The plays of Aristophanes, the oldest surviving genre of comedy in Western literature, still have much to tell us. As recently as 2003, a thousand one-off performances of Lysistrata – the play in which the women of Greece mount a sex-strike to bring about peace – were staged across the world (including one in every US state) as a protest against the invasion of Iraq.
Aristophanic comedy’s enduring relevance in spite of its antiquity is just one way in which it may be seen as simultaneously old and new. The tension between old and new is itself a prominent theme in several plays; none more so than Frogs, where the comic hero Dionysus is asked, in his capacity as the god of theatre, to judge a contest between the old-fashioned Aeschylus and the avant-garde Euripides. But while Frogs appears to condemn Euripides as a debaser of tragic convention, we should not infer from this that Aristophanes was an unequivocal conservative. The same Euripides is portrayed as the tirelessly innovative hero of Women at the Thesmophoria.1 Aristophanes is also at pains to emphasize his own innovativeness as a dramatist. The Chorus of Wasps, speaking on the poet’s behalf, openly berates the audience’s conservatism in failing to appreciate his previous, highly original and unconventional play Clouds.
Even Aristophanes’ method of constructing his plays reflects a preoccupation with the old and the new. As a poet and dramatist he borrows, plunders and parodies from earlier writers remorselessly and yet, as his recycling of Euripidean tragedy in Women shows, he transforms what he appropriates into something utterly new. For Aristophanes, as for T. S. Eliot, tradition and novelty (or originality) are not in conflict but rather complementary elements of artistic creation; this is evident in his implicit attempt in Frogs to incorporate the once-modern Euripides into an evolving tragic canon.
It is often said that classic works are both of their time and timeless. This is true of Aristophanic comedy. The plays are highly topical and firmly located in contemporary Athens, but in creating their own autonomous blend of fact and fiction they attain universal scope. Aristophanes is also the earliest canonical writer to use comedy systematically to examine and contest core cultural values – artistic, social, religious, political and philosophical – of the society to which he belonged.
Critical judgement of Aristophanes’ writing crosses the whole spectrum. Many have hailed him as an artist of the highest order, some damned him with faint praise, others condemned him unequivocally. One reason for such a mixed reception is Aristophanic comedy’s seemingly contradictory characteristics: ceaselessly innovative and irrepressible yet rooted in tradition and generic convention; unashamedly highbrow and yet inordinately fond of slapstick and vulgarity. Still, critical differences notwithstanding, most scholars across the ages agree on two things. First, Aristophanes has few rivals for sheer ingenuity. Secondly, he is one of the greatest exemplars of the grace, charm and scope of Attic Greek – the dialect of fifth- and fourth-century Athens in which its drama, history, philosophy and oratory were composed. Hopefully, the former of these qualities and something of the latter come across in these revised translations of three of his finest plays.
Today we may read Aristophanes simply for entertainment. Over and above this, however, there have been three main approaches to his work. The first is to treat Aristophanic texts as documents for understanding the cultural life of fifth-century Athens. This idea can be traced back to Plato who, when asked by the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse to explain the Athenians’ system of governance, responded by sending him the complete works of Aristophanes. The second is to regard Aristophanes as a comic writer. From such a perspective his work may be studied in its own context, compared with other comic literature, or considered in terms of its influence on later forms of comedy. The third is to see Aristophanes as a comic dramatist. Aristophanes may well have intended his work to be read (the fact that we have the second, unperformed version of Clouds, and evidence in the plays themselves, such as Dionysus’ recollection of perusing a play of Euripides in Frogs 52–3, suggest that play texts existed in Aristophanes’ day), but it primarily was through spectacular one-off performances in dramatic festivals that his plays made their impact on the culture of fifth-century Athens.
Performance radically enhances, or alters, our understanding of any dramatic text. With Aristophanes the gap between the texts and their realization as performances is especially wide. The aspects of performance about which we know very little include delivery, stage action and theatrical effects. We do know from vase-paintings depicting theatrical scenes that various kinds of scenery and props were used in the ancient theatre (according to Aristotle, scene-painting was introduced by Sophocles), although the exact configuration of the stage for original performances of particular comedies remains conjecture. We can also tell where stage machinery – a crane (mēchanē) for aerial appearances and a revolving platform (eccyclēma) for showing indoor scenes – was used. In Aristophanes such occasions, which often parody stage practice in tragedy, are usually alluded to openly in the text (e.g., Women 96, 265).
A significant proportion of ancient drama involved musical accompaniment. Some such passages were lyric and would have been sung, others would have been recited, or chanted, as opposed to spoken as dialogue or monologue. The Chorus danced during some, though not all, of their lyric passages. While we can usually tell at what points musical accompaniment would have occurred in Aristophanes, we know almost nothing of what it might have sounded like. Likewise with dancing, we can generally tell when it would have occurred, but only occasionally are there any specific clues about the movements involved; one such instance is Philocleon’s burlesque of tragic dancing in the finale of Wasps, where he gives a running commentary on his series of highly demanding manoeuvres.
There are considerable obstacles to reconstructing fully the original performance of a specific Aristophanic comedy, but we are better placed to gain an idea of the general theatrical experience of Aristophanes’ fifth-century Athenian audience, and, firstly, the life of Aristophanes.
Little is known for certain about the life of Aristophanes: even the dates of his birth and death are speculative. His birth date is somewhere between 447 and 445 BC, as his first play, Banqueters (427), was performed when he was young but probably no less than eighteen. The date of his death, probably not long after 386, is conjectured on the basis of his having written two plays after his last surviving play, Wealth, staged in 388.
Aristophanes was born and educated in Athens, and belonged to the deme (city district) of Cydathenaeum. His father was Philippus and his mother Zenodora. His family may have had some connection with the island of Aegina (Aristophanes hints at this in Acharnians 653–4). If his family did own property there, it may have been acquired after Athens’ defeat of the Aeginetans in 431. Other biographical facts are few and far between. He had three sons: Philippus, Araros and Nicostratus (or Philetaerus). All three seem to have embarked on the same career as their father, and we know that Araros put on Aristophanes’ last two works, Cocalus and Aeolosicon (both lost), early in his career. As for Aristophanes’ physical appearance, humorous remarks in Clouds and Peace suggest that he went bald at an early age, although some sculptural portraits show him, in early middle age, as having ample hair.
