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THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
BY THE SAME
THE ORIGIN OF
ATTIC COMEDY
BY
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
1914
GILBERT MURRAY
PEEFACE
Aristotle observes that at the date from which the record of
comic poets begins, Attic Comedy had akeady 'certain definite
forms.' 1 The hypothesis put forward in this book is that these
traditional '
forms/ still clearly traceable in the constant features
of the Aristophanic play, were inherited from a ritual drama, the
content which can be reconstructed.
of Chapters ii to viii
contain the argument for this theory, and Chapter ix deals with
the paradox (if paradox it be) that the ritual drama Ipng behind
Comedy proves to be essentially of the same type as that in which
Professor Gilbert Murray has sought the origin of Tragedy.
I was not myself prepared for any such conclusion. This book
was plaimed, and part of it (now cancelled) was even written, while
I still accepted the current view that Aristophanic Comedy is a
patchwork of elements loosely pieced together, and in origin
possibly foreign to one another. A closer study of the eleven plays
convinced me that this opinion was almost wholly mistaken. The
. plays, under all their variety and extravagance, have not only a
unity of structure, but a framework of traditional incidents, which
cannot, I believe, be otherwise explained than as the surviving fabric
of a ritual plot. The hypothesis was thus forced upon me by the
facts ; but very probably it would never have occurred to me, if
fiVT)fU)veiovrai,
viii THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
the Unes suggested by ZieUnski, I have reached
many conclusions
lessen my admira-
that are at variance with his ; but this does not
insight. The other
tion for his masterly handUng and fineness of
most are mentioned in the
writings from which I have learnt
BibUography.
Two have given me much help
friends Miss Jane Harrison
:
That Tragedy and Comedy should have the same divine pro-
tagonist, the dying God whose defeat is a victory, the ironical
Bufioon whose folly confounds the pretence of wisdom this is a —
mystery of Dionysiac religion, the treatment of which here is neces-
sarily incomplete for this book contains no independent study
;
INTRODUCTORY
1. The Data for Inquiry,
2. The Structure of an Aristophanic Play,
3. Some current Theories of the Origin of Comedy,
II
THE EXODOS
4. The Exodos Marriage and Kdmos,
: 8
5. The Exodoi of the Plays, . 9
6. The Problem of the final Marriage, 16
7. The Sacred Marriage, 18
8. The New Ood and the New King, . 20
9. The New Zeus in the Birds, 21
10. The Sacred Marriage of Dionysus and the Queen at Athens, 24
11. The New Zeus in the Plutus, 25
12. Trygaeus as Bellerophon in the Peace, 27
13. The New Zeus in the Clouds, 28
14. The New King in the Knights and the Frogs, 31
15. The Women Plays, 33
III
rv
....
99
48. The scattering of sweetmeats to the spectators, 100
49. Conclusion, 103
VI
THE CHORUS IN AGON AND PARABASI8
60. The part of the Chorus in the Agon,
106
.51. The Function of the comic Chorus, .
107
62. Antiolioria and Epirrhematic structure,
108
53. Choral matches in abuse (aiVxpoXoyi'ai),
54. Ritual Combats for fertility,
56.
56.
The Sophistic Antilogy,
The mediaeval D6bat,
.... 110
111
114
in
CONTENTS XI
FAOU
67. The Choral Agon : the Parabasis, 120
58. The Form of the Parabasis, 121
59. The Anapaests, . 122
60. The Second Part of the Parabasis, 124
61. The Parabasis of the Lysistrata, 125
62. The Parabasis a Choral Agon, 128
63. The Second Parabasis, 130
64. Epirrhematic and Episodic ' '
composition, 131
VII
THE IMPOSTOR
65. The unwelcome Intruders, . 132
66. The Ira/postors in the Plays, 133
67. The Eiron and the Alazon, 136
68. The Minor Buffoon, 139
69. Who is the Impostor ? 140
70. The Im/postor scenes as Episodes,' '
141
71. The Analogy with the Kasperlespiel, 142
72. Punch and Judy, . 144
73. The Impostor a douhle of the Antagonist, 148
74. The Impostor in the Dragon-slaying myths. 152
VIII
IX
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY
PAQE
93. How did Comedy and Tragedy differentiate ? 190
94. The ritual was probably indigenous, 192
The Dionysiac festivals at Athens, 193
....
95.
Plot and Character in Tragedy and Comedy : the primcuiy of Plot in
Tragedy, 195
97. The primacy of Character in Comedy, 197
The tragic Myth and the comic Logos, 199
„ 99. Character in Tragedy, 200
-9400. Character in Comedy, 201
101. Why Tragedy represents '
exalted persons^ 204
102. The germs of Tragedy and Comedy in the original 207
103. Tragedy or Comedy, a difference of emphasis. 212
^ 104. The History of the Old Comedy, 216
—
Note. The design on the title-page is copied from a coloured drawing by
George Cruikshank in Pa3Tie CoUier's Punch and Judy, London, 1870.
THE OEIGII^ OF ATTIC COMEDY
CHAPTEK I
INTRODUCTOEY
1. The Data for Inquiry
I shall follow his example, and try to set in a clear light those
constant features of Aristophanic Comedy which make it unlike the
A
2 THE OBIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
Comedy of other lands and later days. I shall also put forward an
hypothesis to account for them. Whether this hypothesis finds
favour or not, I hope to convince the reader of the need of some
explanation more adequate to the curious nature of the facts than
any that has yet been given.
one which most forcibly strikes the modern reader is the Parabasis
of the Chorus —a long passage which cuts the play in two about
half way through its course and completely suspends the action.
soon evident, in the first place, that nearly all of them end with an
incident no less canonical than the Agon —a festal procession (Kdmos)
and a union which I shall call a '
Marriage '
—a use of the term
to be hereafter justified. But that is not all. We shall also find
in almost every play two other standing incidents which fall between
—
the Agon and the final Kdmos a scene of Sacrifice and a Feast.
In several of the earlier plays these form nearly the whole of the
action, and fill nearly the whole time of presentation, in the
second part. In the later plays, from the Birds onwards, plots of
a more complicated type are developed, chiefly in this latter half
of the play but still the old sequence of fixed incidents in the
;
folk play and that behind this folk play lay a still earlier phase,
;
\^
dramatic representation was there from the very first.
1 Hist, de la lit. grecque-' (Paris, 1899), iii. 429. Mazon'a description (Essai
sur la comp. des Cmn. d'Arhl. p. 178) , is similar. So, too, is Couat's (Aristopkam
tt I'aiicienne Comidie attique', Paris, 1902, p. 14 ff.).
2 M. Croiset, op.
557, regards primitive Comedy as consisting of these
ell. p.
almost disconnected scenes, surviving in the second part of
the Aristophanio
play, while he thinks the first part manifestemeM ime extension du prologue, qui
'
—
between the two sorts of composition epirrhematic and episodic
which ZieKnski held to be characteristic of the two halves of the
play, led him to break an Aristophanic Comedy into two parts, each
of a different type. This entailed the supposition that these two
parts must at some time have been juxtaposed. Comedy must
have arisen, not merely by the confluence of two streams of influence,
but by the patching together of two kinds of dramatic performance
originally distinct. Ziehnski, accordingly, saw in the Pardbasis
the epilogue of the first part, and treated the second part as an
appendix. 2
' This seems, for instance, to be the view of Christ-Schmid {Griech. Littera-
turgesch,^, Munohen, 1908, i. 384) In diesem Teil (Parabasis) der altattischen
:
KomSdie achimmern noch deutlich kvltliche Vorgdnge aus dem alten Dionysos/est
hervor. An diesem Ilittelpunkt scMossen sich wohl, vorhergehend oder nachfolgend,
schon beim alten Volhsfest verhindingslos die cUlerlei komischen Szenen, die dann
durch die KunstkomOdie leidlich auf einen Faden gezogen warden sind und die
J. Poppelreuter passend mit den Entremeses bei den Kirchenfesten in Spanien ver-
glichen hat. Poppelreuter's theory will be criticised below, § 71.
^ Kaibel's view (s.v. Aristophanes, Pauly-Wiss. ii. 987) seems to be similar
Die Parabase redet in der Person des Dichters den Epilog . . Bis zur Parabase
.
ist sie (die Komodie) gam individuell, wie die epirrhematische Composition dieses
Teils zeigt : was hinzu kommt, lediglich urn den Umfavg zu erweitern, hat fremde
Form, die epeisodische Composition der TragOdie. Inhaltlich sind es ganz freie,
imeist possenha/te Scenen, die mit der Handhmg vor der Parabase in ideellem, after
nichi in logisch zwingtndem Zusammenhang etehen. Starkie ( Wasps, p. xxi), after
summarising Zielinski's view of the Parabasis as an epilogue, says: 'It seems
to me more probable that down to the end of the Parabasis, the Attic Comic
poets constructed their plays after the model set by Epioharmus. The succeed-
ing scenes are a survival of the old Phallic Posaenspiel, which suited too well the
iaste of the ordinary Athenian playgoer to be omitted with impunity.'
6 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
Dorian origin of
Various considerations seemed to point to a
another step along the same
these later scenes.^ Poppekeuter took
which they
Unes,when he suggested that the type of drama from
hke the Kasperlesjnel
must have come was some sort of popular play
of modern Germany. A later writer, W. Suss,^ has gone further
still, and maintained that this type of popular mime, whose influence
he detects in all the oldest form of Aristophanes']
parts of the plays, is
crept into the
Comedies, and he speaks of the Chorus as having
'
if anywhere,
mime.' Another ^ traces even the Agon, in which,
the Chorus have a real part in the action, to the non-choral Comedy
The present tendency is, thus, to
of the northern Peloponnese.
Comedy,
derive nearly all the characteristic features of Aristophanic
except the Parabasis and Exodos, from foreign sources and hardly ;
some elements of truth will not be denied. We shall later see good
reason to recognise certain affinities with Dorian forms of mime.
But we shall not admit that the structure of Aristophanic Comedy
could have been made by the simple juxtaposition of two blocks
of different origin. It will, I hope, become clear that there is a
'Ionian Possenapiel,' and suppose that it is the early part of the play that follow
the Dorian model set by Epicharmus. Cf. Starkie, Introd. to the Wasps.
^ De personarum, etc., p. 100.
tendency, and claim not only all the principal features of plot and
stnicture, but also the main types of character as the indigenous
growth of Attic soil. We shall end by reducing the contributions
of Megarian or Dorian mime within very narrow compass.
Our task, then, is to establish the existence of the underlying
plot-formula, to discover the ritual sources from which it derives,
and to show how our results can be reconciled with such of the
external evidence of literary tradition as deserves respect.
CHAPTEE II
THE EXODOS
4. The Exodos : Marriage and Komos
Reseeving the Agon, for a later chapter, we shall begin our examina-
tion with the last term in the fixed series of incidents which make
up the plot-formula of Aristophanic Comedy. The plays regularly
end with a procession in which the Chorus marches out of the;
orchestra, conducting the chief character in triumph and singing
a song technically known as the Exodos?- The hero, moreover,
is accompanied in this Komos by a person who, perhaps because she
is (except in one play) always mute, has attracted less notice than
she deserves. This person is sometimes a nameless coiirtesan,
sometimes an allegorical She is the temporary partner of
figure.
the hero in what is, though not always in the legal sense, a
in fact
marriage. She exists solely for that purpose, and has no other part
in the action, only making her appearance in time to take her
place beside the hero in his triumphal Edmos. Superficial dissimi-
larities of hterary form and variations dictated by the needs of the
several plots have diverted attention from the fact that what is
—
fundamentally the same incident this marriage with its Edmos —
ends almost every play of Aristophanes, no matter what its subject
may be. Before we discuss its significance, the facts must be set
before the reader in detail. We shall, accordingly, pass in review
the final scenes of all the plays in their order of date. Besides
the uniform character of the concluding incident, the reader is
invited to notice several cases in which the hero is treated with
royal, and even divine, honours — hailed as a new King or a new
God.
The AoHAENiAiJS ends with the scene (1190 fE.) in which DikaiopoHs
and Lamachus return, the one from the banquet with the priest of
Diony3Us,at which he haswon the drinking-competitionof the Choes}
the other from the battlefield, covered with wounds and other
marks of the miseries of war. Dikaiopolis has a courtesan on each
arm there are two of them, to match the two slaves who support
;
and calls upon the Chorus to sing it as they follow him. This cry is
who resigns to him the wreath of office (1250). When he has piously
1 1143. Dikaiopolis has been dismissed by the Chorus to this banquet with
the wish rif Sk xadeiSuv fierd, raiSiaKris wpaioriTTis.
:
\
^ Perhaps, aa Starkie holds (note ad loc], the Archon Basileus, who presided
at the Lenaea.
' Find. 01. ix. 1 t4 /tiv 'Apx^^^X"" A'^^"' (pavaev 'OXu^ir/?, KaWlviKos 6 r/snrXiot
:
TTJi-eXXa KuXKipiKOS. \
Char. dXX' itl/d/ieada a-ijv xapi-f |
TiJi-eXXa (caXXfi/i/cos ^ISovres ffi
Kai t6v ia-Kdv. Sehol. ad loc. T^veXXa' iilp-^qp-a iici.<jieiypuT05 aiXov rb riveKKa.
KaWlviKe 'Hpd/cXees, airbs re Klb\aos, Sio.
'Apx^^oxos- rnveWa, S) x<^'p' (Si-al
alxi^-ip-b.
ejaculated '
Zeus Hellanios, thine the prize of victory '
the
' 1406: Stov Si ravnivl Xafiiiv ttjh ^arpaxiSa. Pollux, iv. 116: i(r6TJTes /lit
rpayiKol TroixlXoy . . . rh, Si fTrijSXiJ/iaTO f uo-ris, /Sarpaxlf. . . .
sans doute trains dans ^orchestra. LA, on h traitait peut-gtre comme unt
victim
expiatoire (1405, (papnaKds) ; on lui mettait dans la main un/romage,
unt galetti,
deajigues, et le choeur U suivait e» U huant et en le flagellant avec des
scillei et aittret
THE EXODOS 11
In the second part of the Wasps the same situation comes twice
over. There are two chorika (1265 ff and 1450 fE) sung while the
actors are feasting or drinldng behind the scenes. At the conclusion
of each, a slave comes out to complain of the riotous behaviour of
!Philocleon, who shortly afterwards appears in a state to justify the
slaves' descriptions. On the first occasion, he is returning from
the dinner-party with a Kdmos of other guests, beating every one he
meets and quarrelling with his companions. He enters singing the
opening words of Cassandra's mad Hymenaeal in the Troades,^
plantes sauvages. (Cf. Tzetzes, C/iil. v. 726 Hippoiiai, frag. 5 and 7.) Mazon,
;
however, does not suggest the division of the Chorus into two parties, which
seems to me necessary. For the PharmaJcos, see below, p. 55. Mazon's con-
jecture is, I think, supported by Frogs 731, where the Chorus complains that
Athens uses for all her purposes the vilest politicians, ' men whom in former days
she would have thought twice before she used as pharmahoi ofcrii/ ^ irAXis irpb ' :
Knights) and once more make use of good men. St. Paul (1 Cor. iv. 6 ff. ) refers to
a similar ceremony (at Corinth?), where lie contrasts the Corinthians, who are
'
filled (KiKopeaiiivoi), have become rich ' (^TrXourijo-arc), and
' ' kings without us '
(xw/>i! ij/iuiv i^aatXeiaare), with the apostles, designated by God to be 'last of all,
as men doomed to death (eVxarous, lis eiriffocarious), made a spectacle (Biarpov)
'
'
'
to angels and men, 'fools' (liupol) for Christ's sake, reviled {XoiSopoH/i-evot),
peisecuted (SiojKo/ievot), defamed {Sva^rifioifievoi), He ends : us Trepi.Ka9dpimTa
Tov K^fffiov iycv-qSrit^ev, irAvrtav Trepi\p7jfia,. K6.6apfia and Trepl^tjua are both used of
the Pharmakos. What is specially interesting to us is the contrast with the
Corinthians who have 'become kings.' Compare also the expression 'we are
made a spectacle to men and angels with the last line of the Knights h' Cdicffiv
' :
The Exodos of the Peace is in the full form of the marriage Kdmos
with its hymenaeal song. The last scene opens with the demand!
for sacred silence, while torches are brought and the bride, the
mute attendant of Peace, Fruits-of-Summer (Opora), whom the
hero, Trygaeus, has received from the hands of Hermes (706), is led
forth.* After a prayer for plenty of corn and wine and figs, for
children and all the blessings of recovered peace, Opora and her
bridegroom, carried shoulder-high, go off to the country, attended
by the Chorus singing their fescennine verses with the refrain,
'
Hymen, Hymenaee, 0.'
Schol. on 134:1
' iraipa ti.s iiKoXovBei avrtfi, fjv IXaxe" ck toS <TVfjnroalov.
:
to the Sun and Moon.^ We are told that he is brandishing the very
thunderbolt of Zeus himself ; and it becomes clear as we proceed
that he is in fact to be regarded as a new Zeus. His appearance
with his consort hailed by the Chorus with the hymenaeal song,^
is
shake the earth and give her rain with his thunderings, for he has
become master of everything that belonged to Zeus,' and even of
'
his consort, Basileia.^ Pisthetairos then calls upon his bird subjects
to follow him to heaven, and bids Basileia to take his hand in the
dance. The Chorus conduct him out with cries of victory and
rejoicing. They call him Highest of the Gods ' and break into the
'
Ba(Ti\eiav.
' 1748 : ffl /iiya XP'^'^^O" &<rTepoTTJs tpdos, |
ffi Aids &p,PpoTov lyxos !rvp<p6pov , \
a x^ii-iai papvax^es \
(i/x/3po0(ipoi 0' d/ia ppovral, \
ah S5e vvv xe6va <re(ei. Aia |
U
T&vTa Kparitaas Kal Tdpedpov BaaCKeiav fjcei Ai.6s. \
'Tjnijc'T^^^oi' Si.
\
Satixbvoiv iripraTi.
Schol. ad V. 1764, tA riveWa . . . dir6 toO iipv/ivlov o5 elirei' 'Apxl>^oxos els rbv
'HpaKKia iMtra rbv iBXon Aiy^ov. T-qveXKa Si KaXXivixe, xo'pe ^va^ 'Hpd/tXees airds
5
The Scholiast on v. 1114 says that the play was called, from this part of it,
Av<ruTTpi,TTi fj Aia\Xa7oi.
14 THE ORIGIN OP ATTIC COMEDY
attractions of the courtesan that they lapse into language am-
biguously applicable to either, and come to an understanding.
They are bidden to enter the citadel and take the oaths. After a
banquet, two of them come out, thrusting the torches of the Kdmos^
into the bystanders' faces, and reflecting with drunken sagacity oi
the wisdom of not discussing international politics till after dinner.
me up ?
' mutters the Policeman, stirring in his slumbers. The'
girl's dance and kisses effect their purpose, and the PoUceman,
leaving his quiver as a pledge, goes off with her. Returning to find
^ 1275 :Lys. aviip di Tapa yvpoiKa Kal ywj] a-Tiyroi irap' ivSpa. \
' 1285 : Chor. AIo re wvpl 4>\tyl>ixcvov, iirl re iroTvlav 6.\oxov dX^lar, |
elra SI |
that the persons in the last scene are the servant and the husband of Praxagora,
not two quite unknown characters. See van Leeuwen's note on p. 2 of his
edition.
3 1117, of. 525.
^ 1136. Cf. Schol. ad v. 999 : /ii t^v' KippoUrifV us eralpa oScra. to0t6 (prjiri.
Zeus '
— —
Plutus himself has already come of his own accord and ;
canonical ending of the oldest extant Comedy. This fact has not
been sufficiently considered. The neglect is, no doubt, due to our
famiUarity with innumerable comedies, romances, and novels,
which terminate in a happy marriage. Such a finale is as regular
in these forms of literature as the death of the hero is in Tragedy
But, for reasons that will soon appear, this is not the last word
on the matter. A moment's reflection will show that, whereas a
marriage is the natural ending led up to by the whole course of
the modern romantic love-story, there is nothing whatever in the
previous incidents of an Aristophanic plot to prepare the spectator
for any such conclusion. The formula of the romantic plot ii
modern comedies and novels, reduced to its barest and most abstract
form, would be something of this sort. Two young lovers, prevented
by circumstances from attaining their desires, are, after various
dangers and adventures which bring them to the brink of despair,
at last united by a sudden turn of good fortune and live happily
ever afterwards. If illustration were needed. The History of Tom
Ghor. <l>aLv€Tai'
<!Ti(j)aLVOv y4 Toi Kal S^S' Ix'^" TropeiieraL.
THE EXODOS 17
Jones, which stands at the head of the great series of English novels,
is a typical instance. The tradition of this romantic plot might be
followed up through renaissance and mediaeval novels to the
romances of later antiquity, such as Daphnis and Ghloe. Another
line would lead through the learned Comedy, influenced by Plautus
the hero, and she is not merely married, but distinguished for her
Ihostihty to the other sex. The courtesan or allegorical personage
' who is the female partner in the '
marriages '
we have reviewed, is
' With the possible exception of his last play, the Cocalus, which appears to
have resembled the New Comedy.
B
18 THE OBIGIN OF ATTIC COMEBY
satirical operas of W. S. Gilbert, the Victorian Aristophanes, end in
this way ; but then they are built round the love-story of the
missed with false analogies from later forms of the comic art con-
so far from being dictated by the social and literary themes of the
OIH Comedy, or demanded by the general design of the plays them-,
selves, that it cannot be regarded as the product of poetic invention,
working free from any sort of tradition. Yet it certainly cannot
be accounted for by any hterary convention known to us. I do
not see what remains but to suppose that the tradition which lies
behind this standing feature of the comic plot is not literary, hut
I
'
0. Kern (Tityroi, Hermes, 1913, p. 318) concludes that Tityroi are rams,
just as T(i&yoi are he-goats.
20 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
certainly in some and possibly in all, wearing an artificial
cases
phallus as part of his costume.^ We have seen too, that he regularly
leads a Kdmos at the end, as male partner in a marriage. If we
death and rise again in renewed youth, and vigour. That such
conceptions are at home in the cult of Dionysus is so well known
that we need not dwell upon the point here : some of the actual
rites willbe discussed later. What now concerns us is to point out
that in several of Aristophanes' plays this idea of the succession of
a new God or King of fertility is prominently associated with the
concluding marriage and triumph.
making terms.^
The final scene shows us Pisthetairos, dressed in his bridal robe,
and hailed not only as King of the new city, with the Queen of
Heaven for his bride, but also as a new Zeus a new master of the —
thunder and fertihsing rain. "VThe details here are significant,
because the whole passage institutes an elaborate comparison
between Pisthetairos and the Olympic victor.^ This analogy is
peculiarly instructive.
We have seen how the appearance of Pisthetairos and his bride,
compared by the messenger in words of almost Aeschylean
Basileia, is
grandeur, to the Sun and Moon shining in all the splendour of their
golden rays, and how, in the hymenaeal song that follows, their
wedding is likened to the marriage of Zeus and Hera, driven by
Bros in a chariot with golden reins. The same conjunction of ideas
seems to have been attached to the pair of Olympic victors the —
winner of the chariot-race and the winner of the Virgins' race at
represented Zeus, it becomes probable that the olive-crowned victor in the girls'
race, which was held every fourth year at Olympia in honour of Hera, repre-
sented in like manner the god's wife; and that in former days the two to-
gether acted the part of the god and goddess in that sacred marriage which is
known to have been celebrated in many parts of Greece. This conclusion is
confirmed by the legend that the girls' race was instituted by Hippodamia in
gratitude for her marriage with Pelops for if Pelops as victor in the chariot-race
;
represented Zeus, his bride would naturally play the part of Hera. But under
the names of Zeus and Hera the pair of Olympic victors would seem to have
really personated the Sun and Moon, who were the true heavenly bridegroom
and bride of the aucient octennial festival.'
THE EXODOS 23
and the fiery liglitnings of Zeus and the dread flashing thunderbolt/ _,
they break out into a song which declares that Pisthetairos'ls now
'
master of everything that belongs to Zeus it is he who now will ' :
shake the earth with rumbUng thunders that bring the rain.^ He
is not merely like Zeus, but, transfigured in the beauty of his renewed
'
'
Hurrah for the victor highest of the Gods !
