Classical Receptions Journal Vol 1. Iss. 1 (2009) pp. 55–72
A study in reception: the British debates
over Aristophanes’ politics and influence
Philip Walsh*
The dual and often interconnecting questions of ‘What was Aristophanes’ political outlook?’
and ‘What effect did his plays have on Athenian society?’ have been heatedly contested over
the past several decades. Writing on the eve of World War II, Gomme published an essay
that has been called ‘the canonical statement’ for those who are agnostic about his political
views or who believe his plays had little practical influence in Athens (Edmunds 1987: n. 62).
For the historian Gomme, the comic poet was ‘not a politician but a dramatist, an artist; a
man, that is, whose purpose is to give us a picture . . . not to advocate a policy’. He affirms
that Aristophanes ‘must have had’ political opinions, but in terms of understanding his plays,
he wonders, ‘of what importance is it to us to know?’ (Gomme 1938: 102, 103). In the years
following, scholars including Heath and Halliwell have extended (either implicitly or explicitly) Gomme’s contentions. Heath maintains that ‘political reality is taken up by the poet
and subjected to the ignominious transformations of comic fantasy. But the product of the
fantasizing process did not and was not intended to have a reciprocal effect on political
reality . . . Politics was the material of comedy, but comedy did not in turn aspire to be a
political force’ (Heath 1987: 42).1 Halliwell’s position is even more uncompromising. In a
series of articles and essays, he argues for ‘the difficulty and inappropriateness of reading
Aristophanic satire in terms of personal authorial commitment’, and he highlights the festival
context in which the plays were presented: ‘the prevalence of a satirical irreverence . . . is to
be understood as the expression of the distinctive festival ethos and license for free speech,
*Correspondence to Philip Walsh, Departments of English and Modern Languages, Washington
College, 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, MD 21620, USA. [email protected]
1 See also Heath (1997).
ß The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
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Scholars have long debated Aristophanes’ political outlook and the influence of his plays
on Athenian life, but what has been underappreciated up to this point is that these dual
questions have formed one of the central points of the modern reception of Aristophanes,
particularly in Britain. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, renewed
attention was given to the plays of Aristophanes and their place in the Athenian
democratic experience. Evaluations of the plays became entangled in debates about
democracy itself, and the most important and disputed issues were Aristophanes’
political views and practical influence. The intensity of these arguments subsided in the
late nineteenth century, and a new interpretation emerged, one that steered away from
dogmatic opinion and portrayed Aristophanes as a political moderate. This essay will
explore these historical arguments, and it will situate current scholarship in light of
positions developed in Romantic and Victorian Britain. It will suggest that modern
scholars are linked to earlier critics who considered the same questions but whose
cultural and political attitudes compelled them to understand the Greeks very differently.
PHILIP WALSH
2
3
4
5
6
See also Halliwell (1984b, 1993, 1998).
See also Henderson (1990, 1993, 1998b).
This clever pun is not mine, but from Goldhill (1998: 11).
See also Platter (1993, 2001).
‘Reception’ as a critical term and its applicability to classical studies has been thoroughly explored
over the past several years. Scholars have outlined the objectives of classical reception and defined
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rather than as the declaration of an allegiance to serious standards or the truth’ (Halliwell
1984a: 13).2
In contrast stand those who regard Aristophanes as a serious political dramatist and who
believe his plays exerted socio-political influence beyond the theatre. In The Origins of the
Peloponnesian War, Ste Croix (1972) responds directly to Gomme, historian to historian:
‘Aristophanes was a man of very vigorous political views of a conservative, ‘‘Cimonian’’
variety (not at all untypical among the Athenian upper classes), the general complexion of
which is easily identifiable . . . and remained consistent over the period of some forty years.’
He contends that Aristophanes ‘used many of his plays, even while they of course remained
primarily comedies, as vehicles for the expression of serious political views — about the
Athenian democracy, its institutions and its leading figures, and about the Peloponnesian
War’ (Ste Croix 1972: 371, 356). In the past few decades, scholars including MacDowell,
Edmunds and Henderson have revealed the influence of Ste Croix. MacDowell, for instance,
concludes his monograph on Aristophanes by suggesting ‘[His] unique achievement . . . was
to give good advice to the Athenians while never ceasing to entertain them’ (MacDowell
1995: 356). While these scholars seem likely to accept this short assessment, disagreement
arises when the subject turns to Aristophanes’ specific political outlook. Edmunds opposes
Ste Croix’s claim of steady conservatism, preferring instead ‘to define something like a
consistent political ideal, as distinguished from a consistent view on matters of policy’
(Edmunds 1987: 66). Henderson, who has written persuasively about the integral role the
comic stage played in the civic processes of the demos, is much more in line with Ste Croix:
‘Aristophanes’ hostility to Cleon was but one element of his consistent tendency to espouse
the social, moral and political sentiments of contemporary upperclass conservatives’
(Henderson 1998a: 14).3
In recent years, a third way of understanding Aristophanes’ relationship with contemporary politics — one that navigates between the traditional binaries or even subverts the
standard models — has emerged. Informed by the criticism of Bakhtin, Goldhill suggests
that ‘What is to be taken from Aristophanes inevitably remains a question replayed with
every audience member’s or reader’s engagement with the comic. When the traditional wish
is expressed [to calibrate the tone or mood of the plays] . . . it is precisely this sense of
individual and collective negotiation in and of comedy that makes this wish so misconceived,
finally so unfulfillable’ (Goldhill 1991: 201). Others have also sought to
‘Bachtinaristophanizein’.4 Platter, for instance, claims that ‘views concerning the specific
socio-political orientation of Aristophanic comedy benefit from an approach predicated on
the notion that the work of Aristophanes lies at the nexus of conflicting forces and that it
stages their intense, if unstable, interaction’ (Platter 2007: 37).5
The debates over Aristophanes’ politics and influence on Athenian life are unlikely to be
resolved anytime soon, but what has been underappreciated up to this point is that these dual
questions have long constituted a major fault line in the playwright’s modern reception,
particularly in Britain.6 Since the mid-twentieth century, Murphy, Dover and Storey have
DEBATES OVER ARISTOPHANES’ POLITICS AND INFLUENCE
7
8
9
10
its scope; they have also pointed to its limitations (Hardwick 2003, Martindale 2006, and Hardwick
and Stray 2008 are prominent examples). In a recent review, Revermann notes that ‘Greek drama,
especially tragedy, has been the main driver [of Reception Studies]’, but suggests that ‘the field
needs to develop beyond its near-exclusive focus on performance reception towards vigorously
embracing a comparative agenda’ (Revermann 2008: 178). The present study, which focuses on
Britain but investigates critical threads in Aristophanic studies that cross temporal and linguistic
boundaries, is a gesture in that direction. It makes no claim of comprehensiveness.
See also Murphy (1956) and Storey (1987, 1992).
In fact, Gomme excerpts from an assessment of Aristophanes by Connop Thirlwall (written about a
century before), though his awareness of Thirlwall seems to derive from Rogers’ edition of the
Frogs (1902). For more on Thirlwall, see below.
