an inversion of his earlier hostage scene and uses the
same phrase to mark the moment of triumph both when Menelaus traps Andromache in
Andromache, but also when Menelaus is trapped by Orestes in Orestes. Orestes conforms
to general standards of tragedic hostage scenes, but overturns and inverts the plots and
characters of Euripides’ own earlier tragedies, so much so that it is as if they had not
occurred at all.
THE COMEDIC TRADITION
Only two scenes in comedy contain hostage scenes, both of which parody the
hostage scene in Euripides’ Telephus – Aristophanes’ Acharnians 317-625 and
Thesmophoriazusae 467-764.276 Both plays quote extensively from and rework Euripides’
play using different methods, and the paratragedy achieves different effects in each play.277
Among various other techniques, such as rearranging the elements of the hypotext in the
hypertext or parodying different aspects of Euripides’ Telephus, I suggest that
Aristophanes adapts the hostage scenes by adding the distinctive element of ‘charcoal’ to
Acharnians and the distinctive element of ‘incineration’ to Thesmophoriazusae, extending
the possibilities of what ‘charcoal’ might portend. Furthermore, I suggest that Euripides
reacts to Aristophanes’ addition of incineration to the hostage scene in Thesmophoriazusae
by incorporating the same incineration into the hostage scene in Orestes.
In the passage from Clouds, the metaphor is reinforced with the use of λαµβάνω,
which, like ἔχω, can refer to wrestling (though normally with µέσον, see Poliakoff 1982,
40-53). The same reinforcement with λαµβάνω occurs at Orestes 1617-1618, where
Menelaus exclaims, “You’ve got me (ἔχεις µε)!” and Orestes responds, “You captured
yourself (σαυτὸν σύ γ᾽ ἔλαβες)!” While the use of a specific metaphor drawn from
wrestling adds a greater nuance to understanding the scene, it is not necessary for my
argument.
276
For other Aristophanic allusions to Telephus see Knights 813, 1240, Clouds 891, 921-4,
Peace 528, and Frogs 855, 860-4 and possibly 1400.
277
See primarily Dobrov 2001, 37-53 and Platter 2007, 143-175.
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275
In Acharnians, references to Euripides’ Telephus permeate the play from
beginning to end, from line 8 (‘It was worthy of Greece’, ἄξιον γὰρ Ἑλλάδι) to line 1188
(‘He pressed and routed the brigands with his spear’, λῃστὰς ἐλαύνων καὶ
κατασπέρχων δορί). The most concentrated allusions appear in 317-625:278
1) 317-8 - Dicaeopolis offers to speak with his head on a butcher’s block
(ἐπίξενον), a comedic literalization of a metaphor from Telephus fr. 706, where
Telephus says he will speak even if someone were about to strike his neck with an
axe (πέλεκυς).
2) 325-48 - Dicaeopolis takes a charcoal-basket hostage and threatens to kill it,
much like Telephus does to Orestes.
3) 393-479 - Dicaeopolis visits Euripides to obtain Telephus’ rags in order to
heighten his persuasiveness, which derives from appropriating elements of tragedy.
Telephus appears as a beggar in rags in Telephus fr. 697, 698, 702a.279
4) 497-556 – Dicaeopolis speaks in defense of the Spartans with allusions to
Telephus’ speech in Telephus fr. 703, 708, 708a, 709, 710.
5) 577-8 – Dicaeopolis is accused of slander, which corresponds to Telephus fr.
712, 712a.
While most scholars have focused on the similarities between the two plays, it is
important also to examine the differences. Minor changes are made by substituting lexical
items to fit the genre of comedy; hence, Aristophanes replaces the “leaders of the Greeks”
in Telephus with the metatheatrical address to “the spectators” in Acharnians.280 Dobrov
has shown how Aristophanes’ scene in Acharnians jumbles the order of operations that
This list of concentrated allusions is drawn from Olson 2002, lviii-lix.
On the appropriation of Telephus’ rags see Chapter 5.
280
Platter 2007, 157.
124
278
279
occurred in Telephus, a parodic method that highlights the arbitrariness of the poetic
construction of the original.281 For example, whereas Telephus arrives in his ragged
disguise at the beginning of the play, Dicaeopolis gets his rags from Euripides halfway
through the allusions to Telephus, which leads to consequences that are perhaps confusing
– Dicaeopolis has not yet put on his rag costume when he takes the charcoal bucket
hostage. This process forces the audience to put a scene together actively rather than
receiving it as a polished whole.282 Further differences concern the tone of the
appropriation, as Platter has noted that when Aristophanes replaces the axe (pelekus) with
a butcher’s block (epixenon), the heroic and epic tone of pelekus descends to the prosaic
world of the laborer.283
I would add another difference between Acharnians and Telephus, which is
important for the development of hostage scenes. In Acharnians, the chorus consists of the
old men of Acharnae who are obsessed with charcoal.284 Not only does Aristophanes make
Dicaeopolis take one of their charcoal buckets hostage, he cleverly describes the chorus
with adjectives that could equally characterize charcoal just as much as surly and sturdy
old men (Acharnians 179-181):
Amphitheus: οἱ δ᾽ ὤσφροντο πρεσβῦταί τινες
Ἀχαρνικοί, στιπτοὶ γέροντες πρίνινοι
ἀτεράµονες Μαραθωνοµάχαι σφενδάµνινοι.
Dobrov 2001, 47-50.
The extensive reshuffling of dramatic elements in the parody is similar to what occurs in
the ‘named’ parodies of Helen, Palamedes, and Andromeda in Thesmophoriazusae, on
which see Nieddu 2004, 331-360.
283
Platter 2007, 153-5.
284
On the deme of Acharnae, see Olson 2002, 126 note on 177. On the historical evidence
for the business of charcoal and firewood for fuel, see Olson 1991, 411-20. See Chapter 5
for arguments for paracomedy based on the Acharnians’ trait of ‘oldness’ as opposed to
their connection with charcoal.
125
281
282
Amphitheus: Some elders of Acharnae got wind of them, sturdy geezers,
tough as hardwood, stubborn Marathon fighters, men of maple.
The Acharnians are ‘compressed’ (στίπτοι, 180), ‘made of holm oak’ (πρίνινοι, 180),
and ‘made of maple’ (σφενδάµνινοι, 181). Charcoal is by nature compressed, and oak
and maple are two types of wood used in making charcoal, but the terms have a double
meaning by referring to the sturdy qualities of the old men. Though the chorus fought at
the battle of Marathon, it turns out that their heroic exploits were actually just carrying
around charcoal (212-213). The Acharnians are given individual names based on
charcoal: Μαριλάδη “Son of coal dust” (609), Ἀνθράκυλλος “Little Coal”, Εὐφορίδης
“Son of Good-Carrier”, Πρινίδης “Son of Oak” (612), and the choral ode at 665-675
associates the Acharnians with fire, sparks, and oaken coals. Right after Dicaeopolis begins
the allusions to Telephus by offering to put his head on a butcher block (317-8), he speaks
about the chorus: “What a dark ember blazed up in you then! (οἷον αὖ µέλας τις ὑµῖν
θυµάλωψ ἐπέζεσεν, 321).”285 The word for ‘ember’ is the very rare word θυµάλωψ,
which designates a half-burnt piece of charcoal, perfect for the fiery old men.286 Below I
suggest that when this rare word θυµάλωψ re-appears at Thesmophoriazusae 729, it
alludes to this passage.
The most memorable connection with charcoal is when Dicaeopolis strikes at the
heart of the Acharnian economy by holding hostage the charcoal basket (λάρκος, 333) in
the parody of the hostage scene in Telephus. The charcoal basket takes the place of baby
Orestes in Telephus, as evidenced by the chorus leader’s fear that Dicaeopolis has one of
See Olson 2002, 161-162 note on 321, for more information on his complex and mixed
metaphor.
286
θυµάλωψ cited at Aristophanes’ Acharnians 321 and Thesmophoriazusae 729;
Lucian’s Lexiphanes 24; Strattis fr. 58 (cited at Pollux 10.101), Pollux 7.110 and 7.152,
and scattered entries in the lexicographers.
126
285
their children (παιδίον, 329) locked away. The Acharnians cannot bear to see one of their
own held hostage, so they acquiesce.287 The hostage scene contains the same elements as in
its model Telephus: 1) a hostage is taken (ὅµηροι, 327), 2) who is the child of someone
onstage, 3) using a sword (342), though these tragedic elements are further adapted to fit
the comic caricature of the anti-peace (182-5, 223-33) Acharnians who are, incidentally,
obsessed with the production and transport of charcoal.288
The use of paratragedy in Acharnians is complex and offers different tones and
modes of appropriation, and we can detect both negative and positive aspects of the
paratragedy. On the negative side, the prosaic language of comedy contaminates the lofty
language and subject material of tragedy, as when the commonplace ‘butcher’s block’
replaces the tragedic ‘axe’, highlighting the overblown diction of tragedy.289 Similarly, I
argue in Chapter 5 that in Acharnians Aristophanes characterizes the use of rags in tragedy
as old-fashioned and overdone pieces of costuming, portraying those costumes as
ridiculous. On the positive side, Dicaeopolis appropriates the behavior of Telephus, an
extraordinarily effective rhetorical speaker from tragedy, seeking to “defend comedy’s
social and political criticism” and to “claim for it the moral authority, literary prestige and
latitude that audiences have always given to more pretentious genres.”290 Foley argues that
Aristophanes selected Telephus because the tragedic hero shared a number of similarities
Once the coast is clear, Dicaeopolis further references charcoal, describing how some
“Parnasian coals (ἄνθρακες) were nearly killed” (348) and that the “basket (λάρκος) has
dirtied me with a load of coal dust (µαρίλη)” (350-1). Mt. Parnes, on the border of
Acharnae, provided a source for the charcoal.
288
There is no evidence from Acharnians that explicitly states that Dicaeopolis took the
charcoal hostage at the altar, though there is no reason to doubt it, as both the model
Telephus and Aristophanes’ alternate parody in Thesmophoriazusae (see line 694) use the
altar for their hostage scenes.
289
Platter 2007, 162.
290
Foley 1988, 43.
127
287
with him.291 According to Aristophanes, Cleon, the Athenian demagogue, had recently
brought him up on charges for attacking Cleon and slandering the Athenians in his recent
play Babylonians (426 BCE). From Aristophanes’ perspective, coopting Telephus’ rhetoric
can help justify his position against Cleon. When Telephus, a Greek by birth, drove the
Greeks away from Mysia, and subsequently suffered hostility and slander from his own
Greek countrymen, Telephus argued that his original attack on his countrymen was
justified under the circumstances. Similarly, when Aristophanes attacked his countryman
Cleon and allegedly slandered the Athenians in Babylonians, and endured Cleon’s charges
of slander, Aristophanes claims that his attack on his countrymen was justified as well.
Even if Cleon’s lawsuit was not an actual historical event, as some scholars have suggested,
and Aristophanes concocted the entire account to create a persona of moral indignation at
being treated so horribly, the appropriation of Telephus’ rhetoric would still suit his
purposes.292
Both positive and negative aspects of paratragedy (and paracomedy) can exist
simultaneously as long as they suit the poetic needs and goals of the playwright. By
deflating tragedy’s overblown tragedic language, costumes and scenes, Aristophanes
implicitly suggests that his own are preferable. Telephus’ rhetoric, praised for its
effectiveness, suits the rhetorical needs of Dicaeopolis within the play and Aristophanes
outside the play. Even comedy’s overarching positioning as a subservient ‘low’ genre
compared to the heights of tragedy satisfies Aristophanes’ goals. When Dicaeopolis
proposes, “For comedy too knows about justice” (τὸ γὰρ δίκαιον οἶδε καὶ τρυγῳδία,
Foley 1988, 37.
Rosen 2010, 232-5, with bibliography, presents an overview of the historicity of the
‘rivalry’ of Cleon and Aristophanes. The problem with interpreting Cleon’s indictment as a
historical event is that the only evidence of it comes from within the play itself (Acharnians
377-382, 502-503), and its presence could equally be due to Aristophanes’ persona.
128
291
292
500), tragedy is the implied comparison based on inclusion of the word ‘too’ and the fact
that the word for ‘comedy’ (τρυγῳδία) is created off of the word for ‘tragedy’
(τραγῳδία). Yet this ‘low’ positioning also allows Aristophanes to criticize others with
impunity (as his genre is ‘low’ and is allowed to do so) and not be criticized in return (since
if he were criticized, he could claim that he was only joking).293 Comedy does not need to
have a uniform relationship with tragedy, whereby tragedy is always ridiculous for its
pomposity or always exemplary for its quality and merit. Indeed, we cannot pinpoint how
Aristophanes actually feels about tragedy; rather, the audience must sort through the
myriad ways Aristophanes presents tragedy.
In contrast with the mixed-tone portrayal of tragedy in Acharnians, Aristophanes
implements a thoroughly negative attack on individual tragedies in Thesmophoriazusae.294
In addition to the ‘named’ parodies of Helen, Palamedes, and Andromeda, he includes an
unnamed but obvious parody of Telephus. In Thesmophoriazusae, the parody of the
hostage scene in Telephus serves as but one element in a complex system of paratragedy in
the play.
Platter has argued that the parody of Telephus in Thesmophoriazusae must be
read both against Euripides’ play and Aristophanes’ earlier parody in Acharnians,
engaging in a ‘double dialogism’.295 Aristophanes begins the Telephus parody with the
same material covered in the Acharnians – the intruder pleading a rhetorical defense
speech (467-519), the intruder’s identity being discovered (635), the chorus frantically
Bakhtin’s notion of ‘carnival’ genres provides a theoretical framework for
understanding comedy’s positioning as a ‘low’ genre, on which see Platter 2007, 1-28.
‘High’ vs. ‘low’ genres is one model of understanding comedy, yet see the various
approaches to genre in comedy in Bakola, Prauscello and Telò 2013.
294
See Chapter 5 for the arguments that the escalated negative tone in Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae serves as a response to the paracomedy in Euripides’ Helen.
295
Platter 2007, 162-175.
129
293
searching for the intruder (663-687), and the hostage scene (688-764). In comparison with
the order of events in Telephus or even the re-ordered sequence of events in Acharnians
noted above, Thesmophoriazusae shuffles the material even further – after the Kinsman’s
identity is discovered at 635, the chorus begins a search for “any other man” that might be
there as well, even though they have already caught him.296 The re-organization of
tragedic material is standard fare for Aristophanes’ parodies (as the parody in Acharnians
discussed above uses the same tricks), and thus it aligns well with audience expectations.
While such re-shuffling does engage in double dialogism, more attention must be paid to
what precisely is different about the parody in Thesmophoriazusae.
I suggest that the double dialogism in the hostage scene in Thesmophoriazusae is
best understood as Aristophanes evoking his earlier presentation of the hostage scene in
Acharnians and innovating away from it by adding a new element of ‘incinerating the
hostages’ to the tradition of hostage scenes. Aristophanes does this in three ways: 1) at
Thesmophoriazusae 724 he uses a bit of standard Euripidean metapoetic coding in the
form of the word µεταβάλλω ‘to change’, 2) at Thesmophoriazusae 729 he uses the word
θυµάλωψ ‘half-burnt piece of charcoal’, which I argue alludes directly to Acharnians, and
3) at Thesmophoriazusae 730, he adds ὕφαπτε καὶ κάταιθε ‘light me up and burn me
down’, the new addition to the hostage scene where he threatens to incinerate the hostage.
