Aristophanes

Greek playwright

• Born: c. 450 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Athens, Greece
• Died: c. 385 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Athens, Greece

The highly entertaining plays of Aristophanes provide the only extant examples of Old Comedy. His writings reveal much about not only dramaturgy in late fifth century b.c.e. Athens but also the social, political, and economic conditions of the time.

Early Life

The son of Philippos, who may have been a landowner in Aegina, Greece, Aristophanes (ar-uh-STAHF-uh-neez) was born in Athens about 450 b.c.e. Though little is known about his early life, he was clearly well educated, for his plays quote or allude to many sources. These works also suggest a deep interest in public affairs, and Aristophanes was to serve as representative of his district on the Athenian Council.

His literary ability became apparent quite early: When he was between seventeen and twenty-three years old, he began participating in the annual dramatic competitions in Athens. The Lenaian Dionysia, or Lenaia, held in Gamelion (January-February), was devoted largely to comedies, whereas the Great, or City, Dionysia, established in 536 b.c.e. and celebrated in Elaphebalion (March), presented tragedies but also offered three comic plays. Both festivals were religious as well as literary, honoring Dionysus, the god of wine, who was associated with agriculture in general.

The comedies derived both their name and purpose from the ancient komos, or procession of rejoicing in the vital forces of nature, which supposedly drove away evil spirits and guaranteed continued fertility of the land and its inhabitants. Bawdy jokes and costumes that include large phalluses constituted part of the ritual, as did the gamos, or sexual union, that frequently concluded the plays. Similarly, the mockery of prominent political or cultural figures served as a liberating force that temporarily gave free rein to irrational and suppressed urges; such antics were connected with the madness of intoxication. To these satiric and sexual elements, Aristophanes added a lyricism rivaling that of any other Hellenic poet. An excellent example appears in the parabasis (choral interlude) of Ornithes (c. 414; The Birds, 1824), which begins with a summoning of the nightingale:

Musician of the BirdsCome and singhoney-throated one!Come, O love,flutist of the Spring,accompany our song.

The Chorus then presents a myth of the creation of the world through the power of Love, all told in lyrical anapests.

Only a fragment survives of Aristophanes’ first play, Daitalēis (banqueters), which won second prize at the Lenaia of 427, yet the remains suggest that the dramatist already was treating an issue that would become important in his more mature writing. Though still a young man, he attacked Athenian youth and their new ways, especially modern modes of education. An old man sends one son to the city, while the other remains in the country. The former learns only to eat, drink, and sing bawdy songs; his body is no better trained than his mind. When he returns home, he is too weak to work and no longer cares whether he does.

Babylōnioi (Babylonians), another lost play, was produced at the Great Dionysia of 426 and won first prize. Cleon, the Athenian demogogue then in power, had undertaken a policy of mass terror to force Athens’s allies to support its military efforts against Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. As a believer in peace and pan-Hellenism, Aristophanes attacked Cleon’s measures. Cleon responded by taking Aristophanes to court. Despite the playwright’s claim in his next comedy that during the proceedings he almost “gave up the ghost,” he does not seem to have been punished severely, if at all. As is evident from his next plays, he was undeterred from speaking out against war and against Cleon.

Life’s Work

Acharnēs (The Acharnians, 1812), which in 425 won first prize at the Lenaia, continues to attack Cleon’s war policy. When the demigod Amphitheus raises the question of peace in the Athenian assembly, he is ejected. Dikaiopolis (which means “Honest Citizen” or “Just City”), a refugee farmer whose land has been ravaged by war, supports this pacific plea and sends Amphitheus to Sparta to negotiate a separate peace for himself. When the demigod returns with a thirty-year treaty, the Acharnians attack him. These old men, represented by the Chorus, have suffered in the war, but they want revenge, not peace. Dikaiopolis must defend his views while he rests his head on a chopping block, so that if he fails to persuade the Chorus that his policy is best, they can kill him at once. His speech divides the old men, who resolve to summon Lamachos, a general, to argue the matter further. The agon, or debate, ensues, allowing Aristophanes to present further arguments against the war. The Chorus finally sides with Dikaiopolis, but Lamachos leaves, vowing eternal resistance.

