The issue whether Aristophanic comedies are political or not and, if that is the case, in which sense do we understand they are ‘political’ returns once more with this volume. This question entails asking what we understand by ‘politics’. The editors see Aristophanes essentially as ‘a thoroughly “political” poet’ (p. 1), and the twelve chapters that make up the book confirm this.
Chapter 1 by Rosen sets off from A.W. Gomme's famous article (CR 52 [1938]) and, by quoting a statement on comedy by J. Stewart, outlines the futility to draw any conclusions on a satirist's stance. Rosen's point of view is well known, and he has written much about it. From his formalist standpoint he identifies topoi, but not their relation to their verbal surrounding. This entails an issue: what happens with ideology? Rosen acknowledges the existence of ideology in Aristophanic writings. However, he does not fully discuss what its place is. Certainly, the real Aristophanes has built a persona, but that does not mean we cannot have access to this ego's point of view. Aristophanes’ comedies are not just filled with ‘feel-good rhetoric’ (p. 20).
In Chapter 2 R. Osborne reassesses humour in Knights, arguing that a joke ‘is not an historical problem that can be solved’ (p. 25) if we know the context. Osborne believes that the comedy is not an attack on Cleon or a type of people and contends Paphlagon is a tease. Knights only remains funny if one refuses to unmask him. Osborne reviews and confirms the hypothesis of the centrality of the Council in the comedy; therefore, politics is present in the theme. Though his hypothesis is interesting, the way in which he gets at it is somewhat dubious. Even if we accept tanning mentions are not enough because the identification depends on a scholium, the insistence on the Pylos affair, acknowledged by Osborne, should be enough to establish the identity of Paphlagon: he is the immediate object in the humorous semiosis. He is not Cleon, but a representation.
In the third chapter I. Ruffell offers a reading of Athenian politics and Old Comedy from the perspective of populism. According to Ruffell, Aristophanes’ stance is neither radical nor conservative, and an interpretation in either way implies a misdiagnosis of Athenian politics, which would have contained a ‘substantial populist element’ (p. 62). From Ruffell's point of view Old Comedy resorts to populism instruments when using non-logical, affective and confrontational means as images and metaphors. Although Ruffell's conclusion seems interesting, two issues arise from this reading. First, given the amount of books and articles on populism, there is need for a more precise definition of populism, since Ruffell relies on common sense for this. Second, the description of Athenian politics depends mainly on Thucydides and Old Comedy, which are representations and imply an ideological point of view.
Taking a firm stand on the topic of the book, J. Henderson dedicates the fourth chapter to what some call ‘demagogue comedy’. Based on fragmentary as well as Aristophanic comedy, he argues that political satire was not a traditional element in komoidia and that it took some time to become direct and explicit. For Henderson it is noteworthy that the extant corpus indicates that engaged political comedy was sporadic and partisan with an anti-populist thrust. The proposal is most stimulating, but at the same time depends on the extant corpus, which, besides Aristophanes, is fragmentary and therefore might not be a representative sample. Henderson tries to challenge this argument by declaring it hard to believe that Hellenistic scholars ignored attacks on the Right. Henderson's certainly is an interesting hypothesis that should be explored further.
O. Imperio, in Chapter 5, focuses on the caution that might have characterised Aristophanes in choosing political targets. Imperio considers that the poet was serious about his role as an opinion-maker in political debate. In a succinct and clear way Imperio analyses all the data regarding demagogue comedy, Aristophanes and its relationship with Cleon as well as other comedians. Unlike them, the poet, as Imperio hypothesises, keeps his silence with Alcibiades, and he does not write a play against Hyperbolus as others did. This would explain why he did not dwell on demagogue comedy again after Knights. Imperio's hypothesis seems plausible enough, though regarding Frogs it relies on L. Canfora's proposition that the passages where Cleophon is criticised were added for the second performance, which cannot be corroborated.
S. Halliwell, in the sixth chapter, explores what he calls the ‘micro-world of politics’ (p. 113) and, specifically, how citizens treat each other in their civic dealings. He analyses three Aristophanic passages where there is tension between communal unity and individual freedom, what he calls ‘background realism’ (p. 117). According to Halliwell, this kind of study would complicate our understanding of the workings of democracy, which usually focuses on the conduct of demagogues and the demos. Indeed, this aspect of democracy is an interesting topic for further study.