The word µεταβάλλω ‘to change’, I argue, represents a form of dramatic
metapoetics. Torrance has shown that Euripides utilizes the related nominal form
µεταβολή ‘change’ to signal a new plot direction (Bacchae 1266-7, Iphigenia among the
Taurians 719-22, Iphigenia in Aulis 500 and 1101, Trojan Women 615, Heracles 735,
296
On Acharnians shuffling elements from Telephus, see Dobrov 2001, 47.
130
Orestes 233-4, Auge fr.272a).297 By using this trigger word, Euripides is prefiguring
Aristotle’s definition of a reversal (περιπέτεια) as a ‘change (µεταβολή) to the opposite of
actions being performed” (Poetics 1452a22-6). Whereas some of Euripides’ usages appear
in the context of a recognition of a terrible truth, as for example in Bacchae 1266-7 when
Agave realizes she is holding the severed head of her son rather than a lion, others more
generally conform to a new plot movement, as when the chorus describes Heracles’
murder of Lycus as a ‘change (µεταβολά) of evils’ at Heracles 735, hinting at Heracles’
future downfall and marking the point of transition to a new plot device, the arrival of Iris
and Lyssa.298 Still others draw audience attention to both plot structure and other authors’
use of poetics, as when Electra asks Orestes (Orestes 233-4):
Electra: ἦ κἀπὶ γαίας ἁρµόσαι πόδας θέλεις,
χρόνιον ἴχνος θείς; µεταβολὴ πάντων γλυκύ:
Electra: Do you want me to put (ἁρµόζω) your feet on the ground? It has been a
long time since you made a footprint. Change (µεταβολή) of all things is sweet.”
Euripides’ mention of Orestes producing a footprint calls to mind the poetic structures of
recognition scenes, highlighting the novelty of his current plot, by responding to Aeschylus’
Libation Bearers (205-28), a famous recognition scene where Electra recognizes Orestes by
his footprints, and Euripides’ earlier play Electra (532-7), in which Electra explicitly rejects
Torrance 2013, 44-6. Torrance 2013, 297 writes that Old Comedy does not use
µεταβολή ‘change’ in the same way as Euripides. No examples of such a usage of the
noun µεταβολή are attested in Old Comedy, but the metapoetic use of the related verb
µεταβάλλω I am describing here shows that both genres could use these words to denote
a new plot direction.
298
The use of µεταβολά is reinforced by the similar word µεταλλαγαὶ ‘change’ in 765
and 766. Foreshadowing appears often in Heracles, for example compare the black
funeral garb of the children of Heracles at Heracles 329-335, which similarly foreshadows
their future death, on which see Chapter 5 and Wyles 2011, 69-70. For other examples of
foreshadowing in the double structure of Heracles, see Mastronarde 2010, 69-71.
131
297
the likelihood of siblings having the same footprint.299 Additionally, the use of the word
ἁρµόζω ‘to fit, adapt’ (233), with its semantics of negotiating the distance between two
points, suggests a possible metaphor for poetic craftsmanship, highlighting the distance
negotiated between the current scene and those of its literary predecessors.300 As Torrance
says, “The frequency with which Euripides, and only Euripides, uses the term metabolē at
key moments in the plot to reinforce the new direction the plot has taken suggests that he is
inviting audience recognition of the structural elements of his plots.”301
I maintain that Aristophanes was aware of such a notable Euripidean device, and
used the related verbal form µεταβάλλω to introduce a new structural element in his
hostage scene, the addition of threatening to incinerate the hostage in the scene from
Thesmophoriazusae 721-734.
Chorus: Ἀθέοις ἔργοις γὰρ ἀνταµειψόµεσθά σ', ὥσπερ εἰκός, ἀντὶ τῶνδε.
Ταχὺ δὲ µεταβαλοῦσ' ἐπὶ κακὸν ἑτερότροπος ἐπέχει τύχη.
Chorus Leader: Ἀλλὰ τάσδε µὲν λαβεῖν χρῆν ἐκφέρειν τε τῶν ξύλων,
καὶ καταίθειν τὸν πανοῦργον πυρπολεῖν θ' ὅσον τάχος.
Mica: Ἴωµεν ἐπὶ τὰς κληµατίδας, ὦ Μανία.
Wright 2008, 121-2.
ἁρµόζω ‘fit, adapt’ is an odd word to use for ‘put your feet on the ground’, as the
preposition ἐπί discounts the possibility of the meaning ‘fit’ in this context. One must ‘fit’
something to another thing, as Euripides does at Hippolytus 1189, when Hippolytus fits
his feet into the footstalls of his chariot (αὐταῖσιν ἀρβύλαισιν ἁρµόσας πόδας) [here I
follow Eustathius’ interpretation of αὐταῖσιν ἀρβύλαισιν as footstalls, as the phrase
αὐταῖς ἀρβύλαις (Bacchae 1135), referring to boots, is has a meaning too dissimilar to
suggest similar semantics for Hipp. 1189]. On ἁρµόζω negotiating the distance between
two points, see usage of ἁρµόζω and its related noun ἁρµονία in music, where it refers to
the act of tuning an instrument by adapting the pitch one string to another, thereby
negotiating the gap between the two points.
301
Torrance 2013, 45.
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299
300
Κἀγώ σ' ἀποδείξω θυµάλωπα τήµερον.
Kinsman: Ὕφαπτε καὶ κάταιθε· σὺ δὲ τὸ Κρητικὸν
ἀπόδυθι ταχέως. Τοῦ θανάτου δ', ὦ παιδίον,
µόνην γυναικῶν αἰτιῶ τὴν µητέρα.
Τουτὶ τί ἐστιν; Ἀσκὸς ἐγένεθ' ἡ κόρη
οἴνου πλέως καὶ ταῦτα Περσικὰς ἔχων.
Chorus: For we will repay you, as it fitting, with godless deeds in answer to your
own. Your luck has changed to the bad, and heads in another direction.
Chorus Leader: Here, you should have grabbed these torches and fetched some
wood, to burn up the criminal and incinerate him as quickly as possible.
Mica: Let’s go for the firewood, Mania. And I’ll personally turn you (i.e. the
Kinsman) into a piece of charcoal this very day.
Kinsman: Light me up and burn me down! (unwrapping the baby) As for you, off
with this Cretan swaddling, quickly. And for your death, my child, blame but a
single woman, your mother. What is this? The baby girl’s become a skin full of
wine, and wearing Persian booties to boot!
At the height of the tension, when the Kinsman is holding Mica’s “baby” hostage
with a knife and says that he’ll never give her up, the chorus remarks at 724-5, “Your luck
has quickly changed (µεταβάλλω) to the bad, and heads in another direction.” This
statement can be read metapoetically, referring to an imminent addition to the plot. The
chorus leader and Mica plan to grab torches and wood and incinerate the Kinsman. At
729, Mica adds that she will turn the Kinsman into a θυµάλωψ ‘half-burnt piece of
charcoal.’
θυµάλωψ is an exceedingly rare word, appearing only three times in Classical
Greek literature (Acharnians 321, Thesmophoriazusae 729 and fragment 58 of Strattis, a
133
comedic playwright who began his career in the late 5th century) and three times in the
Second Sophistic era (Pollux 7.110, 7.152 and Lucian’s Lexiphanes 24) as well as some
scattered entries in the lexicographers. The word is so obscure that when Lucian satirizes
Lexiphanes, who uses ridiculously obscure words, he uses θυµάλωψ as a paradigmatic
example:
Perhaps the greatest of all your errors is this: instead of arranging your matter first,
and then elaborating the diction, you find some out-of-the-way word, or are
captivated by one of your own invention, and try to build up your meaning round
it; if you cannot get it in somehow or other, though it may have nothing to do with
the matter, you are inconsolable; do you remember the ‘charcoal’ (θυµάλωψ) you
let off the other day? It was quite off the point, and you did not know what it
meant yourself; however, its oddness tickled the ears of the ignorant many; as for
the cultivated, they were equally amused at you and at your admirers. (Lucian,
Lexiphanes 24)
The target of Lucian’s satire is not explicitly stated, and it is unclear whether he is referring
to a specific person or a type of character. To some degree, the identity of the target does
not matter, since the humor is constructed to work whether the reader knows whom
Lucian had in mind or not. However, it is likely that among the many people or types
Lucian may be mocking, one is Pollux, the author of the Onomasticon, a lexicographical
work arranged by topic, because Pollux was known for his utilization of rare words, and is
one of the only other authors to use the word θυµάλωψ other than Aristophanes.302 Pollux
himself probably acquired the word from Aristophanes and included it in his lexicography
precisely because it was so obscure. The rareness of the word in literary and dramatic
302
Whitmarsh 2008, 81, Anderson 1976, 68-71.
134
contexts lends credence to the idea that Aristophanes was using it for a particular purpose.
If θυµάλωψ truly were as rare in literary contexts as Lucian suggests, then the audience
would have picked up on the oddness of it, much as it tickled the ears of Lexiphanes’
audience. However, another possibility exists, namely that a word that seemed unusual to
Lucian and his audience in the 2nd century CE may have been a common, but non-literary
word in 5th century Greece, and its lack of significant attestation in Greek literature is due
to the fact that some everyday words tend to not occur in literature. Even if, say, there
were no attested word for ‘thumb’ in Greek literature, or if such a word appeared rarely,
that does not mean that no Greek speakers ever talked about ‘thumbs’, rather the
conclusion would be that certain words do not lend themselves to inclusion in literature.303
Similarly, just because there are few, if any, poems involving ‘carburetors’ in Englishlanguage literature, it does not follow that the word ‘carburetor’ is rare or unusual in
English, simply non-literary. Yet when such non-literary words occur in literary contexts,
the effect of its inclusion can be just as distinctive and jarring as if the word were a coinage
or a hapax, much like an English poem about ‘carburetors’ would be distinctive and could
afford the possibility of intertextuality.304 In Thesmophoriazusae, given the immediate
In his poem “Blue Garden”, Dean Young writes: “Never put an eclair in a suitcase or a
poem.”
304
One modern example from the realm of music lies in the phrase ‘fish filet’, which
appears as a lyric in only one song in all of modern music, “Ni**as in Paris” by Kanye
West and Jay-Z, from their 2011 album Watch the Throne. When ‘fish filet’, a very
common non-literary phrase in English, was included in the song, the effect was
extraordinarily notable, as the full lyric “What she order? Fish filet” became an instantly
quotable tagline in popular culture, precisely because it was such a rare phrase to hear in a
song. “Ni**as in Paris” went on to sell millions of records and won the awards for “Best
Rap Performance” and “Best Rap Song” in the 55th Grammy Awards in 2013,
establishing the phrase ‘fish filet’ as a notable line in a notable song. As such, any
subsequent musical reference to ‘fish filet’, especially in rap music, would be immediately
perceived by the audience as an intertext, and it likely would have been intended as such
by the musical artist as well. The same sort of notability due to a pedestrian word in a
literary context is possible for θυµάλωψ.
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303
context of the Telephus parody, the audience would be primed to think of the Telephus
parody in Acharnians. The audience is invited to negotiate the disparities between the
Telephus parody they remember from Acharnians and the Telephus parody they are
watching in Thesmophoriazusae. The charcoal that had the potential to be activated in the
hostage scene in Acharnians actually comes to fruition and ignites in Thesmophoriazusae
(or at least almost ignites, since the incineration never occurs). The scene reaches its peak
in 730 when the Kinsman says, “Light me up (ὕφαπτε) and burn me down (κάταιθε)!”
This rare pairing of words is linked only one other time in extant Greek literature,
at Orestes 1618 and 1620, when Orestes commands Electra to light the house on fire
(ὕφαπτε) and Pylades to incinerate the battlements (κάταιθε). Not only is the diction the
same, but Euripides even uses the same imperative forms as in Aristophanes. Both
Thesmophoriazusae and Orestes tease the audience with an unfulfilled expectation, much
like Helen’s “death” in Orestes or the “baby” in Thesmophoriazusae. No one actually gets
incinerated, yet the potential of burning someone alive is the same. The uncommon verbal
parallel and the novel connection of an incineration plot to a hostage plot demonstrate that
appropriated an Aristophanic plot device from Thesmophoriazusae into Orestes. Yet the
ending of the play is not entirely drawn from comedy, as the scene runs (1617-20):
Menelaus: ἔχεις µε.
Orestes: σαυτὸν σύ γ' ἔλαβες κακὸς γεγώς.
ἀλλ' εἷ', ὕφαπτε δώµατ', Ἠλέκτρα, τάδε,
σύ τ', ὦ φίλων µοι τῶν ἐµῶν σαφέστατε,
Πυλάδη, κάταιθε γεῖσα τειχέων τάδε.
Menelaus: You’ve captured me.
136
Orestes: You captured yourself by your own cowardice. Come then, Electra, set
this house on fire! And you, Pylades, most faithful of friends to me, set alight these
battlements!
Menelaus uses the ‘gotcha moment’ (ἔχεις µε, 1617) that Euripides inverted from his
earlier Andromache (discussed above). Immediately after this, he introduces the elements
drawn from Thesmophoriazusae, “light it up (ὕφαπτε)” and “burn it down (κάταιθε)”,
accomplishing a masterful blending of motifs from tragedic and comedic hostage scenes
into one.
As was the case regarding ‘sword-bearing’ plots (Chapter 2), a triangle of
appropriation is present – first, an easily parodied tragedic element appears (the hostage
scene in Euripides’ Telephus), second, there occurs a comedic appropriation of the motif
(a comedic hostage scene with charcoal in Acharnians and with incineration in
Thesmophoriazusae), and third, a tragedic re-appropriation (Orestes, containing a hostage
scene with characters that are transformed from previous tragedies and the threat of
incineration appropriated from Thesmophoriazusae). The development of hostage scenes
I have presented here shows a process of escalation, a hallmark of literary rivalry. Telephus
featured a notable and interesting staging in a tense scene, which, as far as we can tell,
never occurred previously on the tragedic stage. All subsequent scenes were dependant
upon the original portrayal in some way, sharing various elements and deviating in various
ways. Yet in Thesmophoriazusae Aristophanes engaged in double dialogism, through
reference to not only Euripides’ Telephus but also his earlier charcoal-filled parody in
Acharnians by re-using the rare word θυµάλωψ. Consequently, to combine the scholarly
terminology of Zeitlin and Platter, Orestes engages in a ‘palimpsestic’ ‘triple dialogism’,
evoking the tragedic heritage of Telephus and Andromache through various plot and
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character inversions and the comedic heritage of Thesmophoriazusae through the
innovation of incineration.305
I suggest that Euripides’ adoption of the ‘incinerating hostages’ element signals an
appreciation of the tragedic possibilities that Aristophanes’ comedic scene held, since at its
heart, Aristophanes’ scene contained an idea that could be reworked to suit the needs of
tragedy. A scene involving the threat of slitting the hostage’s throat at an altar was
impressive in Telephus and Andromache, but a scene involving the threat of slitting the
hostage’s throat as the hostage is engulfed in flames atop the skēnē in Orestes is another
thing altogether. The neutral (or even positive!) tone of the ‘incinerating hostages’
paracomedy from Orestes in 408 BCE has a parallel in Phoenician Women, likely
produced the previous year in 409 BCE. Scharffenberger has suggested that the character
of Lysistrata from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 BCE) provided Euripides with the source
material upon which he modeled Jocasta in Phoenician Women, and she draws
comparisons between the shared concerns over war and peace and more specifically, the
blocking of the two ‘reconciliation scenes’ in the two plays.306 For Scharffenberger, the
“Lysistratization” of Jocasta bestows sound decision-making and irreproachable conduct
upon the queen, contrary to previous depictions of Jocasta in tragedy, where she was
presumptuous and engaged in transgressive acts.307 Similarly, I suggest that Euripides
adopted Aristophanes’ incineration plot for the dramatic effects it presents, namely,
providing a more spectacular hostage scene to heighten the dramatic tension in the
conclusion of the play. This chapter, then, demonstrates that the motivation for
paracomedy can be neutral or even positive, much like how Aristophanes’ and
On Orestes as a ‘palimpsest’, see Zeitlin 2003, 309-341, and on ‘double dialogism’ see
Platter 2007, 162-175.
