CLST 312: Greek and Roman Drama
Winter 2016
Supporting Materials for Lectures
Lecture 7: The Theatre of the Dispossessed
This is the title of a book by Augusto Boal about theatre in Peru, but it accurately describes the relationship between
politically dis-empowered groups in the Attic theatre: (i) women, (ii) children, (iii) foreigners. I do not intend to betray
the leftist ethos of this work by including a fourth group-(iv) the dead.
1.
Women
In contrast to their limited role in contemporary Athenian society (secluded in the house by purdah, their sphere of
action being limited by the house-door, so that in Soph. El. 329-30 Electra is rebuked for appearing out of doors, not
citizens, but perpetual minors, all governed by a male kurios, given in marriage by the kurios at a ceremony of
betrothal that they themselves did not attend, and supposed to be mentioned neither in praise nor blame [Thucydides
2.46], expected willingly to sacrifice themselves for the good of the state or family), women were of great importance
in the world represented on the tragic stage. Discuss this fact and the concept of the "female intruder" such as
Clytaemnestra, Medea, and Lysistrata. Consider that the roles of women were played by men, the words they spoke
were written by men. Especially interesting for this topic is Aesch. Eum.
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A. W. Gomme, "The Position of Women in Athens," Classical Philology 20 (1925) 1-26 = Essays in Greek
History(Oxford 1937) 89-115.
D. C. Richter, "The Position of Women in Classical Athens," The Journal of the Anthropological Society of
Oxford 6 (1975) 153-70.
R. Just, "Conceptions of Women in Classical Athens," The Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 6
(1975) 153-70.
M. Shaw, "The Female Intruder: Women in Fifth-Century Drama," Classical Philology 70 (1975) 255-66.
E. Lévy, "Les femmes chez Aristophane," Ktèma 1 (1976) 110.
D. Schaps, "The Woman Least Mentioned: Etiquette and Women's Names," Classical Quarterly 27 (1977) 323-30.
F. Zeitlin, Dynamic Misogyny in the Oresteia," Arethusa 11 (1978) 149-84.
J. P. Gould, "Women in Classical Greece," Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980) 38-59.
A. H. Sommerstein, "The Naming of Women in Greek and Roman Comedy," Quaderni di storia 11 (1980) 393418.
M. Gilleland, "Female Speech in Greek and Latin," American Journal of Philology 101 (1980) 180-3.
H. P. Foley, "The Conception of Women in Athenian Drama," in Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. H. P. Foley
(New York 1981) 127-68.
H. P. Foley, "The 'Female Intruder' Reconsidered," Classical Philology 77 (1982) 1-21.
R. P. Winnington-Ingram, "Sophocles and Women," in J. de Romilly ed. Sophocle = Fondation
Hardt, Entretiens 29 (Geneva 1982) 233-57.
C. Nancy, "Euripide et le parti des femmes," Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica 17 (1984) 111-36.
J. Assaël, "Misogynie et f&eacuteminisme chez Aristophane et chez Euripide," Pallas 32 (1985) 93ff.
S. Wiersma, "Women in Sophocles," Mnemosyne 37 (1984) 25-55.
J. Henderson, "Older Women in Attic Old Comedy," Transactions of the American Philological Association 117
(1987) 105-29.
P. E. Easterling, "Women in Tragic Space," Bulletin of the Institute for Classical Studies 34 (1987) 15-26.
M. La Matina, "Donne in Aristofane: Appunti per una semiotica della esclusione," 84 in J. Vibaek, ed., Donna e
società (Palermo 1987).
G. Clark, Women in the Ancient World (Oxford 1989).
D. Cohen, "Seclusion, Separation and the Status of Women in Classical Athens," Greece and Rome 36 (1989) 315.
A. Powell, ed. Euripides, Women and Sexuality (London and New York 1990).
A. J. Podlecki, "Could Women Attend the Theater in ancient Athens? A Collection of Testimonia," Ancient
World 21 (1990) 27-43.
S. de Bouveis, Women in Greek Tragedy (Oslo 1990).
R. Seaford, "The Imprisonment of Women in Greek Tragedy," Journal of Hellenic Studies 110 (1990) 76-90.
J. Henderson, "Women and the Athenian Dramatic Festivals," Transactions of the American Philological
Association121 (1991) 133-47.
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2.
The Theatre and the Male Gaze
Recent feminist theory, inspired by Freudian sex-based psychology, argues that VISION is a male prerogative, an
expression of sexual aggression; the female conversely, is designated by what is VISIBLY lacking by male,
phallocentric standards. This can change the way in which the theatre is perceived. Consider this perspective in the
light of the Greek theatre (theatron, literally a "place for watching" from the same root as "theory"; contrast
Latin AUDITORIUM, "a place for hearing") with its sexually charged space of the scene-building with its women's area
(the muchos orgynaikonitis, Ltn PENETRALIA) and the stage (for men). Consider other aspects of sight, e.g. [1]
blinding as pseudo-castration (Oedipus, Cyclops, Thamyras, Glouchester), [2] voyeurism (Actaeon, Pentheus in
Eur. Bacchae, Gyges in the anonymous Gyges-Tragedy [fr. adespoton 664 TrGF, published by D. L. Page, A New
Chapter in the History of Greek Tragedy [1953]) note that while Phaedra and Eurydice in Soph. Antigone are
eavesdroppers, Hippolytus is a voyeur), [3] exhibitionism (Candaules), [4] the reversal of sex-roles (Clytaemnestra's
"man-counseling heart" and Lady MacBeth's line, "unsex me now"), and [5] transvestism (Pentheus, Achilles on
Scyros, Euripides' cousin in Ar. Thesm.); the theatre as a whole with all female roles played by male actors is
transvestite. Note that many forms of sexual deviance that do not involve sight are ignored by tragedy (e.g. pedophilia,
necrophilia, which figures in Herodotus, sadism, masochism, etc.). Discuss scoptophilia.
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3.
N. Loraux, "Aristophane, les femmes d'Athènes et le théâtre" 203-44 in J. M. Bremer and E. W. Handley,
edd.,Aristophane = Fondation Hardt Entretiens 38 (Geneva 1991).
C. Cox, review of R. Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life in Ancient History Bulletin 6 (1992) 177-86.
R. E. Harder, Die Frauenrollen bei Euripides (Stuttgart 1993).
L. K. Taaffe, Aristophanes and Women (London and New York 1993).
S. Freud, "The Uncanny," Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works vol. 17 p. 231.
J. Merleau-Ponty (trans. A. Lingis), The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston 1968).
J. Lacan (trans. A. Sheridan), "The Split between the Eye and the Gaze," in The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psycho-Analysis (New York 1977) 67-78.
L. Irigaray in E. Marks and I. de Courtivron, New French Feminisms: An Anthology (Amherst, Mass. 1980) 101.
J. Gallop, Feminism and Psychoanalysis: the Daughter's Seduction (London 1982) 58.
T. Moi, Sexual/ Textual Politics (London and New York 1985) 134, summarizing L. Irigaray, Ce sexe que n'est pas
un (Paris 1977).
N. Loraux (A. Forster trans.), Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman (Cambridge, Mass. 1987).
P. Dubois, Sowing the Body (Chicago and London 1988).
Children
Children tend to be portrayed as mindless idiots on the Greek stage: relevant to this is the fact that the Greek word for
idiot" n-epios, literally means "in-fant", i.e. "not speaking", so too in Modern Greek "baby" is moro, literally a "moron";
Creon prevents Oedipus at the end of Soph. Oedipus the King from giving advice to his children, saying that they
have no wits. The Greeks felt no nostalgia for childhood; gods grow up very fast (Hermes steals at three days,
Heracles strangles snakes in his cradle). Were the roles of children performed by midgets (nanoi), adult actors
speaking form the wings or on stage (as in Eur. Alcestis; see A. M. Dale's commentary, page xx), by real-life children
(maybe apprentice-actors, the sons or nephews of adult actors; acting like most professions ran in families; actors
enter Noh theatre at seven years and the Elizabethan theatre at ten) or by a child miming while an actor sings? For
the (atypical) affectionate treatment of childhood, see the speech of Cilissa in Aesch. Cho. and of Strepsiades in
Ar. Clouds. Did children attend the theatre (Ar. says in the parabasis of Clouds that the comic phallus serves to
arouse boys and Plato in the Republic says that children should be excluded from the theatre)?