SaLiiovtov virepraTe.
Aesoh. Eum. 829 : Ath. K&yu> T^woiBa Z-qvl, koI ri Set \ifei.v ;
have served for the Exodos of the Acharnians, and perhaps also of
;
/SofflXeia ' in Fasciculim loanni Willis Clark dicatus (Cantabrigiae, 1909),
pp. 529 ff. ; and A. B. Cook, Nephelokokkygia,' in Essays and Studies presented
'
to William Ridgeivay (Cambridge, 1913). Mr. Sheppard sees a reference, not only
to the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, but also to the sacred marriage of
Dionysus and the Athenian paalXiaaa. My own argument seems to confirm
this view, which is anticipated by J. E. Hirrison, Myth, ond Moil,
of Anc.
Athens (1890), p. 52.
= SeeJ. G. Frazer,(?.B. •',Jlfa(7i>.4w, vol. ii.(London,1911),p.l3Gff.,
who points
out that, while the Queen took her oath of purity at the Anthesteria, there is
no positive evidence that the marriage was held at that festival. Mr. Cook, in
his brilliant restoration of the reliefs of the stage of Phaedrus in the Athenian
theatre {Zeiis, vol. i. p. 708, pi. xl. }, finds the scene of this sacred marriage
depicted on the third slab. The four slabs represent, he believes,
(1) the birth
of Dionysus (2) his entrance into Attica ; (,S) the sacred marriage with the
;
between Zeus and Hera is also clearly referred to, and, as we have
argued above, probably the marriage of the pair of Olympic victors.
What is important to our argument is the indisputable fact that
the yearly ritual of Dionysus at Athens included precisely that rite
which we have supposed to be the basis of the canonical Exodos of
Aristophanes' plays.
his will be worth twopence, if you get back your sight ? To what '
does Zeus owe his rule ? To money, the gift of Plutus himself
For what do men sacrifice to him ? Without Plutus' consent,
else
they will not even be able to pay for a victim, and the Gods will
starve. Plutus single-handed can overthrow the power of Zeus,*
and all will go well with mankind. The reader will notice how
closely this argument resembles Pisthetairos' discourse to the
Birds, and the means by which the new kingdom is established
are the same the Gods are starved out and their ministers make
:
their submission. At the end of the play, not only does the priest
1
It will appear that the Plutus, though the latest of the plays, is in some
respects nearer in structure to the earliest plays than some of its predecessors.
The explanation probably lies in the fact that it is the second edition of a play
first produced in 408 (Schol. on Plutus, 173).
i
87 ff.
has tried various unfortunate means of scahng the sky, and at last
found his Pegasus in the reluctant and gluttonous beetle. He
means to ask Zeus himself, once for all, what his intentions
are.^ Aristophanes, as always, refrains from bringing Zeus upon
the scene. When Trygaeus asks for him, Hermes makes excuses
for his absence, and only Polemos appears. Trygaeus, of course,
carries his point with Hermes, whom he induces to help in dragging
up Peace from her underground cavern and to give him the divine
bride, whose spousals are celebrated in the hymenaeal Exodos.
The play thus presents the New Zeus motive in a milder form.
'
Nonsense,' replies Socrates what do you mean by Zeus ?
;
'
Clouds, too, whose rolling motion causes the thunder. But who '
strikes and shrivels us, and scorches where it does not kill ? This,
at any rate, is clearly sent by Zeus to fall upon the perjurers.' The
answer is forcible : we need not look far to find perjurers who have
never been blasted ; and the bolt quite as often strikes the temple
of Zeus himself or his own trees, the oaks, which cannot be guilty
of impiety. The thunderbolt is explained physically by the action
of a dry wind on the clouds.
The deposition of Zeus by the usurping Dinos leads to conse-
quences which, at the end of the play, finally revolt Strepsiades,
when he hears the same doctrine from the lips of his son. In
Pheidippides' mind it has led to the practical conclusion that there
is no harm in beating his father.^ The incident is the occasion of
the Agon,^ in which the young man all but triumphs over the old,
were it not that his offer to maintain the '
worse reason '
and prove
1 365 ff.
Strepsiades' favourite oath, Clouds 1, & ZeD ^aaiXeO rd XPW" t"'' "inTUv Saov,
and 153, ZeO jSao-iXeB r^s Xeirr^TT/T-os rfiy <ppevui>.
ffl Perhaps 7ra/i^a(r(Xeia 'AjraiAXi;
(1150) might be regarded as the wife of Dinos, the impious counterpart of the
Basileia of the Birds. (The Clouds are called Tra/t/SatriXeiai at 357.)
' He
has learnt from the Unjust Reason (904) that there can be no Justice,
or Zeus would have perished for binding his father Kronos.
" 1345 ff.
30 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
the Tightness of beating his mother too, brings about a revulsion
in his father. Strepsiades calls upon him to respect Zeus Patr6os.
'
Hark at you with your Zeus Patr6os cries Pheidippides !
'
'
how old-fashioned you are As if there were any Zeus There ! !
' '
is !
' affirms Strepsiades emphatically. '
There is not/ answers hia
son ;
'
Dinos has driven out Zeus, and he is King now.' ^ The old
man vehemently recants his former folUes, accusing the heavenly
Whirl of having turned his head. He calls for his slave to bring
the pick of Zeus, overturn the whole race in one common destruction,
and the murky flame bring thy body and thy house to ashes.'
Pisthetairos, nothing daunted by this tragic outburst, retorts the
threat. If Zeus gives him any trouble, he will send his fire-bearing
Str. iiTT.v.
The Scholiast on this passage quotes Soph. frag. 659 [Chrises), MaxAXp Zij^Js
i^ai'a<rTpa<f>iJ. The language of Cloud.'i 1486, ap-Lvii^v <j>ipuv . . . tJ riyoi Kuri-
o-KOTrT' recalls Aesoh. Again. .'525 T^oloi' Kara^Kd^avrtx. toO SiKr/iphpov
:
Aios fiaK^Wn, \
as the repentant minister of the old Zeus, now reinstated after the
interregnum of inverted morality and Ucence under Dinos.^
There are thus three (or, if we count the Peace, four) plays of
Aristophanes whose chief motive is the accession of a new God to
the throne of the old Zeus. We must next turn to others, in which
the closely allied notion of the accession of a new King dominates
the plot and especially its end.
Two other plays, the Knights and the Frogs, are ahke in that
there is in each a long struggle between two competitors for a seat
of honour, in presence of a judge who represents the Athenian
public of the fnyx (Demos) or the theatre (Dionysus). In the
Knights, the contest is, in a sense, between young and old, for the
Sausage-seller is supported by the youthful knights, while Cleon,
the Paphlagonian, appeals to the '
old men ' of the law courts.^
The competition throughout is for the seat at the pubUc table in
the Prytaneum. Cleon's enjoyment of this privilege is repeatedly
mentioned, and the transference of it to his conqueror is the last
fruit of victory.^ But, though the Sausage-seller wins the wreath
and privileges of office and is hailed as kallinikos (1254),* while his
In view of the frequency of the New Zeus motive, it is curious that the Old
1
Man, Philooleon, in the Wa$ps, in the course of his Agon with the Young Man,
his son, compares his power in the law courts to the kingdom of Zeus 620 8. :
Up' oi) /leydXriv ipxh" &PX<^ ""^ '"'''' ^'^' oiSiv iMrru, SffTis i.Koiw TailB' Hvep 6 Zeiis ; |
irXoi/ToCirfs |
KoX vdvv a-eimoi. At the beginning of the Agon, he is addressed as
pleading for his kingdom Tcpl rfji xdo-T/s p,i\\o>v pa<n\eias i,vn\oyfi<rei.v
:
of Demos, who are called his 'lovers' (Ipaarai), run a race while the object of
their affections 'plays the coquette
'
: v. 1159, Saumge-seller : S.<pes dirb ^aX^lSav
32 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
antagonist is reduced to his rival's former menial trade, the final
reverence and taking his hand and Aeschylus made room for him.
;
But in the present strife Sophocles will stand as odd man out, and
dispute the victory only if it falls to Euripides. When Aeschylus
is taken back to the upper world, he bequeaths his throne during
his absence to Sophocles.*
In both these plays the main interest turns on a contest for what
is, in a democracy, the nearest equivalent to a royal throne. The
Prytaneum, containing the common hearth and household gods
of the state, was a survival Once more, too,
of the King's palace.
we find an analogy with the Olympic victor, who, at the conclusion
of the Games, was feasted in the Prytaneum.
It may be noted here that the greatest of all the demagogues,
Pericles himself, was again and again compared by the writers of
the Old Comedy to Zeus, and given the title of tyrant or king.
Kratinus calls him a tyrant born of the marriage of old Kronos
and the spirit of Eevolution, Stasis.^ Pericles is the squill-headed '
followed by a feast and sacriBoe in one (Neil on 1168) and the crowning of the
victor, saluted as KaWlvLKos (1254), resembles the race of suitors for the bride.
The Paphlagonian whose wreatli is taken a^^•ay is like Oenomaus, the defeated
old king.
' 967. The Sausage-seller produces an oracle to this effect.
' '
1330: Chor. 5eI|0Te riv ttjs 'EXXdSos vfuv xal ttjs 7^5 T^o-Se ixbvapxov
Xaip\ a fiaffiXeO rO>v 'BXXiJxoj;'.
» 761 ff. ' \h^:^ ff. 5 Frag. 240 K.
THE EXODOS 33
Kpavlov I
^av. Plutarch Vit. Per. 13 : to 'OSefoK . . . eMpa X^yovcri. yevitreai koX
C
34 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEBY
Ecclesiazusae, packs the assembly with women disguised in their
husbands' clothes, and by a snap vote puts her sex in absolute
authority over the state. She then estabhshes a Utopian Constitu-
tion, with a likeness, probably more than accidental, to some
features of Plato's —
EepubUc a form of government more than once
compared by its author to the Reign of Kronos in the Golden Age.
In Aristophanes, the exchange of dress between the sexes reflects
a custom which frequently marks Saturnahan festivals.^ The
general atmosphere of hcence, and in particular the sexual freedom
which marks the Old Comedy, are explained and justified by the
persistence of these associations. The Golden Age is an extra-
ordinarily frequent motive in the Old Comedy. ^
The chapter opens with a derivation of all poetry from the innate
human instinct for imjiatisce-cepigsgntaiiou (mimesis), aidedby a
natural sense of harmony and rhythm. Starting from these original
aptitudes, men, by a series of gradual improvements on their first
^
efforts, ' created poetry out of their improvisations.'
Poetry was divided into two kinds," according to the difference of
' Published by Cramer, An. Par. i. 403, and discussed by Bernays, Zwei
Abhandl. iiher d. Ar. Theorie des Dramas, Berlin, 1880. It is now printed in
Kaibel's Com. Or. Frag. i. p. 50.
2 Poet. 5, 1449 a, 37.
* iy4vvri<rav t^p irolrjcriy ix rdv aiTO(XXfSMcrii,iT<av.
^ Aristotle here follows Plato, who speaks of ' each of the two sorts of poetry,'
Theaet. 152 B, tSv ttohjtw o! S,Kpoi ttjs Toiriffews iKaripas, KU/iifSlas /ih 'Erlxap/Jios,
rpayifSlai 5i "Qp.ifpos.
36 THE OBIGESr OF ATTIC COMEDY
make him the object of abuse, satire, lampoon, and it was in this '
^
metre that they used to iambise one another.'
There are thus two main traditions, the graver poets writing heroic
verse, the others iambic. Homer's position is pecuUar, for his
& (ti Kal vvv iv jToXXors rdv irdXeuv Sianim vo/tifiyneva kot4 /UKpbv 7ji)Ji)9)) (^
rpayifidla) ktX.
" 1449 a, 37 : ol /iiu oSv t^s rpaytfiSias /ieTa/Sdireis Kai St' Siv ^y^voi-to oi \e\-^6a<rai,
T] Si Kia/UfiSia Sid t6 fii] trirouSdfetrSai i^ dpxiji (\a8cv •
Koi yiip xop^" KUHifSuii d<j/( irore
6 ipxw iSuK(v, dXX' i$c\ovTai ^irav. ijSri Si irx'fll'^T& riva aiVr^s ^oiJo-ijs oi "Ke^biuvm
ain-Tii TTOirfTal luirtfiOveiovTai. ris Si Tp6<Twira iiriSwKef 1j irpoXi7oiis ^ 7rXi}6i) {nroKpiTiiv
Kai S<ro TotavTa, ijyv6riTai. For these last statements see below p. 216.
THE PHALLIC SONGS 37
not only to perform the part of Leader of this Phalhc Song, but
' '
also to act as his own Chorus. The form of the Song is important.
It opens with an invocation of Phales, the companion of Bacchus
in his nightly revels, who is greeted once more after six years of
1 Nilaaon's description of the scene [Studia, 91) ignores this first procession,
but the text (241-24:3) seems to imply it. I agree with the stage directions as
given in Starkie's edition.
' An interesting, though one-sided, study of the relations of work to poetic
rhythm will be found in Biicher's Arbf.it und Rhythmus (4 Aufl., Teubner, 1909).
THE PHALLIC SONGS 39
wailing.' Each utters her grief in eloquent words, and, as she ends,
the whole company howl together. In this case the improvised
solos are, of course, '
serious '
(airovhala, as Aristotle would say)
but on happier occasions the same form naturally lent itself to
encomia of a hghter kind for instance, the Marriage Songs ;
provised '
iambic,' often taking the form of imprecations upon the
householder, either of blessings if he gives liberally or of the reverse
' Schol. ad Pac. 459 : roe ''Spiiriv Kal raOra i^tipx^t" 0i\ov<ri . . . raOra ava
ixipot "Kiyerai, rb ftiv toO 'B/jjaoO KeKeiovros Kal fX/covros, rb di ruv iMbvriiiv
iwnKovbvTiiiv
2 1 Kings xviii. 26 A. V. marg.
3 xxiv. 718 3'
flf. : r^iri-v aW
"EkA^ti adivoS i^rjpxe yboio (747). For the dotSoiis
ep^uv iUpxo^' 720 see Nilsson, ' Der Ursprung der Tragodie,' JV. Jahrb. f.
of '^-
101 S. is a good instance. The leader sings three or four lines alternately with
three or four lines by the Chorus.
40 THE OEIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
if he isThe Pseudo-Homeric Eiresione Song preserves the
stingy.
type, and better still the Ehodian Swallow-Song recorded by
Athenaeus.^ This last has the choral verse beginning The swallow '
has come, has come,' followed by iambic Unes in which the children
threaten to carry ofi the wife of the grudging householder, and
promise that, if he gives, he shall get much good. L. von Schroder,^
in his interpretation of Rg Veda, as a hymn belonging to a
ix. 112,
Leader of the procession who sings the stanzas of the song, while
the rest only join in the refrain,' and remarks that he is a typical
figure whose congeners appear in the European processions, such
as that of the Sword-dancers.
In the procession of the mystics, whose ritual songs form the
Parados of the Frogs, the lacchos Song consists of three stanzas
in iambic metre, each ending with the refrain invoking lacchos to
join in the procession. It is immediately followed by a passage
resembUng, no doubt, the canonical Jesting at the Bridge '
'
Vive la,
Vive la,
Vive la compagnie I
especially thosewhich perpetuated the Roman Kalends. Thus, the Synod held
at Rome in 826 {canon xxxv.) speaks of bad Christians who go to church on
feast days, tallando, verba turpia decantando, choros tenendo ac ducendo, simili-
tudinem pagamorum pera'gendo. Du Mdril, Hist, de la ComMie (Paris, 186i), i.
p. 67. A good collection of similar texts from the Fathers and Church Councils
is given by B. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage (Oxford, 1903), vol. ii.
Appendix N.
^ Dionysus is invoked to lead the Kui/tos in Thesmoph. 987, riyov Si y' ffiS' airis
ail I
Ki<rcro^6pe Bd((X"e |
SicrTor' • iyi) di /cii/xois |
ffi ^i\oxlipoi.ai fiiX^pa. He is actually
called Ifo/J^os, Eur. Bacch. 141 d d' HapX"^ Bp6fuos, of. 115, Bpi/uos Scms Ayu
Bida-ovs. Soph, Ant. 154, 6eui> W vaois x°P°^^ warmixtois irdvTa! iTriXdu/iey, o 9^/3os
3' iXeXlxOuv BdKXtos ipxoi.
Cf. Reich, DerMimus, i. 327, who points out that the other root of Comedy,
'
'
The Autokabdali (" Improvisers "), as they are called, used to'
they have flowered sleeves and tunics with a white stripe down the
middle, and they are girt with a Tarentine mantle (a long transparent
garment) which covers them down to the ankles. They enter in
silence through the door (in the back-scene of the theatre), and
when they reach the middle of the orchestra they turn towards
the audience and say :
'
The wear no mask, but they put
Phallophori,' he continues, '
dpdbs i<r^vdwfihos
Sia iJ,iaov /3a5/feiv.
The God, Phales, or the phallus borne erect on its pole.
of course, is
'^
(TTi(j>avov dacriiv iav Kal kIttov, like the wreath worn by Alcibiadea in the
Next they ran forward and satirised persons whom they had fixed
on. They performed standing still. The bearer of the phallus . . .
ait. prim. 14) that Semos in this circumstantial description deserts truth to
dently closely akin to the third part of Dikaiopolis' ritual —the pro-
cessionresumed after the sacrifice and accompanied by the Phalhc
Song. The form and content of the Phalhc Song remain essentially
unaltered. There is first the invocation of the God, then the im-
provised '
speeches ' (pi]aei<;) or '
Iambi,' containing personal satire
'"
(rwOaa-fioi) upon individual spectators. The important change
is that the performance has been detached from the old country
ritual procession of which it once formed the concluding part, and
I
has become a stationary performance in a permanent theatre.
The authors of these descriptions do not state how they are related
to the ruder Phalhc Songs of country ritual, such as that sung by
Dikaiopolis. But it seems probable that the Phallophori, Auto-
kabdali, and the rest were guilds or societies of fashionable young
men, like the Ithyphalh, Tribalh, Autolekythi, whose drunken revels
disturbed the peaceable citizens of the Athens of Demosthenes.^
There was also a club of Fools (' The Sixty ') who met in the precinct
of Heracles at Kynosarges.^ They may, perhaps, be alluded to by
Aristophanes in the phrase AiofieiaXd^ove^.^ EarUer than this,
who spent his whole Ufe in the service of Dionysus, wearing Dionysiac
dress and maintaining a large company of fellow-devotees. He
was always leading a Edmos by day or night. He composed
'
Comedies {i.e. satires) and many other poems of the same sort,
'
more resemblance to such oluba than to the Orphic cults. Some dispute the
existence of the Diomean Club as early as Aristophanes' time see Starkie's ;
ciSalfiMv duBpuiTTos cii(j>v^s re vepi wolri<riv &v TrdfTa riv /3to ^Siovwiafei', iffBIJTi. te
AioKwria/c?!' (popSiv koI iroWoiis Tpi(j>(jiv o-u/i/Sd/cxous, ii9iyiv re Kwfi.ov alel fi.€$' inUpaf
Koi viKToip . . . oSros Si koI KU/iipSlas iirolei Kal rdv &\\a woWi, iv roirifi rif rphirip
4 i^ijpxe Tois 11(6' airoS (paWo^opoviri. Rohde, Griech. Roman p. 270,
iroi.T)iii.TU)v,
^
remarks that KaiufSlat would mean srMrzhafU GtdicUe, ja wold gar phaiUastisch
erfundene Brzdhlungen in Prosa, and illustrates this use of the word.
THE PHALLIC SONGS 45
then the other half-Chorus sing the Antode, followed by the Ant-
epirrheme, recited by their leader. We are not now concerned with
this 'epirrhematic' structure, further than to note that it is not (as it
' Martyr. S. Timoth. (Lobeck, Aglaoph. 177), rijs ''E<f}e<rlo>v iarl \el\j/ava Trjs
irpihiiv elSuXoKarpelas KaTayuyelwi' oCtw KoKov/iivoiv, lis airol rdre iK&Kovv eopr^v iv
TlHipau Ticlv iTtTeXovvTes, Tpoirx^fiara iiiv dirpeir^ iaVToti irpoffTlBeiiTes irpds Si t6 lii]
We have now made out what Aristotle means by the Leaders '
(Antode), Phoebus, Artemis, Athena, Dionysus. The Wasps, 1061 (Ode), invoke
their former selves, the ghosts of their youth. Peace, 775 (Ode), MoCcro iri /ifi/
TToX^Mous dTToxTttM^va, 796 (Antode), XctpiTcs. Birds, 737 (Ode), MoOaa \oxiMia.
Lysiatrata is exceptional see below p. 125.
; Thesmoph. 829, Ode and Antode
are wanting. Frogs, 675 (Ode), MoCtra xop'^i' 'fpwc.
THE PHALLIC SONGS 47
no germ out of which a drama could grow. The form into whiclT
those old rude Phalhc Songs of the country festivals could and did
develop we have before us in the performance of the Phallophori
in the theatre. These bands of young men are not actors they^ ;
dramatic than the mask and domino assumed in the modern carnival,
in order to conceal the wearer's identity, while he behaves in a way
that might have unpleasant consequences if he were recognised.
From such a performance we might derive something like the
Parabasis of the Old Comedy, though even this has features which
cannot be so explained^-3ut the Parabasis is not the drama. It
merely interrupts the action of the play ; the actors leave the stage
while it is performed ; its contents are irrelevant and in no way
help out the course of the action. The element of drama here sinks
to the lowest point : the Chorus-leader in the introductory Anapaests
drops the mask completely and deUvers a message direct from the
poet to the Athenian pubUc. Nothing could be clearer than that
the play itself, with all its curious and stiff conventions of form and
plot, could not possibly grow out of the Parabasis as a nucleus.
Aristotle, moreover, never meant to say that it did.*" As we have
It has never been doubted that the phalUc procession, with its
sacrificeand Kdmos, belongs to a well-known class of rites, to be
found all over Europe and in many other regions, and intended
to secure the fertihty of the earth and of man and beast. Plutarch ^
describes the corresponding procession in his native Boeotia as
'
of a popular and joyful character. One carried an amphora of
wine and a bough ; another dragged along a goat ; a third followed
carr5dng a basket of dried figs; and, to crown all, the phallus.'
Herodotus beheved that the institution of such festivals in Greece
^
1 Z>e cup. divit. 8. For all these ceremonies see NiUson'a Stndia, p. 90 ff.
2 ii. 49.
' Mediaeval Stage, i. 164. Mr. Chambers refers to Kogel, Oesch. d. deutschen
lAtteratur, i. i. 6. * /bid. p. 118.
THE PHALLIC SONGS 49
1 Oermania, 40.
the supposed
2
The magical potency of the phallus is well illustrated by
regarded by Kretschmer
connection of the words fascinum and ^i^Kapos,
or Thracian speech. It is
(EinUitung, 248*) as borrowed from lUyrian
^^T"". ^/coXoyer^ Hesyoh.,
may come
conjectured that /Sifo,, m'-h P^'^'^^^"-
de la. langm greeque (1910),
from the same source. Of. Boisacq, Did. etym.
Etym. WSrterb. s.v. fascinum. Phallic objects
s.v. pdffKavos; Walde, Latein.
are, of course, used to avert the evil eye.
3 The Poetics of Aristotle (London, 1911), p. 142.
D
50 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
division of primitive poetry into encomium and invective, observes
that Arabic poetry has never passed beyond this stage, and adds
what Aristotle did not know —that both are in origin the magical
utterance of words fraught with blessings or curses. He instances
the involuntary blessings uttered by Balaam in place of the curses
desired by his employer, and the insults by which Apollonius of
Tyana and his party got rid of a vampire on their travels.
'
The spell against a demon usually takes the form of violent
abuse.'
Examples from classical antiquity readily occur, notably in the
fescennine'^ verses sung at the Eoman triumph or the wedding
procession. The same double intent of stimulating fertihty and
averting bad influences hes at the root of many forms of festival
dance, which, when the serious purpose has died out of them, are
kept up under the sanction of old custom, and partly for the sake
of the inherent pleasurableness of obscenity. In the same way
XoiBopo'i (abuse) passes into ludus (play).^ There can be no doubt
that the element of invective and personal satire which distinguishes
the Old Comedy is from the magical abuse of
directly descended
the phallic procession, just as is due to the sexual
its obscenity
magic and it is likely that this ritual justification was well known
;
Tk KaXiovcri iivnT'fipia, Aiyiimoi. The term SeUrjXa is the name also of the oldest
known type of drama at Sparta.