306
Scharffenberger 1995a, 312-336.
307
Scharffenberger 1995a, 318-319.
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305
Dicaeopolis’ paratragedy of Telephus in Acharnians was (at least partially) positive. When
we incorporate the previous conclusions from Chapters 2 and 3, we can see that numerous
appropriations of comedy can exist within a single tragedy, Orestes, and that they can
have varying motivations and effects within the play – the ‘sword-bearing men’ upped the
stakes in the rivalry between Euripides and Aristophanes, the ‘varying degrees of choral
volume in a madness scene’ added to the sense of discomfort and disquieting horror of the
play, and the ‘incinerating hostages’ scene realized the dramatic potential that
Aristophanes’ scene possessed. Orestes, then, is a tragedy whose multiple and varied
expressions of paracomedy offers a parallel to the fluctuating tones of the paratragedy in
Acharnians and to the sheer quantity of paratragedy in Thesmophoriazusae.
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Chapter 5: From Rags to Drag: Paracomic Costuming in Euripides and Aristophanes
One of the most notable arenas for rivalry between Aristophanes and Euripides
was their respective presentations of costuming. In the contest between Aeschylus and
Euripides in Aristophanes’ Frogs, Aristophanes stages the two tragedians discussing how
they each used costumes in their plays. Aeschylus claims that in addition to having his
demigods use exalted speech (1059-1060), in his plays they also “wear much more
impressive clothing than we do” (τοῖς ἱµατίοις ἡµῶν χρῶνται πολὺ σεµνοτέροισιν,
1061). Contrary to Aeschylus’ position of crafting grand costumes for grand people,
Euripides is described as creating a disjuncture between clothes and character by making
his royals wear rags (ῥάκι’, 1063) so that they would strike people as being piteous.
Aristophanes was grounding his claims in the reality of Euripidean drama, as there are
number of Euripidean passages that feature royal characters in rags (for example,
Telephus fr. 697; Electra 184-185; Helen 416-424 and 1079-1082). Aristophanes
repeatedly parodies Euripides’ ragged royals throughout his career. Acharnians 412-434
(425 BCE) mocked the extent of the dilapidation as well as the variety of Euripidean rags
by having Dicaeopolis visit Euripides’ rag closet. Peace 146-148 (421 BCE) affords the
opportunity for Aristophanes to fit in a quick jab on Euripides’ lame beggars, often
portrayed in rags, “Watch out that you don’t slip and fall off that thing, and then be
lamed and furnish Euripides with a plot, and become a tragedy.” Frogs (405 BCE) labels
Euripides as a ‘rag-stitcher’ (ῥακιοσυππαπτάδη, 842) and ‘creator of cripples’
(χωλοποιός, 846). Thesmophoriazusae (411 BCE) featured a sustained attack on
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Euripidean costuming: Euripides is forced to dress like Menelaus (ship-wrecked rags) in the
parody of Helen (850-927), and Euripides has to wear the tragedic costume of Perseus (at
the very least, his winged boots) in the parody of Andromeda (1098-1132). Costumes in
Thesmophoriazusae are also used in a broad attack on the entire genre of tragedy, as
everyone associated with tragedy ends up dressed in women’s clothing: Agathon (28-206),
the Kinsman (208-268), and Euripides himself (1160-1209). In the play, Aristophanes
presents a mimetic relationship between clothing and poetry, whereby the characteristics
of the clothes determine the characteristics of the poetry and vice versa. For Aristophanes,
it is only natural that tragedians wear women’s clothes due to the effeminacy of their
genre, and conversely, the presentation of tragedians dressed in drag re-establishes the
effeminacy of the genre of tragedy. Clearly, the way that Euripides clothed his characters
onstage was a constant source of comic material for Aristophanic comedy.
These passages do not reveal a one-sided Aristophanic attack upon Euripides’
tragedic costumes, rather, I suggest that they illuminate a two-sided dialogue between
Aristophanes and Euripides concerning the appropriate use and effectiveness of dramatic
costuming. In this dialogic rivalry, each dramatist successively modifies the ways he uses
costume as a direct response to the other’s previous staging of costume. The dynamics of
this dialogue revolve around two overarching costume choices: dressing a character in
rags, and dressing a male character in women’s clothes. I propose that there were four sets
of responses in this back-and-forth rivalry: Aristophanes’ Acharnians (425 BCE) to
Euripides’ Helen (412 BCE) to Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (411 BCE) to
Euripides’ Bacchae (405 BCE):
1) In Acharnians, Aristophanes parodies Euripides’ prominent use of rags in his
early plays (for example, Telephus and Bellerophon) by treating the rags metatheatrically
as costumes, portraying them as increasingly ‘wretched’ (ἄθλιος) and ‘beggarly’
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(πτωχός), and characterizing Euripides’ rag costumes (and the rags of Telephus in
particular) as ‘old-fashioned’ (παλαιός). By doing so, Aristophanes asserts his own
mastery over Euripides in regard to costumes and dramatic techniques.
2) In Helen, Euripides re-appropriates the very elements that Aristophanes mocked
in Acharnians – treating Menelaus as an increasingly ‘wretched’ (ἄθλιος) beggar
(πτωχός), who metatheatrically wears Telephus’ rags as a costume, this time, in an
implicit play-within-a-play. In doing so, Euripides also transforms the possession of
wretched rags into a positive trait and a piece of effective dramaturgy, and furthermore,
deflects Aristophanes’ charge of ‘old-fashionedness’ (παλαιότης) onto Aeschylus,
claiming that Aeschylus’ feigned death plots are truly the ‘old-fashioned’ dramatic
elements.
3a) In Thesmophoriazusae, Aristophanes responds to Euripides’ staging of an
implicit play-within-a-play in Helen by staging an explicit play-within-a-play of Euripides’
Helen marked by the constant failure of tragedic costumes. In doing so, Aristophanes
claims that Euripides’ ragged costumes are ineffective and incapable of success.
3b) In Thesmophoriazusae, as a further response to Euripides’ assertions in Helen
concerning the effectiveness of tragedic costuming, Aristophanes makes all the characters
associated with the genre of tragedy wear women’s clothing. The main plotline and
structure of the play is that the Kinsman, who originally mocked Agathon’s cross-dressing,
is humiliated, dressed in women’s clothes himself, and sent as a spy (κατάσκοπος) to
infiltrate a group of women’s sacred space (Thesmophoria).
4) In Bacchae, Euripides adopts the same plotline and structure of cross-dressing
from Thesmophoriazusae. Pentheus, who originally mocked Tiresias’ and Cadmus’ crossdressing is humiliated, dressed in women’s clothing himself, and sent as a spy
(κατάσκοπος) to infiltrate a group of women’s sacred space (grove of the maenads). In
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doing so, Euripides co-opts a notable comedic plot and means of costuming and
naturalizes it into tragedy, once again demonstrating the effectiveness of Euripidean
costuming, this time used to increase the overall horror of the tragedy.
It should be noted at the outset that these plays reveal a different kind of rivalry
than presented in my previous chapters, which were largely based upon scenes and plots
(Chapter 2 on sword-bearing plots, Chapter 3 on sleep scenes and madness scenes, Chapter
4 on hostage-taking scenes). In conjunction with plots and scenes, the contest in this
chapter concerns the effective use of dramatic costumes. Consequently, much of the
evidence derives from visual or optical allusions, which hold the promise of intertextuality
just as much as textual, scenic, or plot-related allusions.308 Any aspect of a performance (a
signature dance move, a notable prop, a unique piece of costuming etc.) can provide the
opportunity for an allusion as long as it fulfilled the same criteria as for textual allusions,
that is, if it were distinctive or prevalent enough.309 One example from the world of props
is when Electra carries an urn of funeral offerings in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, a notable
prop which provokes two subsequent tragedic responses: in Electra, Sophocles makes
Electra embrace the empty urn which she believes holds Orestes’ ashes, and his play of the
same title, Euripides makes Electra carry a water-jar, signaling her low status.310 The
This excellent pun is taken from Cowan 2013, 311-342, entitled “Haven’t I Seen You
Before Somewhere? Optical Allusions in Republican Tragedy.”
309
Indeed, it is unfortunate that we know so little about certain dramatic elements such as
choral dance steps or the verbal idiosyncrasies of certain actors, which equally provide the
opportunity for paratragedy or paracomedy. Consider the ease and effectiveness of a
modern allusion to Michael Jackson’s “moonwalk” dance or to the distinctive voices of
any number of actors (William Shatner, James Earl Jones, Sean Connery etc.).
310
Easterling 1997b, 168-169 and Cowan 2013, 326-327. Aulus Gellius 6.5 tells the story
of Polus, a renowned actor whose son had recently died. Polus played the role of Electra in
a performance of Sophocles’ play, and filled the urn with his son’s ashes, so that when he
embraced the urn in the play, he was not acting, but genuinely grieved. Such
metatheatrical uses of props were available to actors, and added a new dimension for the
audience.
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308
allusions in Sophocles’ and Euripides’ Electra solely rest on how Electra’s jar is used when
compared to Electra’s distinctive prop from Libation Bearers. Unfortunately, much of the
vibrancy of such visual allusions is now lost because we cannot access all the visual details
of the original performances. However, in some cases, as is the case for Electra’s jar, we
can piece together enough information to suggest that the audience would have recognized
an allusion based on a performative element, and I suggest that rags and cross-dressing
provide further cross-generic examples of this practice.311
Scholars have gestured towards this type of dialogue between Euripides and
Aristophanes regarding costuming. However, they are all incomplete for various reasons:
by not providing any evidence for their claims through a demonstration of distinctive
correspondences, by suggesting the possibility of paracomedy but not exploring it, by
having less than rigorous methodologies, or by realizing only a portion of the back-andforth rivalry. Mureddu has suggested a parallel between Menelaus’ rags in Helen and the
parody of Euripidean rags in Acharnians, yet provides no distinctive correspondences.312
Dobrov notes the implicit play-within-a-play of Helen, and suggests a connection with
Acharnians but only explores the possibility for a few sentences.313 Compton-Engle
provides an excellent analysis of costume in comedy, but does not forge any connections to
tragedy.314 Seidensticker calls the cross-dressing scene in Bacchae ‘comic’, which raises
problems of methodology.315 The closest to my overall thesis in this chapter is Wyles, who
suggests a back-and-forth dialogue between Aristophanes and Euripides about
See also Wyles 2011, 88-91.
Mureddu 2003, 191-194.
313
Dobrov 2001, 127-132.
314
Compton-Engle 2003.
315
Seidensticker 1978, 316-320, and Seidensticker 1982, 123-128. For a discussion of the
‘comic’, see Chapter 1.
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311
312
costuming.316 While my understanding of costume appropriation aligns well with Wyles’
views, Wyles does not push the issue far enough, as she does not incorporate the relevant
plot appropriations in addition to costume appropriations and she fails to realize Helen’s
contribution to the dialogue and its function as the impetus for Aristophanes’ large-scale
attack on tragedy in Thesmophoriazusae. In this chapter, my goal is to analyze all the
dramatic appropriations (via plot, scene and costume) occurring in these four plays, to
support these claims with distinctive correspondences, and to contextualize the metapoetic
claims that are at the heart of the rivalry in these plays.
ACHARNIANS
Acharnians begins with Dicaeopolis fed up with the Assembly’s inability to stop the
war, and in frustration, he creates his own peace (193-200). However, the elders from the
deme of Acharnae, a group of veterans and patriots, accost Dicaeopolis for conducting this
individual peace treaty (204-304). In order to defend himself from these old Acharnians,
Dicaeopolis launches into an extended appropriation of Euripides’ Telephus, a play
produced thirteen years earlier in 438 BCE, in which the main character Telephus, dressed
in rags, defends himself in front of a hostile audience of Greeks.317 It is important that
thirteen years later, Aristophanes can rely on the living memory of the audience to recall
the context of the original play. Many scholars have analyzed the ways that Aristophanes
appropriates Euripides’ Telephus; for example, Foley notes the rhetorical advantages that
Aristophanes had in appropriating the figure of Telephus, who incurred hostility and
slander from his countryman Achilles, much like the hostility and slander Aristophanes
Wyles 2011, 96-100.
On Euripides’ Telephus, see Handley and Rea 1956, Heath 1987, Collard and Cropp
2008, 185-191 and Dobrov 2001, 37-43. On the mythological background of Telephus,
see Gantz 1993, 428-431 and 576-580.
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316
317
claimed he received from his countryman Cleon.318 In the middle of this extended parody
(running primarily from Acharnians 317-625), Dicaeopolis visits Euripides to obtain some
assistance in persuading the elderly Acharnians (393-479). Dicaeopolis pleads with
Euripides for a rag costume, “But come, I beg you by your knees, Euripides, give me a bit
of rag (ῥάκιόν τι) from that old play. I’ve got to make a long speech to the chorus, and if I
speak poorly, it means my death (415-417).”319 Euripides offers Aristophanes a series of
rag costumes that his characters had worn in his plays (Oeneus from Oeneus, undated;
Phoenix from Phoenix, undated; Philoctetes from Philoctetes, 431 BCE; Bellerophon from
Bellerophon, undated; Telephus from Telephus, 438 BCE), and when Dicaeopolis finally
selects Telephus’ costume, the audience glimpses two more rag costumes (Thyestes from
either Thyestes, undated, or Cretan Women, 438 BCE; and Ino from Ino, undated) that
Telephus’ rags are stacked between (410-434).
While the scene is funny for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that
Euripides is so dedicated to his characters’ dilapidated apparel that he keeps at least seven
sets of rags around, in metapoetic terms, Aristophanes seeks to expose the ludicrousness of
tragedic rags as a theatrical costume, by engaging in a metatheatrical commentary on
Euripides’ choice of dramatic technique.320 Dicaeopolis believes that adopting some kind
of costume or disguise might alleviate his predicament regarding the potentially dangerous
Acharnians (383-384):
νῦν οὖν µε πρῶτον πρὶν λέγειν ἐάσατε
ἐνσκευάσασθαί µ᾽ οἷον ἀθλιώτατον.
So now, before I make my speech, please let me
Foley 1988, 33-47 especially 37, Dobrov 2001, 33-53, Olson 2002, liv-lxi, and Platter
2007, 143-175.
319
Translation by Henderson 1998.
320
Wyles 2011, 96-97.
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318
array myself in guise most wretched. (Trans. Henderson, adapted)
As Compton-Engle notes, the noun σκευή denotes a person’s clothing and accessories,
while the related verb (ἐν)σκευάζω denotes dressing oneself in a costume or a disguise.321
Thus, when Aristophanes uses the verb ἐνσκευάζω at 384, he is accentuating the fact that
Dicaeopolis is searching for a costume that he can wear to make his speech more effective.
