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TRANSFORMING THE POLIS: INTERPRETATIONS OF SPACE IN

ATTIC OLD COMEDY

by
Matthew F. Amati

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
(Classics)

at the
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
2008

UMI Number: 3314312

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A dissertation entitled

Transforming the Polis: Interpretations of Space in Attic Old Comedy

submitted to the Graduate School of the

University of Wisconsin-Madison
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy

by
Matthew Ferro Amati
Date of Final Oral Examination:
Month & Year Degree to be awarded:

December

May 2 nd , 2008
May 2.C08

August

***********************************+****************************************^

Approval Signatures of Dissertation Committee

L4lAA>YlK

N\cOi/\Asv^

Mi

^vWa

-filfin'ciA, ^FXn-/;
$

#Msu\

f/^i/LJC-

QL*A*~

Signature, Dean of Graduate School

To my parents, who encouraged me at an early age to read, to learn,

and to value the pursuit of knowledge, I dedicate this work.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to Laura McClure, my advisor, who read numerous early drafts which, in retrospect, I
wouldn't wish on anybody, and whose patience and dedication throughout the dissertation ordeal were
invaluable and will be fondly remembered. Thanks also to the other members of my committee: Patricia
Rosenmeyer, Silvia Montiglio (whose comments on another early draft were extremely helpful), Jeff
Beneker and Marc Kleijwegt. Also Brian Lush for drinks and bouncing ideas back and forth, and Bill
Bach for his calmness and good humor every time I burst into his office shedding paperwork. Finally,
paeans of honor and gratitude go out to my dear and patient wife Melissa whose kindness and support
have changed my life, and for whom I hope to make all this worthwhile.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE:

Interpreting Space

CHAPTER TWO:

Theatrical Space

CHAPTER THREE:

Interiors and Exteriors

CHAPTER FOUR:

Character-created Space

CHAPTER FIVE:

The World Above and the World Below

CHAPTER SIX:

The Polis Transformed

Introduction
The most recent Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristophanes' Birds opens with the following
description of what the stage should look like:
The stage is arrayed as a wooded, rocky landscape, and the scene building
represents first the Hoopoe's nest and later Peisetairos' house; before it is a
thicket. PEISETAIROS, carrying a crow, and EUELPIDES, carrying a jackdaw,
enter by a side passage; behind them are their two Slaves, Xanthias and
Manodorus, who carry the baggage. (Henderson 2000, 13)

Stage directions like this, if they ever existed, are long since lost, and it is up to modern editors
and translators to reconstruct them.1 Details such as the names of the characters and the existence
of the slaves are inferred from the text, sometimes from much later in the play. The original cast
of Birds probably received some kind of instructions as to who should enter, from which
entrance they should come, and what they ought to carry. One element in these directions,
however, is fabricated, to conform to the conventions of modern stagecraft. The original
production of Birds in 414 probably did not feature any kind of backdrop at all. The stage was

See Dover (1972,10-12) for an account of the difficulties in scene-setting posed by the texts, and the problems

with relying on scholia for helpful information.

2
Information communicated by scene-painting and set-decoration seems to have been neglible or nonexistent. This
is a somewhat controversial point. It is not entirely clear what is meant by Aristotle's use of the term scaenographia
{Poet. 1449 A18). Painted, representational backdrops seem to have been a feature of much later theaters. Wiles
dismisses the idea that any kind of painted backdrop specific to a given play existed. "There can be no question of a
representational set, picturing a background to a specific play" (Wiles 1997, 161-2). See also Brown (1984, 1-17)

2
not "arrayed as a woody, rocky landscape." Instead, it is likely that audience at that first
performance saw the same generic skene doors which stood behind the actors in every play,
whether tragedy or comedy.
How, then, could the audience know that the characters in this play inhabit a wilderness?
They know because the dialogue tells them. References to "wandering" (3), "rambling more than
a thousand miles" (6) "cliffs" (20), and the lack of roads (22) set the scene for the audience.
Without these verbal clues, the audience would have no idea whether the skene represented a
house, a palace, or a cave. Unlike tragedy, which usually gives one unalterable description of the
setting per play, Attic Old Comedy, within a single play, changes the identity of the skene doors
and the space around the actors multiple times through dialogue, sometimes with dizzying speed.
Comedy focuses on Athens, but it is free to move about the world, and beyond, to the abode of
the gods, to Hades, to kingdoms in the air. Readers of the plays are often uncertain where the
action is taking place, or what the scenery behind the actors is supposed to represent. Doors
change owners, scenes shift from interior to exterior without warning, and a front yard may
suddenly become the Pnyx or the countryside. There are no examples in Aristophanes of an
explanatory prologue of the sort found in Euripides or Menander. The analogous passages are
teasing and indirect, spoken in character, and the interpretation of the scenery they offer is
subject to change without notice.
The thesis of this dissertation is twofold. First, it aims to demonstrate that the ability of

and Padel (1990, 336). But Dover (1972,180) makes a compelling case for at least some pieces of movable scenery,
possibly shifted about by stage-hands. At the very least, certain scenes would be hard to perform without large
props, including the beetle ridden by Trygaios, Charon's boat in Frogs and the wardrobes of Euripides and Agathon
in Acharnians and Thesmophoriazusae.

3
speaking actors to identify and reidentify the nature of stage and skene as a potent weapon in the
comic hero's arsenal of subversive and transformational trickery. This process will be referred to
as "interpreting" stage space, rather than as "identifying" it, since the nature of the space
occupied by actors and chorus is subjective. Different characters in a comedy interpret stage
space in different ways, and they fight for the right to have their interpretations win out. The aim
of these attempts to define space is to gain control of the space around them, and to dictate the
nomoi by which the other characters should abide. Frequently, this mastery of space takes the
form of the power of the kurios or head of the household, and for this reason many comic
characters interpret stage space as an oikos of some sort, even when the initial interpretation of
space is supposedly external and outdoors.
The second aim is to show that comic action aims at a transformation of space which
reflects the playwright's stated desire to solve the problems of the city outside the theater . Most
comedies begin in a version of Athens that is troubled in some way. Comic heroes set out to
solve the problem (often for the benefit of themselves and people like them) by imposing new
interpretations of polis space, achieving dominance over these transformed spaces, and turning
troubled polis space into a festival paradise of feasting and dancing. Aristophanes purports to be
a benefit to the city (Ach. 635ff) and a purveyor of sound advice {Ran. 686-9) who will improve
the city immeasurably if his fellow citizens will heed him. There are three aspects to this
"advice" which are not always differentiated by commentators, nor, when they are seen as
separate elements, are they given equal weight. The first is straightforward unironic advice,
usually offered in the parabases, which De Ste. Croix (1972, 356-76) believes is Aristophanes at

4
his most serious and substantive. Aristophanes is certainly not joking when he gives
straightforward advice. Dikaiopolis, for example, speaking in the persona of the poet, makes a
potent argument when he says that Athens should swallow her pride and make peace with the
Spartans. The chorus' plea in Frogs for equality and amnesty likewise has no overtones of
mockery or irony.
These serious asides are rare, however, and in "The Demos and Comic Competition,"
Jeffrey Henderson (1990,271-313) argues persuasively that comic mockery had as much serious
import, and was taken as seriously, in its own way, as rhetoric and public debate. He warns
against confident assertions that "separate seriousness and humor: the poets' claim to seriousness
must be a joke, or, conversely, the jokes are there to make the serious parts more palatable"
(Henderson 1990, 272). Henderson's purpose is to bring up
.. .the possibility that comic humor might have been a persuasive mode parallel to
those we call serious. One of the special powers of humor is "fool's privilege": to
mediate between the poles of polite silence and impolite expression, to express
ideas that want a public outlet but that would be too disruptive if expressed
otherwise.. .Thus the problem is not to distinguish humor and seriousness, but
rather to analyze the dynamics of comic persuasion. (Henderson 1990,273-4)

There is a third element of Aristophanes' "message" which Henderson does not really touch on,
nor does he distinguish it from jokes, jibes and mockery. That element is imaginative fantasy. No
one to date has made the case that the the outlandish plots and set pieces that feature so regularly
in the plays are part of a seriocomic argument with as much import, and as much to say to the
citizen audience, as the advice and the jibes. It is of course unlikely that Aristophanes seriously
intended to persuade his fellow Athenians to improve their situation by assaulting the house of

5
Zeus, or building cities in the air, or resurrecting dead poets, or handing power over to the
housewives. On the other hand, it is hardly necessary to think, as Forrest (1963,1-12) does, that
Aristophanes is an ironic nihilist who despaired of ever improving the city and expressed this
despair through deliberately absurd plots. It is the aim of this dissertation to analyze the
dynamics of comic fantasy in comic characters' interpretations and transformations of space, to
show the connection between the transformed polis on the stage and the hoped-for
transformation of the polis of which the theater was a part, and to demonstrate that at a
performance of Attic Old Comedy, comic troupe, audience and citizenry participated in a
reimagining of civic space which had an effect on public ideology and opinion as profound in its
own way as the effect of tragedy.
The first chapter, "Interpreting Space," explains more fully what is meant by "space"
(and how it might be differentiated from the more restrictive notion of "setting.") It will show
that there is a notable difference in the way tragedy interprets stage space, and the way comedy
does it. The first few lines of a tragedy tell the audience explicitly where the action is taking
place. After that, it rarely changes. For the most part, the action of a tragedy stays put.
Aristophanes, on the other hand, rarely tells the spectators where the action is happening. Attic
Old Comedy allows characters within the play to interpret the space for the audience and for
each other, not only once, but again and again. Comic plots are, in large measure, a contest
between duelling interpretations of stage space. Within the world of a comedy, a comic hero has
the almost supernatural power to assert the superiority of one type of space over another, to
"stage" plays within the play that reinterpret the space around him and the chorus, to leave the

6
original version of the stage space behind and travel to distant realms, to recreate stage space on
new terms that suit him better, and to transform troubled space into space for revelry and
feasting. The plot arc of many comedies may be thought of as a transformation of space, from
troubled polis space to trouble free festival paradise. The transformation of the Athens
represented on the stage is meant to mirror a hoped-for change in the Athens that surrounds and
pervades the space of the theater.
How do comic heroes transform space, and what kind of spaces are at their disposal?
Chapter Two "The Stage on Stage" will discuss the nature of dramatic illusion in comedy, and
inquire whether comedy demands anything of its audience similar to the concentration on a
single fictional universe that tragedy demands. It will show that when comic characters
acknowledge the theater, make references to theater building, spectators and the comic contest,
or engage in audience address, parody, and abuse of real public figures, it is possible to see them
not as breaking a fragile dramatic illusion, but as expanding that illusion to include not only
stage space but spectators and city. In this way, the explicit use of theater space conflates
successful comic heroes with a successful playwright and the transformed world of the stage
with the transformed city. It will then examine the "staging" of plays within a comedy, and show
that by becoming the producer of a Euripidean tragedy, the comic hero is able to take advantage
of certain aspects of the world of the tragedy. He can reinterpret the nature of props and the
skene doors to improve his situation, and mimic the motifs of the tragedy in question (e.g.
successful use of disguise, in Acharnians, or daring rescue, in Thesmophoriazusae).
Chapter Three "Interiors and Exteriors" discusses what may have been the only

7
permanent representational feature of the Theater of Dionysos, the door in the skene. The
presence of this door signals a major opposition in Greek concepts of space, a contrast between
interior private space and exterior communal space. In Aristophanes, interior space is associated
with the institution of the oikos, and accordingly functions as a corrective to the exterior,
corrupted communal space of the democratic polls. This chapter will first examine strategies
used by Aristophanes for representing interiors on the nominally exterior space of the stage. It
will then show how Aristophanes' heroes transform the exterior spaces of the polis and of the
Greek theater of international politics by reinterpreting them as interior spaces, particularly oikos
space. This strategy brings armies and generals and cities down to the level of cheeses and
pestles and household dogs (a process which will be called "trivialization"), a process which
renders the enormity of exterior conflict manageable and whimsical. Finally, it will discuss the
role of the kurios, or head of the household, and show that mastery of various kinds of stage
space is often discussed in terms of inheritance and ownership of private property, and that the
goal of many comic heroes is not only to reinterpret exterior spaces as interior oikoi, but also to
achieve dominance over these spaces by becoming kurios over the new oikos space.
Chapter Four, "Character-created Space," identifies another strategy for mastering space.
Aristophanes has often been called a "Utopian" author, but the term "Utopian" means two or
three different things that do not apply very consistently to Aristophanes. This chapter will
instead propose a new spatial category for Aristophanes, "Character-created space," which
focuses on the creation of new spaces by characters in the narrative. The two plays that feature
unique spaces, spaces created, demarcated, and ruled by comic heroes, are Acharnians and Birds.

8
Both the New Agora oiAcharnians and Cloudcuckooland in Birds are created to remedy the
same failing of the heroes' fellow citizens; their tendency to "flit about" all over the polis and the
Greek world after profit, with no respect for boundaries, and hence no loyalty to their own city.
Acharnians seems in many ways a precursor to Birds, as it uses similar language to castigate bird
citizens and to describe the Character-created New Agora, but only in Birds does a new polis
come into being in the air, shaped like a star and dominating the cosmos.
Chapter Five "The World Above and the World Below" discusses Aristophanes'
depictions of distant, mythological spaces, namely the extraordinary journeys of Trygaios in
Peace and Dionysos in Frogs, and argues that Aristophanes makes distant space comprehensible
by reinterpreting it as the nearby and familiar. Trygaios assails the home of the gods, located in
the highest reaches of the sky, and Dionysos contrives to mimic Herakles and travel to the land
of the dead, Hades. Both heroes make the impossible leap from earth to supernatural realm
partly by conceiving the "other" space as a space that is normally quite easily reached. Trygaios
finds that the home of the gods is merely an oikos, similar to any found in Athens, and that
hardly any gods live there. Dionysos' underworld is a tourist spot complete with hotels, rest stops
and a return journey. This chapter shows that Aristophanes' distant spaces exist side by side with
polis space and theatrical space. Both heroes bring the audience along with them on their
journeys, and then cast the audience in the role of inhabitants of the new distant space. Trygaios
draws his helpful pan-Hellenic chorus of farmers and laborers from the eisoidoi, treating the
audience as his own labor pool. Dionysos identifies the audience as the sinners in the Stygian
mire, and later invites them on an Eleusinian procession to a feast with Pluto himself, followed

9
by a tragic contest. Both Trygaios and Dionysos transform the polis by restoring a figure lost to
it, the goddess Peace in the case of Trygaios, and the departed poet Aeschylus in the case of
Dionysos. Both schemes amount to a kind of time travel. Trygaios' restoration of Peace to the
city undoes the decade of harm wrought by the Archidamian war, and Dionysos' revival of
Aeschylus rolls back the cultural life of Athens to its period of greatest majesty.
The transformation of the polis, a motif which ends the majority of the plays, is the
subject of chapter 6, "The Polis Transformed." This final chapter discusses the Golden Age, the
legendary ideal era of abundance and leisure that according to Hesiod's Works and Days, existed
under the rule of Kronos. In Attic Old Comedy, members of the Golden Race can be found in
various distant spaces, such as the faraway wilderness or the underworld. This chapter traces the
depiction of the Golden Age from its roots in Hesiod and Homer to its frequent appearance in the
fragments of Attic Old Comedy. In Attic Old Comedy, the Golden Age becomes identified with
specific places, particularly the wilderness, the underworld, and the city after its comic
transformation. By traveling to spaces where members of the Golden Race live, comic
characters can bring the Golden Age to Athens so that the citizens can enjoy its benefits.
Aristophanes does not depict the Golden Age in the same way as the fragments of other comic
poets suggest they did. The Golden Age for Aristophanes is a point in the more recent past,

The association of the Golden Age with the underworld is particularly prevalent in the fragments of such plays as
Aristophanes' Gerytades, Telekleides Amphictyons, as well as Pherekrates' Miners and Krapataloi. Baldry observes
"Associations of 6 ocuTopocToc. (3ioc; with existence after death was, of course, far from new. The Egyptian version of
Elysium which from which according to Nilsson the Greek conception was derived through Minoan Crete, was a
place of plenty, and contained a 'Field of Food'. To such a land of bliss Menelaus goes in the Odyssey, and so do
some of the race of heroes in the Works and Days. The idea reappears in Pindar, Plato, and elsewhere. One purpose
of the author of the Miners is evidently to satirize some version of this belief (Baldry 1953, 56).

10
dating anywhere from the pre-democratic Age of Tyrants to the Persian Wars.4 Restoring the city
to these already legendary times imbues the demos with the lost virtue of a bygone generation
and results in a paradise of feasting and dancing for the polis.
The conclusion puts Aristophanes' fantasy plots and transformations of polis space into
their public context and asks whether these absurd plots could have had any influence on public
opinion. It builds on De Ste. Croix's plea for taking the serious asides of the choruses as an
earnest expression of the playwright's view, and on Henderson's case for viewing comic
mockery as a persuasive mode of discourse, and seeks to add Aristophanes' fantasies of spatial
transformation to those aspects of Attic Old Comedy worth taking seriously in their historical
context.

The Sausage Seller in Knights, for example, rejuvenates Demos and restores the city to the time of Miltiades and
Themistocles. The marriage of Peisetairos and Basilea has overtones of Herodotus' tale of the trick played on the
Athenians by Peisistratos.

11

Chapter 1

Interpretations of Space

It is important to observe, as others have, that certain theatrical trappings which are taken for
granted in the modern theater did not exist in the Theater of Dionysos. There was no curtain, nor
any way to hide the stage from the view of the audience. There was no theater lighting. A play in
progress in the early afternoon basked in the same afternoon sun that shone on the public
buildings outside the theater.2 No theater lighting meant no spotlights trained on a lone actor in
the darkness, no hidden parts of the stage, no dramatic raising and lowering of ambient light.

The early excavations in the Theater of Dionysos by Dorpfield in the 1880s and 90s gave rise to two
comprehensive works which have largely been superseded, Flickinger's The Greek Theater and its Drama (1918)
and Martha Bieber's The History of the Greek and Roman Theatre (1939). What might be called the "modern era" in
studies of the theater began with T.B.L. Webster's Greek Theatre Production (1956), which applied rigorous
modern archaeological methods to questions of theatrical layout and equipment, and has been an invaluable
influence (cf. Green 1994, xiii). Other influential studies are P. Arnott (1962), Russo (1962), Baldry (1971), Sifakis
(1971), Dover (1972), Newiger (1975) Bain (1977), and Taplin (1977 and 1978), whose groundbreaking 1977 book
The Stagecraft of Aeschylus was among the first to consider tragedy not primarily as a written text, but as a
multifaceted spectacle, in which music, choreography, acting and stage-effects played as much role as did the
written text. According to Taplin, the primary import of a play is to be sought in its 'visual meaning,' a concept
similar to Aristotle's opsis. Any reading that does not take into account the exigencies of performance (which, for
Taplin, means visual communication by actors) is, by Taplin's reckoning, defective. Excellent recent works that have
expanded on Taplin's "spectacle" and drawn connection between the physical space of the stage and a structuralist
reading of spatial meaning include Loraux (1981), Green (1994), Rehm (2002) and David Wiles, whose Tragedy in
Athens (1997) examines the Theater of Dionysos in relation to the surrounding cityscape, and draws connections
between it and the Pnyx and agora, and between this trifold division of political/performative space and the rural
deme-theaters, which often combined all three functions (assembly, market, performance) into one space. He builds
on Loraux's mapping of the ideological relationship between Acropolis and Kerameikos to include a third point on
the axis; the ludic space of the orchestra.
2
Pickard-Cambridge (1968, 64) in his reconstruction of the schedule of the City Dionysia, allots the performances
of tragedies to the morning and the comedies to the afternoons.
3
Sifakis (1971, 10) is so wedded to the idea that proper stage-lighting is essential to dramatic illusion that he

12
Most significantly, there do not seem to have been any elaborate set decorations or backdrops.4
The spectators always saw the same stage and the same door, whether they were sitting down to
watch the Orestia or" Eupolis' Nanny goats. To differentiate one setting from another, spectators
mostly depended on the dialogue to tell them what was what.
To imagine a performance of Greek drama without dialogue, consider the plight of a deaf
spectator at a performance. He could probably have gleaned a vague notion of the plot. Dance,
gesture and movement all tell part of the story. Someone is mourning. Someone has heard
something. Someone is shocked, delighted, dying. In the case of a comedy, here is Socrates (note
the likeness) and some rude fellow is delivering him a drubbing. The stage, too, has its own
visual spatial language which conveys the broadest outlines of the action. The skene doors
represent the gateway to interior space. The ekkuklema presents the hidden interior laid bare for
the exterior world to see. Entrances from the parodoi hint at unseen space beyond the borders of
the little world of the stage.5 The mechane allows actors to occupy the air, the zone reserved for
gods. The flat roof of the skene is used for the appearances of gods, but it also holds mortals in
poses of vigil.6 The actors move between these points of visual meaning, but without verbal
clues, the movements tell no real story. There would be no way to tell whether the doors
represent a house, a cave, a tent, whether the newcomer has just come from Thebes, Korinth,
denies ancient audiences any real imaginative involvement in the fictions of Greek tragedy and comedy. Wiles
(2000, 138-9) has suggested that Greek drama may have made sophisticated visual use of its ambient outdoor light,
incorporating the presence of the sun, the Odeon and the seasons into its world. Padel (1990, 339-40) asserts that it
is more useful to "think theater-lighting out of our own experience" and concentrate on what was actually present in
the theater to help foster manipulation of dramatic feeling.
4
See the Introduction, n. 2
5
cf. Hourmouziades (1965, 109-27) for a comprehensive chapter on off-stage space and its bearing on on-stage
tragic action.
6
P. Arnott (1962, 42) cites the skene-xoof s traditional name, theologeion, as proof it was used for the appearances
of gods, e.g. Athena in Ajax, Zeus in Psychostasia.

13
Persia, what land this is that is visited by the god. Ruth Padel (1990, 340) notes "the tragic poets,
unlike modem producers, extended their world by language only."
The sparsely decorated skene of the Theater of Dionysos, and the stage and orchestra in
front of it, are perhaps best imagined, not as a backdrop such as one finds in the modern theater,
nor as the set of a film, but as a space, a palimpsest filled in by verbal and mimetic cues given by
the actors. One could say that actors in ancient drama interpret stage space verbally in order to
give the audience a sense of context for their actions. Tragic actors will say, "This is the palace of
Argos," or, "Behold the cave of Philoctetes," in order to fill in the ambiguous space around them.
Until someone comes forward with an interpretation of stage space, it is a tabula rasa. Tragic
dialogue is careful and explicit about where the action on stage takes place. Most extant tragedies
interpret the space of the stage before the twentieth line:
XGovoq uev ec, tnAoupov TIKOUEV 7ie5ov,
SKuGnv ec. oiuov, cc^arov eiq epnuiav.
This is the world's end to which we have come
To the Scythian plain, the untrodden wastes. (Aesch. PV, 1-2)
TIKCO

Aide, TiaTc, trjvSe 0n(3auov xQova

I come, the child of Zeus, to this land of the Thebans. (Eur. Bacchae, 1)
TO

yocpTCOCAOUOV"Apyoc, ounoGeiq t65e

There is ancient Argos that you longed for. (Soph. Electra, 2)

In tragedy once the space around the actors is defined, it does not alter significantly. In this

14
sense, tragedy can be said to have a "setting" which endures until the end of the play. The
authority to define space is frequently reserved for the gods who speak the majority of tragic
prologues.
Comic characters, on the other hand, are not content to occupy a static, easily defined
space. Comic space is fluid, subject to rapid shifts brought on by the words and actions of the
characters. Scenes that begin indoors shift imperceptibly into outdoor scenes. To take one
example, Clouds begins by depicting what is evidently an interior, with references to bedsheets
(Nub. 10) and oil lamps (18). Without any indication that they have left the house, the father
points out the front door of Socrates' Phrontisterion. Have they left the house? Were they
sleeping in the street? Given what we know of the stage properties of the Theater of Dionysos,
one would expect an indoor scene to be staged on the ekkuklema, a platform rolled out of the
central stage door. Yet if this is currently holding the beds of the father and son, how can
Strepsiades point to the stage door and plausibly denote it as belonging to a third party?
Characters can also begin in one location and suddenly make it clear by their words that they
have already moved on. At the start of Acharnians, Dikaiopolis states that he is in the Pnyx. He
suddenly announces his intention to celebrate the Rural Dionysia at his country home, and, like
the shite of the Noh drama, immediately he is there. Worse, it is apparent from his speech that he
has been there for an indeterminate number of lines. When did he fly from the center of Athens
to a far flung deme of Attica? Most curiously, comic characters try to recreate the world of
tragedy through parody and repurposing of props, as when Dikaiopolis stages the kidnapping
7

See also Scullion (1994, 67-8, 87, 109) for comparison of the static space of tragedy versus the fluid space of
comedy and the definition of space through dialogue in both genres. Also Taplin (1977 104 n.2) and Dearden (1976,
44-7).