" The notion of an abstract spirit or genius incarnate in a representative,
though earlier than any drama, is of course not primitive. The abstraction
itself must first arise by a process of generalisation from repeated concrete facta.
On this process see J. E. Harrison, Ancient Art and BitucU (1913), pp. 70-73.
52 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
Here, in the very type of ritual to which Aristotle bids us look
for the origins of Comedy, we find the necessarygerm from which
could arise a form of drama strongly marked by the obscenity
intowhich positive sexual magic must degenerate, and the invective
which perpetuates the old negative element of magical aversion.
Some of the various forms which such a drama may assume will be
passed in review in the next chapter, before we return to the other
fixed features of the Aristophanic plot, which they will serve to
elucidate.
CHAPTER IV
SOME TYPES OF DRAMATIC FERTILITY RITUAL
motley bits of cloth, and so forth. The tree thus adorned is called
Summer or May. Boys carry it from house to house singing appro-
priate songs and begging for presents. Among their songs is the
following :
'
bed ; while the Pharmakos carried a phiale, the ritual theft of
which from the temple of Apollo was yearly enacted as part of
' Plutarch {8ymp. 8. 1. 1.) tella us that the 7eWfl\ia of Socrates were celebrated
on the 6th of Thargelion, those of Plato on the 7th. This implies, not that the
two philosophers were really born on those days, but that Plato was held to be
an incarnate Apollo (cf. Mommsen, Feste, 469), and— what is much more striking
—that Socrates, the purifier of men's souls, who suflfered an unjust death, was
regarded as a Pharmakos, who bore the sins of Athens on his innocent head.
2 The sources are given and discussed by Mommsen, Feste, 468 £f. ; J. E.
plead her beneficence in the Agon, is driven away with curses, like
a PharmaJcos.
Harpoor. p. 180 Bekk., s.v. iap/j,aK6s. , . . 6Vi Si ivofui Kipiiv icTiv 6 ^apfMKis,
lepis Si (piAXas toO 'AiriXXu^'os (cX^^as &\ovs iirb tuv irepl rbv 'kxiWia KaT^KeiaBij,
Kal TO, Toh QapytjKtois dYi/xeva Toirav Airo/iififi/iaTd Istlv, "Iot/jos iv i. twv 'Aw6X\uvos
iirKpaveL&v etpTjKev.
2 Cf. Mommsen, Feste, 481. » Frazer, O. .B.^, Dying
Ood, p. 254.
" 'Heilige Handlung,' Arch. f. Beligionswiss. vii. (1904) p. 301.
SOME TYPES OF DRAMATIC FERTILITY RITUAL 57
in the month Xandikos before the Spring equinox. The rite
marked the opening of the campaigning season, and was regarded
as a purification of the army. On the occasion described by Livy^
it consisted of three parts. First came the Lustration : the army
marched between the two halves of a slain dog. Then followed
the Parade {Decursus) and finally the two halves of the army
;
In the battle of Summer and Winter the two powers are clearly
opposed and distinct. In other forms the good spirit and his
antagonist are felt to be, after all, only two successive representatives
of the same Here again, the explanation is obvious with
principle.
reference to the order of time. The spirit of the new year and of its
^
6 fif. in lustratione et decursu el simulacra ludicro pugnae. Cf. also Plut.
xl. ,
Vit. Alex. 31, which describes a mock battle between two parties of
Alexander's
(Suid.
followers, led by an 'Alexander' and a 'Darius.' Polyb. xxiii. 10, 17
s.v. ivayliuv). Similar sham fights in Java and Turkestan are described by
Frazer, Q. The Scapegoat (London, 1913), p. 184.
B.^',
2 The Central Eskimo,' Sixth Ann. Rep. of the Bureau of Mthnol.
P. Boas, '
(Washington, 1888), p. 605 Frazer, The Dying God (London, 1911), p. 259.
;
' The Scapegoat (London, 1913), p. 180, where many instances are collected.
myths of the contests of Heracles with Death (Alcestis) Old Age (the
the ;
'
5 and 6. An Anagnorisis—discovery or recognition—of the slain
and mutilated Daimon, followed by his Eesurrection or Apotheosis
or, in some sense, his Epiphany in glory. This I shall call by the
general name Theofhany.'
Iam not now concerned with the details of this theory, though
I may be allowed to say that I am convinced that it is, in general,
true, and that it provides an indispensable root for the growth of
the tragic drama. Whether Tragedy so originated or not, at any
* The theory was, I believe, first published at the meeting of the Classical
pieces and has his pitiful and tragic Re'cognition at the close.^
Such are some of the chief varieties of the dramatic ritual associ-
ated with the renewal of life in spring. The essential content of
them all is ultimately the same as that of the PhalUc Song, the
victory of the Spirit of Ufe over the adverse influences of bhght
and death. The only difEerence is that this Spirit, instead of being
merely invoked to be present at the procgssion of his worshippers,
is visibly embodied in the person of one of them, and his contest
with the adversary, his death and resurrection, are enacted in
jpantomime.
In modern Europe, this primitive magical ceremony has given
birth to two main types of festival performance, according as one
or other of its two elements, the choral dance or the rudimentary
drama, has tended to prevail. The Sword-dance, including the
Morris Dance, probably, as Mr. Chambers ^ argues, has its origin
here, not in the war-dance some of the figures retain traces of the
:
Whatever the nature of the fight, the result is always the same.
'
One or more of the champions falls, and then appears upon the
scene a Doctor, who brings the dead to life again. The central . . .
action of the play consists, then, in these two episodes of the fight
1 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, i. 211 flf., from whom the following
descriptionis quoted. Mr. Chambers gives the text of one version in an
Appendix.
62 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
and the resurrection ; and the protagonists, so to speak, are the
heroes — a ragged troop of heroes, certainly—and the Doctor.'
Many similar ceremonies exist in northern Europe. A good
parallel is by the Whitsuntide mummery in Saxony and
furnished
Thiiringen, called Chasing the Wild Man out of the bush,' or
'
'
Fetching the Wild Man out of the wood.' A young fellow is '
W. Mannhardt, Baumhultus, pp. 335 sq. For the Doctor, as a survival of the
primitive medicine-man, magician, Soliaman, etc., see L. von Schroder,
Myiterium und Mimus (Leipzig, 1908), p. 370, who finds a humorous picture of
this seller of magical herbs in Rg Veda, 10, 97. The Doctor as a comic figure thus
goes back to the Aryan Urzeit. See also pp. 448 fl'. of the same work. We
shall return to the Doctor below, p. 156.
' K. M. Dawkins, • The Modern Carnival in Thrace and
the Cult of Dionysus,'
/. H. S., xxvi. (1906), 191 ; A. J. B. Waoe, 'North Greek Festivals,' Brit. Sch.
Ann. xvi. (1909-10), 232.
SOME TYPES OE DRAMATIC EBRTILITY RITUAL 63
money, and singing songs of the type above described, which
combine the invocation of blessings on the generous giver with
personal references to the householder and his family,
adapted to
their ages and occupations.^ In Thrace one
of them carries a
wooden phallus, afterwards used in the play, with which he knocks
at the doors, 2 and an obscene pantomime is enacted on
the straw-
heaps before the houses by a male character and another man
disguised as his wife. In the same instance the drama, proper is
prefacedby a hand-in-hand dance of all the characters, in which
the PoUcemen,' two characters carrying swords and whips, with
'
In the first act of the play itself, an old woman, the '
Babo,'
appears carrying in a basket a swaddled puppet, representing a
seven months' child of which she seems to be the illegitimate
mother. She declares that the baby is getting too big for the
'
him. In view of what has been said above about the ultimate
identity of the two antagonists, the old year and the new, it is
interesting to note, in the Thracian play recorded by Mr. Dawkins,
that the adversary is an exact double in name and dress of the
is it not because two are required to drag thejplough to which they are
sword-dancers and the performers of the mummers' play or other mimetic rites
promoting fertility.
3 Strabo x. 480, da-Ke7v di /cot Tofi/cf xal ivoir\l(f ipxic^i-, ^v Karadet^ai KovpfJTa
irpwTOV, ila-Tepov di Ktd (TwrdfocTtt tt/k Kk-qdetaav iir' airoO IlvpplxV! ^'"''^ l"l^^ '''^^
Mr. Chambers' view that the armed dance was not in origin a war-dance.
* See especially J. E. Harrison, Themis, chap. i. for the theory that the
Kouretic dance is an initiation ceremony and linked with that form of death
and resurrection ritual.
£
66 THE OBIGIK OF ATTIC COMEDY
it again at Smyrna, where, upon one occasion, the Chians attacked
the town when allmen were out on the mountains, celebrating
the
Dionysiac orgies. The attempt failed, for the men of Smyrna were
engaged in the armed dance and used their weapons to inflict on
their assailants the fate of those who interrupt Bacchic rites.^
Thebea, when the God came to his own, and his own received
him not.
Another legend of this same cult tells of a duel between Xanthus
('fair man ') and Melanthus (' black man '), who is, as the story
the two were about to fight, Melanthus saw behind his opponent
a figure wearing a black goatskin, and accused him of having brought
a second to this single combat. Xanthus, turning to look, was
killed. J
Usener,^ in the light of the spring combat of the Macedonian
Xandika, saw that this duel was the fight of the God of fight
India. '
The earliest notice of the Indian drama which we certainly
"
possess that contained in the Mahahhasya, or " great commentary
is
double side, the tragedy of the death and the joy of the revival of
the vegetation spirit. It is much more in keeping with primitive
thought to find these sides closely alUed than to beKeve in a solemn
ritual of death alone, and the earlier mummeries, now lost, no doubt
showed in combination those elements which in separation gave us
tragedy and satyric drama.'
Dr. Farnell's apphcation of Usener's suggestion to the problem
of Tragedy is valuable and, I believe (subject to Mr. Keith's
correction), sound. But it has diverted attention from the other
problem, the origin of Comedy, to which it was applied by its author.
It may well be that the satyric drama preserves traces of an original
joyful element in the ritual or folk-play from which Tragedy may
have come. But it is, as I hope will be clear, at least equally likely
that Comedy itself has sprung, not necessarily from the same ritual,
but from one closely alhed to it and belonging to the same class.
In Tragedy, apart from the satjric plays, the element of sex magic
and consequent obscenity has, if it ever was there, been totally
suppressed. The emphasis has come to fall on the death, the
resurrection surviving only in rudiments, such as the Anagnorisis
and Theophany. In Comedy the emphasis still falls on the phalUc
element and the fertility marriage and, from that day to this,
;
not only has a marriage been the canonical end of Comedy, but
this whole form of art, together with other romantic forms which
it has influenced, has been marked all through its history by an
1 'The Origin of Trageily and the Akhyana,' Jcmr. Royal Asiatic Soc, 1912,
p. 421,which contains an admirable criticism of Ridgeway, The Origin of
Tragedy.
SOME TYPES OE DRAMATIC EBBTILITY RITTJAL 69
35. The Agon contrasted with the struggle of the romantic plot
dana le cours d'une meme piice, dea obstacles et des expedients n'empeche pas que
I'intdret ne demeure concentri sur un unique probUme, le plus souveiU, sur une sorte
de duel, engage entre deux adnersaires oudeux groupes d'adversaire'.
70
AGON, SACRIFICE, AND FEAST 71
fight, which leads as quickly as possible to the Agon proper.
This is
not, as in the romantic plot, a whole
train of action with well-
laid schemes and counter-machinations
prolonged to a denouement.
It is more like a sort of trial, with a strict
rule of procedure. The
hero, who has been attacked and even threatened with death, is
put upon his defence. He makes out his case and turns the tables
upon his accuser. The debate lasts for, perhaps, two hundred lines,
during which the action does not advance. Then, in the
second half
of the play, after the Parahasis, we are shown
the hero enjojdng
the fruits of his victory and at last led in triumph in his
marriage
procession. So far from being prolonged to the close, as it must
be in the romantic plot, the Agon is often over and the victory
proclaimed before the play is half way through, with all the rest
of the action still to come. However this extraordinary feature of
the Old Comedy is to be explained, it is certain that, in its nature
and its relation to the economy of the piece, the Agon is radically
different from the machinery of the romantic plot.
In seeking to account for it, we shall follow the clue put into our
hands by what has gone before, and see what hght can be obtained
by supposing that in the Agon we have to do with the first term
insome ritual sequence, of which the last term is a sacred marriage.
We shall begin with a description of its essential features.
nounces the verdict the rest of the Chorus sing their Ode and
;
Telmesses, frag. 3 oii yhp riee/jLev rbv aywa rdrds t6v rpinrov
:
&<nrep ritas fjv, dXXd \
Ode 490-494.
;
Such, then, are in outUne the essentials of the Agon. There are
several points to be discussed. The simplest plan will be to put
aside for the present the role of the Chorus, important though it
be, and the minor character who sometimes plays the Buffoon,
and fix our attention on the Adversaries.
38. ^ '
dramatised debate
'
put into the Agori form in a play constructed on the usual lines.
74 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC (JOMEDY
that follow it in a regular order. In the second place, the term
'
dramatised debate ' is too mild. When Mr. StarMe ^ speaks of
the '
philosophic calm '
Agon in the Wasps, as forming an
of the '
like a trial than a duel, with the two half-Choruses acting as seconds
and the Leader as umpire. It is several times preceded by an actual
fight with fists or missiles, which is somehow arrested in order that
the flushed combatants may have it out with their tongues instead.
Though the victory is finally won by argument —a term which must
include all no mere dramatised
the arsenal of invective —the Agon is '
^ The central importance of the Agon is illustrated by the fact that Aristo-
phanes can describe his first play, the Banqueters, by the names of the two
adversaries in its^g'oii; Glouds, u2S ii otou yap ivSdS' iir' avSpdv, oh ijSi) Kal
:
X^yeti', I
6 Z^(i}(ppioi> re x^ KarairiJ'ywi' &pnjT^ 7jKovffdT7}P
AGON, SACRIFICE, AND FEAST 75
The first Agon in the Knights (303 ff.), again, is led up to by a scene
of fighting. The Paphlagonian has no sooner appeared, breathing
threats of death and destruction, than the Knights are invoked by
Demosthenes to the assistance of the Sausage-seller. They instantly
fall upon the Paphlagonian and beat him then match him and the ;
* It is announced at this point in the words, cos (rKTJ\pip o^wv opros oix
icUhrai., 392.
^ 1250 : (& (rT4(/>ave, x^^P^^ &TnBt, Kel (r' Ukuv iyui
Xeiirw (ri S' (SAXos tis \apibv KexT-iJo-eTai,
kX^tttijs flip o6k if liSXXov, eirux^' 8' (ctDs.
Eurip. Ale. 177. Aloestis says farewell to her marriage bed :
rpifui iv r-S irvicvl, kM' irav ^i, <roi rixa ^i'ov 6v, roirup
Svfiofflov!
I
|
Ss &y r, \
I hoist and beat him.' {KXiTrrovrd re fioiXo/iai Tp4(pety '4va wpo<rT6.Triv toutov 6'
\ I
&Ta.vy T\4m, S.pa.! iirdra^a. ) The Pharmakos was, according to legend, a thief
|
who robbed Apollo's temple, and this ritual theft was represented yearly at the
Thargelia (Harpocr. s.v. (pap/j.aKis) as embodying the sins of all Athens, he
;
was a sort of irpo(TrdTT]s toO S-^/xov and he was beaten, as he was led out of the
;
city. Again, in the Antode of the Agon (400), the Chorus express the delight
they would feel if Cleon were made to disgorge {iK^dXois tt)v IvOeatv), and they
say that 'the son of loulios' {whoever he was) would in his delight lijTraioi'la-ai.
Kal /SaKx^^ffX"" po'i"- It may be worth while to point out that, at the
expulsion of the Pharmakoi at Apollo's festival, Iti iraidv would be appropriate
and that the Pharmakoi were called cri^aKxoi or ai/jL^aKxai. (Helladios, Phot.
Bibl. 279, p. 534, Bdkk. Both readings have MS. authority). The Scholiast
on Knights, 408, saya that the KKdSoi carried by the mystae were called /Sd/c^oi,
and Hesych. (s.v.) tells us of a KpaStrjs v6/ios sung while the Pharmakoi were led
in procession and beaten Kpddais khI Sptois. I conjecture that the song indicated
in itiTraiuvla-aL and ;8aKx^^'"fX<"' ?""' ^*^ t^'" xpaSlris v6p,o!.
dead '
{rffiiOvrjs:) Hke the palUd and skinny Chaerephon, and asks
for a honey-cake to appease the subterranean guardians of this
'
Cave of Trophonius.' ^ Those who were to go down into the real
1345 ff. The earlier ^grora between the two Reasons will be considered later.
1
^
1416 KKi,ov<n iraUes, Traripa d' od KXdeiy doKcTs
:
;
' Mazon (p. 54) speaks of Clouds, 358-475, as an Agon ; but the use of the term
seems to me indefensible.
^ The door of the Phrontisterion is' so low that Strepsiades kicks it instead of
knocking : t^v 66pav XeXd/cTiKas, 136. It ma3- be that a similar reason makes
Dionysus, at Pluto's door in the Frogs, ask how they knock at doors in this '
country,' 460 il7e S-f; rlva. Tp6irov rijv Bipav K6\pa ; rlva
: jtus heiS' dpa KbwTovatv ; \
oiTlX'^pi'Ol ',
The Scholiast says that at the real Cave of Trophonius, oi /iuoi//tei/oi KaBitovrai
iirl ToO <Tr6iiaTos yvuvol, Pausanias, ix. 39, tells us the ritual dress was a linen
tunic. Of. Clouds, 498 : Soer. ,
yvfivois elmhat vopd^erai.
AGON, SACRIFICE, AND FEAST 79
V- 508 ff.
2 1 Streps, to to, riKvov, lii loO lov.
170 :
short with the surprising question Why on earth he does not die. :
* 653 : Phiiocl. ei fx^ yap 6irojs SofXeiJw '716, tovtI rax^ws /xe 5t5d|ets,
ovK l(TTLV Siras oixl Teev/}^eis, k&v xpv avKayxvuv fi' dvix^ffBai.
'^
714 : Phiiocl. ot/j,oi tL irlvovB' ; ws vdpKij fiov Karh ttjs x^ipis (caTaxftrai,
Koi t6 J/0OS oij Sipafmi jcar^x"''. 'i'^'^' 'Ij^V /xaXBaKds elfu.
' 765 : eiceiffe (to Hades) fxiv juijicM ^dSi^, dXX' hedSe
aiiroC fji^vuv SiKai^e Totatv oi/f^rats.
1751: Kelyoiv Ipcmai, xeWi. yevol/xav kt\. Sohol. 4^ 'iTToKirov 'EipiirlSov (230).
Alcesiis, 866 iKeivutp ^pa/xat kt\.
756 : <nreOS' S> ^j/vxi- toO yitoi ypvxi ; |
Trdpts Si (Tui^pL Schol. vapa ra 4k BcWepo-
^dfrov Taipei Tavra.
763 :
TouTo Si \
"AiStjs diaKpiveT. Eurip. Kp^o-crai, frag. 465 (N^), <"Ai5);s>
« 695.
AGON, SACRIFICE, AND FEAST 81
Cerberus) I will make for you with my own hands here is a funeral ;
for him.^ The Prohoulos goes ofi to show himself thus arrayed to
his colleagues. Lysistrata calls after him to know if he is going
to complain that the women have not laid him out for burial, and
promises to come on the third day and do the customary offices.
This passage, which can hardly be said to be led up to by anything
in the preceding context,^ is dramatically a very odd and unexpected
device for getting the Antagonist off the stage.
a child from the arms of one of them and threatening to kill it.
Though the child turns out to be an ilUcit skin of wine, the ruse is
1
501 : £jys, <rti 5k Sri tI fiaOCiv ovk diroflj'ijVKeis
aeavrbv alriu. Van Leeuwen ad loc. cites Bacchae, 504, aiSd /ne Seiv aoxppovav fji.-ij
ou <T(ii<l>po<xiv
all are taken together, and it is seen how constant this motive is,
feature of the comic plot originally, in its ritual form, led to the
death of one or other of the Adversaries, followed, at the end of the
play, by the marriage and triumph of that one who represents
the good principle, the King of the festival, the God or Fertihty
Spirit himself. drama we have had chiefly in view is
The type of
that in which the evil principle of Death or Hunger or Winter,
which is driven out or slain, is represented by the Antagonist, who
in the plays becomes the discomfited villain. But we must not lose
sight of another type, which we have already had before us in the
English Mummers' Play, the folk-plays of northern Greece, and the
ancient Thracian armed dance, where it is the representative of
the good principle that is killed by the evil, and afterwards brought
back to life. If we look again at the series of Aristophanic plays,
we shall not merely find isolated vestiges of this motive of resurrec-
tion, or rebirth, or renewal of hfe, but we shall see how it governs,
in several cases, the general com'se of the action after the Agon.
We must here draw a distinction hitherto neglected. We must
now put aside the cases in which the Antagonist, or evil principle,
is maltreated and expelled, and turn to those in which it is the
good principle, the hero, who passes through the danger of death
or is represented as renewing his Ufe or youth.^ By the '
hero
is meant the person who is led in triumph at the end as a partner
in the sacred marriage.
to lay much stress upon it, because the whole conception of the
plot demands that it shall be modelled on a Descent into Hades.
We cannot, however, pass it over without remarking that we have
here another point of contact with the Athenian Lenaea. In the
ritual that lay behind these Descents —or one form of that ritual
it was the male power of fertility who went down to bring back
from the underworld either his mother or his bride. Orpheus
fetches Eurydice Heracles recovers Alcestis from the clutches
;
the New Birth of the Child, the wealth and promise of the coming
year.
Now the scheme of this Anodos ritual is the basis of the first
vol. 669
See A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge, 1914),
ff.
.. p.
'Ukx^ T\ovroS6ra.'
86 THE OEiam OF ATTIC COMEDY
part of the Peace. The image of Eirene is dragged up by the
Chorus of farmers, apparently out of an cave or mound artificial
were, two acts in the drama of the divine life. The miraculous
Birth of the wonder-child can be followed by his death at maturity.
There is some ground for believing that this sequence actually
existed in the ritual of the Lenaea, for that included also '
the
Rending (a-Trapayixo^) of Dionysus,' at least as the theme of a
' ^
rustic chant.'
Now, it is a very striking fact that the same sequence is pre-
served in the folk-play observed by Mr. Dawldns in Thrace.* It
will be remembered that the first act of that drama showed us the
Old Woman, called Babo, nursing her infant {' Liknites'), who, like
Dionysus, is the seven-months child of no known human father.
The child grows to maturity with miraculous speed —a constant
trait of these divine infants, which may be illustrated from the
^ Peace, 566 : vr) At' ii yap ir^Opa \ainrpbv ^v Up' e^awXio-fiivTi. Schol. ad loc.
vo^fl-ai SetTOP x'P^" <"t""P'''^ txpvTa, aXs ^oKoKoirodai.. This olod-beating gives . . .
xlix, 1914, 17 ff. ) points out that Pandora at her Anodos, represented on the
Oxford Krater (/. H. S. xxi. 1901, PI. 1 J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, p. 281,
;
iirl T(^ Xt;!**^ t^So/jJvrf, ^ Kal aiir^ TepieTxev Thv AtopiJcrou ffivapayjxbv. Parnell, Cutis,
V. 176 ; A. B. Cook, Ztui, vol. i. p. 672. * Above, p. 63.
AGON", SACRIFICE, AND FEAST 87
newly discovered Ichneutai of Sophocles.^ In the
Old Woman we
must recognise the Earth-Mother, and in the sordid
pantomime of
this first part of the play a last survival
of the supernatural birth
and growth of Dionysus. In the Peace the infant is not
mentioned,
though he may have
been represented, as Plutus, in the arms of
the statue of Eirene. His r61e is aheady occupied by
Trygaeua,
who is to become the bridegroom of the final marriage. The rarity
of this motive is soon accounted for. The birth of an infant and
his miraculous growth to maturity are not easily represented in
Comedy that has once passed out of the naive crudities of folk-
drama.