Relevant passages include, speaking parts: Astyanax in Eur. Andr. 504ff, Eumelus in Eur. Alc. 393ff, Supp. 1123ff
andMed. 1271ff, silent parts: Eurysaces in Soph. Aj., the daughters of Oedipus in Soph. Oedipus the King, the
children of Heracles in Eur. Her., the children of Jason in Eur. Med.; choruses: Eur. Suppl. and Ar. Wasps.
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P. Masqueray, "Euripide et les enfants," Revue des études anciennes 8 (1906) 85-92.
G. M. Sifakis, "Children in Greek Tragedy," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 26 (1979) 67-80.
A. R. Rose, "The Significance of the Nurse's Speech in Aeschylus' Choephori," Classical Bulletin 58 (1982) 49-50.
R. J. Rabel, "The Lost Children of the Oresteia," Eranos 82 (1984) 211-3.
T. A. Tarkow, "Tragedy and Transformation: Parent and Child in Euripides' Hecuba," Maia 36 (1984) 123-36.
M. Golden, Children and Childhood in Classical Athens (Baltimore 1990).
4.
Foreigners
Consider the role of foreigners, meaning "Non-Greek" (barbaros) as distinct from "Non-Athenian Greek" (xenos) of
whom the archetype on the Greek stage is the Persian; they exist in the space between male and female (this is
especially true of Dionysus and the Phrygian Eunuch) and exemplify what is undemocratic and unfree (especially the
chorus of Aesch. Persians). Characters of note are everybody in Aesch. Persians and the sons of Aegyptus in
Aesch.Suppliant Maidens, Tecmessa in Soph. Ajax, Medea in Eur. Medea, Dionysus in Eur. Bacchae, the Phrygian
eunuch in Eur. Orestes, and the Triballian god in Ar. Birds.
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5.
Slaves/Servants
Many plays, both tragic and comic, give surprisingly touching portraits of members of the lower classes, often carefully
drawn as individuals (while many a Creon [= "ruler"], by contrast, is but a mere cipher). A special category is the
messenger, whom we have already considered (lecture #1 7D). In only one surviving play is a slave the main
character, viz. Plautus The Savage Slave. Consider the following types:
 Inside slaves:
1. nurses and tutors including Cilissa in Aesch. Libation Bearers, the bawd in Eur. Hippolytus, the fretting nurse
in Eur. Medea
2. man-servants and pupils: as the little tramp character (bomolochus), they often get the best laughs in Old
Comedy; e.g. the Trochilus-bird in Ar. Birds, the flatulent Xanthias in Ar. Frogs, and the self-satisfied pupil of
Socrates in Ar. Clouds.
 Outside slaves:
1. heralds including the bully in Aesch. Suppliant Women, or the liar Liches in Soph. Women of Trachis, and
2. guards, watchment and herdsmen including the garrulous but sadly stifled character in Aesch.Agamemnon,
the apologetic Might and Violence in [Aesch.] Prometheus Bound, the terrified guard in Soph.Antigone and the
equally terrified herdsman in his Oedipus the King
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6.
H. H. Bacon, Barbarians in Greek Tragedy (New Haven 1961).
O. Reverdin, "Crise spirituelle et évasion," in H. Schwabl ed., Grecs et barbares = Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 8
(Geneva 1962) 83-120.
Baldry, The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought (Cambridge 1965) 8-51.
T. Long, Barbarians in Greek Comedy (Carbondale and Edwardsville 1986).
C. Brizhe, "La langue de l'étranger non-Grec chez Aristophane," in R. Louis ed., L'étranger dans le monde
Grec(Nancy 1988) 113-38.
E. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy (Oxford 1989).
E. Hall, "The Archer Scene in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae," Philologus 133 (1989) 38-54.
C. Segal, "Violence and the Other: Greek, Female, and Barbarian in Euripides' Hecuba," Transactions of the
American Philological Association 120 (1990) 109-31.
W. Burkert et al. edd., Hérodote et les peuples non-grecs = Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 35 (Geneva 1990).
J. R. Porter, Studies in Euripides'Orestes (Leiden 1994) 173-213.
D. Bain, Masters, Servants and Orders in Greek Tragedy = Publications of the Faculty of Arts of the University of
Manchester 26 (Manchester 1981).
The Dead
How do ghost-scenes relate to other supernatural scenes in the plays, e.g. deus ex machina-scenes? Do ghosts in
Roman drama differ in nature or function from those in Greek tragedy? The ghost-scene is related to the Greek
concept of the hero and the Christian notion of a "cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12.1). Ghosts normally problematize
normal-seeming situations with their demands for burial or vengeance (this makes them the opposite of the deus ex
machina). The exception to this is Darius, who serves more as a god than a ghost. They serve also to expose crimes.
Ghosts are frequently recorded in the theatre (apart from performances): R. L. Brown, Phantoms of the
Theater(Nashville 1977). Are there any ancient examples?
Relevant passages: Aesch. Pers. 681-52, Lib. Bear. 306-462, "the binding-song", Eum. 94-139 (for ghosts in the lost
plays, see O. Taplin, The Stage-Craft of Aeschylus [Oxford 1974] 447), Soph. Polyzena fr. 522-8 TrGF (the ghost of
Achilles, see W. M. Calder III, "A Reconstruction of Sophocles' Polyxena," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 7
[1966] 31-56), Eur. Hec. 1-58 (ghost of Polydorus, ghost of Achilles reported); Pacuvius Iliona i.145-7 = Cicero Tusc.
Disp. 1.106, Sen. Thy. 1ff, Agam. 1-56, Tro. 164-202 (reported in messenger's speech), Plaut. The Haunted House (is
a fake ghost).
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L. Collison-Morley, Greek and Roman Ghost Stories (Chicago 1912).
F. L. Lucas, Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy (Cambridge 1922).
R. Flatter, Hamlet's Father (New York 1949)
R. J. Edgeworth, "The Eloquent Ghost; Absyrtus in Seneca's Medea," Classica et Medievalia 41 (1990) 151-61.
Supporting Materials for Lectures
Lecture 8: Aeschylus, with Special Reference to The Suppliant Women
The Ancient Life of Aeschylus (T 1 TrGF)
Aeschylus the tragic poet was an Athenian by race from the deme of Eleusis, the son of Euphorion, the brother of
Cynegeirus, from a noble lineage.
He began writing tragedies as a young man and greatly surpassed his precursors in his poetry, his representation of the
scene, the brilliance of his choreography, his training of the actors, and the solemnity of his chorus, as even Aristophanes
says (Frogs1004-5):
"He was first of Greeks to tower up austere words
and arrange the tragic trumpery."
He was a contemporary of Pindar, having been born in the fortieth(?) Olympiad.
They say that he was noble and participated in the battle of Marathon with his brother Cynegeirus and in the sea-battle of
Salamis with the youngest of his brothers, Ameinias, and in the infantry-battle of Plataea.|
As concerns the writing of poetry, he was an enthusiast always for composition swollen with neologisms and adjectives. He
also used metaphors and everything that was able to put gravity into his diction. The structures of his plays have few
reversals of fortune and twists as compared with the work of younger writers, for he was only concerned to give weight to his
characters, considering the lofty and the heroic to be old-fashioned and deeming villainous boasting and sententiousness to
be alien to tragedy. So he is satirized by Aristophanes (Frogs 911ff) for increasing the seriousness of his characters. In
the Niobe, for example, the title-character sat by the tomb of her children wearing a veil, not speaking until two-thirds of the
play were over. And in the Ransoming of Hector Achilles was similarly veiled and did not speak except for a little duet with
Hermes in the beginning. While very many passages could be found in his plays that are suitable for quotation, there are few
sententiae, or sympathetic utterances, or anything else that could move people to tears. He used spectacle and words for
marvelous consternation rather than for deception.