Jenkyns’ assessment of Aristophanes in nineteenth-century Britain is often quoted: ‘of all the great
Greek writers Aristophanes had the least influence in the last [nineteenth] century’ (Jenkyns 1980:
79). Hall extends this contention: ‘One reason [for Aristophanes’ marginal reputation in the nineteenth century] was certainly that Aristophanic drama was suspected on account of its obscenity.
But another reason was its almost uncontested possession by men who espoused traditional, even
reactionary political opinions. Such men rarely participated in the professional theatre, and
Aristophanes, several of whose plays were unavailable in English translation until well into the
nineteenth century, was read by few outside the male, educated élite’ (Hall 2007: 67). Such
analyses, however, discount the vigorous debates over Aristophanes’ politics and influence (the
subject of this study), and they do not explain the reception of Aristophanes in politically or
culturally progressive circles (e.g. Shelley’s verse satire, Oedipus Tyrannus; or Swellfoot the
Tyrant (1820) and Beardsley’s erotic illustrations of the Lysistrata (1896)). For a discussion of
both, see Walsh (2008).
For through discussions of Aristophanes and the British stage pre-1800, see Wyles (2007) and
Walsh (2008).
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provided valuable surveys of Aristophanic scholarship, but their emphases are, to borrow a
phrase from Dover’s prolegomenon, ‘laid upon what is new’ (Dover 1958: 52).7 For his part,
Gomme responds directly to opinions expressed by some of his contemporaries, most notably Starkie, Croiset and Murray, but very few scholars endeavour to situate their own
arguments within the critical tradition.8 More recently, Halliwell has offered a brief discussion of Aristophanes’ English Nachleben. He cites the moralizing attitude of Joseph Addison
as a typical reaction to the Clouds in the eighteenth century, and he briefly touches upon
diverse nineteenth-century treatments of Aristophanes (Halliwell 1998: xl, lvi–lxvi).
But the British reception and understanding of Aristophanes from the late eighteenth
century through the end of the Victorian era were much more complicated and nuanced than
what has been previously suggested.9 With the rise of Romantic Hellenism at the end of the
eighteenth century, the plays of Aristophanes attracted renewed attention from British
historians, classical scholars, readers and translators. Unsurprisingly, reactions to the
comic plays were various and conflicting, sometimes even within an individual’s own writings. Translators, for example, routinely praised the piquancy of Aristophanes’ humour, yet
could not bring themselves to render many instances of verbal or physical vulgarity.
Concerns over both public decency and the dangers of unchecked ridicule limited appreciation of Aristophanic comedy on the live stage and in literary criticism.10 It was at this time,
however, that the questions surrounding Aristophanes’ political position(s) and influence
over the state began to dominate the minds of British critics. Histories of ancient Greece and
periodical essays on Greek culture were the primary vehicles through which the comic plays
PHILIP WALSH
From the Frühromantik to the First World War: Aristophanes, Athenian
democracy and political influence
John Gillies’ The History of Ancient Greece (1786) and William Mitford’s The History of
Greece (1784–1810) wielded significant influence on contemporary historical criticism of
ancient Greece, and the latter dominated Greek studies in Britain until George Grote
(Roberts 1994: 234). Given the historical moment in which these narratives were written,
it is not surprising that they were the first British histories to place Aristophanes in an
explicitly political setting. Gillies, later the royal historiographer for Scotland, and
Mitford, later the professor of ancient history at the Royal Academy, were harshly critical
of the Athenian democracy, and they drew parallels between fifth-century Athens and their
revolutionary present. Gillies dedicated his history to the king, writing that his ‘History of
Greece exposes the dangerous turbulence of Democracy . . . it evinces the inestimable benefits, resulting in Liberty itself, from the lawful dominion of hereditary Kings, and the steady
operation of well-regulated Monarchy’ (Gillies 1786: A2). Mitford criticizes how the democracy impinges upon individual rights: ‘under democracy, no man was master of his own:
property, person, every thing must be devoted, not to the service only, but to the pleasure
and fancy of the people’ (Mitford vol. IV 1838: 26–7).
But despite their shared anxieties over the idea of democracy, their treatments of
Aristophanes were quite different, and it is here that Mitford distinguishes himself from
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were understood, and evaluations of Aristophanes were intertwined with heated discussions
about the Athenian democratic experience. How the plays were portrayed meant a great deal
to Britain in a time of political revolution and economic transition, with debates becoming
proxy battles for large modern issues. By the mid-nineteenth century, these dual questions
superseded all others in Aristophanic studies and ultimately drove critics to confront and
reconsider traditional notions about Old Comedy.
Although the spirit and intensity of these arguments may seem strange to us, they laid the
groundwork for modern discussions. Indeed, many of the opinions that still find favour today
(namely, that Aristophanes was a conservative dramatist who exerted influence in the polis;
or that Aristophanes was an escapist with little practical effect) can be traced to this era. The
intention of this essay is not to suggest direct influence, but indirect influence: to survey
current debates and to examine how a number of authors, writing from the late eighteenth
century to the early 1930s, understood and interpreted Aristophanes and his plays. It endeavours to chart a critical reception history, assuming, as Martindale posits, that ‘our current
interpretations of ancient texts, whether or not we are aware of it, are, in complex ways,
constructed by the chain of receptions through which their continued readability has been
affected’ (Martindale 1993: 7). At first, writers on both sides of the democracy debate used
the playwright as an example of what was good or bad about fifth-century Athens. To some,
he was an earnest advisor to the city; to others, he was an ineffectual entertainer. Towards the
end of the nineteenth century, the politically charged rhetoric subsided, and while some still
made definitive claims about Aristophanes’ politics or influence, what emerged was an interpretive preference for a middle course — to offer a reading that incorporated views from
both sides or to paint Aristophanes himself as a political moderate. In a certain way, this
trend has rematerialized in the present day with the introduction of a new middle course: one
that allows the plays to work on a variety of different registers by questioning or rejecting the
traditional binaries.
DEBATES OVER ARISTOPHANES’ POLITICS AND INFLUENCE
11 In antiquity, the plays of Aristophanes were both intensely criticized and highly praised, and this
ambivalence was reflected in later evaluations of Old Comedy. The assessments of Plutarch and
Horace were particularly influential and were repeated by many French and British critics through
the end of the eighteenth century. These critics were not so much concerned with Aristophanes’
political views as they were with condemning Aristophanes on moral grounds and with defining the
(dangerous) nature of Aristophanic satire (Steggle 2007 and Walsh 2008).
12 Macaulay’s essay appeared in Knight’s Quarterly Magazine (1824); Grote’s in The Westminster
Review (1826).