The Peace and the Frogs have given us one point of contact
with Dionysiac ritual; the Knights provides another, no less
curious. In the English Mummers' Play the resurrection of St.
George, foully slain by the Turkish Knight, is effected by the
Noble Doctor, who can cure
'
All sorts of diseases,
Whateve?' you pleases.'
1 256 ff. Kyllene describes the divine birth of Hermes in her cave, and
how she has nursed him (Xi-kvItlp rpoipiiv). He grows daily to her amaze-
ment, and attains maturity in six days, ofiTru yhp Iktov 9jp,ap iKiretpaff/ihos yvlots \
ipelBei jraidos e(s tj^t)! i.K/j.'^v. It may be worth while to point out a possible
parallel in the case of Veiovis, the youthful Jupiter, to whom March 7 (six days
after the beginning of the old Roman year) was sacred. The Epiphany of Christ,
who, according to the Protevangelion, was born in a cave in his father's absence,
is on January 6. This manifestation on the sixth day may explain the obscure
phrase used of lamos in Pindar, 01. vi. 53, where the king's servants tell him
that 'they had seen or heard nothing of the child that had been born five days,'
Tol S' o<St' Siv iKoua-ai \
oOt' ISeiv eiixovTO TrefiwTatoi' yeyevriixivov. As the servants
could not know this fact, the words are unless they have a ritual
pointless,
meaning. Compare also the miraculous growth of the infant Zeus Callim. :
hymn. Zeus 55, koXcI niv v^iev, KaXi. 8' lTpa(pes, oipivie Zeu. |
6|i> S' av-fipijo-as, raxiyol
dXX' Iti iraidvis iibv i(ppiircrao iravra riXeia.
Si TOt fiXdov tovXoi. I
The situation in
Sophocles' Ichneutai has been discussed by J. E. Harrison in Essays and Studies
presented to W. Ridgeway (Cambridge, 1913).
88 THE ORIGIN OP ATTIC COMEDY
the dead to life.^ He is not, of course, a character in the play
but Plutus recovers his sight at his temple. We shall later find
other traces of the Doctor in very impoltant parts in the Old Comedy.
Meanwhile, we turn to the allied figure of the Cook, who performs
upon the hero of the Knights a magical ceremony of rejuvenation.
The Knights ends with a burst of splendour. After the Second
Parabasis, the ex-Sausage-seller, Agoracritus, adorned with the
symbols of his newly-won ofiS.ce, comes out and calls for a paean
over the good fortune of Athens. Presently the gates of the
Propylaea be fiung wide and reveal Demos, arrayed in the
will
old Ionian attire, such as he wore when he dined with Aristides or
Miltiades, to be hailed as King of Hellas. The Sausage-seller comes
first to prepare us for this amazing transformation, which is so
complete that Demos '
does not know what he was hke before,
nor what sort of things he used to do, or he would think the Sausage-
seller a God to have so reformed him.' ^ How has this transfigure-
ment, this rejuvenation of the grim, testy, deaf old rufi&an been
effected ? The Sausage-seller himseK has done it by the exercise
of his art as I have boiled your Demos and changed his
Cook :
'
Schol. ad. Eurip. Ale. 1, dvicrTtj yhp luj/ievos roi)s re^j'turas. The Scholiast
adds that Asolepiua was said to have resurrected. various persons: Hippolytus
(Apollodorus) Glaucus (Amelesagoras)
j Tyndareus (Panyasis) Hymenaeus ; ;
he healed the daughters of Proetus, and for that was struck by the thunderbolt.
''
1336 : Saus. dXX' ffi ;uA' oiK ottrff' otos ijirS' airii Tdpos
oi55' oV ?5/)0S' ifi^ yap vofill^ois &v Be&v.
' 1321 . rbv Arifiov 40f^7)i7as koK&v i^ alffxpoO ireirolriKa.
iifiiv The Argument
recognises that this is a rejuvenation tov dWavTowtlAov rov A^/xop d^e^iJffai/Tos
:
Kal rhv Aicova, X^ytav oiirojs' KiniKa d' Atcova 6tjk£ tpiXop Kdpov Tj^dtovTa |
jTJpas
dTTof i)<racr' elSviriffi wpavldeffffi, \
<pdp/uiKa irdW (^j/ova' hi x/juo-eioiiri "Ki^Tjaiv. (Nosti,
frag 6, Kinkel. ) ^epexiSris Si Kal T^i/xoiplSris rbv 'Ida-ova, The Argument of
Eurip. Medea has almost the same statement.
^ In a chapter on the ' Olympic Games in J. E. Harrison, Themis, p. 243 ff.
'
^ Thus Mr. Cook explains the mystic formula ' A kid, I have fallen into
:
come to light too late for inclusion in his forthcoming Zeus. An inscription
from Salonioa, published in the BuU. Oorr. Hell, xxxvii. (1913) 97 ff., mentions
a female yaKa.KTr]tj>6pos and an 6,pxi-IJ.a'y\_ei.']peis in connection with a 'Cave-Father.'
The suggestion that the inscription is Mithraic is not supported, so far as I know,
by any known instance of a Cook or arch-Cook as a functionary in Mithraic
ritual.
90 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
circles. The sacramental victim destined to be eaten in the com-
munal meal would be boiled. The burnt sacrifice, consumed and
offered only to the Gods, comes later. The boihng, therefore, may
be regarded as the primitive sacrifice or sacrament. The God who
was torn to pieces, boiled, and eaten could not literally rise again,
though a simulated resurrection might be contrived by some mum-
mery comparable with the old Bouphonia ritual at Athens, where
the slain ox was flayed, and his skin, stuffed with straw, was set
up on its legs and yoked to a plough. To the candidate for the re-
birth of initiation, who must undergo what his God had suffered,
the process could be still further tempered by rehgious fiction.
I venture to think that Mr. Cook's hypothesis is strengthened by
the instance of Demos in the Knights, who renews his youth in the
Sausage-seller's cauldron and emerges as a new King and (as the
parallel cases allow us to add) a new God, ready for his marriage.
No wonder he does not know what manner of man he was before.
When the scene is read in this hght, there is a certain ritual air
about the catechism through which his restorer puts him, to ascer-
tain whether his heart too is changed and he will amend his life.
' Ar. frag. 178 Dind. =Athen. iii. 109 F: Kpipavlrqi/- roirov nvrj/ioveici
A.pLffTO<)>i.v'r)i iv T'qpg,' iroie? Si \iyoii(Tav AproinSKiv SiripTra<T/j.huv airfji tQi/ UpTuiv virb
tQv to yrjpa^ dTTQ^aX^vruv
— tovtI tI ijf TO irpcLy/j-a ; Sepnovs, & TiKvor.
— dX\' ^ ira.pa<ppov€is ; Kpt^avlras, & t^kvov.
Meiueke, Frag. Com. Graec, ii. 994. Frag. 192 Dind. = Sehol. Nieand.
2
Theriac. v. 295 Kal 'Ap. iy ry Trripg, yvvdiKa Trot^tras ^irl ^615701;? 6vuv dxovfihtjv
:
t^ yafJ.oOfj,at T^fiepov.
' Frag. 184 Dind. = Pollux x. 104: 'Api(iTO<pdvovs 70D1' iv 'JirTivinv 6 ixdyeipos
\ey€L ^/iaxatpiSioif Te irXifiyas' itjairep Kal iv TtfiTif}pg,6 aiiros jroL'rjTi^s etptjKe ' KoiriSi twp
itseems certain that a cook was a character in the play, and possible that he
rejuvenated the old men by peeling off their skins, as if they were snakes. See
below, note 5.
* Above, p. 88.
° See Kaibel, s.v. 'Aristophanes' in Pauly-Wiss. ii. 979, citing frag. 102
Dind. = Erotian, 93, 8 Kl. Ae^rjplSos' iiievdSovi dToffipfiaTos, Svep iarl to tQv
i<j>€<i>v XeySfievov yrjpas, tis Kal 'ApuTTOtpdvris iv 'A/i^iapdif. Hesych. Tv/ivoTepos
Xe^ripidos- 'ApiffT0<pdi/7}s tpr/a-l, TV(p\6Tepos Xefir/pldo!. la-n di XejlTjpls ri tov 6<pcw! yyjpas
—
mystic initiation a ceremony of new birth, the details of which
make the patient fear that he is going to be sacrificed like Athamas.
As Strepsiades after his initiation disappears into the Cave of '
happiness and prosperity. What will you say, then, says Trygaeus,
'
'
'
when you see me in my glory as a bridegroom ? All will envy '
'
you, old man, when you have become a youth once more and are
poet, another (the Lysistrata) has no male hero at all. Such are
the facts. Whether the explanation here ofEered is right or wrong,
we are justified in insisting that some explanation is required.^
Between these two points we have looked for traces of that resur-
rection or rebirth which, in known instances of the kind of ritual
drama we are considering, follows the conflict and death of the
Agonist. We must now go back to the actual plots of the plays
Wm
\
:
'
For the Fea^t as a standing incident preceding the K6mos in the second
part of an Old Comedy play, cf. Pint. Lucullus 39, l<rTi d' oSv toO AouKoiiXXou
^iov, Kaddirep dpxa^as KajfitfiSias, avayvvpat to, fiev irpwra TroXtrefas naX arpaTTjyias, ra.
S' CffTepo Trirovi Kal Seiirva Kal fiovovovxl (ciijUous Kai \afiwiSas Kal iraiSiciV fi7ra<rav.
This notice is important because it refers to the Old Comedy in general, not
merely to Aristophanes. Owing to the accident that so many of the comic
fragments are preserved in the Deipnosophists, there are abundant traces of
the frequency of the Feast motive throughout the Old Comedy, comparatively
few of the other standing incidents.
^ Sohol. 318 ^TTifiji/os KaXeiToi 6 fiayeipiKos Kop/uSs,
4<l>' oS rd. xpia cvyKbirTovm.
' 764 xolpovi ixvcTiKis. 784 Dik. dXX' oide 8i<n.ij.b^ icriv airttyl. Meg. a6. niv
TTf 5' ovxl Simiibs iari ; , . (celXXio-ros ^ittoi x^'^po^ 'AippoSlrq. SAeiv.
AGON, SACEIMCB, AND FEAST 95
purchased.i The cooking is interrupted by unwelcome intruders.
Next, Dikaiopolis is invited to the banquet
held by the Priest of
Dionysus, at which he wins the prize wine-skin
of the drinking
competition. This carries us to his final appearance
as victor with
his courtesans.
''
The term 6\al is used, elsewhere always applied to barley grain used in
sacrifice.
' Neil on 1168 says: 'The idea that a feast and a sacrifice are one runs
through the passage but here the goddess almost waits upon Demos with
:
offerings, and gets little thanks or respect. Probably the scene is suggested by
the banquet given to the citizens of Athens at the Panathenaea after the
hecatomb offered to Athena on the Acropolis, G. I. A., ii. 307.'
* 1212-1320.
96 THE ORIGIN OP ATTIC COMEDY
old man rushes out screaming under his son's blows. Then follows
the Agon and the concluding scene.
In the Peace, the fijst half of the play, as we have seen, is modelled
on the ritual Anodos of the Earth Goddess. It ends with Trygaeus
setting out, with the two brides, Opora and Theoria, on his return
from heaven to earth. After the Parahasis we see him arrive.
He sends his own bride into the house to be prepared for the wedding,
and hands over Theoria to the Chairman of the Council.
Then follow the preparations for a sacrifice to Peace. The sacri-
fice, accompanied by a long prayer, is conducted up to the point
The Birds follows the same hues. After the Agon and Pamhasis,
a sacrifice is begun to inaugurate the new city (810). Pisthetairos
intones a long prayer to the new feathered deities of the air
but ;
in the Acropohs, comes in its usual place and leads to the final
Kdmos.
The chief Agon in the Frogs falls in the second part of the play.
It is preceded by a sacrifice of incense, a prayer addressed to the
Muses by the Chorus, and an invocation of Demeter by Aeschylus
and of Aether by Euripides.
After the Agon Dionysus and Aeschylus are entertained by
Pluto at a farewell feast, and the play ends with their departure
to the upper world.
all but burnt ahve, and rescued by the author of the Andromeda
Aeschylus is fetched up from the underworld by the God of Tragedy
Plutus has his sight restored by the painful therapeutics of the
God of Medicine. Unless our hypothesis is false from beginning
to end, we cannot refuse to see in the canonical sacrifice a survival
of the original death of the divine Agonist, and in the scenes of
cooking and feasting that follow with such surprising regularity,
the sacramental meal and the cauldron of apotheosis through
which the God passes to his resurrection.
1 suspect that this intention of making the congregation partakers of the rite
lay behind the oi)X6x'""<", which consisted of KpiBai and salt (Eustath. on II. i.
449, p. 132, 23 ol ov\6xvTai od\al i]<rav, Tovr^ffrt Kpidal fiera dXw*', As iw^xeov Tois
:
and citizens at the Charila ceremony at Delphi, Plut. Qu. Graec. xii. Cakes in
the form of the male and female sex-organs were used at the Haloa (Schol. on
Lucian, Dial. Merelr. vii. 4) and other kindred festivals. Mr. A. B. Cook
informs me that they are still handed about at Easter in Italy.
^ In connection with the scattering of sweetmeats, Couat (.4»'i«iop/ia)ie, etc.
p. 18) calls attention to the obscure story in Athen. ix. 406 D ff., that Hegemon
of ThasoB, a contemporary of Aloibiades, uarjXOi irore xoi et's to Biarpov SiScufkoiv
AGON, SACRIFICE, AND FEAST 103
49. Conclusion
feast, and yet brought back to hfe. These acts survive in the
standing features of the comic plot between the Pardbasis and the
Exodos. Finally comes the sacred Marriage of the risen God,
Kwni^Uav UBuv ^wr w\r,pe, to iii&TLov'ois ^iWav ds "> ipxharpav bcaTropav iirol-qat
\MvTi ^aU^rtfs saying he knows the Eleusinian BaXX,r^5. Then this anecdote
^ ;
Memeke {.Com^c^,
Trepi Trj, Apx^la, Ko,^<fSla,.
is quoted from Chamaileon, iv (kt^
i 214) remarks on Athen. xv. 699 A, yiyp^'Pe U Kal Koi,upSUy d, Ti. apx-uou
as Hegemon lived in the period of the
Old
^^.7M0o"« ^M.w, that,
Tp&^ov, ^.
point to a form of Comedy older
Comedy, the phrase eh Thv &pxalov Tpb^ov may
Did Hegemon provide his stones for a ^oKXryri, between
than C^atinus.
of the actors by the Chorus in the
audience and performers, like the pelting
Acharnians prologue V
104 THE OBIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
which, when it takes a dramatic form, simulates the union of Heaven
and Earth for the renewal of all life in Spring.
Our discussion of the Agon is, however, not yet complete for ;
also consider the literary form in which the primitive ritual action
is clothed.
CHAPTEK VI
KaBdTrep iv raU Ka/i<fSlais, rod SiafiiWovTos Kal toD SiapaWo/i^vov, xal toC irpis Sy 57
5toj3o\7) yiyyerai.
2 Zielinski maintained (GUederung, 117 ff.) that the Chorus never
speaks in
typical Agon, in which two actors are the adversaries. Mr. White gives the
In the Agon they are impartial, merely calling on each speaker in turn.
Strepsiades turns upon them, considered as deities of the sophists, at the end
but they tell him coldly that he has only himself to thank, and that they have
been leading him on, that he may learn to feav the Gods.
= See below, § 52.
THE OHORTJS IN AGON AND PABABASIS 107
This probabihty
is raised almost to certainty by
considerations
urged by Ziehnski, and now, perhaps, generally accepted.^
Arai-
cAona—the division of the Chorus into two halves performing
antiphonally— is, as Ziehnski says,^ 'the soul of epirrhematic
composition.' In other words, the whole structure of the most"^
important part of the play implies this opposition between the two
half-Choruses. This division explains the fact that the comic
Chorus is twice the size of the tragic. It has twenty-four members,
including two Leaders. Moreover, in one extant play (the
its
Odysseus and twelve Cyclopes.* There is, further, the case of the
Acharnians, where the Chorus, though uniform in mask, is divided
against itself, and the two Leaders actually quarrel and fight in the
course of the Agon. Still fainter traces survive in those Agdnes
where each half of the Chorus in turn encourages, in Ode and Antode,
^ They are endorsed by the high authority of Kaibel {Hermes, xxx. p. 80) who
regards the double Chorus in the oldest art form of Comedy as a certain fact.
See also J. W. White, An Unrecognised Actor, etc., Harvard Studies in Class.
Philol., xvii. (1906), 106.
2 Oliederung, 272.
^Kaibel (Hermes, xxx. p. 88) thinks that a double chorus of Nymphs and
their ' husbands' (Satyrs) was required for Aeschylus' Aioviaov rpoipot; but that
was a satyrio drama, not a tragedy.
* Kaibel, loc. cit. There is an odd hint of a double Chorus in the Knights.
At the beginning of the Parados (247 ff. ) the first half-Chorus of young Knights
enters and attacks Cleon. He calls out for help to the Old Men of the law-
courts (255 a yipovT€s ifl\i.a<XTal
: Trapa/Sojjffeifi', lis vt' avSpuv riirToiiai. f ww-
. . .
abuse was directed, not at any man, but at the women of the place.'
'
p. 61.
" Horn. Hym. Dem. 236. Mr. A. B. Cook suggests to me that this word
might help out the rather poor joke at Ach. 234, where the Koryphaeua bids his
followers ^Xiwti.v BaXXiJ^'aSc, when they are pelting Dikaiopolia with stones.
THE CHORUS IN AGON AND PARABASIS 111
its two masks in the cult of Apollo at Anaphe,
in whose honour
there was a ritual of ' strife and abuse '
carried on between parties
ot men and women.i The abuse
flung at the passers-by or at one
another by the worshippers riding in carts
at the K6mos of the
Choes, m
the Eleusinian procession, and at the
Lenaea, may have
been unorganised.
enacted by two parties of women, with their hair flying, like the Maenads, and,
where the body of the Whitsun doll is made of straw, it is torn up when
victory declares itself, and scattered over the fields in order to distribute the
productive energy concentrated in the figure. The existence of such a custom
among the Thracians would afford the moat satisfying explanation for the
frequency of the legend of a man being torn in pieces in connection with Dionysian
rites, as Orpheus, Pentheus, and Dionysus himself.' Doutt^, Edig. et Mcigie
dans I'A/rique du Nord, p. 554 ffi, describes the game of Koura, in North Africa,
a kind of ritual football played generally in spring, sometimes in seasons of
drought, and in many places reserved to the t'olba {savants, clercs). Cf. the
games played by Abbots and Canons of the Mediaeval Church.
112 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
beating or killing of some individual victim for the double purpose
of purification ' (the expulsion of evil influences) and the pro-
'
troupes d'acteurs, distingues les uns des autres par la peau d'un
animal dont la tete est ramenee sur leur front, viennent encore se ranger
en bataille ; des propositions d' arrangement sont faites, discwtees par
I'autre, et difinitivement repoussees ; alors un signal est donne, et le
combat s'engage au milieu des cris de guerre. Aprks une lutte acharnee
la victoire se diclare pour le parti qui porte des peaux de daim ; les
1 ii. 63.
^ From a letter of Don Urrutia on the antiquities of Cinaoa-mecallo in the
Athence-um, 13 Dec. 1856, p. 1537. '
P. 67,
THE CHORUS IN AGON AND PARABASIS 113
dismemberment of a youth.i Whether they engaged in
a battle
with their husbands,' the Psoloeis (' Sooty Ones
'
'), we do not know.
But it is certainly curious that these Oleiai are '
daughters of
Mmyas '—belong, that is to say, to the old
Minyan stock, with which
Melanthus, the antagonist of Xanthus in the Agon at Eleutherae,
is connected, as a Neleid.^ The conjunction makes it not improb-
able that behind these scattered notices lies a ceremony
identical
in essence with the Indian battle of the parties of
and Krsm, Kama
involving a choral
Agon and a duel of the two antagonists represen-
ing Winter and Summer. The intimate connection of the Chorus
in Comedy with the Agon and the division of it into two parties
make necessary to presuppose a ritual of this type.
it
The Agon
proper, the duel of the adversaries, has already been
discussed. We have seen in it the survival of a ritual combat of
the two champions, on its way to become a mere debate, but still
keeping sufficient traces of the time when it ended in the real or
simulated death of one of the combatants.^ In this debate the
' Plut. Qu. Or. xxxviii.
'•*
Farnell, Gvlts, v. 236. For Xanthus and Melanthus, see above, p. 67.
At Eleutherae also there is
trace of the choral oicrxpoXoyia in the statement
«.
that the daughters of Eleuther ' reviled ' the apparition of the God of the Black
Goatskin. Above, p. 66.
' added that two Ag6nes in the plays are prefaced by a rapid inter-
It should be
change of abuse in short metre. The Sausage-seller and the Paphlagonian inter-
change threats, Knights, 284 ff. So do the two Reasons, Clouds, 889 Birds, 386 ff.
flf.
/ ame a Knighte,
and menes tofigliie,
and artnet well ame I ;
lo, here I stand
The first Agon in the Clouds, which we have so far left out of
account, is a contest for the soul of Pheidippides, held between
the two Reasons or Arguments (Logoi), the Just and the Unjust.
In the Prologue of the play Strepsiades says he has heard teU that
the Sophists have a pair of Arguments, the stronger (or better,'
' '
KpeiTTwv), whatever that may be,and the weaker (or worse,' '
the stronger (or better) ' and teach his pupils the same art.^ Now,
it is clear that a teacher who lived to a considerable age in the
enjoyment many cities of
of general respect in Greece, cannot have
professed to make the argument which was 'worse ' in a moral
sense, win over the '
better.' He must have used Kpeirrmv and
•^TTfov in their other sense of '
stronger and weaker,' with no
'
"
sophists as teaching the art of making the wrong side triumph over
the right. And, of course, as Plato and Isocrates complained, the
weapon they put into their pupils' hands could be turned to such
uses.
In the Clouds, the two Arguments, the better and the worse,
identified simply with the Just and the Unjust, are
produced in
presence of Pheidippides.* It
person to have out their quarrel in
the unsympathetic principle, the
is to be noted that in this Agon
/iSBoy iKoiffys \
ovk &v SiKda-ais. Heracles, 204 (Amphitryon's
withLyous), dyiliv
Xi^oi /iff oUe Toiai trois inavrlav yvdijiriv lx<>^'"- 'w'' KaSedTiiiTwv iripi.
\ This last is
a good instance of an Agon or dihat which strikes the modern reader as very
imdramatic. The tyrant and Heracles' aged father, who, with the rest of
Heracles' family, is threatened with instant death, argue the question whether
it is braver to fight with a bow or with a spear.
THE CHORTJS IN AGON AND PARAEASIS 117
disputes, and they merge into that special kind of dit, the dibat or
disputoison proper. The debat is a kind of poetical controversy
put into the mouths of two types or two personified abstractions,
statements. . t i i.
improvised verbal tourna-
Mr. Chambers adds that these were originally
4
however, hia remarks
ments, and have nothing to say to the drama. See,
presently quoted on the ddbats.
118 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
each of wMch pleads the cause of its own superiority, while in
dramatic battle and that of the Coventry Hox Tuesday owe their
Hiems, Winter ; this Ver, the Spring ; the one maintained by the
owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin.' Then follow those
marvellous songs of Spring and Winter :
'
When daisies pied and violets blue,' etc.
and
'
When icicles hang hy the wall,' etc.
1 P. 187.
THE OHOEUS IN AGON AND PARABASIS 119
actually in use. In some parts of Bavaria the boys who play the
'
parts of Winter and Summer act their httle drama in every house
that they visit, and engage in a war of words before they come to
blows, each of them vaunting the pleasures and benefits of the
season he represents and disparaging those of the other. The
dialogue is in verse. A few couplets may serve as specimens :
Summer
Green, green a?-e the meadows wherever I pass,
And tJie mowers are bust/ among the grass.
Winter
White, white are the meadoios wherever I go.
And the sledges glide hissing across the snow.
