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THE AESCHYLEAN STING IN WASPS’ TALE: ARISTOPHANES’ ENGAGEMENT WITH THE ORESTEIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2020

Rosie Wyles
Rosie Wyles*
Affiliation:
University of Kent
*
M.R.Wyles@kent.ac.uk
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The sting to Aristophanes’ ‘little tale’ in Wasps (λογίδιον, Vesp. 64) materializes from the comedy's interplay with the Oresteia. This article argues that Aristophanes alludes to both Agamemnon and Eumenides in the scenes running up to (and including) the trial scene, and that he exploits this intertext in the cloak scene (Vesp. 1122–264). While isolated allusions to the Oresteia have been identified in Wasps, a systematic consideration of these references has not been undertaken: a surprising absence in discussions of the ongoing competition between the comic and the tragic genres permeating Wasps’ dramatic action. Moreover, Aristophanes’ engagement with the Oresteia offers a special type of tragic intertext, in which the first and the last plays of a connected trilogy are referenced simultaneously, provocatively destabilizing the original. Furthermore, this allusion has implications for our understanding of a scene which recent scholarship has established as pivotal within the comedy, namely the cloak scene. The first part of this article, therefore, establishes the extent of Wasps’ engagement with the Oresteia and considers the significance of the ‘pastiche’ formed through the combined intertextual references to Agamemnon and to Eumenides. The second part explores the impact of this intertext on the interpretation of the cloak scene, revealing that its use of costume can be understood as a criticism of Aeschylus’ dramaturgy, inviting a negative reading of Bdelycleon's ideological stance and reinforcing the play's pessimistic view of the Athenian law courts.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 529 - 540
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association.

The sting to Aristophanes’ ‘little tale’ in Wasps (λογίδιον, Vesp. 64) materializes from the comedy's interplay with the Oresteia. This article argues that Aristophanes alludes to both Agamemnon and Eumenides in the scenes running up to (and including) the trial scene, and that he exploits this intertext in the cloak scene (Vesp. 1122–264). While isolated allusions to the Oresteia have been identified in Wasps, a systematic consideration of these references has not been undertaken: a surprising absence in discussions of the ongoing competition between the comic and the tragic genres permeating Wasps’ dramatic action.Footnote 1 Moreover, Aristophanes’ engagement with the Oresteia offers a special type of tragic intertext, in which the first and the last plays of a connected trilogy are referenced simultaneously, provocatively destabilizing the original. Furthermore, this allusion has implications for our understanding of a scene which recent scholarship has established as pivotal within the comedy, namely the cloak scene.Footnote 2 The first part of this article, therefore, establishes the extent of Wasps’ engagement with the Oresteia and considers the significance of the ‘pastiche’ formed through the combined intertextual references to Agamemnon and to Eumenides. The second part explores the impact of this intertext on the interpretation of the cloak scene, revealing that its use of costume can be understood as a criticism of Aeschylus’ dramaturgy, inviting a negative reading of Bdelycleon's ideological stance and reinforcing the play's pessimistic view of the Athenian law courts.

I

I begin by making the case for Aristophanes’ extended engagement with Aeschylus’ Oresteia in Wasps. While the trilogy was first performed thirty-six years before Wasps, parodies and its possible revival would have primed the audience to appreciate Aristophanes’ allusions to it. Cratinus’ comic engagement with the Oresteia in his Ploutoi (429) and his Eumenides (c.424) suggests that the theatre audience in 422 would have been well positioned to identify such allusions.Footnote 3 It is possible, too, that a revival of the Oresteia was staged in Athens, or its environs, in the 420s. Suggested long ago by Newiger, the idea has not lost traction.Footnote 4 Marshall, for example, has recently hypothesized that Libation Bearers and Eumenides were performed together at the Lenaea in the 420s.Footnote 5 Such a revival tallies with Aristophanes’ reference to Libation Bearers in his Clouds.Footnote 6 It also offers the most economical explanation for the trilogy being evoked on stage as many as fifty years after its first production.Footnote 7 Moreover, the independent evidence for the revival of Aeschylean plays and the culture of reperformance offers further support to this claim.Footnote 8

Wasps’ parody of the Oresteia is at its most prominent in the trial scene.Footnote 9 The dramatic scenario, in which a court in the image of an Athenian court is created on stage, readily invites comparison with Aeschylus’ Eumenides. Yet, while Aristophanes’ travesty of real-life Athenian legal procedure has gained wide recognition, the simultaneous comic engagement with the dramatic precedent for bringing an Athenian court onto the stage has received surprisingly little attention.Footnote 10 The ‘elaborately staged Dog trial’ with its systematic and explicit setting up of the court creates an interperformative allusion to Eumenides.Footnote 11 The gradual preparation of the court serves a comic purpose, generating humour from the combination of Philocleon's childlike eagerness and the parade of farcical substitutes for the objects used in serious court proceedings.Footnote 12 This sequence may also, however, wryly allude to the stage business involved in the abrupt, and unusual, setting up of the scene for Orestes’ trial in Eumenides, which is likely to have required urns, benches and other props to be brought onto the stage in front of the audience.Footnote 13 This suggestion gains further force by considering the more explicit example of the Bellerophon parody a year later in Peace, in which Trygaeus’ comment (174–6) about the mêchanê perhaps mocked infelicities in the original tragic staging.Footnote 14 It seems possible that the experimental nature of Aeschylus’ Eumenides formed part of the attraction for Aristophanes.Footnote 15