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Gillies and other moralizing historians. Gillies inherited his perspective on Aristophanes
from the traditionally negative views handed down from antiquity (most prominently in the
epitome of Plutarch) through the era of French neoclassicism.11 He describes Old Comedy as
‘uncommonly licentious; the profligate characters of Aristophanes and his contemporaries . . . contributed, doubtless, to this deformity’. He admits that Aristophanes showed
great courage to produce the Knights when the demagogue Cleon’s fortunes were ascendant;
however, he describes the play as a ‘ludicrous piece . . . celebrated even beyond its merit’
(Gillies 1786: 485, 590). By weaving Aristophanes into his narrative, Gillies acknowledges
his importance for understanding fifth-century Athens, but his zealous concern for order and
decency clouds his judgement. Additionally, he offers a subtle socio-political critique of
Athenian democracy; for implicit in his remarks is the notion that Aristophanes, a poet who
thrived in the democratic polis, pandered to the tastes, mores and opinions of his audience.
In contrast, Mitford goes to some length to portray Aristophanes in a sympathetic light.
While a concern for ethics permeates his prose (‘excess’, ‘license’, ‘gross ribaldry’ and ‘malicious calumny’ can all be found in one sentence describing the extant plays), he presents the
poets of Old Comedy as valuable advisors to the city. Unlike Gillies, who saw Aristophanes
as a symbol of a democratic polis gone bad, Mitford represents him as a patriotic poet with
distinct political interests. The idea that Aristophanes was a patriot was not a new one in
England. It appears as early as 1693, in Rymer’s A Short View of Tragedy, and it would soon
reappear in Fielding and Young’s translation of the Plutus (1742) and in English translations
of highly popular lectures of the brothers Schlegel. Mitford’s intentions, however, were
different from introducing a verse translation or lecturing on a broad range of literature. He
utilized the plays as historical objects without a predisposed moral or aesthetic bias, thus
displaying a more open attitude towards the merits of Old Comedy. He explains that
Aristophanes, ‘a man of rank . . . certain of support from all the first families of the republic’,
was courageous to confront Cleon (Mitford vol. III 1838: 60). He does not explicitly label him
as a ‘conservative’ (this was an innovation of the mid-nineteenth century), but he presents
him as an aristocrat who ‘almost alone . . . dared direct his satire on the public stage to
restrain the folly and correct the profligacy of the tyrant multitude’ (Mitford vol. IV 1838: 19).
Mitford’s treatment of Aristophanes was innovative for the late eighteenth century, but
this is not to say that his narrative was without political bias. Throughout his history, he
displays a consistent antipathy for democracy, and it was this attitude that attracted pointed
commentary from later liberal critics — most notably from the historians Macaulay and
Grote, both of whom issued critiques in the mid-1820s.12 Yet despite this backlash,
Mitford’s volumes were highly influential even after his death in 1827. Thomas Mitchell,
for example, Aristophanes’ most influential popularizer in Britain through the early nineteenth century, incorporated many of his conservative views into his essays, translations and
commentaries. An 1813 essay includes his own translations selected from ten of
PHILIP WALSH
Aristophanes’ extant plays; the one omission is the Lysistrata, whose plot ‘turns upon a
proposal so gross, that we shall not insult our readers with it’ (Mitchell 1813: 142). At
first glance, simple moral discomfort might seem to be the reason for his dismissal of the
play, but this attitude is related to his political indictment of Athenian democracy, one
informed by Mitford’s historiographical approach. Mitchell later reveals his opinion when
he issues a long critique of Aristophanes’ audience, the people of Athens:
Mitchell extends Mitford’s uneasiness with Athenian democracy to justify Aristophanes’
brand of humour. He equates obscenity with the lower classes, and because the comedian
depended on the mob for theatrical success, he had to pander to their tastes. Although he
feels distress for the bawdiness and abuse in the comic plays, he defends Aristophanes’ role as
advisor to the city.
Some of Mitchell’s contemporaries attacked his anti-democratic streak and his anachronism. For instance, D. K. Sandford, Professor of Greek at Glasgow University, notes ‘how
much his judgments have been tinged by a sort of speculative toryism . . . which cannot be
soundly or successfully applied to the manners and events of the ancient world’ (Sandford
1835: 175–6). Yet, Mitchell was more than just a political apostle to Mitford’s views. He was
the first translator to attempt to register something of Aristophanes’ metrical variety in
English verse, and the literary criticism of his essays and commentaries shows the influence
of German Hellenism, in particular the brothers Schlegel. It is largely due to Mitchell that
the ‘Castor and Pollux of romantic criticism’ had a significant effect on the early nineteenthcentury reception of Aristophanes in England (Blackie 1843: 311). Mitchell reviewed
Lockhart’s translation of Friedrich’s lectures in 1819, and he frequently invoked their
spirit (if not quoting their words outright) to explain the mirth and manner of
Aristophanes’ plays.
To the Schlegels, Aristophanes was a bold patriot who played a monitory role in Athenian
civic life; while they do not specifically define his political views, they describe him as a
traditionalist and as an enemy of the demagogues. Above all, however, Aristophanes was an
artist, one who ‘was not animated by prosaic petulance, nor personal spleen, but inspired
with the genuine audacity and fearlessness of a poet’ (F. Schlegel 1841: 40). Both brothers
point out that Aristophanes’ humour and obscenity are to be understood in the context of
religious festival, and it was this setting, according to A.W. Schlegel, that allowed him moral
and artistic freedoms he would otherwise not have:
Here we are best enabled to conceive why the dramatic art was consecrated to Bacchus: it is the
drunkenness of poetry, the Bacchanalia of fun . . . The old comedy is a general masking of
the world, during which many things happen that are not authorized by the ordinary rules of
propriety, but during which also many things that are diverting, witty, and even instructive, come
out, which without this momentary suspension of order would never be heard of (A.W. Schlegel
1833: 115).
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They [the Athenians] were open to the grossest flattery . . . They were fickle and inconstant in their
tempers, melting one night into tears over the tragedies of Euripides, and the next, dying with laughter
at the parodies of his incessant persecutor, Aristophanes . . . Too acute to be insensible of high talents,
and too envious to allow them their due sway . . . Such are some of the traits of the incomprehensible
Athenians . . . Such, we say, were the people whose amusements, morals, and politics, Aristophanes
undertook to criticize, to amend and to direct (Mitchell 1813: 144).
DEBATES OVER ARISTOPHANES’ POLITICS AND INFLUENCE
13 Cf. F. Schlegel 1841: 39: ‘All the peculiarities of the old comedy may be traced to those deifications
of physical powers, which were prevalent among the ancients. Among them, in the festivals
dedicated to Bacchus and the other frolicksome deities, every sort of freedom . . . were not only
things permitted, they were strictly in character, and formed, in truth, the consecrated ceremonial
of the season. The fancy, above all things . . . was on these occasions permitted to attempt the most
audacious heights, and revel in the wildest world of dreams, – loosened for a moment from all those
fetters of law, custom, and propriety, which at other times, and in other species of writing, must
ever regulate its exertion even in the hands of poets.’