15
scene of Euripides' Telephus using a sack of charcoal instead of a baby. The chorus find
themselves taken in by his charade, and they soon begin referring to him as Telephus and to the
charcoal as an infant. It seems Dikaiopolis has persuaded the chorus that his pretend Telephus
world is real. Persuading audiences that pretend worlds are real is the stuff plays are made on,
and so Dikaiopolis' "production" becomes, for a short time, a transformation of the world of the
play.
This lack of fixity provokes some extreme reactions. N.R.E. Fisher declares, for example,
that Acharnians leaves the reader in a 'fog' and that it could not possibly have been taken
seriously:
The multiple and confused overlay of settings, roles, costumes, and parodies
would further have diverted the audience from listening seriously to the argument,
and confirmed them in the belief that it was a silly invented story supporting a
paradoxical argument. If that is 'tragedy's truth' it employs a peculiar form of
argument. (Fisher 1993, 38)

Even those less perturbed than Fisher by the antics of Attic Old Comedy prefer simply to exclude
considerations of space and setting from their discussion. They conclude that the setting of the
plays would have been vague or immaterial to comedy's original audience. Srebrny (1960, 93)
expresses the profound frustration that arises from attempting to pin down many scenes to a
specific place. Dearden claims that since no transitions or pauses between scenes are indicated
in the texts, "the question of setting is never mentioned by actors or permitted to be raised by the
audience" (Dearden 1976, 43).
It is true that there is no setting in comedy in the same sense that tragedy can be said to
have a setting. This is not because comic space is never interpreted (as Fraenkel and Dearden

16
imply) but because it is interpreted and reinterpreted so often. If by "setting" one means a
consistent, unchanging definition of stage space such as one finds in the Oedipus, which begins
and ends in front of the same palace doors, then most plays of Aristophanes do not have
"settings." The space their characters occupy is never "set" but changes constantly. The
mercurial nature of comic space does not necessarily render it unimportant or inexplicable, nor is
Aristophanes guilty of "ignoring the problem of setting" (Dearden 1976, 42). The source of the
fluidity of comic space lies in the competitive nature of comic action. The fight for the right to
interpret stage space is a major factor in comic plots. When comic characters set about redefining
their world, stage space becomes a palimpsest upon which multiple fantastic spatial
interpretations and reinterpretations vie for dominance. The laws of physics change, the identity
of the immediate landscape alters, and longstanding traditions turn heels over heads. The act of
spatial interpretation is for comic characters a sort of witchcraft, an alchemy that imposes many
types of festive and antinomian changes on the world presented at the start of the play. In the
following section, I will attempt to identify what I see as some of the major strategies of spatial
reinterpretation used by Aristophanes' characters.
One strategy, which might be called reconceptualization, involves describing inaccesible
or distant spaces in terms of the easy and familiar. For example, at the beginning of Frogs,
Dionysos wishes to make the journey which Orpheus failed to make. He wants to travel to the
underworld and bring back a living person. Herakles tells him that the journey to Hades is short,
but strictly one way, for example "off a the top of a tall tower." Dionysos, not to be fazed, insists
on describing Hades as a space contiguous with the stage space, one which can be reached via a

17
road. Herakles gives in to this notion, and proceeds to describe the "route," providing Dionysos
with a verbal "map" of the underworld which he uses to carry out his quest. By reconceiving the
land of the dead as a geographical entity like Thebes or Thrace, Dionysos contrives to visit
Hades as one would visit any overseas holiday spot. Trygaios in Peace also faces a journey
across an impassable barrier. He tries to conceive of the home of the gods as space that can be
assaulted, which gets him nothing but a nasty tumble. Eventually he decides he will serve Zeus a
summons in a lawsuit. By conceiving of Zeus' domain as an ordinary citizen household, Trygaios
manages to visit it without too much trouble. To paraphrase Hamlet, in Aristophanes "there is
nothing near or far but thinking makes it so." By inventing a plausible conception of distant
space, comic characters can make it fit within the logic of comic movement and cross boundaries
previously thought insurmountable.
Another strategy, trivialization, reduces complex populous spaces to the scale of the
domestic and everyday. The problems facing the polis and the larger Greek world - corruption,
cultural devolution, maleficent rhetoric, the clash of armies, the death struggle of warring states are too huge and involve too many people for any individual to solve on his own. By recreating
the larger world within a smaller space, a comic hero can reenact these struggles on a
whimsically reduced scale and solve them as one would solve kitchen squabbles. In Wasps,
Bdelykleon brings the law courts inside his kitchen. The trial of Kleon and the affair at Sicily
play out in miniature, recast as the trial of a kitchen dog accused of devouring a cheese. Knights
depicts the struggle for the soul of the demos as individual allegory, as the Sausage Seller and the
Paphlagonian battle for control of a single oikos and the affections of a single old dotard. By

18
shrinking the scale of troubled polis space, the comic hero becomes drastically empowered to
persuade entire populations, represented as individuals, and to assert dominance over polis space
and even the entire Greek world, once they are reduced to the scale of a single oikos.
Another strategy comic heroes use to control stage space is to initiate performance of a
tragedy, a comic mode often referred to as paratragedy. When comic characters begin
performing/parodying tragedy, their interpretation of the stage properties changes. The Relation
in Thesmophoriazusae, for example, finds himself treed on an altar, surrounded by hostile citizen
wives who have announced their intention to turn him over to the constabulary. He begins
staging past tragedies of Euripides, and reinterpreting the nature of the thing upon which he
perches. His altar becomes, in his interpretation, first the boat of Palamedes, and then Helen's
Egyptian tower. The plank to which he is later tied becomes the rock to which he is chained in
the role of Andromeda. His stated purpose is to "summon" Euripides. This can be seen on
another level as rearranging the mental scenery around him to "summon" the world of a play in
which a hero pulls off a successful rescue.
A final strategy involves the demarcation and defense of boundaries. The trouble with
polis space is that it it is crowded with the wrong sorts of people. A frequent motif in

What exactly do comic characters do when they enact scenes from tragedy? The problem is to find an adequate
translation of the word uiueouoci used by both Dikaiopolis in his staging of Telephus and the Relation in his series of
Euripidean performances. The choice boils down to three senses: imitate, perform, or parody. Muecke (1977, 56) in
a discussion of Thesmophoriazusae, dismisses 'imitate' outright, citing a need for 'further definition.' She considers
the term 'parody' and notes the absence of any evidence for an analogous fifth-century technical term; however, she
says, the term mimesis could be argued to denote, non-technically, a similar idea. SSrbom's (1966, 35) formulation
of the fifth-century sense of mimesis precludes the sense of'perform,' although Koller (1954, 11-12) supports the use
of the term. There are two purposes in these performances. One aim could very well be described as "parody" since
the burlesquing of a popular tragedy is obviously a rich source of humor, but another must be seen in terms of the
peculiar logic of comic plots. Chapter 2 will argue that "evocation" of Euripides himself is the Relation's putative
purpose in staging mangled versions of these tragedies.

19
Aristophanes is the defense of a bounded space from legions of unworthy characters seeking to
gain entry. Dikaiopolis, Trygaios and Peisetairos especially must fend off processions of
unsavory characters, many of whom represent prominent contemporary Athenians. Alan
Sommerstein (1996, 327-356), borrowing a page from Francis Bacon, divides these
komodoumenoi into "idols of the tribe," meaning prominent politicians like Kleisthenes, "idols of
the theater," meaning culturally prominent individuals, such as Agathon and the Poet of Birds,
and "idols of the market" meaning members of the trades class like Meton and (in his profession
as a tanner) Kleon. By purging stage space of these unwanted characters, comic heroes rid the
city of pernicious influences and create a sanctified space of like minded revelers.
The aim of these strategies - reconceptualization, trivialization, paratragedy and
demarcation of boundaries - is control and dominance over space. Aristophanes has his comic
heroes "think" space into manageable categories, or reduce large-scale spaces to a controllable
scale, or perform tragedies which are set in spaces they control in the role of the hero, or mark
out and defend spaces which are theirs to rule. These newly interpreted spaces put the comic hero
in the role of master. Comic heroes begin as members of a specific social and economic class,
but most comedies show the protagonist transcending boundaries and becoming the most
powerful figure on stage, blessed by fortune, stuffed with food and ready for sexual congress
with nubile female figures. Dikaiopolis rules his own private agora, Trygaios oversees the return
of Peace to Athens, the Sausage Seller becomes top slave in the house of the malleable Mr.
Demos, Strepsiades gets the better of the Phrontisterion, Philokleon shakes off the yoke of
juryman's servitude, Peisetairos becomes more powerful than the gods, Lysistrata and Praxagora

20
become arbiters of city sized oikoi, Dionysos, after commencing his journey as a buffoon, by
the play's end takes up his godly role as judge of tragedy, and Chremylus refashions the cosmos
as a meritocracy.9 In many of these plays, the hero interprets stage space as some kind of oikos
for analogue thereof) and cements his dominance by marrying a divine personification of some
ideal; thus Trygaios marries Harvest, Peisetairos marries Sovereignty, and Lysistrata brokers the
wedding of Reconciliation. The hero, marrying his bride, then takes control of stage space using
the language of property inheritance, becoming kurios of his domain.10
This position of kurios was, in the days before the democracy, and even more so in the
remote past before the advent of synoecism and the development of communal life, the most
powerful position an ordinary man could hold, equivalent to a king over the miniature kingdom
of the oikos. That so many comic heroes yearn for this status points to two strains in
Aristophanes, one anti-democratic and anti-communal, and one nostalgic for a fondly
remembered past, a time when the head of household was all but autonomous. Aristophanes does
not reach very far back into the past for the locus of his nostalgia. As De Ste. Croix (1972, 357-8)
observes, he seems most in sympathy with the Athens of the Persian Wars down to the exile of
Cimon. Throughout his plays, Aristophanes keeps returning to this "preferred" version of the
polis, recreating it through his characters' hyperbolic comic transformations, interpreting the
contemporary polis as its historical counterpart and presenting this "old" version as a lost
paradise.
9

Only the Relation in Thesmophoriazusae winds up not terribly well-off.

This does not describe the aim of every comic hero, but on one level or another, the final triumphs of
Dikaiopolis, Trygaios, the Sausage Seller, Peisetairos, and the male negotiators of Lysistrata all may be seen to enact
this fantasy of marriage and power-inheritance. The old women of Ekklesiazusae could even be said to enact it in
reverse, by coupling with young desirable men.
10

21
In one sense, democratic Athens itself was a space created and continually recreated.
Beginning as a collection of households governed by personal wealth and tradition, its rules of
operation were revised over time, most famously by Solon and later by Cleisthenes, Ephialtes,
Pericles and others who "reformed" (or re-formed, if you will) the city into a space governed in
practical terms by those whose ability to persuade shone the brightest.11 Democratic leaning
Athenians were always afraid lest another reformer come along and persuade away the
democracy. This anxiety over evil persuasion, velvet revolutions, and unwholesome drama
percolates through Aristophanes' works. Space that has been defined in beneficial ways by the
virtuous men of old can be redefined by the pathic, corrupt and foolish men of the present.
Comic heroes always seem to wake up the day after these negative transformations have
occurred. It is their job to wreak destructive havoc on unwholesome spaces they encounter, and
to persuade wrongheaded characters to accept their improved, sometimes radical version of
space. In doing so, they ultimately turn the depressing modern world of war and politics into one
of harmony and feasting. The recreation and redefining of space that occurs in comedy is a
mirror of the space creation and space definition that underlie democratic politics. Aristophanes
connects his characters' transformations of space with both a prescribed transformation for the
city at large, a transformation that brings about a fantasy-politics purged of komodoumenoi, and
at the same time connects them with the culturally real transformation of the city during the
Dionysia into a place of leisure and festival.

11

Rothwell (1993, 16-21) sums up the extensive literature on the relationship between peitho and Athenian
politics. He examines peitho in the Ecclesiazusae and shows how the case for the women's commune is made on
established models of rhetoric, and how it plays on fears of sophistry and revolution, which are examples of
maleficent persuasion.

Chapter 2

Theatrical Space

The previous chapter outlined several strategies comic characters employ to redefine and control
the space around them on the stage. This chapter will examine the ways comic heroes interpret
stage space as just that: the performance space of a theater. Of all of the plot devices unique to
comedy, this is the most perplexing to critics, especially those who view tragedy as the template
from which Attic Old Comedy deviates. When comic heroes call attention to the reality of the
theater and the presence of spectators, this is usually treated as a violation of something
necessary to successful drama: the maintenance of a "dramatic illusion." There can be no fiction
without suspension of the awareness of performance. Until recently, the late 1970s, it was
common even among admirers of this "illusion breaking" to treat it as subversive of the goals of
dramatic persuasion; that even as Aristophanes evokes laughter from these breaches, he
undermines his own dramatic effectiveness.1 This chapter will argue that breaches of dramatic
illusion are not always what they seem. Audience address, in comedy, pretends to include
spectators and the polis itself in the transformations of the plot; yet the "spectators" to whom
comic characters speak are themselves fictional, and the actors never refer to themselves as
actors, as they remain resolutely in character. Interpreting stage space as theatrical space, and
1

See below, n. 5.

23
pointing out the trappings of the theater, is a plot device that gives comic heroes almost magical
powers of persuasion (as when Dikaiopolis costumes himself as Telephus), along with the ability
to manipulate the ropes and pulleys of their universe to achieve the impossible (witness Trygaios'
use of the mechane).2 As comic characters become the didaskaloi of their world (in the sense of
"producers") so does Aristophanes hope to be the same thing to his city, using the theater to
transform polis space and be a benefit to the polis.
Theater and Dramatic Illusion
A speaker in a tragedy may tell the audience that the stage represents an island, a palace, a camp,
a temple, a grove, or a wilderness. He may not remind them that it is a theater. Acknowledgment
of theatrical space is strictly forbidden in tragedy. This rule seems to have been both inviolable
and easily violated.3 Actors on the comic stage, on the other hand, had no qualms about
reminding the audience that they were in a theater. References to the festival contest, to the
spectators in their seats, to the mechanical devices of the stage and to the playwright's role as
creative artist are ubiquitous in Aristophanes. Since even a hint of this sort of business would
ruin a tragedy, it has become common to refer to these reminders as "breaking the dramatic
illusion."4 These so-called breaches of illusion have led many to conclude that Attic Old Comedy
was uninterested in presenting anything like the sustained fictional universe of tragedy, and that,
2

Sometimes it does not work at all, as in Thesmophoriazusae, where the elaborate donning of theatrical costume
and staging of tragedies comes to nought.
3
The scholion to a fragment of Euripides' lost Orestes tells us that during the performance of this play the actor
Hegelochus failed to elide the vowel at the end of the word galena and that the audience heard it as galen or
'polecat.' For making the audience aware of the presence of the fallible actor behind the mask, Hegelochus was
pilloried by both judges and audience, and ridiculed by comic poets, including Aristophanes, for years afterwards.
The anecdote illustrates, perhaps a little too gnomically, the fragility of the 'spell' that tragedy was supposed to cast
upon its audience, cf. Ar. Ran. 304, Strattis Anthroporrhaestes (fr. 1 K-A ), Sannyrion Danae (fr 8 K-A).
4
For a discussion of the troublesome history of this term as it applies to ancient theater, see Bain 1977, 3-4.

24
for the sake of a joke, Aristophanes is willing to let his conceits drop as fast as he has constructed
them.5
In "Playing with the Play: Theatrical Self-consciousness in Aristophanes," Frances
Muecke offers a remarkable interpretation of Aristophanic illusion breaking that takes into
account the singular nature of comic fiction, and its difference from the fictions of tragedy. For
Muecke, spectators at the Theater of Dionysos have a twofold reaction to events on the stage. On
the one hand they are imaginatively involved in the action as it is presented, and at the same
time, they remain detached, reading the stylized movements and dialogue according to the rules
of theatrical discourse. They are simultaneously aware of and oblivious to the artificiality of what
is going on. When a comic character breaks the dramatic illusion by calling attention to the
reality of the theater, that "reality" is itself a construct, a "second fiction" which is no less
artificial.6 Reading many of the famous asides in Aristophanes in light of Muecke's
interpretation, the "breaches" seem as illusory as the primary fictions of the plays. An apparent
5

Dramatic illusion according to Dover (1972, 56-59) is primarily a matter of consistency. In Dover's account, the
plot of a play consists of a single fictitious situation. As long as the characters 'concentrate' on that situation,
dramatic illusion is maintained. When an actor ruptures this concentration by overt reference to spectators or theater,
he provokes laughter at the incongruity. Crossing the line between the world of the play and the world of the
spectators, or even acknowledging it, is a violation, and therefore leads to an 'incomplete illusion.' Sifakis (1971)
defines dramatic illusion as synonymous with deception. True illusion, he argues, would deceive the audience into
confusing fiction and reality. He argues that Greek drama had a purpose fundamentally different from that of
modern theater and film. For Sifakis, there is no 'make-believe,' no 'dramatic illusion' and thus no belief on the part
of the audience, on any level, in the reality of the events on stage. Bain (1977) refutes Sifakis' somewhat dogmatic
view by pointing to the obvious differences between recitation and drama. Taplin (1978) points to references by
Gorgias and others to the aTtaxfj and iiroxcryroyia of tragedy: these words 'ruse' and 'soul-bewitchment' sound
suspiciously like Sifakis' own definition of the supposedly nonexistent dramatic illusion. As for effect that the
conditions of performance might have had upon believability, Wiles (1997) suggests that tragedy and comedy may
have made sophisticated visual use of their outdoor setting, incorporating the presence of the sun, the Odeon and the
seasons into their world.
6
"The fiction...may be interrupted and be shown to be fiction by being contrasted with the 'reality' of the
performance. But when the illusion (in this sense) is broken, what happens is that a second fiction is introduced into
the play. The 'actor' we see now is just as much a character of a play as was the character of the first fiction"
(Muecke 1977, 56).

breach of dramatic illusion occurs in Peace as the two slaves presumably turn to the audience
and explain the plot:
A: OUKOUV dv rj5r) TCOV Geatwv n<; Aevoi
veaviaq SoKnaioocpoc;, 'TO 5e Ttpdyua n ;

6 KdvGapoq 5e irpoq TI; ' KOCT' auTCp y' dviqp

'IwviKoq TIC; cpnai raxpaKOtGfjuevoc;'Soxeoo uev, eq KAicova TOUT' aiviaaeTOti,
wq Ketvoq dvaiSeooc; xr\v aTtaTiAnv eoQiei.
dAA1 eiaicov TCO KavGdpco Sooaco icietv.
B: eycb 5e TOV Aoyov ye xoiai 7rai5ioic;
Kal ToTaiv dvSpioiai nal ToTq dvSpdaiv
Koci Totq UTtepTdTOiaiv dv5pdaiv cppdaco
Kal TOIC; UTiepnvopeouaiv en TOUTOIC; udAa.
6 SeaKOTnq uou uaiveTai KOCIVOV Tponov,
ovx ovitep uuetq, dAA.' erepov Kawov Ttdvu.
aiyriaaG', cbq 9covfjc; dKoueiv uoi SOKCO.
A: But mightn't some curious youth among the spectators say
"What's going on? What's the idea behind the beetle?" And then
some Ionian guy sitting next to him says "Seems to me that's code
for 'Kleon' - you know "he eats shit shamelessly." But I'm going
inside to give the beetle a drink.
B: And I'll explain this business to the kids, and the little guys, and
the men, and the top dogs, and the real supermen. My master's
crazy in a bizarre way. Not your kind of crazy, but completely
unique...Wait! Be quiet all of you, I think I hear his
voice! (Ar. Pax 43-61)

The "you" here is plainly the audience. Is this an actor stepping out of character? He refers to
Trygaios as his "master" (6 SscntoTnq uou). His companion refers to the skene entrance as the
place where the beetle is kept, a beetle that "drinks" which implies a real beetle, not a prop. The
two are evidently staying in character. What of the "curious youth" and the "Ionian?" These lines
could be spoken plausibly even if no such youth and no such Ionian existed. The audience

members who are "addressed" are as imaginary as the characters played by the actors. The actors
have not set aside the primary fiction of the play, but have interpreted the stage around them as a
fictionalized theatrical space. A similar nonbreaking occurs in Wasps:

A: Auuviac, uev 6 npovcntouc, cpr\o' outoai

eivai cpiXoKU^ov aurov aXV ou5ev Aivei.
B: ua Af, aXX' deep' autou xr\v voaov teKuaiperai.
A: OUK, aAAa "cpiAo" uev eoriv apxn. TOU KaKou.
6515e cprioi Ecoaiac, Tipdc, AepKuAov
rival (piAoitoTnv autov.
B: ovba\i&>c,y', tnei
autn ye xpn 0 T ^ v T l v dvSpcov r\ voooq.
A: NiKoatpatoq 5' au cpiqaiv 6 ZKauPcoviSriq
sivai cpiAo8uTr|v autov f\ cpiAo^svov.
B: ud TOV KUV' u> NiKoatpat' ou cpiAo^evoc;,
eTisi KataTtuYoov eotlv 6 ye OiAo^evoq.
dXXcoq cpAuapeit1, ou yap e^eupriaere

A: Amynias, son of Pronapos over there says [our master] must be

a gambling addict
B: Wrong! He's projecting his own sickness onto someone else!
A: He's an addict, all right though. That's the source of his illness.
B: Over there Sosias is saying to Derkylos that our master must be
a drunk.
A: Wrong again! Drinking's a good man's vice.
B: Nikostratos from Scambonia says he's got to be either a
sacrifice addict or a compulsive entertainer.
A: Hell no, Nikostratos, he doesn't entertain guests...and when we
say 'entertain guests' around here, we mean 'get fucked.' But you're
all blathering, you'll never figure it out. (Ar. Vesp. 73-86)
The "guesses" coming from audience members are imaginary and the names are not necessarily
those of any actual spectators. The dialogue with audience members, spoken in the same
trimeters as the dialogue between characters, is revealed to be another fiction.

