Commissioned to commemorate the career of Ian Storey, this volume consists of fourteen wide-ranging essays on Athenian comedy, its context, politics and influence. Not surprisingly, four of the studies follow in the footsteps of Storey, weaving elegant analyses from bare comic fragments. Noting that a recent spate of texts and commentaries also makes this study particularly opportune, the editors divide the essays into three categories: comedy before Aristophanes, Aristophanes, and fourth-century comedy and beyond.
The first two chapters illustrate how much can be gleaned from the study of fragments. In ‘Pursuing Nemesis: Cratinus and Mythological Comedy’, J. Henderson reconstructs the broad plot outline of Cratinus’ mythological comedy Nemesis. Given the play's production on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, and Cratinus’ known use of mythological comedy to allegorise contemporary political figures, Henderson suspects that Nemesis’ reimagining of Helen's origins and role in motivating the Trojan War provided an analogue for satirising Pericles and his policies. In ‘A World without Slaves: Crates’ Thêria’, D. Konstan explores the possibility that Crates’ play featured a progressive comic utopia. Whereas many comic utopias put an end to slavery as an incidental by-product of the return to a mythic age, Konstan argues that the fragments of the Theria intimate a plan for the future in which technological innovation makes possible the intentional abolition of slavery. Ritually licensed speech associated with festivals of Dionysus, termed ‘Parade Abuse’ and ‘From the Wagons’, is the topic of E. Csapo's investigation in Chapter 3. More specifically, he seeks to identify the particular Dionysiac festival in which this abuse took place. While early scholars linked the abuse to the Anthesteria and Lenaea, in part, to serve an evolutionary theory of comic origins (pp. 25–7), Csapo convincingly argues that the Dionysia is most likely the correct venue. He concludes that the Dionysian setting for ritually licensed speech has obvious relevance to the history of Athenian comedy, though spelling out what that relevance might be is a topic he leaves for another day.
K. Sidwell's ‘Aristophanes’ Acharnians and Eupolis again: Metacomedy in Action’ (Chapter 4) is the most substantive and challenging essay in the volume largely because it builds on and elaborates positions developed in his recent Aristophanes the Democrat and in previous articles. In this study, Sidwell attempts to unpack how Acharnians’ original audience would have understood the play in light of his theories of poetic sponsorship, caricature and metacomedy. Interestingly, Sidwell finds that the original audience would have seen the play as parodying rather than advocating peace. In Chapter 5, ‘Clouds, Eupolis, and Reperformance’, H.R. Marshall challenges the notion that the extant text of the Clouds is an unperformed revision of the play originally staged in 424/23. She points out that in all other cases of double plays of Old Comedy, the assumption is that the existence of two texts means two performances. Rejecting the notion that the revised text was unperformed, she concludes that the revision is a sign that Clouds was being performed many years later, as the evidence from Plato's Apology indicates. In Chapter 6, ‘Lysistrata's Conspiracy and the Politics of 412 bc’, D. Olson argues that Lysistrata provides evidence for the contemporary situation in Athens about seven or eight months prior to the play's staging; that is, its backdrop is the social and political thought that made the oligarchic seizure of 411 possible. We see this in the presentation of the women's coup as a reasonable response to the refusal of male political leadership to listen to alternative voices (p. 71). At the same time, Olson points out that there is a dark side to Lysistrata's brand of political salvation in that it entails a ‘cleansing’ of the city's undesirables. Olson concludes that Lysistrata captures the notion that ‘fundamental changes were needed … and … that the democracy itself had become part of Athens’ problem’ (p. 76).
The next three chapters deal with different aspects of Aristophanes’ Frogs. In Chapter 7, ‘Eleusis and the Public Status of Comedy’, D. Sells argues that Frogs develops an analogy between the comic genre and Eleusis: ‘Aristophanes comedifies Eleusis’ mystic knowledge in his initiates’ poetic knowledge’ (p. 94). Moving to politics, in Chapter 8, ‘Turning Remorse to Good Effect?: Arginusae, Theramenes, and Aristophanes’ Frogs’, A. Allan argues that the play's recommendation to select better leaders, coupled with the many references to Arginusae, represents Aristophanes’ attempt to convince the Athenians to fail Theramenes at his upcoming scrutiny for generalship. As one of the trierarchs at Arginusae who played a key role in the conviction of the generals, Theramenes emblematises the ‘bad politician’ critiqued by the chorus. In Chapter 9, ‘Notes on Aristophanes’ Frogs’, A. Sommerstein provides new comments on the Greek text in light of his 1996 commentary.
In different ways, chapters 10–13 explore the creative vibrancy of fourth-century comedy, as well as its continuities with fifth-century comedy. In ‘The Women's Decree: Law and its Other in Ecclesiazusae’, J. Fletcher considers the problems and paradoxes of the realm created by the women. While the decree abolishing the laws and courts was itself technically illegal, Fletcher also points out that the lack of law and mechanisms of enforcement leads to a world of violence, with the final scenes taking us back to the pre-legal world of the Oresteia. In ‘Carion down the Piraeus: the Tragic Messenger Speech in Aristophanes’ Wealth’ (Chapter 11), R. Tordoff discusses tragic parody in Carion's speech at 627–77, considering it to be a sign that Aristophanes’ creative powers had not abandoned him. He views the speech as an ‘extended metatheatrical joke in which Carion appropriates the form of the tragic messenger speech only to invert its purpose, since instead of narrating a death scene, he tells the audience how wealth came to look upon the light’ (p. 151). In Chapter 12, E. Scharffenberger provides translation, text and commentary for a pair of fragments from Axionicus’ The Euripides Fan preserved in Athenaeus. The comedy, most likely dated to the mid-fourth century b.c., featured a singing cook (fr. 4) whose ‘warbling in high style about his options for preparing the catch of the day … seems to have tapped into the same rich vein of humour concerning Euripides’ focus on “ordinary affairs” that Aristophanes exploited so ingeniously in the contest in the Frogs’ (p. 169). In Chapter 13, ‘Timocles fr. 6 K-A and the Parody of Greek Literary Theory’, R.M. Rosen interprets a fragment from Timocles’ Dionysiazousai in which a speaker expounds on the trials of the human condition and tragedy's ability to ameliorate them. Rather than viewing the passage as an example of literary theory, Rosen convincingly argues that it parodies didactic theories of tragedy, and in so doing, demonstrates a familiarity with Old Comic techniques. In Chapter 14, ‘Cratinus, Menander, and the Daphne Mosaic’, M. argues that knowledge of Old Comedy extended further still, with Cratinus’ Wine Flask providing an interpretative lens for understanding a mid-third century a.d. mosaic from the House of Menander in Daphne, now in the Princeton Art Museum. The mosaic depicts Menander reclining on a couch with his lover seated next to him, and with a personified Comedy standing demurely off to the side. M. cleverly suggests that the composition was meant to evoke Cratinus’ Wine Flask, a play featuring another personification of Comedy involved in a pseudo-love triangle with a comic poet. All in all, a fitting finale to a volume of strong essays that well serve their commemorative end.