In Chapter 7 C. de Klerk adapts a quantitative methodology for tracking diversity and applies it to Aristophanes’ extant comedies. The data reveal a certain homogeneity related to its closeness to democracy: it is not surprising that free men do most of the speaking and free women come in second place and male slaves in third. This stems from the role each of them played in the city: while men were citizens and women participated in cultural and social activities, slaves were known to run away at war times. Even though the conclusions seem sound, two problems arise in the application of quantitative methodology. First, the figures depend mainly on what we have (not on what was actually written). Second, when dealing with Cleon and his masks, quantitative analysis makes simplifications where maybe it should not: as an allegory in Knights Paphlagon is a slave and so are his words, but in Wasps Dog's dialogues are counted as a citizen's.
In the eighth chapter N. Papathanasopoulou disputes the Acharnians’ traditional reading as illustrating separation between the polis and the oîkos space and suggests that both are interconnected visually. According to her, the play is a response to Pericles’ aim to regard the interests of the polis as more significant than those of the oîkos, and promotes the importance of the welfare of the latter for the general wellbeing. Papathanasopoulou's proposal is appealing if we consider that, by the time the play was put on, Periclean strategy was being discussed by some sectors, which were encouraging a more aggressive policy towards Sparta (cf., e.g., A.J. Holladay, ‘Athenian Strategy in the Archidamian War’, Historia 27 [1978]).
E. Hall, in Chapter 9, persuasively argues that Aristophanes’ Birds should be understood as a political comedy, but not in the way in which it is usually read, where the Athenian empire and its desired expansion towards Sicily is the target of criticism. Hall contends that the work is full of references to Thrace (paratragically, topographically, thematically) and that it would be a satire ‘on the murky doings of individual opportunistic Athenians’ (p. 193) in emporia located in that region. This reading offers a global understanding of the play, which others usually do not.
In Chapter 10 M. Telò offers a comprehensive and enlightening analysis of Aristophanes’ Birds in relation to J. Rancière's concept of dissensus, a disruption of the communal modes of perception. Telò intertwines this aesthetic concept with the agonistic democracy theory offered by C. Mouffe in order to explore the paradox of democracy and the way in which the play addresses the assimilation of the difference. Telò tries to deal with Aristophanic politics without taking an explicit position on the subject, which might be an issue in itself since being a critic of democracy implies a political stance to a certain extent, although not necessarily defined as conservative or democratic.
Chapter 11, by D. Steiner, sheds light on fragment 71 from Babylonians and its chorus in a very interesting way, taking into account the relationship between the at-the-time graphologist (in)formal policy in Athens, its imperial hegemony and its dependence on large numbers of heterogeneous and disenfranchised rowers in the navy. According to Steiner, each member of the chorus is identified by a letter from the Ionian alphabet, which might recall the branding or tattooing of slaves, and it would be one of the few testimonies of the presence of slaves in the Athenian navy. This acknowledgement, that there were slaves in the triremes, would run counter to the fiction that its superiority over other fleets issued from the fact that citizens served on board and voluntarily. Moreover, the use of this particular writing system might have carried a ‘cultural sophistication and/or served as a means of displaying a cosmopolitan look’ (p. 256).
P. Cartledge closes the book with some reflections on the topic dealt with by Rosen's ‘Prolegomena’ and picks up P. Walsh's categorisation of positions (‘A Study in Reception: the British Debates over Aristophanes’ Politics and Influence’, Classical Receptions Journal 1 [2009]). There are three possibilities, which can be identified in some of the chapters: those who believe analysing Aristophanes’ political stance is a methodological problem, those who see in him a conservative, upper-class poet-dramatist, and those who think he could only ‘situate himself and his work at the confluence of conflicting’ (p. 274) forces in order to influence the panel of judges to vote for him. In the light of this, Cartledge defends the second option by providing data to prove that Clouds is a political play and that it enriched the public discussion of democracy.
The chapters employ different conventions in quoting the text since some include either the Greek text or an English translation and others both. The editors promise a variety of questions and of methodological lenses, and they comply with this pledge. It is certainly an eclectic volume where authors do not necessarily agree with each other. However, at the same time, there is hardly any dialogue between the chapters, probably because many of these were originally lectures offered on different occasions. Nevertheless, this is a stimulating and thought-provoking volume for whoever wants to have a dialogue with up-to-date research on the topic.