He sailed to the court of Hieron, according to some under the urging of the Athenians and having been beaten by Sophocles
who was still a young man, or according to others having been beaten by Simonides in the contest to write the elegy for
those who had died at Marathon (Simonides' elegy is lost; see fr. 9-16 West), for an elegy ought to have a lot of the delicacy
involved in sympathy that, as we have said, is alien to Aeschylus. Some say that in the production of the Eumenides he
brought the chorus on piecemeal and so startled the citizens (i.e. the audience?) that the babies died and the pregnant
women miscarried. Going therefore to Sicily at the time when Hieron was founding Aetna, he produced the Aetnaean
Women in order to augur a good life for those who inhabited the city.
He was greatly honoured by the tyrant Hieron and the citizens of Gela and, having lived among them for three years, he died
an old man in the followings way. An eagle snatched up a turtle and when it was unable to master its prey, it dropped it onto
the rocks to crush its shell, but it was borne onto the poet and killed him. It had been prophesied that a bolt from heaven
would kill him.
When he had died, the citizens of Gela buried him with many honours at public expense and honoured him exceedingly, with
this epitaph:
"This tomb holds the Athenian Aeschylus, son of Euphorion
who died in grain-bearing Gela.
Of his comely strength the grove of Marathon can tell
and the long-haired Mede: he knows it well."
Those who found his tragedies life-like made pilgrimages to his tomb and gave it hero-worship and performed his plays.
The Athenians loved Aeschylus so much that they voted after his death that anyone wishing to produce his plays would be
given a chorus.
He lived sixty-three years, in which time he wrote seventy tragedies and in addition about twenty satyr-plays. He won in all
thirteen victories. He carried off not a few victories after his death.
Aeschylus was the first to augment the tragic art with the most noble sufferings and he painted the scene-building and filled
the sight of the spectators with brilliance, with paintings and devices, altars and tombs, trumpets, ghosts, Furies. He covered
the actors with loose sleeves and long theatrical robes and he increased their height with platform-shoes. He used as his first
actor Cleanander and after him added Mynnicus from Chalcis. But Sophocles invented the third actor, as Dicaearchus of
Messene says. If one were to compare the simplicity of his dramatic art with those who came after him, one would find it
paltry and simple, but if with those who came before, one would marvel at the poet for his clarity of vision and inventiveness.
To whomsoever Sophocles seems to be the more perfect poet, and rightly so, le t him consider that it was much harder to
bring tragedy to this height over Thespis, Phyricus and Choerilus than to come to Sophoclean perfection over Aeschylus.
There was written on his tomb:
"Struck on the pate from the claws of an eagle, he died"
They say that Hieron deemed it worthy to produce the Persians in Sicily and that it was a great success.
1.
The Danaid Tetralogy
The tetralogy originally consisted of: i) Suppliant Women, ii) Aegyptiads, iii) Danaids and iv) Amymone (satyric); how
can we reconstruct the plots of the lost plays? What are their recurrent themes (overcoming drought by bringing
irrigation, the punishment of drawing water with a sieve in Hades, the creation of the spring of Lerna; rape, etc.)?
(Note that the speech of Aphrodite, perhaps in a Eumenides-like trial-scene - the only surviving fragment of
the Danaids - is given in the introduction to the Suppliant Women in Grene and Lattimore's edition page 3.) What is
the date of the tetralogy? Stylistically it seems simpler than the other plays (the earliest datable one to survive
being Persians of 472), but Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2256.3 (published in 1952) says that it was defeated by Sophocles:
was this a revival, or did the tetralogy languish unproduced until after 468 (Sophocles' debut)?
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D. S. Robertson, "The End of the Supplices Trilogy of Aeschylus," Classical Review 38 (1924) 51-3.
H. N. Cook, "The Loathing of the Danaids," (abstract) Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological
Association 63 (1932) liv-lv.
K. von Fritz, "Die Danaidentrilogie des Aeschylus," Philologus 91 (1936) 121-35, 249-69.
G. H. Macurdy, "Had the Danaid Trilogy a Social Problem?" Classical Philology 39 (1944) 95-100.
F. R. Earp, "The Date of the Supplices of Aeschylus," Greece and Rome 22 (1953) 118-23.
J. F. Finley, "The Suppliants," in Pindar and Aeschylus (Cambridge, Mass. 1955).
*A. Diamantopoulos, "The Danaid Tetralogy of Aeschylus," Journal of Hellenic Studies 77 (1957) 220-9.
E. A. Wolff, "The Date of Aeschylus' Danaid Trilogy," Eranos 56 (1958) 112-39; 57 (1959) 6-34.
R. D. Murray Jr., The Motif of Io in Aeschylus' Suppliants (Princeton 1958).
H. Lloyd-Jones, "The Supplices of Aeschylus: The New Date and Old Problems," L'Antiquité classique 33 (1964)
356-74 = H. Hommel ed., Wege zu Aischylos = Wege der Forschung 87 (CITY 1974) 101-24 = E. Segal
ed, Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy (Oxford 1983-4) 42-56 = Kleine Schriften ?
A. Lesky, "Die Datierung der Hiketiden und der tragiker Mesatos," Gessamelte Schriften (Bern and Munich 1967)
220-33.
A. J. Garvie, Aeschylus Supplices: Play and Trilogy (Cambridge 1969).
*D. F. Sutton, "Aeschylus Amymone," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 15 (1974) 193-202.
S. Ireland, "The Problem of Motivation in the Supplices of Aeschylus," Rheinisches Museum 117 (1974) 14-29.
*A. J. Podlecki, "Reconstructing an Aeschylean Trilogy," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 22 (1975) 119.
M. McCall, "The Secondary Choruses in Aeschylus' Supplices," California Studies in Classical Antiquity 9 (1976)
117-31.
O. Taplin, The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford 1977) 192-239.
*T. Ganz, "Love and Death in the Suppliants of Aeschylus," Phoenix 32 (1978) 279-87.
*J. K. Mackinnon, "The Reason for the Danaid's Flight," Classical Quarterly 28 (1978) 74-82.
H. F. Johansen and E. W. Whittle, Aeschylus: The Suppliants (Denmark 1980) 3 vols.
*R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Studies in Aeschylus (Cambridge 1983) 55-72.
2.
1.
Suppliant Women
Why do the Danaids oppose their marriage? Do they oppose (a) marriage in general, because they are devotees of
Artemis à la the Amazons or Hippolytus (but some scholars argue that they do remarry at the end of the third play), or
(b) marriage with non-Greeks, or (c) marriage with their cousins as being incestuous, in which case they would serve
as spokes-people fo the principle of exogamy against the endogamy favoured by the Aegyptiads and by the real-life
pharaohs of Egypt (see J. Cerný, "Consanguinous Marriages in Pharaonic Egypt," Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 40 [1954] 23-9; in this respect they will be the opposite of Antigone, who shows a deep, almost romantic
attachment to her brother), or (d) forced marriage as being a king of rape (cf. the story of the Sabine women)? Or is
no explanation for their reluctance given or relevant" Or, again, do their motives change depending on whether they
are, in the person of the coryphaeus, actors in the drama or when they function strictly as the chorus (so Ireland)? Did
the Aegyptii have a legal right to claim the women as wives under the law ofepikleroi as femmes couvertes under
their kurioi? (Probably not, since their father is alive and opposes the marriage.)
2.
1.
What, if any, is the relevance of this story to Aeschylus' contemporaries?
Discuss the arranging of marriages by match-makers, a legitimate profession, but often seen as little better than
bawds (promnestria; Eur. Hipp. 589, Xen. Mem. 2.6.36, Pl. Tht. 149d, Ar. Nub. 1ff, Digesta
Iustiniaani50.14.2, Codex 5.1.6; see D. Noy, "Matchmakers and Marriage-Markets in Antiquity," Echoes du monde
classique/Classical Views 9 [1990] 375-400), a role played in part by the herald in this play.
The Danaids are accepted as resident aliens (metoikoi) in Argos (Aeschylus, Suppliant Women 609, cf. the use of this
word of the Furies in Eumenides 1011, 1018); discuss this state.
You may also want briefly to discuss the Athenian law of suppliants or refugees (hiketeis).