In a writing career spanning forty-odd years, Aristophanes is known to have had forty comedies produced. Of these, apart from numerous fragmentary quotations, eleven plays survive: Acharnians (425), Knights (424), Clouds (a revised version of the play that was produced in 423), Wasps (422), Peace (421), Birds (414), Lysistrata and Women at the Thesmophoria (411), Frogs (405), Assemblywomen (probably 392) and Wealth (388). Comedy, like tragedy, was performed as part of state-sponsored competitions (on which see below). Of his surviving works, Aristophanes is known to have won first prize in the comic competition with Acharnians, Knights and Frogs; second prize with Birds and Wasps; and third prize with Clouds. We do not have results for the other five. Of his lost plays, we know that he won first prize with Babylonians (426) and Preview (422).
It was probably in the 380s that Plato (c. 427–347 BC) wrote his Symposium, a fictional dramatic account of a drinking party given by the tragedian Agathon in 416 to celebrate his first victory in the tragic competition. Among the guests are Aristophanes and Socrates. Though written several years after its supposed date, Symposium is our only source for what Aristophanes may have been like in person. It presents him as sociable. Socrates suggests that he ‘devotes all his time to Aphrodite and Dionysus’.2 He seems on friendly terms with the other guests and his host. Indeed, the first thing he says is that he has a hangover from drinking with Agathon on the previous day.
Though Symposium is a Platonic dialogue, it is largely made up of speeches aimed at defining love. Aristophanes, in his speech, contends that love is the desire and pursuit of spiritual and physical wholeness. The myth he invents to support this claim is amusing and absurd. People, he suggests, were originally one of three genders: male, female or hermaphrodite. They possessed two sets of everything – head, arms, legs, genitalia. However, the gods, feeling threatened by mankind, split them into two. This condition of being incomplete explains why people feel the urge to find, and conjugate with, their respective other halves (whether a different gender or the same). While Aristophanes aims to amuse by his speech, he does not expect to be dismissed as trivial; Plato makes him say as much himself. Symposium ends just as Agathon, Aristophanes and Socrates – the only guests still conscious – are about to discuss whether the technique of composing tragedy and comedy is fundamentally the same. What they might have said, according to Plato at any rate, we shall never know.
In Aristophanes’ lifetime the political circumstances of Athens changed considerably. During his childhood and early career the city was at its zenith. Radical democracy meant that all citizens could vote in the Assembly on all major policy decisions. They also stood a reasonable chance of gaining public office since a number of positions were appointed by lot. But generals and ambassadors were elected, and usually came from aristocratic or otherwise wealthy families; it was such men who tended to dominate politics. Pericles, one of the men responsible for establishing radical democracy in 462–461 BC, emerged as Athens’ single most powerful political leader. Through a mixture of diplomacy and aggression, and by building up naval supremacy, he turned an existing alliance of Greek states (against the threat from Persia) into a virtual Athenian empire. But Athens’ expansionism and harsh treatment of its former allies (now effectively subject states) caused other Greek citystates to fear for their independence. In 431 Sparta, the dominant military power in the Peloponnese, drew Athens into war.
When Pericles died in 429 BC he was soon succeeded by Cleon, a self-made man who was an unscrupulous, pro-war demagogue. Only after Cleon and the bellicose Spartan general Brasidas were killed at the battle of Amphipolis was an opportunity for peace seized in 421 (this is celebrated in Aristophanes’ play Peace). But this did not last. Athens soon resumed its imperialism, setting its sights on subjugating Sicily. The Spartans again endeavoured to thwart Athenian ambitions. A vast Athenian naval expedition to Sicily ended in catastrophic defeat. Meanwhile the Spartans, advised by Pericles’ nephew Alcibiades (who had defected), fortified their base at Deceleia, deep within Athens’ own territory. In 411, the year Women and Lysistrata were produced, dissatisfaction with the handling of the war led to Athens’ democratic system being replaced by an oligarchy, although democracy was restored the following summer. By this time, however, most of Athens’ subject states had either revolted or gone over to the Spartans, who had also secured Persian support. A costly Athenian naval victory at Arginusae in 406 did little to ward off final disaster, which came in 405 in the form of a crushing defeat at sea off Aegispotami (when Frogs was first performed early in 405 the city’s situation was desperate but this final blow had not yet been dealt). This cut off Athens’ grain supplies through the Hellespont and forced unconditional surrender in the spring of 404. Athens was stripped of all overseas territories and power was seized by oligarchs who established a reign of terror. As in 411–410 BC, democracy was soon restored, and lasted until Philip of Macedon’s conquest of Athens in 338. But defeat in the Peloponnesian War (404 BC), and the corresponding loss of empire, meant that the former intimate relationship between citizens and the state, a vital condition for Aristophanes’ highly politicized and topical comedy to flourish, was irrecoverably lost.
Theatre in fifth-century Athens was one of the principal and most popular art forms. It was firmly rooted in its religious origins. Drama was composed for performance at two major festivals held in the city, the City Dionysia and the Lenaea, both in honour of Dionysus, the god of theatre.3 These festivals were major public events of civic as well as artistic and religious importance. Going to dramatic festivals was seen by Athenian citizens not just as a privilege but a duty and a right; there was even a ‘theoric’ fund for those unable to afford the price of tickets (two obols in Aristophanes’ day).
The festivals of the City Dionysia and Lenaea were each held over four days every year, the former around the beginning of March, the latter in January. The City Dionysia took place in the Theatre of Dionysus on the southern slope of the Acropolis. The location of the Lenaea is disputed. Originally it was probably held at a sanctuary called the Lenaeon, located by some scholars outside the city walls but identified by others with the precinct of ‘Dionysus in the Marshes’. The festival may have relocated after the building of the Theatre of Dionysus, as it would be surprising if a makeshift theatre were preferred to an available permanent one. In Aristophanes’ Acharnians (line 504), the hero Dicaeopolis speaks of himself and the audience as being ‘at the Lenaeon’, but this is not conclusive, as the phrase (also used by Plato and Demosthenes) may refer to the festival irrespective of its location.