27
G.A.H. Chapman, in a thorough examination of breaches of dramatic illusion in
Aristophanes, concludes that "examples of theatrical self consciousness in Aristophanes...draw
attention to the fact that the fictitious situation illustrated by the play is, in fact, a theatrical
performance" (Chapman 1982, 4). In some cases, however, one might turn this around and say
that theatrical performance becomes a fictitious situation within the play. Often comic characters,
like Muecke's doubly aware audience, seem as aware of the presence of the theater as they are of
the fictional universe they inhabit. When they find themselves involved in certain situations, they
are able to undertake actions that recall the process of producing theatrical performances as
schemes to alter their circumstances. When comic characters find themselves in a dilemma, they
use theatrical space in a number of ways. Sometimes they act like playwrights themselves, as
when the Relation of Thesmophoriazusae announces his intent to "put on" Euripides' Palamedes.
At other times, they define the space around them as theatrical space, and they refer openly to the
theater and its attributes and to the tools of the playwright's trade. Strepsiades in Clouds, for
example, undercuts Socrates' claims to godliness by pointing out the existence of his "basket"
hanging from the mechane. Another trick is to take on the roles of tragic heroes whose situations
are analogous to their own, and stage tragedies whose plots roughly coincide with what they
intend to do. Such is the rationale behind Dikaiopolis' staging of Telephus in Acharnians, an
attempt to gain a hearing from the chorus appropriating the scheme the "real" Telephus used to
gain a hearing from his chorus. Modern readers and viewers of plays (and of literature in
general) tend to expect a linear plot, whose outcome is the result of cause and effect. Resolutions
and plot developments in Attic Old Comedy feature what one might call a logic of contexts. A

character who needs to fly to the heavens stages a tragedy with a similar theme, reworking it to
his own needs. One who needs a rescue at a particular moment stages a tragedy with a rescue
plot, and so on. Throughout, the theater and its props, costumes, ropes and pulleys are kept in
view, and characters vie for the right to manipulate them and define what they stand for. Comedy
derives much of its paradoxical humor from the audience's recognition of the dual nature of
many definitions of stage space and stage properties. This chapter will not cover every
conceivable instance of theatrical reference in Aristophanes, nor does it go so far as to conclude
that the traditional view - that theatrical references "jolt" the audience into a recognition of
humorous paradox - is necessarily wrong. I hope to show that among the definitions and
redefinitions of theatrical space taking place in a comedy, the interpretation of stage space as a
theater is a powerful plot device that brings the world of tragedy alongside the world of comedy
and enhances the powers of the comic hero by making him akin to a playwright.
The Dung Beetle Bellerophon
This section will discuss Trygaios' use of Euripides' Bellerophon as a model for his flight into
the sky. By foregrounding theatrical space, Aristophanes makes it possible for Trygaios to
accomplish two feats. The first is to breach the impossible gap between earth and the solid
regions of the sky inhabited by the gods. Staging a performance of Bellerophon introduces a
theatrical context in which such journeys are completed through manipulation of stagemachinery. The second feat of Trygaios is to rewrite the outcome of Bellerophon's journey so
that the flight into the sky ends triumphantly rather than tragically. Trygaios does this by
discarding the tragic context when it suits him. As a comic hero endowed with the powers of a

tragodidaskolos, he is able to trivialize Euripides by switching to a performance modeled on

Aesop, and stealing the happy ending of the beetle and the eagle. In this way, Aristophanes takes
advantage of multiple contexts - those of tragic fiction, theatrical production and fable - to
enable his hero to make his impossible journey and ultimately to triumph.
Trygaios has two things in common with the eponymous hero of the Bellerophon. The
first is that he burns with rage against the gods, a typically Euripidean affliction.7
6 8Ea7t6xr|<; uou uaivexai Kaivov xporcov,
ox>% ovitep v[ieiq, 6X1' exepov Kaivov 7rdvu.
81' f|(j,8pa<; yap eq xov otipavdv pAirccov
aSi Kexnvdx; A,oi8opeixai xco Ail
Kai (pnaiv, 'a> Zeu xircoxepoi)A,ei3ei 7ioietv;
My master is mad in a novel sort of way
Not the way you're mad, but wholly novel,
The livelong day, gazing at the sky
mouth agape, excoriating Zeus
he says "Zeus, why do you wish to do this? (Ar. Pax 54-9)
The word uaivexai is a Euripidean touch. As Bellerophon railed and cursed the gods for their
injustice, so does Trygaios curse them for allowing the war to "sweep Greece away" (61).8 The
relationship of tragic hero to comic hero is not random, but reflects a similarity in their attitude
and circumstances.
The second problem that Trygaios shares with Bellerophon is his desire to make an
The condition of uavia afflicts many characters in tragedies by Aeschylus and Sophocles, but Euripides made it
his trademark, as has been noted by Harvey (1971, 362) and others. "It would be possible to say, perhaps, that
madness is a fundamental aspect of Greek tragedy, for the excessive act is committed when the tragic figure is in the
grip of some passion larger than himself. Euripides, however, presents characters actually mad, acting under the
influence of this affliction (Hartigan 1987, 126)."
8
In Euripides' version of the Bellerophon story, an impoverished and bitter Bellerophon denies that the gods exist,
and later asserts that if they do exist yet allow evil to prosper they do not deserve the name of gods. Somewhere
toward the end of the play, he attempts to ride Pegasus to heaven to confront the gods, but is thrown down to earth
for his hubris, and dies after a Job-like speech acknowledging the murkiness of divine will. For a summary of what
is known and not known about this very fragmentary work, see Olson (1998, 24-5).

30
impossible transition across an impassable boundary to the locus of power in the universe, the
gods' home in the sky. As part of his scheme to make this journey, Trygaios appears to "stage" a
version of Bellerophon using the same stage device that the original tragedy presumably used to
represent the flight upon Pegasus, the mechane, or stage crane.9 His use of the mechane goes
beyond simple parody of the original play. Trygaios deliberately plays up devices of the theater,
using theatrical space as a platform from which to launch his scheme. The similarities between
his flight and Bellerophon's are obvious to the other characters, and his daughter scolds him for
riding the wrong species of winged mount. "Why not saddle winged Pegasus," she asks him "and
then you would appear more like a tragic hero in the eyes of the gods?" (135-136). Her words
make it clear that Trygaios' scheme is a performance.
Trygaios, surprisingly, asserts that he is not staging the Bellerophon after all. That tragedy
ended badly for the hero, who was cast down and never completed the passage from earth to the
heavens. Trygaios explains his use of the beetle, "for it may be read in the stories of Aesop that
9

The mechane is well-attested, if vaguely so, in ancient criticism. Although a detailed reconstruction of its design
and workings are impossible, the consensus is that it was a crane-and-pulley arrangement, with a beam longer on the
operating end which would allow a urixavoTtoioc; to 'fly' an actor onto the stage from a space behind the skene, and to
remove an actor by the reverse (Dearden 1976,75). Its use is not attested before Medea (Olson 1998, xxxvii). For
animal flights such as those presented in Euripides' Sthenoboea and Bellerophon, and in Peace, it is possible that it
was decorated with a dummy figure at the end that carried the actor. (P. Arnott 1959, 78). Plato denigrates the use
of the mechane (Clit. 407a, Crat. 425d) to unravel plots at an impasse. Aristotle does the same (Poetics, 1454b).
The Middle and New Comic poet Alexis (fl. c.375-275) makes overt reference to gods suspended from the crane
(fr. 125, 126 K-A). 1 Jn every tragedy where it is likely the mechane was used, its purpose seems to have been solely
to show the entrances and exits of airborne gods, supernatural beings and flying mounts. Again, no extant tragedy
flags its use of the device in so many words, but it was probably used for the entrance of Oceanus in Prometheus
Bound, the exit of Medea, and the flight of Pegasus in Euripides' lost Bellerophon. Clouds and Birds use the
mechane in this way for the entrances of Socrates and the goddess Iris respectively. Comedy may have expanded its
use. Peace uses the mechane to represent an entire journey from start to finish, something tragedy does not seem to
have done. According to Pollux, tragedy and comedy employed different names for the device, the former using the
term \xr\%avf[ and the latter Kpa8rj (IV, 128ff.). An ancient commentator on an anonymous comic fragment mentions
many other uses of Kpa5fj (POxy 25, 2472). Nonetheless, the two terms probably did not refer to different machines.
It is possible that comic poets felt free enough with the mechane to employ a proprietary term for it, but since
Aristophanes' use of the machine is baldly paratragic, this seems like overexplanation.

31
they [beetles] alone may reach the gods" (129-30). By enacting a version of the Aesop fable,
Trygaios becomes the hero of a tale in which a winged creature really does ascend into the sky
and wreak its revenge. The "eagle" of the fable here may be taken as a symbol of Zeus. By
combining tragedy and fable, Trygaios stages a tragicomic narrative that suits his purposes and
allows him to achieve what Bellerophon could not: a successful journey and revenge on the king
of the gods. Another deficiency of the Bellerophon plot is that it has no return narrative, other
than the ruin of the traveler. Trygaios, envisioning the possibility of a splashdown, reinterprets

props and costume to satisfy his eventual needs. The beetle will become reimagined as a ship and
his costume phallus as the rudder. In the event of such an emergency, the stage space will be
interpreted as the harbor at Kantharos - beetle town.
The flight scene is often pointed to as a prime example of a broken dramatic illusion.10
The existence of theatrical space supposedly shatters the fiction of the play when Trygaios calls
out to the operator of the mechane to keep him safe.
o\\i <hq 8e8oiKa, KOUKSXI CJKOMITOUV Xsyco.
Co uT|xavo7toie Jtpocexe xov vow cbq sus:
fjSri axpecpsi TI 7tvei>ua 7tepi xov ouxpa^ov,
Kei of) <pvXaE,ei, ^opxdaco xov KdvGapov.
dxdp eyyix; elvai xdbv 0ecov euoi 8OKCO.
Oh, how I am frightened! and I won't make any jokes!. O crane
operator, be careful with me! A wind's already swirling around my
belly button, and if you won't keep me safe, I'll feed this beetle!
What ho! I seem to be near the gods! (Ar. Pax 173-77)

"Once the actor abandons this pretence [of being someone else] and admits or implies that he is an actor playing
before an audience, the man playing Trygaios rather than Trygaios himself, he is breaking the illusion (Bain 1977, 89)."

32
It is not necessarily true that the actor is breaking character and referring to himself as an actor
playing Trygaios. If this were the case, we can imagine a few lines like the following:
This costume is hot! It's not easy putting on these stories for your
amusement. I was on my way here to the theater this morning and I
almost decided to let my understudy handle it. But I'm loyal and
hardworking, and the mechanopoios is my brother-in-law...
There is no dialogue like this anywhere in Aristophanes. The lines from Peace come from the
mouth of the character, not the actor. He is too "frightened" to make jokes (an experienced
mechane-tiding actor wouldn't be) he feels wind around his midsection (in the basin of the
theater it would probably not have been any more windy a few feet above the stage than it would
have been on its surface) he is about to defecate and feed the beetle (even if the actor were to soil
himself, the "beetle" was only made of wood and could not eat) and he can see the home of the
gods. All these seem to be more part of the fiction of the play than the reality of the theater.In this
instance as in many others, the actor is not saying "Look, none of this is real, it's all just theater."
He is making the theater part of the fiction of the play. The existence of a mechanopoios is
bracketed by so much fantastic detail that it seems he is folded into the world of the play rather
than presented as the mundane detail that shatters it. Theatrical space thus becomes assimilated
to the other fictional spaces encountered in Trygaios'journey, one aspect among many of the
world comic heroes inhabit. The advantage of interpreting stage space as theater is that it allows
the comic hero to manipulate the ropes and pulleys of his microcosmos. It provides the hero with
a powerful tool with which to accomplish his or her schemes. When Trygaios shouts "I seem to
myself to be near to the home of the gods!" (177), it signals that he has succeeded where the
tragic hero failed. In terms of theatrical movement, of course, the mechanopoios has simply set

33
him down on the same stage he left. He has redefined it both through his assiduous cultivation of
dramatic precedent and through his power to manipulate the trappings of the theater.
On the Altar: Staging Euripides in Thesmophoriazusae
While Trygaios makes use of theatrical space to stage a production of Bellerophon, interpreting
the stage crane as a winged steed and successfully ascending into the heavens, the Relation in
Thesmophoriazusae stages four plays by Euripides with less satisfactory results. He not only
repurposes stage properties as Trygaios did, turning the altar into a boat and a tomb as needed,
but he attempts to reinterpret the Thesmophorion as a radically distant space, the shore of Egypt.
Trygaios, as has been shown, owes his successful crossing of the boundaries of the aether to
Aesop rather than to Euripides, and here too the Relation finds Euripides a weak reed to lean on
for a happy ending. This section will focus on four plays staged by the Relation and/or
Euripides, Telephus, Palamedes, Andromeda and Helen, and the nuances of the various
situations that the contexts of these plays are supposed to reflect.
Like Dikaiopolis, the Relation in Thesmophoriazusae recreates the Telephus by stealing a
woman's "baby" which turns out to be a wineskin. His need is similar; he is cornered by an angry
chorus which has no intention of hearing him out, and he wishes to hold them off while he
justifies himself. The Relation is unsuccessful in his attempt to stage Telephus, since the owner
of the wineskin has got there ahead of him and redefined the prop as her child (725). Although
the Relation initiates the staging of Telephus by his actions, the woman has already begun the
"production" and become the de facto comic hero. Her paratragic cry of xdAxxiv' syd) (695) places
her in the role of Euripidean heroine, her calls to the other women are the calls of a distressed

34
tragic heroine to a chorus (and, in the dual logic of comic scene staging, they really are a chorus).
The chorus admonishes the Relation in high tragic style, telling him that "fortune" (vb%r\) will
turn around and punish him for his crimes. At 749, the Relation discovers the trick that has been
played on him: the "child" is nothing but the "mother's" private tipple. A dual fiction ensues. The
Relation asks: "Did you give birth to this?" (741). The mother sidesteps this by punning on the
verb cpspco, stating that she "carried it for ten months." The Relation tries to trip her up again. He
asks: "Did it cost three obols, or how much?" (xpiKOTuA,ov f| n&q).n The mother ignores him,
crying out that, by removing the disguise, he has "stripped the child naked," rather than that he
has exposed her conceit as fraudulent. She never, in fact, admits that her child is a wineskin.
Even "killing" the child is represented as a blood sacrifice rather than a sharing of the wine.
Instead of finding himself rescued by staging the Telephus, he falls victim to someone else's
production of the play, and instead of playing the hero, he is reduced to a powerless bit part.
At 765, he finds himself stuck atop the altar in the Thesmophorion.12 He now stages a
Euripidean tragedy with a rescue theme, the Palamedes.13
11

According to Austin and Olson (2000,254) the word xpucoxuXov in the late fifth century was exclusively comic
diction, being the language of everyday commerce, and it may be that the Relation is trying to bring the conversation
out of the tragic universe (into which he tried to put it via his Telephus stunt) back into the real world as represented
in the play's primary fiction.
12
What was this "altar?" P. Arnott (43-59) claims that the &yuiuq Pcouog mentioned by Pollux (4.101-123) was a
permament fixture, not of the orchestra but of the raised stage itself. It is needed in the following plays: Birds, for
the sacrifice scene that starts at 859, Frogs (888ff.) for the trial-scene which features references to incense, and
Peace, for the sacrificial scene which begins at 938. It is not obviously needed anywhere else. The word ctyuisu^ "of
the street" is a participial derivation from ayro, and suggests that, like the street altars still used in many Asian
countries, it could be brought out when needed and stowed when not (cf. Dover 1972, 58ff. for the idea that
unobtrusive stage-hands might have shuffled stage-properties about.) For the Relation to climb it, it would need to
be rather large.
13
Palamedes does not appear in Homer. He is an inventor/innovator figure like Prometheus or Daedelus, chiefly
famous for seeing through the feigned madness of Odysseus and devising the trick of tossing the infant Telemachus
in the path of his beach-plough. In Euripides' version, Odysseus avenges this deed by framing Palamedes for theft,
and Palamedes' brother Oinax notifies their far-off father of Palamedes' execution at the hands of the Achaeans by

35
aye 8f| tic; eaxai (irixavf) ccoxnpiac;:
xiqrceipa,xiq emvoi': 6 uev yap aixio?
Kan' eoKokioaq ec, xoiauxi rcpdyuaxa
cm cpaivexai 7tco. cpepe xlv' ouv <av> dyye^ov
7is(x\|/ai(4,' S7i' cruxov: 018' eycb Kai 8f| rcopov
SK xou naA,auri8o\)<;: cbq SKetvcx;, xac; itkdxaq
piv|/co ypowpcov. aXk' ov 7idp8iaiv ai rcXaxai.
7i60ev ovv ysvoivx' dv |a,oi 7tX,dxai Jt60sv: <7r60sv:>
xi 8' dv ei xa8i xdydA,(j,ax' dvxi xcov 7tX,axcov
ypdcpcov 8iappi7ixoi(xi: ^ekxiov itoXv.
uXov ye xoi Kai xavxa Kaiceiv' rjv ^uXov.

Come now, what scheme will be my salvation? What gambit, what

plan? The cause of this trouble and the one who put me in this
pickle hasn't shown himself yet. What message could I send to
him? I know! A trick from the Palamedes. Just like that guy, I'll
hurl oars with writing on them overboard. Where, where can I find
some oars, where? Hey, what if I took these wooden tablets in
place of oars and wrote on them and hurled them overboard? That's
really the best plan. Those were wood, and these are wood! (Ar.
Thes. 765-75)

He redefines the altar on which he is treed as the boat from which Palamedes sent forth his
oars.14 For oars, he repurposes a stack of votive tablets. Unlike the hero of Palamedes, the
practical effect of throwing "oars" into the "water" will be negligible, as no water surrounds the
Relation and so the tablets cannot float. Again, the dual fiction presents itself: there was no water
surrounding the actor playing the hero Palamedes either, and so the Relation's exhortations to the
tablets of "go forth, here, there, down every road" (783-4) are only ludicrous in the absence of
tragic context.
After the parabasis, the Relation, still treed, concludes that his trick hasn't worked. This is
writing the message on oars that somehow make their way to their intended recipient. For a thorough summary of
this obscure figure in Greek myth, see Woodford (1994, 164-169)
14
In the Euripides play, it was Oinax who sent the oars forthfromthe boat, not Palamedes.

36
not because of practical concerns, but because Euripides is ashamed of frigid (yxy/poq)
Palamedes.15 Palamedes fails to bring Euripides back on stage, and so the Relation tries staging a
new tragedy.
syq8a: xf|v Kaivfp/ 'EAevnv ptyifjaouai.
rcdvTooc; vnap'xei uoi ywaucsia OTOATJ.
I know! I'll perform the fresh Helen
I'm all decked in woman's gear, at any rate. (Ar. Thes. 850-1)
The altar now becomes the tomb of Proteus from which Helen keeps her vigil, while the
interior space of the Thesmophorion becomes the Egyptian shore:
NdAou uev od'Se KaAAvn"dp6evoi poai
6q avci 5iaq xbanaSoq AiyuTrrou TtiSov
AeuKfft vorifei usAavocupuaTov Aewv
Austen and Olson (2000,279) think yvxpdq is a reference to the failure of the Palamedes in the contest of 415.
Palamedes was not only a failed play, but a failed play from some years past, beyond its freshness date, and thus
\|A)xp6<; in the sense of'dead. Rogers (1910, 90) thought that it implied that the play was too far in the past to be
effective in a comedy of 411, but this does not explain why a play like Telephus, performed twenty years earlier, still
crops up regularly.
16
Muecke ponders just who this 'Euripides' is supposed to be. She says that he represents an abstraction, the
personification of Euripidean tragedy. He speaks like a character in one of his own tragedies, and characteristics of
his tragedies find their way into Aristophanes' depiction of him. I suggest, then, that what the Relation is doing is a
kind of summoning. Just as Odysseus must voyage to a sunless place that resembles the underworld in order to bring
back the shades of the dead, so the Relation must create a context that looks enough like Euripidean tragedy to bring
out its personified spirit. In this case, I might translate uiurioouai in the above passage as 'I will recreate' or 'I will
call into being.' "For the trick to be successful," says Muecke, "his play must be taken as reality" (Muecke 1977,
66).
17
The scholiast explains Kaivffv as vmoyuov SeSiSaynevnv "recently exhibited" and adds that the Andromeda, soon
to be staged by the Relation, was exhibited as part of the same trilogy. This would make the Relation's reasons for
choosing the Helen extremely theatrical, if considerations of vintage and public reception are foremost. However, as
noted below, this fails to explain the frequent use by Aristophanes of Telephus, the earliest of Euripides' plays,
already thirteen years in the past at the time of its earlier appropriation in Acharnians. A more likely implication of
Kcuvog is the radical nature of this play's Helen-plot. In the Steisichorean variant on the Trojan cycle, Helen is the
reverse of the wicked aloof character portrayed elsewhere in tragedy. Holmberg (1995,20) observes: "In Helen,
[Euripides] radically resolves the question of Helen's responsibility and volition by adopting Steisichorus' variant
tradition, thereby blowing apart the Homeric Helen and her story." The word KCUV6C; is used elsewhere in
Aristophanes to signal instances of particularly clever or persuasive comic invention. Birds, with its radically
inventive plot, uses variants on this word seven times in the sense of'new' or 'novel.' See also Nu. 1279, Pax 54,
Vesp. 346.

37

These are the lovely virgined streams of the Nile

which in place of heavenly rains dampen the plain
of white Egypt for the black laxative people. (Ar. Thes. 855-7)

These are lines from the prologue of the Helen, the part of a tragedy where the speaker defines
space for the audience. The Relation not only recasts himself as a tragic heroine, but he also
takes the space defining authority of the prologue in order to reinterpret the space he occupies,
from the interior Thesmophorion, in which he is an interloper and a prisoner, to an exterior
distant space, where he awaits rescue and keeps watch for his rescuer. The woman guarding him
becomes his surrogate audience, and he must convince her of the plausibility of this new
interpretation of the stage space. By convincing her to accept the temple of Thesmophoriazusae
as the Egypt of Helen, he can change the way she sees him, from guilty impostor to a
sympathetic figure entirely innocent of the wrongdoing traditionally associated with her story. If
he and Euripides can successfully stage the Helen, he will be absolved. A contest of
interpretations follows. The Relation insists "I am here" (K&YOO uev v6d5', 901), reinforcing his
place in the Egyptian setting. The woman insists on her version of stage space: "This is the
Thesmophorion!" (902). Lines 865 and 868 are typical comic interjections which puncture the
attempt at tragic illusion. Where the Relation found analogues of tragic fiction in the stage
properties (altar=ship, tablets^oars, etc.) the woman deflates his assertions of a tragic reality by
finding analogues in his speech from the here and now world of Athens: for example, the
1 ft

Relation's mention of Proteus is matched to a recently deceased Proteas. Curiously enough, she

18

The scholiast merely states "IIpoT&u;- OATCD K(AOI3|IEVOI; AOnvaibc; 6q Te8vf|Ki 7ipo7iaX,at" "Proteas: the name

38
responds to Euripides on his own fictional terms, until he proposes carrying his "wife" away.
"You seem to me to be apanourgos yourself," she says at 919. Euripides vows not to abandon
the Relation until his "ten thousand stage devices" (jxupiai urixavai) have been used up. The
woman tells the Prytanis that a "sail stitcher" (ioTioppd(po<;) has nearly stolen her prisoner
(935).19 The image of a "stitcher of sails" may also be seen as a metatheatrical reference to the
activity of "stitching" together a narrative about voyages - in this case Menelaus' journey to
Egypt. If this is the case, the woman sees the attempt to stage tragedy for what it is, and knows
she has beaten Euripides at his own game.
The Skythian archer now appears and binds the Relation to a adviq or plank, which the
latter promptly interprets as the rock to which Andromeda is chained. The attempt to stage the
Andromeda fails, not due to stubbornness on the part of the women, but because the Relation lets
himself be persuaded by his own production. Euripides initially takes the role of Echo, as a
disembodied voice. The Relation quickly grows irritated, and becomes a hostile audience to his
would be rescuer. He finds himself trying to subvert the fictional posturings of Euripides by
metatheatrical references to his own tragic diction. Still calling Euripides an old woman (CG
ypou), he accuses "her" of "yammering on" (axG)fAuMx>usvr|, 1073), exclusively comic
vocabulary used elsewhere in Aristophanes to put down windy poets.