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Up until this point, one common way of explaining the nature of Old Comedy was by
distinguishing ancient and modern manners, but the Schlegels’ ideas represent the innovation of Romantic Hellenism. By associating Aristophanic comedy with the ‘fearlessness of a
poet’ and the ‘drunkenness of poetry’ (or Friedrich’s the ‘wildest world of dreams’) they
change the terms of the debate by utilizing language that departs from strict formality,
literary decorum and classicizing tendencies.13 Neither suggests that the comic plays are
pure fantasy (in fact, they insist that Aristophanes was a serious and political dramatist), but
they lay the groundwork for later critics and historians to make this very claim.
Since Thomas Mitchell learned from both Mitford and the Schlegels, he merged the
conservative historiography of late eighteenth century with the developing aesthetics of
literary Romanticism. In this way, he provides an opportunity to track an important intellectual fault line within British attitudes of the time. What emerges in his work is a conflict
between politics and poetry, between a negative view of Athenian democracy and a genuine
admiration for Aristophanes the playwright. His ambivalence made him an easy target for
political liberals and literary critics alike; for he espoused views that became increasingly
unpopular in the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, it was at this very moment that a new
generation of scholars, steeped in philosophical liberalism and German scholarship, began to
write its own histories of ancient Greece, and with these fresh interpretations came new
evaluations of Aristophanes. This movement culminated with Grote’s History of Greece, but
before Grote, Edward Bulwer Lytton and Connop Thirlwall produced narratives that
anticipated him in spirit and (sometimes) in content. The former published Athens: Its
Rise and Fall in 1837, but due to the similar efforts of Thirlwall and Grote, he never finished
his project. Yet, as Murray has recently discovered in a heretofore unpublished section of
Athens, Bulwer Lytton deserves recognition because he ‘anticipated by a decade most of the
radical views on Athenian history hitherto attributed to George Grote’ (O. Murray 2004: 16).
Although Bulwer Lytton cites Aristophanes at several points throughout his narrative, his
discussions are brief, and no new views on the playwright are fully articulated. Hence, this
study will focus primarily on Thirlwall’s History of Greece (1835–44). Until recently,
Thirlwall’s fate too was one of relative obscurity. Educated at Trinity College,
Cambridge, he was ordained in 1828, and began work on his Greek history. In addition,
he collaborated with J. Hare to translate the first two volumes of Niebuhr’s Römische
Geschichte (1828–32), and it was from the German historian that Thirlwall developed his
thorough and scientific approach to history (Demetriou 2002: 56).
Thirlwall was a careful reader of primary and secondary material, and on two different
occasions within his history, Aristophanes is given extensive (and conflicting) treatment.
At one point, he advances an argument for the political ineffectiveness of the plays, but
then reverses himself later in the narrative. He first introduces Aristophanes in a section devoted to drama in the age of Pericles. Following the claim most prominently made
PHILIP WALSH
by A.W. Schlegel, he relates Old Comedy to the atmosphere of a modern carnival, and he
asserts that the freedom that the poets enjoyed allowed them to ridicule any Athenian of
import and to assail ‘every kind of vice and folly’. It was ‘the sacred license of the festive
season’ that permitted ‘the grossest things to be publicly spoken of in the grossest language’,
but Thirlwall departs from Schlegel by asserting that the comic stage was basically harmless:
Thirlwall’s assertions are unlike anything that has appeared in the English language up to
this point; for he is the first to argue forcefully that Old Comedy was impotent on social,
moral and political grounds. By playing down the idea that the playwright was an advisor or a
censor, he implicitly reacts against the Aristophanes of Mitford, Mitchell and the Schlegels.
He extends A.W. Schlegel’s conception of Old Comedy as a ‘Bacchanalia of fun’, but where
Schlegel believes that ‘even instructive’ things can be taken from the comic plays, Thirlwall
claims that the audience quickly forgot any lessons that might have been offered on stage.
This view is consistent with one developed concomitantly by Droysen in German verse
translations of Aristophanes (1835–38). For instance, in his introduction to the Birds,
Droysen describes the play as ‘utterly fantastical’ and he compares it to ‘a Fata Morgana,
which lets the realities shimmer again through all the distorted, incorporeal, and wavering
images’ (Droysen 1835: 259–60, my translation).14 Thirlwall shows familiarity with Droysen
in other parts of his history, but his narrative makes no reference to his fantasy reading of
Aristophanes.
However, when Aristophanes reappears in Thirlwall’s retrospective survey of Athens
during the Peloponnesian War, he is treated much differently. He is presented as a patriot
who ‘never ceased to exert his matchless powers in endeavors to counteract, to remedy, or to
abate the evils which he observed’; and as an advisor to the city for whom ‘the restoration of
peace is the object of his most ardent wishes’. He blames Pericles for leading the city into the
Peloponnesian War, and it is ‘the Athens of another age that he heartily loves’ (Thirlwall vol.
IV 1835–44: 248, 253). With these short descriptions Thirlwall paints Aristophanes as a
politically and socially engaged poet: a traditionalist who idealized the values and accomplishments of men like Aristides, and a comedian whose plays had some material effect on the
city. But these ideas stand in stark contrast to the poets’ ‘felt and acknowledged harmlessness’ discussed above. That these two positions occur within the same narrative is startling,
but perhaps Thirlwall was simply trying to maintain an air of impartiality by offering two
(albeit conflicting) interpretations. His was the mild tone of a liberal Anglican historian, and
14 Droysen’s reading of the Birds counters Süvern’s thesis (published in 1827) that the play is a
political allegory for the Sicilian expedition (cf. Holtermann 2004: 198–203).
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Such a censorship, as it has been appropriately termed, one so unlimited in its range and in its
processes, may, at first sight, appear the most formidable engine ever wielded in a state by private
hands . . . It is not without surprise that we find it to have been, though not absolutely powerless, yet, on
the whole, feeble and insignificant in its operation . . . The surprise, however, which this discovery may
at first excite will abate when we reflect on the circumstances and the temper in which the comic poets
found their audience. It was not a time or place, nor were men in the humour for any serious
thought . . . When the holydays were over, they returned to their ordinary pursuits in their habitual
mood, and the gay lessons which they just received were soon effaced from their memories by the
business of the day. The boldness and impunity of the poets seem, in fact, to have been the consequence
of their felt and acknowledged harmlessness (Thirlwall vol. III 1835–44: 81, 82–3).
DEBATES OVER ARISTOPHANES’ POLITICS AND INFLUENCE
15 ‘Philosophical history’ was a technical genre of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
associated with James Mill and the Scottish Enlightenment, and exemplified by Mill’s History of
British India (3 vols, 1817). On the influence of Utilitarianism on Grote’s approach to history, see
Vaio (1996).
16 Turner argues that Mitford and Grote waged modern battles in their assessments of ancient
Greece: ‘Both writers conceived their histories as vehicles for contemporary political polemics,
and both distorted their evidence and arguments to that end. Both believed that some direct analogy
could be drawn between the government of ancient Athens and the liberal state emerging in Great
Britain.’ (Turner 1981: 214).