Does Aeschylus by showing Pelasgus of Argos as the saviour of the Danaids, hold up contemporary Argos to his
audience's admiration? Themistocles had been ostracized from Athens under the influence of Cimon (a conservative
pro-Spartan) politician. Like the Danaids, he found refuge in Sparta and used this as a staging-ground for his antiSpartan machinations (see Podlecki).
2.
3.
4.
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A. J. Podlecki, The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy (Ann Arbor 1966).
A. Andrewes, The Greeks (London 1967) 113-4.
A. R. W. Harrison, The Law of Athens (Oxford 1968).
J. Gould, "Hiketeia," Journal of Hellenic Studies 93 (1973) 74-103.
Supporting Materials for Lectures
Lecture 9: Sophocles, with special reference to the Women of Trachis
1.
The Ancient Life of Sophocles (T 1 TrGF)
Sophocles was an Athenian by race, the son of Sophilus, who was neither, as Aristoxenus says (fr. 115 Wehrli), a
carpenter or a blacksmith, nor, as Istrus says (334 F 33 FGrHist.), a knife-maker by trade, but perhaps owned
blacksmiths or carpenters as slaves. For it is unseemly that one born of such a station should have been deemed
worthy of generalship along with Pericles and Thucydides among the first rank of citizens. But he was not left unattacked on this ground] by the comic poets or by those who opposed Pericles. One must also refuse to believe Istrus
(334 F 34 FGrHist.) when he says that Sophocles was not an Athenian but from Phliasia [a region of the Peloponnese
near Corinth], for if he was a Phliasian by origin, no-one has discovered the fact except for Istrus. Sophocles was
born, then, an Athenian by race from the deme of Colonus. Notable for his life and his poetry, he was well educated
and brought up in luxury; he took part in politics and in embassies.
They say that he was born in the seventy-first Olympiad in the second year when Philip was archon in Athens (495/4
B.C.). He was younger than Aeschylus by seven years [sic: really 29 years] and older than Euripides by twenty-four
years [sic: really 11 years].
As a child he worked out in wrestling and music and was crowned for both, as Istrus says (334 F 35 FGrHist.). He was
educated in music by Lamprus, and after the sea-battle at Salamis when the Athenians were gathered round the
trophy, naked and rubbed-down with oil, he led with the lyre those who sang the victory-song.
He learned tragedy from Aeschylus. He introduced many innovations into the contests: first having abolished the
poet's role as an actor because of his poor voice (for before this the poet himself acted), he introduced fifteen chorusmembers instead of twelve and he invented the third actor.
They say that he took up the guitar and played it only in his Thamyris. This is why he is portrayed in the Painted Stoa
with a guitar.
Satyrus says (3, 161f. FHG) that he invented the crooked stick [presumably a tragedian's staff of office like the
herald's caduceus or the rhapsode's wand]. Istrus says (334 F 36 FGrHist) that he invented white half-boots which
both actors and chorus-members wore, and that he wrote his plays in accordance with their natures. He led a sacred
college of those who had been educated by the Muses.
To speak plainly, he had such personal charisma that everywhere he was loved by everyone.
He won twenty victories, as Carystus says (4, 359 FHG) and often won second place, never third.
The Athenians elected him general when he was sixty-five years old in the seventh year of the Peloponnesian war in
the battle of Anaea [a town on the coast of Asia Minor near Samos].
He was so pro-Athenian that although many foreign kings summoned him, he did not wish to leave his country.
He held the priesthood of Halos who was established as a hero along with Asclepius and Chiron(?) by Iophon his son
after his death.
Sophocles was unsurpassed in his love of god as Jerome says (fr. 32 Wehrli). [This is revealed in the story] about the
golden crown. When it had disappeared from the acropolis, Heracles appeared to him in a dream and told him that he
would find a building on the right as he entered the acropolis and that the crown was hidden there. He disclosed this
to the people and was rewarded with a talent. So it was publicly announced. Taking his talent, he founded a shrine to
Heracles the Informant.
It is said by many sources that a charge was brought against him by his son Iophon, for he had one son Iophon by
Nicostrate and another, Ariston, by Theoris of Sicyon and he loved his grandson by Ariston, Sophocles by name,
more.... So Iophon called him before the phratry and charged that his father was senile, but they fined Iophon instead.
Satyrus says (3,162 FHG) that he said, "If I am Sophocles I am not senile and if I am senile I am not Sophocles," and
then read from his Oedipus [at Colonus].
Istrus (334 F 37 FGrHist) and Neanthes (84 F 18 FGrHist.) say that he died in this way: Callippides the actor was
coming back from working in Opus at the time of the Pitcher Festival [on the second day of the Anthesteria] and sent
him a bunch of grapes. Sophocles took a grape into his mouth and while still eating it he choked because of his
excessive age and died. Satyrus says however (3, 162 FHG) that he was reading Antigone and toward the end fell
into a long speech that did not afford him a moment's rest so that he strained his voice and lost both voice and life at
once. Others say that after a performance of the play, when he was announced as the winner, he died overcome by
joy.
He was laid in his family tomb that stands by the road to Decelia at eleven stades from the city-walls. Some say that
they erected a siren on his tomb, others a brazen nightingale. When the Spartans were laying siege to the district
around Athens, Dionysus appeared in a dream to Lysander and ordered him to retreat so that a man could be placed
in his tomb. When Lysander made light of this, Dionysus stood beside him a second time and gave him the same
commandment. Lysander enquired of the exiles who it was who had died and, learning that it was Sophocles, he
declared a truce and let them bury the man.
Lobon says that these words were inscribed upon his tomb:
"I conceal in this tomb Sophocles, who won first place
with the tragic art, and was most beautiful to look upon."
Istrus says (334 F 38 FGrHist.) that the Athenians decreed by law in honour of his excellence to make annual sacrifice
to him.
Aristophanes [of Byzantium] says that there are one hundred thirty of his plays and of these seventeen are spurious.
He competed against Aeschylus, Euripides, Chorilus, Aristeas, his son Iophon, and many others.
He always used words Homerically. He brings out stories in the footsteps of that poet. He introduced Odysseus into
many of his plays. He made puns like Homer on the name of Odysseus, for example (fr. 965 TrGF):
"I am rightly called Odysseus of the Evils,
for many enemies are hateful (dusanto) to me."
He fashioned characters and plot-developments and speeches with skill, impressing them with a Homeric charm.
Hence it was said that Sophocles was Homer's only pupil... Though many before and after him imitated something
from Homer, only Sophocles brought its brilliance to full bloom.
So too he was called "the bee". He blended good timing, sweetness, strength and variety.
He knew how to fit matters opportunely so that in a little half-line or a single word he created a whole character. The
greatest thing in poetry is to reveal character or experience.
Aristophanes says (fr. 580a PCG) that "a honeycomb sat [upon his lips]" and again that "Sophocles' mouth was
anointed with honey."
Aristoxenus says (fr. 79 Wehrli) that he was the first poet from Athens to take up the Phrygian melody and the
dithyrambic style in the same choral songs.
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Sophocles fr. 4 West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci
Hieronymus of Rhodes says in his Historical Works that Sophocles lured a handsome boy outside the city wall to
have sex with him. Now the boy spread his own cloak on the grass, while they wrapped themselves in Sophocles'.
When their encounter was over, the boy seized Sophocles' cape and made off with it, leaving behind for
Sophocles his own boy's cloak. Naturally the incident was much talked of; when Euripides learned of it he jeered,
saying that he himself had once had sex with this boy without paying nay bonus, whereas Sophocles had been
treated with contempt for his licentiousness. When Sophocles heard that, he addressed to him the following
epigram, which refers to the fable of the sun and the North wind and also alludes lightly to Euripides' practice of
committing adultery:
"Helios it was, and not a boy, Euripides
Who by his heat stripped me of my cape;
but on you, when you were embracing
Another man's wife, the frigid North wind blew."
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2.
1.
Plato Republic 329c
I remember hearing Sophocles the poet greeted by a fellow who asked, "How about your service to Aphrodite,
Sophocles: is your natural force still unabated?" and he replied, "Hush, man, most gladly have I escaped this thing
you talk of, as if I had run away from many and mad masters."