The word Eicfjppr|Ka<;

("you've interrupted," 1075) again is inappropriate for tragedy in both tone and metatheatrical
of an Athenian who had recently died." Kuster identifies him with the Athenian general mentioned by Thucydides
i.45. Both are probably guesses from context.
19
This curious word is attested sparsely, but the scholiast to the Ravenna codex claims it is a reference to Egyptian
prominence in the sail-making industry. This would indicate that she still believes Euripides' pretense on some level
- at least that someone in the recent farce was an Egyptian. Austin and Olson (2004, 295-6) see it as a synonym of
7tavoupyo(;, and a possible comment on the rags for which Euripidean heroes were famous.
20
Austin and Olson 2004, 195

reference to the monologue. Lines 1077-8 take the violations of tragic tone and metatheatrics
further. The Relation requests that he be left alone to speak his monody (royaO' eaoov us
uovoa)8fjaai, 1079) and when Echo persists in her repetition, he hurls the typically comic P&M,'
s<; Kopaicac;, which is swiftly returned by Echo. While they are bickering, the "sea monster"
awakes - the Scythian, presumably asleep on his mat until now. The Scythian, like the guardian
woman of the previous scene, refuses to play along with the tragic fiction. The same sort of name
confusion punctures the reenactment: he confuses the mention of the Gorgon's head with the
decapitation of a certain contemporary Gorgos (1104). Line 1111 is analogous to the woman's
exclamation at 893-4, a declaration of the maleness and criminality of the Relation. The Scythian
responds to Euripides' assertion that the Relation is a maiden by exposing his maleness, just as
the guardian woman did with her accusation of yuvaudoic;. The Scythian makes his accusation
graphically, by pointing to the prisoner's genitals (1114).
The Scythian wins the contest of interpretations because he is impervious to the kind of
tragic fiction that the two rogues are trying to conjure up. He is a creature of the comic reality.
High-flown tragic diction has no effect on him because his Greek is crude. Euripides cries:
octal: TI Spdoco; npoc. rivaq atpecpOco Aoyouc,;
ccAA' ou <yap> ccv Se^aixo (JapfJapoc, (puaic,.
axaioTai yap toi Kaivd Ttpoacpepcov aocpa
udrnv ocvaAiaKoic, av, aXK aAAnv tivd
TOUTCI) TrpETtouaav unxavriv Ttpoooia-riov.

Alas! What shall I do? What words can I use to bring him 'round?
But someone who is a barbarian by nature won't understand! You
squander fresh (Kaivd) cleverness on such stupid folk. But some
other trick must be found to suit such a nature. (Ar. Thes. 11281132)

40

Even the most striking, novel (KCUVOC;) evocation of tragedy fails against someone as uncultured
as the Skythian. The urixavrj that will best the Scythian will have to be one drawn from the
fiction of comedy, specifically the comic paradise of sexual gratification. Euripides' last disguise
is that of an elderly madam. It is not necessary that the Scythian be fooled by this. He is a comic
creature, and the comic festival ending persuades him of its legitimacy as no tragic scene ever
could have.21
Coda: Reinterpreting Tragic Space.
Aristophanes gives his heroes the power to define stage space and to win over those who resist or
assert it differently. This is not the case in tragedy. Tragic heroes who attempt to assert their own
narrative over the "reality" of the primary fiction are punished severely. It is diagnosed as
madness in every instance. This section will look at an instance of tragic madness and show that
the mad hero acts in many ways like the hero of a comedy, reinterpreting the space around him in
a way that is at odds with the way the other characters interpret it. This tragic motif has many
curious echoes of comic spatial manipulation, even in the language used, and could even be seen
as the reverse of comedy's paratragic aspect. One might even call it "paracomedy" if it were not
the mark of a tragic hero's utter ruin. Since space in a tragedy is fixed, any subjective
reinterpretations of that space are illegitimate. With the exception of gods, tragic figures who
reinterpret space are at variance with reality, and are therefore mad.

21

"This is also a movement from tragedy to comedy, in which tragedy fails to liberate while comedy succeeds.
The four parodies and the final scenario move from explicitly tragic situations, including the threat of human
sacrifice, to love/marriage plots and finally to men dressing as women to deceive a parodically hypermasculine
male, thereby achieving a return to normality" (Tzanetou 2002, 331).

41
In Euripides' Herakles, the messenger gives an account of the hero's murder of his family
using language that is a travesty of the comic hero's ability to invent and define space. Herakles
attempts to assert his own narrative context for these terrible events - that he is traveling across
Greece to attack Mycenae and kill the sons of Eurystheus, in what Barlow (1982, 121) calls a
"hideous parody" of his own life and career. The primary fiction of the play, however, is
inescapable. Instead of traversing a setting that spans all of Greece, Herakles merely passes
through the halls of his own house. The roles he concocts for his own family to play are
disastrously wrong. The primary interpretation of stage space - Herakles' house - reasserts itself,
and the hero is revealed as nothing but a pitiable madman.
When Herakles first begins staging his narrative drama (let us call it "The Vengeance of
Herakles") there is something oddly metatheatrical, even "paracomic," about the way the other
characters view his actions. The onlookers' first instinct is to read it as comic mimicry. They are
smitten "half with amusement, half with fear" (950). They do not know whether he is "joking or
going mad" (7iaiei...fj umvexai, 952). He begins with a travesty of a prologue that would never
adorn a fixed setting tragedy, since it announces his intent to undertake a journey. A comic hero
would repurpose existing stage properties, but Herakles grabs the reins of a wholly imaginary
chariot, emphasizing that he is delusional rather than legitimately recreating the narrative context
(948-9). His journey, however, does appropriate existing features of the tragic setting, although
they are not visible on the stage, but only through the recreation bf the messenger.
He undertakes his journey to Mycenae, locus of the ur-tragedy, the murder of
22

"Internal space provides referents to the external world until at last the palace of Herakles maps out a mental
geography of Greece, signposts for his journey into madness" (Rehm 2002, 106).

Agamemnon as recounted in Odyssey 11. His first stop is his own andron, which he identifies as
the city of Megara. He sits down and prepares to eat (955), appropriate, since he is in the dining
hall, but also geographically in keeping with his delusional reality since Megara (his "megaron")
lies between Thebes (the external space of the stage) and Mycenae (the hearth where he will
commit the murders.) Next he imagines that he has reached the Isthmus of Corinth, and strips
down for a wrestling match (958-9). He competes with an imaginary rival, and calls on
imaginary spectators to witness his victory, in a reverse-comic display of audience address (960).
When he reaches "Mycenae," he attempts to change the roles of his family to fit his obsession
narrative. His father becomes the father of Eurystheus, his children his foe's children, his wife
the hated king's wife. She flees to the inner chamber and bolts the doors. For Herakles, these
doors become the "Cyclopean walls" of Mycenae, and he tears them down (998). The ultimate
role change is worked by Herakles on himself. By casting his own family as the family of
Eurystheus, he has become Eurystheus, destroyed, like the real Eurystheus, by Herakles.
Where comic characters may recreate setting and context according to their whims, the
primary fiction of a tragedy is inviolable. The action that is paizon for a comic character is mania
for a tragic one. Ajax stages the killing of his fellow Argives for one night, but when he awakes,
he finds he was using the field animals as props, and he himself has become the central figure in
a ghastly tableau.23 Bacchae may be seen as a contest of interpretations between Pentheus and
Dionysos, one in which mania wins. The two realities of the play come to a "head" in the debate
over the identity of the prop under Agave's arm.

Hourmouiades 1965, 100

43
Conclusion
Comic heroes exploit the fact that comedy and tragedy use the same stage. When the comic
choruses took over the Theater of Dionysos at the end of the festival day, they were, in a sense,
repurposing and reinterpreting the stage and its properties from a tragic context to a comic one.
This awareness on the part of the audience that the stage, the former site of Bellerophon's groans
and Helen's longing, is now occupied by buffoons and revelers becomes a rich source of humor
when comic actors interpret stage space as it was interpreted only recently, and evoke the
recently staged spaces of tragedy. By addressing imaginary spectators and making theatrical
space part of their fictional world, comic heroes subsume audience and surrounding cityscape
into a grand fiction, in which not only stage space, but public space and the city at large, may be
reimagined and transformed at will. This chapter has demonstrated that the viewing the visible
spaces of the theater is one of many equally plausible, equally fictional interpretations of space
that may be exploited by comic heroes. The next chapter will examine how Aristophanes deals
with invisible spaces, those which are imagined to take place behind the skene doors, and how he
uses the skene doors both to squeeze the exterior world into an oikos setting, and to bring the
oikos outdoors to encompass the city.

44

Chapter 3

Interiors and Exteriors

The previous chapter showed comic characters reinterpreting the mechane and the stage altar to
stage their own overtly theatrical reinterpretations of stage space. The third major fixture of the
theater, the doors in the skene, represent something more than a stage property. They stand
behind every actor and every chorus, and must be interpreted in every play. Prior to any
interpretation by prologue or dialogue, the doors in the skene suggest a liminal point between
outside and inside, between exterior space and hidden interior space.1 In tragedy, this layout is
most often interpreted as the main entrance to a palace, less often as a military outpost or temple.
There are a few departures from this pattern - for example, Sophocles makes this set over into an
island in Philoctetes, and Aristophanes presents it as a bushy wilderness in Birds. No matter how
much this basic set is dressed up with tents or twigs (if it even was) the playwright must include
some way of interpreting the skene doors.2 Not surprisingly, themes associated with interior
space versus exterior are not hard to spot in Greek drama generally; the spectators always want
to know, on some level, what is happening behind those doors.3
1

By exterior space, I mean space interpreted in a way that makes it clear that the action takes place in the open air,
in areas of the city open to the larger citizen-body, or outside the city in semi-fantastic wildernesses. By interior
space, I mean space that encompasses actions understood to be characteristic of indoor activity, especially, but not
limited to, the activities of the oikos.
2
The exception to this rule is, as usual, Aeschylus. PVhas no use for the skene doors at all, which may indicate
that it is an early example of pre-skene tragedy (cf Griffith 1983, introduction).
3
One of the supposedly inviolable rules of tragedy is that all action visible to the audience takes place outdoors,
while violent action, including murder, conspiracy and witchcraft takes place within, to be related by messengerspeech and proven by gory static tableau on the ekkuklema. Comedy freely upends this tragic shibboleth (as it does

45
In Aristophanes, interior space seems to function as a corrective to exterior space. Interior
space, when it is associated with privately owned space and the oikos, is used by Aristophanes to
miniaturize the public life of the polis, to make its problems seem less intractable and to bring
broad conflicts between factions and communities down to the level of conflicts between
individuals.4 Comic heroes often undermine and confuse the corrupt or otherwise wrongheaded
denizens of exterior spaces by reinterpreting the exterior space around them as interior space.
The interior space of the oikos presented in Knights turns out to be the exterior polis in
microcosm. Philokleon in Wasps foreswears his rightful status of kurios over his own oikos for
the illusory status of kurios over the city, while his son, attempting to redress this perversion,
induces him to recreate the exterior space of the law courts in his kitchen. The women of
Lysistrata announce their intention to remake the exterior public spaces of Athens into a giant
oikos. Interior space and exterior space, when contrasted with each other seem to carry certain
loosely held associations for Aristophanes. Interior space represents something timeless and
traditional, while exterior space, especially when it appears as the political arena, is something
invented, corruptible and neoteric. The conflict between these two kinds of space brings a
symphony of opposing themes into play: darkness versus light, the clothes in one's wardrobe
versus one's public persona, intercourse in the bedroom and social intercourse in the agora, the
so many others.)
This chapter uses the terms 'interior' and 'exterior' more than it uses the more commonly cited dichotomy of oikos
and polis. Douglas Macdowell (1989, 10-21) has perceptively noted that the word oikos has several meanings, not
all of them having to do with the private dwelling as a building. In Athenian law, according to Macdowell, the use of
oikos is not always a spatial reference, but can refer to property, family and even individual citizen-rights. Similarly,
the use of "polis" for exterior space, even politicized exterior space under the sway of the democracy, is not
consistently accurate for an 'empire' that controlled areas far from its borders. The disctinction between oikos and
polis becomes even harder to justify when one considers that the term polis also includes the aggregate ofoikoi
within it. Here, oikos will be used to specifically mean the interior domain of a kurios-citizen, and "polis" to refer to
the communal political spaces of Athens.
4

belly and its wants versus public ideals of behavior.

This chapter will first look at how interiors were presented on the comic stage, and show
that the ambiguity of the "extruded interior" foreshadows the blurring of the wall between
private and public space that results from the machinations of comic heroes. I will then discuss
how exterior space in three plays - Knights, Wasps, and Lysistrata - is reinterpreted as interior
space, in the process becoming miniaturized and made malleable by individuals, replacing the
need for cooperative action in the community with the corrective actions of fantastically
empowered individuals.
Staging Interiors
No matter what kind of space the playwright intended to present, the stage of the Theater of
Dionysos could not do away with the skene doors.5 The action of a tragedy accordingly takes
place outdoors, in the daylight of both the play's temporal setting and the real daylight of the
festival afternoon. Unlike the tragedians, who rarely directly represent any action taking place in
an interior space, Aristophanes presents many scenes that are clearly meant to suggest
bedrooms, kitchens, dining rooms and so on. Yet those skene doors are always present. Props
that suggest interiors in Aristophanes are always brought out from the skene, as though the
hidden interior space is moved forward from its putative place behind the main action and
temporarily stretched in the direction of the spectators.
The most straightforward way of doing this is through use of the ekkuklema.6 In tragedy,
5

For the unlikelihood that painted screens were used to suggest scenery in the fifth century, see above, n.3
This is assuming that the verb KKUKX6(0 is a reference to the ekkuklema, an assumption which is not entirely
certain, although Aristophanes of Byzantium seems to share it. Hourmouziades states: "The verb must have
originally meant 'to bring forth something on a wheeled apparatus', as suggested in II. H 332f.: KUKWJOOUSV S9&8E

47
the device seems to have been used to present a static tableau, the revelation and results of
extrascenic activity. There is no evidence of interaction between chorus/actors on the stage and
the actor on the platform.7 There are two scenes in Aristophanes in which an interior scene
begins with this act of "rolling out" (Ach. 395-479 and Thes. 95ff.) It has also been suggested
o

that the interior of the school in Clouds is brought out on the ekkuklema. Acharnians and
Thesmophoriazusae bring forth a tragic poet surrounded by the trappings of his boudoir, which
are assumed to be synonymous with a repository of theatrical costumes. Clouds rolls out the
school of Socrates, complete with maps, astronomical instruments and pupils. In the first two
plays, the protagonists interact freely with the props that seem to have come out on the
ekkuklema. In Clouds, Strepsiades at least gets close enough to the map of the world to protest
the inclusion of an Athens without dicasts. The ekkuklema, in all three plays, brings forth a
tangible, visual representation of the mental world of the occupant of interior space. Euripides'
and Agathon's wardrobes are metaphors for pretense and disguise, implying that the naked true
self chooses its clothes and thus its appearance in the exterior world. Socrates' school contains
veicpcnx; Bowl Kal riuiovoioiv, on which the scholiast comments KUKXf)aouev ecp' auai;fi>v KOUIOUHEV. The transition
from rcurd-Eiv 'bring along on a wheeled vehicle', to ^KKUKXEIV, "bring out on a wheeled platform', seems very
natural. There must, however, have been a stage at which the derivative SKKUK^nua meant the result of the action,
not the machinery by which it was produced (Hourmouziades 1965, 95)." The verb (n8pi)oTp^(peo9ai "pivot around"
used at Ach. 408 and Nu. 184, seems to complicate matters, and led Bethe and others to postulate an entirely
different construction of the device than is generally accepted.
7
cf. Hourmouziades (1965, 100-01) for a run-down of ekkuklema scenes in tragedy and some persuasive evidence
for their diorama-like quality.
8
Dover (1972, 25) discusses the virtues and problems of the use of the ekkuklema and some alternative
possibilities. In each scene, the ekkuklema seems to bring with it numerous elaborate props and furniture, and the
actors interact with this stuff. The main objection to the notion of staging of an entire scene on the ekkuklema is that
it would have to be rather large to accommodate up to three actors, as well as beds and astronomical instruments
(Nub.) or entire wardrobes and toilet kits (Ach. and Thes.). The skene-door would thus have to be quite large to allow
such a device, which really amounts to a second stage, through the portal. Dover suggests that stagehands may have
carried properties on and off the stage, with the ekkuklema merely holding one or at most two actors. Although these
stagehands and their activities are unattested for any period in the history of ancient theater, this idea has an Occam's
razor simplicity that is very appealing.

the tools for a perverse and evil manipulation of truth and reason. Ruth Padel views the extrusion
of interior space on the ekkuklema as a visual metaphor for exposing the thoughts and dark true
nature of the mind.9 There is something uncomfortable and diseased about interiors on the
ekkuklema, perhaps reflecting the tragic notion of interior space as the sight of murders,
conspiracy and magic (for example, Deianeira in Trachiniae reports that she enchanted her robe
whilst indoors), and the ekkuklema is seldom on the stage for long before it is swiftly packed
away again. In the two plays featuring tragic poets, the ekkuklema is rolled back upon the
command eaKUKXrjaaxG). At Nu. 195, the pupil gives the order to the other pupils "But go inside,
so that Himself doesn't find you" {akV eiaiG', vva uf|

'KSVVOC;

uutv E7UTi>xn)> which seems as

though it might be equivalent to the same thing, but the props remain available to Strepsiades for
viewing. The extruded interior interpretation of the scene is not dispersed definitively until 217
when Socrates is seen swinging through the air in his basket.
The ekkuklema is not always necessary, however. Both Clouds and Wasps feature
dialogue in which characters interpret the space around them unambiguously as interior space
without apparent use of the ekkuklema. Thus Strepsiades in Clouds describes his situation:
Zsu PacnXeu TO ypf\\ia xcov VUKXCQV OCOV:
&7ispavTOv. ot>8s7io0' f||ispa ysvfjaexai;
Kai uf|v 7tdA,ou y' aXsKxpuovoc; fJKOuc;' eyco:
oi 8' oiKsxai peyKouaw...
aXk' ot)5' 6 xp>T|0"xd<; ouxooi vsaviaq
syeipsxai xfj<; VOKXOC,, aXka 7i8p8sxai
ev 7ievxe ciatipouc; eyK8Kop8uXn|j,voc;...a7tx THX! Xv'/yov,
Kaiapepe xo ypauuaxelov...
"This is the theater exulting in the possibilities of relating inside to outside, unseen to seen, private inner
experience to the external watching and guessing of others... [The house offers] an image of the self. (Padel, cited in
Rehm2002,21)."

49

Oh, King Zeus, what a dickens of a long night: endless! Will the
day never come? And I haven't heard the rooster for a long time.
The slaves are snoring...Neither does this worthy youth wake
during the night, but he farts, swaddled in five blankets. Boy, bring
me a lamp and the accounts tablet. (Ar. Nu. 1-8)
The clues given here are mostly temporal: five references to the night, and two to household
accoutrements. 10 At Vesp. 121 Iff., Bdelykleon tries very hard to interpret the scene before the
skene doors as an interior by conjuring up a symposium setting. He refers to coverlets, bronze
vessels, and a ceiling, he calls for water and tables to be brought indoors (siccpspeiv), and he
narrates the progress of a party whose existence is purely verbal.11 In both cases, the
interpretation of space as interior is abruptly dropped. Strepsiades' bedroom walls vanish
abruptly when he asks "Do you see that door and the little house?" (opou; TO Gtipiov xouxo Kai
xq)Ki8iov, 92). 12 The transition to exterior space occurs with no indication that father and son
have gone outdoors. In the equivalent scene in Wasps, Bdelykleon's symposium is never quite
real to Philokleon. Despite his son's insistence on the tangibility of tapestries, tables and guests,
the old man asks if they are they are "being entertained in a dream" (evwtviov saxKbueGa, 1218)
using the verb sondco with its connotations of the innermost area of a house. The refined parlor
talk of Bdelykleon is met by his father with gibes and insults characteristic of the rough-and-

Aristophanes is unique among Greek dramatists in setting scenes in darkness. The blazing sunlight in which
plays were staged must have mitigated against interpreting the stage space this way, and so it is perhaps not
surprising that Strepsiades makes more references to darkness than he does to household-properties, cf.
Sommerstein (1998, 137) on Praxagora's lamp.
11
Sommerstein insists that this scene takes place Outdoors, and that instead of lying down on a dining-couch
Philokleon merely lies on the ground. I think it is more likely that this scene conflates interior and exterior the same
way the opening of Clouds does, with street and triclinium superimposed on one another.
12
A standard formula for introducing the gateway to an interior, cf. Thes.26, Ran.35.

50
tumble of public debate.13 In neither case does the interior remain interpreted as such for long,
nor is it safe from abrupt reinterpretation as an exterior once again.
A more common way of representing interiors is to stage, in front of the skene doors,
action that is characteristic of indoor activity, even though the actors refer to the house as being a
separate space behind them. There is often a fair amount of spatial ambiguity in these "extruded
interiors" with contradictory indications sometimes coming hard on one another's heels.
Dikaiopolis and Lamachos at Ach. 1070ff. prepare their feasts in front of their houses, but such
activity would more likely be performed indoors. Lamachos refers to the exterior space he
occupies as his d(b\iaia (1072) while Dikaiopolis orders his slave to bring him sausages (1119)
and loaves (1123). These items are understood, however, as being brought outside from within
(SsOp' s^co cpspe, 1118). At Eq. 95ff, a slave asks his fellow servant to bring him out (e^eveyics
uoi) a cup of wine, implying that the action takes place before the doors, yet one line later, he lies
down as though on a couch. During the kitchen scene in Wasps, Philokleon continually runs
indoors to fetch utensils and bring them outside, but the presence of pots and cheesegraters that
are already present suggests an interior scene. In all three of these scene types, the the line
between these interior spaces and the outdoors is never clearly drawn, nor are the actors'
transitions from one to the other easy to spot. Exterior and interior space are blendable categories
in comedy, and individual characters do not always agree on which is which. In the following
section, I will examine three plays in which comic heroes take advantage of this ambiguity to
take power over exterior space by conflating it with, or remolding it into, interior space. Exterior
13

He refers to "overthrowing the city (1234)" names contemporary politicians (1236) and touches on foreign
policy, accusing Aeschines of wanting to "rob the Thessalians (1247)."

51
polis space is political, subject to the whims of the mob who are open to manipulation by
demagogues. Interior space is under the control of an autonomous kurios. Not only does this
make mastery over oikos space an easier task than mastery over the polis, but the wider world
beyond the polis is easily comprehended and manipulated when it becomes assimilated to the
trappings of the oikos such as kitchen implements, slaves, dogs and so on. The interior then
becomes space that is a source of Bakhtinian bodily humor, as well as a comic miniature world,
in which the needs and desires of the community are reduced to the needs of the individual
citizen-kurios - sex, food, drink and elimination.
Oikos, Polis, and Agora in Knights
"Since that cursed day when the new slave entered the house he has never stopped beating us!"
In this way the slave at the start of Knights interprets the space around him in the first two lines
of the play, with a statement lamenting the penetration of an interior space by an outside entity.
This slave and his companion are household slaves, in a wealthy oikos that employs a sizable
contingent of slaves, and the doors behind him represent the house.14 For approximately seventysix lines, there is no evidence that this space has any other possible interpretation. It is not until
line 77 that the allegorical nature of this oikos becomes explicit.15 The master of the house goes
by the name Demos, and his deme identification is puknites.16 The latter is patently not a
14

Most of the action of this play takes place before these doors, in a space continually interpreted and reinterpreted
from interior to exterior and back again. The interior of Demos' house may at times be seen as extruded from behind
the skene doors.
15
The longstanding identification of these slaves with the names and/or personas of Nikias and Demosthenes
(which would mark the action as allegorical right away) is far from certain. There is nothing in the text to suggest
the identification. Cf. K. J. Dover "Portrait-Masks in Aristophanes", in H.J. Newiger, ed. Aristophanes und die Alte
Komodie (Darmstadt, 1975).
16
The name Demos is said by Sommerstein (1997,2) to be immediately recognizable as allegory, but see Vesp. 98
and Eupolis fr. 227 K-A for instances of the name applied to a young man.