Dicaeopolis further declares that not just any costume will be serviceable for his
requirements, but rather he needs to persuade the old Acharnians with a costume that is
‘as wretched as possible’ (ἀθλιώτατος, 384). In this sentence, Dicaeopolis uses the
grammatical construction οἷος + superlative, which Greek uses to express the highest
possible degree of an adjective. The search for these utterly wretched rags spans the
following scene, and when he visits Euripides, he rejects rag after rag for not being
wretched enough. He wants a costume ‘more wretched’ (ἀθλιώτερος, 420) than Oeneus’
rags, still ‘more wretched’ (ἀθλιώτερος, 422) than Phoenix’s rags, and something even
‘more beggarly’ (πτωχίστερος, 425) than Philoctetes’ rags. The use of the comparative
adjectives display an increasing level of wretchedness for each costume, ultimately
endeavoring to reach Dicaeopolis’ original goal of rags which are ‘as wretched as possible’
(οἷος ἀθλιώτατος, 384). Bellerophon’s rags are similarly rejected, and Dicaeopolis refines
his previously vague request for a wretched rag costume by enumerating the individual
traits that the man who wore the costume had: a cripple, a beggar (προσαιτῶν), a
smooth-talker, and an impressive speaker (429). Euripides’ ragged characters are presented
in such a way that each ragged character introduced builds upon the characteristics of the
last. This presents a continuum of raggedness, in which the first character (Oeneus) is the
least ragged and wretched and the last character (Telephus) is the most ragged and
321
Compton-Engle 2003, 508-509.
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wretched. Inasmuch as Telephus’ rags are the most wretched and most ragged of
Euripidean costumes, they fit Dicaeopolis’ needs perfectly. Overall, this scene mocks
Euripides’ rag costumes for the particular qualities they have (‘wretched’ and ‘beggarly’),
and the sheer quantity of rag costumes that Aristophanes presents exposes tragedic rags as
a cheap dramatic device.322 If the audience hadn’t already deduced Euripides’ penchant
for rags for themselves, they certainly would have recognized Euripides’ tendencies after
viewing Aristophanes’ scene.
Beyond simply commenting on the characteristics of the rag costumes and the
frequency with which Euripides uses them, I suggest that Aristophanes also characterizes
Euripides’ use of rags as old-fashioned. My evidence comes from the set-up of the scene,
when Dicaeopolis asks for what Henderson translates as ‘a bit of rag from that old play’
(ῥάκιόν τι τοῦ παλαιοῦ δράµατος, 415). While the word παλαιός certainly means ‘old’,
it can also be used as a metapoetic form of literary criticism, in which case it signifies the
concept of ‘old-fashioned’, serving as the opposite of καινός, which means ‘new’ but also
‘novel, new-fangled’ when used as literary criticism.323 Both comedians and tragedians
utilize this terminology to engage in metapoetic rivalries with other comedians and
tragedians. For example, when Aristophanes mocked Euripides’ Helen at
Thesmophoriazusae 850, he used the word καινός ‘recent, novel, new-fangled’, and when
Euripides responded at Orestes 129, he used the word πάλαι ‘old, old-fashioned’.324
Determining whether the noun that παλαιός modifies is simply ‘old’ or ‘oldfashioned’ depends upon the contextual clues of the passage. In this case, παλαιός
For the suggestion that Aristophanes is accusing Euripides of turning an effective
theatrical device into a cliché, see Muecke 1982, 22.
323
For more on novelty and old-fashionedness, see Chapter 2. For καινός more broadly as
a form of literary criticism in comedy, see Wright 2012, 70-102. For καινός as literary
criticism in tragedy, see Torrance 2013, 295-316.
324
On this example, see Wright 2006, 36-37.
148
322
probably does not imply a distinction in chronology between an early play of Euripides as
opposed to a recent one, as Olson explains.325 Since some of the plays referred to in the
scene have known dates of 438 BCE (Telephus, Cretan Women) or 431 BCE (Philoctetes),
they were performed relatively recently before Acharnians in 425 BCE. If Aristophanes’
goal were to refer to Euripides’ earliest dramas with the word παλαιός, the dates of the
plays mentioned should run closer to the beginning of Euripides’ career in 455 BCE. Olson
concludes that the phrase παλαιόν δρᾶµα should rather signify “a play performed at a
previous festival”. Yet this explanation is not satisfactory either, since by definition any
play alluded to in a text must have preceded that text, and consequently, it is obvious and
self-evident to say that the play was performed at a previous festival. Rather than believing
that Aristophanes would state something so insubstantial, it makes more sense to situate the
adjective παλαιός in the forms of literary criticism along the poles of καινός ‘novel, newfangled’ and παλαιός ‘old-fashioned, old-hat’, as occurs frequently in Aristophanes and
Euripides. Consequently, the nuance expressed in Acharnians 415 is that Dicaeopolis is
searching for ‘a bit of rag from that old-fashioned play’. Aristophanes characterizes
Euripides’ constant use of rag costumes as trite and hackneyed, and whatever piteous
effect Euripides had intended to achieve by costuming his characters in rags is effectively
diminished.
Yet why would Aristophanes claim that rag costumes are old-fashioned and trite,
while at the same time making his character Dicaeopolis use the very same rag costume as
a disguise? One answer lies in the fact that this double standard is regular fare for
comedians, since they often mock the same material they use elsewhere or the same
qualities that they themselves have. For example, Wright has shown that Aristophanes can
325
Olson 2002, 182 on Acharnians 414-415.
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describe himself as ‘novel’ or ‘clever’ but also castigate others who possess the same
quality.326 Similarly, Aristophanes suggests at Peace 739-748 that he is worthy of praise for
avoiding certain stale jokes, yet when Aristophanes includes ‘making jokes about rags’ in
the list and equates it with ‘lowbrow buffoonery’ (748), it is up to the audience to detect
that he is obviously guilty of this charge as well.327
While one reason for including ‘old-fashioned’ rag costumes is to mock the very
items that Dicaeopolis will soon use, another reason is that Dicaeopolis is attempting to
persuade a chorus of Acharnians who are ‘old-fashioned’ themselves. The Acharnians are
constantly described as old and belong to a previous generation: πρεσβῦται ‘old men’
(179), γέροντες ‘old men’ (180, 222, 375), Μαραθωνόµαχαι ‘Marathon fighters’ (181),
στερρός ‘arthritic’ (219), and γεραίτατοι ‘most venerable’ (286). One of them, a man
named Lacrateides, is even described with the same word παλαιός ‘old’ (220). To
convince such old men, Dicaeopolis needs old-fashioned costumes and decides to utilize
rags precisely because they are such an old-fashioned trope.328 Acharnians metatheatrically
treats Euripides’ rags as costumes, asserting that tragedic rags are extremely wretched,
beggarly, and old-fashioned, and therefore, are effective only for old-fashioned people
such as the chorus of elderly Acharnians.
Wright 2012, 70-76.
See also Silk 2000a, 47 who cites Clouds 537-543 and the exchange between Dionysus
and Xanthias at the beginning of Frogs as further examples of Aristophanes mocking the
same jokes he uses elsewhere.
328
On the connection between old men and old-fashioned traits in comedy, see for
example the exaggerated comedic contrast in Clouds between the old man Strepsiades,
described with γέρων (129, 746, 1304), πρεσβύτης (263), and πρεσβύτα παλαιογενές
(358), and the young man Pheidippides, described as a νεανίας (8). The conflict between
Strepsiades’ traditional ways and Pheidippides’ novel ways reaches a head when
Pheidippides proves that it is right to beat his father using the new forms of reasoning
learned at the Thinkery (1399-1426). Pheidippides introduces the passage with “How
agreeable is intimacy with novel (καινός, 1399) and clever activities and the power to
scorn established customs (οἱ καθέστωτοι νόµοι, 1400),” where Strepsiades’ views are the
‘established customs’.
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326
327
More than this, Aristophanes’ mockery of Euripides’ costumes can be read as a
form of domination over him. As Compton-Engle describes, a character’s control over
other characters’ costumes in comedy correlates to mastery over them. Dicaeopolis
“repeatedly detects other imposters and pulls off their disguises, but no one ever strips off
Dicaeopolis’ apparel,” a fact which showcases Dicaeopolis’ dominance over other
characters as well as his inability to be dominated.329 Dicaeopolis’ identification with
Aristophanes in the parabasis of the play suggests that Aristophanes is claiming that he too
shares Dicaeopolis’ supremacy. Compton-Engle has argued that Aristophanes’ dominance
extends over costumes and therefore the elements of dramatic production, but this view
can be extended.330 As Macleod has suggested, the costumes represent copies of the plays
themselves, and therefore, I would add that Aristophanes’ domination over the costumes
entails an assertion of power over the plays of Euripides and Euripides himself.331 Much
like how Dicaeopolis humiliates Lamachus when he strips Lamachus of his armor (582589), Aristophanes humiliates Euripides by asserting control over Euripides’ costume and
stripping Euripides of his tragedic art (464).
HELEN
In Helen, I propose that Euripides deliberately re-appropriates the very elements
that Aristophanes had mocked, presenting rag costumes in a similar way to Aristophanes’
parodic presentation in Acharnians.332 Euripides’ Menelaus in rags acts and appears in
Compton-Engle 2003, 510.
Compton-Engle 2003, 515.
331
Macleod 1974, 221-222.
332
Euripides’ Electra, likely performed after Acharnians and before Helen, features a
character in rags (τρύχη τάδ᾽ ἐµῶν πέπλων ‘these tatters of my clothing’ in 185).
However, because there are no grounds to see a ragged Electra as a response to the parody
151
329
330
precisely the same way as Aristophanes’ caricature of a tragedic character in rags in
Acharnians: 1) a beggar (πτωχός), 2) who is increasingly wretched (ἄθλιος), 3) and who
adopts the rags of Telephus, 4) treating the rags as a theatrical costume, affording
metatheatrical thought concerning the relationship between costume and identity. In
addition to revamping Aristophanes’ portrayal from Acharnians, Euripides also makes two
metapoetic claims regarding the methods of dramatic construction intended to re-assert his
own dominance in the rivalry: 1) transforming the possession of wretched rags from a bad
thing to a good thing, and 2) responding to Aristophanes’ assertion that the trope of
ragged costumes is ‘old-fashioned’, by designating a specific trope of Aeschylus (feigned
death scenes) as ‘old-fashioned’, thereby shifting Aristophanes’ attack onto Aeschylus. In
Euripides’ hands, a costume of wretched rags could actually create a novel, compelling
tragedic plot instead of the old-fashioned, trite and ineffective plots that Aristophanes had
claimed it produces.
References to Menelaus in rags permeate Helen. When we first see Menelaus, he is
fresh from a shipwreck (408) and will not talk with the locals out of his shame for his
shabby clothes (δυσχλαινίαι, 416) since his previous garments, which were fine and
luxurious, were lost in the shipwreck (421-423). When Helen first sees Menelaus she
describes him as ‘savage in body’ (ἄγριος δέ τις µορφήν, 544-555) and when she meets
him, she says that he has ‘disgusting clothes (στολὴ ἄµορφος, 554). In the escape plot in
the second half of the play, the rags come to the forefront of the action, as Menelaus
realizes that the rags (ῥάκη, 1079) he is wearing will aid in his disguise, and during the
deception, Theoclymenus notes Menelaus’ ‘ugly clothes’ (ἐσθὴς δύσµορφος, 1204). At
Theoclymenus’ order, Menelaus’s rags (ἀχλαινίαι, 1282) are to be replaced by good
in Acharnians, due to the fact that Electra does not engage with the same material that
Acharnians mocked.
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clothing and Helen herself is the one who changes his clothes, putting on fine garments
instead of his ‘shipwrecked clothes’ (ναύφθορος στολή, 1382).
Furthermore, Euripides often describes Menelaus as a beggar. After the Old
Woman warned Menelaus that her master was not hospitable to Greeks and Menelaus is
deliberating how best to approach her master Theoclymenus, Menelaus exclaims, “One
thing caps all my other miserable woes, that I, myself a king, must beg (προσαιτέω, 512)
my livelihood from other kings.” After Menelaus meets Helen, he reveals that the Old
Woman had expelled him from the palace gates “like a beggar” (ὥσπερ πτωχός, 790),
and Helen responds, apparently shocked, “You weren’t begging (προσαιτέω, 791) for
food, were you? How dreadful for me!”
The sheer volume of references to rags and beggars in Helen has led Walton to
suggest that Euripides is engaging in self-parody of his earlier play Telephus, and the same
volume of rags and beggars has led Mureddu to suggest that Euripides is responding to the
parody of the rag costumes in Acharnians.333 Both Walton and Mureddu show that both
Helen and its comparandum emphasize rags, yet they do not show any distinctive
correspondences that point to one play or the other, citing only the quantity of rags and
beggars in both plays.334 Demonstrating that both plays showcase rags is not enough to
prove an allusion, much like the presence of a ‘mad character dancing’ in Heracles and
Wasps was not enough to prove that Wasps was responding to Heracles II in a form of
Walton 2009, 76, and Mureddu 2003, 191-194.
Mureddu 2003, 194 simply argues [my translation]: “The reiterated reference to ῥάκη
and the miserable ἄµορφος στολή cannot be incidental: the impression one receives is
that Euripides wants, by any means, to attract audience attention to the boldness of a
particularly miserable “stage costume”. This new ragged hero inevitably responds to the
memory of the long section of Acharnians...” [Il reiterato richiamo ai ῥάκη ed alla
miserabile ἄµορφος στολή no può essere casuale: l’impressione che se ne ricava è anzi che
Euripide voglia con ogni mezzo attirare l’attenzione del pubblico soll’arditezza di un
“costume di scena” particolarmente miserabile. Questo nuovo eroe straccione riporta
inevitabilmente alla memoria la lunga sezione degli Acarnesi...].
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333
334
paratragedy.335 The bare presence of the same trope in two plays does not prove anything,
and in the case of the relationship between Heracles and Wasps, paracomedy is equally
likely, as is the possibility of there being no intertextual relationship at all between the
plays, since the correspondences could be due to a genre-neutral trait. For the example of
rags in Helen, distinctive correspondences must be shown that demonstrate why Menelaus’
rags must be read as a response to either Telephus or Acharnians, and I believe the
evidence points towards Acharnians.
First, Euripides embraces Acharnians’ recurrent connections between rag costumes
and beggars. In Acharnians, in scenes throughout the parody of Telephus where
Dicaeopolis is either obtaining the rags or wearing them, words for ‘beggar’ or ‘beg’
appear frequently: πτωχός ‘beggar’ (413, 424, 440, 498, 558, 578, 579, 593, 594);
πτωχικός ‘beggarly’ (448); πτωχίστερος ‘more beggarly’ (425); and προσαιτέω ‘beg’
(429). In Helen, Euripides’ presentation of Menelaus as a beggar is of low prototypicality
in the mythic tradition, as this trait is outside his standard mythology.336 While self-parody
is possible as an explanation, and equally plausible reason for including a beggarMenelaus would be as a response to Acharnians.
A much more distinctive correspondence lies in the fact that Euripides makes his
ragged character Menelaus increasingly wretched (ἄθλιος) throughout the play. This very
likely is not a response to Telephus, as there are no indications of Telephus in Telephus
being described as wretched, let alone increasingly wretched throughout the play. Instead I
argue that this is a response to Dicaeopolis’ rejection of increasingly wretched rag costumes
On my response to these arguments of Beta 2000, 135-157, see Chapter 3.