Athenian comedy and tragedy were performed as part of separate competitions (albeit at the same festivals). In the comic competition rivalries were fierce. Aristophanes, for instance, described his venerable elder contemporary Cratinus as an incontinent, drunken has-been, and was himself accused of plagiarism by another contemporary, Eupolis. At the City Dionysia, where the primary focus was on tragedy, three tragedians competed, each offering three tragedies and a satyr-play (a relatively simple, humorous genre involving a Chorus of drunken, lascivious satyrs in a mythological setting). These plays were performed on the first three days of the festival. On the fourth and final day there were single plays by five comic playwrights. The Lenaea appears originally to have had just single comedies by five playwrights. But at some point around the end of the 430s, tragedies were introduced, with two tragedians each putting on two tragedies (but no satyr-plays); the tragedies were performed before the comedies. Evidence suggests that during certain years of the Peloponnesian War the comic competition was reduced from five competitors to three for financial reasons (comic choruses tended to involve elaborate and expensive costumes).
The process by which playwrights were invited, or selected, to put on plays was complex. For the City Dionysia, the Eponymous Archon (the principal magistrate of the nine elected annually), upon taking up office, had to nominate wealthy citizens to be the sponsor, or chorēgos, of a comic or tragic chorus. For the Lenaea, this duty was performed by another of the magistrates, and it was possible to nominate wealthy resident foreigners (as non-citizens could participate as chorus members). The chorēgos was responsible for recruiting the twenty-four members of the comic chorus (the tragic chorus in Aristophanes’ day numbered only fifteen). He had to pay for costumes and masks, and also for professional voice trainers and choreographers. He would probably also have paid for any professional singers, musicians, dancers and minor actors or extras the play required. Sponsoring a chorus, while mandatory, was also considered a great civic honour. Nevertheless, if someone felt that another citizen could afford to fund a chorus more easily, the nominee could challenge this person either to be chorēgos in his stead or make a complete exchange of property and goods. Such exchanges, while not common, are attested.
Playwrights wishing to compete in the City Dionysia or Lenaea had to apply formally to the appropriate archon to be ‘granted a chorus’. The archon would then see samples of their respective plays before reaching his decision. Besides being granted a chorus, successful playwrights were given a principal actor, or ‘protagonist’, at public expense; it is unclear how the other two main actors were recruited and paid. The granting of choruses took place shortly after archons came into office in July. This meant that playwrights and their chorēgoi had ample time to prepare and rehearse before the following January or March for the Lenaea or City Dionysia respectively.
The playwright was known officially as the didaskalos (literally, ‘teacher’ or ‘instructor’), a role that falls somewhere between author and director. Playwrights before Aristophanes’ day also performed other roles including writing the music and choreography, and training the Chorus to sing and dance. By Aristophanes’ day, however, it was common to employ a special chorus master, or chorodidaskalos. In some cases, the whole play was handed over by the playwright to another person, who would act as didaskalos. Aristophanes did this with his early plays up to and including Acharnians, all of which had his older friend Callistratus as their didaskalos. Aristophanes also used another friend Philonides as didaskalos for his lost play Preview, which beat Wasps (produced/directed by Aristophanes himself) at the Lenaea in 422. Where someone other than the playwright acted as didaskalos, authorship would almost certainly have been an open secret.
Actors were highly skilled professionals who were also capable of singing and dancing. The actor playing Philocleon in Wasps, for example, had to sing a solo aria (316–33) and perform an elaborate burlesque of tragic dance (1482–1515); and the actor playing Agathon in Women had to imitate, and parody, Agathon’s innovative singing and play solo and choral parts in alternation (101–29). Actors also had to perform elaborate ‘stage business’. Besides slapstick scenes, such as Philocleon popping up from various parts of the house in Wasps, there were scenes involving the use of stage machinery. In Women, for example, the actor playing Euripides (dressed as the tragic Perseus) has to swing across the stage aerially attached to a stage crane.
Comedy, like tragedy, observed a three-actor rule.4 Aristophanic comedy is, for the most part, performable with three actors; although odd scenes do require a fourth actor, there is no play in which the fourth actor would have to speak more than a few lines.5 The general observation of the three-actor rule ensured that comic playwrights competed on level terms and kept a check on production costs. Conforming to the three-actor rule cannot have been easy, especially in comedies which often involved large numbers of minor characters. Typically, the principal actor would play the lead character. This would involve being onstage for the majority of the play, but when the lead character was not onstage the principal actor may also have had to play one or two minor characters. The second actor would usually play two or three other major parts, although again he may also have had to play the odd minor character (particularly in scenes where a string of characters come onstage only to be rebuffed by the hero, as happens in Acharnians, Peace and Birds). The third actor would play the majority of minor characters but possibly one major character as well.
The actors’ parts are relatively easy to determine in the case of Women. The protagonist must play Mnesilochus, who is onstage for almost the entire play. The second actor must play Euripides (in all his disguises) and the First Woman (Mica). This leaves the third actor to play Agathon’s servant, Agathon himself, the Second Woman, Cleisthenes, Critylla and the Scythian. There are two minor parts remaining. The first is the Magistrate, who comes on at 922, only one line after Euripides exits and while the other two actors, playing Mnesilochus and Critylla, are still onstage; this part must be played by a fourth actor. The other part is Echo. It is unclear how this part was played, and by which actor (the second or the fourth); still, the number of lines involved is small, and all the lines are repetitions, making them easy to perform. Frogs requires a little more of its fourth actor. The protagonist must play Dionysus, who is onstage throughout. The second actor plays Xanthias and either Aeschylus or Euripides. The third actor plays Heracles, Charon, Aeacus, a Maid, First Landlady, the Old Slave (who may be Aeacus) and either Euripides or Aeschylus. This leaves the fourth actor with the part of Second Landlady, when the three main actors are playing Dionysus, Xanthias and the First Landlady, and the part of Pluto, when the three main actors are present playing Dionysus, Aeschylus and Euripides.
There were also conventions concerning masks and costume. Masks were grotesque. Most were generic – the old man (e.g., Philocleon, Mnesilochus), the young man (e.g., Bdelycleon), the slave, the old woman, and so on – but individual masks could be used for well-known individuals. Socrates in Clouds, for example, was probably recognizable by a mask portraying his well-known snub-nose and satyr-like features. It is also possible that the mask worn by ‘The Dog’ in the trial scene in Wasps was identifiable as Cleon. Mythological figures, such as Dionysus and Heracles in Frogs, would be recognized by traditional attributes – Dionysus by his ivy, fennel wand and effeminate clothing, and Heracles by his club and lion-skin. Conventions were sometimes deliberately infringed for comic effect (e.g., Dionysus dressed as Heracles in Frogs). Women’s masks were white, while men’s masks were darker and bearded, but it is clear from remarks made by other characters onstage that in Women the masks of Agathon and Cleisthenes, who are both portrayed as very effeminate, are beardless and, probably, paler than usual.