The association created by this stage business is reinforced through the chorus addressing Apollo ὦ Φοῖβ’ Ἄπολλον Πύθι’ (‘Phoebus Apollo of Pytho’, Vesp. 869). This invocation draws attention to the initial setting of Eumenides at Apollo's shrine at Delphi, as does the comic chorus’ hope for an end to their wanderings (873; cf. Orestes in Aesch. Eum. 77, 238–9).Footnote 16 A further resonance, as Biles and Olson note, is established through the characteristics that this prayer (860–90) shares with Athena's solemn charter of the newly founded Areopagus (Aesch. Eum. 681–710).Footnote 17 This prepares for the interperformative allusion to Eumenides, which is created when the voting becomes the focal point of the court scene (986–94).Footnote 18 Aristophanes signals his engagement with this significant moment of the Oresteia's staging through alluding to the gesture and prop which are integral to it and by echoing the words which accompany the action.Footnote 19 In Eumenides, Athena's gesture of raising her ballot before voting is designed to focus the audience's attention on ‘the remarkable power of a single ballot’; an effect which is, in part, achieved by her emphasis on the anticipated stage action (735): ψῆφον δ᾿ Ὀρέστῃ τήνδ᾿ ἐγὼ προσθήσομαι (‘I shall cast this ballot for Orestes’).Footnote 20 The equivalent moment in Wasps is similarly heightened through the focus on the single pebble (which visually evokes Athena's prop) and the action of voting (987–94).Footnote 21 Moreover, Bdelycleon uses the same deictic and noun as Athena, as he hands over the focal prop to his father (987): τηνδὶ λαβὼν τὴν ψῆφον (‘taking this voting pebble’), while urging him to acquit the defendant.Footnote 22 The combination of the prop's handling, the focus on the stage action of voting, the reference to acquittal and the verbal echo (which draws attention to the strategy used by Aeschylus to make the pebble a focal point) creates a strong evocation of Eumenides. The allusion is further bolstered by the subsequent parallels: the attention given to the stage action of counting the votes and speculation over the result (Vesp. 993–4; cf. Eum. 742–4 and 748–51), the response of Philocleon to the outcome (Vesp. 997) which echoes the Erinyes’ own post-acquittal sentiment (Eum. 845–6, 879–80), and Bdelycleon's compressed equivalent to Athena's consolation (Vesp. 1003–8; cf. Eum. 794–807, 824–36, 848–69, 881–91).Footnote 23 This network of visual and verbal allusions confirms Aristophanes’ engagement with Eumenides and establishes the parody in the audience's minds, priming them to appreciate the subsequent references to the trilogy.

The more alert audience member, however, may have already detected interactions with the Oresteia.Footnote 24 The situational parallel of Wasps’ opening scenario might be taken as a programmatic hint to its interplay with Aeschylus’ trilogy.Footnote 25 The comedy begins, as Agamemnon does, with a nightwatch (Vesp. 2); a link reinforced on the semantic level: both the slaves and the Aeschylean watchman keep watch (φυλάττομεν, Vesp. 4; cf. φυλάσσω, Ag. 8).Footnote 26 The blocking of Agamemnon's opening scene is evoked through Bdelycleon's placement on top of the roof (Vesp. 67–8; cf. the Watchman, Ag. 2–3). The verbal emphasis given to this staging in both Wasps and Agamemnon reinforces the allusion.Footnote 27 The fact that Bdelycleon is sleeping, whereas the Watchman relates his inability to sleep in memorable terms (Ag. 12–15), only highlights the effect of transposing tragic material into the comic frame: safely in the realm of comedy, Bdelycleon can sleep. Set within this context, the use of the term κνώδαλον (‘monster’, Vesp. 4), which echoes Apollo's shocking choice of vocabulary in describing the Erinyes (Eum. 644), may offer a further cue to the intertext.Footnote 28 A further visual interplay with the Oresteia may be identified in the netting used to keep Philocleon in the house which gains considerable attention (Vesp. 130, 164, 208, 367–8).Footnote 29 If this offers a comic counterpart to the sustained imagery of the net in the Oresteia, then Aristophanes uses this staging to subvert Aeschylus’ powerful transformation of verbal imagery into visual counterparts in his trilogy.Footnote 30 In the comic frame the terrifying net of the tragedy becomes something mundane which can be overcome through an appropriately comic means: by (in effect) eating it (Vesp. 367–71). Further contextual support for the allusions to the Oresteia in the opening scenario is given through broader paratragic resonances and the focus on the door as a symbol for the dangerous interior of the house.Footnote 31

It is worth noting the effect of Aristophanes’ engagement here with different plays from a trilogy. The simultaneous interplay with Agamemnon and Eumenides collapses the linear progression of the original, suggesting a form of pastiche.Footnote 32 The skilful compression of the trilogy within his parody offers an elegant synecdochic expression for the way in which Wasps crams multiple tragedies into its frame.Footnote 33 Moreover, by drawing attention to the connected trilogy, a form unique to the Aeschylean corpus, Aristophanes alerts the audience to his interest in commenting not only on tragedy in general but on this playwright specifically.Footnote 34 Furthermore, the cloak scene's commentary upon tragedy can only be fully appreciated if the impact of this simultaneous engagement with Agamemnon and Eumenides is taken into account.

II

In the cloak scene (Vesp. 1122–264), Aristophanes exploits the intertext to problematize the ending of Aeschylus’ trilogy and assert a negative reading of Bdelycleon's ideological stance. This scene opens with the comic protagonist engaged in yet another dispute with his son.Footnote 35 The matter at stake is whether Philocleon will embrace the new lifestyle proposed by Bdelycleon. This is represented in the stage business of a tussle over an enforced costume change: Bdelycleon strips his resistant father of his τρίβων (threadbare cloak), symbol of his past lifestyle as juror, and dresses him instead in a καυνάκης (luxury cloak), the clothing of the elite. This scene has been successfully interpreted through the lenses of: the play's themes, Aristophanes’ self-definition and social mobility.Footnote 36 A rereading of it through the Oresteia intertext, however, produces a fresh interpretation of its range of meanings, contributing to our understanding of the political positioning of Wasps and this comedy's attitude towards Aeschylus.

The continuing engagement with Eumenides is signalled by the introduction of this new cloak following the acquittal. The stage action corresponds neatly with the Erinyes’ costume change after the trial in the Oresteia.Footnote 37 The Erinyes receive clothing (probably cloaks) from Athena to mark their transformation and the beginning of their new life.Footnote 38 The audience would have been encouraged to make this connection, since the end of the court scene had already established the necessary alignment of roles: Bdelycleon plays the part of Athena announcing the outcome and offering consolation, while Philocleon in his despair at the verdict echoes the Erinyes.Footnote 39 This prepares for the following scene in which Bdelycleon will enact the role of Athena: an authority figure representing the younger generation and bestowing clothing to effect a transformation on the recipient, representative of the older generation. The visual resonance in the Philocleon scene would not be created by any similarity of the costume itself (Philocleon's cloak is white, woolen, tufted and distinctively foreign, while the Erinyes are given purple-dyed clothing).Footnote 40 The echo would be detected in the equivalent stage action of a figure being enveloped by the fabric of a new item of clothing and the shared dramatic intention of this costume change (namely transformation).