The farmer now sets up a market. While the play shows him prospering through peace, it also reveals the hardships of war. For example, a Megarian has become so impoverished that he is willing to sell his daughters for a pittance. The final scenes highlight the contrast between the policies of Cleon and Aristophanes: Lamachos returns from war, wounded, just as Dikaiopolis, victorious in a drinking bout, appears with two young women to celebrate wine and fertility, the gifts of Dionysus and peace.

In Hippēs (424; The Knights, 1812), which took first prize at the Lenaia, Aristophanes again attacks Cleon. A lost play, Holkades, presented at the next Lenaia, is still another attack on Cleon. Then, at the Great Dionysia, Aristophanes turned his attention to a different subject in Nephelai (423; The Clouds, 1708). Strepsiades (Twisterson) has fallen deeply in debt because of the extravagance of his wife and the gambling of his horse-loving son, Pheidippides. To cheat his creditors, Strepsiades resolves to send the youth to the Phrontisterion (Thinkery), the local academy run by Socrates, who can make the weaker side appear the stronger. When Pheidippides refuses to attend, his father enrolls instead. Despite his best efforts, the father cannot grasp the new learning, and at length his son agrees to enter the academy.

Now Pheidippides must choose a mentor; Dikaios Logos (Just Cause) and Adikos Logos (Unjust Cause) offer themselves, and to help Pheidippides choose they engage in a debate, or agon. Dikaios Logos speaks for the old morality and simple life, but when Adikos Logos advocates skepticism and amorality, even Dikaios Logos is converted. Pheidippides becomes certified as an adept at the new philosophy and even teaches his father enough to allow Strepsiades to outwit two of his creditors.

The old man’s triumph is, however, short-lived. When Strepsiades reproves his son for singing an obscene song by Euripides, Pheidippides beats him. The father appeals to the Clouds, those symbols of obscurity and form without substance that are the deities and patrons of Socrates’ school. They, however, side with the son, who has used his new skill to argue that, because Strepsiades, when he was stronger, would beat Pheidippides, Pheidippides may now beat his father. Enraged, Strepsiades heeds the advice of Hermes and burns down the Phrontisterion.

In 399, The Clouds was used as evidence against Socrates, yet Aristophanes’ attitude toward the philosopher may be more sympathetic than the play suggests. During its performance, Socrates is supposed to have stood up in the stadium to point out how closely the actor’s mask resembled him, and Plato later included Aristophanes in the Symposium, where he is treated kindly. Perhaps, in fact, Socrates was among the few who actually enjoyed the piece, for it received only the third prize at the festival. Aristophanes blamed its failure on its being too intellectual for the masses.

Sphēkes (The Wasps, 1812), which won second prize at the Lenaia of 422, returns to political issues, as Aristophanes once more criticizes Cleon as well as the litigious nature of the Athenians. In the autumn of 422, Cleon died, and ten days after the Great Dionysia of 421 Athens concluded a peace treaty with Sparta. Aristophanes’ Eirēnē (Peace, 1837), which won second prize that year, celebrates the end of the fighting, as Trygaios rides to heaven on a giant dung-beetle to rescue Eirēnē from the clutches of Polemos (War). He also saves Opora (Harvest) and Theoria (Ceremony), the private and public benefits of peace. The former becomes his wife; the latter he gives to the Athenian Council. As the play ends, Trygaios regains his youth and is guaranteed perpetual fertility through his union with the goddess.