Women of Trachis
Heracles
One of the mythic characters most frequently treated by the ancient dramatists both Greek and Roman was Heracles;
both Heracles and Dionysus were sons of Zeus and mortal women; neither were given to Apollonian restraint; and
Shakespeare confuses the two ("tis the god Hercules now leaves him / who had loved him well"). This confusion, in
part, justifies Heracles' importance for Drama. Discuss this unusual figure, the hero/god as Pindar calls him
(Nemean 3.22), in his role on the stage: as hero (Aesch. Prometheus Bound, Soph. Trach., Eur.Heracles, Alcestis,
Sen. Her.) And as god (Soph. Phil., Ar. Birds); cf. Dionysus' impersonation of him in Ar. Frogs. Discuss the concept of
"apotheosis". The allegorization of Heracles as a philosopher began with Prodicus
(apudXenophon Memorabilia 2.1.21-34) and culminates in the Suda's entry s.v. "Heracles"; Plato's dialogues, the art
form par excellence of philosophy are pseudo-dramas. Discuss Heracles in drag performing the labours for Omphale
as a figure of role-inversion. The Globe theatre in London at which many of Shakespeare's plays had their first
performances was named from the sign over the door showing Heracles holding up the world so that Atlas could fetch
for him the apples of the Hesperides.
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L. Castiglioni, "La tragedia di Ercole in Euripides ed in Seneca," Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 54
(1926) 176-97, 336-62.
A. R. Anderson, "Heracles and his Successors," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 39 (1928) 7-58.
G. Murray, "Herakles, the Best of Men," Greek Studies (Oxford 1946) 106-26.
R. Soellner, "The Madness of Herakles and the Elizabethans," Comparative Literature 10 (1958) 309-24.
V. Ehrenberg, "Tragic Heracles," in Polis and Imperium (Zurich and Stuttgart 1965) 380-98.
G. K. Galinsky, The Herakles Theme (Oxford 1972).
G. S. Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths (Harmondsworth 1974) 176-212.
J. Boardman, "Herakles, Peisistratos and Eleusis," Journal of Hellenic Studies 95 (1975) 1-12.
J.-A. Shelton, Seneca's Hercules Furens = Hypomnemata 50 (Göttingen 1978).
W. Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1979) 78-98.
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2.
G. W. Bond, Euripides: Heracles (Oxford 1981) introduction.
H. A. Shapiro, "Heros Theos: The Death and Apotheosis of Herakles," Classical World 77 (1983) 9.
M. S. Silk, "Heracles and Greek Tragedy," Greece and Rome 32 (1985) 1-22.
J. D. Mikalson, "Zeus the Father and Heracles the Son in Tragedy," Transactions of the American Philological
Association 116 (1986) 89-98.
J. G. Fitch, Seneca's Hercules Furens (Ithaca and London 1987) introduction.
The play itself
This is a play of homecoming, with the revenge-theme usual in plays of that type, but worked out most unusually here
because the agent of revenge, Nessus is long dead. This is an enactment in a different sense of the Aeschylean
paradox whereby it can be said of Orestes that "the dead are killing the living". Also typical of the homecoming play is
the theme of recognition, although here again it is unusual, for it is not Heracles whom Deianira recognizes, but rather
her error in mistaking a poison for a love-potion; like other recognitions of error (e.g. Admetus in Eur. Alcestis) this one
comes too late. This is also a sacrifice-play, for every homecoming involves a thank-offering to the gods, in this case,
once again, perverted for the offerer and victim are one and the same person.
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T. Zieliski, "Excurse zu den Trachinierinnen des Sophokles," Philologus 9 (1896) 491-540, 577-633 = Iresione1
(1931) 260-391.
I. M. Linforth, "The Pyre on Mount Oeta in Sophocles' Trachiniae," University of California Publications in Classical
Philology 14 (1951) 255-67.
S. G. Kapsomenos, Sophokles' Trachinierinnen und ihr Vorbild (Athens 1963).
P. E. Easterling, "Sophocles, Trachiniae," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 15 (1968) 58-69.
C. P. Segal, "Sophocles' Trachiniae: Myth, Poetry, and Heroic Values," Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977) 99-158.
T. F. Hoey, "Ambiguity in the Exodus of Sophocles' Trachiniae," Arethusa 10 (1977) 272ff.
R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge 1980) 73-90.
C. Fuqua, "Heroism, Heracles and the Trachiniae," Traditio 36 (1980) 1-81.
P. E. Easterling, "The End of the Trachiniae," Illinois Classical Studies 6 (1981) 64ff.
P. E. Easterling, Sophocles: Trachiniae (Cambridge 1982).
T. C. W. Stinton, "Heracles' Homecoming and Related Topics: The Second Stasimon of
Sophocles'Trachiniae," Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 5 (1985) 403-32 = Collected Papers (Oxford 1990)
402-29.
P. W. Gildersleeves, "Two Notes on the Trachiniae," Journal of Hellenic Studies 105 (1985) 155-6.
R. A. S. Seaford, "Wedding Ritual and Textual Criticism in Sophocles' 'Women of Trachis'," Hermes 114 (1986)
50-8.
T. C. W. Stinton, "Sophocles, Trachiniae 94-102," Classical Quarterly 36 (1986) 337-42 = Collected
Papers(Oxford 1990) 446-53.
T. C. W. Stinton, "The Apotheosis of Heracles from the Pyre," Journal of Hellenic Studies Suppl. 15 (1987) 1-16
= Collected Papers (Oxford 1990) 493-507.
M. Davies, Sophocles: Trachiniae (Oxford 1991).
Supporting Materials for Lectures
Lecture 10: Euripides with special reference to Hippolytus
1.
The Ancient Life of Euripides (minus the last, repetitive paragraph)
Euripides the poet was son of Mnesarchides, a shop-keeper and Cleito, a vegetable-seller, and Athenian. He was
born on Salamis under the archonship of Calliades in the 75th Olympiad when the Greeks were engaged in a seabattle with the Persians. He trained first in the pankration (a kind of martial art) and boxing, since his father had
received an oracle that he would win at the contests for which wreaths were the prize. Having done some reading, he
turned to tragedy and invented many things: prologues, character-development, speeches, recognition-scenes, since
he was a disciple of Anaxagoras and Prodicus and Protagoras and a companion of Socrates. It seems that Socrates
[the philosopher] and Mnesilochus even wrote some things with him, as Telekleides says:
"It's Mnesilochus who is cooking up some new play of Euripides, and Socrates is stoking the fire".
Others, however, say that Iophon and Timocrates of Argos made lyric songs for him. And they say that he was a
painter and exhibited his paintings in Megara. He also carried a torch in the procession of Apollo Zosterius, and
Hellanicus says that he was born on the same day on which the Greeks won the naval victory at Salamis. He began to
compete at the age of 26, and he moved to Magnesia where he was awarded resident-alien status and exemption
from taxation. From there having come to the palace of Archelaus in Macedonia he spent time and wrote in his honour
the tragedy that bears his name and he fared well in his presence and became part of the government. They say that
he cultivated a thick beard and had spots on his eyes. He married first Helito and second Choerile. And he left three
sons: Mnesarchides, the eldest was a merchant, then Mnesilochus an actor and finally Euripides, who directed some
of his father's plays. He began to direct under the archonship of Callias in the first year of the 81st Olympiad. The first
play he staged was the Daughters of Pelias in which he won third prize. The total number of his plays was 92, 78 are
preserved of which 3 are illegitimate: Tennes, Rhadamanthys and Perithous. He died, as Philochorus says, when he
was over 70 years old, or as Eratosthenes says 75, and was buried in Macedonia. The Athenians erected a cenotaph
for him and the epitaph was composed either by Thucydides the historian or Timotheus the lyric poet:
"All Greece is Euripides' tomb: but Macedon
Holds his bones, where he received the end of life.
His fatherland was the Greece of Greece, Athens. Having often delighted
With the Muses, he has praise from many men."