The evocation of Eumenides primarily highlights the difference in outcome between the two costume interventions. In the case of the Erinyes, the adoption of new clothing symbolically marks their transformation from a threatening force to a beneficial presence.Footnote 41 In Philocleon's case the costume is similarly intended by Bdelycleon to effect a transformation, but it fails demonstrably. Philocleon's subsequent appearance, after the symposium, as a sort of Erinys reiterates his association with the chorus of Eumenides (implied here) and confirms the ineffectiveness of the intervention.Footnote 42 This outcome is all the more marked given Philocleon's widely demonstrated ability to transform elsewhere in the play.Footnote 43 The failure of the cloak to transform Philocleon, already established by others as rich in meaning, becomes even more significant when considering the intertext's suggestive implications for Aristophanes’ commentary on tragedy in this scene.Footnote 44

Aristophanes presents Aeschylus’ costuming strategy only to allow it to be undercut by the comic protagonist. It is Philocleon's comic body and outlook which disrupts, and ultimately resists, the attempted transformation.Footnote 45 He enacts the semiotic manipulation necessary to change the meaning of the cloak.Footnote 46 Repeatedly in the exchange, when Bdelycleon attempts to assert the grandeur and desirability of the cloak, Philocleon undermines his perspective with a competing comic reading.Footnote 47 Twice this debunking depends on a reference to culinary matters: he invites the hanging tufts of the cloak to be viewed as woolen sausages (1144) and then suggests that the cloak is an oven which will cook him like a piece of meat (1153–6).Footnote 48 Philocleon's comic ‘food-obsessed’ perspective eventually wins out with the result that Bdelycleon gives way to the comic gaze and sees Philocleon's cloak as a bulb of garlic (1172).Footnote 49 If we accept the generic alignment of comedy and food, the comic genre ‘wins’ in this scene.Footnote 50 Wright's analysis of Aristophanes’ engagement with tragedy in Wasps did not extend to considering costume, and yet the reading of the cloak scene put forward here further substantiates his persuasive observation that Wasps ‘can be read as embodying a contest between comedy and tragedy’.Footnote 51 The victory of comedy in this passage, however, does not only assert superiority over the tragic genre in general but makes a statement about Aeschylus’ Oresteia in particular.Footnote 52

Bdelycleon's conspicuous corruption of the court procedure to ensure an acquittal (992) already hints towards the cloak scene's provocative challenge to the integrity of the Oresteia's resolution.Footnote 53 The failure of the cloak to transform Philocleon calls into question the dramaturgic tools employed by Aeschylus to produce a sense of closure in his trilogy. This was not the first time that Aristophanes used costume to critique a tragic playwright's work. The tactic would have been familiar to the audience from its more explicit employment in Aristophanes’ Acharnians just a few years before.Footnote 54 The target in Wasps is the Erinyes’ new clothing, which in Eumenides represents their transformation to civic benefactors and symbolizes the positive resolution of the cycle of violence through Athenian justice and ritual (represented by the torch procession).Footnote 55 By displaying the inability of the equivalent costume strategy to transform Philocleon, Aristophanes contests one of the theatrical mainstays to the Oresteia's resolution.Footnote 56 This has more serious implications than simply ‘discrediting’ the dramaturgy of an earlier tragic stage production, since (as is well known) the political situation in Athenian society at that time was closely implicated in the Oresteia's resolution.Footnote 57 By undermining the theatrical means for the trilogy's resolution, therefore, Aristophanes disputes the ability of Aeschylean tragedy to benefit society. This contributes to Aristophanes’ claim in Wasps to be able to assist the city more effectively than other playwrights and resonates also with the ambiguity towards tragedy's social function which he displays in Frogs.Footnote 58 The precise target here, however, is distinctive. The tragic costume criticized by Aristophanes gains its symbolic potency through its association with contemporary society.Footnote 59 The comic playwright may therefore be suggesting that Aeschylus should leave the contemporary to comedy. On this reading, Aristophanes not only claims his superiority in benefitting society but also attempts to assert limitations on the means through which tragedy effected its own social function.

The negative presentation of the Oresteia's resolution is further reinforced through the nagging presence of Agamemnon in the cloak scene. The programmatic intermeshing of references to Agamemnon alongside references to Eumenides in the comedy's opening supports the possibility of simultaneous allusions to separate parts of the Oresteia here. The cloak scene's framing as a power struggle involving expensive Persian fabric cues its interpretation through Agamemnon. The reading which emerges from this poses a challenge to Olson's interpretation of the play's ideology and expands Wasps’ criticism of Aeschylus.Footnote 60 In the Oresteia, Agamemnon's demise comes from an excessively expensive cloth which is invested with Persian associations and which Clytemnestra casts around him.Footnote 61 She describes it at lines 1381–3:

ὡς μήτε φεύγειν μήτ᾽ ἀμύνεσθαι μόρον.
ἄπειρον ἀμφίβληστρον, ὥσπερ ἰχθύων,
περιστιχίζω, πλοῦτον εἵματος κακόν.

so that he could neither escape death nor defend himself. I staked out around him an endless net, as one does for fish—a wickedly opulent garment.Footnote 62

The garment offered to Philocleon is similarly delineated as Persian, woven by ‘barbarians’ in Ecbatana, and noted to be excessively expensive (1137–47).Footnote 63 It is also perceived as dangerous, as Philocleon's jokes (about the death that this costuming will bring, 1133–4, 1156) demonstrate.Footnote 64 These quips may be viewed as symptomatic of Philocleon's ‘paranoid suspicion’, but in the context of the Aeschylean intertext, his anxiety becomes quite reasonable.Footnote 65 After repeated requests for his father to put on the enveloping garment, eventually it is Bdelycleon who, like Clytemnestra, will ‘cast it around’ Philocleon (1154 φέρ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ἐγώ σε περιβάλω); the verb may be different but the action is the same. The force of the accompanying simile in the tragic description, however, is reduced by its transformation into an appropriately comic culinary metaphor: Philocleon envisions this enclosing cloth as an oven (1153–6). If we view this exchange through Agamemnon, humour is generated from the comic dissonance, the pretension of evoking such a heightened moment from tragic drama and the relief that in this comic world the consequences will not be fatal.Footnote 66

