The seventeen essays in this Festschrift are of generally high quality and cover a wide range of topics. The only disappointment is that there is just one chapter on post-classical reception, P. Swallow's excellent discussion of the two major nineteenth-century translators of Aristophanes. Too many of the contributors cite in footnotes an excessive number of modern scholars to support a simple point (M. Silk and Kanellakis are welcome exceptions). Translations are supplied for all Greek texts quoted, even though this collection is unlikely to be read by people other than Hellenists.
I discuss selected chapters. In Part 1, ‘Genre’, M. Silk's ‘Connotations of “Comedy” in Classical Athens’ is a lexicological analysis of the terms for comedy, in particular kōmōdein and its cognates, which traces the evolution of these terms, with their predominantly negative overtones, from the fifth century to the early third, and explains why Aristophanes prefers trugōidia in Dikaiopolis’ famous speech in Acharnians (501–2). Kanellakis's study on para prosdokian in Aristophanes is sound and thorough, but wrongly claims that Peace 823 is an example; ‘from heaven you looked a pretty rotten lot, | and here you look much worse’ (trans. M. Ewans, Aristophanes, Acharnians, Knights, and Peace [2011], p. 175) is not a surprise ending but an entirely natural development and was played as such in my production. H.-G. Nesselrath cogently argues against some recent scholarship that the term ‘Middle Comedy’ is still valuable as a tool for understanding the evolution of Attic comedy.
In Part 2, ‘Texts and Contexts’, there is much to enjoy. F. Morosi's chapter on the father–son relationship in Clouds and Wasps brings stimulating new interpretations of Wasps 651–2 and 1351–9 (pp. 118–20), and also finely reinterprets Philocleon's rejection of Bdelycleon's offer to support him: ‘if he wants to be supported by his son, he has to cede his authority to him – and this he cannot accept. This is why his salary as a juror is vital for Philocleon. Scholars have often branded Philocleon's refusal to be richly supported by his son as nonsense – a clear proof of Philocleon's madness. However, it is exactly that refusal that makes Philocleon's character rational; since his desire is for authority, not for riches, being supported is precisely what he must not accept. Far from being an act of caring, Bdelycleon's behaviour towards his father is an act of physical and psychological repression’ (p. 115). The contrast with Strepsiades, who is always attempting to avoid supporting his son, then becomes evident.
H. Kopp, in ‘Comic Euboulia: Deliberation, Free Speech, and the Language of Oligarchy in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata’, provides a thorough analysis of the overtones of euboulia in Athenian political discourse; he then refutes the view, held by S.D. Olson, M. Santucci and others, that the heroine is advancing a proto-oligarchic agenda, preparing the ground for the coup that took place five months after the play's performance in January 411 bce. I agree with Kopp, and indeed it is notable and prescient (though he does not mention it) that Aristophanes has Lysistrata name Peisander unfavourably at line 490.
This is followed by another chapter on Lysistrata, in which A. Markantonatos gives a thoughtful analysis of the reference to the Adonia and the choral amoibaion at the centre of the play, which, since the Old Men and Old Women are thoroughly hostile to each other at this point, replaces a parabasis. Then comes A. D'Angour's analysis of the music of the Frogs’ chorus in Frogs. He notes that it is accompanied by the aulos, which he controversially describes as ‘the most conspicuous avant-garde instrument of the late fifth-century New Music’ (p. 189); surely, the aulos accompanied tragic and comic lyrics from the very beginning of the festivals. But his new analysis of the metre and melodic contour is sound; his starting point is that ‘the irruption of the frogs’ refrain is undoubtedly a challenge [to Dionysus] to row to a rhythm that is faster than the one originally set [by Charon]’ (p. 191). However, I cannot accept his conjecture that for this scene the auletes stood in the boat between Dionysus and Charon (p. 192), and Dionysus seizes the instrument from the player as he takes over ‘brekekekex’ from the frogs in lines 251–2 (pp. 194–5). There are practical considerations: would there be room for him in Charon's presumably small boat? And could he play (standing up) while stagehands move the boat across the playing space? But also, D'Angour had previously noted that the auletes is on the side of the frogs, since Dionysus does not sing until after he has declared victory – and he even suggests that the player might have donned a frog-costume for this scene. The auletes should therefore be somewhere where he can interact closely with the frog chorus.