Gantz 1993, 574-576 and 662-664 notes that while the element of a storm driving
Menelaus down to Egypt appears in the Odyssey and the Nostoi, there is nothing in our
early sources about him wearing rags.
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335
336
(ἀθλιώτερος, Acharnians 420, 422) in his search for the most wretched costume possible
(ἀθλιώτατος, Acharnians 384), namely the rags of Telephus.
When Helen introduces Menelaus at the beginning of the play, he is described with
the adjective ‘wretched’ (ἄθλιος, Helen 49), due to the fact that he had to raise an army to
retrieve Helen from Troy. Often in tragedy, the first description of a character introduces
a defining trait of the character in the play, for example, the description of Orestes as crazy
in Orestes 35-37 or the description of Pentheus as defiant towards Dionysus in Bacchae
45-46. I submit that Menelaus’ wretchedness serves as his defining characteristic, and
while the events that precede the play warrant an adjective in the positive degree (ἄθλιος),
the events of the first half of the play increase his wretchedness remarkably, marked by
stronger and stronger indicators of the degree of wretchedness.337
When Menelaus discovers that Helen has been in Egypt for years, he interprets this
news as an increase in his wretchedness, ‘I hear of wretched troubles standing atop earlier
ones’ (συµφορὰς γὰρ ἀθλίας ἐκ τῶν πάροιθε τὰς παρεστώσας κλύω, 483-484). This
sentence reveals a second and third level of Menelaus’ wretchedness expressed through two
sets of wretchedness: the ‘wretched troubles’ (συµφοραὶ ἀθλίαι, 483) referring to the
existence of two Helens of Sparta and the ‘earlier ones’ (οἱ πάροιθε, 484), likely referring
to the shipwreck.338 A fourth level of wretchedness soon follows in which the royal
Menelaus is compelled to become a beggar (510-512):
The word ἄθλιος ‘wretched’ is extraordinarily common in tragedy, due to the vast
amounts of suffering and misery tragedy employs. For example, in this play, Helen is also
connected with the word ἄθλιος a number of times (Helen 594, 909, 924, 1163), when
she is describing her sufferings in general terms, which aligns with standard tragedic usage.
What leads me to differentiate between those occurrences and the wretchedness of
Menelaus is that Menelaus’ wretchedness increases in precisely the same way as in
Acharnians, and thus can be seen as a response to Aristophanes.
338
While it is unclear what the phrase ‘earlier ones’ (οἱ πάροιθε) is referring to, I believe
the most likely option is Menelaus’ shipwreck (other options might include being driven off
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337
κακῶν δ᾽ ἕν ἡµῖν ἔσχατον τῶν ἀθλίων
ἄλλους τυράννους αὐτὸν ὄντα βασιλέα
βίον προσαιτεῖν.
One thing caps all my other miserable woes,
that I, myself a king, must beg my livelihood from other kings.
Menelaus’ wretchedness is increasing more and more, and this is marked grammatically in
the passage in two ways. First, ‘one thing’ (ἕν, 510) is literally added to the category of
‘miserable woes’ (κακῶν τῶν ἀθλίων, 510), which itself comprises Menelaus’ earlier
categories of ‘wretched troubles’ and the ‘earlier ones’. Second, Menelaus uses the word
ἔσχατον ‘furthest, outermost’ to describe this new wretchedness. The use of ἔσχατον,
with its basic semantics of marking the last in a series or the extremities of a particular
situation (as ἔσχατον can mean for example ‘lowest, furthest, highest, deepest, utmost,
worst’ depending on the context), signifies that for Menelaus this new wretchedness
extends his misery so much that he has reached a new boundary of wretchedness. The fifth
level of wretchedness is a hypothetical situation that Menelaus is contemplating (802-804):
Menelaus: οὐδ᾽ ἄρα πρὸς οἴκους ναυστολεῖν <σ᾽> ἔξεστί µοι;
Helen: ξίφος µένει σε µᾶλλον ἢ τοὐµὸν λέχος.
Menelaus: οὕτως ἂν εἴην ἀθλιώτατος βροτῶν.
Menelaus: So I am not allowed to take <you> home by ship?
Helen: A sword awaits you, not my bed.
Menelaus: That would make me the most wretched of mortals.
by the Old Woman or the fact that the Theoclymenus is hostile to Greeks). As my point is
to demonstrate how Menelaus’ wretchedness increases and increases throughout the play,
the specific identity of the earlier wretchedness is irrelevant.
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Finally Menelaus is able to describe himself with a superlative degree form (ἀθλιώτατος,
804), showing that his potential death marks a new outermost limit of wretchedness,
beyond all that has transpired up to that point. This is the exact same superlative form that
Aristophanes uses in Acharnians to represent Dicaeopolis’ ultimate goal for the rag
costume (ἀθλιώτατος, Acharnians 384). The extent of Menelaus’ wretchedness is
obvious even to Menelaus himself, when he attempts to persuade Theonoe to help them in
the sixth level of his wretchedness (954-958):
ἀλλ᾽, εἰ µὲν ἄνδρα σοι δοκεῖ σῶσαι ξένον
ζητοῦντά γ᾽ ὀρθῶς ἀπολαβεῖν δάµαρτ᾽ ἐµήν
ἀπόδος τε καὶ πρὸς σῶσον· εἰ δὲ µὴ δοκεῖ,
ἐγὼ µὲν οὐ νῦν πρῶτον ἀλλὰ πολλάκις
ἄθλιος ἂν εἴην, σὺ δὲ γυνὴ κακὴ φανῇ.
Well, if you think it best to save the life of a stranger
properly trying to recover his wife,
give her back and save my life in addition. But if not,
I will be wretched not for the first time – I have been so
many times before – whereas you will be shown to be a base woman.
Menelaus’ fate is in Theonoe’s hands, and she has the potential to inflict further
wretchedness upon him. If Theonoe does not save their lives, then he will be wretched “not
for the first time, but often (οὐ νῦν πρῶτον ἀλλὰ πολλάκις, 957).” The pleonastic
phrases ‘not for the first time’ (οὐ νῦν πρῶτον, 957) and ‘but often’ (ἀλλὰ πολλάκις,
957) signal that Menelaus is all too aware of his enormous amounts of wretchedness, and
one can interpret this as Menelaus showing a metapoetic awareness of his role in the
distinctive plot of Helen, in which Menelaus is a character afflicted with everaccumulating amounts of wretchedness. By signaling this, Menelaus reaffirms his own
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primary trait as ‘wretched’. Resigned to his fate, Menelaus is not concerned at the prospect
of more wretchedness, since he has suffered so much already.
Reason for Wretchedness
1. Menelaus needed to retrieve
Helen from Troy
2. Menelaus suffered a shipwreck
3. There are two Helens of Sparta
4. Menelaus must be a beggar
5. Menelaus may be killed by a
sword
6. Menelaus may be killed if
Theonoe does not save his life
Passage in Helen
‘wretched’ (ἄθλιος, 49)
‘earlier ones’ (οἱ πάροιθε, 484)
‘wretched troubles’ (συµφοραὶ ἀθλίαι, 483)
‘one thing caps all my other miserable woes’ (κακῶν δ᾽ ἕν
ἡµῖν ἔσχατον τῶν ἀθλίων, 510)
‘most wretched’ (ἀθλιώτατος, 804)
‘wretched not for the first time – I have been so
many times before’ (οὐ νῦν πρῶτον ἀλλὰ πολλάκις
ἄθλιος, 957-958)
Table 11. Increasing Levels of Menelaus' Wretchedness in Euripides' Helen
Menelaus’ wretchedness compounds throughout Helen, in the same way that Aristophanes
compounds the wretchedness of Euripidean rag costumes in the scene in Acharnians.
Throughout Helen, Menelaus travels along the continuum of wretchedness that
Aristophanes had created, and thus Euripides assimilates Menelaus to the standard that
Aristophanes set in Acharnians: an increasingly wretched hero from tragedy, wearing rags,
and acting like a beggar.
Third of all, Euripides designates the rags that Menelaus is wearing as belonging to
Telephus, and the allusion is composed in such a way that it recalls two aspects of
Acharnians: marking the rags as a theatrical costume (this time in an implicit play-withina-play), and making costume determine the identity of the character. When Helen
proposes that Menelaus will play the character of the witness who saw Menelaus die,
Menelaus wholeheartedly endorses it, adding (1079-1080):
καὶ µὴν τάδ᾽ ἀµφίβληστρα σώµατος ῥάκη
ξυµµάρτυρές σοι ναυτικῶν ἐρειπίων.
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Well, these rags I have cast about my body
will second your story of my wreck at sea.
The phrasing of this line evokes Euripides’ Telephus fr. 697 in which Telephus refers to his
clothes as ‘these humble rags thrown about my body’ (πτώχ᾽ ἀµφίβλητα σώµατος
λαβὼν ῥάκη). The repetition of ἀµφίβλη(σ)τ(ρ)α σώµατος ῥάκη is distinctive enough
to ensure an allusion to the line in Telephus. What was Euripides’ motivation in alluding
to the rags of Telephus at this point in the Helen? We might consider this to be a form of
self-parody, reasoning that Euripides is channeling Telephus as he portrayed him earlier in
Telephus for some particular reason, perhaps to aid in Menelaus’ upcoming deception
since Telephus was effective at disguising himself in rags.339 Yet contrary to Dicaeopolis’
effective appropriation of the rags of Telephus from Telephus, which was suitable since
both characters were in similar situations (needing to speak effectively and persuasively
before an angry crowd), Menelaus’ appropriation of the rags of Telephus from Telephus
would be less effective, as their situations are not parallel at all. Wounded by the spear of
Achilles and in need of a cure, Telephus assumed a disguise in order to infiltrate the
Greeks, whereupon he interceded in a debate on whether the Greeks should re-embark for
Troy or not, has his identity discovered, seized baby Orestes as a hostage and made a
rousing speech. Once the Greeks figured out that Telephus was actually a Greek, all was
well, and Telephus’ wound was cured by the rust from Achilles’ spear. None of these
elements affords Menelaus any benefit, since he is attempting to escape rather than
infiltrate, he has no need of rousing speeches or debates, and he is trying to keep his
identity a secret rather than have it be discovered.
Walton 2009, 76 describes Menelaus’ rags as self-parody of Euripides’ Telephus
without mentioning distinctive correspondences or describing the motivation for what that
self-parody might be.
159
339
I argue instead that Euripides makes Menelaus co-opt the rags of Telephus as a
response to Aristophanes’ parody of Telephus’ rags in Acharnians. Whereas Aristophanes
engaged in metatheater by portraying various types of rags from Euripides’ plays as
theatrical costumes, Euripides engages in metatheater by having Menelaus redefine his
rags as a theatrical costume in an implicit play-within-a-play. When Menelaus co-opts
Telephus’ rags, exclaiming to Helen, “these rags I have cast about my body will second
your story of my wreck at sea (1079-1080),” Menelaus displays awareness that he will be
acting a role, and that the rags he is currently wearing will be reinterpreted as a theatrical
costume.340 Some scholars have seen this aspect as an element in a play-within-a-play
involving the escape scene in Helen, whereby Euripides enables metatheatrical reflection
by engaging with the methods by which dramatists create, cast, and produce dramas for
audiences.341 According to this model, the scene contains a metafictional process of
constructing a narrative intended to be staged for an audience (Theoclymenus and the
Egyptian sailors), characters feigning new identities (Menelaus as the witness and Helen as
the grief-stricken widow), and the adoption of new costumes (Menelaus’ rags and Helen’s
black clothes, shorn hair and bloodied cheeks). Seen in this light, Menelaus’ rags (and
Helen’s black clothes) portrayed as a costume afford an implicit metatheatrical reflection
on the creation of tragedy which I submit is similar to the explicit metatheatrical reflection
appearing in Aristophanes’ closet of rag-costumes in Acharnians.
Furthermore, the recurrent theme in Helen whereby one’s costume determines
one’s identity is of low prototypicality in tragedy, and of high prototypicality and
On the redefinition of rags as a theatrical costume see Allen 2008, 262 on lines 10791081, and Muecke 1982, 28.
341
Dobrov 2001, 127-128, Lada-Richards 2003, 25-29, Lada-Richards 2005, 460, and
Munteanu 2011, 228-230.
160
340
notability in comedy.342 Much of the time in tragedy, costume has little to do with
determining identity.343 Costume can designate ethnicity, as in Hecuba 733-735, in which
Agamemnon deduces a man’s identity as Trojan based on his costume. Costume can be
exploited to provoke an emotional response from the audience, as when Hecuba dresses
the dead Astyanax in the clothes he would have worn on his wedding day at Trojan
Women 1218-1220. Costume can also determine someone’s subsequent fate, for example,
when characters wear funeral robes while still alive, foreshadowing their imminent death
(Alcestis 160-161, Euripides’ Suppliants 1045-1071). While one might expect a change of
costume in tragedy to represent a change in identity as well, most of the time this does not
occur. When the family of Heracles changes into funeral garb at Heracles 329-335 they
are not receiving a new identity, rather, the funeral clothes determine and foreshadow their
ultimate death at Heracles’ hands. Sometimes we cannot ascertain from our texts whether
a character underwent a costume change at all, for example, at Libation Bearers 560,
Orestes says that he will arrive at the palace ‘like a stranger’, but we do not know what this
involved in terms of dramaturgy: changing clothes, affecting a different voice, etc.344 When
Telephus adopts the rags in Telephus, he makes it clear that the rags do not affect his
identity (fr. 698):
δεῖ γάρ µε δόξαι πτωχὸν
εἶναι µὲν ὅσπερ εἰµί, φαίνεσθαι δὲ µή.
For I must seem a beggar, to be who I am but not appear to be so.
Of the times when a change of costume corresponds to a new identity, the relationship is
one of a new identity determining the costume, not costume determining identity. When
For a different take on costume and identity in Helen, see Wright 2005, 329-335.
The following categories and examples are drawn from Wyles 2011, 61-85.
344
Muecke 1982, 29.
161
342
343
the Erinyes are given red cloaks to mark their decision to live in Athens at Eumenides
1028-1032, first the Erinyes’ new identity as metics “resident foreigners” (as metics wore
red cloaks in the Greater Panathenaic procession) occurs, and the clothing is given to them
second, only after their identity has been transformed.
On the contrary a number of prominent examples of costume dictating the identity
of a character occurs in comedy, from Frogs, Thesmophoriazusae, and most relevantly
Acharnians.345 In the beginning of Frogs, Dionysus attempts to assume Heracles’ identity
by wearing his lionskin, and when Dionysus and Xanthias swap the Heracles costume at
Frogs 494-500, they change identities as well. At Thesmophoriazusae 146-174, the
“method-writer” Agathon wears women’s clothes to produce plays about women. While
the trope is fairly common in comedy, a notable example comes from Acharnians, which I
suggest provokes Euripides’ response. When Dicaeopolis acquires Telephus’ rags and
Mysian cap, he immediately adopts Telephus’ persona and is filled with Telephus’
rhetorical skill: “God bless you, and as for Telephus – what’s in my thoughts! Bravo! How
I’m filling up with phraselets already! (446-447).”
Euripides begins Helen in accord with highly prototypical usages of tragedy and
transforms the dynamics of costume at 1079-1080 to accord with highly prototypical
usages of comedy. When the hero Menelaus arrives shipwrecked and dressed in rags, there
is a mismatch between reality (Menelaus is actually a hero) and appearance (Menelaus is a
beggar), yet he is constantly treated according to his appearance. When Helen meets
Menelaus, she thinks he is a thief or a criminal as evidenced by his clothing (553-554). The
One example from tragedy comes from Bacchae 822 when Pentheus fears becoming a
woman if he wears women’s clothes. Below I suggest that Bacchae appropriates
Thesmophoriazusae’s relationship between identity and women’s clothes, in a parallel way
to my proposal that Helen appropriates Acharnians’ relationship between identity and
rags.
