DFA 60, Reckford (1987) 21.

2: Interpreting Aristophanes 30

contradictory aspects o f Aristophanic comedy. Scholarly opinion can be grouped into approximately three different approaches. Firstly, in his book on Athenian society, Victor Ehrenberg privileged Old Comedy above other sources because he argued it provided a ‘fairly full and satisfactory picture’ of Athenian mentalities, ‘a mirror reflecting real life.’"^^ Although fully aware of comedy’s tendency to distort reality, Ehrenberg argued that by isolating the ‘background’ information used to create a realistic ‘atmosphere’ against which the fantastical exploits of comic heroes are set, it was possible to recreate a picture of Attic society from Old C o m ed y .E h ren b erg ’s approach has been criticised, particularly by Kenneth Dover, for failing to recognise the extent to which even ‘background’ information is subject to comic distortion.^'^ A second approach has been put forward by Geoffrey de Ste. Croix, who argued it was essential to identify Aristophanes’ political opinions, where he was coming from, if we wanted to use him as a historical source."^ He particularly focused on passages that in and of themselves were not funny as expressions of the poet’s view.^9 He saw Aristophanes as a Cimonian conservative, suspicious of the democracy, hostile to the new men of politics and opposed to the war with S p a r t a .De Ste. Croix’s position has recently been restated by Paul Cartledge, who similarly saw Aristophanes as a crypto­ oligarch, hiding his anti-democratic opinions beneath a cloak of comic subterfuge.^i De Ste. Croix’s approach has triggered a long running debate on the political opinions of Aristophanes. For instance Malcolm Heath has argued, on the basis of internal and external evidence, that Aristophanes never promoted a consistent political line in his plays, although he utilised contemporary politics as his starting point.^^ xhe third approach highlights comedy’s festival licence and the suspension o f off-stage norms within the theatre of Dionysus. Proponents of this approach are reticent to make pronouncements about the off-stage world on the basis of on-stage evidence. The function of Old Comedy is either to offer the audience a series of comic stereotypes and situations, from which general moral conclusions can be d r a w n o r to explore the

Ehrenberg (1951) 7.

^ I b id . ^,31-42.

47 Dover (1987) 196-8,280-82. 48 De Ste. Croix (1972) 356. 49 /W . 234,357

Ibid. 357-8 for a summary.

Cartledge (1990a) 46-53.

Heath (1987) 41-2 for his conclusions. Heath has taken every ‘opinion’ attributed to Aristophanes by de Ste. Croix and has suggested that in fact Aristophanes does not offer a consistent polemical view on these topics throughout his plays. Bowie (1993) 9-17 also rejects the search for Aristophanes’ political opinions.

Gomme (1962), Dover (1996) 369: ‘the essential spirit of Old Comedy is the ordinary man’s protest - using his inahenable weapons, humour and fantasy - against all who are in some way stronger or better than he: gods, politicians, generals, artists, and intellectuals.’

audience’s reaction to the comic (mis)representations of reality placed before it and the acceptable boundaries of comic licence.^

As these scholarly approaches demonstrate, interpreting Aristophanes is bedevilled with disagreement and a lack o f consensus. Aristophanic com edy’s contradictory aspects, the representation of the city to itself and its festival licence, lie at the root o f this disagreement, with scholars often emphasising one aspect at the expense of the other. Like Ehrenberg and de Ste. Croix, I want to use Aristophanes as a historical source, in this instance, for attitudes to judicial activity. I struggle with the third approach, which is content to focus on ‘negotiating the licence and limits of comedy’ and rejects the ‘traditional wish...‘to find some kind o f external control, evidence independent of our reading of the plays that would help us calibrate our estimation of their tone or mood. The evidence presented above (pp.24-7) suggests a demonstrable interaction between on and off-stage worlds. When Plato reminds his audience of the satirical portrayal of Socrates which they had watched in the Clouds, he describes the individual portrayed ‘spinning around about, asserting that he walks on air and babbling much other nonsense’ as ‘a certain Socrates (ScoKpQTri TLva)’; a caricature of Socrates distinguishable from the real Socrates.^ In other words, Athenian audiences were able interpret comic images set before them, making connections between on-stage image and off-stage reality.^^ Our problem is to construct a methodology which allows us to read from on-stage to off-stage, as Athenian audiences did, while still taking into account comedy’s festival licence. I have side-stepped the vexed question of Aristophanes’ ‘political opinions’ in this regard. This is not to deny that Aristophanes would have had opinions of his own, clearly he must have.^^ But I think Aristophanes’ opinions are probably irrecoverable at this distance, 2,500 years further on. Moreover I do not think that Aristophanes’ primary aim was to instruct or influence opinion, rather it was to entertain. The competitive ethos of the dramatic festivals required him to select subjects of contemporary interest, the festival licence allowed him to present even disturbing topics, but his treatment of them was primarily comic: setting up a viewpoint, only to demolish it at a later point.^^ Below I have set out three interpretative keys which I have used to analyse the plays in the following

54 Halliwell (1984a) 8-9, (1991a) 296; Goldhill (1991) 187-201. 55 Goldhill (1991) 201, quoting Heath (1987) 8.

xauTQ Yap ecopaie k q i o u t o i €v jv\ Apiaxocpai/ouç KCOiicpoKj, IWKpaxn iii/a £K€l

nepL(pep6uei/oi/, (paaKoi/ia xe aepopaxeTv Ko'i aW vw noXKriv cp\\jap(ai/ (pKuapoOvxa’ (Pl.Ap.19c). 5^ This analysis of PlAp.l9b-c is indebted to Keith Sidwell. I am very grateful to him for allowing me to see his unpublished work and for several fruitful discussions on interpreting Aristophanes.