The comic actor’s costume typically comprised tights worn over thick padding that exaggerated the stomach and buttocks, complementing the grotesqueness of the mask. He would also wear a tunic (or chitōn), which was short enough to reveal a large phallus. An outer garment was often worn, which allowed the phallus to be shown or concealed as required. Aristophanic comedy is rife with comic business involving the phallus. In Women, for instance, the disguised Mnesilochus goes to great lengths to conceal his phallus when Cleisthenes and the women seek to expose him (643–8).
Members of the Chorus were not specialists, as the actors and playwrights were. Still, between them the Chorus and Chorus-Leader usually had a sizeable quantity of lines, sung and spoken. The Chorus’s costume and appearance were also very important. Along with their dancing and singing they were significant factors in the judging of performances. The importance of the Chorus is evident partly from the fact that comic dramatists had to be ‘granted a chorus’ to enter a play. As ordinary citizens, the Chorus members also represented a strong link between the performers and the audience.
What remains today of the Theatre of Dionysus belongs to the theatre rebuilt in the fourth century BC by Lycurgus. Any account of the theatre as it was in Aristophanes’ day therefore remains largely speculative. The capacity of the Theatre of Dionysus was approximately 14,000 to 17,000. It was outdoors, and performances ran from morning to evening. Prior to its rebuilding in stone by Lycurgus, the seating area (theatron) was not semi-circular but a more irregular shape, and the rows of seats were movable and wooden. Important officials sat in the front row, in seats of honour called prohedria, with the priest of Dionysus in a throne-like seat at the centre. At the foot of the seating area was a circular pit, the orchestra, where the Chorus performed. In the middle of this was the altar of Dionysus. Behind this was the stage-building, or skēnē, with a raised stage in front of it for the actors. In Aristophanes’ day the building was a long wooden structure with a painted facade. Inside it were rooms in which actors could change costumes, and in which props and costumes were stored. The stage-building contained central doors and two further doors stage left and right. The flat roof of the stage-building offered a higher level for actors and could, as in Wasps, represent the upper floor, or roof, of a house (this is where Bdelycleon is sleeping at the start of Wasps, and it is from here that Philocleon attempts his first ploy to escape). To each side of the stage were wings or side-entrances (eisodoi). By these the Chorus could enter the orchestra. There were also ramps, for actors, leading up from the wings to the stage.
The composition of Aristophanes’ audiences may have been affected by various factors. One was place of residence. Many outlying parts of Attica were about thirty miles from Athens. The journey may have been too arduous for many poorer rural folk, who would have had to walk to the city (the better-off would probably have had a second home in the city). Assuming some plays were re-performed, such people may have preferred to attend rural Dionysia festivals instead. This said, during the war much of the rural population moved into the city, making it easier for them to go to the theatre. Cost was also an issue. Despite the theoric fund for those unable to afford theatre tickets, the money may not have covered the full expense; moreover, those who claimed the fund may have kept the money and not attended.
Another significant factor was status. Throughout the fifth century there were many non-citizens living in Athens (metics). While these people could attend the theatre, they could not claim the theoric fund. Some slaves seem to have attended; these presumably came from well-off families, as their masters would have had to pay for them. One imagines that if demand for tickets was higher than availability, citizens would get preference over slaves and, probably, metics; if so, it is unclear how such matters were handled. There are references in Aristophanes suggesting that some boys were among the audience. It is not known from what age they were allowed, or encouraged, to attend. Given that their fathers would have to pay for their tickets, we may reasonably suppose that only boys from relatively wealthy families attended.
Evidence about whether women attended is inconclusive. The situation may even have been different for tragedy and comedy. In Aristophanes there are two remarks possibly suggesting that women went to see tragedy (Women 386 and Frogs 1050–51). As regards comedy, the often-cited remark in Peace 966 about women never getting the free food thrown to the audience is inconclusive: while it may mean that women sat towards the back, it may equally mean that they were not present. A more suggestive piece of evidence is the Chorus’s remark, in Birds 793–6, that having wings would allow a man to fly off and visit a woman whose husband was in the audience and return before the end of the day’s performances. This implies that women did not attend the theatre, at least not in significant numbers.
A separate but related issue is whether the composition of the audience differed for the Dionysia and Lenaea respectively. One passage from Aristophanes’ Acharnians suggests a difference. The hero Dicaeopolis, seemingly speaking on behalf of Aristophanes himself, declares that he need have no fear of being accused by Cleon of maligning the city (something that appears to have happened after Aristophanes’ previous play Babylonians). Dicaeopolis says he can address the audience freely because there are ‘no foreigners present’ at the Lenaea, adding that Metics are de facto citizens. This clearly implies that some foreigners came to the City Dionysia, and it is not unreasonable to suppose, on this basis, that Greeks from other states may also have been in attendance. Still, despite the possible presence of Metics, slaves, boys, women, foreigners and other Greeks, the vast majority of the audience, at the City Dionysia and the Lenaea, would have been adult male Athenian citizens.
The most important members of the audience, as far as playwrights were concerned, were the judges. Athenian drama was, it must be remembered, performed as part of a competition. The judging process for the Dionysia is known up to a point, and the procedure for the Lenaea may, in the absence of any evidence to suggest otherwise, be supposed to have been similar. Ten judges were chosen by lot, by the Archon, from a larger group of citizens chosen previously by the Council (the basis on which this prior selection was made is unclear). Before taking up their special seats at the front, these ten judges had to take an oath to vote for the best performance. After all the performances were over the judges wrote down their votes on tablets. These votes were then used to determine the victorious play and the second and third prizes.
Athenian comic drama began in 486 BC, half a century after the establishing of the tragic competition in 534. The genre may be divided into two strongly contrastive periods, Old and New Comedy. Old Comedy, as represented by Aristophanes, stands completely apart from other kinds of dramatic and narrative fiction in the ancient Greek world. (His surviving plays are our only complete examples of Old Comedy.) It flouts the principles of causality and probability; it disregards rules of space and time; it has little interest in creating or maintaining dramatic illusion; its action and characterization are neither consistent nor lifelike. By contrast, its older contemporary tragedy and its successor New Comedy share a common set of fictional conventions and practices which may be traced back to Homeric epic (this is pretty much what Aristotle does, with tragedy, in his Poetics): they are both plotted with strict economy according to rules of causality and probability; and they both strive to create characters who are convincing and lifelike in speech, reasoning and action.6 Old Comedy does not reject the rules to which tragedy and New Comedy subscribe in their entirety, but it does feel free to deploy or discard them at will. Aristophanes belonged to the third generation of writers of Old Comedy. Writing during the latter stages of the form, he arguably presided over its zenith, although his final surviving work reflects a decisive turn from Old Comedy’s spirit of cheerful irreverence towards the restrained spirit of New Comedy.