More importantly, the reading of this scene through Agamemnon reveals a new dimension to the debate over the representation of economy and ideology in Wasps.Footnote 67 The allusion to Agamemnon furnishes Bdelycleon's ‘sharing of wealth’ with a more sinister aspect.Footnote 68 This is problematic for Olson's positive reading of the play's ‘democratic’ outlook, since his argument depends on the assumption that Bdelycleon's intentions are presented as benign.Footnote 69 Interpreting the scene through its allusion to Agamemnon therefore allows this costume to pose yet another challenge to Olson's view.Footnote 70 It also enables Aristophanes to contest the ending of the Oresteia further by allowing the prominence of his reference to Agamemnon to disrupt the closure implied by the Erinyes’ cloaking. The new clothing in Eumenides represents a positive reworking of the fabric's symbolism within the trilogy, reversing the negative associations that the death of Agamemnon (wrapped in cloth) had established.Footnote 71 The earlier stage moment is evoked by Aeschylus but only to highlight the trilogy's subsequent progress. In Aristophanes’ cloak scene, however, references to the first and the last plays of the Oresteia coexist irrespective of their placement in the original performance. One effect of this, already mentioned, is to reduce the trilogy to a pastiche, but a far more serious consequence is the denial of the symbolic progression so important to the Oresteia's ending. The presence of Agamemnon alongside Eumenides in the comic scene imposes an ambiguity on the uplifting symbolism of Eumenides (through the continued prominence of Agamemnon's negative associations with enveloping fabric). The insistence on an open-endedness here calls into question the Aeschylean assertion of the law court's ability to resolve matters. Aristophanes’ challenge operates both on the level of theatre (criticizing Aeschylus’ appropriation of this contemporary institution, the domain of comedy, as a theatrical device) and in relation to society. By ‘rewriting’ the Oresteia and by asserting the inability of its trial to suppress the destructive elements which have gone before, Aristophanes invites the audience at the same time to reflect on the situation in Athens in 422. That Wasps expresses a pessimistic outlook towards the efficacy of the courts will not surprise readers, but what should is the ways in which Aristophanes uses the intertext of Aeschylus’ Oresteia to communicate this.Footnote 72

CONCLUSION

The recognition that Aristophanes presents a sustained engagement with the Oresteia in Wasps furthers our understanding of its interaction with tragedy, the ideological stances it presents, and its critique of the law courts. The acknowledgement that this intertext enables Wasps’ cloak scene to criticize Aeschylus’ costuming strategy is also significant for the appreciation of costume's role in Aristophanes’ metatheatrical discourse across his extant plays.Footnote 73 Moreover, later parts of the play could be profitably reinterpreted with this intertext in mind; the appearance of Philocleon after the symposium as a form of torch-carrying Erinys, for example, might be fruitfully reassessed through the lens of the torch procession at the end of Eumenides.Footnote 74

A further area of investigation, on a much grander scale, which suggests itself is the potential implications for our understanding of Aristophanes’ self-definition through Aeschylus. I offer some preliminary thoughts here. Wasps’ interplay with the Oresteia presents a new dimension to Aristophanes’ complex reflection on his career through the reference to Electra (from Aeschylus’ Choephori) in the revised parabasis to his Clouds (534).Footnote 75 The alignment of characters in Wasps (especially Bdelycleon as Clytemnestra) potentially complicates the framing of comic rivals in the revision of Clouds.Footnote 76 Wasps could also impact on our understanding of Aristophanes’ broader self-definition through Aeschylus in Peace and Frogs.Footnote 77 At the same time, earlier Aristophanic interactions with Aeschylus, such as Dicaeopolis’ professed preference for the great tragedian (Ach. 10) (which—given the protagonist's later identification with Aristophanes in that play—may be read as part of this programme of self-definition), may nuance the reading of Wasps offered here.Footnote 78 It has been argued that Cratinus exploited his engagement with Aeschylus as a means of asserting his own canonical status.Footnote 79 Aristophanes’ interplay with Aeschylus in Wasps, and elsewhere in his work, could be viewed as a response to that claim.Footnote 80 If it is agreed that Aeschylus plays a significant part in Aristophanes’ self-defining discourse, then Wasps, as the most sustained engagement with the Oresteia in his extant comedies, should hold a central place in future discussions of this.

A final consideration is how this reading of Wasps might alter our understanding of the relationship between Euripides and Aristophanes.Footnote 81 Of particular importance here is the observation that Euripides, too, engages with Aeschylus’ Oresteia as a means of self-definition and potentially does so in the same period as Wasps.Footnote 82 If the dating of Euripides’ Electra to 422–417 is correct, it is possible that Euripides’ treatment of the Oresteia formed a response to Wasps (as much as to Aeschylus).Footnote 83 The form of Euripides’ comments on the Oresteia (that is, references to its staging) takes on a new significance in this context, as it may simultaneously draw attention to Aristophanes’ interperformative allusions to that same trilogy. This contextualization of Wasps’ engagement with the Oresteia highlights the further significance of the intertext identified here. In the meantime, the findings of this article's central discussion should be enough in themselves, I hope, to demonstrate that the sting in Aristophanes’ tale deserves to be overlooked no longer.

Footnotes

I am grateful to Patrick Finglass, Niall Slater, Edith Hall, Laurel Fulkerson, Mario Telò, Alexa Piqueux, Anne Alwis and Lucy Jackson for advice on aspects of this chapter.

References

1 Wright, M., ‘Comedy versus tragedy in Wasps’, in Bakola, E., Prauscello, L. and Telò, M. (edd.), Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres (Cambridge, 2013), 205–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 206 recognizes the centrality of encounters between the world of comedy and tragedy to the structural design and meaning of Wasps. The subsequent appearance of studies by Telò, M., Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy (Chicago, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Farmer, M.C., Tragedy on the Comic Stage (Oxford, 2016), 117–54Google Scholar has further established the fruitfulness of Wright's approach. Jedrkiewicz, S., ‘Bestie, gesti e logos. Una lettura delle Vespe di Aristofane’, QUCC 82 (2006), 61–91Google Scholar and Auger, D., ‘Corps perdu et retrouvé dans les Guêpes d'Aristophane’, in Auger, D. and Peigney, J. (edd.), Phileuripidès (Paris, 2008), 503–28Google Scholar are important precursors for Wright. Telò (this note) includes some discussion of Wasps’ engagement with the Oresteia (especially 99–101).

2 Compton-Engle, G., Costume in the Comedies of Aristophanes (Cambridge, 2015), 67–74; Telò (n. 1), 29–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Piqueux, A., ‘Le manteau imaginaire de Philocléon (Vesp. 1122–73): vêtements masculins et identité sur la scène comique’, in Coppola, A. (ed.), Gli oggetti sulla scena teatrale ateniese (Padua, 2016), 237–60Google Scholar have established the scene's importance in the comedy, but do not take its engagement with the Oresteia into account.