N. Tsoumpra tackles the identity of Dionysus in Frogs – ‘the gradual construction of Dionysus’ masculine gender identity and his transformation from an effeminate and passive male figure to a masculine and virile one’ (p. 200). She notes his increasing interest in heterosexual sex during the second chorus (lines 415–16) and in the scene where a female servant of Persephone tempts Xanthias–Heracles with the promise of dancing girls. Then, when it comes to the agōn, Aeschylus is all martial, Homeric manliness while Euripides identifies strongly with the domestic, female sphere (p. 210). After analysing the agōn in this way, she then, with striking originality, compares the Dionysus of Frogs not with Dionysus in Euripides’ recent, posthumous Bacchae but with Pentheus. She argues: ‘Dionysus’ identification with the male element in himself leads to the choice of the manly Aeschylus over the effeminate Euripides, and to the salvation of Athens (1418–21)’ (p. 214). By contrast, ‘Pentheus’ failure to make the initiatory crossing to full maturity leads to the demise both of the royal house and the city’ (pp. 214–15). This is a cogent and illuminating chapter.
Other essays include E. Hall's ‘In Praise of Cario, the Nonpareil Comic Slave of Aristophanes’ Wealth’, and in Part 3, ‘Reception’, O. Taplin on the comic vases of northern Apulia, N. Sidoti on paratragic burlesques and the reperformance of tragedies in the fourth century, and Swallow (as already mentioned) on Thomas Mitchell and John Hookham Frere, the two nineteenth-century translators of Aristophanes into English.
I take issue with parts of two chapters. In ‘Imagining Space: Spatial Perception and the Gaze in Aristophanes’ Birds’ A. Migliara admits the possibility that the scene-building facade might have been painted, but still cites C.W. Dearden to the effect that it was an anonymous background ‘capable of being transformed by the audience's imagination to whatever scene the poet suggests’ (p. 135). In a too much ignored 1989 article, ‘Agatharchos, Aeschylus and the Construction of a Skene’ (Maia, N.S. 1.1, 35–8), G. Ley established that panels on the facade were painted to represent scenic location from the time of the Oresteia onwards; and Migliara proceeds to note that in the first half of Birds ‘many clues locate the setting in a wild countryside with trees and rocks’ (ibid.). If this setting was represented by panels, then the change to Cloudcuckooland at or before the first parabasis could equally have been represented by hanging new panels, this time depicting a blue sky and clouds. (Changes of scene involving change of panels very probably took place in Libation Bearers, Ajax and Eumenides between the exit and re-entry of the chorus and, in the first two examples, at the midpoint of the drama as in Birds.) This assumption would solve many of the problems about opsis with which Migliara grapples in the remainder of her chapter.
Fries, in ‘Evidence from Aristophanes for the Language and Style of Euripides’, translates Cratinus’ famous evocation of the new style of drama with the coinage euripidaristophanizōn as meaning ‘an Aristophanic imitator of Euripides’ (p. 240). This is tendentious; the ‘quibbler of words and maker of maxims’ who is accused of euripidaristophanizein is surely being held simply to be an imitator of shared characteristics of the style of both poets (a ‘Euripidaristophanizer’); and he could potentially be either a tragic or a comic playwright, this being a short fragment whose context is unknown. The scholion cited in the accompanying footnote does not adequately support Fries’ interpretation.
I do not want to end on a negative note; overall this is a very good collection, and the editors are to be congratulated on eliciting such fine essays from seventeen very different contributors.