Aristophanic Old Comedy is topical and satirical. In confronting socio-political and cultural issues of the day, it pokes fun at well-known figures onstage, sometimes benignly (e.g., Euripides in Women) but often with vitriol (e.g., Cleon in Wasps). It is unpredictable and readily embraces fantasy, contradiction and absurdity. Hence in Wasps it is possible for a dog to prosecute another dog while calling on kitchen utensils as witnesses. It is also self-consciously literary, with a fondness for parodying, imitating, assimilating and alluding to other texts – not only poetry (e.g., tragedy, epic or lyric poetry) but also songs and certain specialized uses of language (e.g., oracles, philosophical jargon, prayers and oratory). Thus in Women the women parody the procedural language of the Athenian assembly, while Mnesilochus and Euripides extensively parody Euripidean tragedy. Old Comedy also frequently draws attention to itself both as comic fiction and as a theatrical performance, paying little heed to the notional boundary between stage and audience. A memorable example of this is when a distressed Dionysus in Frogs appeals for help directly to the priest of Dionysus sitting in the front row of the audience, reminding him that he – the actor playing Dionysus – will be having a drink with him after the show. But for all its ridicule, abuse and absurdity, Old Comedy also engages with contemporary political, philosophical and artistic thought at the highest intellectual level: as a piece of sophisticated literary criticism about tragedy, the preposterous contest between Aeschylus and Euripides in Frogs is no less valuable than Aristotle’s Poetics.
It is unclear exactly how Greek comic drama originated. Even in the ancient world the issue was a disputed one. Aristotle (384–322) offers a few suggestions. He says that comedy (like tragedy) came about through improvisation, tracing its origins, in part at least, to fertility songs sung in honour of Phales (a divine companion of Dionysus, represented by a pole, or phallus); an example of such a song occurs in Aristophanes’ Acharnians (263ff.). He links comedy to invective or lampoons (iamboi). He also implies that comedy was derived from the kōmos, a ritual act of revelry. Aristophanes’ surviving plays suggest that there is probably some truth in all of these propositions.
In terms of their broad areas of interest there are, perhaps, five notional types of play in Old Comedy. These were not recognized categories in the ancient world, and do not necessarily cover all Old Comedy – in any case, individual plays are not restricted by these types since they tend to fall under several categories – but they do help to describe and distinguish Aristophanes’ surviving plays.
The first is political comedy. While all of Aristophanes’ plays are ‘political’ inasmuch as they concern the city, or polis, of Athens, not all confront pressing political issues directly. Of his surviving works, the earlier plays show a more pronounced political dimension. Knights and Wasps, for example, target a particular, deeply loathed politician, Cleon, who rose to prominence after Pericles’ death. A similar hostility against the later demagogue Cleophon is present in Frogs but only surfaces in passing. Other strongly political comedies involve responses to the Peloponnesian War. In Acharnians the hero makes a controversial, if implausible, private peace with Sparta at a time when the general mood was for continued hostilities. Lysistrata, written when Athenian fortunes were low, shows the women of Athens (and elsewhere in Greece) achieving a fanciful peace by mounting a sex-strike. Such plays, which confront political issues head on, may be contrasted with Women, which is conspicuously free of political concerns.
The second type of play is the comedy of manners, or social comedy. According to Aristotle, the comic playwright Crates developed this type of play a generation before Aristophanes. Several of Aristophanes’ plays involve elements of social comedy. His first play, Babylonians (lost), involved two differently schooled sons vying for their father’s affection. Wasps and Clouds both present conflicts between urbane sons and their unsophisticated fathers. The double-act in the first half of Frogs with Dionysus as dim-witted master and Xanthias as clever slave anticipates the kind of situation-based social comedy that occurs throughout New (and Roman) Comedy, as does the ‘below-stairs’ scene in which Xanthias and Pluto’s slave gossip about their masters.
The third category is comedies about specific topical cultural issues. Plays that may be placed in this group include Clouds, which polemically examines modern education and its transformation by philosophers, or sophists, such as Socrates; Women, which explores Euripides’ presentation of female characters in his tragedies; and Frogs, which surveys tragedy retrospectively from Aeschylus to Euripides. Other playwrights do not appear to share Aristophanes’ preoccupation with tragedy but they did write plays about other kinds of poetry. Plays about cultural issues are often couched in terms of a wider conflict of Old and New. We see this in Frogs, in the contest between old-fashioned Aeschylus and the innovative Euripides, and Clouds with its conflict between traditional and new education. Significantly, in Clouds the contrast between the father who is at heart old-fashioned and the son who has been educated by the avant-garde Socrates is expressed in terms of the former’s fondness for Aeschylus and the latter’s newfound enthusiasm for Euripides.
The fourth category is comedies involving Utopias or fantastic locations. Common settings include the underworld and the Golden Age. There are many lost plays of this kind by other Old Comic playwrights. Of Aristophanes’ plays, Frogs is set in the underworld, while Birds is set in Nephelococcygia (Cloud-cuckooland). The fifth and final category is plays involving mythological or tragic burlesque. There were a surprisingly large number of such plays, which are often identifiable by their use of the titles of tragedies or mythological characters. Aristophanes, however, seems only to have written a very small number of such plays, none of which survive.
We have very little by way of literary criticism on Aristophanic comedy from his contemporaries. Indeed, Aristophanes’ own Frogs, which tells us a great deal about contemporary perceptions of tragedy, is one of the first major pieces of ancient literary criticism. There is, however, one interesting fragment from Old Comedy, written by Aristophanes’ contemporary Cratinus (fr. 342). It involves one character referring to another as ‘a pedantic purveyor of niceties, a real Euripidaristophanes’.7 This conflation of Euripides and Aristophanes into a single name suggests that they are alike in their love of verbal precision and cleverness. The quality of being dexios (‘clever’ or ‘talented’) is not just one that Aristophanes claims for himself and, flatteringly, his audience (e.g., Clouds 521–48); Dionysus, in Frogs 71, explains his quest for Euripides as a yearning for a tragedian who is dexios. Aristophanes’ insistence that he is always introducing new ideas into his comedies (Clouds 547) is also something that implicitly aligns him with Euripides, the innovative tragedian par excellence.