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no doubt it frustrated philosophical radicals like John Stuart Mill (Demetriou 2002: 88). In
his review of Grote’s first two volumes, Mill praised Thirlwall for his ‘candid and impartial
narrative’, but felt that his work, ‘though highly and justly esteemed as a Critical, does not
attempt to be a Philosophical history’ (Mill 1846: 345–6).15
George Grote, however, endeavoured to write the sort of history that Mill desired, one
that imparted liberal lessons to the nineteenth century and made an impassioned defence of
(Athenian) democracy. While Thirlwall ‘could not put his whole heart and mind into a Greek
History’, Grote was fascinated with the subject and began working on his project in the early
1820s (if not before) (Momigliano 1952: 10). His history superseded all previous efforts, was
reprinted in Britain and abroad, was translated into French and German, and influenced
generations of later historians. Unlike Thirlwall, Grote’s formal education was cut short in
his teenage years when he went into the family banking business. In 1819, he met James Mill
and soon after Jeremy Bentham, and from this point, he commenced a career as a public
intellectual and politician. These commitments diverted Grote’s attention from working on
his history, but starting in 1846, he began to publish volumes in pairs every two years (except
for volumes eleven and twelve, which appeared in 1853 and 1856, respectively) (Clarke 1962:
78–80).
In his historical analysis, Grote was unapologetically ideological. While Mitford labelled
the Athenian government ‘A Tyranny in the Hands of the People’, Grote was its defiant
apologist (Mitford vol. IV 1838: 10). His defence of the demagogues — not to mention his
justification of the sophists — was tied to the larger ambition of articulating an idealistically
liberal vision of Athenian democracy.16 And it is within this context that he discusses the
relationship between Aristophanes and Cleon. Grote accepts Thucydides’ general description of the demagogue, but he turns those faults (‘the powerful and violent invective of
Kleon, often dishonest — together with his self-confidence and audacity in the public
assembly’) into strengths. Cleon and Hyperbolus were men ‘of the middling class’, who
took on rich and powerful aristocratic families; if they had not been audacious, Grote writes,
they ‘would never have surmounted the opposition made to them’. Cleon was a patriot and ‘a
great oppositional speaker’ who can be favourably compared with Cato the Elder;
Aristophanes, however, shares Thucydides’ oligarchic bias and exaggerates the claims
made by the historian. Grote speculates that the Knights, ‘the most consummate and irresistible’ of all his plays, must have elicited an intense reaction from the audience, but it was
Cleon’s ‘mental vigour and ability’ that allowed him to maintain his position of leadership
(Grote vol. VI 1849: 32–3, 333, 661, 332, 657, 658).
Grote offers additional remarks on the practical influence of Old Comedy in an extended
discussion of Athenian dramatic literature. He is harsh in his judgement of the comic poets,
who waged war ‘against philosophy, literature, and eloquence — in the name of those good
PHILIP WALSH
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old times of ignorance’. He describes Old Comedy as having ‘an unfavourable and degrading
influence . . . on the Athenian mind’, but praises the democracy that fostered it, for it ‘was
strong enough to tolerate unfriendly tongues either in earnest or in jest’. Individuals suffered
from the public ridicule of the stage, but ‘on the general march of politics, philosophy, or
letters, these composers had little influence’. Importantly, Grote distinguishes between
personal and general satire; it was the former in which Aristophanes exerted his influence
(what little there was), not the latter. His interpretation is a departure from Thirlwall, who,
he notes, ‘estimates more lightly than I do the effect of these abundant libels of the old
comedy’ (Grote vol. VIII 1849: 452–53, 452, 454, n. 453). Additionally, he argues that a moral
and patriotic Aristophanes is a misconception, even though this view finds acceptance among
‘three of the ablest recent critics’, the Germans Bergk, Ranke and Meineke. Instead,
Aristophanes should be seen as presenting himself ‘to provoke the laugh, mirthful or spiteful,
of the festival crowd — assembled for the gratification of these emotions, and not with any
expectation of serious or reasonable impressions’ (Grote vol. VIII 1849: 456–57, n. 454). Just
as Thirlwall diminishes the practical influence of Old Comedy and invokes the festival
context, so does Grote.
Contemporary British critics of Grote did not fully embrace his assessment of Cleon.
Lewis, the liberal politician and Editor of the Edinburgh Review (1853–55), declared that
Grote’s view was ‘legitimate’ but that it had ‘a hypothetical value . . . It has shown, not that
the facts must be understood in a different way from that hitherto recognized, but simply
that they may’ (Lewis 1851: 221). Earlier in his career, Lewis had undertaken a translation of
Müller’s unfinished Geschichte der Griechischen Literatur, a project later completed in English
by J. W. Donaldson. Müller’s was a detailed study of ancient Greek literature, and as the
nineteenth century progressed, other literary histories of ancient Greece began to appear.
These were not pedantic, scholarly works, but general surveys intended as primers for
students and as popularizing vehicles for readers with no knowledge of the Greek language.
One significant project of this sort was John Addington Symonds’ Studies of the Greek
Poets (1873, second series 1876), which originally grew out of a series of lectures that he gave
at Clifton College in 1869 and includes a provocative chapter on Aristophanes. Symonds was
fascinated with the culture of ancient Greece, and he cultivated a broad range of interests,
producing critical works on the Italian Renaissance and English drama, translating the
sonnets of Michelangelo, and issuing several books of his own poetry. His homosexuality,
however, was ‘the overwhelming obsession’ of his life, and he became an intrepid advocate of
the taboo practice, particularly in A Problem in Greek Ethics (privately printed, 1883)
(Grosskurth 1964: 262). The subject is also addressed in the final chapter of Studies, and
its publication stirred a great deal of controversy. In the essay, Symonds makes a distinction
between modern morality, which ‘has hitherto been theological’, and Greek morality, which
‘was radically scientific’. The latter is preferable, for its ethics ‘do not place between us and
the world in which we live and die the will of a hypothetical ruler, to whom we may ascribe
our passions and our fancies, enslaving ourselves to the delusions of our own soul’ (Symonds
1880: 404).
An interest in sexual politics and the state of religion also pervades his thoughts on
Aristophanes. He describes the poet’s sensuality as ‘nonchalant and natural — so utterly
devoid of shame, so thoroughly at home and well contented with itself, that it has no perturbation, no defiance, no mysterious attractiveness. Besides, he is ironical: his apepsōlēmenoi
and euruprōktoi promenade in noonday, and get laughed at, instead of being stoned and
DEBATES OVER ARISTOPHANES’ POLITICS AND INFLUENCE
hooted down.’ Symonds revels in Aristophanes’ ability to use sexuality for humour in a way
that is natural and without wicked intent. The theme of naturalness appears again in his
discussion of Phallic ecstasy, which was ‘organized and reduced to system in the
Aristophanic Lustspiel’ (Symonds 1880: 183, 178). Here he lodges a critique of Christian
morality and celebrates ancient Greek mores:
Although Symonds’ aestheticizing prose might suggest that his Aristophanes is an artist
without serious intentions, just the opposite is the case. Old Comedy, he explains, ‘performed the function of a public censorship’. In both political and cultural affairs,
Aristophanes ‘maintained his character as an Athenian Conservative . . . the demagogues,
the sophists, and Euripides were looked upon by him as three forms of the same poison
which was corrupting the old ēthos of his nation’. He identifies two extremes of interpretation: on the one side is Grote, for whom Aristophanes is ‘an indecent parasite pandering to
the worst inclinations of the Athenian rabble’; on the other are Ranke, Bergk and Meineke
(the German scholars whom Grote lists in his history), for whom Aristophanes is ‘a profound
philosopher and sober patriot’. Symonds rejects both views, preferring instead ‘a middle
course’ when reading the plays (Symonds 1880: 191–2, 195).
