Among the many perks of jury-duty which Philocleon enumerates in Aristophanes’ Wasps is the jurors’ power to extort various forms of entertainment from the defendants. This entertainment includes the titillation of ogling boys’ genitals at their deme-registration dokimasia (578), having a piper pipe them out of the court (581–2) and making a defendant recite a tragic rhēsis (579–80):

Commentators and critics universally follow—or, on the basis of context, tacitly agree with—the assertion of the scholia that Oeagrus was a ‘tragic actor’ (τραγικὸϲ ὑποκριτήϲ).Footnote ¹ These lines and the scholium likewise earn him a place in catalogues of actors from antiquity.Footnote ² His inclusion in lists of known individuals from fifth-century Athens also depends entirely on these two testimonia.Footnote ³ Biles and Olson do strike a note of salutary caution by observing that ‘this is most likely only a deduction from this passage’, but their scepticism seems to be about the scholiast's extratextual knowledge rather than about Oeagrus’ existence or profession.Footnote ⁴

Greater scepticism is surely justified by the scholia's similar and clearly mistaken assertion that the Aesopus mentioned a little earlier at lines 566–7 was also a tragic actor. Philocleon describes how defendants try to put the jury in a good mood by, among other strategies, saying ‘something funny’ of, by or about Aesopus.Footnote ⁵ The scholiast clearly noticed the contradiction in a tragic actor's being associated with τι γέλοιον, so he contorted himself to make Aesopus either a ‘ludicrous’ or a paradoxically ‘comical’ one (Αἴϲωποϲ τραγῳδίαϲ ἐγένετο ὑποκριτὴϲ γελοιώδηϲ).Footnote ⁶ Such contortions are of course unnecessary, since the reference is clearly to the fabulist Aesop, whose fables play so large a part throughout the play, especially in the second half.Footnote ⁷ A similar guess is made in Clouds, this time assuming that a mythological figure is a contemporary actor. When Strepsiades taunts the second of his lamenting creditors by asking ‘What evil has Tlempolemus ever done you?’ (τί δαί ϲε Τλημπόλεμόϲ ποτ' εἴργαϲται κακόν; Nub. 1266), the scholiast notes that ‘some [say] that Tlepolemus [sic] was a tragic actor who repeatedly acted for Sophocles’ (ἄλλοι δὲ τραγικὸν ὑποκριτὴν εἶναι τὸν Τληπόλεμον, ϲυνεχῶϲ ὑποκρινόμενον Ϲοφοκλεῖ, Σ ENp Ar. Nub. 1266 Holwerda).Footnote ⁸ Other scholia recognize that it is a quotation of a line from a tragedy by Xenocles, either Tlempolemus or Licymnius. The scholia are thus quite capable of simply guessing that a figure whom they do not recognize is a contemporary tragic actor. With Aesopus and Tlempolemus, they are manifestly wrong, but just because Oeagrus’ identity is a more plausible guess does not mean that it is correct.

Biles and Olson also note of Oeagrus that ‘the name is extremely rare (also once in the late Hellenistic period on Tenos).’Footnote ⁹ Such rarity is in itself a reason to pause before assuming that the name corresponds straightforwardly to a contemporary individual rather than being chosen for some other reason.Footnote ¹⁰ Sometimes, it is even considered grounds for emendation. Euphemius (Εὐφημίου) is the manuscript reading at Vesp. 599, but because it is otherwise unattested in Classical Athens and the -ιοϲ ending is typical of late antique onomastics, it is generally emended to the more common Euphemus (Εὐφήμου) or Euphemides (Εὐφημίδου).Footnote ¹¹ Even names that are attested in Classical Athens, but not associated with prominent, known individuals, may have been chosen for reasons other than that they were borne by someone familiar to the audience at the Lenaea. Ergasion (1201), while far from common, does occur a handful of times in fifth- and fourth-century Attica, but Biles and Olson still reasonably assert that ‘the name has been selected … for the etymological hint that the man in question is a common “worker” rather than an aristocrat’, while Kanavou more cautiously allows that it ‘is likely … that it was not an accidental choice, but was used for its appropriateness to a small farmer’.Footnote ¹² Likewise, Philoctemon (1250) is a fairly common name and was held by the prominent fourth-century subject of Isaeus 6, so that Sommerstein has even suggested that the man mentioned in Wasps may have been his grandfather.Footnote ¹³ However, as the host of a lavish symposium, ‘Possessions-lover’ does not merely ‘sound … appropriate for a rich man’, but ‘the real point is so obviously etymological … that there is no reason to assume a reference to an otherwise unattested contemporary.’Footnote ¹⁴ The name Oeagrus is not attested in Classical (or any other period) Athens, but it does have a very obvious and common other significance, as that of the father of Orpheus. The subtle etymological implications of the name Philoctemon are the principal significance that the audience would assign to it, even though they probably knew of several contemporaries of that name. So, a fortiori, the obvious mythological implications of the name Oeagrus would surely make them think of Orpheus’ father, since a name attested nowhere in the fifth century and never in Athens is unlikely to make them think of a real individual.