52
reference to a deme, but to the Pnyx. The locative serves two purposes; it alerts the spectators to
the allegory in a general way, but it also makes a comment about space and location. The
"house" located on the Pnyx is the city of Athens itself. The dual fiction of oikos = polis will be
maintained and dropped in a slapdash manner throughout Knights. Within a single block of
dialogue, references apropos of city politics and of household maneuvering coexist, sometimes in
the same line. One of the slaves complains that the Paphlagonian has stolen a "Laconian cake"
that he himself kneaded (55). It is atypical slaves' dispute, but as Dover (1972, 92) points out,
the addition of the words "at Pylos" gives new meaning to the epithet "Laconian" and brings the
exterior world of contemporary events into this domestic scene. At line 60, the slave complains
that the Paphlagonian flatters Demos by standing over him at dinner with a leather strip and
"keeping off the rhetors" (instead of the flies, as one would expect.) The Paphlagonian brings
false allegations against "those within the house" (xovc, yap &v8ov) yet among his ordinary
domestic crimes is his habit of "taking bribes" (8copo8oKsTv, 66) a political charge. The hapless
victim of his machinations, however, is a certain Hylas, a name more appropriate to a good
looking young slave than a public figure.
Not only do events affecting the entire city unfold within the space of a single oikos, but
this oikos manages to encompass the entire Greek world. The Paphlagonian, whose crimes are
unmistakably associated with those of Kleon, bestrides the Greek world like a colossus. One of
his feet rests on Pylos, another in the Assembly, his posterior hangs over the Chaeonians and he
has hands that manipulate the Aetolians and a mind that resides among the Klopidians (77-9). At
the same time these are geographical references, they are also puns recalling acts of petty

53
thievery and corruption.

Later, by standing on a basket, the sausage seller can see "the entire

circle of Greek islands" (170) the "markets and shipyards" (171) and even as far as Carthage and
the land of the Carians in southwestern Asia Minor (173). The exterior space of Athens and the
lands under her sway is thus vastly reduced in scale, and fits into the bounds of the stage oikos.
The plot of the two servants recalls the larger canvas of the Peloponnesian War, as they try to get
an advantage over the Paphlagonian by stealing his oracles.18 The slaves conclude that they, like
Themistocles, have run out of places that will give them shelter; with the world contained in their
oikos, they have nowhere to run and so must commit suicide in the same manner as the
unfortunate Themistocles.
In this play, the polis is an oikos and vice versa, and so neither can function as a
normative space to correct the failings of the other. A third type of space is introduced by
Aristophanes, an exterior that has strong connections to the life of the oikos. That is the agora, a
space with connotations of both exterior and interior. The agora is a public political forum, yet at
the same time it is a place for the buying and selling of food and household goods.19 The

'Aetolian' is a pun on aixsco (cf.aixei in line 66), KlcMriSai on i&(t>\|/, and the Chaeonians recall %&oq, something
'gaping' (and the Paphlagonian is called 'gape-arsed' at line 380). A similar pun on aixeco can be found in PA 63:
' Avtvyovn, StKsX.firc&poqrja0d uoi, cbg 8' eysvfjGric; AkoXfi, K&ycb Mfj8o<; ISoti yyova. (For Mf|8oc, read uf| 8oi)q.) The
scholiast states that the name KXoMriSai is a comic perversion, meant to recall KX,cbv|/, of the deme KpomiSai, cf. CIA
ii 788.
18
For the craze for oracles in the early years of the war, cf. Thuc. 2.8.2,2.21.2
19
The agora seems to connote two different kinds of space in Aristophanes: commercial (and thus connected to the
economic functions of the household; cf. Thes.3&2 ff. and Lys. 486) and political, the scene of the dikasteria. The
Athenian agora, in fact, existed in two phases: an earlier "archaic" agora now thought to have existed on the east
side of the Acropolis, and the later western agora, whose construction c. 500 coincides with the advent of the
democracy. The two seem to have existed side by side until their destruction by the Persians, and only the newer
agora was rebuilt (cf. Robertson 1998, 283). That the conflation of a market-area with an officially sanctioned space
for debate and trials was a pre-Hellenistic feature of Attica is noted by Wiles (2000,23-4) who demonstrates the way
the deme-towns routinely combined agora, theater and marketplace. By the time Pausanias visited Athens in the
third century CE, the functions had again been separated; his 'agora' (mentioned only once at 1.17.1-2) is a
collection of monuments and minor public functions, and the commercial marketplace, today called the Roman

54
Paphlagonian, who is linked to the tannery (and so to Kleon) by the oracle, and the Sausage
Seller are both products of the agora, both "low-born and of the agora and brash" (181). Again
and again, the Sausage Seller confirms his upbringing in the agora, reinforcing the role that agora
space played in qualifying him to rule the city. He was bred in the agora (294), he swears by
Hermes of the agora (299), and he is described by the slave as one who was "reared where men
are men" in the agora (333). Later in the play, his name will be revealed as "Agorakritikos" or
"he who passes judgements in the agora" (1231). The difference between the Sausage Seller and
the Paphlagonian is in their trades. The tanner fashions slipshod, unwearable clothing for the
masses (316-18), while the Sausage Seller provides food, an altogether more worthy commodity
in Attic Old Comedy. When the Sausage Seller complains "How will / ever lead the people?"
the slave tells him:
cpouXoxaxov epyov: xauG' arcep 7roiei<; 7ioisi:
xdpaxxe Kai %6p8eu' ouou xd 7rpdyuaxa
aroxvxa, Kai xov Sfjuov del ;rpoo7roiou
u^oyXuKaivcov pr|uaxioi<; uayeipiKoic;.
xd 8' dAla aoi rcpoaeaxi 8nuaya>yiKd,
q>covf| utapd, yeyova<; K(XK(B<;, dyopa!o<; ei:

It's the simplest trick. Keep doing exactly what you do. Mix and
knead together all the public affairs like sausage paste, and win
over the demos with sweet n' spicy gourmet rhetoric. Besides,
you've got everything a demagogue needs in you: a horrid voice, a
twisted nature, and you're a creature of the agora! (Ar. Eq. 214-18)
This use of a homely art as a metaphor for statecraft and politics may be seen elsewhere in

Agora, had moved to the northwest part of the city and does not merit a mention by Pausanias.
20
Not only food, but sausages, described by Bakhtin as "the bowels, the belly, the very life of man (1984, 162)" a
food intimately connected to the organs that process food and connected by Bakhtin to the "belly laugh," a humor
whose source is the grotesque, the comedy of fulfillment of bodily desire.

55
Aristophanes, notably in Lysistrata's comparison of governance to wool carding (Lys. 565ff).
Like the Platonic Socrates, the slave sees statecraft as an individually practiced TSXVTJ, one of the
many arts practiced in the agora.21 Both tanner and Sausage Seller threaten each other with their
agora associated skills. The Sausage Seller threatens to "stuff the Paphlagonian's arse like a
sausage" (364) and the tanner tells the Sausage Seller he will "stretch your skin on the tanning
table" (369) and "stretch and peg you on the ground" (371). The Paphlagonian's crimes, where
they are not overtly the public crimes of Kleon, are described in terms of filling the belly with
market goods; he "eats up" the common stores and "fig picks" the magistrates undergoing review
(259-63), he treats his rhetorical victims in the manner of a butcher about to slaughter a lamb
(260-3), he "runs into the Prytanaeum empty in the gut and comes out again full" (280-2)
absconding with "bread, meat and fish slices" (284-5). At 352, the Paphlagonian compares his
mastery of the city to behavior at a symposium, specifically eating, drinking and engaging in sex
with prostitutes:
8(xoi yap avTeOnicac; avOproraov xiv'; oaxit; euOix;
0i3wsia Ospua Kaxacpaycbv, Kax' ejivmcov aKpaxou
oivot) x,oa KacaA,p&aco xoiyq ev ITuAxo axpaxriyouc;.
Do you put me up against any man? Then right away I'll gulp
down hot fish slices, and then guzzle unmixed wine and then I'll
bumfuck the generals at Pylos! (Ar. Eq. 352-5)

When the Sausage Seller addresses the Boule, he is able to overcome Kleon's bombastic rhetoric

21

The word xzyyi\ refers to that which is learned and taught (cf. Laches 180a.ff.) and had, for the Greeks,
inescapably banausic connotations. Socrates turns received wisdom on its ear by calling even kingship a TEXVI^
(Euthydemus, 291c) and in a similar way, Aristophanes' challenges his audience with the notion that leadership,
statesmanship, correct argument and good government can be reduced to an art on a level with grinding sausage or
carding wool.

56
by assimilating the world theater of Greek foreign affairs to the agora. He invokes the "powers of
indolence, stupidities, roguishness, impundences, and the agora, in all of which I was educated as
a boy" (aye 8f) EKixaAxn Kai evaK<;, rjv 8' eya) BspeaxeOoi xe Kai KoPaAoi Kai MoGcov, dyopd
x' ev fj naiq v S7rai8ei>0r|v eycb, 635-6). He brings the bellicose Boule into a state of rapture by
reminding them of the joys of affordable food, as it existed before the ravages of the war drove
up prices:
'CD POUATI %6yovq dyaGouc; cpspcov
euayyeAaaaaGai np&xov t>ulv Poi3A,oum:
e^ ot> yap fi(4,Tv 6 noks^ioc, Kaxsppdyn,
owtcbrcox' d(pi3a<; ei8ov d^uoxepa<;.'
xa>v 8' etiOeoc; xd 7tp6aco7ta SieyaA-fiviaev:
six' saxE9dvow n' evayyeXia: Kayd) '(ppaaa
aiixoTq duoppr|xov 7roiriod^evo<; xa/p,
iva xaq dcpi3a<; (bvotvxo 7ro>J,dg xot>PoA,oi),
xrov 8rm,ioDpya>v ZpXfaifisiv xd xpuP^ia.

"Members of the Council, since I'm bearing good news I wanted to

be the first to report it to you. From the time the war first fell upon
us, I've never seen cheaper sardines." Straightaway their faces
became calm, and they were eagerly giving my speech the garland.
And I said, strictly on the down-low, that if they wanted to
purchase sardines for an obol, they should snatch up the bowls
from the craftsmen's shops... (Ar. Eq. 642-50)

Enjoyment of food from the agora is the key to peace. The Sausage Seller announces that the
Spartans are suing for peace "now that they've discovered the sardines here are cheap" (671-2).
The commerce agora will be the salvation of Athens; the goods to be found there make the Boule
forget all about pursuing war. They "leap right over the railings" (674) in their eagerness to
desert the barren public space of the Areopagus. Meanwhile, the Sausage Seller finds material for

57
bribes within the agora:
syob 8s xd Kopiaw' 87ipidur|v tmoSpaudrv
drcavxa xd xs yfjxei 6<;' r\v ev xdyopa:
87ceixa xat<; dcpuaic; eSiSouv f|8rjc|4,axa
d7topoi)aiv ai>xoT<; 7ipoiKa Kd%api^6ur|v.
Ol 8 ' t>7Ip7tfjV(yOV t)7rSp87TU7i:7ia^6v X8 US

djtavxeq oakax; axrre xf)v (3ouA,f|v 6hr\v

6(3oX,oi> Kopidwoic; dvaAxxPrav ekr\kx>Qa.
But I sneaked into the agora and purchased all the coriander and
leeks that were for sale, and gave it all away free as seasoning for
their sardines. And they all praised me exceedingly and thus I
come here having bribed the whole Council for an obol's worth in
coriander. (Ar. Eq. 676-82)

The Sausage Seller's agora is oddly reminiscent of Dikaiopolis' farm, a source of abundance that
can magically reverse the scarcity brought on by the war and persuade the Athenians to seek
peace.
The scene in which the Paphlagonian and the Sausage Seller compete for the affections of
Demos resembles a paraklausithyron, a literary trope in which a wooer pleads for the right to
pass through a door into the interior space presided over by the object of his affections.22 Demos
answers the pair's frenzied knocking by sputtering "You've pulled my harvest wreath to pieces!
(728)." The Paphlagonian assures him "I love you, Demos; I am your spaaxf|c;" (733). The
Sausage Seller compares him to a promiscuous lover. "You're like boys with their lovers. You
shun those who are well-born and good, and you give yourself over to lamp merchants and
Canter (1920, 355-368) pinpoints the archetype of this genre: "The practice of the lover's serenade is frequently
indicated in Greek and Latin literature, but the technical term occurs only in Plutarch's Eparaicdc; .In this dialogue
one of the interlocutors is made to enumerate sundry acts which show the essence of passion: masquerading before
the loved one's doors, singing amorous lamentations at the windows, adorning statues with chaplets and garlands of
flowers, duelling with rivals."
23
Canter (1920, 335) cites violence to a door as a salient feature of a paraclausithyron.

58
cobblers and shoemakers and leather workers" (736-41). The Paphlagonian urges Demos to
choose between his rivals in the public space of the Pnyx, but the Sausage Seller fervently
wishes he would make his choice while in the house. "For the old man, when he's at home
(OIKOI)

is the cleverest (Se^vmaxoq), but when he sits on that rock [the Pnyx] he gapes like a

man eating dried figs" (754-5).24 Oikos space is the normative seat of good judgment, while
public space is conducive only to bad judgment and blunders on a worldwide scale. The two
wooers flatter Demos with a conflation of political and domestic references, as when the Sausage
Seller denigrates the Paphlagonian's treatment of Demos:
(be; 8' oi>$ (pile! q ou8' EOT' EUVOUC;, TOUT' CHJTO oercpc&Ta8i8d^<B,
aXk' f] 8id TOUT' ao8' oTifj aou xfjc; dvGpaiaac; dTtoAxxusi.
at yap, 6c; MfjSoiai 8is^i(pioa) 7tepi Tfjc; %(fopa<; MapaGrovi,
Kai vncrjaac; f|uiv \isyak(oq SYYA,(OTTOTO7I81V TtapedoiKaq,
sin Taioi 7i6Tpaic; ou (ppovri^ei aKA,r|p(oc; as Ka0f|Uvov OUTO^,
ot>%ffla7rspsyd) pa\|/dp,ev6(; aoi TOUT! (pspco. aXk' sjiavaipou,
KQtTa KdBitpu |a,a?iaKa)q, iva (if| Tpipn<; xfiv ev SaA,a|xtvi.
First I'll show you that he doesn't love you, he's not concerned with
your well-being; he just warms himself with your coals. For you,
who fenced with the Medes on the plain at Marathon, who by
beating them allowed us such lofty utterances, sit on those rugged
rocks and he doesn't care. Not like me! I've stitched you this
cushion, - get up, and sit down softly, so you don't chafe that part
of you that won at Salamis. (Ar. Eq. 781-5)
Images of hearth, flagstones and cushions bring the tumultuous historical memory of the Persian
wars within the walls of the oikos. At the end of the play, the Sausage Seller, having won out
over the Paphlagonian for the affections of Demos, "boils him down" (d(pV|/sw, 1322) like

For 'gaping' (x&cjKEiv)as an Aristophanic synonym for stupidity, particularly in the realm of public affairs, see
Konstan (1997,23-82). Any mention of figs (the UTX<X8<*<; mentioned here are the dried variety) in such a context
cannot help but recall the word croKocpdvTn*; with its connotations of slander, hypocrisy and bad counsel.

59
Medea boiled Aeson. He triumphantly announces that he has reinterpreted the space in which
Demos resides; his oikos is now "the Athens of old, violet-crowned" (ev xaiaiv ioaxs(pdvoi<; oiice!
xaic; dpxaiaioiv A9f|vou<;, 1323). Unlike the senile old Demos, this new Demos is sharp, youthful,
wary of manipulation by demagogues and possesses excellent judgment. His reinterpreted city, a
retouched snapshot out of historical memory, serves as a model on which to reconstruct the
current city in its sorry state.
The Kitchen court: Wasps
The central metaphor of Wasps may be seen as a reversal of Knights. In the former play, the
household stood for the city, while in Wasps, the city is depicted as a corrupted version of the
household, one which cheats its rightful kurioi of their autonomy and authority. This section will
examine the attempt by the son Bdelykleon to keep his father Philokleon indoors, preventing him
from carrying out his activities in the law courts, activities which are harmful to the father
himself and the city at large. Declaring there to be no cure for the city's ills, Bdelykleon
persuades his father to shun troubled exterior space and to recreate his beloved law courts
indoors. By encompassing them within the oikos, Bdelykleon will trivialize the problems facing
Athens and the Greek world, reducing them to the scale of kitchen disputes.
The opening scene of Wasps parallels the beginning of Knights. Two slaves discuss a
resident of their household (represented by the doors behind them) in terms of his
monstrousness. The knodalon (4) whom they are guarding is, like the Paphlagonian of Knights, a
creature of the oikos unleashed upon an unfortunate city. The Paphlagonian stood for Kleon (and
twice in Knights is referred to by that name) and the father in Wasps is given an absurd name,

60
Philokleon, placing him unambiguously on one side of the major political schism of the day. The
son's name, in contrast, is given as Bdelykleon or "Kleon loather." As in Knights, we see the
panorama of public debate compressed into one oikos and here too broad sections of the demos
are represented by single individuals. The father is portrayed as an old man, possessed of a mania
that is reckoned among other pleasurable vices. He is not, so his slaves say, a compulsive partier
or gambler (maladies whose symptoms are enacted in interiors). He is addicted to meddling in
the exterior world by sitting on juries and rendering verdicts according to his private
prejudices.25 The son's thankless job in this play is to keep his father an inhabitant of interior
space, where, like children and women, he is unable to influence the affairs of the city.
Unfortunately, this creature of the law courts corrupts and misinterprets interior space at every
turn. Even in his dreams, he is outdoors at the law courts (94). He superimposes his madness for
jury duty upon domestic religious ritual, as his continual habit of crimping his three fingers (in
the manner of a juror casting a pebble) recalls, and he perverts the new-moon rite of anointing
Oft

the household shrines (95-6).

When the household rooster fails to crow on time, he sees it as a

sentry corrupted by conspirators (101). The pleasures of food and sex are transformed by his
obsession. Instead of eroticizing a beautiful young man (whose name "Demos" is hard not to
read allegorically) he eroticizes the kemos, the funnel atop the voting urn. He spurns traditional
delicacies such as eel and sole for "a nice little lawsuit, cooked in a dish" (510-11). The early
scenes of Wasps are a dance back and forth across a liminal boundary. Philokleon, like the wives
of Lysistrata, attempts his exodus from the interior. Bdelykleon with the help of the slaves tries
25

Sommerstein (1982, xvii) notes that his name seems to imply that the underclass of poor old men, who lived for
the daily wage of three-obols that Kleon had recently raised from two, were blindly loyal to Aristophanes' nemesis.
26
cf. Theopompus fr. 344

61
to restrain him. A struggle over the interior/exterior boundary ensues, as Philokleon tries to cast
himself in absurd roles that may loosely be categorized as "things that go outside." He pretends
he is a mouse (140), the chimney smoke (144), an imprisoned tragic hero calling his men to
come rescue him (166), and finally Odysseus escaping the Cyclops' cave (179-189). Bdelykleon
half believes these fictions on some level. He orders his slaves to guard the drains so the
"mouse" cannot escape, he interrogates the "smoke" as to its wood of origin, and he carries on a
Homeric dialogue with the freighted donkey and its passenger.
David Konstan (1985, 31) points out that this peculiar relationship between father and
son hinges on an argument concerning mastery of space. This argument is not over who is kurios
in the household, meaning the master of the house, with power to run its affairs and manage the
slaves.27 That power is manifestly held by the son Bdelykleon, as we are told repeatedly (cf. 67,
142). Like a comic King Lear, Philokleon has surrendered his status as kurios over interior space
(442). The relationship between Bdelykleon and Philokleon thus resembles the father and son
contretemps of Clouds, only in reverse.28 The usual pattern in both Attic Old Comedy and New
Comedy is for the elder protagonist to act as the upholder of traditional values and for the
David Schaps (1998, 161-88) sums up the status and nature of the Athenian kurios as follows: "Athens was
made up of households - oikoi. Of each household, at least in theory, a man was kurios of the land, of the house, of
his wife, of his children, and for that matter of his parents, if they could not take care of themselves, or his maiden
sister, even if she could. If we look at status on a one dimensional scale we shall have to define him as "a master less
powerful than a despotes" or some such, and those under his authority as "subordinates with more independence
than a slave" (Schaps 1998, 165).
28
This makes Philokleon an unusual figure in comedy. He is not analagous to the errant senex of the Roman
comic stage, as David Konstan (1985,29-30) has observed, since this type of amorous old man invariably comes to
his senses after a brief infatuation. Konstan also questions whether the theme of this play can be identified as
education, since education should imply preparation for responsibility, and he points out that the ending of Wasps is
antinomian in the extreme, with old Philokleon bringing flute-girls home and beating up partygoers. Aristophanes
has featured this kind of anti-education before, however, in Clouds, where Pheidippides' 'education' turns him into an
overconfident bully with no respect for the laws of polis or oikos. A character in need of education must be forced
into an interior space, but here as in Clouds the attempt to better him goes disastrously wrong.

