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ΦτΣΙΣ A Bawdy Joke In Aristophanes?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Kenneth McLeish
Kenneth McLeish
Affiliation:
Lincoln
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Extract

It is characteristic of Aristophanes that, in the fifth-century debate on the conflicting moral claims of and he tended to adopt a conservative stance, and in general to support the claims of Most of his plots concern an imbalance.in cosmic order (usually at first perceptible to the hero alone), and the hero's (Ach. 128) which is undertaken to correct it. Often the cosmic imbalance is caused by the pre-eminence of those who place their own above (whether they are generals, politicians, sophists, or tragedians), and the hero's self-imposed task is to reverse this state of affairs.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , May 1977 , pp. 76 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1977

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References

1 It is of interest that of the forty extant occurrences of in Aristophanes, no less than eleven are in Clouds. This ‘sophist-play’, on the other hand, only contains six examples of as against no less than sixteen in Birds (whose theme is vitally concerned with the establishment of a new

2 It is clearly no part of this article to enter in any detail into the controversy. The whole matter is best discussed in Heinimann, , Nomos und Physis (Basel, 1945), and related to drama by many scholars after him, notably Dodds, Kitto, and Lloyd-Jones.Google Scholar

3 See Varro, , R, R, 3.12.4Google Scholar; 2.7.8; Cicero, , N.D. 3.22.55Google Scholar; id. Div. 2.70.145Google Scholar. For meaning the sexual organs, see Weinreich in Rh.Mus. 77 (1928), 112.Google Scholar

4 passim and esp. Ach. 729 ff. (Henderson, , op. cit., pp. 131Google Scholar f). Av. 1100, Lys. 1004 (Henderson, , op. cit., pp. 134Google Scholar f.). cf. Thes. 448Google Scholar (and Ruck, , ‘Euripides' Mother’, in Arion N.S. 2/1, p. 17Google Scholar). Lys. 800Google Scholar (Henderson, , op. cit., p. 136).Google Scholar

5 Dover, , The Clouds (Oxford, 1968), p. 227.Google Scholar

6 See LSJ9 s.v.

7 It is however possible to read a bawdy double meaning into in Ar. frag. 684, and both (Henderson, , op. cit., p. 176Google Scholar) and (ibid., p. 175) have bawdy associations. The case is doubtful: but some evidence does exist.