Summer
/ 'II climb up where the red cherries glow.
the tree
Winter
With yoii I will climb the cherry-tree tall.
Winter
'
Summer, for all yov/r bluster and brag,
Summer
Winter, your chatter no more can I stay,
delay.
I'll TcicTi and I'll cuff you without
Pulcinella, 78.
120 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
Here ensues a between the two little boys, in which Summer
scuffle
gets the best of it, and turns Winter out of the house. But soon
the beaten champion of Winter peeps in at the door and says with
a humble and crestfallen air :
There can be httle doubt, then, that the dSbat as a Uterary form
goes back to these seasonal Agdnes from which we have derived
the Agon in Comedy. The rhetorical Antilogy may have had an
independent origin or have been based on this popular type. But
there is no ground for deriving from it the comic or tragic Agon,
though in the latter part of the fifth century the influence of rhetoric
may have been felt by the dramatic writers.^
' O. B.\ The Dying Ood (London, 1911), 255. A dialogue in verse between
representatives of Summer and Winter is spoken at Hartlieb in Silesia, near
Breslau (Note).
" Perhaps a, further trace of this influence may be seen in the tendency to
regard (1) the speech in the first half as an M8(i.^i.s, (2) the reply in the second
a,3an IXeyxo!. (1) Knights, 334 {Katalceleusmos) v On Sei^ov. Clouds, 934,: Koi-yph.
d.'SX' iirldei^ai. ai. 949 {Odt), vvv del^eTof. 1333, ?7M7' avoSel^ui. Wasps, 548
(opening of Epirrheme), iiroSel^w. (2) Knights, 843 flf. {Antep. ), in SXeyxos form.
Clouds, 1043 {Antep.), ani^j/M lis iXiy^w.
. . . Frogs, 857 (Dionysus to Aeschylus
before the Agon) iXeyx' i\iyxov XoiSopeiaeai S' oi irpiTvei.
:
3 Epioharmus' pieces are called dpi/iara there is no reason to believe that the
;
Antepirrheme are omitted ; the Frogs has lost the whole of the first
oomplete.
THE CHORUS IK AGOK AND PABABASIS 123
treatment of comic poets ; but chiefly to show what difficulties Aristophanes has
faced. The Anapaests of the Wasps also blame the spectators (1016), but con-
sist almost entirely of boasting.
2 De com. att. prim., 33.
124 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
enters the orchestra— a passage which, in the oldest known type of
1 Cf. Sohmid, Zur Oesch. des griech. Ditliyramhus (Tiibingen, 1901), 13 Nur :
der sweite (Teil) ist in alien Parabasen, volUlamdig odtr wenigstens {in den
Thesmophoriaz.) stiickweise, vorhanden, wdhrend der erste in den FrSschen vSllig
fehlt. Daraus wird man folgen dilrfen, dass der zweite Teil der ursprung-
lichere ist.
^Above, p. 45.
3 E.g. Ach. 676 {Epirrheme), ti€ij.ip6/j.eirea TJj T6\ei. Clouds, 576 {Epirrheme),
Frogs, 686 {Epirrheme), rbv lephv x"?^" SUaidv iirrt xp^rrd. ry v6\ei
dySpAnv. |
1 That this passage is a Parabasis was held \>y AVestphal. Its form is the
same as that of the Frogs Parabasis, except that it is double. Other authorities
have denied it the name, because there are no Anapaests and therefore (it is
argued) no advance towards the audience' (irapa^aifeiv irp6s to Biarpov). The
'
Philocleon) aXKa ealniria Xa^dfres (^aKbvres, suprascr. in B.) iis rdx^CTa, TaiSia,
:
eelre Kal poare. Whether \a^6vTes or ^aUfres be read, the cloaks of the
, . .
Chorus, not of the boys (who would not wear them), must be meant. Of.
Starkie, ad loc. Thesm. 655 (after the Debate and before the Parabasis. The
are seeking the disguised intruder. The seizure of Euripides'
kinsman
women
follows) ^v!;oJo-afi4vas eH K&vSpelm tCiv 0' l/iaHav &Todia-as fiyT-eiK. . . .
:
XPV I
|
2 Of. Peace, 729 (Kommatimi before Anapaests), where the Chorus hand over
their agricultural tools to attendants.
5 The phrase 'IiTTTiou rvpavvlSos is, of course, obscene. Cf. Wasps, 502.
* irard^as (-fai oodd.) TTJ<rde ypabs t't}V yvdOov.
635 : TTJs Bedts Ix^pcis
5 g5g ;
d Si Xinriyireis tI /tie,
1115
1 fif. 2 1101 flf.
3 1154 ff. There are also appeals for victory in the pnigos of the Anapaests in
Parabasis i. of the Knights (544), and in the same part of Parabasis i. of the
Peace (760 ffi). All these passages, with their promises of reward if the play
suooeeda, and threats of punishment if it fails, recall the popular
songs (above
mentioned, p. 39) usual in seasonal processions.
' 1264 flf. » 1265 ff. 6 1072 flf. 1
97J ff.
^ 1040: dXXa vwl (Tirhdo/Mal troi Kal rb Xowfo oiK4n
oSre dpddu (jiKavpov oiSip oi6' v(p' i/j.ut> ireiffo/iat.
THE CHORUS IN AGON AND PABABASIS 131
THE IMPOSTOR
65. The unwelcome Intruders
There is one more constant motive in Aristophanes' comedies,
still to be accounted for —the unwelcome intruders who so often
thrust themselves upon the hero in the second part of the play.
These impertinents arrive when the victory of the Agon is already
won. The scene of sacrifice, cooking, or feasting has no sooner
begun than an oracle-monger, a poet, an informer, presents himself
to interrupt the proceedings or to claim a part in the good things.
Often there is a whole string of them. As they drop from the blue
and have done nothing to earn a share, their generic character is
—
that of Impostor [dXai^wv) an epithet several times flung at them
by the exasperated hero. Their common fate is a well-deserved
rebuff. When they have made an exhibition of themselves, they
are driven off with abuse, frequently seconded by blows. The
Impostors are always pitted against the hero, who draws out their
absurdities with mocking irony.
We will begin, as usual, by passing in review the scenes in which
these characters appear. We shall consider only those which fall
between Parabasis and Exodos. There are a few other scenes m
the comedies framed on the same pattern ;i but the great majority
fall in the second half of the play.
poet,' '
a priest,' etc.
132
THE IMPOSTOR 133
holding his private market, the action falls into two parallel scenes,
in which the Megarian brings his daughters for sale as pigs, the
Boeotian hiseels and feathered game. In the first scene an Informer
comes to denounce this contraband trading. He is soon expelled
by the market officials prudently provided by Dikaiopohs, with
'
'
Bdelycleon takes the law into his own hands and carries ofE the
aged reprobate bodily into the house, the door banging upon the
middle of the story of what happened to Aesop when he went to
Delphi.
looks !
' says the slave, taking him for a diviner. ^ It turns out to
be Hierocles, the oracle-monger, who claims to share in the meal
cooked under his nose. A last and desperate attempt to snatch
some of the meat, while his servant simultaneously tries to steal
a cushion, leads to both being driven ofi under a shower of blows.
The next incident is This is interrupted by
the marriage-feast.
two contrasted pairs The pruninghook-maker and
of craftsmen.
the cooper, grateful for the restoration of peace, bring wedding
gifts and are sent to join the feast inside. The maker of helmet-
crests laments that he and his friend, the spear-maker, are ruined
but this pair and a number of other weapon-manufacturers ^ are
derided and dismissed with contumely.
^ This incident appears to have been used again in the
comedy entitled Old
Age, which seems to have turned principally on the motive of the Old Men
renewing their youth and behaving outrageously, like Philocleon Geras, :
frag. 178, Dind. Athen. iii. 109 F, KpifiavlTriy' toijtov ixyq/xoveiei A. iv Tqpq.- ttoiei
3i \^yov<7av aprbiroiKiv diripirafj^^Viav aijr^s rujp dprujif virb Ttov rd y^pm a-Ko^aXbvToiv'
—tovtX tI Jiv rh TrpcLy/xa ; 8ep/i.o6s, S) riKvov.
— aXK' fi irapatfipoveh ;
—Kpi^avLras, Si riKvov.
^ 1045 : Trygaeus addresses him, Si aXa^Siv (1069), and
us iXa^iiv (palverai.
says, TivBrjs el (tA Kal iKa^Siv avZ/p. wa? airbv ^tt^xw ''<? {"^XVi 'o" oKa^dva (1120).
|
for the city that has only just been founded. Being a poet, he is
less harshly treated than usual and, being a frigid poet, he receives
;
a shirt and jerkin, borrowed from a slave. The next comer, the
inevitable oracle-monger, is discomfited by an oracle, extemporised
by which declares in Pythian hexameters that, if an
Pisthetairos,
'
impostor comes unbidden, he is to be beaten.^ This divine
'
another sort.
In the later plays the traces of this Impostor motive are faint,
He is evidently '
dying of an ox-hunger,' ^ and he scents the meat
roasting for the feast inside. He is stripped of his coat and shoes,
made to put on the old cloak which the Just Man has brought
as a votive oSering to the God of his new fortunes, while the same
person's old shoes are clapt to his forehead, Uke the votive offerings
hung on oHve-trees by persons saved from shipwreck. Thus
decorated, he is told to run to the baths and get what warmth he
can there, as the Just Man formerly had been driven to do. This
reversal of the positions of the two men recalls the end of the
Knights, where the Paphlagonian, degraded to his rival's former
trade, is similarly bidden to go and drink the waste water of the
baths.^ Finally, at the end of the Plutus, the two starving appU-
cants, Hermes and the Priest of Zeus, are allowed to gain a footing
in the new divine establishment. The Just Man and the amorous
Old Woman are treated by Karion and Chremylus with the ironical
derision regularly accorded to Impostors and they may be added ;
to the Kst.
, r-
a mock of you.^ It was for putting on these airs that Socrates was .
^ The evidence
the Tractatus CoisUniamts, 6 (Kaibel, O. G. F. i. 52; see
ia
above, p. 35, note 1)
^di] Ku/iifdias rd re /SwynoXix" ^ai toi dpoiviKi. naX ri. tCiv
:
i,\a^6vuy. Cf. At. Mth. Nic. 1108a 21, 17 Si wpoa-iroliia-is ii fxh iiri ri fietj^on
&\al^oi/ela Kai 6 ^x"" "iirijv dXafti)/, ri Si iirl rb IXarTov elpuvda Kal dpoiv. irepl Si
rh i]Si rb fiiv iv ttmSi^ 6 fiiv /iiaoi eirpdireXos Kal 17 Sidffeais eirpaweXia, i) Si iirep^oXij
PufioXoxia Kal b ^av j3w/io\6x"S, 6 Si iWeliraii aypoMs ris ktX. See also Rhetoric,
iii. 18, quoted below, p. 138, note 3.
^ N^ic. £/th. 1127a 21, SokH Stj 6 p^if dXa^iov TrpotriroiTjTiKbs rwv ivSb^ujv elvai Kal
p.^ virapxbvTiOV Kal pt^ei^bvtujv ^ vTrdpx^t, b Si e'lpojv dydiraXiv dpvHffdai to, virdpxovra ij
xxxi. (1876), 381 ff. The word occurs first in Comedy. Clouds, 449, p.dcBX'ns
dpav yXoibs dXa^iSiv in a list of words expressing every sort of rhetorical cunning
and trickery ; Wasps, 174, ol'av n-pbtl>ai!iv KadTJKet/, us elpwviKus, ' cunningly,'
'
slily ; Philemon, 89, 6, ofe Ict' aXdir?)^ ri fiiv dpav r-ff ^iirei 17 S' aiBiKaaros.
.'
must be wool-gathering. Demos replies that his wits are safer than
those sheltered by the young Knights' curled locks. He is letting
the rascals feed fat before he gobbles them up. ' I play the simpleton
\ like this on purpose.' ^ Thus, in the concrete character-type as it
both types, and we have, over against the Impostor, one character
- onl)'^ —the Ironical Buffoon.
1 Thrasymaohus in Plato, Sep. 337 A and (playfully) Alcibiades, Symp.
, ;
216 D, dpavevbixevot Si Kal Tal^av iravTo. Thv ^iov irpis to>)s av6piinvovs SiarcXei.
^ 1123 4yCi 5' eKi^)v ravr' ^Xt^tdfw.
:
' lii. 18, 1419 b 8 Sffridi i; dpuvda ^u/xoXox'as (\eveepturrepov 6 /liv yci,p oiVoC
:
those unhappy creatures who earned a place at the tables of the rich by allow-
ing themselves to be a butt for every sort of joke and indignity. For the con-
nection of jSw/ioXox'a with the /ciXa| or vapaairot see Ribbeck, Kolax, 15. Mr.
Cook points out to me that Battus and Korydon in Theocritus' pastoral mime
{Idyl iv.) are respectively good examples of the eiron and the aijroilcos. The
scene belongs to the Mime tradition.
THE IMPOSTOB 139
• 1 Cf. Ribbeck, Alazon, who cites (p. 4) Eep. 490 a, 560b, y//evdeis S^ koE
dXof6i'es Lysis, 218 D, ^o/SoC/iai n^i &<nrep avOpdnrois dXafio-i \6701s ncrl toioAtois
;
eKTerux^fa/iej' Gorg. 525 A, viri \(/ev&ovs koX aXa^ovdas ; Hipp. Min. 369, dXtt^i'
;
as synonym of TroXiJTpoTros and \pev5ris. Bekk., Anec. Gr. p. 374, 20, nXdToii' Si
dXafiffti/ ifrl ToB ^j/cvaTois.
THE IMPOSTOR 141
'
70. The Impostor scenes as '
Episodes
'
had a different sense from its more famihar use to denote the acts '
inserted in a comedy outside the argument of the play for the sake
of causing laughter.' ^ On the strength of this definition, and of
a somewhat obscure statement in which Tzetzes ^ speaks of the
earliest Attic comedians as bringing on their characters with no '
1
See Poppelreuter, who cites Et. Mag., p. 356, iireurSSion Kvplas ftev rh iv
KUfiieSltf iin^epdnevop Ty Spi/iarc yi\uros x^P'" ^S'^ ^?s vTroBiirem, and a similar
gloss in Suldas, s.v. He does not notice that Aristotle's use of the word
iireLffoSiJiSris comes near to implying this
sense.
2 Kaibel, C. G. F., i. p. 18 rai yap ol
: h
t§ 'AttikS TrpioTOV a-vo-TrijdiJ.evotTb
iiri.T'^devp.a T?s ' Ku^t:fi^las—^(ray d^ ol vipl SowapWa—t4 irp6<ru7ra iriKTUs ehfiyov
We have but just come to see that this is not a conceivable process
by which the great tragic drama we know, with its rigid conven-
tional forms, could possibly have come to exist. One object of
this book is to show that just the same impossibilities confront the
corresponding theory for Comedy. The Alazon scenes are not
disconnected burlesque episodes. The Impostors, as we have
insisted, stand in one definite relation to the main action. So far
as action goes, each is the merest reduphcation of the one before.
Why should burlesque episodes be framed on this monotonous
pattern ? What makes these scenes '
episodic,' in the only sense
in which they really are so, is just this reduphcation. The course
of the action is interrupted again and again in a series of indefinite
length, which might be cut down to one scene, or cut out altogether,
without injuring what the grammarians call the argument of the'
play.' The effect is repeated for the best possible reason because
it is funny
— ' The scenes are
for the sake of causing laughter.'
:
'
episodes in the sense of excrescences
' but, if we call them so,;
detail.
and decency the fine and serious part of the Provoked Husband
and it was indeed a very grave and solemn entertainment, without
any low wit, or humour, or jests or, to do it no more than justice,
;
boasts of his own improvements upon the vulgar Comedy ' of his '
predecessors.*
'
He said, " The present age was not improved in anything so much
as in their puppet-shows ; which, by throwing out Punch and his
wife Joan, and such idle trumpery, were at last brought to be a
rational entertainment. I remember," said he, " when I first took
to the business, there was a great deal of low stuff that did very
well to make but was never calculated to improve
folks laugh ;
answered Jones, " but I should have been glad to have seen my old
' According to E. K. Chambers (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 160) the earliest English
notice of Punch in England is in the overseers' books of St. Martin'a-in-the-
Fields for 1666 and 1667. Puppet-plays were, of course, well known in the
sixteenth century, and are frequently mentioned, under the name of ' motions,'
by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other Elizabethans.
2 Spectator, No. 14; Tatler, No. 115.
acquaintance master Punch for all that ; and so far from improv-
ing, I think, by leaving out him and his merry wife Joan, you have
spoiled your puppet-show."
These
life-size marionettes do not seem to have had a long
career. Punch and his merry but shrewish wife resumed their
place, and have held their little stage to the present day. A text
of the play was taken down by Mr. Payne Collier ^ in 1828, mostly
from the performance as given by an old Itahan wayfaring '
town and county for the last forty or fifty years.' Piccini's version
is interpolated with songs and airs from recent operas, but the
Act Punch deUvers the prologue. The dog Toby appears and
I.
and goes ofE with Pretty Polly (a mute person, supposed to be the
daughter of the gentleman who quarrels with Punch for his per-
formances on a sheep-bell, presently to be mentioned).
II. Punch appears with his horse. Hector, intending
to ride
Act
and [Here, in the Ballad, follow his travels in
see Pretty Polly.
are found to resist him.^]
foreign lands, where only three females
Hector, however, throws him, and Punch, declaring that he is a
While this person is looking for his
dead man, calls the Doctor.
Punch kicks him in the eye and leaps up. The Doctor
injuries.
applies a dose of the stick, but is made to take his own physic and
' This personage is the only unwelcome intruder who corresponds to the
Impostor of the comedies, appearing for no reason, and making a claim which the
hero treats as impudent. 2 Punch and Judy,
66.
* HUtoire dea Marionnettes, 251. Act. v. Scene iv.
•*
THE IMPOSTOR 147
1
See Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, i. 206 £f.
148 THE OKIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
of the duelling scenes of the Mummers' Play is more probably-
due to the process of multipUcation. The Mummers' Play, at any
rate, has certainly not passed through the puppet-show stage ;
attack them with weapons ; but they are repelled and wounded
1 Bacch. 758.
^ Ibid. 912 : ai rbv irpbBvixov 6vd' &, fiJi] -ype^v ofrnv. 956 : S6\ioii /taiviSuv Kard-
(XKOTOV,
' Prologue V. 44, Ilei'Se? ... |
3s 6eoii.axet to, Kar' i/j,i Kal (nrovSdv diro |
liBet u',
iv e^xa's t' oiiaii.o'i jixdav (x^i, Cf. 325 (Teiresias) ov deotj.ax'qaoi. 374 (Chorus)
difis oix offlav O^piv is riv Bpd/juov, 387, dxaXti'Ui' trTO/idTUv kt\. 516 (Dlmi.) rCivt'
&iroLv^ v^pLCTfidrtav |
/ieTei(7i ^iSvvabs tre.
a mark to be shot at, just as the figure of Pentheus served as a target for the
Maenads.' We are reminded, too, of Euripides' Kinsman, tied up to a plank by
the infuriated Thesmophoriazusae, whose rites he had profaned. The elaborate
dance and song which accompany the search for this intruder (655 ff. ) have a
sort of ritual air, as if a formal search for the profane had preceded the mystical
service. The language is serious, and recalls that which the Bacchae use of
Pentheus. Cf. Thesmoph. 668 : ^v ydp /xe XdO-y dpdaas dv6a-i.a |
Silxrei t6 SUriv Kal
Trpbs Toiruf \
Tois (SXXois dvSpdaiv ^ffrai, \
irapdSiiyn' S^piuf idlKiav i-' fyywv \
ddiuv re
TpbTraV I
0i)(rei S' ilvai re fleois <j>avepi^s, \
Seffci t' ijSri \
raatv &v0piI>Tois ae^lletv
dal/iovas, ktX, with Bacchae 373, 537, and many other passages.
THE IMPOSTOR 151
who also bears upon his head, as a scapegoat, the sins and evils
evil—that lie at the root of Comedy with its two elements of invoca-
story the hero is murdered by the villain, but brought to Ufe again
by some beasts, his faithful friends, who apply to the corpse a
certain healing herb or the water of life.' ^ When we remember
the black-masked Antagonist of the northern Greek plays, who
breaks in upon the wedding celebrations, molests the bride, and
kills the hero, it is hard to resist the conclusion that the Impostor
motive in these been influenced by the folk play. In
stories has
the Mdrchen of the Dragon-slaying he temporarily triumphs over
the hero, whose exaggerated modesty and humble exterior often
set him in contrast to the swaggering impostor, as the eiron is con-
trasted with the alazon. Even when the hero is not slain by the
impostor, the recognition of his true character at his final triumph
is analogous to the recognition [dvajvwpiai'i) of the tragic hero,
in
which we have learnt to see the epiphany of the risen God.* This
motive passed from Tragedy to the New Comedy, and thence
into the long tradition of romance, where the hero of high
birth
1
See Jessen, s.v. 'Phineus' in Roscher, Lex. Myth. col. 2355.
' Frazer on Paua. i; 41, 3.
2 Ibid. vol. iii. pp. 203 ff.
^ See above, p. 59.
CHAPTER VIII
minor impostor, Ach.); Aeschylus (i^Vogrs); Cleon and Agoracritus ( &jgrAjs). The
hero of the Thesmophoriazusae appears in many editions as 'Mnesiloohus,' but
there is no good authority for the name. Van Leeuwen points out that no
definite person is intended, only a Kinsman of Euripides.
'
The minor historical
'
has pointed out that Lamachus, at the date of this play, was not
an important member of the war-party. He was very young, and
his poverty made him obscure.^ He appears to have been picked
out for the sake of his name, which might be rendered VaUant'
plea for peace with the tragic bombast inherited by all his descen-
1 Das literariscTie Portrat, Berl. (1896), pp. 152 S.
2 Plut. Alcib. 17 and 21 ; Ar. Acham. 601, veaflas.
3 Bruns, op. cit, 153: Nichts lamachisch ist als der Name. Im Orunde
p.
liegt die grotesJce Fratze des Eenommistm im Mend, des
hungernden und siohnenden
Prahlhaiises, ein Wesen so unwirUich wie sein Pendant Dihaeopolis, etc.
The
Son of Lamachus is brought into the Peace, to be rebuked by Trygaeus
for
Tois \oyxo<pl>poi(rii' ?«' i'iv. Schol. ad v. 1290: Aa/idx""' roO del pov\o/ihov
hraiie Si vapd, to tAos toO Ai£;UOXos dvSnaTos. Peace 304
Tj/iipa yap :
tidX^aBai..
^JAaju^eK TJSe luaoXd/rnxos.
« Aristotle, Mth. N. iii. 7, 8 : SoKeT 5k Kal dXofiy eTyai 6 Bpaais Kal TrfioffToii/Ti/cds
"iiras ^oiXerat (PalveaBai.- ii>
dvSpetai- lis oBv ixeivoi (o dvSpiiOs) iripl ra 4>opepd ?x">
oTs oSk Sivarai. (/.tueTTM- SiJ Kal eMv ol iroXKol air&v BaaffiSeAoi..
156 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
dants. A terrific crest of plumes (' boastard's feathers ?
' queries
Dikaiopolis ^) nods over Ms helmet, and the emblem on his shield
is the Gorgon's head, as if he posed as a second Perseus and would
strike his enemies to stone. What is especially interesting to us
is Lamachus is properly the Antagonist in the Acharnians,
that, while
in place of the Antepirrheme of the Agon is substituted a duologue
of the regular pattern, in which DikaiopoKs plays Buffoon, and uses
his irony to discountenance this bragging Impostor, and beat
'
'
in the general scheme of the play, and treated in the way in which
the Impostors are regularly dealt with.^ The Antagonist, in a word,
is here an Impostor of the major type and this may be taken to ;
support the view that the minor Impostors of the last chapter are
only doubles of the Antagonist.
Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 11, a good example of the BuSoon- Alazoji scene.
"^
Athen. xiv. 621 v, where it is a general term applicable to the Italian mimes
called Phlyakes and the Phallophori, Autokabdali, etc.