3 Bakola, E., Cratinus and the Art of Comedy (Oxford, 2010), 49, 135–8 and 174–7Google Scholar; ead., ‘Crime and punishment: Cratinus, Aeschylus’ Oresteia, and the metaphysics and politics of wealth’, in Bakola, E., Prauscello, L. and Telò, M. (edd.), Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres (Cambridge, 2013), 226–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, with greater caution about Cratinus’ Eumenides, Farmer (n. 1), 92–3.

4 Newiger, H.-J., ‘Elektra in Aristophanes’ Wolken’, Hermes 89 (1961), 422–30Google Scholar, critiqued by Bowie, A., ‘Myth and ritual in the rivals of Aristophanes’, in Harvey, D. and Wilkins, J. (edd.), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy (Swansea, 2000), 317–30, at 323Google Scholar; supported, however, by Vahtikari, V., Tragedy Performances outside Athens in the Late Fifth and the Fourth Centuries b.c. (Helsinki, 2014), 153Google Scholar.

5 Marshall, C.W., Aeschylus: Libation Bearers (London, 2017), 46–52Google Scholar. I am grateful to Niall Slater for this point (and for the one below about deme theatres).

6 Nub. 534 (discussed below); although the reference is made in the revised version, it would have been more effective if there had been a revival staged in the 420s.

7 Zeitlin, F., ‘Redeeming matricide? Euripides rereads the Oresteia’, in Pedrick, V. and Oberhelman, S.M. (edd.), The Soul of Tragedy (Chicago, 2005), 199–225Google Scholar; Mueller, M., Objects as Actors: Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy (Chicago, 2016), 42–3Google Scholar on its impact; and Torrance, I., Metapoetry in Euripides (Oxford, 2013), 45–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Euripides’ Orestes.

8 Σ Ar. Ran. 10, with Z.P. Biles, ‘Aeschylus’ afterlife: reperformance by decree in 5th c. Athens?’, ICS 31–2 (2006–7), 206–42 and Lamari, A.A., ‘Aeschylus and the beginning of tragic reperformances’, TC 7 (2015), 189–206Google Scholar. Against the ‘single-performance theory’ and on the participation of prominent playwrights at the Rural Dionysia, see Csapo, E., Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theater (Chichester and Malden, 2010), 83–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on performances in deme theatres, see Vahtikari (n. 4), 91–8. On reperformance in the fifth century, see Lamari, A.A., Reperforming Greek Tragedy: Theater, Politics, and Cultural Mobility in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries b.c. (Berlin and Boston, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Stewart, E., Greek Tragedy on the Move: The Birth of a Panhellenic Art Form c.500–300 b.c. (Oxford, 2017), 177–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 On comic parody, see Rau, P., Paratragodia (Munich, 1967)Google Scholar; Silk, M.S., ‘Aristophanic paratragedy’, in Sommerstein, A.H., Halliwell, S.F., Henderson, J. and Zimmermann, B. (edd.), Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (Bari, 1993), 477–504Google Scholar; Rosen, R.M., ‘Aristophanes, Old Comedy, and Greek tragedy’, in Bushnell, R. (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Tragedy (Oxford, 2006), 251–68Google Scholar; Bakola (n. 3 [2010]), 118–79; and Farmer (n. 1). I follow Bakola (n. 3 [2010]), 121 in using ‘paratragedy’ and ‘parody’ interchangeably (contra the distinction made by Silk [this note], 479).

10 See, for example, Rogers, B.B., The Wasps of Aristophanes (Cambridge, 1897), on 976 with n. 568Google Scholar; MacDowell, D.M., Aristophanes Wasps (Oxford, 1971), on 976–7Google Scholar; and Biles, Z.P. and Olson, S.D., Aristophanes Wasps (Oxford, 2015)Google Scholar, ad loc. The theatrical precedent for the dramatization of court procedure is not mentioned in these acknowledgements of the scene's juridical satire. The metatheatrical dimension to the Dog Trial has, however, gained recognition: Farmer (n. 1), 134 with n. 45 and Slater, N.W., Spectator Politics: Metatheatre and Performance in Aristophanes (Philadelphia, 2002), 96 with n. 43Google Scholar.

11 Biles and Olson (n. 10), xliii on elaborate staging. On interperformative allusions, see Wyles, R., Costume in Greek Tragedy (London, 2011), 89–90 and Mueller (n. 7), 42–69Google Scholar.

12 MacDowell (n. 10), 235 (on 760–859) and Slater (n. 10), 96. It may offer further entertainment as a variant on previous Aristophanic scenes in which multiple props are brought onto the stage; see Nelson, S., Aristophanes and His Tragic Muse. Comedy, Tragedy and the Polis in 5th Century Athens (Leiden and Boston, 2016), 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977), 390–1Google Scholar notes the rarity of this type of scene change and hypothesizes that the props are brought on. S. Scullion's objection (Three Studies in Athenian Dramaturgy [Stuttgart, 1994], 77–86) to Taplin's argument for a shift of scene does not affect the claim that objects were brought on to set up the court. His objection to the use of stagehands is of greater relevance (Scullion [this note], 115 on Ajax; marginally revised: S. Scullion, ‘Camels and gnats: assessing arguments about staging’, in G.W. Most and L. Ozbek [edd.], Staging Ajax's Suicide [Pisa, 2015], 75–110, at 77), yet the props required for the court in Eumenides must arrive on stage somehow.

14 On this parody, see S.D. Olson, Aristophanes Peace (Oxford, 1998), xxxii–xxxiv and ad loc., Rau (n. 9), 89–97, Dobrov, G.W., Figures of Play: Greek Drama and Metafictional Poetics (Oxford, 2001), 20Google Scholar; on staging, Hourmouziades, N.C., Production and Imagination in Euripides (Athens, 1965), 150–2Google Scholar. For further discussion of the relationship between Wasps and Peace, see Dobrov (this note), 89–104 and Farmer (n. 1), 118–21.

15 As Silk, M.S., Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy (Oxford, 2000), 52Google Scholar argues in the case of the Aristophanic penchant for Euripides.

16 Sommerstein, A.H., Aristophanes Wasps (Warminster, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad loc. notes the tragic resonance of the phraseology. The association of Apollo Pythios with the courts (A.L. Boegehold, The Athenian Agora. Results of Excavations Conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 28. The Lawcourts at Athens [Princeton, 1995], 22 n. 7), while relevant here, does not preclude evocation of the Oresteia.