Symonds’ social libertarianism informs his literary criticism, and the explicitly moderate
course he proposes is an innovation. Not only does it break from the strict political and moral
rhetoric that was for so long attached to any reading of Aristophanes, but it also balances an
artistic vision of the poet with an acknowledgement of his socio-political influence. By
balancing mirth with seriousness, Symonds brings to mind the interpretations proposed
by the brothers Schlegel, and his view of Aristophanes is reflected in Browning’s
Aristophanes’ Apology (first published in 1875).17 Furthermore, Symonds looks forward
to new critical threads developed through the early twentieth century. This movement to
the middle was a prevailing trend, marking the diverse work of J. P. Mahaffy, W. J. M.
Starkie, Maurice Croiset and Gilbert Murray. In 1880, Mahaffy, professor at Trinity
College, Dublin, published A History of Classical Greek Literature, and his chapter on
Aristophanes avoids the extremes by suggesting that the intent and tone of the plays changed
over time. At first, he presents him as a politically and culturally engaged poet, a supporter of
17 The Aristophanes in Browning’s discursive poem is a personality both familiar and unfamiliar to
nineteenth-century Britain. On the one hand, Browning rehearses established views about
Aristophanes’ political conservatism; he is ‘a patriot, loving peace and hating war’ (l. 1691). On
the other hand, Browning also represents the Dionysian side of Aristophanic comedy: its parrhēsia,
its roots in phallic ritual and its animalism (e.g. ll. 560–6 and 2347–67). The poem does not
foreground sexuality (if anything, its language keeps the reader at a distance), but the Apology
recognizes that Aristophanes can be satirical, patriotic, aggressive and uninhibited (A. Roberts
1990–91: 44 and Walsh 2008: 164–73).
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. . . by introducing a new conception of the physical relations of humanity, by regarding the body as the
temple of the spirit, [Christianity] utterly rejected and repudiated this delirium of the
senses . . . Christianity taught mankind, what the Greeks never learned, that it is our highest duty to
be at discord with the universe upon this point. Man, whose subtle nature might be compared to a
many-stringed instrument, is bidden to restrain the resonance of those chords which do not thrill in
unison with purely spiritual and celestial harmonies. Hence, the theories of celibacy and asceticism, and
of the sinfulness of carnal pleasure, which are wholly alien to Greek moral and religious notions
(Symonds 1880: 179).
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‘the aristocratical peace party against the intrigues and intimidations of the democratic war
party’. Aristophanes was a conservative voice who used the stage to offer advice to the city,
but Mahaffy does not suggest that he was always (or ever) an anti-democratic moralist. He
argues that early in life Aristophanes wrote with strong convictions because he thought that
he could be an instrument of good. As the years passed (and the war took its toll on Athens),
Aristophanes lost his passion for reform, choosing instead to indulge his ‘infinite subjectivity’ (a phrase borrowed from Hegel). He turned away from serious subjects to ‘obscenity,
buffoonery, and mere literary and social satire’ (Mahaffy 1883: 440, 467). Mahaffy’s
Aristophanes, then, is both a political and apolitical poet.
Also portraying Aristophanes as a party man was Mahaffy’s colleague at Trinity, W. J. M.
Starkie. In his commentary on the Acharnians (1909), Starkie labels Aristophanes as a political and cultural conservative ‘educated in the political school of Cimon from his earliest
years’. When he describes the political parties at Athens at the beginning of the
Peloponnesian War, he places him in the centre, between the oligarchs (‘the extreme
right’) and the ochlocrats (‘the extreme left’). Once the war commenced, the three parties
were reduced to two, ‘the advocates of war and the champions of peace’, and Aristophanes
was a member of the latter (Starkie 1909: xiii, xvi–xvii, xx). Starkie goes out of his way to
specify Aristophanes’ moderate allegiances, but this conception of party man and poet was
opposed by Maurice Croiset. In the influential Aristophane et Les Parties à Athènes (1906,
1909 in English translation), Croiset retreats from the notion that Aristophanes was a
member of a political (conservative) party, arguing instead that he ‘belonged, heart and
soul, to a moderate democracy’. Although he admits that Aristophanes may have agreed
with members of the aristocracy on some issues, he insists that he was guided by his own
principles: ‘Child of the country and of Athenian tradition — it is in the name of his native
land that he speaks, and it is the soul of Athens that he defends against those whom he
regards as its corruptors.’ Throughout his career Aristophanes maintained the same general
philosophy, but in his final two plays he exhibits ‘a sort of tacit acceptance of a state of affairs
which he did not relish, but which, from this time forward, it appeared to him impossible to
change’ (Croiset 1909: 25, 27, 183).
However, no individual from the late Victorian era through the mid-twentieth century
was more involved in introducing the ideals of ancient Greece to the modern world than
Gilbert Murray. As a professor of Greek, teacher, translator, man of the theatre and politician, Murray utilized a variety of methods to influence both scholarly and general audiences
in Britain and abroad. In politics and philosophy, he was liberal, becoming a vocal advocate
for the causes in which he believed (e.g. women’s rights, educational reform, temperance,
anti-imperialism and peace), and as his reputation grew, he became part of the literary and
political establishment. Over his career he gave extensive treatment to Aristophanes on
several occasions: most notably, a chapter in A History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897);
an introduction to B. B. Rogers’ edition of the Thesmophoriazusae (1904); a lecture,
Aristophanes and the War Party (1919); and a book simply entitled Aristophanes: A Study
(1933). He also produced verse translations of the Frogs (1902, in tandem with Euripides’
Hippolytus and The Bacchae), Birds (1950) and Knights (1955). It is even reported that right
before his death Murray wanted to translate the Lysistrata (Curgenven 1957: 305). At first
glance, it would seem that Murray maintained a lifelong affection for Aristophanes, admiring
him as he did Euripides. However, his relationship with him is complicated by a variety of
factors. Most striking is that Murray was an abstemious Victorian moralist, and he even
DEBATES OVER ARISTOPHANES’ POLITICS AND INFLUENCE
Conclusion: situating recent debates
This study has thus far avoided making any explicit links to scholarly debates of the past few
decades, but at this point it is important to situate some of these arguments in light of
positions held by past historians and literary critics. ‘What was Aristophanes’ political outlook?’ and ‘What effect did his plays have on Athenian society?’ were the two questions that
were introduced at the beginning of this essay and that have framed the discussion
18 In suggesting that Murray ‘identified with particular classical authors’, Stray notes that ‘Murray
himself was a comic playwright. There survives in his family a short farce [undated] set at a meeting
of the League of Nations, entitled ‘‘Saved Again, or, the Assembly as it might be. A serious
drama’’ ’ (Stray 2007: 11).