None of Aristophanes’ plays from the next several years has survived, though he apparently returned to the theme of regeneration in Geras (c. 421) and Amphiaraus (c. 414). His next extant piece, The Birds, dates from the Great Dionysia of 414, at which it won second prize. Pisthetairos (Trusty) and Euelpides (Son of Good Hope) have tired of the corruption, fast-paced life, and litigious habits of their fellow Athenians and so resolve to find a pastoral retreat among the birds. Aristophanes demonstrates that though one can leave Athens, one cannot suppress the Athenian polupragmosunē, that energy, daring, curiosity, restlessness, and desire for ever-expanding empire.

Instead of basking in rural retirement, Pisthetairos and Euelpides create Nephelokokkugia (Cloudcuckooland), which chooses Athena as its patroness, builds a wall like that surrounding the Acropolis, and undertakes a blockade to keep the smoke of burnt offerings from reaching the gods. In short, these refugees from Athens create a city very much like the one they have fled, except that they are now rulers instead of subjects. Nephelokokkugia does differ from its earthly counterpart in some respects, though, for Pisthetairos expels informers, oracle-mongers, and lawyers, while he treats poets well. In other words, he eliminates those elements whom Aristophanes regarded as preying on their fellow Athenians. In the final scenes, the blockade of the gods succeeds: The Olympians surrender to the birds, Pisthetairos becomes a deity, and he marries the divine Basileia.

The success of the blockade marks another difference between Nephelokokkugia and Athens. As spectators watched The Birds, the Athenian fleet was sailing toward disaster in Sicily. In 413, the Peloponnesian War resumed, and, as a result, so did Aristophanes’ criticism of the fighting. In the Lenaia of 411, he offered his solution to end the conflict. Women in Athens were virtually powerless, but in Lysistratē (English translation, 1837), they become the architects of peace by refusing to sleep with their husbands until the fighting ends. In a display of pan-Hellenism, they also recruit women from all of Greece to join the sexual embargo.

The results of this effort are soon apparent in the enlarged phalluses of the husbands. Naturally, this tumidity is comical, and the large phallus is ritualistic as well. In another sense, though, it represents all the thwarted desires of Greece: the yearning for peace, prosperity, normalcy. It also links Spartan and Athenian by showing their common humanity, a point Aristophanes emphasizes further by showing that Greeks have cooperated before and can again. The Dionysian power of sex achieves peace between the warring parties as the play ends in a reconciliatory gamos.

Thesmophoriazousai (411; Thesmophoriazusae, 1837) dates from about the same time as Lysistrata and was performed either at the Great Dionysia of 411 or during the Lenaia of the following year. The piece has little political significance; instead, it satirizes several tragedies by Euripides, who had already been a comic target of Aristophanes in several of his earlier pieces. Yet, as The Clouds does not imply that the dramatist disliked Socrates, so Thesmophoriazusae should not be read as a true condemnation of Euripides.

In fact, Batrachoi (405; The Frogs, 1780), Aristophanes’ next surviving comedy and the last surviving work of Old Comedy, suggests that Aristophanes admired his fellow playwright. As the piece opens, Dionysus is preparing to go to Hades to resurrect Euripides, who had died in 406 (as had Sophocles). The god arrives just in time to judge a debate between Aeschylus and Euripides, each of whom claims to be the better writer. The succeeding agon reveals Aristophanes’ keen critical sense. Euripides points out that he used common language so that the audience would understand him; Aeschylus replies that his own language is dignified and elevated to encourage spectators to aspire to lofty ideals. Euripides explains that his characters are drawn from real life; Aeschylus maintains that heroic figures are more appropriate for tragedy because ordinary people cannot serve as good examples.

Although Dionysus admires both writers, he finally decides to resurrect Aeschylus, for the older dramatist represents the values Aristophanes himself admired. Aeschylus had fought in the Battle of Marathon (490) and revered the customs and gods of Athens, whereas Euripides was modern and skeptical, embracing values Aristophanes had repeatedly attacked.