This is not to say that the figure whom Philocleon describes reciting a rhēsis in a fifth-century Athenian court is to be imagined as literally Oeagrus, the father of Orpheus. Rather the name should be taken metonymically, ‘an Oeagrus’. A clear-cut and unambiguous example of such metonymy occurs in Ecclesiazusae, when the girl expresses concern that the sexual revolution will ‘fill the whole world with Oedipuses’ (τὴν γῆν ἅπαϲαν Οἰδιπόδων ἐμπλήϲετε, 1042).Footnote ¹⁵ The plural makes it clear that she means not a specific individual or individuals but rather the type of men who sleep with older women. The indefinite τιν(ά) produces a similar effect at lines 180–1 of Wasps itself, when Bdelycleon, in jest but more truly than he realizes, asks the donkey: ‘Why are you groaning, unless you are carrying an Odysseus?’ (τί στένεις, | εἰ μὴ φέρεις Ὀδυσσέα τιν᾽;).Footnote ¹⁶ With a little more complexity, Aristophanes twice uses the name Orestes in a similar way, at Ach. 1167–8 and Av. 712.Footnote ¹⁷ On both occasions, the name seems intended to evoke a type figure who in a particular way resembles the Orestes of myth, a madman in Acharnians and a thug in Birds. On both occasions, critics have been tempted to identify a contemporary figure either named or nicknamed Orestes, but with little success. The figure is not Orestes, nor even ‘Orestes’, but ‘an Orestes’, though that type might still correspond to a particular unidentified individual. The same interplay of generalization and particularization can be seen in action as with Oeagrus, the evocation of a type emblematized by a figure from myth but with the invitation to imagine that type as a contemporary individual. What then is ‘an Oeagrus’ and to what type does his mythological characterization correspond?

Oeagrus’ mythology is strictly limited.Footnote ¹⁸ He is not simply Orpheus’ father. He is only Orpheus’ father. Indeed, until Late Antiquity, apart from a couple of instances where he is mentioned in a chain of genealogy or in the act of begetting Orpheus, his name occurs only in the genitive (for example υἱὸν Οἰάγρου <δὲ> | Ὀρφέα, Pind. Thren. 3 fr. 128c.11–12 Maehler) or in patronymic form (for example εὐαί]νετον Οἰαγρίδα[ν, Bacchyl. fr. 28.8 Irigoin) to describe or designate his son.Footnote ¹⁹ We might compare Laertes, who is similarly defined only as the father of Odysseus and has no mythology of his own, but even he appears, acts and speaks as a character in the Odyssey, if only in a supporting role as father to his protagonist son.Footnote ²⁰ In contrast, Oeagrus does not even appear in his own right in a narrated present but is always thought of in the past, or perhaps rather in the plupast, the time before whatever past exploit of Orpheus is being recounted. It is not until Nonnus’ Dionysiaca at the turn of the fifth century c.e. that Oeagrus has a role of his own, singing in a contest with Erechtheus and performing an aristeia in Dionysus’ battle against the Indians.Footnote ²¹ Even here he is self-consciously a figure of the plupast, competing with the primaeval Athenian Erechtheus and defined as Orpheus’ father, even paradoxically deriving his musical powers from his son.Footnote ²² He also leaves the baby Orpheus on Calliope's lap, a scene reminiscent of Apollonius’ Chiron showing baby Achilles to Peleus with a similarly self-conscious effect of prolepsis.Footnote ²³ In general, then, Oeagrus’ mythological characterization is as ‘earlier than Orpheus’.Footnote ²⁴ Since Orpheus himself, along with Musaeus, was considered one of the earliest singers, if not the earliest, Oeagrus constitutes a hyperbolically pre-originary, plupast, hyperarchaic ne plus ultra of poetic prehistory.Footnote ²⁵ ‘An Oeagrus’, as a type, transplanted into 420s Athens and made to recite a rhēsis from the Niobe, would suggest, with appropriate comic hyperbole, a representative of old-fashioned modes of tragic composition and performance.

Such an old-fashioned mode of tragic composition and performance is, of course, exactly what most appeals to Philocleon and his fellow-jurors in the chorus. As David Konstan puts it, ‘Their old-fashioned cast of mind is indicated by a preference for Phrynichus, and for traditional art forms in general.’Footnote ²⁶ This preference—and its socio-political implications—are repeatedly signalled throughout the play, from Bdelycleon's anticipation that the chorus will warble ‘old-fashioned-honey-sweet-Sidon-style-Phrynichan-lovely lyrics’ (μέλη | ἀρχαιομελιϲιδωνοφρυνιχήρατα, 219–20) through the wasps’ own puzzled observation that Philocleon is usually the first to lead the way ‘singing [a song] of Phrynichus’ (πρῶτοϲ ἡμῶν | ἡγεῖτ' ἂν ᾄδων Φρυνίχου, 268–9) to Philocleon's climactic dance-fight with the modernist sons of Carcinus, including special Phrynichan moves (καὶ τὸ Φρυνίχειον | ἐκλακτιϲάτω τιϲ, 1523–5) and prefaced by Xanthus’ description of the old man, who ‘hasn't for a moment all night stopped dancing those old-fashioned dances with which Thespis used to compete’ (ὀρχούμενοϲ τῆϲ νυκτὸϲ οὐδὲν παύεται | τἀρχαῖ' ἐκεῖν' οἷϲ Θέϲπιϲ ἠγωνίζετο, 1478–9).Footnote ²⁷ Whether we see Philocleon as primarily a paratragic figure, with Farmer, or para-epic (in antithesis to the paratragic Bdelycleon), with Papathanasopoulou, or as transcending genre, with Nelson, he is unquestionably a man who loves song (φιλῳδόϲ, 270) and more specifically one who loves old-fashioned song.Footnote ²⁸ When such a man and his like-minded cronies are sitting as jurors, the ideal person to entertain them is ‘an Oeagrus’, a poet-cum-performer so old-fashioned he could have been composing and singing literally since Orpheus was in short pants.Footnote ²⁹