5^ See Sommerstein’s judicious comments (Sommerstein (1994a) 189, quoted in part on p.7) in response to Bowie’s wish to liberate Aristophanic scholarship from the question of Aristophanes’ opinions (Bowie (1993) 9-17).

5^ I will argue this point in more detail on p.55 and p. 137 in relation to Aristophanes’ non-polemical position in relation to the democratic judicial system.

2: Interpreting Aristophanes 32

chapters. Given the turbulent waters of Aristophanic scholarship and the complexity of the comic construct, these ‘keys’ are provisional and simply my own attempts to ‘read’ the plays. My approach has also been governed by my overall aim, that of arriving at a better understanding of popular attitudes to judicial activity. So I have focused on the presentation of Judicial activity in Aristophanes’ plays: the frequency with which Aristophanes examined judicial activity; the function of judicial activity within the Aristophanic world; the control of comic images by evidence from the off-stage world.

The first interpretative key is that the frequency with which Aristophanes focuses on a topic is a barometer of his audience’s concern about that issue. If Aristophanes and his ‘company’ are producing plays to entertain a mass, citizen audience and so wrestle comic victory from their rivals, then his choice o f subject matter must have been influenced by contemporary concerns and tensions (see pp.21-4 above). In order to obtain a sharper picture of comic interest, I have quantitatively analysed the frequency and choice of subject matter in Aristophanic satire. I chose seven satirical topics, including involvement in legal activity, and counted how often each topic was associated with a named, contemporary individual in Aristophanes’ eleven extant plays. Having carried out some simple statistics, it is possible to compare legal satire with other satirical topics, and so gauge the audience’s interest in legal matters.^® Graph 3.A below quantifies the degree to which individuals are attacked for being associated with the legal activity, in comparison to involvement in politics, physical characteristics and artistic endeavour (Graphs 3.B-D below).^^

^ The theoretical justification and methodology for this quantitative approach are outhned in Appendix 1 .1 carried out this quantitative analysis before I decided to focus this research solely on judicial activity (see p.9). Consequently the legal satire referred to here includes both judicial and legislative activity.

These graphs express in graphical form the information complied in Tables 12-16 of the Statistical Appendix. The absolute total values for each variable in each data set has been turned into a percentage of the total values of each variable. This then allows values to be compared across the data sets.

Graph A: Total Number of Legal Jokes (%) in the Plays of Aristophanes 5 0 - -

45 - -

35 - -

ill

AOr. E(f Nub. Vasp Pax. Av. Lys. Thai. Ran. EccL Plut.

Graph B: Total Number of Political Jokes (%) in the Plays of Aristophanes

Ach. Ea Nub. Vasp Pax. Av. Lys. TTies Ran. Eccl Plut

Graph C: Total Number of Physical Jokes (%) in the Plays of Aristophanes 50 T

4 0 - -

30 ■ -

20 - -

to--

Nub V asp Pax.

Graph D; Total Number of Artistic Jokes (%) in the Plays of Aristophanes 50 — 4 5 - - 4 0 " 35 - - 30 4- 25 20 15 10 5 0 JUXZL

A ch ' E p ' Nub Vasp Pax ' Av. ' Lys. ' T has ' Ran. ' E c a Plu

Graph 3: Total Number of Jokes in tlie Plays oi A ristophanes

Firstly, individuals are perceived to be involved in legal activity in all the plays bar one. There are some variations, but given that the nature of the statisties being dealt with here, it is unwise to place too great a significance on these variations.^- N evertheless some suggestions can be offered. The relatively high value (29%) in the W asps is hardly surprising, given that this play explores the role and function of the jury courts. A sim ilar trend can be seen in other plays, where the category of satirical attack with the highest value corresponds with the theme that dominates the play.^3 sim ilarly the relatively high value in i\\Q Acharnians is probably the result of the distorting influence of A ristophanes’ legal battle with C le o n .^ T h e failure of any individual to be satirised for legal involvement in the Thesmophoriazusae has been commented on above. On the basis o f Graph 3.A (p.33 above), it is possible to suggest that the ridicule of individuals on stage for their involvement in legal activity had comic potential and therefore was a consistent subject of interest to Aristophanes’ audience throughout the late and fifth and early fourth centuries. Secondly, those with a legal bent appear to be no more or no less a subject of ridicule than individuals that are satirised for any other reason. Graph 4

See T ab le 13 in tlie Statistical Appendix. For instance in the A charnians 1 have arrived at a total value o f 12 fo r the legal variable, in the Knights, 8, wliich, when expressed as percentages, give the figures 24% and 19%. In other words, the percentages are derived from small absolute total values. See Floud (1979) 42-51 on the advmitages mid problems in turning absolute totals into percentage totals.