THE STOCK MASKS OF THE OLD COMEDY 157
distinguished from the men we now call ' '
philosophers ; indeed,
any serious students, such as the great medical school
of Cos, would
come under the name.i There is, accordingly, nothing
surprising
m the fact that this mask of the learned pedant is worn in Aristo-
phanes' plays by
Socrates and also by Euripides, the two great
symbolic representatives of all that Aristophanes thought
dangerous
in the culture of the younger generation. The same mask also fits
minor impostors hke Meton the mathematician, 2 the ragged
poet
of the Birds, and so on. These are professed exponents
of Sophia.
The glaringly unhistorical picture of Socrates in the Clouds has
excited the wonder of many generations. Not only does the poet
attribute to the philosopher many opinions and forms of speculation
of which the historic Socrates was notoriously innocent, but
what is equally surprising, though less often noticed—he does not
avail himself of many
which would seem to ofier most
real traits
attractive material for satire and caricature.^ The famous dai-
monion, the midwife mother and the obstetric theory of education,*
the Silenus-like figure and countenance with its prominent eyes
—
and snub-nose ^ all these are left untouched. It may, perhaps,
^ Of. the list in the Clouds, 331, irXetffTOUs aSrai ^bcKovai. a-o^/urTd^ \
dovpio/iipms
(Lampon, who founded Thurii at the bidding of an oracle), laTpoTix""-^
(Hippocrates and other physicians), o-(f>payidovvxapyoKo/jiTiTas (philosophical dilet-
tanti), KVuXiijiv Sk xo/aw" q-aiMTOKiixirras (dithyrambic poets), di/Spas /j,eTcwpocfihaKa5
(natural philosophers). Of. also Meineke's note on Kratinus, ArchilocM frag, ii.,
oTov aotpitTTuv fffiijvos aveStcjiTjaare (of poets and musicians). Compare Aristotle's
third class of aka^oves in Eth. N. iv. 7,13 oJ nipSovs {Ivena 6,\a^ovev6/j,eyot) &p Kai
:
being warned by his familiar spirit, Meton either by reasonable forecast or some
kind of divination. Meton feigned madness, and, taking a torch, made as if
he would burn down his house, or, as others say, actually burned it.
' This is pointed out clearly by W. Siiss in his excellent dissertation De
personarum antiq. com. Att. usu atque, origine, Bonn 1905, from which I have
borrowed freely here.
^ Unless we count e^-fifi^XwKas (137) and Toi^Ti/j.^Xufn.ii'ov (139). Professor Taylor
(Varia Socratica, 1911, Essay iv.) seems to me to make far too much of a few
points like this. I differ altogether from his conclusion that the Glouds is a '
= Siiss {op. cit.) disputes the use of portrait masks in the Old Comedy, arguing
that the conventional grotesque masks of the Comedy of Menander could not
have been invented for realistic plays of that type, but must have been
traditional on the Attic stage. Anyhow, the above-mentioned features are not
referred to in the text of the Clouds. For the general point see below,
p. 169.
158 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
be inferred from various passages that Socrates was actually
represented as a pale and emaciated skeleton like his disciple
Chaerephon.^
The secret of these curious facts was found when it was shown
that the Socrates and Euripides of Aristophanes have several
traits in common which the two actual men certainly did not share,
and that these traits belong to the stock mask of the Learned
alazon.^ The epithet 'Impostor' is twice in the play apphed to
the philosophers,* who, in striking contrast with the real practice
of Socrates, are supposed to dispense mysterious doctrines inside
their Cave of Trophonius. The mask worn by these lean and
unwashed ascetics is not individually characterised it belongs :
1 Ll. 1112, 1011-1018 may imply this, as Siiss thinks (p. 11).
- The Scholiast on Clouds, 363, where the Chorus praise Socrates, Sn Ppeveia.
r' iv raiffiv oSoTs, is explicit : (Mv iari tvv aXal^dvoiv. Cf. Schol. on Lysistr. 8S7,
^pevdieTai.' dXafoi/i/fws epi-KTerai. See for this subject Ribbeck, Alazmi, pp. 11 ff.
3 102 ; Pheid. roils dXafiras
Toi>s uix/3iu»'i'as Totis dvvirod/iTovs X^eis,
dv KaKoSat/uov XwKparrjs /cai Xaipeipuv.
Schol. ad loc. : 6.\(il;6vas- . . . eUlrras S^ Tois <f>i.\o(r6^ovs dXafivas /caXei, iwel
X^yeiv iwayy^Woi/Tai. irepl i&v oix {(raaif. ij Sri ae/xvci ^ovtes ijfl9i; dXafixf s SokoOo-iv.
1492 : Streps, sei <r^6dp' etc' aXa^6ves.
* omnes enim philosophi scenici secundum regtilam certae cuiusdam
Siisa, p. 28,
1
The passages are collected in Diels, Fragmente d. Vorsokrr (1906),
i. p. 291 S.
2
948 a-i Sti Beounv lis irepiafftis S>v &v^p
^ivu ; ail aii}(j>poiv KoX KaKwv dKriparos ;
' The last scene of the Prologue (221 ff.), the Parados,
the long scene in
Anapaests (314-456), an iambic scene (478-509), and two iambic scenes after the
Parabasis, down to 812, where Pheidippides enters.
THE STOCK MASKS OF THE OLD COMEDY 161
or principle of evil.
So, here again, we have a case in which the
arch-Impostor and the Antagonist are identical. The destruction
of his house, if not of himself, by fire, is
an appropriate
ending, if we think of the Antagonist-Impostor as, in a sense,
a
Pharmakos.
Oneof the most curious things in all literary history is the way
in which Plato, writing philosophy in dialogue form under the
influence of the SiciUan Mime as practised by Sophron, exactly
reversed the role of Socrates, and spent his early life as a man of
letters in setting his
master before us in the opposite character of
the eiron.^ Socrates was to him the one man in the Greece of
Aristophanes' days who really practised the Delphic precept Know '
thyself —that
precept which, in his analysis of the spectator's
emotion in witnessing Comedy,^ he says is violated by every type
of impostor. Socrates alone did not profess to know what he did not
know, and his devoted follower wrests the weapon from his enemies'
hands and turns it against themselves. They had attacked Socrates
for his '
irony,' in which their meaner spirits could only read the
hidden pride that apes humihty. Plato would show them what
this irony really was and as a consequence of his treating S.:5Crates
;
in this light, the word irony lost its necessarily bad association
'
'
turning them from foolish rogues into wise and good people— and evidently they
do possess this art of destruction {(peSpov riva rat S\eepov)—theii, if the young
men shrink from the ordeal, he himself, being old, will submit to Dionysodorus,'
as if to Medea the Golohian. Let him destroy me, and if he pleases boil me,
provided he will turn me out a good man This motive of regeneration by
!
'
cooking an old man into a youth we have also seen in Aristophanic Comedy.
L
^
162 THE OBIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
The Socrates who will live for ever is the Socrates of Plato, a figure
as different from the hero of Xenophon's well-meaning and dull
gospel as the philosophised Christ of St. John is from the Christ of
the synoptics. He is a work of art, the creation of a great dramatic
' Rep. viii. 568 A : ovk irbs ... ^; re rpayifiSla iXus (To<t>bv SoksT clmi Kal 6
Ei5/)i7rf5i/s 5La<p4pti>i' iv adTjj.
Atheu. iv. 158 E, where Euripides, Socrates, and Diogenes
^ 6 (TKiji'i/cJs tj)i\6<ro<l>o!,
are all quoted as recommending a sparing diet ; xiv. 561 A, Euripides is quoted
for the philosophic doctrine of Love. Sext. Emp. Math. i. 288.
^ Vita, i. 10, Sohw. : dxouo-TJjs yeyijicnos 'Ava^aydpav Kal UpoSUov Kal UpuraySpov
Kal XuKpirov! iratpos. * Aelian,
V. H. ii. 13.
THE STOCK MASKS OF THE OLD COMEDY 163
an alazon and a cheat,* who bluffed his audience with effects stolen
from Phrynichus. Then he stuffed his plays with phrases Uke '
1 Thesmoph. 5 flf. This instance is taken from Suss, op. cit. p. 21. Of. also
Mazon, p. 126.
2 Clouds, 659. I take this opportunity of suggesting a restoration of the lines
which must have been lost after 661, as follows :
oKeKTpiav
Kptis, rpAyos, ravpos, Kiav, . . . 661
<Socr. ivlaxes aKSa ttus to, d'^Xe' aB (caXefs ;
'
n the Peace (Parah. II. ), 1177, fcSra <j>eiya irpSros Siawep |ou96s iTToXem-pviiv roiis |
X60OIIS ffeluv. \6<t>os is of course used both of the cock's comb and of the
horse's mane and the helmet crest was made of horse-hair (i)r7r4Xo0os).
;
^ 939 (Eurip. : aXK' ilis -rrapiXa^ov t^v t^X""!" vapk ffoO rb Trpuror eiBM |
o/5oCiro>' iirti KoinraffiiotTUji Kal prffiaTav iirax6tip, |tcxvara /ih TpumcTov airrjv Kal
rb pdpos d0erXov |
iTuWlois Kal irepi.TaTois Kal TCVTMottn Xewois . . elr' avirpe^ov
|
fiovifSlaii ktK.
1 Athen. vii. 290b : aXa^oviKiv S' iarl irav rb tCiv /iayeipav (jtOXov. Poseidippus,
Xopeiovffai. frag. 24 M
twv T]Smii.aT<jiv: \
iravTOiv KpaTia-rSv ianv ex fiayeipiKr; |
dXa^orela. See Ribbeok, Alazon, pp. 18 ff. ; Legrand, Daos (Paris, 1910), 125 S.,
the Spartan cake which the speaker (who represents the General,
Demosthenes) had kneaded at Pylos. Then he drives away the
other slaves, and will suffer no one else to attend to his master,
but ' stands over Demos at his dinner with a leather fly -flap to scare
away the pohticians,' ^ He croons oracles to soothe the supersti-
tious old fellow when he has reduced him to a state of imbecil-
; and,
ity, mahgns his fellow-slaves and gets them whipped, not forgetting
describing the xiXa/ces in attendance on a yonng man, speaks of one as scaring off
the flies. Cleon is said to perform the same service to the old jurymen in the
Wasps, 596 : KXiuv 6 XfKpaJiSd/uos . . . ^vXimi. Sid x^'P^s ^X^ '"'' ^as p^vlas
of the flattering courtier.^ This passage brings out that the figure^
of the kolax comes from a monarchical and aristocratic type of
society. The mask is transferred to the flattering demagogue by^
way of analogy. Probably it came into Attic Comedy from the
^ Klearchos says : Trii> KoKaKelav ravreici woulv to, ijOr] tSsv koKAkuv Kara^povriTtKuv
6vTuiv tQv irepl airoifs . . . ffTjfieiov d^ rd Taz^ {jTO/z^veiv elddras oTa ToXfJLWffi. Td d^
Tuv KoKaKevoiUvuv ifupvaoinivuv Tjj'/coXaKeijt, xaiii/ous koX Kevois ttoiowto (?), irivTOiv
vifiov, Kal yberai 5£0-n-OTi.K6s, liVre ol KdXaKes IvTi/wi, xal itrTtv 6 Srip.os oBtos iviXo-^ov
Tuv novapxiSiv T-T? TvpavvlSi. Sib Kal rb ^Bos rb airb . . . Kal 6 dvp.ayoyyb<: Kal 6
K6\ai ol airol Kal&viXoyov. Knights 1111, ffi A^/ie /caX^i' 7' ?xets |
i-pxiv, bre irAvra
^ That the Old Comedy had portrait-masks is alleged by Pollux, iv. 143, and
PlatoniuB v. Siacfi. KOifj,. 13, iv fih yap ry irdXaig, eficafoc ret Trpoa-airela rots KUfUfi-
SoviJ.ivoi.1, Xva irplv n xal Tois iiwoKpiTO-i elTeiv o Kup,ifSoiiievoi ex ttjs o/iOiirT/Tos riji
in the Middle and New Comedies the masks were specially made not to look
like any human beings at all, for fear that they should by chance resemble some
'Macedonian official.' The New Comedy masks, as any one can see, represent
certain stock characters with definite traits of temperament, conventionally
expressed by exaggeration of feature. No 'Macedonian official' could have
been such a fool as to think that any individual was pointed at in the irate
or, if he had
fathers, prodigal sons, pandars, etc., of this Comedy of manners ;
the distorted features of the mask would not have protected the
thought so,
author.
2 Cleon's mask may have been specially copied from representations of
Typhon, to whom he repeatedly
is compared Knighta, 511, the Chorus say of
:
causes bad
Aristophanes yeyyaiws vpbs rbv Ti;0S xapfl Kal tt)v ipiii\r,i>. Typhon
<"»
winds so does 6 Ua4>Uta<' (Paphlagon) Knights, 430 ff. {Ckon), ?|eiM' y^P
;
;
of the mask was probably to disguise the performer's face,^ and its
later use was to express the traits of the stock character represented.
The whole history of ancient portraiture, which hardly presents
a single reahstic hkeness before the end of the fifth century, is against
the portrait-mask in Old Comedy.
Shakespeare's treatment of Sir John Falstafi is a parallel case.
Of the real Sir John FastoM, the magnificent knight ' who
'
'
To avouch him by many arguments vahant is to maintain that the
sun is bright.' He adds that '
the stage has been overbold with
his memory, making him a thrasonical puff, and emblem of mock
valour.' The truth is, of course, that this great comic figure owes
his character and features, his wit, his cowardice, his devotion to
sack and to Doll Tearsheet, even his baldness and round belly,
not to the valiant benefactor of Magdalen but to the stock mask
of the Bufioon, with some borrowings, jjarhaps, from that
thrasonical puff, the Boastful Soldier.^ Shakespeare did not send
his property man to study portraits of Sir
John Fastolf. Neither,
we may be sure, did Aristophanes tell his
mask-maker to copy the
features of Euripides, or Aeschylus, or Lamachus. We must imagine
all these historical characters wearing masks conventionally belong-
1 Cf. Demoath., Falsa Legal., 433 : toO Karapirov Kvpij^luvos, Ss ey rais TrofiwaU
&vev ToO vpocilnrov KUiidj^ei,
2 Worthies of England (1811), ii. p. 131.
' Der Mimas, i. p. 863 ff. I do not know whether the analogy has
Cf. Eeich,
been noticed between the scenes in Henry IV. where the Chief Justice
expostulates with Falstaff, and the episode in some versions of Punch and Judy,
in which the Chief Justice appears, after the discomfiture of Jack Ketch, to
arrest Punch, and is derided in the usual way. See Payne Collier, p. 89 note.
THE STOCK MASKS OF THE OLD COMEDY 171
83. The Age and Sex Types : the Old Man and the Young Man
When we look at the remaining stock characters of the Old
Comedy, four other types emerge, forming a group characterised
—
not by profession, but by sex and age the Old Man, the Young i
Man, the Old Woman and the Young Woman. We must consider
the members of this group in turn.
We have already seen how the hero of an Aristophanic play is
normally an old man at the beginning, who turns at the end into
a young man, the radiant bridegroom of the Exodos.^ We have
also explained this extraordinary rejuvenation motive by reference
to our supposed ritual in which the Old Year is transformed into the
New. The ritual and the corresponding legends show us that, accord-
ing as the symbolism varies, the Young Man may either be the Old
Man restored to youth, or a distinct person, his successor. In the
latter case, the Young King (Pelops, Oedipus) kills the Old, and
takes the throne with the hand of his wife (Jocasta) or daughter
(Hippodameia). In the plays of Aristophanes, besides the normal
type with the rejuvenated Old Man, we also find in the Clouds
and Wasps the other possibility, the Father and Son. Even here
the rejuvenation motive is still prominent. Strepsiades tries to
assimilate the culture, Philocleon the manners, of the younger
generation. A further interesting point is that in both plays the
principal Agonbetween Father and Son. The son beats his
is
father in the Clouds, and all but kills him in the Wasps.
What here concerns us, however, is that the Young Man is, so
rejuvenated parent. He
to say, identical with his reformed and
ia everytHng that his old father
is not at the outset, and tries to^
fashionable. The traits of the Old Man, on the other hand, recur
_^
so regularly as to show that we have to do with a stock mask. The
description of Demos in the prologue of the Knights is typical.'
'
Our master,' says the slave, is a boor in temper, who Uves on '
beans, a testy and morose old man, and rather deaf.' He is super-
stitious and easily deceived by his cunning slave, whose slanders
cause him to beat the other slaves unmercifully.* The Old Men
in the remaining plays are substantially the same type, with one or
another trait thrown into reUef as the subject demands.
Rusticity and boorishness (arypoiKLu) are a constant feature.
Dikaiopolis is a countryman, hating the town to which the war
has confined him. His boorishness is softened for the sake of
contrast with the Acharnians, who have all the more rough and
unpleasant features of the mask. Strepsiades, Uke Georges Dandin,
is the rustic who has married a city madam.^ His son complains
of his moroseness.® He is thrifty to the point of stinginess
another fixed trait of this mask—and
wished to call his son Pheido-
nides, on the principle of the Shandean Hypothesis. He beats
his slave for putting too large a wick in the lamp.'' His superstition
' Cf. Arg. I. to Clouds : vpe(r0uTTis yip iaTiv AypoiKO! ix^ofievoi TritiSi dcmicoD
^povy}Htt.Tos yefiovTi Kal t^s eiyevelas eh Tro\vTi\eiai> dTToXeXovjcoTi.
- Wasps, 135 : ^uv rpiirovs ippvcLy}xotxeiJ,vi,Kovs ti,v6.s.
says he ia not afraid so long as ri toC S^/iou irpda-airov /i,aKKo$ KaBi)iJ.evov (376).
Neil remarks {ad loc.) The look on the mask of Demos is foretold.'
:
'
tI dvcTKoKaheiS ;
Streps.
vaxeidv hcriBd.! BpvaWlSav. Sri rSiv
This little episode seems designed to bring in the slave-beating motive. It is
repeated in the Parados of the Wasps, 248 ff. Cf. Silas, de Pcrsonarum, 113.
THE STOCK MASKS OF THE OLD COMEDY 175
and credulity need no detailed illustration.
Philocleon is the same
type, with the moroseness i
and quick temper exaggerated to
waspishness. The bean-soup which he so
enjoys in his private
law-court is a link between him and Demos, the '
eater of beans.' 2
It the countryman's favourite diet. Trygaeus
is
is more like
Dikaiopolis, a comparatively genial countryman,^
though capable
of hurUng strong language at Zeus for '
sweeping Hellas with the
besom of war.' Pisthetairos is DikaiopoUs again, only still
more
genial and witty.
We need not pursue the series further. As we follow this
character through the plays, we see clearly enough why
Demos
is the only old man who keeps nearly true to type,
as the
morose, testy, old boor. In all the other plays we have
traced him
through, the Old Man's part is the one which Aristophanes
has
written for himself, no matter whether he acted it or not.
Hence
it breaks through the traditional mask, and flowers with much
of the charm and genius of its creator, like the parts that MoUere
wrote for himself in his hghter plays. In the same way, Falstaff
and Mr. Pickwick, who were originally cast for the mask of the
Bald Fool, and designed to be no more than the cause that wit is
in other men, became witty in themselves, lovable, and even wise.
Instances hke these are the best measure we have for creative
genius. The stock mask can be defined in half-a-dozen adjectives,
which no more make a living character than half-a-dozen clothes
make a man. Any dullard can put a dummy inside them and make
it walk and talk upon the stage. In Aristophanes we can see the
dummy touched into life, and the features behind the mask working
with a play of expression very different from the traditional angry I
dance the Jmrdax. He adds that EupoUs had stolen her from
Phryniohus, who had put her in the place of Andromeda in a
parody of the Perseus story. She seems to have figured in another
Comedy as the mother of Hyperbolus.^
enough we remember
(if Xanthus and Melanthus), there are two
varieties one dark {fii\a<;) with black hair, and one fair (^av66<i)
:
and more dehcate. Then come the Flatterer {Koka^) and the
Parasite {irapdaLTO';), both dark-skinned, hook-nosed, and luxurious.
They are only sUghtly distinguished the Parasite by his crushed :
Luc. Dial. Dear. xix. 1 iinirelovaa rbv \b<j>ov iKirXJiTTei, /ic. We are reminded
:
of the apotropaic Gorgon masks, the oldest in the series of masks found in the
Artemisium at Sparta (Brit. Sch. Arm. xii. 1905-6, p. 338 and PI. x.-xii.). The
later masks are indubitably dramatic. It is quite possible that the terrific mask
of the Soldier developed directly from the Gorgon mask. Lamachus has the
Gorgon on his shield. If the Soldier is the Antagonist, he stands for the
apotropaic side of the ritual.
THE STOCK MASKS OF THE OLD COMEDY 177
Thus we can trace our old group of stock masks among the more
varied figures of the laterGreek and Koman stage. We must now
turn back to Aristophanes and the evidence he suppUes which may
throw light upon their origin.
'
87. Aristophanes on '
Vulgar Comedy
his own superior merits, refers to certain stale tricks and characters
what he calls
'
vulgar Comedy ' {<j)oprLKr) Kajj^mUa).^ He makes
of
it clear that the Athenian
pubHc was getting tired of these stereo-
typed antics, and he claims credit for giving Comedy
a wider range,
M
178 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
cost him the most pains ;
yet it was defeated by a crew of
vulgarians.^ So much the worse for the wit of his audience ; but
still he will not desert the cause of the clever. So, like Blectra,
his Comedy comes now to seek the lost brotherhood of wit.
'
And see how modest she is. To begin with, she comes before
you not decorated with that broad, red-tipped thing of stitched
leather (the phallus), to raise a laugh among the children ; then,
there is no jeering at the Bald-head, no high-kicking Kordax ; and
the old man who speaks his lines shall not beat the bystander with
his stick to conceal the badness of his jokes.
does My Comedy
"
not rush upon the scene with torches in her hands, screaming lou
lou !
" ; she comes with full trust in herself and her verses.
'
Yet, for all that I am a poet of this stamp, I do not put on airs
I do not seek to cheat you by bringing the same old thing on the
stage again and again. No I show my wit by the fresh notions
;
'
Come had better explain the
then,' says the slave Xanthias, '
I
plot to the audience, with just these few hints by way of preface.
They must not expect from us anything so very tremendous but ;
is a simple plot with a moral to it, not too clever for the likes of
you, but still wittier than Comedy of that vulgar sort.'
In the Parabasis of the Peace (734 fl.) the Leader claims blessings
on the poet
'
For he alone has put an end to his rivals' everlasting jokes
about rags and warfare upon fleas he was the first to depose ;
and drive off the stage that Heracles of theirs, who kneads his cakes
or goes hungry he dismissed those runaway slaves, and deceitful
;
slaves, and slaves who get beaten on purpose that their fellow-slave
may crack a jest at their stripes and then ask " Poor wretch, :
what is the matter with your skin ? Has the whip invaded your
THE STOCK MASKS OF THE OLB COMEDY 179
ribs in full force and devastated your back ? " He made away
vdth all rubbish and vulgarity and
this low tomfoolery, and
created for you a. noble art, building high its towered walls with
fine verses and fine ideas and jokes not of the market-place.'
He
adds that his satire did not fly at small game, but attacked
no less a monster than Cleon.
'
Frag. 2 K Me-ya/jiK^s
: Kw/Ujidias gir/i' <oi)> SUi/j,'
|
-Qaxwhix-qv to Spdfia
•
\
* Poetics,
3, 1448a, 29, 5i6 Kal ivrnroioOi'Tai. ttjs re rpayifiSlas Kal Trjs KoifUfdias
ol Aapieh' TTJs /iiv ykp KU/MiiSlas ol Meyapets o'i re ivraOBa (is ttjs irap' avroisM
dv/iOKparlas yevoiiivrii Kal ol ex SiKeXlas, ^KeWev yap fjv 'Eirixap/ios 6 ttoiijt^s ttoXXij;
irpdrepos &v Xiuvldov Kal MAyvTiTOS.
* For this point see Kaibel, G. G. F., i.p. 77. Marmor Parium, 39 (ed.