They say that both monuments were struck by lightning. They say that when Sophocles heard that he had died, he
appeared in public in a black cloak and that he brought out his chorus and actors in the proagon [the parade on the
first day of the dramatic festival] without crowns and that the people wept. He died in the following way. In Macedonia
there is a village called "Of the Thracians" because Thracians once lived there. Once the Molossian bitch [i.e. a mastif]
of Archelaus got lost there. The Thracians, as was their custom, sacrificed it and ate it. So Archelaus fined them one
talent. Since they did not have the money, they begged Euripides to get their acquittal, by begging the king. Some
time later Euripides was resting in a grove outside the city when Archelaus had gone out hunting, when the young
dogs had been unleashed by the hunters and had come upon Euripides, the poet was torn to pieces and eaten. These
puppies were the children of the bitch killed by the Thracians, as a result of which the saying exists among the
Macedonians, "bitch-justice".
They say that he outfitted a cave on Salamis that looked out over the sea and would pass his days there avoiding the
crowds. That is why he takes most of his similes from the sea. He looked frowning and preoccupied and austere, a
hater both of laughter and of women, for which reason Aristophanes blames him: "[Euripides] is bitter, I say first of all"
[Alexander the Aetolian apud Aulus Gellius Attic Nights 15.20.8]. They say that he married Choerile, daughter of
Mnesilochus, and that, when he noticed her wantonness, he wrote the first Hippolytus play, in which he denounces
the shamelessness of women, and then he divorced her. When the man who married her [afterward] said, "She is
faithful to me", he replied, "You are wretched if you think that a woman to one man might be faithful, but to another
not."
He married a second wife, whom he found to be more wanton than the first, and he was made more bold in his
denunciation of women. The women, wishing to kill him, came together into the cave in which he spent his time
writing. It is said out of jealousy that Cephisophon collaborated with him on his tragedies. Hermippus says that
Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, after Euripides' death, sent a talent to his heirs to receive his lyre and note-book and stylus,
which when he saw them he ordered those who had brought them to dedicate them in a temple to the Muses, writing
upon them his own name and that of Euripides. This is why they say that he was called most loving of foreigners
because he was most loved by foreigners, for he was envied by the Athenians. When a rude young boy said from
jealousy that he had bad breath, he replied, "Speak well of a mouth sweeter than honey and the Sirens".
He mocked women in his poems for the following reason. He had a slave-boy in his house named Cephisophon. He
caught his own wife in adultery with him. Having first tried to admonish him, he failed, and when he did not obey, he
left him his wife, since Cephisophon wanted to have her. Aristophanes says:
Cephisophon, oh best and blackest,
for you live most closely with Euripides
and collaborate, so they say, on his songs.
They say that women, because of the blame that he was putting upon them in his poems, stood up against him at the
Thesmophoria, wanting to kill him. They spared him firstly because of the Muses, and secondly because he agreed no
longer to say bad things about them. He says these things about them in the Melanippe:
In vain against women does the blame of men
beat, a useless arrow, and speaks wrongly:
for they are better than men, say I....
Philemon loved him so much that he dared to say this about him:
Truly, if those who have died
have perception, as some say they do,
I would kill myself in order to meet Euripides.
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2.
W. Nestle, Die Legende vom Tode des Euripides," Philologus 57 (1898) 134-49.
F. Leo, "Satyros, Bios Euripidou," Ausgewählte Kleine Schriften (Rome 1960) vol. 2, pp. 365-82.
M. Delcourt, "Les Biographies anciennes d'Euripide," Antiquité Classique 2 (1933) 271-90.
P. T. Stevens, "Euripides and the Athenians," Journal of Hellenic Studies 76 (1956) 87-94.
I. Gallo, "La vita di Euripide di Satiro e gli studi sulla biografia antica, La Parola del Passato 113 (1967) 134-60.
C. P. Ruck, "Euripides' Mother: Vegetables and the Phallos in Aristophanes, Arion 2 (1976) 13-57.
M. R. Lefkowitz, "The Euripides Vita," Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 20 (1979) 187-210 = The Lives of the
Greek Poets (London 1981) 88-104.
Hippolytus:
Euripides wrote two plays and Sophocles one on the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus. Only one of these plays (the
last to be composed) survives. Speculate on the relationship of this play to the two lost ones. Consider the role of
speech (both true and false) and silence, of the tongue and the heart (line 612). Consider a leap into the sea and
horses as metaphors for sex (Aphrodite was born from the sea; cf. Hippolytus' name, "loosed by horses"). Consider
the motif of Potiphar's wife (Genesis 39), found in Greek myth as the Bellerophon-story (Iliad 6.156-202), especially
the jealous wife who lies to her husband, the fatal writing-tablets, and catastrophe on horseback. Consider the
abstract opposition of sex and chastity found not only between Aphrodite and Artemis but between the family of
Hippolytus (his mother was a "breastless", i.e. sexless Amazon) and Phaedra (her mother, Pasiphae, had excessive
lust: she slept with bull and bore the Minotaur; her name, "shining on all" recalls the name of the prostitute Pasiphile,
"she loves everybody" (Archil. fr. 331 West). Cf. also the conflict between indulgence and self-restraint in Bacchae and
in Aeschylus' lost Bassarids.
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I. Linforth, "Hippolytus and Humanism," Transactions of the American Philological Association 45 (1914) 5-11.
E. R. Dodds, "The AIDOS of Phaedra and the Meaning of the Hippolytus," Classical Review 39 (1925) 102-4.
A. R. Bellinger, "The Bacchae and Hippolytus," Yale Classical Studies 6 (1939) 15-27.
W. B. Stanford, "The Hippolytus of Euripides," Hermathena 63 (1944) 11-17.
B. M. W. Knox, "The Hippolytus of Euripides," Yale Classical Studies 13 (1952) 3-31.
R. P. Winnington-Ingram, "Hippolytus: A Study in Causation," 171-97 in Euripide = Fondation Hardt, Entretiens 6
(Geneva 1960).
D. J. Conacher, "A Problem in Euripides' Hippolytus," Transactions of the American Philological Association 92
(1961) 37-44.
R. Lattimore, "Phaedra and Hippolytus," Arion 13 (1962) 5-18.
W. S. Barrett, Euripides: Hippolytos (Oxford 1964) Introduction pp. 1-84.
C. P. Segal, "The Tragedy of the Hippolytus: The Waters of Ocean and the Untouched Meadow," Harvard Studies
in Classical Philology 70 (1965) 117-69.
H. C. Avery, "My Tongue Swore but my Mind is Unsworn," Transactions of the American Philological
Association 99 (1968) 19-35.
C. W. Willink, "Some Problems in Hippolytus," Classical Quarterly 18 (1968) 11-43.
C. P. Segal, "Shame and Purity in Euripides' Hippolytus," Hermes 98 (1970) 278-99.
B. Frischer, "Concordia Discors and Characterization in Euripides' Hippolytus," Greek, Roman and Byzantine
Studies 11 (1970) 85-100.
K. J. Reckford, "Phaethon, Hippolytus and Aphrodite," Transactions of the American Philological Association 103
(1972) 405-32.
G. F. Fitzgerald, "Misconception, Hypocrisy and the Structure of Euripides' Hippolytus," Ramus 2 (1973) 20-44.
A. V. Rankin, "Euripides' Hippolytus: A Psychopathological Hero," Arethusa 7 (1974) 71-94.
J. M. Bremer, "The Meadow of Love and Two Passages in Euripides' Hippolytus," Mnemosyne 28 (1975) 268-80.
C. P. Segal, "Pentheus and Hippolytus on the Couch and on the Grid," Classical World 72 (1978-9) 129-48.
C. P. Segal, "Solar Imagery and Tragic Heroism in Euripides' Hippolytus," 151-61 in G. Bowersock et al.
edd.,Arktouros = Festschrift B. M. W. Knox (Berlin and New York 1979).
C. Lindsay, "Aphrodite and the Equivocal Argument," 54-72 in D. V. Stump ed., Hamartia = Festschrift J. M.
Crossett (New York 1983).
C. P. Segal, "Senecan Baroque: The Death of Hippolytus in Seneca, Ovid and Euripides," Transactions of the
American Philological Association 114 (1984) 311-26.