Plato in his Apology complains about Aristophanes’ presentation of Socrates in Clouds. Plato’s main gripe, however, is the negative effect of the portrayal upon the popular perception of Socrates; there is no pejorative criticism of Clouds on artistic grounds. Besides, while complaining of Aristophanes’ treatment of Socrates in particular, Plato acknowledges that Old Comedy as a whole was negative towards philosophers and philosophy.
Aristophanes’ last surviving play, Wealth, shows signs of the shift in taste away from the uninhibited excesses of Old Comedy towards greater restraint, consistency and uniformity (of action, characterization, style, tone and so on). In the fourth century Old Comedy quickly went out of fashion. While tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles were regularly re-performed from 386 BC onwards (those of Aeschylus were re-performed from sometime after his death in 456), there is no evidence for revivals of fifth-century comedies.
The clearest indication of Old Comedy’s fall from grace lies in Aristotle’s verdict in his Poetics. Aristotle expresses a general distaste for Old Comedy’s crudeness, excess and fondness for the ridiculous. He also suggests that Old Comedy’s habit of satirizing particular individuals onstage means that it is not universal. Part of his definition of poetry is that it deals with the hypothetical, or universal, rather than the actual, or particular; this sets poetry above other disciplines such as history and alongside philosophy.8 To accuse Old Comedy of not being universal is tantamount to claiming that, while it may be verse, it does not count as poetry at all. Aristotle further criticizes Old Comedy for neglecting plot. Only one Old Comic playwright, Crates, is described as structuring action satisfactorily (i.e., in accordance with causality and probability). This criticism, however, is misguided. Old Comedy, for the most part, chooses to construct its action in a way that neglects causality and probability in favour of the absurd and the improbable.
Aristotle’s negative verdict notwithstanding, the plays of Aristophanes continued to be read, despite being difficult texts to follow (they had no stage directions, often lacked indications of speaker and were full of obscure topical references). Interest lay not so much in their merits as comic drama but in their exemplification of the expressiveness and charm of Attic Greek (which had by this time given way, along with other regional dialects, to a common dialect known as koinē). Alexandrian scholars, more sympathetic to Old Comedy than Aristotle, gradually established a consensus that Aristophanes, Cratinus and Eupolis were the greatest exemplars of the genre.9
Later responses to Old Comedy are mixed. While Cicero (106–43 BC) saw Aristophanes as ‘the wittiest poet of Old Comedy’, Horace (65–8 BC), in his Ars Poetica, suggests that although the free speech enjoyed by the poets of Old Comedy was notionally a good thing, in practice it degenerated into unfettered abuse. In his Satires, however, he praises Old Comedy for its use of laughter (as opposed to outright abuse) as a means of exposing hypocrisy in the public sphere. This more favourable view of Old Comedy may in part be attributed to Horace’s having regarded the genre as a distant precursor of his own satires.
A far less positive judgement is offered by Plutarch (AD c. 45–c. 125) in a comparison of Aristophanes and Menander. He accuses Aristophanes of vulgar action, general boorishness and uncouth language. He also decries what he considers poor puns (e.g., ‘where shall flick you, cursed pot, when you’re the one who’s given me the flick’), weak associations (‘he’s so harsh to us. I suppose it comes of being brought up on his mother’s bitter potherbs’) and laboured jokes (e.g., ‘I’m laughing so much, before I know it I’ll be in Chortleton’).10 Plutarch may have a point – Aristophanic characters do sometimes make bad jokes – but by ignoring context he risks overlooking the underlying purpose of his examples. The remark about potherbs, for instance, one of many jokes in Women about Euripides’ mother being a seller of greens, is part of a broader characterization of the women of Athens as implacably hostile to Euripides.
Plutarch also criticizes Aristophanes for stylistic inconsistency, particularly combining the tragic and the comic, the elevated and the prosaic, and the erudite and the everyday. Characters, he suggests, often do not speak as befits them. He further claims that Aristophanes lacks his much-touted verbal ‘ingenuity’; that his roguish characters are simply malicious; that his rustics are idiotic rather than simple; that he avoids romantic love in favour of pure lust. Like Aristotle, Plutarch is guilty of criticizing Aristophanic comedy simply because it differs from the New Comedy more akin to his conservative sensibilities. Ironically his criticisms, taken as a whole, are almost as excessive and inconsistent as the works they disparage.
The Roman rhetorician Quintilian (AD c. 35–c. 95), writing a little earlier, offers a more positive, less judgemental view:
Old Comedy is almost alone in preserving the genuine grace of the Attic tongue; moreover, it has a most eloquent freedom of speech: and if it is especially notable for its attacks on vices, it has a great deal of strength in other departments also. It is splendid, elegant, graceful; and nothing else after Homer (who, like Achilles, must always be the exception) is more like oratory, or more suitable for training orators. It has many exponents, but Aristophanes, Eupolis and Cratinus stand out. (The Orator’s Training 10.1.65–6)
By Aristophanes’ day Old Comedy had well-established formal elements and conventions, although Aristophanes (and most likely other comic playwrights) felt free to modify, omit or depart from these up to a point.
A fundamental structural pattern found at expected points in Aristophanes’ plays is a scheme of alternation known as the syzygy.11 While it may vary in length, order and complexity, its simplest form is A B A′ B′, where A and A′ are lyric passages corresponding in metre and their number of lines, while B and B′ are similarly corresponding blocks of lines that are spoken or recited.12
The plays of Old Comedy contain certain formal units, or elements, appearing in customary sequence. Among Aristophanes’ surviving plays these units are most fully represented in Wasps. They are as follows:
The prologue, as defined by Aristotle, is all that precedes the entry of the Chorus. Unlike most other elements it has no strict formal requirements. It generally comprises spoken iambic trimeters, although lyric passages may be inserted (e.g., the servant’s prayer and Agathon’s song in Women, 39–57 and 101–29). The prologue may open with dialogue between major characters (e.g., Women, Frogs, Birds, Lysistrata) or minor characters (e.g., Wasps, Knights, Peace). Alternatively, it may consist of a speech or monologue by the protagonist (e.g., Acharnians, Clouds, Assemblywomen) or another major character (e.g., Wealth). It may then proceed variously. In Wasps, a slave addresses the audience directly and explains the situation in Philocleon’s house, after which there is a slapstick scene with Philocleon trying to escape. In Women and Frogs there are encounters with a character who provides advice or assistance (Agathon and Heracles respectively), followed by scenes of buffoonery.