17 Biles and Olson (n. 10), ad loc.

18 The heightened significance afforded to this stage action in the original makes it an ideal point of allusion; for another significant gesture (manipulating fabric) capable of evoking Aeschylus’ trilogy, see Noel, A.-S., ‘Le vêtement-piège et les Atrides: metamorphoses d'un objet protéen’, in Milanezi, S. and Le Guen, B. (edd.), L'appareil scénique dans les spectacles de l'Antiquité (Saint-Denis, 2013), 161–82Google Scholar.

19 It is made significant by the verbal reinforcement of the visual; see Taplin (n. 13), especially 30.

20 On Athena's voting pebble as a focalizer in the Aeschylean scene, see Bakewell, G.W., ‘Theatricality and voting in Eumenides’, in Harrison, G. and Liapis, V. (edd.), Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre (Leiden and Boston, 2013), 149–59, at 151Google Scholar.

21 While the urns are subjected to comic transformation (being substituted by ἀρυστίχοι ‘little cups’, 855), on which see Wyles, R., Theatre Props and Civic Identity in Athens (London, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Vesp. 109–10 imply that a pebble is used (rather than a ‘small domestic item’, pace Biles and Olson [n. 10], ad loc.).

22 On deixis in fifth-century drama, see D.J. Jacobson, ‘Show business: deixis in fifth-century Athenian drama’ (Ph.D. Diss., Berkeley, 2011) and brief comments on Ajax specifically in Finglass, P.J., ‘Second thoughts on the sword’, in Most, G.W. and Ozbek, L. (edd.), Staging Ajax's Suicide (Pisa, 2015), 193–210, at 198–206Google Scholar. All quotations from Wasps use the text of Biles and Olson (n. 10).

23 Farmer (n. 1), 134 explores the other potential tragic associations of Philocleon's response. On further similarities between Philocleon's temperament and Aeschylus’ Erinyes, see Nelson (n. 12), 164. Bakewell (n. 20), 149 n. 1 notes that Vesp. 993 recalls Eum. 744.

24 On the audience alertness, see Revermann, M., ‘The competence of theatre audiences in fifth- and fourth-century Athens’, JHS 126 (2006), 99–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Those members of the audience who did not consciously identify these allusions at the outset could have nevertheless been psychologically ‘primed’ by them to make the link to the Oresteia in the later court scene.

26 Biles and Olson (n. 10), xli make the comparison with the opening of Agamemnon.

27 There is some debate over whether the Watchman's lines imply that he is lying down as he delivers them (Taplin [n. 13], 277); the allusion in Wasps would be clear in either case. Telò (n. 1), 59 n. 9 notes Bdelycleon's position on the roof as a paratragic element to the opening.

28 ‘The vulgarity of Apollo's reaction is without parallel in tragedy’, Sommerstein, A.H., Aeschylus Eumenides (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar, ad loc. This cue to the tragic intertext is noted by Beta, S., ‘Madness on the comic stage: Aristophanes’ Wasps and Euripides’ Heracles’, GRBS 40 (1999), 135–57Google Scholar, at 136, Wright (n. 1), 205 n. 1 and Telò (n. 1), 99.

29 On the prominence and significance of the net, see Revermann, M., Comic Business: Theatricality, Dramatic Technique, and Performance Contexts of Aristophanic Comedy (Oxford, 2006), 171 and Nelson (n. 12), 161Google Scholar.

30 Taplin (n. 13), 315. This may be reinforced by the reference to spreading the ‘net’ out (Vesp. 132; cf. Aesch. Cho. 983). On Aeschylus making the verbal visual, see Bakewell (n. 20), 156; Chaston, C., Tragic Props and Cognitive Function: Aspects of the Function of Images in Thinking (Leiden and Boston, 2010), 20–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lebeck, A., The Oresteia: A Study in Language and Structure (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 131Google Scholar. For an example of Aristophanes making the figurative literal in a tragic parody, see Ar. Ach. 318 with Sommerstein, A.H., Aristophanes Acharnians (Warminster, 1980)Google Scholar, ad loc. The presentation of the ‘politician’ dogs in the trial scene offers another example of this strategy; on canine imagery in the Oresteia, see Saayman, F., ‘Dogs and lions in the Oresteia’, Akroterion 38 (1993), 11–18Google Scholar and D. Raeburn and O. Thomas, The Agamemnon of Aeschylus (Oxford, 2011), lxvi–lxviii.

31 On the ‘brooding presence’ of the house in the Oresteia, see Taplin, O., Greek Tragedy in Action (London, 1978), 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the ‘tragic’ focus on the door in Wasps, see Marshall, C.W., ‘Dramatic technique and Athenian comedy’, in Revermann, M. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy (Cambridge, 2014), 131–46, at 137Google Scholar. For further tragic resonances to the opening, see Wright (n. 1), 205 and 212–13, and Telò (n. 1), 57.

32 ‘Pastiche’ in the sense applied by Bakola (n. 3 [2010]), 121–2. See also Dobrov (n. 14), 19 on Euripides’ Phoenissae.

33 On its intense tragic engagement, see Wright (n. 1) and Telò (n. 1), who links this to the idea that Philocleon is represented as a voracious consumer of tragedies.

34 Murnaghan, S., ‘Legal action: the trial as theater in Aeschylus’ Oresteia’, in Weiner, A. and Kaplan, L. (edd.), On Interpretation: Studies in Culture, Law, and the Sacred (Madison, 2002), 190–201, at 192Google Scholar; the challenge to the assumption that this was an Aeschylean norm from Yoon, F., ‘Against the Prometheia: rethinking resolution and the “connected tetralogy”’, TAPhA 146 (2016), 257–80Google Scholar does not affect this claim.

35 On the earlier parts of the play as a series of agônes, see Bowie, A., Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual, and Comedy (Cambridge, 1993), 78–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Compton-Engle (n. 2); Telò (n. 1); and Piqueux (n. 2) respectively.

37 Despite the textual issues afflicting the proposal in Eumenides for purple-dyed clothing (φοινικοβάπτοις ἐσθήμασιν, 1027) to be adopted, it is generally accepted that the Erinyes were the intended recipients and that this costume change took place on stage. On textual issues, see Taplin (n. 13), 412–13 and Sommerstein (n. 28), ad loc. On staging, see Podlecki, A.J., Aeschylus Eumenides (Warminster, 1989), ad locGoogle Scholar.