Jacoby, pp. 13, 105), d0' oi5 iv 'kB[,iv']ai.i Ka^ulMv xoM^s iTliBt, [arriJffivlTwv
wpii]Tui/ 'Ixapiiiav, eufidvTos 2ov(rapiavos, Kal S.e\ov MBri irpuTov IcrxiSulf] Aptnxob']
ture in the hands of Ehinthon, in the days of the first two Ptolemies,
The Tarentine Phlyax can certainly be affiliated to the type ol
Daidalos and Eneualios (both inscribed) who are fighting with spears anr
shields, in the presence of Hera (inscr.) seated on a throne and evidently to b(
the bride of the victor. Eneualios has the high-crested helmet of the Valiant
Soldier while Daidalos, the prince of ' Sophists,' may be taken as the Learnec
;
puppet-play.
^ Athen. xiv. 621 D : irapd 5^ AaKeSai/jiovloi! kiji/uktjs iraiSias tJk tis rplnro'.
TToXaiis, fit 07)(r4 Suirl/Sios, oiK 8,ya,v a-n-ovdtuos, itre 5<j Kav Toirots to Xirbv t^s ZirdpT?)!
/iETaSiwKO^Jirrjs. i/ufiuro ydp tk iv eiireXei tJ X^fei KX^WTOvris nvas irilipav i
KoX /u/itiTis. This passage has recently been discussed by Reich, Der Mimm
i. 231 ff. ; G. Thiele, Anfange d. griech. Komiidie, N. Jahrb. ii. (1902), 405 ff.
we all think him a wonder. It has often been remarked that here
we seem to have our earliest ghmpse of the stock mask worn by the
Learned Doctor, the remotest ancestor of the Italian Dottore, of
Doctor Caius, and of the Medecin malgri lui?-
Another branch was established as early as the sixth century
at Syracuse. Here the creator of the literary Mime was Bpi-
charmus, a contemporary of Aeschylus, who achieved such fame
that in Plato's time he could be called the Eng of Comedy.^
This brilhant tradition undoubtedly affected Comedy at Athens.
One thing is transparently clear. This ' vulgar Comedy ' possessed
slave whose function is to get beaten, and the cunning slave who
retvei. rois ixh yd-p <j>a\riTai elfffyayev iv rri Avffi<rTp6.TTi, rbv 5k xSpSaKa ii> toii
2<pri^l, rois 5k 0oXok/)oi>s iv Wp'^vv, -r^" ^^
vpea^driiv iv 'Opvin, rhs 5k S?5as Kal t5 loi
iv Ne^^Xois roirpuToy. The note is not well-informed, but the genera! point is
true.
3 See above, p. 20.
184 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
the Greek Mukku).^ He is the stwpidus of the Mime. A second
was Bucco, whose large cheeks betokened, it would seem, folly-
even more than greed. ^ Third comes the Old Man, Pappus (in
Oscan, Casnar),^ a name borrowed from Greek Comedy or from
the Silenopappos, who is the constant stock mask in the Satyr plays.
The fourth is Dossennus, the '
hunch-back," who is none other than
the Learned Doctor. He played a chief part in the Philosophia of
Pomponius, and appeared as a schoolmaster in the same author's
Maccus as a Virgin. The passing stranger is bidden to read his
'
wisdom in his epitaph quoted by Seneca.*
'
' The derivative jiaxKoav is twice used in the Knights, once of Demos (62),
once of the people whom he personifies, 395, Paph. oi diSoix ijicii, ?io! cLv ^ rb
pov\e\n-/ipiov \
Kal rb toS S^q/xov TrpbffUTOV /laKKoq KaBiiixevov. For these masks see
Dieterieh, Pulcinella, 84 if.,and Marx in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Atdlanae fabulae.
^ Apul. de mag. 81 (Helm) omnes isti quos nominaui . . si cum hoc una
.
Dieterieh,' Fu^cineKa, 94, adds that a name, it must have been a if Cicirrus is
cognomen from the stage, as Maoous and Dossennus were names of historical
persons (ibid. p. 84).
^ Hesych. Klxippof iXeKrpiiay.
; KiVica' dXexropfs. kIkkos' iXcRTpviiv, kX^ttjs.
THE STOCK MASKS OF THE OLD COMEDY 185
to a cock-fight i
a cock-fight is sculptured on
:
the chair of the
priest of Dionysus in the Athenian theatre. A vase from Lower
Italy 2 shows us two comic actors, armed
with spear and shield,
marching one behind the other. The leader is a handsome youth,
crested with what looks an enormous cock's comb his follower
like ;
Vulgar Comedy.
186 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
Many writers an historic
have speculated as to the possibility of
' See Soherillo, La commedia dell' arte in Italia ; Dieterich, Pulcinella, 251 S. ;
1
In Pauly- Wisiowa, vol. ii. s.v. ' Atellanae fabulae.'
188 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
taken as final, for Reich looks to Byzantium as a centre from which
the late Greek Mime could have spread to Italy on the one side
and to Moslem countries on the other. If, therefore, we are con-
Cook, the Soldier, the Parasite, the Old Man, the Old Woman.
This group furnishes the stock masks for the major characters in
who carry on the main business of the plot,
Aristophanes' plays,
[
ifwe add to them the Young Man (in two plays), and the Young
',
Woman, the mute bride of the final marriage. The Parasite may,
i
perhaps, be ruled out as borrowed from the Dorian tradition.
But what of the remainder ?
both appear and fight one another, or the Old may be turned into
the Young. The Swaggering Soldier is Captain Bluster, the
antagonist who kills the bridegroom. The Doctor recalls him to
THE STOCK MASKS OF THE OLD COMEDY 189
life, or the Cook transmutes him from age to youth. This magical
process of regeneration, as we have seen, is only a special variety
of death and resurrection. The Cook is a magician, a dealer in
enchanted herbs, a medicine-man. As such, he is not, in origin,
distinct from the Learned Doctor. These two characters are
alternative. The Young Woman is the mute bride of the marriage.
The Old Woman is properly the Mother, who appears in the opening
scene of the Thracian play, nurses her miraculous child, and dis-
appears. In most of the versions this prehminary scene has dropt
out, leaving the Old Woman without a function : and accordingly
we find that she does not figure as a major character, either in
Aristophanes or in the Atellane plays. This incident of the
miraculous birth was, from its nature, sure to drop out in the
transition from the childish make-believe of folk drama to Uterary
Comedy.^ In a comedy the hero cannot always be born in the first
act and married in the last. Nor can the miraculously rapid growth
to maturity, which recurs so often in legend, be represented on the
stage. It can only be described, as in fact it is in the newly dis-
covered Satyr-play, the Ichneutae of Sophocles. Clearly this old
bound to disappear, and with it fades the figure
ritual induction is
of the Old Woman, whose function is gone. She remains only
as the drunken and amorous hag who dances the Kordax. The
rest of the play from the Agon at the beginning to the Marriage at
the end requires just those other dramatis personae that we have
enumerated. It can hardly be an accident that, with the addition
of the Parasite, they provide the stock masks for Aristophanes'
historical characters. wj
That the ritual which lay behind Tragedy was native to Attica,
in the sense that it existed as ritual in that country before the
drama grew out of it, is generally admitted. I can see no serious
reason to doubt that the same holds of Comedy. The Dorian
claim is not supported by Aristotle
on the contrary he points
:
Ameipsias (Frogs, 13); the &vSp€^ (popriKol who defeated the Clmds (524),
Eupolis, Phrynichus, Hermippus {Clouds, 553).
2 The sources are collected and discussed by Nilsson, Studia de Dion, atticis.
The most reoeut treatment of the subject will be found in Mr. A. B. Cook's
ZeuK, vol. i. (Cambridge, 1914), pp. 665-718.
N
194 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
the reputed founder of Comedy, and Thespis, the founder of
brought into Rome itself. The Enghsh Morris Dance and play of
St. George must be sought in the remotest hamlets in the larger ;
of the word from Kii/iri, ' village ( Arist. Poet. 14:48a, 35), if Comedy had not been
'
'
ApX^l /i^" oHu Kal oiov ^vxh o /'OBos ttJs rpayiiiSlas, deiirepoi/ d^ to. ijSi).
^ I believe that this metaphor of development into the 'full-grown' form
(0i}(ris TeXeia) is in Aristotle's mind vpheu he says that the action represented in
Tragedy must be reXeia Kal SXt; {Poetics, 7).
S\ov is defined as t6 ?xo'' °-Px¥ ™!
fi^<rov Ka.1 Te\evTi/iii. In the same chapter, discussing the question of magnitude
(lJ.4yeeos), he compares a plot to a living creature (fifJov). He is there following
Plato, Phaedrus, 264 C : Sdv irdi/ra Xiyoi/ flffi-ep jT^ov irweffTdviu <rCi/j.d n ^X""''''"-
alirbv airov, &<rre fi-fir' dXXa iii<Ta r' ^fi!» koX dxpa,
dfc^tfiaXop etpai. li-qr' dirovv,
irpiirovT' dXXiiXois /cai ru 6\(f yeypafifiha. The last phrase is repeated with
reference to the structure of the tragic plot, Phaedrus 268 D Sophocles and :
Euripides would laugh, ef tis oi'erai TpayifSlav iSXXo ti flvai fi t^v tovtuv irvffTaa-iv,
7rp4-iroviTai> a.X\-/j\oi.s re Kal rep «X(j) avviiTTaiiivriv. At Poetics 23 init. Aristotle
repeats the comparison to a living thing with reference to Epic ' The plots :
should be constructed as in a tragedy, and deal with a single action that is whole
and cdmplete— 7re/)l /xlay irpa^m S\r}v khI reXelav (xovaav dpx^v Kal ixiaa Kal t^Xos,
W (liaircp ^op iv &\ov
olKetav ijdov^i>. In an animal the seed is the dpxi),'
ttol-q tt)v
the full-grown form the TeXeuriJ or riXos. Similarly, the end of the tragic plot is
related to its beginning as fruit to seed: Aesch. Pers., 821, Oppts ydp HafSoCa'
iKdpiruxrev iTTix"" |
"Attjs, SBev TdyKapwov i^a/j.^ Oipos. The end is implicit
{Svyd/J.ci) in the beginning and unfolds out into its fulness.
COMEDY ANB TRAGEDY 197
tragic effect. It is not really absent even where the fatal moment
is a clash between the unaccountable spontaneity of will and the
stroke of bUnd chance. There is still the feeUng that such things
must be ;
^ and chance itself no sooner ceased to be a power of
malignant purpose than it was resolved into inexorable law.
There is no room for accidents that are insignificant, in other
words, pa/rticular accidents, without what Aristotle calls a 'uni-
versal' meaning.
Among such particular accidents we must reckon all the richness
of individuality which any real person has, in so far as it is irrele-
vant to the action. The weaker a tragedian is, the more he will
be tempted to make his characters look real and life-like, by admit-
ting these casual traits. The stronger he is, the more his characters
will possess the inner coherence, or rather the indivisible unity,
which belongs, not to the hfe-Hke, but to the living and, by virtue ;
1
Marcus Aurelius, xi. 6, At first tragedies were brought on the stage as a
'
had never happened and Napoleon never been born all this is —
characteristic of the Mime, though she may never have read
Theocritus, and Herodas had not been discovered.
' ^or Krates, see below, p . 217.
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY 199
plots were not myths,' but -'were freely invented. The proper
'
term for the comic plot is not mythos, but logos} The term seems
to mean the '
theme,' or '
idea,' of the piece. There is no suggestion
of a closely spun web of incidents running all through. Whereas
the Euripidean prologue will foretell the whole general course of
the action to the end, the prologue in Aristophanes only states
the main idea. In the Peace, for instance, Trygaeus' slave tells
the audience no more than that his master is mad and has procured
a dung-beetle to carry him, hke Bellerophon, to heaven. Aristo-
phanes repeatedly boasts of the novelty of his ideas.^ His method
is to take some general theme {logos), such as the notion of a strike
of women in favour of peace, and to illustrate it by the most
amusing incidents he can devise. For such a purpose no well-
knit intrigue is required. Consequently, the traditional framework
of the ritual plot serves well enough. Any artist— above all a
Wasps, 54 (Prologue), (pepe vvv KaTsiwui toIs e^aruls rby \6yov, 64 dX\'
1
Kg.
ecTTLV -iiiuv \oylSi.ov yvi^" ^o"- -P««<:e, 50 (Prologue), ^7"^ Si rby Uyoy ye . .
.
break up.^
' These remarks, of course, apply chiefly to the earlier plays of Aristophanes.
rises again, his Mother and his Bride, the Antagonist who kills him,
the Medicine-man who restores him to hfe. When the drama lost
its serious magical intent, probably the Antagonist and the Doctor
jurer. These two figures gave rise to two professional types, the
Swaggering Soldier and the Learned Doctor, the false pretenders
to superior courage and more than mortal wisdom. The medicine-
man, moreover, combined a number of arts that later become
distinct. His magic herbs pass into the remedies of the physician ;
the harsh father, the benevolent old gentleman, the old miser,
distinguished by his close-cropped hair, and so forth. The Young
COMEDY AND TBAGEDY 203
—
Man, again, includes eleven types the boorish youth, the delicate
youth with a soft white skin, the swarthy and black-haired youth
who perpetuates the Swaggering Soldier, etc. The beginnings of
this sort of differentiation can be traced in the latest plays of
Aristophanes. The Ecclesiazusae, for instance, has four elderly men
Blepyrus, husband of Praxagora Chremes Blepyius' whimsical
; ;
that such and such a hind of man will probably or necessarily say
and do, which is the aim of poetry, though it affixes proper names
to the characters. ... In Comedy this has now become clear
{i.e. since the New Comedy superseded the Old) they first compose ;
have personal names only because people have them in real life.
Their true names would be descriptive of character, as indeed they
often were in the New Comedy (Thraso, PyrgopoUnices, etc.), and as
they were again in EngUsh plays and novels from the seventeenth
century onwards (Mr. Allworthy, Sir Courtly Nice, etc.).
Along this channel we reach the literature of Characters,' which
'
indeed, can it ever really pass out of that stage. The difference
former
between a great comedian and a small one is not that the
mere types.
puts real individual characters on the stage, the latter
Such, then, are the general tendencies whose drift carries Comedy
and Tragedy along their divergent ways. Comedy is, in the main,
bent upon character, and becomes, in the hands of Menander, the
mirror of society. Its end now, though not at the first,' is to ' '
show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very
age and body of the time his form and pressure.' The mirror is
no magic mirror, capable of reveaUng far distant times and unknown
regions. The scene is commonly Athens the time, the present.^l ;
they are
they are 'a Herald,' 'a Nurse,' and so on. Further,
definitely marked off by a considerable degree of reahsm, and often
which Tragedy,
by comic touches. They stand at the hmit beyond
a mirror
as conceived by Aeschylus, will not move
towards holding
up on to that
up to ordinary life. They are human types,
caught
dyopeiu, t.W
1
628 : Dion.
^aaavl^eiv AddvaToy 6vt'- el di /ii),
ifik ixTi
Servant. '^^T"' Sf tI ;
of the divinity that hedged a king, was neither a courtier nor a snob.
The French critics were not entirely wrong, even as interpreters
of Aristotle's meaning. The persons in Greek tragedy are royal
for a better reason than any secondary cause, such as Peisistratus'
encouragement of the Epic at Athens. They are royal because
at one time to be a King was to be half a God, and these divine
princes can therefore tread the same stage with the higher Gods,
whose will directs the course of human life and is itself immediately
overshadowed by the ultimate power of Destiny.
Here the argument connects with our previous point the —
primacy of the plot in Tragedy. Tragedy does not seek to ape
the manners or portray the characters of everyday society its ;
Moira, to whom Zeus himself had once been subject. With this
reservation, however, we can be allowed to see the figures of the
' D'Aubignao, La pratique du thidtre, ii. oh. 10. This, and Daoier's notes to
the same effect (on Poet. v. 4 and xiii.), are quoted by Butoher, Aristotle's
Theory of Poetry^ (hondon, 1S98), p. 2,38.
^ Cf. Nietzsche, Oebnrt der TragSdie.
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY 207
Professor Murray has pointed out the affinity between the re-
theme of our supposed
current hfe-story of the Year Spirit, the
doctrine of Huhris, of the Insolence
ritual, and that deep-rooted
wheel of Time and Judgment
that brings vengeance on itself as the
inexorably turns, in which the Greek
found the tragic philosophy
''
according to the ordinance of time." ^ Our supposed ritual, '
the great ones among mankind. The kings of the earth whose
dizzy exaltation upsets their moral balance are, like those old divine
kings of fertility, cut off lest their waning strength should bring
famine upon their people.
In Tragedy, the hero's enemy is his own Hubris ; the conflict
between this disastrous passion and its opposite, Sophrosyne, is
fought out in his own breast. Thus, in the developed form of the
two adversaries in the Agon are united in one person
tragic art, the ;
though outside and above him there is always the watching Jealousy
of immortal powers —
Zeus, who abases the proud and exalts the
lowly. But, in our review of the various forms of the ritual drama,
we saw how the God comes
to be doubled into the two adversaries
— the suffering and triumphant Dionysus, and Pentheus, who,
I
after insolently threatening his worshippers and breaking in upon
1 their secret rites, himself endures the fate of the God. In this type,
the element of Hubris, which brought the Year to its wintry ruin,
is detached from the hero to become the characteristic of his double,
wet and dry— the conflict of Summer and Winter, conceived in a more abstract
—
form as a feud between the elements lies behind a great deal of Greek scien-
tific speculation. This point is elaborated in F. M. Cornford, From T!ili[iion to
Philosophy (London, 1912).
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY 209
of the evil adversary in the Agon. The common note of all the'
Impostors was Alazoneia. What now becomes clear is that Alazoneia
is the comic counterpart of the tragic Hubris.^ That the two
conceptions were associated in the Greek mind is evident from an
interesting discussing in Plato.
in the sense of being mixed with pain, Plato takes, among other
illustrations, the pleasures of the theatre. In witnessing Tragedy
we enjoy our tears. The admixture of pain in the pleasure of
Comedy is more obscure, and leads him into an analysis of the
Ridiculous. _
The Ridiculous derives its essence from the failure of some vice
or defect to obey the Delphic precept, '
Know thyself.' ^ Three
principal types are those who overvalue themselves in respect of
external fortune, bodily advantages, or mental virtues, and think
themselves richer, handsomer, or wiser than they are.* (We may
note in passing that this is only a more exact statement of the
definition of the Alazon, given by Xenophon's Cyrus :
'
The name
of Alazon should, I think, be given to those who affect to be richer
or braver than they are, or undertake to do things beyond their
powers.' ^)
1 If, with Suidas van L.), we read at Birds 824, IV ol $eol rois
(fort, rede,
77)7e;'ers |
Codd. KaBvTeprjKivTia-ai' iXa^oiiela is used to
d\afoyeu6/teyous (-;'oi ) ,
insolent presumption.
J
This is based on the philosophic distinction of {a) external goods from
internal, whether (b) of body or (c) of soul.
= Xen. Cyrop. ii. 2, 12 6 lih yap dXccfui'
: ^fjioiye SoKet Syo/ia Keia-eai iirl roU
Kal dvBpeioT^pois, Kal voiiiaav
wpocriroiov/ihois Kal TrXovaioiripois ehai el<n ft ii.^
'
We saw how, in Comedy, Alazoneia finds its match in the mocking
/ Irony of the hero, who draws out the Impostor's absurdities and
seta them at naught. If, with that antithesis in mind, we read
'
434 ff.
2
'''
Dion, oi K6fi,iro! oMe/s' pq.Siou 5' diruv rdSe.
461 ;
oi; ^eoi/u, 1005 but elsewhere they speak of <70<pla in the same breath with
J
Hubris 395 rb a-o^6v 5' oi <ro:pla, t6 re |Ui) BvTjTa. ippovew. 427 ffo0d>' S' dTr^x^iK
:
ritual did contain the essential germs out of which each could grow
to its full form.
to a small
Aristotle [Poetics, 14 fin. ) notes that Tragedies are restricted
'
1
I
Not only did our supposed ritual drama provide Tragedy with
its essential conception, and Comedy with its opportunity for
1 Plutarch, rii. Alcib. xviii. North's version expands the Greek : 'A.Siiivlav
yap eh ros 7ifi4pa,s cKslvas KaBriKbvrav efSuXo TroXXaxoO viKpois iKKoiu,^oiJ.ivoii S/xoia
wpoliKeiMTO rats yviia,i.^l, Kal roc^as i/unoOvTO KOTrTA/ieKai Kai Bpifvovt JSoc.
" On this point see Frazer, Adonis Auis Oairii (1906), chap. i.
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY 213
1 Ar. Poetics, 13, 1453a, 23, 5i6 xal ol KvpLirlSrj iyKaXoOvres aiirb ajxapTdvovaiv 8t(.
2
S. LiSvi, Le tUdtre Indien (Paris, 1890), says that the first positive document
attesting dramatic representations in India associates them with Krishna ; and
that the Classical drama (Kalidasa, etc.) was due to a revival of Krishnaism.
We must, however, allow for the ritual dramas detected by Schroder in the
dialogue hymns of the Eg-Veda (Mysterium und Mimus, Leipzig, 1908).
Fragments of Indian palm-leaf MSS. found in Central Asia prove that dramatic
literature of substantially the same chief characteristics as the Sanskrit
classical
drama flourished in the first, or first and early second centuries a.d.,
Encycl. of Belig^
three or four centuries before Kalidasa (Rapson in Hastings'
and Ethics, s.v. Drama). The 'processional' folk-plays called Yatras,\
celebrating the life of Krishna and especially his love for Kadha,
more resemble
what we have supposed to lie behind Greek Comedy.
3 an excellent discussion in Doutte, Relig. el Mayie dans I'Afriquedu
Cf.
nord, p. 533 ff., and especially the following: Le
drame poignant du sacrifice
a disparn, n'est plus [qu'} nne cirimonie ridicule: Venterre-
d'un'dieu, si la foi
ment grotesque d'un personnage fantaisiste. nous M
avons dans les camavals
rehgieuse, vidie de sa
I'exemple plus typique de ce que devient une cirimonie
le
'
*
because the poetry was satjTic and more connected with dancing
than it was later. He implies also that this phase had lasted for
a long time ; for he says that it was '
late ' in its progress that
Tragedy acquired its proper tone of stateUness and dignity.
Without going further into the historic problems, I will here
express the opinion that, if Tragedy had declined to this level, ' '
its dignity and stateliness can only have been conferred upon it
^^^
On however, it may be noted that if the emblem of
this point,
round which Tragedy centred was the goat, the human
fertility
' Poetics, i : '4ti. Si rb fifyeOos' ck ixiKpQiv ixiOoiv Kai Xefeois yeXolas Sii. t6 ix
(rarvpiKoO /MTa^aXeiu d^^ air^aeixvivOT], to -re iihpoii iK Terpaiiirpov laix^iiov iyiviTO.
ri fiiv yap irpCiTOV Terpafiirpip expuvTo Sia to aaTvpiK^ii Kal dpxri<TTi.KoiTipav ctvai
rijp irol-ri<nv. As fUKpwv fiidwv immediately follows the term fiiycBos, which means
'amplitude,' 'grandeur,' rather than mere length, fiiKpSv probably means
'petty," slight," trivial,' rather than 'short,' as it is commonly rendered. I
am convinced that ck caTvpiKoO /iera/SaXe?)' does not mean that Tragedy developed
out of a form like the Satyric dramas known to us, a century later, from
Sophocles' Ichneutae and Euripides' Cyclops. This form, on the contrary, appears
to be modelled on Tragedy. I take Sia rb h
a-arvpiKoS /ieTapaXelv 6\pi aireae/ivOvev
to be nearly equivalent to saying, ' it changed from satyric to dignified,' as it
Aristotle had written iK traTupmov aep-vov fi.cTi^a\ef (cf.
Phys. y 5, 205 a 6,
eis
performance not much more serious and dignified than the Old
^
Comedy.
Play. Behind that again lies the period during which the ritual
drama was still a serious religious ceremony, annually performed
for the fertility of man and beast and crop. At some time
faith in its magical efficacy died out, perhaps under the influence
of some new incoming system of belief, just as Christianity in its
day brought about the degradation into folk-plays and May games
of many an ancient pagan rite. How long Comedy existed on
this lower level of folk-drama we cannot say. The examples still
lingering on in modern Europe show that no Umit can be set to
the persistence of such survivals but, on the other hand, it may ;
recorded from the date of official recognition, we may inffer that the features
named are older. Of. Starkie, Wasps, p. ix. The statements of later writers
who profess to know what Aristotle says was not known in his day may be
ignored.