162
345
Old Woman violently thrusts him away “like a beggar” (790), and Menelaus, seeking to
maintain his own identity as a hero despite the fact that he is constantly being treated like a
ragged beggar, claims that while it was begging in deed (τοὔργον, 792), it was not that
way in its name (ὄνοµα, 792). At this stage of the play, due to the mismatch of being one
thing but seeming to be something else, Menelaus is much like Telephus from Telephus,
where costume does not dictate identity. When Menelaus redefines the rags as a theatrical
costume belonging to Telephus at 1079-1080, suddenly his costume dictates his identity,
as he is both a beggar according to his appearance and according to the role he is playing.
His disguise is effective, and Theoclymenus is wholly convinced as to his identity (12041205, 1284). Menelaus’ use of Telephean rags is conceived of in the same way as
Dicaeopolis’ use of Telephus’ rags, where costume determines a character’s identity. A
third costume shift occurs when Menelaus’ disgusting clothes are exchanged for good
clothes (1281-1284) and he re-appears in battle armor (1375-1384). Once again
Menelaus’ costume dictates his identity, and instead of a ragged beggar, he acts like an
armored hero for the remainder of the play.346 I suggest that the best explanation for the
trope in Helen in which costume dictates identity is that it is a comedic element drawn
from Acharnians.347 It is a form of one-upmanship, as Euripides is claiming that this is the
best way to appropriate the rags of Telephus, not in the way that Aristophanes did in
Acharnians.
Wright 2005, 329 notes that Helen and Menelaus’ costume changes are unparalleled in
Greek tragedy and suggests they would be as disorienting as a modern film where the
actors were changed in the middle of the movie.
347
See also Muecke 1982, 28. Wright 2005, 335 suggests that Menelaus’ heroic behavior
aboard the ship is completely different than it was before, and that this is “at least partly
due to his new costume.” Unfortunately, Wright does not provide an answer to his own
thought-provoking question about Helen, “Does outward appearance dictate reality,
rather than vice versa?”
163
346
By reclaiming Telephus’ rags and making costume dictate identity, Euripides
presents an alternate way that Telephus’ rags can be used to produce a successful tragedy.
Far from Aristophanes’ claim that Euripidean rags are so common that anyone could see
through the disguise, Euripides shows how Menelaus’ adaptation of Telephus’ rags can
persuade different audiences, re-interpreting the forms of success that tragedic rags can
achieve.348 In Euripides’ hands, a wretched costume of rags can be novel, contrary to what
Aristophanes had asserted in Acharnians.
These aims are reinforced by two metapoetic strategies, the first of which is that
Euripides transforms the wretchedness of rags from a bad quality to good one, reversing
the assertion that Aristophanes made in Acharnians. Immediately after Menelaus treats the
rags he is currently wearing as a costume, Helen remarks (1081-1082):
ἐς καιρὸν ἦλθε, τότε δ᾽ ἄκαιρ᾽ ἀπώλλυτο·
τὸ δ᾽ ἄθλιον κεῖν᾽ εὐτυχὲς τάχ᾽ ἂν πέσοι
The loss of your clothes was advantageous, though when it happened, it seemed
detrimental. That wretchedness may prove to be a blessing.
Throughout the play, Menelaus outlined the various ways that he was ‘wretched’
(ἄθλιος), including the shipwreck and the events leading up to his ragged state (συµφορὰς
γὰρ ἀθλίας ἐκ τῶν πάροιθε τὰς παρεστώσας, 483). In lines 1081-1082, Euripides
redefines wretchedness (τὸ ἄθλιον, 1082) and transforms it into a positive benefit. The
misery of the shipwreck contains a silver lining for Menelaus through the provision of a rag
costume that will enable their escape from Egypt. In the light of the “Euripides scene”
from Acharnians, in which Dicaeopolis sought the most wretched rag costume he could
This re-interpretation falls under the category of ‘rejection’ in rivalry, in which the loser
rejects the winner’s claims and puts forth a new claim of his own (van Wees 2011, 3).
164
348
find, I argue that this passage (1081-1082) can be read as a paracomic response, rejecting
the Aristophanic accusation that wretched rags are ineffective, and instead showing how a
wretched rag costume can be a blessing.
The second metapoetic strategy responds to Aristophanes’ charge that the use of
rags was old-fashioned (παλαιός). I argue that Euripides explicitly designates his escape
plot as novel (καινός) and shifts the charge of old-fashionedness (παλαιότης) onto the
highly prototypical trope of the feigned death scene. When Helen asks Menelaus (1050),
“Are you willing, though alive, to be reported dead?” Menelaus reluctantly agrees. Helen
explicates the plan further (1053-1054), “Then I would mourn you before the godless
man, cropping my hair and wailing as women do.” Menelaus responds, “But how does
that help us to escape with our lives? Your story seems a bit old-fashioned (παλαιότης,
1056).” This charge of ‘old-fashionedness’ alludes to other feigned death stories, such as
Aeschylus’ Choephoroi, Sophocles’ Electra (assuming a date prior to Helen), or Euripides’
own Cresphontes.349 Even though Helen and Menelaus actually do use a feigned death
story, it is different from the narratives of previous plays in a number of ways – the
addition of sword-bearing men (on which, see Chapter 2) and the use of a wretched rag
costume. By using the trigger words καινός and παλαιότης, the implication is that
Euripides’ feigned death scene in Helen involving sword-bearing men and wretched rags is
novel, not old-fashioned. The novelty of the wretched rags is expressed more explicitly
when the Messenger reaches Theoclymenus to tell him of the events aboard the ship
(1513):
ὡς καίν᾽ ἀκούσῃ πήµατ᾽ ἐξ ἐµοῦ τάχα.
So novel is the trouble you will soon hear from me.
349
Dale 1967, 133-134 on line 1050 and Allan 2008, 259-260 on lines 1050-1056.
165
As Torrance has elucidated, Euripides uses καινός to explicitly signal the novelty of
his plots.350 Since the καίν’ πήµατ’ refer to Helen and Menelaus’ escape plot, it is that
element that Euripides is signaling as novel. The fact that Euripides metapoetically
describes the escape plot as novel (καινός) combined with his charge that other feigned
death scenes are old-fashioned (παλαιότης) can be seen as a two-fold response to
Aristophanes’ accusation that rags only appear in old-fashioned (παλαιός) dramas.
Euripides’ escape plot in Helen trumps earlier feigned death scenes, but also reappropriates the Aristophanic parody – enabling a beggar-hero wearing the rags of
Telephus, who undergoes ever-increasing wretchedness, to let his own costume of rags
determine his identity in an implicitly metatheatrical play-within-a-play and to transform
his wretchedness into a benefit to aid in his escape. In this way, Euripides reacquires
control over his dramatic costumes, and nullifies Aristophanes’ attempt to dominate
Euripides through costume control in Acharnians. By countering Aristophanes’ specific
comic characterizations, Euripides re-asserts that a costume of wretched rags, far from
being old-fashioned, trite and ineffective (or more precisely, only effective for the oldtimers) as Aristophanes had claimed, could actually create a novel, compelling tragedic
plot.
THESMOPHORIAZUSAE
A year later in 411 BCE, Aristophanes composed a whole-scale assault on
Euripidean drama in his Thesmophoriazusae, casting Euripides as the protagonist of the
play and staging four parodies of Euripides’ plays. Three of Euripides’ plays are cited by
name (Palamedes at Thesm. 770, 848; Helen at Thesm. 850; Andromeda at Thesm.
350
Torrance 2013, 218-227, especially 226.
166
1012), while the fourth, Telephus, is unnamed, but obvious.351 In the parody of Helen,
Aristophanes directly mocks Euripidean rags at Thesmophoriazusae 910 “And I [cannot
help but see] Menelaus in you – to judge from your rags (τὰ ἴφυα)” and at line 935, where
he calls Euripides a ‘sail-stitcher’ (ἱστιορράφος). Both of these comments (as τὰ ἴφυα
means ‘seaweed’) literalize Menelaus’ claim at Helen 422 that he was only wearing
‘castups from the shipwreck’. I believe that Aristophanes’ widespread comments upon a
myriad of Euripidean dramatic idiosyncrasies throughout the play suggest a counterresponse to Euripides’ dramatic claims in Helen in two ways. The most obvious is that
Aristophanes parodies Helen at Thesmophoriazusae 849-928, directly mocking a number
of novel elements in Euripides’ response to Acharnians. The less obvious counter-response
to Helen is that Aristophanes offers a broader criticism of tragedic costuming as a whole by
making the characters connected with tragedy (Agathon, Kinsman, Euripides) dress in
women’s clothes.
Thesmophoriazusae’s direct parody of Helen is introduced by labeling Euripides’
Helen καινός (850), which refers both to its recent production and, metapoetically, to its
novelty.352 While the Aristophanic parody addresses and subverts some of Helen’s novelties
(the play’s setting in Egypt and a much simpler treatment of epistemological issues of
identity involved with recognition), it omits many of the more prominent novelties, such as
the issue of Helen’s double identity as a ghost or the scene where the Old Lady drives
Menelaus off from the gates. Austin and Olson suggest that “the new ‘new Helen’ that
results [in Thesmophoriazusae] contains none of the rarified intellectual and theological
On parody in Thesmophoriazusae, see Zeitlin 1981, 311-318, and specifically on the
parody of Helen, see Nieddu 2004.
352
Austin and Olson 2004, lx-lxii and 278 on lines 850-851, Segal 2001, 140-150, and
Torrance 2013, 292.
167
351
matter so prominent in the original, and is instead a simple tale of easy recognition and
(attempted) rescue.”353
While Aristophanes’ portrayal reduces and simplifies the numerous instances of
novelty in Euripides’ Helen, I argue that it also continues the rivalry about the
effectiveness of certain modes of dramatic construction. In addition to perpetuating the
metapoetic discussion about whether tragedic rags are old-fashioned or not Aristophanes
also responds by utilizing two of the novel ways that Euripides responded to Acharnians in
his paracomic Helen and revealing that they are ineffective failures: the play-within-a-play
and the re-interpretation of the clothes a character is wearing as a theatrical costume.
Helen’s implicit play-within-a-play, whereby Helen and Menelaus adopt theatrical
costumes, new identities, and stage a dramatic performance for an internal audience, is
answered in Thesmophoriazusae by Aristophanes using the same technique of a playwithin-a-play, though explicitly so, in accord with the generic conventions of comedy.
After realizing that using a stratagem from Palamedes was ineffective, the Kinsman
introduces a gambit from Helen (849):
τῷ δῆτ᾽ ἂν αὐτὸν προσαγαγοίµην δράµατι;
So which of his plays can I use to entice him?
In contrast to the Kinsman’s escape attempt using Palamedes, which he described as a
stratagem (πόρος, 769), the escape attempt involving Helen is called a play
(τῷ...δράµατι). The postponement of the word δράµατι until the end of the line adds to
the audience’s surprise that the Kinsman would be staging an entire play instead of using a
trick from one.354 Contrary to the parody of Palamedes, which stages a stratagem within a
Austin and Olson 2004, lxi. On the ways in which Helen is directly parodied in
Thesmophoriazusae see Nieddu 2004, 331-360.
354
See Austin and Olson 2004, 278.
168
353
play, the parody of Helen explicitly stages a play-within-a-play, thus re-appropriating the
method that Euripides had used to show how tragedic rags could be effective. As the playwithin-a-play that the Kinsman and Euripides stage eventually fails, Aristophanes
demonstrates that, contrary to Euripides’ claims, tragedic rags are ineffective as a dramatic
device.
Furthermore, Aristophanes adopts Menelaus’ technique of using the clothes he is
already wearing as a theatrical costume in his escape plot (Helen 1079-1080). The
Kinsman, in a similar situation necessitating escape, first uses the women’s clothes he is
already wearing to play the role of Helen, “After all, I’m already wearing a woman’s
costume (πάντως ὑπάρχει µοι γυναικεία στολή, 851).” When their performance of
Helen fails, the Kinsman, still in need of escape, uses the chains he is already wearing to
play the role of Andromeda, “After all, I already have the requisite chains (πάντως δέ µοι
τὰ δέσµ᾽ ὑπάρχει, 1012-1013).” This technique of reinterpreting one’s clothes as a
theatrical costume was a Euripidean innovation, as the prototypical method of disguising
oneself is not to wear the clothes one is already wearing (surely, a method of disguise that
would not fool very many people) but rather to adopt different clothing so as to mislead
the internal audience.
Much as Euripides adopted the salient points of the Acharnians parody into Helen,
so did Aristophanes adopt the novel elements of Helen into Thesmophoriazusae. In
Aristophanes’ hands, however, Euripides’ techniques of an implicit play-within-a-play and
costume re-interpretation fail. Contrary to the effectiveness of ragged costuming Euripides
presents in Helen, the costumes that Euripides and the Kinsman adopt in
Thesmophoriazusae (Menelaus’ ship-rags for Euripides; women’s clothes for the
Kinsman) completely fail at deceiving their audience, Critylla. Unlike Theoclymenus and
the Egyptian sailors, the internal audiences of Helen who were duped by Menelaus’ rags,
169
Critylla is not taken in at all. Critylla sees through the dramatic illusion that the Kinsman
and Euripides are attempting to accomplish, and never once is she removed from the
dramatic location of the Thesmophoria in Athens.355 The Kinsman and Euripides call
upon Critylla to imagine that she is in Egypt in front of the halls of Proteus, that the altar
in the orchestra is actually a tomb, that her identity is actually Theonoe. None of these
illusions affect Critylla, and thus, as a dramatic performance, Euripides and the Kinsman’s
play fails.
While Thesmophoriazusae engages in a direct response to Euripides’ Helen
through a direct parody, it also more broadly criticizes tragedic costuming as a whole by
shifting the discourse and making the characters connected with tragedy (Agathon,
Kinsman, Euripides) engage in cross-dressing, producing the effect of feminization and
humiliation.356 As Compton-Engle writes, “Tragedy fails to deceive, and its representatives
in Thesmophoriazusae are feminized – not only the Relative, but also Agathon and
Euripides, who ends the play dressed as an old woman.”357 These concepts are tied in with
the ideas of costume control and mastery. In Acharnians Dicaeopolis overcame his rivals
within the play through control of costume, and since Aristophanes fused his identity with
Dicaeopolis in the parabasis, Aristophanes also staked claims about his own mastery over
other comedic and tragedic poets in the dramatic sphere. Yet there is a great difference in
the ways that these claims occur in Thesmophoriazusae. Whereas in Acharnians
See Lada-Richards 2003, 30.
On cross-dressing, feminization and humiliation see Bassi 1998, 99-115, Austin and
Olson 2004, lxx, Compton-Engle 2003, 515-524, and Zeitlin 1981, 301-311. It is possible
that the connection between tragedy and femininity was due to the presence of the trope of
cross-dressing in tragedy. A possible candidate might be Euripides’ fragmentary Scyrioi,
which featured Achilles hiding among the women of Scyros in drag, on which see Fantuzzi
2012, 29-38. Unfortunately, according to Cropp and Fick 1985, 90, the play cannot be
dated, and thus we cannot determine which play was written first.
357
Compton-Engle, 2003, 523.