The prologue establishes the opening situation, introduces the main characters and indicates the play’s main topical and thematic concerns. Thus in Wasps the two slaves discuss their dreams about the deluded Athenian public and its corrupt political leaders, and then describe Philocleon’s delusional condition; in Frogs we hear one discussion between Dionysus and Xanthias about comic conventions and another between Dionysus and Heracles about tragedy past and present. The prologue may include a change of location. The whole prologue of Wasps takes place before Philocleon’s house, but in Women the action shifts from Agathon’s house to the site of the Thesmophoria festival, while in Frogs we move from Heracles’ house to the underworld.
This is the Entry-Song of the Chorus. The comic Chorus, which numbered twenty-four, would enter via the wings (eisodoi). Its arrival is often anticipated in the text. In Wasps, for example, Philocleon’s old friends, who comprise the Chorus, appear soon after Bdelycleon remarks that they are later than usual (Wasps 217–21). The metre and mood of the parodos can vary. In Wasps the Chorus enters singing in plodding iambic tetrameters to indicate their age and sluggishness. The Choruses of Acharnians and Knights, by contrast, enter singing bustling trochaic tetrameters to reflect their vigour and aggression. The Initiate-Chorus of Frogs sing their parodos mainly in the ionic metre associated with their patron god Iacchus. The parodos in Women, unusually, is in prose.
This is a formal ‘contest’ or ‘debate’ in which the Chorus, or a major character, chooses between two parties (agōn is the Greek word for ‘trial’). In Wasps the Chorus decides between Philocleon and Bdelycleon; in Frogs Dionysus chooses between Aeschylus and Euripides. Not all plays have an agōn. The absence of an agōn in Peace, for instance, perhaps suggests in formal terms that no arguments for war remain. Knights, by contrast, has two proper agones. In the convention of the formal agōn, the contestant who speaks second is victorious. There are other kinds of competitive scene besides the formal agōn. In Wasps, for example, after the agōn proper there is a trial scene in Philocleon’s kitchen. In Frogs the whole contest between Euripides and Aeschylus, even outside the agōn proper, resembles an expanded agōn (agōn is also the Greek word for the dramatic competition). Another situation resembling the agōn is where a major character presents a case before a hostile audience, such as Mnesilochus’ speech before the women in defence of Euripides in Women.
The agōn is recited rather than spoken. In its fullest manifestation, as in Wasps, it comprises nine components arranged in the form A B C D A′ B′ C D′ E (the examples are all from Wasps):13
A. Ode (526–45, ‘The speaker who will… ghosts of parchment-cases’): a stanza sung by the Chorus to encourage both participants.
B. Katakeleusmos (546–7, ‘Be bold… glib persuasive art’): a brief invitation to the first contestant to begin.
C. Epirrhenta (548–619, ‘Well, to get off to… scarcely greater than my own!’): the first contestant’s speech; in tetrameters (usually anapaestic).
D. Pnigos (620–30, ‘When people speak… damned if I fear you’): a short climactic end to the speech, supposedly recited in a single breath (hence its name, the ‘choker’).
A′. Antode (631–47, ‘A most sensible speech… convert a hostile jury’): a stanza corresponding to the earlier ode, usually praising the first speech.
B′. Antikatakeleusmos (648–9, ‘You’d better think… countering our fury’): an invitation to the second contestant to reply.
C′. Antepirrhema (650–718, ‘It is a difficult undertaking… keeping you shut up’): the second contestant’s speech; also in tetrameters.
D′. Antipnigos (719–24, ‘I want to look after… the paymaster’s milk’): see D.
E. Sphragis (725–9, ‘You should never decide… whatever you say’): the announcement of the victor, sealing the result (sphragis means ‘seal’).
The parabasis (literally, ‘the stepping forward’), in which the action of the play is suspended, occurs at a point when the stage is empty (although in Women two characters remain). It involves the Chorus suspending its dramatic identity – by temporarily removing masks and some elements of costume – and stepping forward to address the audience directly in recitative mode. The parabasis usually occurs somewhere near the middle of the play, but may vary in complexity and length. The parabasis of Women is relatively short, and that of Clouds simply a single block of lines, while in Wasps not only is it fully developed but there is a second, shorter parabasis. The full parabasis has seven parts and may be expressed in the form A B C D E D’ E’. The parabasis proper (B) is a sizeable block of lines in tetrameters (usually anapaestic), with a corresponding introduction, or kommation (A), and conclusion, or pnigos (C). This is followed by a syzygy (D E D′ E′).
The parabasis typically involves praise of the author and the play – most commonly in the parabasis proper (B) – and abuse of well-known public figures to whom the author is ill-disposed. Usually there is some humorous play on the Chorus’s identity. In Wasps, for example, the Chorus liken their irascible nature and cohesiveness to the behaviour of wasps; in Birds the Chorus threaten to defecate on the judges from on high if the play is not awarded first prize. The parabasis also allows the Chorus-Leader seemingly to speak on the playwright’s behalf.
The parabasis is followed by a series of scenes, usually farcical, for which there is no technical term. These are generally in iambic trimeters. In some cases, particularly where the protagōnist’s outrageous plan has turned out well, we see a string of impostors who hope to gain by his success but are promptly drubbed (e.g., Acharnians, Peace, Birds). In such plays we also see the fruits of the hero’s plan: usually a celebration and some kind of ritual marriage. In plays where the outcome is still in doubt at the end of the parabasis, the action is more varied. In Wasps, Philocleon is re-educated and launched into more glamorous society with hilarious results; in Women, Euripides has to intervene in person to rescue his ill-fated relative; and in Frogs, Dionysus has yet to decide which tragedian to rescue.
This is the final scene or, more strictly, the actual finale. There are no specific formal requirements for the exodos. Some final scenes imitate tragic formal features. In Wasps and Birds, for example, a tragic-style ‘messenger-speech’ heralds the return of the protagōnist. Usually there are festivities of some kind, although not in Women or Clouds, both of whose endings are oddly subdued. The actual finale, in which the Chorus makes its exit, varies considerably. In Wasps we find a riotous dance, with the characters leading off the Chorus (a first according to Aristophanes). In Frogs, by contrast, the closing dactylic hexameters (the metre of epic, but also common in Aeschylean tragedy) suggest a more dignified exit.