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admits in the preface to his 1933 Study that his appreciation for the comic poet was belated: it
is ‘only late in life that I have learnt to care for Aristophanes and, I hope, to understand him’
(Murray 1933: vii).
Like many of the other individuals in this survey, Murray drew explicit parallels between
the ancient and modern worlds, and his accounts of Aristophanes, written over a fifty-year
period, illustrate a tendency to project himself, his aspirations and his world onto the ancient
subject with which he dealt. In November 1918, he argued that the Peloponnesian War ‘was
in many respects curiously similar to the present war. It was, as far as the Hellenic peoples
were concerned, a world-war . . . It was a struggle between the principles of democracy and
military monarchy.’ Aristophanes was a ‘man of honest traditions in manners and morals’,
and the comic plays represented the ‘political opposition’ to those who preferred war with
Sparta. Politically speaking, the comedian was neither a conservative aristocrat nor an antidemocratic oligarch; instead, Murray describes him as a moderate or pacifist, who, like
Thucydides, was critical of Cleon’s policies (Murray 1919: 7–8, 18, 38, 28). While the
demagogue wanted to win the war at all costs and was willing to do anything to achieve
that goal, Aristophanes ‘loathed the cruelty, the injustice, the vulgarity and ignorance which
he saw dominating the public life of Athens. It was a different Athens that he loved and
served’ (Murray 1933: 50).
Murray’s understanding of Aristophanes as an advisor, patriot and traditionalist is not
new, and his portrayal as a political moderate is consistent with contemporary views, but his
influence was significant because of the large audience he reached. His Aristophanes was a
moral man, but not a preacher; a political writer, but an idealist and in essence a man of the
demos: ‘I see him devoted to three great subjects, Peace, Poetry, and the philosophic criticism of life’ (G. Murray 1933: x). Perhaps Murray, who was then approaching seventy and
who had accomplished so much as a literary and political figure, saw himself in Aristophanes,
the man and poet.18 His colleague Pickard-Cambridge certainly noticed the parallelism in an
approving review: ‘Few have worked more strenuously for Peace, or contributed more to the
understanding of Poetry, or studied more sincerely those ideals which are or should be
implicit in sound education or the Good Life than the writer of this book’ (PickardCambridge 1933: 178). Or perhaps Murray’s Aristophanes was like the auctor to whom he
dedicated his Study, his friend George Bernard Shaw: ‘Lover of ideas and hater of cruelty
who has filled many lands with laughter and whose courage has never failed.’ Or perhaps, as
Gomme believed, Murray held ‘a good, comfortable, essentially British position’ on
Aristophanes’ (Gomme 1938: 98).
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throughout. Those who have offered their opinions on his politics have maintained the
relatively consistent view that he was an Athenian conservative, but substantive differences
emerge in how ‘conservative’ is defined. For Mitford, whose clear aversion to democracy is
evinced throughout his history, Aristophanes was ‘a man of rank’ who found support ‘from
all the first families of the republic’. He does not attribute any specific political allegiances to
the poet, but Aristophanes, it seems, was an author congenial to the Tory historian. Grote, in
his effort to rehabilitate Cleon and to idealize fifth-century democracy, takes an opposite
position, associating the poet with the point of view of Thucydides, whom he lists as part of
‘the oligarchic party of the time at Athens’ (Grote vol. VI 1849: 476). Starkie strikes a
moderating tone by describing Aristophanes as a Cimonian conservative, placing him in
between the oligarchs of the far right and the radical democrats of the far left. It was only in
the early years of the twentieth century that the notion of Aristophanes as a conservative
partisan poet was challenged. Croiset argued that he was not a member of any political party
but belonged to the moderate democracy, while Murray ascribes to him the character of
a moderate or pacifist.
In recent years, scholars have either integrated established interpretations into their
own work or have deliberately broken away from these positions. Ste Croix follows
Starkie in describing Aristophanes as a Cimonian, believing that he demonstrated a
consistent pattern of conservatism throughout all his plays. Henderson also affirms an
unfailing conservative bias, though he retreats from explicitly labelling Aristophanes as a
Cimonian. Sommerstein defines Aristophanes as a conservative by describing what he
was not: ‘He never goes so far as to express himself in favour of oligarchy, and it would
be an exaggeration to describe him as anti-democratic; but he was certainly distrustful of
the way the system was currently working’ (Sommerstein 1973: 15). MacDowell takes
this approach as well, distancing himself from the views that Aristophanes was a child of
the country (Croiset), a pacifist (Murray), a Cimonian (Starkie and Ste Croix) or an
oligarch (Grote).
Discussions of Aristophanes’ political allegiances normally coincide with observations
on his socio-political or cultural influence. Most often, he is portrayed as a monitor of
morals, a guardian of the state and a defender of tradition. Mitford, citing the Old
Oligarch, illustrates Aristophanes’ advisory role in the city, while Mitchell highlights
his role as a teacher and censor of the people. Symonds explains that Aristophanes was a
conservative ‘panegyrist of the old policy of Athens, and a vehement antagonist of the
new direction taken by his nation subsequent to the Persian war’ (Symonds 1880: 192).
He idealized, in other words, the Athens of a previous age, an interpretation echoed by
Thirlwall (in his affirmative treatment of Old Comedy), Mahaffy, Croiset and Murray.
In recent debate, Ste Croix essentially argues for the same principle; for when he uses
‘Cimonian’ to describe Aristophanes, he not only associates the poet with a dream of a
pan-Hellenic peace, but also the traditional mores and achievements that Cimon (not to
mention his father Miltiades and his co-commander Aristides) represent. Meanwhile, the
views of the Old Oligarch underscore Henderson’s contention that the demos ‘provided
that they [the ‘rich, the well-born, and the powerful’ — from the Old Oligarch] be
subjected to a yearly unofficial review of their conduct in general at the hands of the
demos’ organic intellectuals and critics, the comic poets’ (Henderson 1990: 307).
Those who believe that the plays of Aristophanes exerted little influence on Athenian
life are also linked to nineteenth-century critics and historians. Although the brothers
DEBATES OVER ARISTOPHANES’ POLITICS AND INFLUENCE
But even for those who can acknowledge the coarse and cynical vigour of Aristophanes, a sense of
the original festive context remains indispensable for a proper appreciation of his satire . . .
Whatever we may conjecture that Aristophanes himself put into the play [Knights] from his
own animus against Cleon, the satirical charge was effectively dispersed in performance, without
seriously impinging on the city’s democratic politics (Halliwell 1984a: 20).19
This essay has traced how modern scholars concerned with defining Aristophanes’ politics
or his influence on real life affairs are linked by a ‘chain of receptions’ to earlier critics who
examined the same questions but whose political and cultural attitudes compelled them to
understand the Greeks very differently. To us and to them, Aristophanes has been a patriot,
a teacher, a jokester, a pacifist and it seems likely that to another generation he will be these
things again. One interpretive innovation of past twenty years, though, is the introduction of
a new middle course. Instead of making a definitive claim that Aristophanes was a conservative dramatist or a harmless entertainer, this approach cautions against dogmatism and
champions diversity.20 It allows the plays to work on a variety of different registers, and it
identifies potential limitations in pinning Aristophanes down to one particular position.