170
355
356
Aristophanes declares Euripides’ subservience through costume control, in
Thesmophoriazusae Aristophanes utterly annihilates Euripides (and tragedy as a whole)
through tragedy’s constant failure in plots, scenes, and costumes. Compton-Engle also
notes this substantial difference between Acharnians and Thesmophoriazusae, yet
speculates that it is perhaps due to “broader developments in Old Comedy”, namely an
increased awareness of gender and a corresponding increase in dramatic portrayals
involving gender.358 Yet this fails to account for the escalating intensity of the attack on
Euripides and tragedy. As escalation is one of the hallmarks of rivalry, a better explanation
is that Aristophanes’ escalated attack on Euripides was precipitated by Euripides’ assertions
concerning tragedic costume and plot in his paracomic Helen.359
BACCHAE
Euripides’ Bacchae (405 BCE) continues the conversation between Aristophanes
and Euripides regarding mastery over costume and, more generally, dramatic skill. I am
certainly not the first to draw connections between Thesmophoriazusae and Bacchae, as a
number of scholars have commented upon the main comparandum between the plays: the
cross-dressing of the Kinsman at Thesmophoriazusae 209-268 and the cross-dressing of
Pentheus at Bacchae 912-970).360 There are two main viewpoints concerning the
relationship between the two plays. One camp, following Seidensticker, suggests that the
Compton-Engle 2003, 522.
van Wees 2011, 3.
360
Dodds 1960, 192 on lines 912-976, Segal 1982, 254-259, Said 1987, 221-3. The
possibility of paracomedy does not enter the arguments of Gruber 1986, 26: “The
parallels between Thesmophoriazusae and The Bacchae in this respect are clear and
striking, all the more so since there can be no question of direct influence. Euripides’ play
was brought to Athens only after the poet’s death, which makes the many similarities
between the plays truly remarkable.” For other relevant scholarship on these scenes, see the
footnote immediately below.
171
358
359
cross-dressing scene in Bacchae is comic, and the other, following Muecke, suggests that
the scene in Bacchae is not abnormal in tragedy, but rather follows the norms of tragedic
costume and plot.361 My own analysis will harmonize these views, since I endeavor to
demonstrate that Euripides appropriates a comedic element involving both costume and
plot from Thesmophoriazusae into Bacchae, but that this element is naturalized into the
tragedy. Bacchae, then, serves as the final rejoinder in the cross-generic dialogue about
dramatic costuming.
As Muecke discusses, there are a number of correspondences between the two
scenes.362 Both the Kinsman and Pentheus are dressed as women (στολή γυναικός,
Thesmophoriazusae 92, θῆλυς στολή, Bacchae 828, 836, 852, cf. γυναικόµορφος,
Bacchae 855 and σκευὴ γυναικὸς µαινάδος βάκχης ἔχων, Bacchae 915). The Kinsman
is shaved and singed (Thesmophoriazusae 215-248) and receives a dress (ἱµάτιον, 250,
κροκωτός, 253), a bra (στρόφιον, 251, 254), a girdle (implied at σύζωσον, 255) a
hairnet (κεκρύφαλος, 257) and headdress (µίτρα, 257), a wig (κεφαλή, 258), a wrap
(ἔγκυκλον, 261), and shoes (ὑποδήµατα, 262). In Bacchae, Pentheus acquires long hair
(831, cf. 928, 931), a dress reaching to the ankles (πέπλοι ποδήρεις, 833, 935-936), a
headdress (µίτρα, 833, 929), a thyrsus and fawnskin (835, 941), and girdle (ζῶναι, 935).
All of the items that the Kinsman and Pentheus acquire are distinctively feminine. Even
though the only items that match in both lists are a headdress (µίτρα) and a girdle
(ζῶναι), both scenes offer a number of further parallels in terms of staging. In both scenes,
For the view of Bacchae 912-970 as comic, see Seidensticker 1978, 316-320 and
Seidensticker 1982, 123-128, which follow a universal idea of ‘the Comic’, a problematic
concept (on which see Chapter 1), and also Dobrov 2001, 77-82, Foley 2003, 347-351.
For the view of Bacchae 912-970 as following the norms of tragedy, see Muecke 1982, 32.
See also Basta Donzelli 2006, 1-17 who rejects Seidensticker’s view of the Cadmus and
Tiresias cross-dressing scene (Bacchae 170-369) as comic.
362
Muecke 1982, 17-18.
172
361
the character relinquishes control to the one dressing him in drag. The Kinsman says “Put
me to use however you want” (212) and acquiesces when faced with the prospect of being
shaved and singed, “Then go right ahead, if you think it best; otherwise I should never
have handed myself over to you” (216-217). Pentheus similarly shows his subservience,
remarking “You must be my hairdresser, for I am entirely given over to you” (934). In
both scenes, the Kinsman and Pentheus express a concern over their overall appearance as
a woman (Thesmophoriazusae 234-235, Bacchae 925-934, 941-942) and specifically how
the pleats of the dress should hang (Thesmophoriazusae 256, Bacchae 935-938).363
Bacchae responds to Thesmophoriazusae primarily not through verbal repetitions, but
through their similar dramaturgy.
In addition to the parallels in the cross-dressing scenes, I suggest that Bacchae
adopts the plot structure that Aristophanes used in Thesmophoriazusae, in which a
character (Euripides, Dionysus) dresses up a humiliated character in women’s clothes (the
Kinsman, Pentheus) to make him appear like another previously mentioned character who
wears the same women’s clothes (Agathon, Tiresias and Cadmus) in order to infiltrate and
spy upon (κατάσκοπος, Thesmophoriazusae 587 and Bacchae 916, 956, and
κατασκοπή at Bacchae 838) a sacred space of women (the women at the Thesmophoria,
the maenads). The similarities permeate the entire plots of both plays, as a cross-dressed
character or characters at the beginning of the play serve to foreshadow the subsequent
cross-dressing of the Kinsman and Pentheus. Agathon is wearing the same clothes and
using the same objects that the Kinsman will later use when he is dressed like a woman: a
party dress (κροκωτός, 138), a hairnet (κεκρύφαλος, 138), a bra (στρόφιον, 139), and a
mirror (κάτοπτρον, 140). Once the transformative process is complete, the visual effect is
363
Wyles 2011, 99.
173
of both Agathon and the Kinsman dressed exactly the same in women’s clothing.
Similarly, Pentheus’ attire of maenad’s clothing is foreshadowed by Tiresias and Cadmus,
who wear the same fawnskins (176, 249), use the same thyrsus (176, 188, 254) and shake
their heads (185) in the same way as Pentheus does later (835, 930, 941), making Pentheus
visually appear like Cadmus and Tiresias did earlier in the play.364 Thesmophoriazusae’s
visual effect of Agathon and the Kinsman appearing onstage together dressed the same
way in women’s clothing is replicated by the fact that Pentheus, in addition to recalling the
appearance of Cadmus and Tiresias, also appears as a mirror-image of Dionysus. In
addition to a fawnskin (137) and a thyrsus (495), Dionysus has long hair (455) and tosses
his locks (150, 240-241), and these same four features mark Pentheus’ new appearance as
a woman (831, 835, 930, 941). The features of costume foreshadowing and onstage
costume duplication are of low prototypicality in tragedy, yet have a notable comedic
precedent in Thesmophoriazusae, and consequently I suggest a paracomic relationship
between them.
The plot and cross-dressing scene that Aristophanes had used to humiliate those
characters associated with tragedy is used for entirely different purposes in Bacchae, and
these align well with conventional standards in tragedy. Much as he did for rags in Helen’s
response to Acharnians, Euripides demonstrates the effectiveness that cross-dressing can
have in the right hands, and the comic elements in Aristophanes are re-interpreted in
serious ways. The Kinsman’s comical sexual arousal at seeing the mixed-gender array of
Agathon’s apparel at Thesmophoriazusae 130-145 is replaced by Euripides’ serious
treatment of Pentheus’ confused sexuality, as when he finds the effeminate Dionysus
A further parallel in both scenes is that Pentheus suggests destroying something with
crowbars (µοχλοί), either Tiresias’ seat of prophecy (348) or the glens of the maenads
(949).
174
364
attractive at Bacchae 453-454. Agathon’s form of “method writing”, that is, feminine
clothes determines a feminine identity for writing feminine plays (Thesmophoriazusae
146-174), is substituted for Pentheus’ response to Dionysus’ suggestion that he wear a
linen robe to infiltrate the maenads at Bacchae 822: “Shall I become a woman instead of a
man? (ἐς γυναῖκας ἐξ ἀνδρὸς τελῶ;).” For Pentheus, a linen robe would dictate a
transformation in his identity, whereby he ends up (τελῶ) a woman.365 The Kinsman’s
laughing mockery of Agathon’s cross-dressing (ψόγος, 146) is replicated by Pentheus’
mockery of Tiresias and Cadmus in Bacchae (πολὺν γελών, 250, διαγελᾳς, 272, 286,
322).366 Since the audience already knows that Dionysus is about to destroy Pentheus
(847-861), the cross-dressing scene is accompanied by a feeling of foreboding. The
appropriation of the comedic element of cross-dressing results in a sense of disquieting
confusion for the audience, as the distinctively comedic costuming is juxtaposed with the
imminent horror of Pentheus’ brutal death. As such, the best way to interpret this literary
adoption is by Euripides naturalizing a comedic element into tragedy, a model that
harmonizes the views of Seidensticker and Muecke. Seidensticker is correct in that the
impetus for staging the cross-dressing scene and the plot of Bacchae was
Thesmophoriazusae, yet Muecke is right to contextualize these elements within the
Bacchae’s appropriation of ‘costume dictating identity’ from Thesmophoriazusae, with
both using women’s clothes as the example, continues Helen’s previous appropriation
from Acharnians, with both plays using rags as the example.
366
Seidensticker 1978, 314-315 views Pentheus’ laughter at Tiresias and Cadmus as
evidence that the scene is comic, and that the audience is supposed to laugh alongside him.
Yet Dillon 1991, 345-355 has demonstrated that tragic laughter is not funny at all, but
almost always contains a malevolent and mocking tone. Halliwell 2008, 137 also notes the
unsettling dual nature of Dionysiac laughter, whereby a laughing face and voice can
encompass either friendliness or hostility. When Pentheus is dressed in women’s clothing
later on in the play, he expresses his fear of the same mocking laughter that he inflicted
upon Tiresias and Cadmus (842) and later on Dionysus arranges for him to suffer the
same mockery (854). On ψόγος as a part of the mockery associated with iambic poetry
see Rotstein 2010, 61-111.
175
365
broader picture of tragedy. Bacchae represents the last in a line of paratragic and
paracomic appropriations between Aristophanes and Euripides spanning the majority of
their careers, and through these passages we can glimpse a dramatic world filled with
rivalry and mutual influences that were not limited by the specific genres of tragedy and
comedy but instead were hallmarks of Greek drama as a whole.
176
Conclusion
In this dissertation, I have suggested that tragedians used paracomedy as a poetic
technique in their plays much more frequently than is commonly believed (see Appendix
B). Much like other methods of literary craftsmanship, paracomedy was a technique that
was available but optional for dramatists, and consequently paracomedy appears only in a
portion of our attested dramas. All three major tragedians utilized paracomedy, and no
doubt other tragedians did as well, though due to the fragmentary nature of their plays we
do not have the evidence to reconstruct enough of their plots, scenes and language to
develop arguments about their use of paracomedy thoroughly. Aeschylus, Sophocles and
Euripides differ significantly in the manner and extent that they use paracomedy.
Aeschylus uses paracomedy only occasionally, but when he does so it pervades the extent
of the play. Rather than plots or scenes, he tends to adopt paracomedic language, as he
does in his characterization of the horrific Furies in the Oresteia.367 Sophocles engages in
paracomedy very rarely, and Kirkpatrick and Dunn have demonstrated that Sophocles
avoids material that potentially could give rise to paracomedy, and much like Aeschylus'
tendencies, the one secure example of Sophoclean paracomedy involves language.368
Euripides, however, uses paracomedy significantly more frequently that Aeschylus or
Sophocles, both in absolute numbers (12 reasonably secure examples in Appendix B) and
as a proportional percentage of his corpus of plays. Euripides further differs from the other
367
368
Sommerstein 2002, 151-168.
Kirkpatrick and Dunn 2002, 39-42.
177
two playwrights in the manner of appropriation, by adopting paracomedic scenes, plots,
costumes, and blocking in addition to language.
Given the extent and depth of Euripides' incorporation of paracomedy into his
later plays, from Electra and Heracles in the mid-410s BCE to Orestes and Bacchae (the
final productions before Euripides' death in 406 BCE), it is seems that paracomedy was a
technique that Euripides focused on increasingly at the end of his career. I believe that
whatever tone scholars detect in their designation of 'late Euripides' can be attributed to
the surge of Euripidean paracomedy occurring in this period.369 To some scholars, 'late
Euripides' may feel different than the rest of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, but this
is not due to the bare inclusion of comedic elements (as paracomedy was a viable dramatic
technique at least as early as 458 BCE, when Aeschylus permeated his Oresteia with
paracomedic language), but rather to the greater extent and more comprehensive manner
of paracomedic appropriations that Euripides includes in the plays in the last decade or so
of his life. Even though this process might be seen as a convergence of the genres of
tragedy and comedy at the close of the fifth century BCE, in that paracomedic elements
are increasingly included in tragedy and paratragedic elements are increasingly included in
comedy, it also serves to re-establish the generic identity of the separate genres. For
paratragedy and paracomedy to make any sense to the audience, tragedy and comedy
must exist as distinct categories for the comedian to draw upon.
My argument is conditioned on the assumption that the audience had the capacity
to perceive, appreciate, and contextualize the examples of paracomedy I have described. I
believe this assumption is valid, given Revermann's demonstration of the bottom-line
Torrance 2013, 300-301 suggests that the ‘comic’ elements in Euripides are better
understood as metapoetic strategies. My views on paracomedy are not mutually exclusive
with this position.
178
369
theatrical knowledge that the majority of the audience had, comprising knowledge
acquired from performing in civic choruses and from watching a wide array of plays year
after year.370 The Athenians had a great ability to remember dramas, as evidenced by an
anecdote of Plutarch (Nicias 29.3) that a group of Athenian prisoners of war sang
Euripidean songs from memory during the Peloponnesian War, something that prompted
their captors to free the Athenian prisoners. The strong oral and visual memories of the
Athenians is well attested by the rhapsodes, who could commit vast quantities of Homer to
memory and could trust on the audience to know if they were making mistakes, and by the
symposiasts, for whom an image on a vase hanging on the wall could provoke a discussion
surrounding mythic variants drawn from memory. It is reasonable to suggest that this
broader culture of memory allowed paracomedic elements, much like paratragedic
elements, to resonate for the Athenian theater audience.
More than anything else, my study casts the world of Athenian theater as vivid and
dynamic. Assuredly there existed a small intellectual circle around the dramatists, who
were actively involved in theater production and who were likely well acquainted with the
dramatists themselves. This inner circle would have a deeper theatrical knowledge from
producing and watching more plays than the average Athenian, and would have been able
to better appreciate the interconnected web of dramatic appropriations in the 5th century
BCE. Still, the average Athenian, with his relatively strong theatrical competence, would
have grasped some of the allusions during the plays, and likely would have learned even
more from post-play discussions with friends. It is important to keep in mind that any
given audience member does not need to understand each example of paracomedy or
paratragedy to appreciate the play as a whole, however, for each case that he does
370
Revermann 2006, 107-115.