^ See Bywater on Poetics, 14486, 36, rh t^s KufiifiSLas
o-x'JM'"'" Tpwros vTriSei^cv,
'marked out for us the great outlines of Comedy.' Plato, Lmos, 737 D, (tx-Zi/uitos
'iveKa Kal iTroypa(l>rjs. In the text above discussed Bywater renders ax^p'^o-Ta
'
definite forms.'
^ V. 520 £f. If the Scholiast is right, Aristophanes refers to plays by ilagnes
entitled Bap(3i7i(rTaI,"0pi'iSes, \v5ol, S['^i'ts, BarpAx"'-
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY 217
conjecture with certainty that the play must have ended with a
reconciliation and re-marriage of Comedy and Kratinus.^ The plot
fits neatly into the same scheme that we have traced in Aristophanes.
^ Of Krates Aristotle* makes the important statement that he
was the first Athenian poet to drop the iambic element of invec-
' '
took this step under the influence of the Sicilian poets Epicharmus
and Phormis. It has often been observed that the fragments of
Krates and Pherekrates are hardly distinguishable from the manner
of the New Comedy ; and there is no trace in Krates of personal
attacks upon individuals. Aristotle seems to assert two things.
The first that Krates dropped that element of invective
is
ixbvos
Poppelreuter {De Com. Mt.
rd Kara^KevaHi^evov.
ArdKTO,, dariyo. Kal yi\o>s fiv
equally consistent with our own view that Comedy then had still
in broken outline the old ritual scheme with its constant features.
When Krates began to compose new imaginative plots, he may
have been doing for Comedy something analogous to what Thespis
or Aeschylus did for Tragedy, moving away from the old ritual
formula towards a fresh variety of subjects and characters. But
though Krates, under Syracusan influence, Hfted the '
vulgar
Comedy ' of his predecessors to a higher plane, he did not banish
the old stock masks and farcical incidents from the comic stage.
The tradition of them was still alive in the next generation ; for
Aristophanes can boast of expurgating them, while in reality he
kept them all, though in a very subordinate place. In this respect,
again, Aristophanes is not the successor of Krates, but goes back
to the older tradition. Krates, in fact, seems to stand outside
the direct line, as one who attempted
to import the Sicihan Mime,
which already had a long history of independent development.^
giving pleasure. afUKpa iiroici xoi irepve tovs aKpoaTa^, ypaipuv rjSia.
: Aristotle
uses the same expression in contrasting the New with the Old Comedy, Eth.
Nic. IV. viii. 7, 1128a 25, iroTipoii ovu rbv eUaKilnrTODTa bpuTriov rif \4yav fi^j awperri
i\ev9eplij> ^ T(f fir) XuTreij' rix a,Ko6ovTa ^ koi WpTrfiv ; so also Euanthins, ii. 6, r^ar
KUnipSiav . . . quae minus amaritudinis spectatorihus et eadem opera multum
delectationia afferret.
COMEDY AND TRAGEDY 219
The attempt was premature, and only bore fruit later, when
Aristophanes had shown the best that could be made of the old
indigenous form inherited from ritual. We are told that in the
Cocalus, which is conjectured to have been Aristophanes' last play,
he introduced the new plot motives (including the Eecognition,' '
'
Chez nos devots Ayeux le TMdtre ahhorrc
Fut longtemps dans la France un plaisir ignore,
1
Vita Aristoph. (Dindorf, Poetae Scenici/' p. 25), Trai/TdTrao-ic ^/tXeXoiiri/Us
Sid, TO&rav airwv (iSiOV y&p KO>ix(fSlas
rb aK<iirTei.v Twi.s)
rrii aXris tSiv KaiJ.vStSii>
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Adversaries in Agon : Dikaiopolis (Old Man, Buffoon).
Lamachus (Soldier).
{Exeunt.)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Adversaries in Agon : A Sausage-seller, Agoracritus (Cook).
A PapUagonian Slave, Cleon (Parasite).
756. AGON II. With Demos as judge, they compete for Us favour.
The Sausage-seller is declared victorious.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Adversaries in Agon ii. : Strepsiades {Old Man, Buffoon).
Pheidippides {Young Man).
Impostors Pasias.
Ainynias.
^ •<!^mgmir /^t/^l'S
L^e*'''' -'Scene. The Clouds appear. Socrates expounds their nature.
V
^ They Gods ZEUg does not existy ^ The Clouds
are the only :
y^^ ^ make rain and thunder. Dinos is JUIJNU. litrepsiades abjures all
^
'
other Gods. He is bidden to lay aside his cloak and enters the
'
Cave of Trophonius.'
1113. Parabasis II. (Epirrheme only). The Clouds promise the judges
rewardsif they give them the prize threaten them, if they do
;
DRAMATIS PERSONAB
Adversaries in Agon : Bdelycleon ( Young Man).
PMlocleon (Old Man, Buffoon).
Impostors A Bakerwoman.
A Prosecutor.
Mute Persons : A Courtesan.
Two Dogs, etc.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Trygaeus {Old Man, Buffoon).
War {Soldier).
Tumult, his attendant.
Hermes.
301. Paeodos. The Chorus of Farmers comes and dances for joy.
1191. Trygaeus adorned for his marriage, gives orders for the wedding
FEAST, held within.
(AL.) A
Pruninghook-maker and a Cooper bring presents in
gratitude, and are sent in to feast.
(AL.) Makers of hehnet-crests, breastplates, trumpets, helmets,
and spears are dismissed with derision.
Two boys, sons of Lamachus and Kleonymus, come to practise
songs for the feast. The former is driven away for singing of war ;
the latter sent in to sing of peace. The Chorus eat the rest of the
sacrificial FEAST.
1316. ExoDOS. Trygaeus and Opora are conducted in the
MAERIAGE KOMOS, with hymeneal song.
232 SYNOPSIS OV THE EXTANT PLAYS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Adversaries in Agon : Pisthetairos {Old Man, Buffoon)
Hoopoe.
Chorus : Birds.
Servant. Prometheus.
A Priest. Poseidon.
Two Messengers. Triballos.
A Sentinel. Heracles.
A Herald.
Mute Persons Basileia {Bride in Exodos), etc.
451. AGON. Pisthetairos tells how the Birds were once KINGS
before ZEUS, now persecuted by men. They must fortify the
air and demand their kingdom back. If Zeus refuses, starve out
the Gods if men refuse, eat all their crops if they consent, give
; ;
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Adversaries in Agon : Lysistrata, an Athenian wife.
A ProboTilos.
829. Scene. Kinesias comes for his wife Myrrhine. She comes out
and deludes him. He laments.
Scene. A Herald from Sparta describes the distress of the
men there. He and Kinesias agree to get peace legates appointed.
1014. Paeabasis II. The two Half-Choruses make up their quarrel
and resume their garments. The Men offer money, the Women
food, to the spectators.
1189. Choeikon. The Men and Women renew their ofiers of money
and food to the spectators. (FEAST within.)
1216. Scene. The Athenian legates come out after the feast in
KOMOS with torches. The Spartans follow with a flute-player
and perform a dance.
ExoDOS. Lysistrata bids the men and women to pair ofi with
one another (' MAERIAGE '). They dance ofi singing to various
divinities, including Zeus and Hera and Aphrodite, who has
reconciled them.
236 SYNOPSIS OF THE EXTANT PLAYS
DRAMATIS PERSONAB
Adversaries in quasi-Agon : Euripides' Kinsman (Old Man, Buf-
foon).
Mikka, ivife of Kleonymus.
etc.
655. The Chorus lay aside their upper garments and search the
orchestra for other intruders.
(E.S.) The Kinsman seizes a baby from a woman and takes
refuge at the altar. He threatens to SACRIFICE it. The
women fetch faggots to burn him. The baby turns out to be a
winesldn. The Kinsman sacrifices it.
Kritylla mounts guard, while Mikka goes to find the Prytaneis.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Adversaries in Agon : Aeschylus {Soldier).
Euripides {Learned Doctor).
Chorus Mystics.
738. Scene. Dionysus has won the case. The Porter fraternises
with Xanthias. Aeschylus and Euripides are heard abusing
one another. Euripides has challenged Aeschylus' right to the
throne of Tragedy. Dionysus is to judge between them.
Choeikon. The Chorus forecast the respective styles of the
adversaries.
Scene. Aeschylus and Euripides enter abusing one another.
Dionysus quiets them and calls for fire and incense. He SACRI-
FICES. The Chorus sing to the Muses. Aeschylus prays to
Demeter, Euripides to Aether, etc.
1500. ExoDOS. Pluto gives Aeschylus a sword, a noose, and poison for
various pohticians. Aeschylus leaves his THRONE
to Sophocles
during Ms absence. The Chorus conduct Dionysus and Aeschylus
in torchht PROCESSION, singing in Aeschylean style.
240 SYNOPSIS OF THE EXTANT PLAYS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Adversaries in Agon : Praxagora, wife of Blefyrm.
Blepyius {Old Man, Buffoon).
311. Scene. Blepyrus comes out of his house in his wife's clothes.
His Neighbour talks to him out of window, and goes to the
Assembly.
Scene. Chremes describes the meeting to Blepyrus. The
Women's plot has succeeded.
478. Paeodos ii. The Women return and take ofi their male dis-
guise.
Scene. Praxagora, about to restore her husband's clothes,
meets Blepyrus coming out. He tells her the result of the
Assembly. She says she will explain the advantages of female
rule.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Adversaries in Agon : Chremylus (Old Man, Buffoon).
Poverty (Old Woman).
a misfortune to mankind.
PliUTUS 243
487. AGON. Poverty argues that equaHty of wealtli would mean
universal idleness and tie loss of all the arts of
civilisation and
virtues. She is driven away with curses.
Chremylus and Blepsidemus take Wealth to the temple of
Asclepius.
802. Scene. Karion describes how the house is filled with plenty
and Chremylus is making SACRIFICE within.
(AL.) A Just Man comes to dedicate his old cloak and shoes.
{AL.) An
Informer laments that his occupation is gone. He
scents the FEAST
within. Karion despoils him of his fine
clothes and drives him away, decorated with the Just Man's old
cloak and shoes. Karion and the Just Man go inside to pray to
Wealth.
Dance of the Chorus.
1171. Scene. The Priest of Zeus Soter, also starving, is told that
Plutus is the NEW ZEUS, and joins in a torchUt PEOCESSION
to install him in the Parthenon. The Old Woman carries the
XVTpai.
ExoDOS. The Chorus join the procession with Songs (KOMOS).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
This list only includes some of the more important recent works which I
(1908).
282.
The Origin of Tragedy and the Akhydna, Journ. Royal Asiatic Soc.
XV. (1912) p. 411.
KoKTE, A., Studien zur alten Eomodie, Arch. Jahrb. viii. (1893) 61.
Mazon, p., Essai sur la composition des Comidies d' Aristophane, Paris (1904).
Murray, G., Excursus on Forms preserved in Greek Tragedy,
the Ritual in
J. E. Harrison, Themis, Cambridge (1912).
NiLSSON, M. P., Studia de Dionysiis Atticis, Lundae (1900).
Der Ursprung der Tragodie, N. Jahrb. xxvii. (1911) 609.
Waoe, a. J. B., Nwth Greek Festivals, Brit. Sck Ann. xvi. (1909-10) 232.
To § 103. Since this book was printed I have come to see more
clearly what the significance and the original content of the Satyr-
play must have been. If Tragedy and Comedy are based on the
same ritual outlines, the Satyr-play at the end of the tetralogy must
stand for the Sacred Marriage and its Komos, which form the finale of
Comedy. I suspect that Thespian Tragedy was still only emerging
from the Satyric phase and contained the elements
'
' of grotesqueness
and obscenity which mark the fertility aspect' of the old dromenon.
this side of the performance from the tragic part and relegating it to
216
INDEX
Abusb, Choral matches in, 110 ; at Eleu- Antagonist, defined, 71; multiplied into
therae, 113 ; in fertility rites, 118. Impostors, 147 S. ; as double of the God,
Acharnians, Exodos, 9 Prologue (Phallic ; 148, 208; treated like Impostor, 156,
Song), 37 ; Agon in, 72 Agon in, de- ; 161, 168.
scribed, 75 ; Sacrifice and Feast, 94 ; half- Antheas of Lindos, 44.
Choruses fight, 109 ; Parabasis, 122, 123, Antichoria, implied by Epirrhematic form,
129 ; Second Parabasis, 130 ; Impostors 106, 109.
in, 133 ; Lamachus in, 155 ; Old Man in, Antilogy, sophistic, 114.
172. 'AToSwai., 126.
Adonis ritual, 212, Arohilochos, Song of, 9, 10, 13, 23.
Aeschylus, Nurses of Dionysus, 88, 91, Aristotle, on beginnings of
Comedy, 35 ff. ;
in original ritual, 99 Chorus in, 105 ff.; ; Bacchae of Euripides. See Pentheus.
individual Judge in, 105 as contest of ; Baldheaded Pool, in 'Vulgar Comedy,'
two leaders of bauds, 110 in Euripides, ; 178, 181 on Corneto amphora, 183.
;
116 ; in Sicilian Mime, 117 in Bucolic ; BaWrjTis, at Troezen and Eleusis, 110.
poetry, 1 17 Parabasis as Choral, 120
;
;
Basile and Echelos, 27.
no Choral Agon in Tragedy, 131 in ; Basileia, 12 as bride of New Zeus, 22.
;
'Agonist' and 'Antagonist,' 71. 97; Parabasis, 122, 123; Second Para-
Aiolosikon of Aristophanes, 182. basis, 130 Impostors in, 136 Old Man
; ;
logue to second part, 123. 138 ; minor, 139 ; minor, in Agon, 71.
Anodos, in Peace, 73, 86 ; ritual at Lenaea,
— 85.
Vases, 86.
Careyino out of Death,
Chambers, E. K., 48.
53.
247
248 THE ORIGIN OF ATTIC COMEDY
Character, historic characters in Aristo- Commedia dell' arte, masks in, 182, 186.
phanes, 154 ; dictated by action in Cook, rejuvenates Demos, 88 ; in Salonika
Tragedy, 197, 200 is primary in ; inscription, 89 ; or Doctor, as medicine-
Comedy, 197 and in Mime, 198 ; man, 90, 189 ; in Geras, 91 ; stock mask
development from stoclc types in in Knighls, 164 ; in Mime and later
Comedy, 201 professional types, 202 ;
Comedy, 165; as 'sophist,' 165; and
age and sex types subdivided, 202; Doctor in Oorgias, 165 ; Maison, 182.
'
universal in Comedy, 203 literature
' ; Cook, A. B. on opisthodomos, 26 ; on
,
161 ; 11. 661-2 restored, 163 ; Old Man 87 ; in Ftmch and Judy, 145, 147 in ;
heroes, 205 ; the comic spirit, Sophro- Old Men in, 203.
syne, 211 ; emphasises marriage, 212 Echelos and Basile, 27.
history of, 215 definite forms of early ;
'
' Eiresione ceremony, 54.
Comedy, 216. Eiron. Sec Irony.
INDEX 249
Eleutlieiae, Melanaigis at, 66. Uippolytus, 159.
Epiohannus, 158, 165, 181, 192 Ag&nes in ; Hubris, 207; tragic counterpart ol Ala-
his plays, 117 Hope or Wealth, 168
; zoneia, 208.
influence ou Old Comedy, 217.
Epiphany on 6th day, 87.
Epirrhematic structure, implies Anti- Iambic Element, dropped by Krates,
choria, 106, 109 in Parabasis, 121
; 217.
explained, 131. Iambus, and invective, 36, 42.
Epirrhematic Syzygy, form of, 45. lamos (Find. 01. vi. 53), 87.
Episode, applied to Impostor scenes, 141 Ichneutai of Sophocles, 87.
meaning in Comedy, 141. Ikaria, 194.
Episodic Composition, a misnomer in Impostor (Alazon). as fixed motive, 132
Comedy, 107, 131. in the plays, 133 essential traits of,
;
Euripides, as Doctor, 162, 163, 164. 148 ; treated like Pharmakos, 151
ist, :
90, 134.
Demos, 87 Sacrifice and Feast, 95
;
II
250 THE OEIGIK OF ATTIC COMEDY
Krates, position in history of Comedy, 217. Mime, Peloponnesian, 6, 179 ; Sicilian,
Kratinus, Odysses, 109 Panoplai, 159 ; Agon in, 117 ; at Syracuse, 181 ; stock
TIvtIvti, 217. masks in, 182 ; essentially Dorian, 198
primacy of character in, 198.
Mimesis in Sacred Marriage, 19.
Lamachus in Acharnians Agon, 76 ; as
Miraculous growth of divine Child, 86,
Miles Gloriosus, 155.
Rend- Morris dance, 60.
Lenaea, 194 ; Anodes Ritual at, 85 ;
Comedy,' Aristophanes and Atellane, epilogue, 124 Epirrhematic part of, 124
;
Medicine-man becomes grotesque, 202 166; as mask on Attic stage, 167; and
See Doctor, Cook. demagogue, 167; perhaps from Sicilian
Megara, 'laugh stolen from M.,' 179, 192. Mime, 168; mask iu New Comedy, 176
Melampus, 48. baldness of, 182 on Corneto amphora,
;
118.
Parabasis, 178.
Pharmakos, in Knights Exodos, 10, 77,
151 ; iv. 6 ff , 11
in 1 Cor, ceremony .
; Saceed Mabeiage. See Marriage.
at 55 ; Poverty as, 151
Thargelia, Sacrifice, as fixed motive, 3, 93 ; its original
Antagonist-Impostor as, 151 ; Aesop as, meaning in the ritual, 99,
151. Salmoneus, 23, 28.
Philosophers, in mask of Doctor, 158. Satyricdrama and Tragedy, 68, 246 ;
phase
Phineus, 152. of Tragedy, 214.
Phlyax, 180 ; Soldier in, 185. Semele, Anodos of, 85.
Phthonos, excited by Hubris and Alazoneia, Semos of Delos on Phallophori, etc. , 42.
208 ; in spectator of Comedy, 209. Sheppard, J. T., 24.
Pickwick, Mr., as Bald Fool, 173. Silenopappos, 184.
Plato, as Mime Buthydemus,
writer, 161 ; Slave, Comic, stock mask in Old Comedy,
161 ; on tragic and comic emotions, 175 ; in New Comedy, 176 ; in Vulgar '
Plutus, Exodos, 15 ; New Zeus in, 25 New Comedy (iirlau(TToi), 176 ; Gorgon
expulsion of Poverty, 56 ; Agon in, mask, 176 Eneualios on Phlyax Vase,
;
72 ;Agon in, described, 81 ; Sacrifice 122, 123; Second Parabasis, 130; Im-
and Feast, 97 ; Parabasis, 122, 123. postors in, 134 Old Man in, 171, 173
; ;
Thracian folk play, 62, 86, 189. Winter, Expulsion of, 20. Ste Summer
Tityroi, as Rams, 19. and Winter.
Tragedy, Murray on '
fixed forms ' of, 59 ;
113, 149.
saries in Agon, 110 no traces of Choral ;
Telephone :
^°'''^ ^''^^t' London, W.
No. 1883 Mayfair. February, 1914.
AND Roman Societies formerly President of the Alpine Club Author of " The
; ;
In this little volume Mr. Freshfield has put into final shape
the results of his study of the famous and still-debated question :
" By which Pass did Hannibal cross the Alps ? " The literature
which has grown up round this intricate subject is surprisingly
extensive, and various solutions have been propounded and
upheld, with remarkable warmth and tenacity, by a host of
scholars, historians, geographers, military men, and mountaineers.
Mr. Freshfield has a solution of his own, which, however, he puts
forward in no dogmatic spirit, but in such a fashion that his book
is practically a lucid review of the whole matter in each of its
many aspects. To an extensive acquaintance with ancient and
Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring Announcements.
3
modern geographical literature he unites a wide and varied
ex-
perience as an alpine climber and a traveller,
and a minute
topographical knowledge of the regions under discussion;
and
these qualifications— in which many of his predecessors in the
same field of inquiry have been conspicuously lacking— enable him
to throw much new light on a perennially fascinating
problem.
THE LIFE OF
Admiral sir harry rawson,
G.C.B., G.C.M.G.
still held the seas, Sir Harry, as a young cadet, thirteen years of
age, took part in the China War of 1858-60, being present in the
Calcutta's launch at the capture of the Taku forts.
In 1863, when only nineteen years of age, he held Ning-po for
three months against the rebels, with 1,300 Chinese troops under
his command. He served for two commissions as Commander
of the battleship Hercules, and acted as Flag-captain in both the
Channel and Mediterranean Squadrons.
1 During the Egyptian Campaign of 1882, he acted as principal
Transport officer, and after his promotion to Flag rank, was
appointed Commander-in-Chief on the Cape Station, 1895-98.
Whilst holding this important position, he landed the Naval
Brigade which captured Mweli, the stronghold of a rebel Arab
chief; part of his squadron bombarded the palace at Zanzibar
and, in 1897, he commanded the famous expedition for the capture
of Benin, which was successfully accomplished.
^ For more than two years he commanded the Channel Squadron,
and the work contains a chapter devoted to the naval manoeuvres
of I goo.
The book terminates with a well-told account of Sir Harry's
Governorship of New South Wales, and a chapter on his short-
lived but no less famous brother, Commander Wyatt Rawson,
Who led the historic night march over the desert to Tel-el-Kebir.
4 Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring Announcements.
RICHARD CORFIELD OF
SOMALILAND.
By H. F. PREVOST-BATTERSBY,
War Correspondent of the "Morning Post" in South Africa and Somaliland.
It was the news of his death that made the world acquainted
with Corfield's name, but everyone who had served with him
knew him as a man of extraordinary charm, with some secret
source of power which had an amazing influence over savage
peoples, and regarded a notable future as assured to him.
He had gone as a mere boy to the South African War, serving
afterwards in the South African Constabulary. He had just
returned home on leave from his five years' service when he was
appointed to the new Tribal Militia being raised in Somaliland.
He remained there till the country was evacuated, and the militia
disbanded, in 1910, acquiring a remarkable reputation for hand-
ling the most " difficult " natives in Africa.
He was at once transferred to Northern Nigeria, and after a
year's work, signalized by striking successes with the pagan
tribes, was specially requisitioned to raise and command a force
of camelry, to which the governance of Somaliland was to be
entrusted. In nine months he performed miracles in a country
literallyreeking with blood, 100,000 of the inhabitants having
been massacred since the country was evacuated, and restored in
that short time the confidence of the natives in the honour of the
British Government.
He lost his life in a gallant attempt to check a Dervish raid,
which was spreading fresh ruin over the country but those who ;
read his life will discover that his action touched a much deeper
issue than the succour of a starving people. He died for
—
England's old ways of honour for the keeping of faith to unfor-
tunate dependents, for his country's good name.
Author of *' How to Deal with Lads," "How to Deal with Men."
This book is intended primarily for the use of those who have
to give instruction to boys in Sunday Schools, Church Lads'
Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring
Announcements.
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Brigades' Bible Classes, and
similar institutions and ha. h^^n
This volume comprises, for the most part, matter hitherto un-
published which existed in the form of notes and essays amongst
the MSS. which Father Tyrrell left behind him. To this have
been added a few articles already published, either in England or
abroad, in various periodicals, but which are not now easily
obtainable, and which possess a certain importance. One of these
latter essays, in particular, has attained considerable celebrity,
—
and is yet almost unprocurable namely, the one entitled " A
Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring Announcements.
y
Perverted Devotion," which played so large a part in the drama
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may be said roughly to deal with problems of faith, the second
with the ever-recurrmg problem and mystery of personal
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power of
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tion of all questions will find in these essays, not a scientific
answer to their difficulties, but illuminating hints and suggestions
to help them in their own search. The essays, in fact, as a
whole, are not definite treatises, but the musings and gropings of
a deeply spiritual mind in its quest of truth.
NEW NOVEL
BARBARA LYNN.
By EMILY JENKINSON,
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;
tribution as this book to the history of the Victorian era. " Daily Chronicle.
His analysis of Cumberland's military campaigns are especially lucid." Daily MaiL
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