38 This stage action has long been understood to gain further meaning from the earlier use of fabric in the trilogy (R.F. Goheen, ‘Aspects of dramatic symbolism: three studies in the Oresteia’, AJPh 76 [1955], 113–37) and from its visual allusion to the ‘crimson cloaks’ worn by metics in the Panathenaeic procession (Headlam, W., ‘The last scene of the Eumenides’, JHS 26 [1906], 268–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

39 While there are points of difference between Philocleon and the chorus, these reflect comic distortion (a staple of parody). Moreover, Dionysus in Ran. 1028–9 offers a parallel example of a comic protagonist parodying an Aeschylean chorus (Persians). See also Silk (n. 15), 255 on Philocleon representing a ‘one man community’ in the court scene.

40 For καυνάκης, see Stone, L., Costume in Aristophanic Comedy (New York, 1981), 168Google Scholar.

41 Goheen (n. 38), 122.

42 On Philocleon as Erinys, see Telò (n. 1), 96–101.

43 Silk (n. 15), especially 232, Nelson (n. 12), 166, and Farmer (n. 1), 122 and 129.

44 See the interpretations of Compton-Engle (n. 2), 71, Piqueux (n. 2), 254 and Telò (n. 1), 36.

45 On the relationship between Philocleon's comic body and this costume, see Piqueux (n. 2), 254–5. For the centrality of his comic body to understanding the play, see Auger (n. 1) and Compton-Engle (n. 2), especially 73–4; and on the comic body's significance for comedy in general, see Varakis-Martin, A., ‘Body and mask in Aristophanic performance’, BICS 53 (2010), 17–38Google Scholar.

46 Piqueux makes a persuasive case for the essential role of words in the power dynamics of this scene, expressed through a struggle over the definition of the cloak; Piqueux (n. 2), 249–53. On the impact of words on the semiotic meaning of costume, see Wyles (n. 11), 51–2.

47 Farmer's interpretation ([n. 1], 118, 133) depends on the continuing association (established earlier in the play) of Bdelycleon with comedy. Given Silk's model of the ‘recreative’ comic character ([n. 15], 207–55), there may be inconsistency in this association. See Nelson (n. 12), 168 on the shift to the cause identified with Bdelycleon in the second half of the play.

48 Sommerstein (n. 16), ad loc. See Biles and Olson (n. 10), ad loc. on χόλιξ (the term used at line 1144) meaning ‘“intestine” stuffed with meat’; also cf. Ar. Eq. 1179.

49 Biles and Olson (n. 10), ad loc. on how this line corresponds to Philocleon's appearance; see also Piqueux (n. 2), 254. On comedy's ‘food-obsessed’ perspective, see Compton-Engle, G., ‘Aristophanes Peace 1265–1304: food, poetry, and the comic genre’, CPh 94 (1999), 324–9, at 326Google Scholar. I disagree with Auger's reading (n. 1), 516.

50 This extends the argument of Compton-Engle (n. 49), which posits the generic alignment of food and comedy in Pax 1279–90, by suggesting that Aristophanes already exploited this in Wasps.

51 Wright (n. 1), 206.

52 This assertion of superiority is not necessary hostile. On rejecting the assumption of universal hostility against tragedy in Aristophanes’ work, see Silk (n. 15), 52 (on Euripides); see also Ruffell, I.A., ‘A total write-off: Aristophanes, Cratinus, and the rhetoric of comic competition’, CQ 52 (2002), 138–63, at 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Farmer (n. 1), 8 n. 1 and 70 (both on parody). Hostility is implied by Wright (n. 1), 207 and Telò (n. 1).

53 By inviting reflection on the judicial process presented by Aeschylus; see Goldhill, S., Aeschylus The Oresteia (Cambridge, 1992), 33–4Google Scholar on problems with the Oresteia trial, and Bowie, A., ‘Religion and politics in Aeschylus’ Oresteia’, CQ 43 (1993), 10–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 11 for a helpful summary of scholarship on this issue.

54 On which, see, above all, Foley, H.P., ‘Tragedy and politics in Aristophanes’ Acharnians’, JHS 108 (1988), 33–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Taplin (n. 13), 415 discusses the reconciliation symbolized by the final procession. A.J. Podlecki, The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy (Bristol, 19992), 80–1 suggests that the Erinyes’ acceptance of the trial's outcome represents the victorious enthronement of justice, both legal and civil. On ritual, see Easterling, P.E., ‘Tragedy and ritual: “Cry ‘Woe, woe’ but may the good prevail!”’, Mètis 3 (1988), 87–109, at 99–100Google Scholar. See also Macleod, C., ‘Politics and the Oresteia’, JHS 102 (1982), 124–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 136–8 and 140; and Sommerstein (n. 28), on 1021–47; note, however, Goldhill, S., ‘Civic ideology and the problem of difference: the politics of Aeschylean tragedy once again’, JHS 120 (2000), 34–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar on the ending's complexity and ambiguities.

56 On the simultaneous critique in this scene of ritual clothing's ability to transform, see Compton-Engle (n. 2), 72.

57 The political sympathies of Eumenides are notoriously ambiguous; however, the production (it can be argued) benefitted society by facilitating distanced reflection on recent events (Bowie [n. 53], 11–12).

58 On this claim, see Wright (n. 1), 208. On ambiguity, see Rosen (n. 9), 264.

59 First noted by Headlam (n. 38).

60 Olson, S.D., ‘Politics and poetry in Aristophanes’ Wasps’, TAPhA 126 (1996), 129–50Google Scholar; Biles and Olson (n. 10), xliv–lxii.

61 I see no problem with the view that the cloth used in the murder is the same prop as the cloth strewn out on Agamemnon's path; Taplin (n. 13), 315 suggested that the use of the same prop was ‘possible’, but the following year said that it was ‘unlikely’: Taplin (n. 31), 81. For a recent discussion of this issue, see Mueller (n. 7), 60. On Persian associations, see Hall, E., Inventing the Barbarian (Oxford, 1989), 204–8Google Scholar; on wealth and danger in this scene, see Goldhill (n. 55), 45–6 and Mueller (n. 7), 52–3.