C. Wagner, "Vernunft und Tugend in Euripides Hippolytus," Wiener Studien 18 (1984) 37-51.
G. Devereux, The Character of EuripidesHippolytus (Chico, Ca 1985).
F. E. Brenk, "Phaidra's Risky Horseman: Euripides' Hippolytus 232-38," Mnemosyne 39 (1986) 385-8.
N. Rabinowitz, "Aphrodite and the Audience: Engendering the Reader," Arethusa 19 (1986) 171-85.
N. Rabinowitz, "Female Speech and Female Sexuality: Euripides' Hippolytus as Model," in M. Skinner
ed., Rescuing Creusa = Helios 13 (1986).
M. E. Craik, "Euripides' First Hippolytos," Mnemosyne 40 (1987) 137-9.
G. Ley, "Placing Hippolytus Kalyptomenos," Eranos 85 (1987) 66-7.
Supporting Materials for Lectures
Lecture 11: Aristophanes, with special reference to Clouds
1.
Aristophanes' life (trans. Mary Lefkowitz):
Aristophanes the comic poet's father was Philippus. His nationality was Athenian, from the deme of Kydathenaion,
and from the tribe of Pandionis. It was he who first is thought to have transformed comedy-which was still wandering
around in the old style-into something more useful and more respectable. Comedy had previously been spiteful and
more shameful, because the poets Cratinus and Eupolis uttered more slander than was appropriate. Aristophanes
was first also to demonstrate the manner of New Comedy in his Cocalus, a play Menander and Philemon took as
starting point for their dramatic compositions.
Since he was very cautious at the start, all the more because he was gifted, he produced his first plays under the
names of Callistratus and Philonides. Because of this Aristonymus [fr. 4] and Ameipsias [fr. 38] made fun of him,
saying that (as in the proverb) he was born on the fourth day, to toil for other men. [11] Later on he entered the
contest for himself.
He was in particular an enemy of Cleon the demagogue and wrote the Knights as an attack on him. In that comedy he
exposes Cleon's thefts and his tyrannical nature, and since none of the costumers had the courage to make a mask of
Cleon's face because they were too frightened, since Cleon acted like a tyrant, Aristophanes acted the part of Cleon,
smearing his face with red dye, and was responsible for Cleon's being fined five talents by the Knights, as he says in
the Acharnians:
But one thing really made me happy: when I saw
those five talents that Cleon vomited up. [5ff].
[20] Aristophanes had become Cleon's enemy because Cleon had entered a lawsuit against him because of his being
foreign, and because in his play the Babylonians Aristophanes criticised the elected magistrates while foreigners were
present.
Some say that he was a foreigner himself, inasmuch as some say he was a Rhodian from Lindos, others that he was
an Aeginetan, an assumption based on his having spent a considerable amount of time there or on his owning
property there. According to other authorities it was that his father Philippus was an Aeginetan. Aristophanes absolved
himself from these charges by wittily quoting Homer's lines:
My mother says I'm his son, but I don't know myself.
For no one knows his own father. [Od. 1.215f]
When he was informed against a second and third time he also got off, [30] and now that his citizenship was
established he won out over Cleon. As he says, "I myself know how I was treated by Cleon" [Ach. 377], etc. He was
held in high regard because he got rid of the informers, whom he called Fevers in the Wasps, where he says "they
strangle their [?] fathers at night and choke their grandfathers" [1038-9].
People praised and liked him particularly because of his determination to show in his dramas that the government of
Athens was free and not enslaved by any tyrant, and that it was a democracy and that since they were free, the
people ruled themselves. [40] For this reason he won praise and a crown of sacred olive, which was considered equal
in worth to a golden crown, when he spoke in the Frogs about the men who had been deprived of their rights:
it is just that the sacred chorus give the city
much good advice. [686ff.]
The metre called Aristophanean was named after him, since he was well known. The poet's fame was so great that it
was known in Persia, and the king of the Persians asked whose side the comic poet was on. There is also the story
that when Dionysius the tyrant wanted to learn about Athens' government, Plato sent Aristophanes' poetry and
advised him to learn about their government by studying Aristophanes' dramas. [50] He was imitated by the writers of
New Comedy, I mean Philemon and Menander. When the decree about choregoi was passed that no one could be
ridiculed by name and the choregoi were no longer rich enough to provide subsidies to train choruses, and because of
these measures the substance of comedy had been completely removed (the purpose of comedy being to ridicule
people), Aristophanes wrote the Cocalus in which he introduces seduction and recognition and other such events,
which Menander especially likes. When once again the subsidies for training choruses were taken away,
Aristophanes, when he wrote the Ploutos, in order to give the actors in the scenes time to rest and to change, wrote
"for the chorus" in the directions, in the places where we see the poets of New Comedy writing in "for the chorus" in
emulation of Aristophanes.
In that drama he introduced his son Araros and so departed from life, [60] leaving three sons, Philippus (named after
his grandfather), Nicostratus, and Araros. He mentions his children in these lines: "I am ashamed before my wife and
my helpless children" [fr. 588], perhaps meaning them. He wrote forty-four plays, of which it is alleged that four are
spurious. These are Poetry, The Shipwrecked Man, Islands, [?] Niobus-which some authorities say are by Archippus.
2.
Clouds:
This play illustrates the standard elements of Old Comedy, including parabasis and agon (define) and the conflict of
eiron and alazon. Oddly, the alazon is Socrates, elsewhere famous for his "Socratic irony". According to
Plato's Apologythis play aroused in the Athenians the suspicion of Socrates that was to lead many years later to his
conviction and execution on a charge of impiety. Mention the revision of the play to produce the present
(unperformable) version, intended perhaps for circulation in book-form.
Consider the various humorous techniques exemplified in the play, including slapstick (which Aristophanes says that
he never uses, line 543), e.g. the burning of the phrontisterion and that important subclass, doorway-slapstick, low
humour with references to sex (a man can never be alone in bed without masturbating, 734), shit (the son farts in his
sleep, 9, as does Strepsiades, 390, a gnat hums through his anus, 157, a gecko shits on Socrates' head, 169, Zeus
makes rain by pissing in a sieve, and Strepsiades' describes Pheidippides' toilet-training, 1384), bugs ("I am bitten by
a demarch out of the mattress", how many of its own feet does a flea jump?, does a gnat hum through its mouth or its
anus?, 157), jokes including puns (heaven is an oven and we are the coals [anthrakes, cf. anthropoi/andres,
"people"]), and situational jokes (the pupil who, having been taught dishonesty, refuses to pay his teacher), breaking
of the dramatic illusion by breaching "the fourth wall" ("I don't see them" "There-in the wings! 326, Wrong Argument
calls the audience buggers, 1352, the two parabases), parody of life including social classes, with the "precuckolded" Strepsiades, the sophistic movement, witchcraft (drawing down the moon) and cockfighting (the agon),
andparatragedy with the burning of the phrontisterion echoing the end of Sophocles Women of Trachis (as
the Birdsparodies Soph. Tereus and Lysistrata in his Tyro).
 K. J. Dover, Aristophanes: Clouds (Oxford 1970) introduction.
 L. E. Woodbury, "Strepsiades' Understanding: Five Notes on the Clouds," Phoenix 34 (1979) 15-25 = C. G. Brown
et al. edd., Collected Writings (Atlanta, Ga. 1991) 335-54.
 D. Fausti, "Aspetti di sophia nelle Nuvole di Aristofane," AFLS 3 (1982) 1-28.
 Z. P. Ambrose, "Socrates and Prodicus in the Clouds," in J. P. Anton and A. Preus edd., Essays in Greek
Philosophy 2 (Albany 1983) 129-44.
 D. Ambrosino, "Nuages et sens. Autour des Nuées d'Aristophane," Quaderni di storia 9 (1983) 3-60.
 C. G. Brown, "Noses at Aristophanes Clouds 344?" Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica 14 (1983) 87-90.
 M. Delaunois, "Le comique dans les Nuées d'Aristophane," Antiquité classique 55 (1986) 86-112.
 T. K. Hubbard, "Parabatic Self-Criticism and the Two Versions of Aristophanes' Clouds," Classical Antiquity 5
(1986) 182-97.