179
understand, the audience member feels all the more satisfied. Aristophanes rhetorically
bifurcates his audience into the clever and the low-brow, and quite naturally everyone
wants to be a member of the clever half of the audience. Paradrama is inclusive, and
allows every member of the audience to feel smart. Paracomedy should not be seen as a
model that contrasts with other theories of tragedy; rather, it adds a certain sense of
subtlety and nuance to tragedy, and works together with other analyses of drama to
provide a fuller and deeper appreciation of the Greek theatrical world.
180
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194
Appendix A: Dates of Relevant 5th Century Dramas
458 BCE
438 BCE
431 BCE
428 BCE
425 BCE (c.)
425 BCE
423 BCE
422 BCE
421 BCE
420 BCE (c.)
416 BCE (c.)
415 BCE
415 BCE (c.)
414 BCE
414-412 BCE (c.)
412 BCE
411 BCE
410 BCE (c.)
409 BCE (c.)
409 BCE
408 BCE
408 BCE (c.)
406 BCE (c.)
405 BCE (c.)
405 BCE
??? BCE
??? BCE
Aeschylus Oresteia (Agamemnon, Choephoroi, Eumenides)
Euripides Telephus, Alcestis
Euripides Medea
Euripides Hippolytus
Euripides Andromache
Aristophanes Acharnians
Aristophanes Clouds (revision at 417 BCE?)
Aristophanes Wasps
Aristophanes Peace
Euripides Electra
Euripides Heracles
Euripides Trojan Women
Euripides Iphigenia among the Taurians
Aristophanes Birds
Euripides Ion
Euripides Helen, Andromeda
Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae, Lysistrata
Euripides Antiope
Euripides Phoenician Women
Sophocles Philoctetes
Euripides Orestes
Euripides Cyclops
Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus (produced 401 BCE)
Euripides Bacchae
Aristophanes Frogs
Sophocles Trachiniae (perhaps ‘early’ based on stylistics?)
Sophocles Electra
195
Appendix B: Proposed Examples of Paracomedy
A brief survey of examples of paracomedy will be beneficial, as no full summary is
available for scholars to see how widespread the phenomenon is. Considering that different
scholars may have different reactions to each argument, I have included all proposals,
including those that may not meet the criteria I outlined above (distinctive
correspondences, priority of the comedic element, motivation).
Location of Paracomedy
Target Text/ Comedic Element
(CE)
Comic language as CE with high
prototypicality
Bibliographical Citation
Numerous Aristophanic CE
Herington 1963
Sophocles’ Chryses fr. 727
(mattock of Zeus)
Aristophanes Birds 1239-1240
Marshall 2009, 145-149
Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus
(entire)
Aristophanes’ Birds (entire)
Castellani 2010, 47-58
Euripides’ Heracles 1380-1381
(talking object)
Cercopes scene, talking object as
CE with high prototypicality
Kirkpatrick and Dunn 2002
Euripides’ Ion 154-176
(driving off succession of birds)
Aristophanes’ Birds 278-365
Diamantakou-Agathou 2012,
15-29
Euripides’ Helen passim (rag
costumes)
Aristophanes’ Acharnians 393479
Chapter 5, Dobrov 2001, 128,
and Mureddu 2003, 191-194
Euripides’ Helen 386-396
(boastful warrior)
Aristophanes’ Acharnians 572625
Appendix C
Aeschylus’ Agamemnon 1389
through Eumenides 695
(comedic language)
Aeschylus’ Eumenides (entire)
Sommerstein 2002, 151-168
Continued
Table 12. Proposed Examples of Paracomedy
196
Table 12 continued
Location of Paracomedy
Target Text/ Comedic Element
(CE)
Aristophanes’ Acharnians 395479
Bibliographical Citation
Euripides’ Helen 1107-1113
(mourning nightingales)
Aristophanes’ Birds 209-216
Dover 1972, 148-149
Euripides’ Helen 1250-1283
(requests for supplies)
Aristophanes’ Acharnians 437439
Appendix C
Euripides’ Phoenician Women
446-585
(reconciliation scene)
Euripides’ Antiope first episode
(costumes and rhetoric)
Aristophanes’ Lysistrata 11121187
Scharffenberger 1995a, 312-336
Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae 95-208
Scharffenberger 1996, 65-72
Euripides’ Orestes 129
(‘old’ Helen)
Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae 805
Wright 2006, 36-37
Euripides’ Orestes 132-210
(ebb and flow of choral volume
in madness scene)
Euripides’ Orestes 1504
(sword-bearing men)
Aristophanes’ Peace 292-360
Chapter 3
Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae 218
Chapter 2
Euripides’ Orestes 1567-1624
(hostage scene)
Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae 688-764
Chapter 4
Euripides’ Cyclops 222
(what is this rock I see?)
Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae 1105
Euripides’ Bacchae 912-970
(cross-dressing)
Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae 209-279
Seaford 1982, 163-172, Seaford
1984, 48-51, and Marshall 2001,
226-228
Chapter 5, Seidensticker 1978,
316-319, Seidensticker 1982,
123-127, Foley 2003, 349-351,
Wyles 2011, 98-100
Euripides’ Helen 437-482
(knocking at the door)
197
Appendix C, Mureddu 2003,
194-198
Appendix C: Further Potential Connections Between Acharnians and Helen
I will briefly note and evaluate a few other paracomic correspondences that should
be considered between Helen and Acharnians to see if they can corroborate the idea that
the use of wretched rags in Helen responds to Acharnians: 1) the aspect of ‘knocking at the
door’ of Menelaus and the Old Woman in Helen and of Dicaeopolis and Euripides’ slave
in Acharnians, 2) the characterization of Menelaus in Helen and Lamachus in Acharnians
as a miles gloriosus ‘braggart soldier’ figure, and 3) the sequence of Dicaeopolis requesting
a list of props from Euripides in Acharnians and the sequence of Menelaus requesting a list
of supplies from Theoclymenus in Helen. The first two of these elements have been
discussed in general terms as ‘comic’. Pippin, for example, describes “the portress’
invective, Menelaus’ water-logged rags and his tendency to drop from bluster into
cowardice” as well as the “marriage theme” at the conclusion of the play as “highly
Aristophanic”.371 Yet it is clear that what she means by this is that the tone of these
passages is humorous, and she labels Helen as a “new sort of comedy” that is “ancestor to
Measure for Measure and the Winter’s Tale”.372 One must of course recognize the fact
that this type of characterization projects an anachronistic sense of genre upon Helen, and
furthermore, it is impossible to determine the ‘comicness’ of these tropes.373 Podlecki
presents an equally valid counterargument for the basic seriousness of the play,
Pippin 1960, 155. Her proposed connection of the ‘marriage theme’ is distinctive only
so far as both plays refer to marriages, and thus are not valid enough to qualify as
paracomedy.
372
Pippin 1960, 154.
373
On this, see Chapter 1.
198
371
contextualizing Menelaus’ rags and Menelaus’ self-description as a world-renowned hero
in terms of the recent miseries of the shipwreck.374 Wright disagrees even more strongly
with Pippin’s views on the grounds that one cannot determine whether a feature is comical
or funny.375 Even if we cannot tell if these elements were ‘comic’, however, it is worth
considering if there are distinctive enough correspondences between these elements and
passages from comedy to establish that Euripides appropriated comedic elements into
Helen.
Despite her lack of evidence for connecting Helen’s and Acharnians’ treatment of
rags (see above), Mureddu presents an excellent set of distinctive correspondences for the
‘knocking at the door’ scenes in the two plays.376 She adduces the connections of ‘beggars’
(πτωχός) and ‘begging’ (προσαιτέω) discussed above, but also adds a few more
specifically regarding the scene at the door. The phrase ‘know that you are troublesome’
(ὀχληρὸς ἴσθ᾽ ὤν, Helen 452) is almost a direct quotation of Aristophanes’ ‘know that
you are troublesome to my halls’ (ἴσθ᾽ ὀχληρὸς ὤν δὀµοις, Acharnians 460).377 As
Mureddu describes, ἴσθ᾽ ὤν + adjective is quite rare in Greek literature, and it may have
been a characteristic phrasing of Euripides.378 If so, when Euripides nearly quotes the line
ὀχληρὸς ἴσθ᾽ ὤν, he is reclaiming the phrase that Aristophanes had mocked. Similarly,
both passages have an element of the doorkeeper violently removing the character from
the doors. Dicaeopolis was ‘thrust from the house’ (ἀπωθοῦµαι δόµων, Acharnians 450),
and Menelaus asks the woman ‘not to thrust him away by force’ (µηδ᾽ ὤθει βίαι, Helen
Podlecki 1970, 402-405.
Wright 2005, 228-233.
376
Mureddu 2003, 194-198.
377
Compare Acharnians 456 ‘know that you are irksome’ (λυπηρὸς ἴσθ᾽ ὤν).
378
Mureddu 2003, 196. See also Acharnians 490-491 ‘know that you are a shameless and
an iron man’ (ἴσθι νυν ἀναίσχυντος ὢν σιδηροῦς τ᾽ ἀνήρ), which may parody
Euripidean style.
199
374
375
445) and later tells Helen ‘I was driven away like a beggar’ (ὥσπερ πτωχός
ἐξηλαυνόµην, Helen 790). While Mureddu embraces the idea of a paracomic response,
when faced with these same parallels, Brown concludes in his study of door-keeper scenes
in tragedy that, “It does not follow that Euripides had Dikaiopolis in mind as his model for
Menelaos. It is after all Dikaiopolis who is modelled on a hero from Euripidean tragedy
and his scene with Euripides is full of tragic diction.”379 Yet Brown, thinking only in terms
of comic elements, not comedic elements, denies the parallel because of his preconceived
views on what tragedy can or cannot contain. For him, the possibility of a response to
comedy can only exist if the passage in Helen were comic or humorous (as he admits
happens for the scene with the rude doorkeeper), and he does not find the portrayal of
Menelaus to be comic. The fact that Dicaeopolis’ scene is paratragic is cited as evidence
that Menelaus’ character cannot respond to Dicaeopolis, yet why Brown thinks this should
be so is unclear. Indeed, the fact that Acharnians parodies Telephus and other early
Euripidean plays lends support to the idea that Helen is responding to Acharnians, as the
paratragedy provides the motivation for Euripides to reclaim what was parodied. To my
mind, the distinctiveness of the parallels, especially the near-direct quotation of the rare
phrase ‘know that you are troublesome’ (ὀχληρὸς ἴσθ᾽ ὤν), demonstrates that Euripides
was modeling his scene after the ‘knocking at the door’ scene in Acharnians.
As for the second proposed parallel, the connection between the blustering warrior
figures of Menelaus and Lamachus, distinctive correspondences are severely lacking. Both
figures are certainly reminiscent of the miles gloriosus figure from Roman comedy (3rd
century – 2nd century BCE). However, the miles gloriosus stock character had not yet been
developed in 5th century BCE Greece, and thus comparisons made between the Greek and
379
Brown 2000, 8.
200
Roman characters may potentially illuminate a pathway of development from Greek
drama into Roman comedy, but no understanding about Greek drama may be acquired
through comparison to Roman comedy. Thus, proposed parallels and questions are
misleading, as Segal’s “Is it mere coincidence that Lamachus is hailed as a ‘stormer of city
walls’ (Acharnians 570) and Plautus’ eponymous braggart warrior is saluted as urbicape
‘sacker of cities’ (Miles Gloriosus 1055)?”, since they imply an ahistorical relationship that
cannot exist.380 It is still valid, though, to inquire as to a historical relationship between
Menelaus in Helen and Lamachus in Acharnians because of potential similarities between
them, as both characters are full of themselves and prideful of their martial exploits. Yet
no distinctive correspondences can be drawn between the two plays – one might expect
Euripides to target Lamachus’ notable armor, which is discussed in detail when he arrives
in full panoply carrying a shield with a Gorgon on it and wearing an elaborate helmet with
crest (Acharnians 572-625) and again in the arming scene (Acharnians 1094-1141).
Reading in the opposing direction, one might expect a precedent in Acharnians for
Menelaus’ boastful references to how ‘famous’ (κλεινός 392, 453) he is, but none are
found.
There is some evidence that the sequence of Menelaus asking Theoclymenus for
supplies (Helen 1250-1283) may parallel the sequence of Dicaeopolis asking Euripides for
props (Acharnians 437-479). After receiving the rags, Dicaeopolis goes on to ask for
various items associated with tragedy: a little hat (πιλίδιον, 439), a little cane (βακτήριον,
448), a little basket (σπυρίδιον, 453, 469), a little goblet (κοτυλίσκιον, 459), a little bottle
(χυτρίδιον, 463), and little herbs (φυλλεῖον, 469). Menelaus similarly requests a list of
items for use in the escape from Egypt: the blood of an animal (αἷµα, 1255), bedding
380
Segal 2001, 483.
201
(στρωτά, 1261), bronze armor (χαλκήλατ᾽ ὅπλα, 1263), good fruits (καλὰ
βλαστήµατα, 1265), and a ship and skilled rowers (ναῦς κἀρετµῶν ἐπιστάτας, 1267).
While there no connections between the items requested in both scenes, there is a certain
similarity between the staging and general dynamic of the scenes, supported by some
verbal correspondences between the passages. Dicaeopolis makes requests either with
forms of δίδωµι, primarily the imperative δός ‘gimme’ (Acharnians 415, 431, 437, 453,
458, 463, 469, 478), or forms of δέοµαι ‘I need’ (Acharnians 448, 451, 466) and
Euripides capitulates either with forms of δίδωµι ‘give’ (Acharnians 445) or λαµβάνω
‘take’ (449, 460, 464). Menelaus similarly makes requests with δίδωµι (Helen 1257, 1259)
and δέοµαι (Helen 1267), and Theoclymenus capitulates with δίδωµι (Helen 1264) and
λαµβάνω (Helen 1254). Powers suggests that “it is unlikely that Euripides is directly
playing off of Aristophanes’ scene, especially given the length of time between the two
plays, but the similarity between them does suggest that there is some commonality
between the plays and their relationship to props and costumes, as each scene involves a
sense of building tension or excitement in seeing how many items the hero can extract
from the buffoon.”381 While the correspondences I outlined are not distinctive in and of
themselves since they are common vocabulary items, their similar contexts and the
frequency and precision with which both scenes use them increase the likelihood that
Euripides intended this as a response. We do not have direct access to how these scenes
were staged, though one can easily imagine scenarios in which intertextuality between
both scenes were activated visually on stage through certain gestures or accumulation of
props onstage.382 It is certainly possible that this was intended as an intertextual allusion,
Powers 2010, 30-31.
On visual intertextuality or ‘optical allusions’ in Greek and Roman drama, see Cowan
2013, 311-342.
202
381
382
especially given that long lists of prop-requests are unusual in tragedy. Unfortunately,
there is not enough evidence to fully suggest paracomedy, as more distinctive
correspondences would be needed to argue for an allusion, and without seeing the original
performances of the plays, one cannot obtain them. To summarize, given that one
paracomic response in a play may increase the likelihood of more paracomic responses
from the same play, my overall proposal that Helen responds to Acharnians’ treatment of
rags gains support from the parallels between the two door-keeper scenes, the possibility of
support from the ‘prop request’ staging of both plays but no support from the ‘braggart
warrior’ motif.383
For multiple paratragic and paracomic responses within one play, consider
Thesmophoriazusae and Orestes, each of which responds to numerous plays from the
other genre.
203
383