An aspect of Old Comedy that contrasts with both its generic rival tragedy and its descendant New Comedy is the active role of the Chorus. In tragedy the Chorus, though present, does not as a rule actively influence the play’s action but rather looks on helplessly.14 In New Comedy the Chorus, which only sings non-dramatic odes between certain scenes, has no physical presence in the play’s action. The Chorus of Old Comedy is far more prominent both in the dramatic and non-dramatic parts of the play. The parodos usually involves the Chorus interacting significantly with major characters. In some plays the Chorus is integrated into the dramatic action by having the protagōnist defend himself before them (Acharnians, Birds and Women). The parabasis, which reinforces some of the play’s topical or thematic concerns, is also delivered by the Chorus-Leader and Chorus.
It is almost impossible for us to gain a precise sense of what Aristophanes’ Old Comedy meant as an overall experience to its original audience. The Greek dramatic festival was a civic, religious event experienced by citizens far more closely linked to the community as a whole than is remotely possible in our larger, more ethnically and culturally diverse modern democracies. Even in classical Athens, after the city’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War, Old Comedy declined rapidly as a genre, as the closeness of the relationship between individual citizens and their city-state decreased. For us the nearest thing to the experience of Aristophanic comedy’s original audiences – in feel if not in form or scale – is probably a school or college revue, insofar as it presents strongly topical material to a close-knit community and involves a palpable sense of participation among audience, writer(s) and performers alike.
There are, however, other useful modern parallels for many aspects of Aristophanic comedy. The scholar Ian Storey, for example, asks the reader of Aristophanes to imagine a combination of ‘the slapstick of The Three Stooges, the song and dance of a Broadway musical, the verbal wit of W. S. Gilbert or of a television show like Frasier, the exuberance of Mardi Gras, the open-ended plot line of The Simpsons, the parody of a Mel Brooks movie, the political satire of Doonesbury, the outrageous sexuality of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien wrapped up in the format of a Monty Python movie.’15 While this farrago of modern comparisons represents a fair attempt to capture the confection of farce, variety, carnival, fantasy, parody, satire, vulgarity and absurdity in Aristophanes’ plays, it seems to downplay Aristophanic comedy’s form and character as highbrow comic drama. Perhaps the nearest single modern parallel with Aristophanic comedy from contemporary theatre is the work of Tom Stop-pard. His Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, for instance, parodies and imitates other texts, most obviously Hamlet but also Waiting for Godot. It has inconsistency of characterization and action, and involves its own absurd logic (at the start of the play, a coin in a coin-tossing game lands ‘heads’ eighty-five times in a row and yet Rosencrantz shows no surprise). It indulges in reflexive theatrical games; part of the text is identical to Hamlet, while most of it complements its Shakespearean model by presenting the action that might have happened offstage. As with Aristophanes, several of Stoppard’s plays are plays of ideas that polemically explore major cultural issues often while presenting comic versions of well-known figures onstage (e.g., Joyce and Lenin in Travesties; the philosopher George Moore in Jumpers; Wilde and Housman in The Invention of Love). If we add Stoppard to Storey’s list, we perhaps gain a fuller idea of the form, variety and ingenuity of Aristophanic comedy.
What makes Aristophanic comedy seem so contemporary in its outlook, and gives it enduring relevance, is that its defining qualities – a spirit of inquiry, a determination to question the democratic powers that be, a penchant for extensive cultural reference, a willingness to entertain new ideas, a healthy sense of self-criticism and, of course, a readiness to see the funny side of things – are ones that we generally endorse. What is more, the core values that Aristophanic comedy affirms seem very much to chime with our own. Foremost among these are the freedom of expression, the independence of the human spirit and – last but by no means least – the therapeutic power of laughter.
1. Henceforth abbreviated to Women.
2. My own translation.
3. Another major festival, the Rural Dionysia, was celebrated within Attica but outside Athens itself. It took place in various towns and villages, such as Piraeus and Eleusis, on different days in the month of Poseidon (late December/early January). The festival comprised various fertility rites, including songs to Dionysus and a procession with a large phallus (as seen in Aristophanes’ Acharnians), but it also included dramatic performances. While Aristophanes and both Sophocles and Euripides are known to have had plays put on at the Rural Dionysia, it is probable that these were not first performances of new plays (which would very likely have taken place at the City Dionysia and Lenaea).
4. According to Aristotle, Sophocles raised the number of actors from two to three (Poetics 1449a), just as Aeschylus had earlier raised the number from one to two. The likely date for the introduction of the third actor is 468 BC, or some time shortly after it.
5. For a detailed discussion of the issue, see D. Bain, Actors and Audiences (Oxford, 1977).
6. Indeed Menander’s New Comedy takes its illusionistic credo to such lengths that one ancient scholar felt compelled to write, ‘Oh life, Oh Menander! Which of you imitates the other?’
7. My translation.
8. It is their universality that makes poetry and philosophy theoretical; theoria (‘contemplation’) is described by Aristotle, in his Nichomachean Ethics, as man’s highest form of activity.
9. In the handbook On Style, wrongly attributed to fourth-century scholar Demetrius of Phaleron (it is probably from the second or first century BC), Aristophanes is praised on a number of occasions for his charm (charis) and wit.
10. The translations are my own.
11. Various scholars have tried to trace this structural pattern back to a prototypical comic revel or komōs.
12. Recited (as opposed to spoken) lines would have been delivered with some kind of musical accompaniment in a manner generally termed ‘recitative’.
13. In formal terms the English translation does not correspond exactly to the Greek components of the agōn. Thus the katakeleusmos appears to belong with the ode that precedes it in the English, but is in a different metre (anapaestic rather than the iambo-choriambic of the ode) in the Greek; conversely, the epirrhema and pnigos appear metrically different in the English but are in the same (anapaestic) metre in the Greek.
14. While this is true of extant tragedy from the 430s and 420s, the period at which tragedy seems to have conformed most strictly to what we might call tragic conventions, it is not as true of Aeschylus. In Eumenides, for example, the eponymous chorus, who are non-human and aggressive towards the hero, seem much more like an Old Comic chorus than a typical tragic chorus.
15. I. C. Storey, ‘Poets, Politicians and Perverts: Personal Humour in Aristophanes’, Classics Ireland 5 (1998), p. 85.