 D. Ambrosino, "Ar. Nub. 46s. (Il matrimonio di Strepsiade e la democrazia ateniense)," Mcr 21/22 (1986/7) 95127.
 S. Byl, "Pourquoi Aristophane a-t-il intitulé sa comédie de 423 les Nuées?," RHR 204 (1987) 239-48.
 J. Tomin, "Socratic Gymnasium in the Clouds," Symbolae Osloenses 62 (1987) 25-32.
 R. K. Fisher, "The Relevance of Aristophanes: A New Look at Clouds," Greece and Rome 35 (1988) 23-8.
 H. Tarrant, "Midwifery and the Clouds," Classical Quarterly 38 (1988) 116-22.
 H. Tarrant, "Alcibiades in Aristophanes' Clouds I and II," Ancient History 19 (1989) 13-20.
 E. C. Kopff, "The Date of Aristophanes' Nubes II," American Journal of Philology 111 (1990) 318-29.
 R. D. Griffith, "Strepsiades' Bedroom, Wife, and Sufferings: Three Notes on the Prologue of
Aristophanes' Clouds,"Prometheus 19 (1993) 135-42.
Supporting Materials for Lectures
Lecture 12: Theatre in Rome
1.
Roman Plays:
Perhaps the earliest form of drama at Rome, and probably the only native one, was the Atellan farce. Sadly, no
examples survive, and indeed these skits may have been improvised, never existing in written form. They relied on a
series of stock-characters with fixed masks and names such as Maccus, the clown, Bucco the simpleton, Pappus the
old fool, and Dossennus the hunchback; as such they are antecedents to the Italian Commedia dell'arte and the
Spanish Entremeses. The role of the alazon in Aristophanic comedy was perhaps taken by the mean father and that
of the eiron by the noble lovers, humorous clowning being provided by Maccus and other zanies (a Commedia
dell'arte term from the Venetian pronunciation of "Johns", i.e. servants). A related art-form, likewise unrepresented by
extant texts was the Mime, which presumably involved greater literary skill, the lyric poet Catullus being said to have
written some (see T. P. Wiseman, Catullus and his World [Cambridge 1985]189ff).
The following is a list of Latin plays that survive to the present day. All of them, except for the Octavia, wrongly
attributed to Seneca, are based on Greek originals (many of which are lost):
1.
1.
Comedy
Plautus (died 184 B.C.); these plays are listed in alphabetical order, as their date of composition is unknown:
 Amphitryon
 The Braggart Soldier (Miles Gloriosus)
 The Captives (Captivi)
 The Casket Comedy (Cistellaria)
 The Comedy of Asses (Asinaria)
 The Entrepreneur (Mercator)
 Epidicus
 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Wedding (Casina); edited with commentary by W. T. MacCary and M.
M. Willcock (Cambridge 1976)
 The Haunted House (Mostellaria)
 The Little Carthaginian (Poenulus)
 The Persian (Persa)
 The Pot of Gold (Aulularia)
 Pseudolus
 The Rope (Rudens)
 The Savage Slave (Truculentus)
 The Sisters Named Bacchis (Bacchides)
 Stichus
 The Tale of a Travelling Bag (Vidularia)
 Three Bob Day (Trinummus)
 The Two Menaechmuses (Menaechmi)
 The Weevil (Curculio)
2.
Terence (circa 190-159 B.C.), the plays are listed in order of composition:
 The Girl from Andros (Andria), edited with commentary by G. P. Shipp (Oxford 1960)
 The Self-Tormentor (Heautontimorumenos)
 The Eunuch (Eunouchus), edited with commentary by J. Barsby (Cambridge 1999)
 Phormio
 The Brothers (Adelphoe), edited with commentary by R. H. Martin (Cambridge 1976)
 Her Husband's Mother (Hecyra), 2nd version
2.
1.
Tragedy
Seneca (circa 1-65 A.D.):
 Trojan Women
 Thyestes
 Phaedra, edited with commentary by M. Coffey and R. Mayer (Cambridge 1990)
 Medea, edited with commentary by C. D. N. Costa (Oxford 1973)
 Agamemnon
 Oedipus
 The Madness of Hercules (Hercules Furens)
 A Cloak for Hercules (Hercules Oetaeus)
 [Octavia]
 The Phoenician Women (Phoenissae)
2.
Theatre as Part of Roman Life:
Widely popular in Rome was the philosophical school of Stoicism (on which see M. E. Reesor, The Nature of Man in
Early Stoic Philosophy [London 1989]), one of whose tenets was that "all the world's a stage" (cf.
Seneca Epistle 76.20, 80.6-8, De Providentia 2.9; see L. G. Christian, Theatrum Mundi [New York and London 1987]
11-24), and in keeping with this doctrine all of Roman life was highly theatrical.
In the public and political sphere drama was very important. A number of major politicians either composed or acted in
plays, for example when he was being held for ransom after being kidnapped by pirates, the teen-aged Julius Caesar
passed his time writing a play on the Oedipus-story (Suetonius Iul. 56.7, Tacitus Dial. 21.6; see V. Valcárel, "La
pérdida de la obra poética de César: un caso de censura?" 317-24 in J. L. Melena ed., Symbolae = Festschrift
Lucovico Mitxelena [Salamanca 1985]) and Nero liked to act the title-role of an Oedipus exsul (Suetonius Nero 46).
Theatrical techniques were useful in forensic oratory, notably the practice of prosopopoeia whereby the speaker took
on various personae and spoke in voices other than his own as a way of providing variation and humour in his
speech. One of the ways that politicians maintained popularity was by entertaining the plebs with blood-sports of
various kinds. The executions of criminals could be used theatrically for this purpose, for example tarring and
feathering a convict and pushing him off a high platform into a small tub of water and calling the whole
charade Icarus (see Coleman).
In the private sphere a popular form of entertainment was dinner-theatre, not quite in our sense of the word, but rather
through meals in which the serving of food became itself mimetic and dramatic. An interesting fictional account of
such a dinner is the dinner-party of Trimalchio episode from Petronius' novel, Satyricon in which the host stages a
reenactment of Ajax mad, serves dishes disguised as foods of other types, compels his wife to climb on a table and
dance the kordax (a sort of can-can), has tumblers let down from the ceiling in a machine, and ends up pretending to
be dead so all the guests can mourn for him and give him the pleasure of, as it were, attending his own funeral.
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F. Abbot, "The Theater as a Factor in Roman Politics under the Republic," Transactions of the American
Philological Association 38 (1907) 49-56.
F. W. Wright, Cicero and the Theater (Northampton, Mass. 1931).
M. Kokolakis, "Lucian and the Tragic Performances in His Time," Platon 12 (1960) 67-109.
W. A. Laidlaw, "Cicero and the Stage," Hermathena 94 (1960) 56-66.
T. P. Wiseman, Cinna the Poet (Leicester 1974) 159-69.
E. Cizek, "Suéton et le théâtre," in Association Budé, Actes IXe Congrès (Paris 1975) 480-85.
J. Cousin, "Quintilien et le théâtre," ibid. 459-97.
C. E. Manning, "Acting and Nero's Conception of the Principate," Greece and Rome 22 (1975) 164-75.
F. Dupont, L'acteur-roi ou le théâtre dans la Rome antique (Paris 1985).
K. M. Coleman, "Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments," Journal of Roman
Studies 80 (1990) 44-73.
A. Malissard, "Tacite et le théâtre ou la mort en scène," in J. Blänsdorf ed., Theater und Gesellschaft im Imperium
Romanum (Tübingen 1990) 213-22.
P. L. Schmidt, "Nero und das Theater, " ibid. 149-63.
E. Rawson, Roman Culture and Society (Oxford 1991) 468-77.
D. Potter, "Martyrdom as Spectacle," in R. Scodel, ed., Theater and Society in the Classical World (Ann Arbor
1993) 53-88.
S. Bartsch, Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian (Cambridge, Mass,
1994).
W. J. Slater, "Pantomime Riots," Classical Antiquity 13 (1994) 120-44.
R. C. Beacham, Spectacle Entertainments of Imperial Rome (New Have and London 1999).