62
younger to flout them, often by desiring an inappropriate marriage. The father is the
personification of the household, its kurios, and the son, by attempting to leave the household in
a way the father does not condone, must be kept indoors until he is corrected. Wasps turns this on
its ear: it is the father who is possessed of unwholesome eros. The slave describes him as
phileastes (89) and he himself proclaims he is "in love with" (epauai) the trappings of jury duty
(753). He is forever trying to leave his own house for the "house" of the one he loves, although it
is no oikos to which he wishes to flee, but the exterior public spaces of the city.
The argument instead hinges on whether there is any legitimacy to Philokleon's claim
that he is a kurios over an exterior space, the polis. Philokleon believes he is equivalent to a
kurios of the entire city, since his position as a dicast makes the wealthy tremble and gives him
power over magistrates. His extraordinary portrait of a dicast's power hinges on the assumption
that, like the kurios of an Athenian oikos, he is legally accountable to no-one. A juror enjoys the
best parts of the pleasures of a king, a citizen and even a god. His power is not inferior to that of
a king (549). Even though he is an old man, he is pampered, feared and envied. The court bailiffs
are, in his view, his own palace guard (553). Supplicants kneel at his feet, like worshipful
subjects and beg for his mercy. (555). Defendants act like court jesters, hoping to wheedle a
laugh from him (565). They offer him goods, including the same sort of "piglets" the Megarian
offers Dikaiopolis - their own daughters (573). Tragic actors entertain him with their best
speeches and flute players reward him with music (580-2). Wills, treaties and seals mean nothing
to him - heiresses and property are his to dole out to whomever he chooses (585). The exterior
space of the courts, and the city at large, is like a household under his authority. Once he truly

63
comes indoors, however, his pretense to the status of kurios becomes rather more pathetic. He
makes it sound as though he returns home with sacks of money instead of his meager three obol
wage. His daughter attempts to "fish out" his three obols with her tongue - he means that she
simply talks him out of his wages, but he implies something sexual. He minimizes his
dependence on his son and his son's stewards who are in charge of the household stores by
magnifying his tiny wine flask, calling it a "donkey" (616) and claiming that its gurgle is
equivalent to a mighty "soldier's fart" (619). He quickly compensates by comparing his power to
that of Zeus, comparing his flatulence to thunder, and a jury's anger to lightning, which causes
people to "cluck" apotropaically (629).
The arrival of the chorus turns this quasi-domestic scene into a trial scene characteristic
of the exterior space of the law court. The charge, brought by Bdelykleon, is that of douleia,
acting like a household slave. This directly contradicts Philokleon's view of himself as kurios of
exterior space. In reinterpreting his father's notion of the role he plays, Bdelykleon casts himself
in the role of a reformer. He identifies the jurors and their manipulation by demagogues as a
"malady" in need of a cure. He makes the extraordinary declaration, "It is difficult to cure a
disease, so old and widespread in Athens, requiring greater intelligence than may be found
among comic poets" (649-51).29 In a speech that is not in the least bit hyperbolic or humorous

29

How should we interpret this statement? Sommerstein (1982, 194 ) sees it as Aristophanes extolling himself
above other comic poets. But Bdelykleon, as Konstan (1985, 31) points out, makes no attempt to reform Athens in
the manner of Lysistrata or Praxagora, nor does he attempt to 'cure' the city at large. McGlew suggests that "perhaps
Aristophanes meant his audience to dislike Philokleon without incurring the serious consequences that might come
from an unflattering portrayal of common Athenians and their civic passions" ((McGlew 2004, 31). This
consideration does not stop Aristophanes from roasting common Athenians in Acharnians, Clouds, Peace or other
plays. Furthermore, not only is the portrayal of jurors in Wasps already plenty unflattering but everything
Bdelykleon says about the jurors applies equally to the Athenian masses who attend the Assembly.

Bdelykleon points out that Philokleon and the jurors of the chorus reap few tangible rewards
from their work. The polis receives thousands of talents in tribute, and its wealthy officials are
plied with luxuries and bribes, but poor Athenians, who earned the rewards of empire by fighting
on land and sea (677) see only a pittance. Their masters are sexually pathic young prosecutors,
who arrange healthy payouts for themselves while threatening to withhold the three obol
payment from the poor jurors. The dicasts are mere house slaves, and the paymasters are the true
kurioi, tricking and manipulating them into attacking their own enemies. Bdelykleon proposes,
like Praxagora, that an ideal Athens would support all the people alike, thus eliminating poverty
and allowing them to live "surrounded by hare's meat and all manner of crowns and birth milk
and cheeses" (710-11). Like Praxagora and Lysistrata, he asserts that the inhabitants of civic
space have failed the Athenian people. The women in those plays wish to turn public space into
an oikos, but Bdelykleon's idea is to recreate the exterior world of the courts indoors, where the
intractable problems of politics and war will be miniaturized and made harmless. He presents the
oikos as an autonomous space that can feed Philokleon and protect him from contact with the
corrupt outside world.
cbv OUVSK' eyco a' &7tsKXr|ov del
POCKSIV 80sX,cov Kai uf| Touxotx;
ey^daKsiv aoi axouxpd^ovxou;.
Kai vuv ax&yy&q eGeX. rcapexetv
6 xi (iouAsi aoi,
7iA,f|v KcotaxKpexoD ydAxx rciveiv.
For this reason I kept you locked up, wishing to feed you myself
and not wishing those boasters to mock you. And now I'm willing
to provide you with anything you could want, except to let you
drink the milk of the paymaster. (Ar. Vesp. 719-724)

65

This description of the potential relationship of son to father resembles that ofakedemon or
patron to his ward. Mr. Demos in Knights is described this way (Eq. 1342) and it is depicted
there as an unhealthy dependency. Yet it certainly seems as though the way is clear for
Philokleon to retire in luxury and wealth.
The argument has been made that this makes Philokleon an extremely atypical juror. The
jurors in the chorus are poor. They do not have the option of retiring into a luxurious household.
Much has been made of the disparity between Philokleon's family wealth and the poverty and
desperation of the jurors in chorus. Konstan goes so far as to call this
...a kind of fissure in the text that is a mark of its ideological
burden. For all Philokleon's exemplary status as spokesman for the
jurors' way of life and most acrid soul among them (277), he alone
is not dependent upon the courts for his living. For him, jury
service is merely a personal passion. (Konstan 1985, 37)
Konstan further remarks that it is strange that Philokleon should choose a life of poverty when a
life of wealth is open to him, as the elder member of a rich oikos, while the chorus of Wasps,
poor and desperate scavengers of oil and charcoal, do not have this option. But it makes sense to
see Aristophanes in full allegorical mode here, as he was in Knights. The chorus may be viewed
as the jurors proper, inhabitants of civic space, while Philokleon, Bdelykleon and their household
are personified allegorical representations of the elder generation, the younger one, and the polis
respectively.

If the juries are made up of elder statesmen who are kurioi over their own

households, then they are also the rightful kurioi of the city, but they have abdicated their
30

Olson observes that "the cantankerous but dependent Philokleon in his house, like Demos Puknites in his house
in Knights two years earlier, can function throughout the rest of the play as an image of the Athenian 8n.uo<; in the
city" (Olson 1995, 137).

66
privilege and authority in the polis (to demagogues like Kleon) just as Philokleon has abdicated
his privilege and authority in his oikos. Philokleon has a home to go to: the house currently run
by his son. So too do the Wasps have a wealthy home that they shun through pure stubbornness:
the city of Athens, with its "thousand states paying tribute" (708), a polis awash in wealth that
keeps its rightful elder kurioi in a state of poverty.
Bdelykleon now reveals his plan. Instead of conducting trials in outdoor civic space, he
proposes that Philokleon do his judging in the interior space of the oikos. He labels these
opposing spaces SKETCE and sv0d8e - "over there" and "indoors" (765). The exterior activity of
sitting in the law court will be performed indoors, repurposing the furniture and the actions
characteristic of the oikos. These include eating, retrained as "chewing over" a verdict (783), a
pig pen re-used as the railings of the court enclosure (843),31 drinking cups for voting urns (855)
and a chamber pot for a water clock (with a urinating Philokleon providing the stream of water!)
(858). In this way, Aristophanes trivializes the workings of the courts by assimilating them to the
domestic and everyday activities of the oikos. The trial is thus staged using repurposed domestic
props and becomes a referendum, not over which dog stole which cheese, but rather over who is
the rightful kurios of the oikos - Bdelykleon or Philokleon - and whose interpretation of the
proper duties of a citizen will win the day.
No sooner has the oikos encompassed the hurly burly of court activity than a storm of
metaphorically enacted trouble breaks. The servant reports that one of the household dogs, who
is given the name Labes -"snatcher" - has just "rushed into the kitchen and scarfed down a

31

This recalls the Spticpcucrog of the Prytaneion in which sacred pigs were suckled, cf. Plut. 1106-7.

chunk of cheese" (838).

Bdelykleon suggests that the servant prosecute, but it is the other dog,

soon identified as the "Kydathenaian Dog" who will be the prosecutor. It is generally agreed that
the Kydathenaian Dog is a stand-in for Kleon (a resident of the same northern deme) and that
Labes "the dog of Aexeone" represents Laches, the Athenian general who hailed from there.33
"Kleon Lover" naturally takes the side of the Kydathenaian Dog, while "Kleon Loather" speaks
in defense of Labes. The political strife of the polis is thus miniaturized and played out in
allegory in the oikos. Bdelykleon plays the part of the magistrate closing off the proceedings to
latecomers (891-2). Philokleon, true to his character, declares he will vote to convict before the
trial has even begun, and proposes a harsh but comically appropriate penalty: a "dog's death" humorous popular idiom for a particularly painful and nasty end. When the Kydathenaian Dog
comes forth, a character observes that he can see no difference between the two animals (9045).34 To the born prosecutor Philokleon, however, the mere fact that Labes is the defendant
makes him look "thievish" and "deceptive" (900). The style of the Kydathenaian Dog's
testimony is vintage Aristophanic Kleon. He accuses Labes of crimes against himself and against
the sailors in the navy and complains that he didn't receive a share of the embezzlement. He
threatens to withhold his "protection" from the household unless he receives a share of such dirty
goods in the future (917, 930). He conflates the charges against the real Laches with those
against the dog. Labes. When he declares that the latter "sailed around the mixing bowl and ate
32

The cheese is described as Sicilian, giving it the same symbolic value as the Laconian cake of Eq. 79.
The political fracas that inspired this comic recreation is not understood in any detail, and may not reflect any
single incident. It seems that Laches underwent some audit of his finances when he left office, and here the charge
seems to be that he kept the funding for his campaigns for himself, which seems, in Kleon's view, to be synonymous
with failing to give Kleon a cut.
34
Bdelykleon according to the Oxford text, but more plausibly designated as the slave by Rogers and
Sommerstein.
33

68
the rind off the cities" (924-5) he compresses the entire Mediterranean into the topography of a
single kitchen.
Further trivializations of the trappings of the court and of world events follow during the
defense. Only now does Philokleon begin to start the "klepsydra" by pissing in the bowl, which
causes Bdelykleon to compare him to a dog, who always has a defendant "in his teeth" (940943). Bdelykleon then calls the kitchen implements as witnesses for the defense. The basin, the
cheese grater, the brazier, the pitcher and other utensils come forward, but it is the cheese grater
that is called on to give (mute) testimony. The cheese grater (TupoKvnoTic;), asserts that it indeed
"grated off' what it received for the benefit of the troops, allegorically declaring that
Labes/Laches made sure his funds were shared among the common foot soldiers who fought
with him.

Bdelykleon's defense argues that the dog Labes is a good oikos citizen, who keeps

away wolves (greedy officials) protects sheep (poor citizens) and always "fights on your side and
guards the doorway" (957). The Kydathenaian dog does nothing but sleep in the safety of the
house and bully his way into getting a share of food (971-2) which reflects the substance of
much criticism of Kleon: that, the affair at Pylos aside, he had not earned his self proclaimed
status of "protector" of the demos via military service. If Labes did steal a cheese, Bdelykleon
argues, it is only because he is poor and uncultured, never having learned to play the kithara.
Further conflation of the real world case with the kitchen trial occurs, highlighting the absurdity
of the proceedings, when Philokleon laments that he wishes Labes "had never learned his ABCs"
(960) and mentions forged account records, a crime seldom characteristic of thieving dogs.
35

According to Post (1932,265) the cheese-grater is possibly a reference to the Sicilian city of Catana, which
Laches probably used as a base, and Catana is actually the Sicilian dialect word for cheesegrater.

69
By winning his case in the oikos law court, Bdelykleon has won the right to transform the
world Philokleon inhabits from a world of political strife and public witch hunts into one of
parties, sophisticated banter and refined manners. He attempts to recreate the space around him
as a symposium. As noted before, Philokleon is incapable of responding to literary banter
without bringing in the discourse of the city. But several notable changes are evident in the
character of Philokleon from this point on. He is no longer "Kleon lover." With Bdelykleon
playing the role of Kleon at a symposium, Philokleon calls him arcavoupyogand a thief (1228).
Shocked, Bdelykleon warns him that Kleon will drive him into exile, and Bdelykleon declares, in
a parody of Alcaeus' denunciation of the tyrant Pittacus, that Kleon is out to gain supreme power
and will destroy the city (1234). When an imaginary Theorus warns him to "cherish prominent
men" Philokleon responds with a warning against being too clever and trying to be a friend to
everybody (1242). In effect, Philokleon has become a Bdelykleon, a "Kleon Loather." Father and
son have switched roles in two ways, both in their relationship as Jcurios to dependent, and in
their political alignment (although Bdelykleon only assumes Kleon friendly roles for a few lines,
for educational purposes.) Symposium space effects a change in Philokleon's character that
neither oikos space nor law court space could achieve. He is noxious, outspoken and vulgar, but
he has also broken free of his dependencies on his various kedemones, his son and Kleon, and
come into his own as an elderly kurios.
Seizing the Acropolis: Lysistrata
Like Philokleon, the women of Lysistrata have difficulty emerging from interior space. "It's
difficult for women to go outside," says Kalonike (16). At dawn, when the Assembly is supposed

70
to meet, women are typically relegated to inside roles: "bent" (sKU7ixaasv) to the sexual desires
of the soon to depart husbands, feeding the children, waking the servants to get the household
running. Yet Lysistrata acknowledges that on certain other occasions the streets are thronged with
women. In the first lines of the play she declares:
aXk' el' TIC; sq BaK^sTov amaq sKaX-easv,
r\ 'q Ilavdc; r\ 'm KcoA,ia8' r\ 'q Tevsxv>'kXiSoq,
ou8' av 8ieA,6etv rjv av vnb TCOV TOUTTOIVCOV.
If someone had called them to a Bacchic rite
or a rite of Pan, or Aphrodite or of the Genetyllides
You wouldn't be able to get through because of the tympany
players. (1-3)
Athenian women are not "prisoners" of the oikos, at least not all the time. At festival time, they
crowd public space to such a degree that there is no room for anyone else. When there are no
public female centered rituals in progress, however women's rightful place is indoors. And there
are no kitchens in the oikoi of this play, only bedrooms. Exodus from the house means getting
out from the space reserved for sexual intercourse. Kalonike paints a picture of women in the
home, not supervising the household economy or the activity of the kitchens (as at Thes. 382ff.)
but "sitting" (Ka0f|L4,e9a), clad in sexually alluring attire (44-7). The women, having decided to
foreswear sexual activity, foresee that the men's reaction will be to force them back into the
innermost interior space of the bedroom. Kalonike wonders what to do when the husbands "drag
us by force into the bedchamber" (eav la^ovi&q 8' eq TO 8cou<raov |3ia/ SIKCOOIV r\\iaq, 161-1).
Lysistrata prescribes a refusal to cross spatial boundaries, telling her to "hang fast to the door
36

Schap (1998, 179) notes that they must have spent a great deal of their time indoors, however. While the spheres
of men and women were "not symmetrical" (meaning that men moved in much wider circles than women) Schap
identifies the primary social activities of women as being religious.

71
posts" (dvTSXpi) av> xcov Guprov, 162).
Ritual space is one of the few types of exterior space that women are permitted to occupy.
Hence the older women make for the Acropolis "pretending to sacrifice but really in order to
seize the Acropolis" (Gtieiv SoKofjaaic; KaxaA,a(3siv xfrv dKpoTcoAav, 179). Their triumphal shout
is identified by one of the conspirators as an co^oAuyd, referring to the traditional cry following a
sacrifice (239).38 The agon of Lysistrata centers around the Acropolis, and around the fact that
the exterior space of the Acropolis is open to different interpretations by men and women. For
the women, it is primarily a ritual space. The hemichorus of women describes the cultic
upbringing of a young participant in the rites of Athena:
7rxd uv xr| yeyS>(5' evQvq ippncpopouv:
SIT' dXexpi*; rf 8KSTI<; otfoa xdp%nyxi:
KO(X' %ouaa xov KpoKcoxov pKxoc; rf Bpaupcoviot^:
KdKavncpopouv TCOX' orjca naxq KaA,f] '%oua'
iaxdScov opuaGov.
aba 7cpoi)(piX,co xi ypr\oxbv xx 7t6X,i Tcapaivsoai;
Then when I was seven years old, I was an arrephor [bearer of holy vessels]. At
ten I was barley thresher to the generallissima. And wearing a saffron robe I was
Little Bear to the goddess at Brauron. And being a beautiful young girl, I was a
basket bearer all decked out in necklaces of figs. So isn't it obvious that I should
give you the best advice I can? (Ar. Lys. 641-8)

With the exception of the rites at Brauron, all these ritual activities take place on the Acropolis.
The sanctuaries of Athena are temples, and Athena is the female goddess who appropriates
spheres of activity normally belonging to men. This fact will form an important part of the

Foley (1982, 5) discusses how the women make use of not only domestic ans sexual power, but "from their
traditional and legitimate participation in the religious life of the city."
38
cf. Henderson (1987, 97).

72
rationale behind the women's interpretation of the Acropolis as their own space. Upon hearing
the a>A,oA,uyd, Lysistrata exhorts the women to "enter along with the other women in the citadel
and help them shove in the bolts" (nufiic; 8e xaic; aAAaiai xaiaiv ev 7t6A,ei/uve|ipdX,a)Uv siaiouaai
xoix; [icyxkovq, 245-6). The central exterior space of the polis will be denied to the men unless
they consent to follow the women's reinterpretation of the Acropolis - not as ritual space (which
was a pretense to gain access to exterior space, cf. 179ff.) but as an interior. By transforming the
Acropolis into a space interior and domestic, the women will make it part of themselves,
something female, which no amount of force from the men can violate. Lysistrata confidently
asserts that "neither threats nor fire will force the women holding [the Acropolis] to open the
gates" (oux' cmeiXac, owe Tmp/f\,ovq' exovxeq coax' dvoT^ai xd<; 7rv)X,ac;), a statement that echoes
her earlier assertion that force will avail men nothing in the bedroom, "for there's no pleasure for
them if they have to use force" (otj ydp svi xouxoic; f)8ovf| xoi<;rcpdc;(31av, 163). Men and women
will have to compromise on the terms by which they occupy and control space, both in the oikos
and in the polis, both indoors and out.
When the women force the men to negotiate, the Proboulos demands a rationale from the
women:
nPO: Kori uf|v auxcov xoux' S7ui0i)jxc6 vf| xov Aia Tcpcaxa 7n>9ea0ai,
6 xi PovA,6jxevai xf|v %6Xxv f|(xv d7ieKA,fjaaxe xoToi
uo%ta>iaiv.
AYI: iva xapytipiov aa>vrcapexoiuevKai \ir\ 7ioXp,oixe 8i' auxo.
I1PO: 5id xdpyupiov 7roA.s|ioi)jxev ydp;
39

Not only ritual, but agora-space allows women to exist outdoors. Lysistrata calls upon the women in their roles
as denizens of the commerce-agora, as grain-sellers, garlic and vegetable merchants, and tavern-keepers (456-60).
As in Knights, the agora in its commercial aspect has strong ties to the oikos and can serve as a transitional area
between political and domestic space.

73

P:
L:
P:

Why have you shut and barred the gates of our Acropolis?
So that we can keep the money safe and not allow you to
make war with it.
We're at war over money? (Ar. Lys. 486-9)

The "we" referred to by the Proboulos is usually taken to refer to the Athenians and Spartans.40
In this context, "we" seems more likely to refer to the men and women at the gates. It suddenly
dawns on the Proboulos that the women see this standoff as a domestic squabble writ large, as
though the men and women were husband and wife fighting over the household budget.
Lysistrata sees the entire Peloponnesian war as a domestic quarrel of pan-Hellenic proportions.
Men like Peisander act like the grain-stealing wives of Thesmophoriazusae, pillaging the
household stores (489). Here, as in Knights and Wasps, the wider world of intractable dispute
and political standoff is brought under the aegis of a single all-encompassing oikos. For the men,
the Acropolis is a fortress and a war treasury. For the women, it is a household treasury and the
site of their religious functions. The male version of proper public business - make war! batter
down the opposition! - has clearly failed. Lysistrata herself urges the men to put away their
phallic instruments of conflict:
UT|8ev eKuoxX-susxe:
s^spxoum yap auxou-dTn. xi del uoxM>v;
on yap uoxA-cav 8sT [idXkov f\ vov Kai (ppevcov.
No need to batter down the gates. I'm coming out on my own. Why
the bolts, why the rams? What we need here isn't rams, but brains
and common sense! (Ar. Lys. 430-1)
Lysistrata, ensconced in the new center of power, replaces the male centered discourse of force
40

Cf. Sommerstein 1973, 199 who nevertheless acknowledges the other possibility.

74
and threats with her own rhetoric of reason. Like the inhabitants of a women's country, the
women hold the Acropolis. Now it is the men who approach the gates as foreigners, asking
permission to be let in.
Faraone (1997, 38-59) and Stroup (2004, 37-73) see the scene with Kinesias at 835ff. as a
violation of the sanctity of the Acropolis. In Faraone's and Stroup's view, the couple reinterpret
the sacred space as a brothel. This is an appealing argument, and the dialog is certainly fraught
with sexual tension. Faraone's arguments are as follows: the names of husband and wife are
suggestive of horny customer and courtesan,41 the oaths sworn by Myrrhine and Lysistrata are to
Aphrodite, not to the more customary Demeter, and Lysistrata herself seems to act the part of a
madam, brokering the meeting between the two. If this is the case, the women are transgressing
in an outrageous manner, misusing the Acropolis rather than repurposing it, and turning it into an
altogether undomestic sort of interior space, one not represented, or even referred to, anywhere
else in Aristophanes. This interpretation of the scene does too much violence to the construct of
women-as-saviors that elsewhere in the play is forcefully argued by Lysistrata and the women's
chorus. The language of the Acropolis scene is salty and the action is ithyphallic, but such
language crops up in every context in comedy and does not have to suggest a pome scene. This
scene does not suggest a customer approaching a brothel so much as aparaklausitheron scene,
wherein a lover is shut out of his love's dwelling/good graces. The wives have essentially
divorced their husbands temporarily, reducing poor Kinesias to the status of a wooer. Lysistrata
does not try to entice Kinesias to enter, as the keeper of a brothel would do. She tells him to get
41

Kinesias means "mover," hence "thruster," and is one letter away from Binesias, which means "fucker" and
Myrrhine can be translated as "perfumed with myrrh," akin to "prostitute."

75
lost (848) as though she were an older guardian protecting a marriageable young woman within.
Kinesias does refer to the "rites of Aphrodite" (898), but this has as legitimate a context within
marriage as it does outside of it. It seems likely that the phrase here corresponds to something
like "marital duty." The frustration scene is anything but a brothel play. Myrrhine has to go look
for a mattress, a pillow and a blanket (one at a time) and complains that there is no suitable place
for sex. Surely a prostitute would never be without the tools of her trade, and how could a brothel
lack places for intercourse? The presence of a baby (907) and her complaint that the "Rhodian
perfume" is inadequate (946) puts the cap on it: this is a scene meant to recall the frustrations of
domestic lovemaking. The business of a courtesan is to fulfill desires quickly, not deny them.
The source of Kinesias' frustration is that his desire for lovemaking is thwarted by domestic
details, which is the reason men visit brothels in the first place. In this play, the women
reinterpret the Acropolis first, in the Proboulos scene as a civic/household treasury, then as a cult
space for female rites of passage into adulthood, and finally, here, as the sexless bedroom of a
married couple at loggerheads. In this Kinesias scene, the Acropolis mirrors the bedrooms of the
Athenian oikoi, a place of sexless frustration.42
So far, the women of Lysistrata have interpreted public space as ritual space to justify
their exodus from the home, rallied to "war" with the men using their status as dwellers in agora
space, and turned the Acropolis into an oikos interior, a bedroom. Now it is up to Lysistrata to
make the case that the interpretation of the Acropolis as a war treasury is wrongheaded, and that
the men would be better off seeing it as a domestic storehouse. Standing before the Acropolis
42

Foley also thinks that Myrrhine interprets Acropolis space as a bedroom. "Myrrhine.. .turns the Acropolis into a
bedroom replete with blankets, pillows and perfume. The image of the walled Acropolis becomes, like the
household, an enclosed, carefully guarded female realm" (Foley 1982, 7).