In the B irds, w here many individuals are likened to Birds (see especially Av. 1292-1299), tlie physical variable has the highest total value (46%); in the K nights, w here politics is a key tlienie, the political variable (30% ); in the Frogs, concerned with tragedy, the artistic variable (32% ). See T ables 12, 15 and 16 in the Statistical Appendix.

2: Interpreting Aristophanes 34

below shows that, on average, when all the plays are taken together, audiences were just as likely to find legal satire funny as they were political, physical, sexual, m ilitary or artistic satire.

Average Total Number of Jo k es <%) in Plays of A rlstopfianes

M ean = 14

m

Graph 4: A verage Total N um ber of Jokes in the Plays o f A ristophanes

It seems that portraying Hyperbolus as a habitual litigant was Just as likely to raise a laugh as cracking jokes about Cleonymus’ size, his shield abandoning tendencies or his questionable sexual preferences.^^

It is one thing to conclude that mass, citizen audiences found legal jokes am using and, by extrapolation, were interested in legal matters; it is quite another to attem pt to locate the nature and significance of that interest. The second interpretative key seeks to locate the significance of judicial activity within the A ristophanic world. G iven that A ristophanes refracts A thenian society through a prism o f distortion, exaggeration, fantasy and inversion, it is impossible to read directly from the on-stage to the off-stage w o rld .^ On the other hand, the Aristophanic world possesses its own internal consistency or ‘comic l o g i c . I think the political cartoons of Steve Bell, who draws for the Guardian, offer an interesting analogy. Ever since John M ajor became Prime Minister, Steve Bell has represented John Major as wearing his underpants on the outside of his suit trousers (see Figure 4). It would be disastrous to read directly from the satirical fantasy of the cartoon into political reality: the cartoons are not a reliable source of information on the Prime M inister’s sartorial style. On the other hand, Steve B ell’s cartoons possess an internal consistency: John M ajor is alw ays depicted as wearing his underwear outside his trousers. I have attempted to locate the significance of judicial activity within the Aristophanic world in Chapter 3. The plays m ust be read first and forem ost as plays, possessing their own internal dram atic m om entum and

O n H yperbolus as a litigant, see definitely: A r.Ac/r845-6, Nub.S14-6, VespAOOS, Ran.550-79, Eupolis f r.l9 3 K -A ; probably: E q .1362-3, AW;. 1061, P ax 679-92, 922, 1319. See Storey (1989) for an excellent analysis o f the com ic portrayal o f Cleonymus.

S ee p p .28-9 on the festival licence of com edy and pp.30-1 on the tliird approach to analysing Aristoplianes.

‘logic.’ In Chapter 3, attention will be paid to the dramatic momentum of the whole play, to the position of judicial activity within that dramatic momentum and to the associations that are coupled with judicial activity. I believe it is possible to identify a consistent representation of judicial activity within the Aristophanic world and there is evidence that other playwrights similarly focused on judicial activity.

The third interpretative key is to bring off-stage evidence from the period to bear on comic society, to provide an alternative picture of agreement or dissent.^^ If comic society is distinct from the off-stage world, with its own internal ‘logic,’ then it is possible to translate impressions from on-stage to off-stage only by interpreting and verifying on-stage images in the light of off-stage evidence. Again taking Steve B ell’s portrayal of John Major, we are able to interpret this comic image when we remember that super-heroes, from Superman onwards, are depicted as wearing their underpants on outside their trousers and that the Y-front is the epitome of male tastelessness in attire. The juxtaposition of super-hero dress sense and the Y -front instantly undermines John Major’s credibility as a politician and as an individual. We can interpret the comic image only by utilising information from beyond the comic-strip, which the cartoonist presupposes that his readers posses. This necessity of using off-stage evidence to interpret on-stage images was also emphasised to me when I watched the reaction o f a group of Kenyan students to the play Betrayal in the City by the Kenyan playwright Francis Imbuga. As an outsider to Kenyan culture, I found it was possible to comprehend why on-stage images were funny to the Kenyan audience only by utilising evidence from beyond the theatre. The play centres around the activities o f the character Boss, the president of Kafira, a fictitious post-colonial, African state and his cousin and henchman Mulili. At one point Mulili comes to Boss to discuss with him the workings of a government committee:

Mulili Boss, you are cousin and I tells you this. Things have spoil. Don’t trust anybody, not even me.

Boss You talk straight or go back to the meeting. I put you on committee for obvious reasons and I expect you to report directly to me if something should seem to be going wrong. What is the matter?

Mulili I can’t believe it even now. It is a big ugly matter I tells you. Do you