Thirteen years separate The Frogs and Aristophanes’ next play, Ekklesiazousai (c. 392; Ecclesiazusae, 1837). As in Lysistrata, women here seize control of events to create a utopian society. Peace is no longer an issue, because in 404 Sparta defeated Athens and tore down the vanquished city’s walls. The new philosophy is no concern, either; in 399, Socrates had been executed. Although Athens was beginning to recover from a decade of economic, political, and social turmoil—in 395, it rebuilt its walls, for example—the play reflects a new mood and new conditions. Both here and in Ploutos (388; Plutus, 1651) the role of the chorus is greatly diminished, perhaps because the city could not afford to pay for one. Gone, too, is the sharp personal satire, as is criticism of contemporary events. Instead, the plays are escapist fantasies, one promising a communistic paradise, the other a society in which all receive their just deserts.

Aristophanes died shortly after the performance of Plutus but left two plays that his son Araros produced. Aiolosikōn was presumably a parody of one of Euripides’ plays that is not extant, and Kōkalos seems to be based on the myth of a Sicilian king, who is the hero of one of Sophocles’ lost plays. Kōkalos, which, like Aiolosikōn, was produced about 385, introduces a love story involving Daedalus and one of the king’s daughters, and it presents a recognition scene of some sort; both features were to become standard in New Comedy.

Significance

Aristophanes, the advocate of the old order, helped to create a new kind of play. Crafty servants such as Cario in Plutus, lovers thwarted by their elders such as those in Ecclesiazusae, intrigue, disguise, and recognition scenes such as the ones believed to be in Kōkalos became hallmarks of New Comedy. By the first century c.e., Plutarch in his Ethika (after c. 100; Moralia, 1603) would condemn the coarseness of Old Comedy, characterizing Aristophanes’ plays as resembling “a harlot who has passed her prime.”

Aristophanes’ plays remain historically important. Not only do they provide the only surviving record of the form and content of Old Comedy, but also they reveal much about daily life in late fifth century Athens. “Great, charming, and eloquent,” Quintilian called Aristophanes’ works, and the 150 extant manuscripts of Plutus alone attest his enduring popularity in antiquity. Modern productions, unencumbered by prudery, have demonstrated the vitality and beauty of his comedies, which, though written for a particular time and place, continue to speak to people everywhere.

Bibliography

Croiset, Maurice. Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens. Translated by James Loeb. 1909. Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1973. Focuses on the political implications of Aristophanes’ plays. He offers a good discussion of the military, political, social, and economic milieu of Aristophanes’ Athens.

David, Ephraim. Aristophanes and Athenian Society of the Early Fourth Century B.C. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1984. Seeks to fill a gap in studies of Aristophanes, which concentrate on his contributions to Old Comedy and his comments on Athens during the Peloponnesian War.

Murray, Gilbert. Aristophanes: A Study. Reprint. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964. Concentrates on analyzing the plays and their revelation of Aristophanes’ attitudes. Also gives useful information about dramatic conventions and historical events that influenced the plays.

Reckford, Kenneth J. Aristophanes’ Old-and-New Comedy: Six Essays in Perspective. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Examines Aristophanes and his world from six perspectives: religious, psychological, theatrical, poetic, political, and literary-historical.

Spatz, Lois. Aristophanes. Boston: Twayne, 1978. After an introductory chapter on the nature of Old Comedy, Spatz presents a roughly chronological discussion of Aristophanes’ contributions to this genre, focusing especially on the lesser-known works. Includes bibliography.

Strauss, Leo. Socrates and Aristophanes. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Discusses the confrontation between Socrates and Aristophanes in Aristophanes’ comedies. Analyzing eleven plays, Strauss argues that this confrontation is basically one between philosophy and poetry.

Ussher, Robert Glenn. Aristophanes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Offers an excellent brief introduction to the poet and his plays. Includes a chronology of the surviving comedies and discusses them in terms of structure, theme, character, language, staging, and performance. Includes bibliography.