98
(yecofxexpfjaai) the air for you and parcel (5is^eTv) it into individual units (Kaxa yuaq)."35 In his
hand he carries kanones aeros, "measuring tools of the air." He tells Peisetairos "in fact, the
whole of the air has a shape a lot like a bread oven" (auxuca yap arjp eaxi xrvv ISgav okoc, Kaxa
7xviyea \iakx<3xa, 998-9). An incomprehensible vastness is thus reduced to the quotidian by means
of a domestic analogy drawn with kitchen implements.

Fig. 1: A dome-shaped 7iviY<5<; (Sparke, 1962).

Meton grasps his compasses and declares, in a torturously convoluted passage:

7rpoa9ek; otiv eyd)
xov Kavov' avcoOev xouxovi xov KauTruXov
ev9ei<; Siapfrrrrv"...
6p9co (a,8xpf|aQ) KOVOVI 7upoaxi9siq, iva
35

The German archaeologist Armin Von Gerkan protested (cf. Wycherley 1937, 23) that a surveyor would not
carry geometer's tools, as Meton does, but rather rods and chains. The two professions were not far removed in the
ancient world (cf. Dunbar 1996, 553) and yeousTp&o at any rate provides a nicely ambiguous verb that can appy to
either profession.
36
Rogers (1906) flummoxed by the syntactical contortions of the passage quoted below, gives Meton a "straight
compass" and a "curved compass," the latter of which he imagines to possess bowed legs. Dunbar (1996, 556) goes
to some length to find evidence for such an unlikely instrument. Nonetheless, it seems better to take KaujtuXov in a
very loose sense - not 'curved' but rather "redoubled" (cf. Wycherley 1937,25) and to assign Meton the standard (in
ancient Greece as today) circle-drawing tools of a compass and straightedge (not a square, pace Wycherley).
37

cf. Nu. 95-6:

VT<XU0' evoiKouo' avSpeg, o'i T6V oupavov
^iyovta; avaTteiGoucnv dbg EOTIV jrvvyeug

6 KUKAOC; ysvrjxai ooi xexpdycovoc; K<XV use

dyopd, (pspouoai 8' cbaiv eic, auxf|v 68oi
6p0ai 7tpd<; amo xo usaov, (Scrap 8' daxspoc;
auxot) KUKA,oxepoi)<; ovxog 6p9ai rcavxaxfi
aKxTvei; dTCoXduTHBaiv
Placing the compass arm on the upper side then, I inscribe the
curved compass from top to bottom in a circle...With the straight
rule, I bisect [the air] so that the circle may become squared and
form an agora in the middle, bringing straight roads into it, right to
the center, like the rays of a star which, although [the star itself is]
round, shine out straight in every direction. (Ar. Av. 1002-9)
If the direction signifier dvcoGsv is translated as "from the top of the dome" then one may
imagine Meton inscribing his circle as in fig.2.

Fie. 2: Inscribing a circle in the air.

Drawing a circle between a point on a circle and a bisecting plane (in this case the earth) may be
easily done. "Squaring the circle," however, was a proverbial geometric impossibility, and
Meton's claim to have done so is clearly absurd. Absurdity, however, is not necessarily a bar to

38

To square a circle means to construct a square equal in area to a given circle using (like Meton) compass and
straightedge, a thing which cannot be done, since the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is a
transcendental number. This fact was recognized (in geometric rather than algebraic terms) by Eudemus of Rhodes
as early as the fourth century and was known intuitively as early as the time of the Pythagoreans.

100

Fig. 3: Cloudcuckooland's streets, marked with Melon's straight rule, radiate

outward like the rays of a star.

comic action. To square a circle is to make the infinite number of vertices in a circle finite, and
this may what Peisetairos has done with his limiting wall that blockades the ever-present air. The
geometry of space itself has been refashioned, and the unboundable three-dimensional air has
been made to conform to the properties of two-dimensional land. Meton's plan for a star-city, a
central agora with streets radiating outward (fig. 3) is appropriate for a city located in the sky.
Cloudcuckooland, in the shape of a new star in the firmament, will take its place among the other
gods (identified with stars in the Greek astronomical scheme) and usurp their powers.
Cloudcuckooland disc layout becomes a standard shape for later eu-topian cities such as Plato's
Atlantis and even Thomas More's Utopia (see appendix, fig. 4-7).
The gates of Cloudcuckooland, like those of Dikaiopolis' New Agora, must be defended
against individuals who are unfit or unwilling to live under the new order. In the case of
Cloudcuckooland, it seems that Peisetairos' goal is to bar codifiers, rule makers, and those who

would tie his new space to earthly spaces by citing treaties, common history or religion. As
soon as Peisetairos has chosen a patron bird deity to guard the "Pelargikon,"40 a priest of the new
religion arrives to initiate the sacrifices. At first, he and Peisetairos join in prayers but it becomes
quickly apparent that minor differences in assimilating the pantheon to their bird associated
incarnations are intolerable to Peisetairos. When the priest proposes inviting carrion birds (the
kites) to the sacrificial feast, the association between rapacious birds and greedy human beings
resurfaces, and Peisetairos chases the priest away, declaring "I myself alone shall sacrifice"
(892). A poet, chattering in Pindaric and Hipponaktian tropes, is given clothes by Peisetairos but
sent on his way after he suggests that he has "sung the praises of this city for a long long time"
(realm. TidXat 8f| xf|v8' sycb KAT^CO 7c6A,iv, 923) even though it is still being built. The word nakai
must not be applied to this ahistorical comic paradise. An oracle seller attempts to tie the fate of
Cloudcuckooland to the destinies of Corinth and Sicyon (which would tangle Cloudcuckooland
in earthly politics), but Peisetairos disavows the connection, crying "what do the Corinthians
have to do with me?" (xi ouv 7cpoaf|Ki Sfjt' euoi KopivOicov, 970). Meton's attempts to make
Cloudcuckooland follow a comprehensible mathematical scheme are rebuffed, as are the
Inspector and the Decree Merchant who try to bind Cloudcuckooland to Athenian and
international law.
39

The urge to sweep away history and build a society unencumbered by the weight of the past has been
characteristic of revolutions and social experiments since the 18th century. To give one recent example, Benjamin
Moser, writing about the construction of Brasilia in the inaccesible center of that country, explains the reasoning
behind the massive undertaking: "Brazil's seemingly incorrigible backwardness, its painful shortage of economic
development, its embarassing geopolitical irrelevance, all would be waved away by a metropolis of stunning
modernity erected in the highlands...Brazilian history needed to be erased ("Cemetery of Hope: Brasilia at Fifty."
Harper's, January 2008, 67-74.)"
40
The "stork-wall" a name for the then-ancient Mycenaean walls of the Athenian Acropolis, and by extension a
common name for the Acropolis itself (Dunbar 1996,497).

No sooner have the massive fantasy walls of the city been finished than distressing
news reaches Peisetairos' ears. His attempts to make the vertical hierarchy of heaven and earth
conform to terrestrial standards of boundary and border are apparently lost on the gods. Iris,
goddess of the rainbow, has passed "through the gates into the air, escaping the notice of the daywatch jays" (8id xcov irnXfov sia87ixx' ec, xov depa, X,a8dv KOAXHOUC; (pvXaxaq fwispocKonovq,
1174-75).42 She enters on the mechane (Dunbar 1996, 612-13). In theatrical terms, this
undercuts Peisetairos' claim to have made the horizontal space of the stage encompass the air,
since even stage space that is interpreted as "in the air" has an "air space" relative to it through
which the mechane flies. Peisetairos compares Iris to the messenger ships of the Athenian fleet,
the Paralos and the Salamina (1205) ironically, since at line 147 he expressed a wish to find a
space beyond their range. Iris, for her part, expresses astonishment at the notion that the air has
been parceled and sectioned off, and seems to have no idea that this has happened.
lie:
Ip:
He:

lis:
Ip:
lie:
Ip:
fie:

Kara Jioiaq imkaq

siofjXGsg iq TO xeixoq a> jxiapcoTdTn;
OUK ol8a ud AC eycoys Kara iioiaq imlaq.
r\K.ovGaq ai>xf\q oiov eipcoveuerai;
Tipo^ Tovq KoA,oidpxa<; iipoof\kQsq; ou lAyeiq;
acppayiS' eysiq Jtapa raw rceXapYcov; Ip: xi TO KaKov.
OIJK ekafisq;
r>yuxivsi<; jxev;
ot)5e annPoA,ov
87isPaX,sv 6pvi6apxo<; on8ei^ aoi jcapcov;
ud Ai' OUK ejioiy' STie|3aA,v ou8si(; a> jxeXs.
Ka7tsvra 8fj9' OUTCO aicojcfj 8ia^8Ti

Cyclopean walls, such as those that surround Mycenae, were supposed in popular consciousness to have been
constructed by giants in the time of myth.
42
The rainbow is one of two natural phenomena that passes from on high through the air and appears to touch the
earth, making Iris an appropriate goddess to take on the task of heavenly messenger. The other natural occurrence
that follows this path is the thunderbolt. In comedy, violators of divine space have an easier time than those in myth
and tragedy - witness Bellerophon, Phaethon and the Giants, struck down by Zeus' weapon.

dm tf\q %6Xe(oq rf\q a/AOTpia<; Kai xov %aox>c,;

Ip:
Pe:
Ir:
Pe:

Ir:
Pe:
Ir:
Pe:
Ir:
Pe:
Ir:

rang

yap akhr\ %pf| TtsxsaGai xovq 0eoi3<;;

By which gates did you pass through the wall,

scoundreless?
By Zeus, I really don't know by which gates.
You hear how she "Iridicules" us? Did you approach the
jay guards? You won't talk, eh? Did you get an entry permit
from the storks?
What's this outrage?
You didn't get one?
Are you feeling all right?
No permit. No bird-sheriff accompanied you?
My good man, no-one's accosted we!
You must have sneaked into this city and into this region of
the void which is off-limits to you.
By what other route can the gods get around? (Ar.Av. 1208-19)

Peisetairos, having become a policer of boundaries and a city official, now finds that airy beings
like the gods have the same freedom relative to him that the birds had before. Despite his wish
for a topon apragmona, his citation of permits, magistrates, and entry laws shows him up as an
impotent martinet when confronted with a figure who does not respect space and borders. He
gets rid of Iris by evoking a mythological motif, the frequently depicted "rape of Iris" by satyrs
(Dunbar 1996, 613). The tyrannical side of Peisetairos has been noted often43 and it is here that
his desire "that the gods yield to us as rulers of the universe...and recognize the stronger race in
turn" (1224-7) starts to seem bellicose and megalomaniacal. Attempts by apologists for
Peisetairos to make his quest for supreme power over the universe seem "about nothing"44 or to
explain it away as a reaching for a pastoral ideal45 must face the swiftly accumulating evidence

See especially Arrowsmith (1964).

cf. Whitman, cited above
45
See Pozzi (1986) for a particularly convincing argument that Peisetairos is a tyrant followed by an unconvincing
attempt to downplay this in favor of a pastoral interpretation of the outcome of the play.
44

104
in the latter half of the play that Peisetairos' city is constructed entirely for the benefit of himself
and those gods and men who abet him. By the time the gods have surrendered to him, he is
roasting and eating birds as punishment for dissent (1600ff.) As Pozzi points out "it is not
nostalgia but irrepressible eros for power that propels the plot in Birds" (Pozzi 1986, 125).
Possibly it is both. The aim of a comic reinterpreter of space is often to become a kurios,
or head-of-household over that space, and the position of kurios is one of both citizenship (with
respect to public space) and absolute power (with respect to oikos space). At the end of the play,
Peisetairos is caught up in discussions with the gods over inheritance and property, like a good
Greek homeowner. Peisetairos' final act in Birds is to get married, like a Greek male of
appropriate age, an act which was followed in Athenian custom by founding a household. His
marriage will be to Basilea, goddess of sovereignty. As Newiger (1975) demonstrates, this is
qualitiatively different from the sexual congress with personified concepts that occurs in Peace,
Lysistrata and elsewhere. Basilea is not a personified concept, but a genuine goddess. By
marrying her, Peisetairos turns her into his queen/wife and Cloudcuckooland into not only his
domain, but also his household, over which he exercises absolute power. The oikos with its
resident tyrant is a social structure much older than the democracy, and an undertone of nostalgia
for the supremacy of this arrangement underlies much of Aristophanes' spatial politics. The
marriage of Peisetairos and Basilea recalls, in fact, a remarkable event in pre-democratic Athens.
Herodotus (I.60ff.) tells of the successful attempt on power made by the tyrant Peisistratos, in
which he dressed a tall woman up as Athena and used her to legitimize his seizure of power.
Campbell Bonner (1943, 208-10) makes a persuasive case that Basilea in Birds is to be identified

as a less blasphemous stand-in for Athena, and that Peisetairos1 marriage to her recalls
Peisistratos1 scheme to legitimize his rule. Even the names Peisetairos and Peisistratos are eerily
similar. Yet Peisetairos does not become ruler of the cosmos through force alone. It is worth
noting that the scheme to intercept traffic between earth and heaven fails. Iris and the other gods
have no trouble entering, and presumably passing through, Cloudcuckooland, and the idea of
Cloudcuckooland as a border town between regions exacting its toll is forgotten by the end. The
gods fail to receive their smoke because human beings, smitten with the new star in their
firmament, stop sacrificing. Cloudcuckooland becomes, like the mirage-Sparta, an ideal to be
emulated rather than a force to be fought.
Conclusion
Acharnians and Birds are the only plays of Aristophanes, and the first instances in Greek
literature, in which characters in the narrative create unique spaces whose nomoi are theirs alone
to determine. Character-created spaces are a response to the failure of Athenian citizens to police
the boundaries of their own spaces. The public spaces of Athens were the property of citizens,
yet they were traversible by foreigners. Athenian citizens who flit about the world in search of
material gain instead of earning it in their proper demesne, and who furthermore allow
barbarians into the sacred spaces of Athens, are bird-like in both their lack of loyalty to their
native city and in their tendency to "gape" - that is, to go about with their mouths open, saying
nothing and eternally on the prowl for sustenance. Dikaiopolis in Acharnians solves his problem
of economic displacement by creating an agora in which he is no longer a refugee dependent on
alien economic principles, and which allows goods from all over the Greek world to be traded

106
regardless of embargo or hostilities. Peisetairos founds a topon apragmons in which he, as
married kurios and tyrant of a comic paradise, has no pragmata to worry about. He turns the air
into the new abode of new gods, and as he sits at the center of his "star-city" he becomes, like the
mythological heroes enshrined in the firmament, his own constellation. These two fantasies of
spatial creation and control lie at the beginning of a long literary tradition of idealized kingdoms.
It should not be taken for granted however, that the urge to create unique spaces has always
aimed at the same goal. Cloudcuckooland especially is both a "no-place" and, for its founder, a
"good-place" but it is no Utopia.

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Chapter 5

The World Above and the World Below

In the previous chapter, Peisetairos and his companion ventured out of the polis and into the
wilderness, and from there hatched a scheme to inhabit the aether, midway between space for
men and space for gods. This chapter will accompany two comic protagonists as they journey
even farther, to the extreme ends of the cosmos of the Greek imagination. Peace depicts Trygaios
as crossing the barrier between human and divine, represented spatially as the air, to ascend to
the home of the gods, who are located not on Olympus but somewhere in the upper reaches of
the sky. In Frogs, Dionysos travels in the other direction, as he contrives a method of crossing
the barrier between the living and the dead. His goal is to reach the dwelling of Pluto, where the
shades of the dead are imagined to live, and which is represented as the terminus of a downward
journey. One play depicts a journey to the regions avco and one to those K&TCO. Both plays feature
what Edith Hall (2000, 414) calls "retrieval" plots, in which divinely inhabited otherworldly
space is the repository of something beneficial to the polis that is now lost, and which then
becomes the object of a quest. In both cases, the heroes reach their impossible destinations by
reconceiving them as spaces that are familiar and comprehensible. Trygaios envisions the
dwelling of Zeus as an ordinary citizen's oikos, to which he may travel to deliver an indictment
as he would any other pernicious resident of Athens. Dionysos imagines Hades to be equivalent
to an overseas holiday destination. He elicits from Herakles a "map" of Hades, complete with

108
directions, landmarks and hotel accommodations. This chapter will also examine the way both
plays connect their exotic landscapes to comedy's usual polis setting by foregrounding the
realities of theater and audience. The spaces traversed by the heroes are mapped on the layout of
the theater and its topography. Trygaios, having conceived of the dwelling of Zeus as, an ordinary
Athenian house, leaves the stage Athens, rises into the air on the mechane, and alights on the
same stage, reinterpreted as the domata of Zeus, with the skene doors now standing in for the
gates of Zeus' house. On his way to Hades, Dionysos crosses the stage, which is interpreted as
the swamp over which Charon ferries the dead. His companion must make the same journey on
foot and out of sight in a "circle" around the swamp. The actor does, in fact, exit through one
parodos, traverse a semicircle around the back of the skene, and reenter at the other. In both
plays, the audience is made a part of the action. Trygaios casts the spectators in the role of
farmers and laborers. He conflates the identity of the chorus with that of the audience, and he
enlists foreigners and metics along with farmers and laborers in a communal rescue of Peace
from her prison. Dionysos casts the audience in the role of tormented thieves and parricides in
the Stygian mire, and later associates them with the chorus of Initiates as they make a journey to
the underworld. The contest between the tragic poets becomes an enactment of the ritual of the
theatrical Dionysia, as the audience watches and Dionysos fulfills his role as judge of the
dramatic competitions.
The House of Zeus
In this section, I will discuss Peace 178-855, the portion of the play in which Trygaios has his
adventure in what is variously referred to as "the sky" (xov oupocvov, 55,70), "the palace of Zeus"

(Aibq a&X&q ,161), "the property of Zeus" (xfrv ondav tfrv xou Ai6<;, 178), and the place where
War has "set up housekeeping" (KaxcoKiaav, 205, eicrcoKiausva, 260). As these references show,
the place where the gods live is conceived as an oikos and its environs.1 Trygaios, by conceiving
of this space as an oikos on a par with the citizen residences of Athens, gains access to this
forbidden space, sidesteps punishment for his hubris, and brings back a cure for his city's
troubles. I will demonstrate a continual interplay and opposition between traditional ideas of the
gods' home derived from earlier literature and myth and a trivializing treatment wrought by
Aristophanes, who not only brings the palaces and lofty halls of the Greeks down to the level of
an ordinary house, but presents this overworld space as a polis community suffering the same
problems as Athens, albeit writ large.
The home of the gods is simultaneously a barbarian wilderness (with aspects of both
paradise and savagery), a space that welcomes those who have no use for the corrupting
7tp&Y|a,axa of the polis, and an other space where a missing quest object may be found whose
retrieval has the power to transform the troubled world below. Yet Trygaios will also find that the
microcosmic nature of this space reduces intractable problems to a human scale. War becomes a
single being who can be duped or discouraged. The myriad squabbling city states become
represented by individuals, who can be persuaded, organized and cajoled into unity. Peace itself
becomes a possessable female figure to be rescued and bedded. Even when presented with this
reduced scale set of problems, Trygaios cannot fulfill his quest alone. The audience, by being a
1

It is proverbial in Aristophanes that a Euripidean vision of the universe has the gods residing in a house or palace
in the cd0f|p "upper air" rather than on a mountain-peak like Olympus, cf. Thes.273 (ouvuui toivuv ai06p' O'IKUOIV
Ai6<;), Ran. 100 (al06pa Atdg ScouAxaov), both of which are imitations of Euripidean cosmology. Add the
Bellerophon parody and the entire central conceit of Peace can be seen as an extended burlesque of a Euripidean
idea.

110
constant presence both on earth and in the sky, becomes both the source of his help and the
means of his journey home.
Trygaios'Journey
Where do the gods live? In Homer, their dwelling is located in the most remote, forbidding space
imaginable, the peak of Mount Olympus.2 Zeus, as cloud gatherer (vscps^nyspexa, Iliad 1.511),
naturally holds his court on a mountaintop where clouds accumulate before storms.3 Here, earth
is indistinguishable from sky, and in fact the imaginary geography of Olympus has aspects of
both. This realm is simultaneously airy and solid. From here, the gods can get anywhere in the
world quickly, not only because they occupy a great height, but because they dwell in the air, and
thus have a share in the qualities of that all-encompassing everywhere-and-nowhere substance.4
Mortals who try to traverse or assault the realm of the sky are routinely punished for their hubris:
cast down like Bellerophon, buried like the giants Otis and Ephialtes, or done in by extremes of
nature, like Icarus. In the company of these bad examples, Trygaios announces his intention to
assail the gods. No mortal may cross the boundary between human space and god space, and at
first, Trygaios is flummoxed by the scale of his quest. In order for the comic hero to reach the
dwelling of the gods, he has to interpret this ultimate distance as a different kind of space.
Through his comic hero's power of conceptualization and interpretation, he must remake it into a
space that is approachable and comically trivialized, a space into which he will qualify for
2

Olympus, like most Greek mountains, does not realy have a single peak. Its shape is more like a bread loaf,
lending a certain geographic vagueness to the physical location of the gods' dwelling.
3
Powell (2004,140) calls stormy mountaintops a thunder-god's "natural abode" and cites the occasional use of
Mt. Ida as a home for Zeus.
4
West (1997, 139) explains "the Greeks in general tended to think of the sky (ouranos) as more or less equivalent
to aither, something of airy or fiery nature, perhaps condensed to form a definite surface." Homer, on the other hand,
describes a journey "to heaven all of bronze (oupavov ec, ;IOM%C$.KOV, //. 5.507).

Ill
entrance. Both the distance to be crossed and the dwelling to be reached must be conceptualized
as something everyday and unremarkable, so that approaching Zeus' home becomes as plausible
as visiting the house of Euripides. Trygaios makes a few false starts, as his slave recounts. When
the slave first tells the spectators about Trygaios, he is described as "gazing open-mouthed
towards the sky" (ec, xov oupavov |3A,ercG)v...Kexnvd)<;, 54-5). Gazing at the sky, often with palms
upturned, is the standard tragic posture for expressing desperation to the gods.5 Here, the only
gesture described is "gaping," in comedy the mark of a citizen whose political senses have
abandoned him, and who is about to commit some form of spatial transgression.6 His behavior is
"madness" (uaivexcu, 55), which in tragedy is often a punishment visited upon mortals for
disrespecting the gods. In Euripides' Bellerophon, the maddened hero casts the famous aspersion
"if the gods do shameful things, they are not gods" (si 0soi is Spcocriv aia%pov, OUK sioiv Geoi, fr.
292.7 Kannicht) and here Trygaios "rails against" (AxnSopeTxai, 58) Zeus. Trygaios' lack of
reverence goes further than verbal abuse of the gods. He seems to conceive of the gods as beings
who live in an oikos and who engage in ordinary domestic activities which nonetheless affect the
entire Greek world. Trygaios admonishes Zeus to "lay aside your broom, and do not sweep
Greece away" (KmdBou TO Kopruxrr uf| 'lacopei xf|v 'EAM8a, 59). This interpretation of the
relationship of the Greek world to the gods reduces human beings to the status of dust on a
doorstep, and Trygaios quickly shifts gears. Trygaios next looks for a means of going "straight

cf. Hippolytus 1190: Kal Jip&ia uv QZOK, sut' dvoaiTi^ac; x^pa?"