62 Text from Raeburn and Thomas (n. 30).

63 I agree with Miller, M.C., Athens and Persians in the Fifth Century b.c.: A Study in Cultural Receptivity (Cambridge, 1997), 154Google Scholar that the comedy of the scene depends on the garment being distinctively foreign (i.e. a καυνάκης). While Bdelycleon refers to it as a χλαῖνα (a standard cloak, 1132), I take this as his attempt to impose a reading on the cloak (trying to persuade his father to put it on by normalizing it; after that fails, he changes tack emphasizing its exoticness). Telò (n. 1) underplays the foreignness of the garment, equating it to a χλαῖνα in his analysis; Compton-Engle (n. 2), 70–1 by contrast recognizes the importance of this aspect of the cloak (using it to argue that political identity is at stake).

64 Piqueux (n. 2), 252–3.

65 On paranoia, see Telò (n. 1), 35. The polysemic nature of Aristophanic comedy allows for Telò's interpretation of these jokes to stand alongside the reading offered here.

66 For the tapestry scene as a dramatized power struggle par excellence, see Taplin (n. 31), 82. The relief is equivalent to the feeling generated by the recognition that Bdelycleon can sleep (unlike the Watchman); see above. A further ludic interaction with Agamemnon may perhaps be identified in the stage business of Philocleon removing his shoes at line 1157 (in preparation for the joke about the boil, 1172); cf. Aesch. Ag. 944–5, with dire consequences, on which see Griffith, R.D., ‘Disrobing in the Oresteia’, CQ 38 (1988), 552–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 See Olson (n. 60); contra, Konstan, D., ‘Politics of Aristophanes’ Wasps’, TAPhA 115 (1985), 27–46Google Scholar, and Biles and Olson (n. 10), xliv–lxii.

68 Based on Mueller's reading of the Aeschylean scene ([n. 7], 51–60).

69 Olson (n. 60); Biles and Olson (n. 10), xliv–lxii.

70 Compton-Engle (n. 2), 70–1 identifies the challenge its foreignness poses.

71 Goheen (n. 38), 125.

72 It is not assumed that every member of the ancient audience made every proposed connection or that every meaning was present throughout the scene for those of the audience who identified them. On the challenges of establishing an allusion and judging how far to go with it, see Thalmann, W.G., ‘Euripides and Aeschylus: the case of Hekabe’, ClAnt 12 (1993), 126–59, at 129–30Google Scholar. Intertextual references might also be enjoyed in subsequent periods by a reader rather than a theatre-goer.

73 Wyles (n. 11), 96–103.

74 Telò (n. 1), 96–101 on Philocleon as an Erinys. I am grateful to Niall Slater also for pointing out to me the significance of Philocleon's obscene description of the flute girl as a torch (1372) as a further potential challenge to Aeschylean meaning.

75 On the revision of Clouds, see Revermann (n. 29), 326–32. While the interpretation of the simile and whether Euripides made a mistake remain vexed questions, the point of reference to Aeschylus’ Choephori is identified from scholium R on 534 (R. Hackforth, ‘Aristophanes, Clouds 534–6’, CR 52 [1938], 5–7, at 5). For varying interpretations of Electra, see Hackforth (this note); Dover, K.J., Aristophanes Clouds (Oxford, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad loc.; Sommerstein, A.H., Aristophanes Clouds (Warminster, 1982)Google Scholar, ad loc.; and Sidwell, K., Aristophanes the Democrat. The Politics of Satirical Comedy during the Peloponnesian War (Cambridge, 2010), 13Google Scholar. While Sidwell argues for the identification of ‘that Electra’ as Banqueters, he nevertheless acknowledges that the simile makes a ‘cross-reference’ to Aeschylus’ Choephori. It is striking that the explicit intertext is the one play of the trilogy which Wasps does not address, though it has been argued that the passage in fact presents a little Oresteia: Telò, M., ‘Embodying the tragic father(s): autobiography and intertextuality in Aristophanes’, ClAnt 29 (2010), 278–326Google Scholar.

76 For the argument that Eupolis is figured as Clytemnestra in Clouds, see Telò (n. 1), 135.

77 See Biles, Z.P., Aristophanes and the Poetics of Competition (Cambridge, 2011), 5–6 and 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar on Aristophanes’ poetic posturing in Pax 749 through the appropriation of Pherecrates’ comic representation of Aeschylus’ self-promotion, and 245–7 on Aeschylus as a ‘parabatic figure’ (speaking for Aristophanes) in Frogs.

78 Foley (n. 54) and Biles (n. 77), 57 on identification with Aristophanes. Olson, S.D., Aristophanes: Acharnians (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar comments ad loc. that Dicaeopolis’ ‘taste for Aeschylus marks the hero as an old-fashioned, traditionally minded character’; yet Dicaeopolis’ comment may take on a fresh significance in retrospect (after his identification with Aristophanes).

79 Bakola (n. 3 [2010]), 177.

80 This seems even more likely given the centrality of this rivalry to the interpretation of Aristophanes’ work: see Ruffell (n. 52) and, above all, Biles (n. 77), especially 97–166. Telò (n. 1), 119 argues for a different form of response by suggesting that Aristophanes alludes ‘polemically to Cratinus's assimilation of his comedy to archaic tragedy’ at the end of Wasps.

81 On Euripides’ special status in Aristophanes, see Silk (n. 15), 50. In 422, Aristophanes seems to have engaged far more explicitly with Euripides in his Proagon (produced unusually in the same competition as Wasps); see Σ Vesp. 61c (PCG 3.2 Proagon Test. iv, page 253) with Slater (n. 10), 87 and 111–12, and I.C. Storey, ‘The curious matter of the Lenaia festival of 422’, in D. Phillips and D. Pritchard (edd.), Sport and Festival in the Greek World (Swansea, 2003), 281–92.

82 On Euripides’ use of the Oresteia, see Thalmann (n. 72), Zeitlin (n. 7), Torrance (n. 7), 45–62 and D.G. Zuckerberg, ‘The oversubtle maxim chasers: Aristophanes, Euripides, and their reciprocal pursuit of poetic identity’ (Ph.D. Diss., Princeton, 2014), 52–68. On his interaction with Aeschylus in the famous example of Euripides’ Electra 518–44, see, above all, the seminal reflections of Winnington-Ingram, R., ‘Euripides: poiêtês sophos’, Arethusa 2 (1969), 127–42, at 129Google Scholar, as well as Dobrov (n. 14), 18–19.

83 Cropp, M.J. and Fick, G., Resolutions and Chronology in Euripides (London, 1985), 23Google Scholar propose this date range based on metrical resolutions; cf. M.J. Cropp, Euripides Electra (Warminster, 20132), 31–3.