Goldhill’s conclusion to his chapter on Aristophanes stresses this very point: ‘the search
for the poet’s voice entails the negotiation of the interrelated problematics of representation,
self-reflexivity and intertextuality’ (Goldhill 1991: 222). And when Carey writes that
‘Instead of trying to fit this data into a single model, it is better to accept that the political
19 Dover’s interpretation of Aristophanic comedy as fantasy also bears comparison to nineteenthcentury predecessors: ‘Practical questions which would arise at once if the fantasy were to be
translated into real terms are admitted only to the extent that they can be exploited for humorous
purposes; which is to say, most of them are excluded altogether’ (Dover 1972: 42).
20 In a recent essay, Van Steen maintains that the ‘nineteenth- and twentieth-century reception
history of the playwright (as far as we can reconstruct it) points to no single consistent line of
political interpretation but, instead, many diverging and even diametrically opposed readings’ (Van
Steen 2007: 118). She thus advises readers of Aristophanes to proceed with caution in assigning him
a singular point of view.
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Schlegel saw Aristophanes as a patriot and advisor to the city, they were two of the first
critics to highlight the festival setting of Old Comedy. Such an atmosphere, they argued,
freed the poets from the regulations of daily life, but because the plays produced
‘instructive’ things, they were not entirely escapists. Thirlwall extended their festival
argument in his effort to downplay the practical influence of the comic poets and
to emphasize their ‘felt and acknowledged harmlessness’. Grote also cited the festival
ethos, and contended that ‘on the general march of politics, philosophy, or letters’, Old
Comedy was ineffective.
In the twentieth century, those who deny the practical influence of Old Comedy avoid
addressing Aristophanes’ political views. Gomme separates Aristophanes the politician from
Aristophanes the poet; he insists that his personal opinions are ‘wholly biographical, with
very little relevance to his character as a dramatist’ (Gomme 1938: 103). Halliwell’s arguments can also be compared to nineteenth-century antecedents. He follows Thirlwall by
citing the festival licence of Old Comedy and by making a claim for ‘its implicit impotence, in
its inability to exert a practical influence on social and political life’ (Halliwell 1984a: 8). And
Grote’s general view on the effectiveness of Aristophanic comedy is not unlike his position:
PHILIP WALSH
References
J. S. Blackie, ‘Friedrich Schlegel’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 54 (1843) pp. 311-24.
R. Browning, The Complete Works of Robert Browning, vol. 16 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press,
1969–present).
C. Carey, ‘Comic Ridicule and Democracy’, in R. Osborne and S. Hornblower (eds), Ritual, Finance,
Politics: Athenian Democratic Accounts Presented to David Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1994) pp. 69–83.
M. L. Clarke, George Grote: A Biography (London: University of London, Athlone Press, 1962).
M. Croiset, Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens. James Loeb (trans.) (London: Macmillan,
1909).
A. Curgenven, ‘Gilbert Murray at Home’, Contemporary Review, 1104 (1957) pp. 303-6.
K. N. Demetriou, ‘Bishop Connop Thirlwall: Historian of Ancient Greece’, Quaderni di Storia, 56
(2002) pp. 49-90.
K. Dover, ‘Aristophanes 1938–1955’, in Hans Joachim Mette and Andreas Thierfelder (eds), Lustrum,
2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958) pp. 52–112.
——, Aristophanic Comedy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).
J. G. Droysen, Des Aristophanes Werke, vol. I (Berlin: Veit & Comp, 1835).
L. Edmunds, Cleon, Knights, and Aristophanes’ Politics (Lanham: University Press of America, 1987).
J. Gillies, The History of Ancient Greece, vol. I (London: A Strahan and T Cadell, 1786).
S. Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
——, ‘Bachtinaristophanizein’, CR, 48 (1998) pp. 11-13.
A. W. Gomme, ‘Aristophanes and Politics’, CR, 52 (1938) pp. 97-109.
P. Grosskurth, The Woeful Victorian: A Biography of John Addington Symonds. (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1964).
G. Grote, History of Greece, vols. VI and VIII (London: John Murray, 1849).
E. Hall, ‘The English-Speaking Aristophanes: 1650–1914’, in Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley (eds),
Aristophanes in Performance 421 BC–AD 2007: Peace, Birds, and Frogs (London: Maney Publishing,
2007) pp. 66–92.
S. Halliwell, ‘Aristophanic Satire’, Yearbook of English Studies, 14 (1984a) pp. 6-20.
21 Also noteworthy are the comments of Silk, who wonders if ‘real seriousness’ can be ascribed to ‘a
brand of comedy full of seeming paradoxes’. He is critical of scholars who assume serious intentionality, and proposes in the end that ‘Aristophanic comedy . . . tends to destabilize [the] contemporary world and its issues, in the very act of drawing attention to them’ (Silk 2000: 303–4, 345).
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satire may function at more than one level simultaneously,’ he acknowledges the social,
political and artistic intricacies of Aristophanic comedy (Carey 1994: 82).21
Just like Symonds, Murray and others before them, these scholars have questioned the
established positions and have proposed new (middle course) models for reading the plays.
Such complexities, however, while intellectually stimulating, can leave readers (especially
ones new to Aristophanes) in indeterminate aporia, with a sense of the multi-dimensionality
of Aristophanic comedy, but without a sense of why, in this world of diversity, they should be
reading his plays in the first place. This is something for which many of the critics and
historians in this survey cannot be faulted; for they used Aristophanes to explain and defend
the causes in which they believed. For Mitford, it was a reaction against democracy; for
Grote, it was the exact opposite. For Symonds, it was a celebration of sensuality; for Murray,
it was world peace through poetry. By identifying where the modern debates were first
generated and analysing how they developed over time, we can situate our own views
within a long critical tradition. Such a process can reveal our assumptions about
Aristophanic comedy, and it can ultimately lead us to a better understanding of the ancient
plays that we study.
DEBATES OVER ARISTOPHANES’ POLITICS AND INFLUENCE
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——, ‘Ancient Interpretations of onomasti kōmōdein in Aristophanes’, CQ, 34 (1984b) pp. 83-8.
——, ‘Comedy and Publicity, in the Society of the Polis,’ in A. Sommerstein, S. Halliwell,
J. Henderson, B. Zimmerman (eds), Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (Bari: Levante Editori, 1993)
pp. 321–40.
——, ‘Introduction’, Birds and Other Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) pp. ix–lxvi.
L. Hardwick, Reception Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
L. Hardwick and C. Stray, ‘Introduction, Making Connections’, A Companion to Classical Receptions
(Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008) pp. 1–9.
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