See above ch. n.
7
Imagine that Trygaios turns his back to the audience and faces the skene-roof. The latter space is where gods
often appear in tragedy (cf. Athena in Ajctx). With a mixed audience of Greeks behind him, the stage space suddenly
looks like an oversized threshold, placed below the appearance-point of the gods, and Trygaios becomes the
suppliant representative of the Greeks behind him. This is far too tragic an aspect for a comic hero to assume, and it

112
to Zeus" (n&q av 7tox' a(pucoi|j,r|v av evBb xou Aio<;, 68). His first attempt involves "little ladders"
(A-OTTOI

K^iuaKta, 69) which Olson calls "the sort commonly used for armed assaults on walls or

towers," (Olson 1998, 81). This siege of the gods' dwelling, modeled on the myth of the rebellion
of Otis and Ephialtes, is bound to end in the same way, with the assaulter cast down, and indeed,
the servant says "he came hurtling down" (Kaxappuei<;, 71).8 The concept of the gods' dwelling
as a fortress that can be breached turns out to be a useless conceit. Finally, Trygaios conceives of
Zeus as a malignant fellow citizen, and his means of assault as a legal one. He tells his daughter
"I am going to indict [Zeus] on a charge of betraying Greece to the Persians" (yp&i|/oum
Mfi8oiaiv auxov 7rpo8i86vai xf|v 'EXXd8a, 107-8). His mission becomes one of righteous revenge,
and, as mentioned earlier, he takes as the model for his journey Aesop's story of the beetle and
the eagle.

By using this story, Trygaios turns the vastness of the air into something out of fable,

trivializing the scale of the undertaking, and so he ascends into the sky.
At the end of his journey, he does not see the domata of Zeus, as Homer refers to the
gods' home. Instead he claims to see "the oikia of Zeus." This is in keeping with his new
interpretation of the gods' dwelling as the oikos of a single bad citizen, Zeus. The domain of the
gods occupies the same stage as the Athens scene before it, and Trygaios' reinterpretation of this
space as the oikia of Zeus is a perfectly logical reinterpretation from a theatrical standpoint. The
same door is there, and the same skene which stands behind comic houses and tragic palaces.
is discarded as soon as its incongruous humor has served its purpose.
8
Olson (1998, 81) cites a parallel story in Polyaenus 7.22, in which an angry general, also a priest of Hera, fed up
with his disobedient troops, attempts to climb up to the goddess via ladders. KXiuaicou; noXkaq xal \ieyakaq ^uXivai;
fjysipe, GDvGelq &Xkaq &c' &M.at<;, Kai W>yog rjv, eg TOV oupavdv avapf|aeTai Kaxsp&v npbq zi\v rfpav TCOV pqiKdiv
(be, COTetOowtcflv. "He assembled many great wooden ladders, placing some upon others, and the idea was that he
intended to climb up and complain to Hera that the Thracians were insubordinate."
9
See ch. 2 page 34 for a discussion of the beetle/Pegasus motif.

113
Zeus' dwelling is no different from any other house on the comic stage. It will be revealed that all
the gods keep there currently are "the furniture, pots and pans, chairs and tables, and wine jugs"
(201-2), the usual comic domestic bric-a-brac.10 The extended allegory that follows, as War
grinds up the cities of Greece in a pestle, is the same sort of kitchen play featured in Wasps.
Before Trygaios can participate in any of this, however, he first has to gain entrance to
this sky oikos. Aristophanes stages variations on the ubiquitous knocking scene. Ironically
Hermes, the psychopompus who ferries souls across the boundaries between Earth and Hades, is
here given the role of gatekeeper, expressing outrage at the spatial transgression wrought by
Trygaios. Three questions are posed by Hermes: the intruder's name, his father's name and his
place of origin. After some taunting refusal, the intruder answers two of these questions in spatial
terms: he is "Trygaios from the deme Athmonon, a deft vine pruner, no sycophantes and no lover
of pragmata" (191-2). This statement is loaded with the credentials that signify the worthiness of
a comic figure. The name Trygaios (and this is the first time it is uttered) is derived from xpuydo)
"pluck fruit" and thus has the agricultural connotations that signify virtue in the comic world. His
deme, Athmonon, is a rural inland deme like the demes of Dikaiopolis and Strepsiades, which,
with his claim to viticultural expertise, identifies him as a bomolochus farmer from the more
remote corners of Attica.11 He is no sycophantes, a type excoriated elsewhere by comic
gatekeepers.

Most importantly, he is no lover oipragmata. Like Peisetairos and other

adventurers who make forays outside the polis, he exists in opposition to the entanglements of

10

For the use of myriad domestic props in comedy, see English (2005, 1-31).
Dikaiopolis hails from Kholleidai (Ach. 407) and Strepsiades from Kikynna (Nu. 134) both parts of the inland
trittyes of their tribes (Olson 1998, 105).
12
cf. Ach. 819, 910-27, Av. 1410, PI. 850-957).
11

114
polis life and the corruption that accompanies them. These qualities, plus a xenia gift of meat,
win Hermes over and gain Trygaios entrance into the gods' oikia.
Unfortunately for Trygaios, the oikia has only one god left within its walls. Disgusted
with the pragmata of the Greek cities, which keep Greeks continually at war with each other, the
gods have "moved house" (e^wKiajievoi, 197). Using the common Greek idiom for inquiring
after whereabouts, Trygaios asks "Where on earth have they gone?" (ran yfj<;, 198). "On earth
indeed," Hermes scoffs, informing Trygaios that they have moved "to the dome of the sky"
(to'opavot) xov Kuxxapov). The gods have "moved their dwelling up, as high as possible" (auxoi
8' dvcpKicjavG' oraoc; avroxaxco, 207) and so have removed themselves one step more from
Trygaios' attempts to implicate them, placing another insurmountable layer of aither between
themselves and him. The stage heaven now has the same relationship to the sky and the gods that
Trygaios' stage Athens had at the start of the play. He will soon find that the problems afflicting
Greece below are playacted here on two levels. The gods' oikia suffers from a violation of space
by barbarian interlopers, and it also plays host to the metaphorical "grinding up" of Greece in the
kitchen of War.
The occupation of the gods' former home by War is, as far as it affects mortals, equivalent
to a replacement of political balances with tyranny.14 Now that the gods have "changed houses,"

13

The word icurrapov is such an unusual way to refer to a part of the sky that the manuscript tradition flubs it. A
Kurrapov is a tiny cell such as one finds in a wasps-nest (cf. Vesp. 1111) but Olson (1998, 108) associates it with a
Trviyeuq or baking cover (see ch. 4 n.#) and claims it is another kitchen-metaphor for the heavens.
14
The traditional order of the gods cannot be said to be democratic, but the roots of Greek notions of communal
rule may be seen in Homer's depictions of their quarrels and conspiracies. Zeus may be the ruler of the gods but not
even he is allowed to call all the shots, and the fates of mortals are the result of the gods bargaining, arguing, and
manipulating each other for advantage. In Odyssey 1, for example, it is the absence of the Odysseus-hating Poseidon
from the central space of Olympus that allows the other gods to begin pulling the strings to bring the hero home.

115
Hermes says, "they have handed you over [to War] to do absolutely anything he pleases with
you" (viiaq 7rapaS6vTE<; 5pav axe'xy&q 6 xi pouA,sxai, 206). The verb 7iapaSi5G)ui is a politically
loaded word. In Herodotus and Thucydides, it is regularly used of betraying someone or
something, often a city, to the enemy.15 The oikia of the gods, their sky polis, has been taken
over by the alarming spectre of War and his toady Ruckus, who, like barbarian occupiers, wield
unopposed control over the cities below.
Chapter 3 demonstrated how in Wasps the strife afflicting the Greek world became
miniaturized and played out in allegory in the kitchen of Bdelykleon's oikos. Here also the
dreadful cookery of the giant War is an allegory for the impending destruction of the cities of
Greece. Cities become ingredients in a concoction of muttatos, a spicy paste used as soldiers'
rations and a logical snack for a personified War. As War adds each ingredient, he names the city
it is associated with and throws it in the bowl.16 A handful of leeks stand for Prasia, punning on
the Greek word for leek, 7tpdaa. Garlic, frequently identified as Megara's chief export, is
Megara (cf. Ach. 528) and the cheese is Sicily (as at Vesp. 838). As he is about to add Attic
honey to represent Athens, War finds his plan thwarted. There is no pestle available to set the
grinding in motion. It quickly transpires that, just as the ingredients represent cities, the pestle
that will physically destroy them is an allegory for a human agent. The Athenian "pestle," Kleon,
is dead, as is the Spartan "pestle" Brasidas. With the human agents of destruction dead, it is clear

15

cf. Herodotus 3.149: "As for Samos, the Persians handed it over bereft of men to Syloson (Tf|v 86 S&uov oi
ilepoai ;iap65oo-av Su^oofivTi epnuov eouaav avSpcov) and Thucydides 7.86.4 "this was the main reason why he
trusted Gylippus and surrendered himself to him (K&KEIVOC; oi>x fJKtonra 5ia TOOTO 7ticTeooaq sauTdv x$ ruMjnwp
7tape5coKv.)
16
Olson (1998, 116) observes "[War's] threats both sum up the previous decade of conflict in the Greek world and
represent preparations for a new and seemingly final cataclysm."

116
Aristophanes sees some hope for the Greek situation, and he leaves the way clear for Trygaios to
solve the problem spatially. Peace (personified, it will transpire, as a mute bride figure) has been
removed from the immediate space of the stage and placed in an isolated non-space, the "deep
cave" (avtpov Pa0i3, 222). She must be "drawn out" (e^stacuaai, 295) before another "pestle"
emerges to hinder the effort. Even in this rarified comedy space, however, Trygaios cannot do it
alone.
How, even in the loose logic of comedy, does a chorus of Greek farmers and laborers
manage to make the same journey through the sky that Trygaios made, without the help of their
own beetles? Here, Aristophanes puts metatheatrical use of space to work in a moving and clever
way. Trygaios makes a dual interpretation of the stage space as not only the location of the plot
but as a theater, and brings the audience into the action with his direct address. It is telling that he
addresses them as "men of Greece" (&vdpeq "EXkr\veq, 292).!8 He calls not only upon the georgoi
for help, the farmers who usually constitute the virtuous heroes of comedy, but also upon
merchants (guTtopoi) carpenters (xsKxoveg) and craftsmen (SnuioupYoi), all of whom are
members of the banausic class upon whom Aristophanes frequently turns a jaundiced eye.
Neither does he limit his plea to Athenians. He calls upon metics (USTOIKOI) foreigners (^svoi)
and islanders (vnaicbxai). This call for pan-Hellenic unity is a striking as the equivalent sentiment
in Lysistrata, and the fact that Peace was staged at the Dionysia means that Trygaios' catalogue
may have described the audience fairly accurately. The arrival of the chorus, then, may be seen

17

For the controversy surrounding the staging of the rescue of Peace (is this "antron" behind the skene doors? was
there actually a pit on stage) see Arnott, Dover, Dearden
18
Olson calls this line "a striking form of address quite in tune with the larger spirit of the play: the spectators in
the theater are suddenly 'Hellenes' rather than 'Athenians' or the like." (Olson 1998, 129-30)

117
as an extension of the audience, especially if it is true that they entered via the same eisodoi as
the audience.19 Trygaios' interpretation of the space around him becomes simultaneously the sky
locale of the play, the theater where the play is being staged, and the contemporary Greek world.
Trygaios declares the moment "free ofpragmata and battles" (oOTaAlayelai 7tpayuaxa>v xe Kai
uax&v, 293).20 The space he occupies has been cleansed of the pragmata that foster war and
corruption, and the moment is ripe to effect his comic solution.
With the arrival of the chorus, the stage space becomes, like the comic festival in
wartime, a space festive yet with the shadow of the conflict hanging over it. The chorus declares
that "the day reviled by Lamachos has come" (304) recalling the war-free festival space created
in Acharnians. As in that play, a contrast is drawn between the carefree life of the comic festival
and the misery of a life spent at war. At 335, the chorus exclaims "I'm delighted and I'm thrilled
and I fart and I laugh as if I'd shed my old age, since I'm free of that shield of mine." Four years
have passed since the latter play, however, and War can no longer be banished so easily. The
festival space of the parodos is threatened, since War might "flame forth from within"
{e\j^i^mpr\aex, evSoGev, 309) at any moment. Trygaios warns the revelers that the festival
paradise will not come about until their quest has been accomplished:
urj Ti Kai vuvt ye ^aipsx'* ot> yap ioxe 7rco aay&c;
aXk' oxav Mpcouev amr\v, xTrviKatixa xaipexe
Kai poaxe Kai yeXax1, fj5r|
yap e^saxai x60' tiurv
TIXEIV ueveiv Pivstv Ka0eu5eiv,
eq 7iavny6pi<; GecopeTv,
19

Padel states that "spectators...shared more...than we do with actors in our theater. Each chorus was a group of
citizens...Many spectators had sung in choruses themselves. They knew the people singing. They entered the theater
by the same route, the eisodoi, used by the actors and by the chorus on their entrance." (Padel 1990, 338)
20
cf. Ach. 269

118
scraaaOai Koxxapi^eiv,
fauPapi^sivf
ioti ioO KEKpaysvai.
No, you can't rejoice just yet, it's not clear we'll succeed. But when we've fetched
her [Peace] then you can shout and laugh. Then you'll be able to sail, or stay
home, or fuck or sleep, to watch parades, entertain, play Kottabos, live like
Sybarites, and shout 'Io io! (Ar. Pax 337-46)

There are no fantasy elements in this vision, as there are in the paeans to wings in Birds, nor does
Trygaios' description of the good life include anything as implausible or socially transgressive as
the social upheaval of Ecclesiazusae. Trygaios' vision of an Athens ruled by Peace is quite
everyday, a catalogue of pleasures that recalls the life of a very recent period in history. The
fantastic element occurs not in Trygaios' scheme, but in the circumstances by which it is
achieved. The war, a catastrophe involving multitudes, is reduced to a disagreement between
small groups of individuals. The tensions between political entities are trivialized, becoming
nothing more than squabbles between members of a labor squad. The Spartan armorers lack
enthusiasm for Peace (479), the Megarians are too hungry to pull effectively (481) and the
Athenians are too preoccupied with lawsuits (501). The solution is to banish all but the georgoi
from the effort. With the farmers doing the work, Peace comes out of her pit easily (520). The
problems that beset the gods' abode prove much less intractable than those destroying the realms
of the Greeks, since in this microcosmos, geopolitical complexities are reduced in scale. Since it
is the gods' home, however, it is a space empowered to effect change on the world below. When
Dikaiopolis returns to Athens, he will find that the changes enacted on a human scale above will
translate into a state of peace at home.

119
Once the squabbling disorganized members of the chorus have rescued Peace from her
prison, it remains for Trygaios to bring himself, along with the goddess, back to the world below.
The return journey poses certain problems in terms of stage logic. Trygaios has to transport
himself, the goddess Peace, and her two helper goddesess back to earth. The mechane was only
capable of carrying one actor at a time.21 There is also a need in folktale accounts of magical
journeys to eliminate the means by which the hero made the journey in the first place. Hermes
informs Trygaios that the beetle is no longer available; like Pegasus (cf. Th. 285ff.) it has gone to
work carrying Zeus' thunderbolts. As with the entrance of the chorus, a metatheatrical solution
presents itself. The commencement of the parabasis requires the actors to exit.23 The chorus,
already shown to be a liminal entity that can use the existence of theater space to move between
worlds, takes the stage. By addressing the audience as Athenians, they interpret the space around
them quite naturally as the Athens that Trygaios departed. When Trygaios enters again, he is
back home.
Trygaios' visit to the gods' home in the sky turns out to have a profound effect on his
efforts to end the war. By becoming an actor in the microcosmos encountered in the world above,
a space that trivializes its manifestations of the troubles of the real world, Trygaios finds events
on earth within his power to control. By marrying Opora, the goddess of abundance, he becomes
kurios over the affairs of mortals, and a quasi-divine figure in his own right. Yet once he returns
to earth, he performs no miracles, nor does he make much use of theatrical space. Instead he
21

cf. Mastronarde (1990, 270)

Olson (1998,215) cites the example of Jack chopping down the beanstalk.
23
This is the case in all plays that feature parabases, with the notable exception of ThesmophoriazusaeM which
the bomolochus, tied to an altar, cannot remove himself.
22

120
relies on his powers of persuasion to turn aside unworthy stock-characters and bring tranquility
to Greece. The restoration of Peace to Athens is a genuine possibility even in the real Athens. An
Athens transformed into a space for rational honest individuals who shun war is fantasy enough
for him, and as the Peloponnesian War progresses, it becomes a fantasy whose fulfillment is ever
more remote.
Katabasis and Retrieval in Frogs
The underworld in Frogs, like the sky of Peace, is presented as a space that is both the end point
of an impossible journey, and the repository of something that once belonged to the polis but is
now lost. As the imprisonment of Peace leads to the persistence of the war, so does the loss of the
poets of the past lead to a decline in Athens' cultural life. Just as Peace can be "rescued" and
brought back to the contemporary city, so can a poet be fetched from the land of shades and
brought back to restore the city to its former artistic glory. Restoring the city to a state it
previously enjoyed is represented as something that can be accomplished via a journey. Again,
as in other comedies of Aristophanes, the solution to the hero's problem, which could be solved
any number of ways (through necromancy, for example) comes about through the hero's
reinterpretation of stage space, in this case through a reinterpretation of stage space from polis
space to the land of the dead and back again.24
24

There are other solutions to Dionysos' problem that do not involve a journey from polis space to the underworld.
The most well-known (and best-preserved) fragmentary play that treats this theme is the Demoi of Eupolis. The
standard view of this play is a "batrachocentric" one- that is, it is thought to depict a journey to the underworld,
along the same lines as Frogs. Two schools of thought have long held sway: either the hero Pyronides travels to
Hades in order to bring back the four greatest Athenian leaders of the past, or a scene set in the underworld prompts
these four to undertake a journey up above. Ian Storey (2000, 175-77), however, argues that there is no evidence in
the fragments or in references by other authors supporting the notion of such a journey. He suggests that the pattern
followed by Eupolis was that of a necromancy, a raising of the dead by magic, similar to the raising of the dead by
Odysseus in book X of the Odyssey. This would make Demoi quite a different play from Frogs, and suggests that

121
Like Trygaios, Dionysos wishes to travel to a mythological realm on the other side of an
impassable divide.25 There are three approaches to Hades outlined in this play. The first two,
described by Herakles, are darkly ironic. According to Herakles, the first approach is open to all,
namely death. The "road" to Hades is actually quite short and well-traveled. Hades can be
reached via "ropes and benches" (Kdtao m i Gpaviou, 121) which suggests a journey by sea, but
which turns out to signify hanging (KpeudaavTi). He then mentions a "well-worn smooth road"
(dTparcdc; ^tivxouoc; xsxpiwiEvn, 123) which really means the mortar in which one grinds
hemlock, and finally a "quick and steep" (Kaxdvxn Kai xa%iav, 129) journey, off the top of a
tower. One gets there, in short, by dying, a change of physical state. A second method of reaching
the underworld is to adopt a mode of dress appropriate to a ritual katabasis. Dionysos has
dressed himself as a stage Herakles in hopes of metatheatrically making the journey, while the
chorus of Initiates makes the journey clad in rags "to the Maiden's side" (400) as part of the rites
of the Mysteries. A third way is to reconceive the underworld as a tourist spot that can be reached
by a journey over sea and land. Dionysos pleads with Herakles to narrate his journeys to Hades
in these terms:
ifyOov Kaxd af|v uiur|OTv, iva uoi xorx; ^svouq
xouc; cove, (ppdaeiac;, si 8eoiur|v, oioa at)
%pa> x60', f)viK' Ejxi xov KspPfipov,
xotixoix; cppdaov uoi, XiuEvaq dpxo7iri)X,ia
jropvEi' avcmavXac, EKxporaxc; Kpf|vac; 68ou^
noksic, 8iaixa<; 7iav8oKSDxpiaq, oran)
Kopeu; oMyiaxoi...
aXka (ppd^e xcov 68a>v
OTtn xdxicrx' d(pi^6|a.6' eiq Ai8ou Kdxcocomic plots which center around interpretations of space were not necessarily universal among the poets of Attic Old
Comedy.
25
In Dionysos' case, that divide is only impassable in one direction, the return.

122
m i urjxs Gepurrv jufix' ayav \|/t)%pav (ppaarn;.
I've come dressed as you so that you could tell me who your hosts were, if I
should need them, who you met down there when you went after Cerberus. Tell
me about the harbors, bakeries, brothels, bide-a-wees, shortcuts, fountains, and
roads, the towns, the local habits, the hotels where the bedbugs bite the least... tell
us the road by which we might arrive in Hades the quickest, and not one that's too
hot or too cold. (Ar. Ran. 109-119)

In Dionysos' interpretation, the journey to the land of the dead is no more perilous (or one way)
than a holiday overseas. This catalogue is arranged like a travelogue; beginning with the point of
arrival (the harbor) the traveler next seeks something to eat at the bakery, sexual entertainment
at a brothel, rest at a way station, and proceeds by road and through towns to his pied-a-terre, the
pandokeion.
The description of the journey given by Herakles is consistent with the route eventually
taken by Dionysos and Xanthias. Herakles provides a "map" of the underworld for the
adventurers which is almost exactly consistent with their subsequent journey:
nouiECNF ramus
L K ' U f ' l l l l Q l HOCK

DmWTUlK

* ^

ROUTE Of DKmYSUS/CHAHON
FROGS

SMfflJS
HEETWG-fLACE

MRS*

IWTIOTES

PftNDOKDOM?

Q 5 OF FLUID

ROAD

Fig. 1: A map of Hades. Herakles' account is consistent with Dionysos' subsequent journey, transposing only the
sinners and the monsters.

Herakles mentions a "great marsh, completely bottomless" (Xiuvnv uyaAr|v...7cavu dpuoaov,

137), then "monstrous beasts" (9r|pia...fi,upia 88ivoTaxa,143-4), followed by a list of villainous

123
komoidoumenoi who, he says, dwell in mud (PopPopoc;) and dung (oioop). Finally, Herakles says,
the travellers will encounter the Initiates (usuur|Uvoi), who dwell "beside the road at the doors
of Pluto's oikos" (syyuxaxa 7iap' auxfrv TTIV 656v 87ri xaiai xov nX,ouxcovo<; OIKOUOW 0upaic;, 1623).26 Absent from his narrative are the frogs themselves, the alternate route around the marsh that
ends at "die-of-thirst rock" (Auaivou MGov, 194) and the precise nature of the monsters, but
generally the topography he outlines is unusually (for Aristophanes) consistent with the
subsequent voyage.
In a modern play or film, such exotic and otherworldly scenery would require elaborate
stage effects and detailed backdrops. Probably there were some props used, such as Charon's
boat, and the possibility of an elaborately costumed frog chorus has never been ruled out.27 The
following section will demonstrate that nearly every feature of the journey through Hades
corresponds to some element of theatrical space, so that, even as the stage becomes interpreted as
Hades, Hades at the same time becomes a theater. The movements of Dionysos and Xanthias
through underworld space are overtly connected to the realities of the stage layout. The audience
is not only acknowledged, but, as in Peace, the audience are given a role to play and brought
along on the journey. The culmination of the journey is a dramatic contest, before a Hades
theater of spectators and Dionysos, judge of tragedy.
Stage geography and Hades geography are shown to correspond when Charon refuses to

Parallels to these infernal landmarks: Ar. Gerytadesf fr.156 K-A) refers to "a river of diarrhoea" (Suxpotac;
Ttota^idq). Demosthenes 60.34 mentions the dead as living "nearby, one might say, to the gods of Below
(jtapsSpouc; ekoTCog av x\q cpfjaai TOTC; K&TG) 9EOU; etvai).
27

Cf. MacDowell (1972, 3-5).

take Xanthias in the boat.

We find out that it is possible (though not desirable, to judge from

the complaints of Xanthias) to take a detour around the marsh and arrive in Hades on foot.
Charon informs Xanthias he must "go around the marsh in a circle" (7tepi6p&;i Sfjxa if|v A,iuvnv
KDKA,(D,

193) and meet Dionysos at the Auaivorj A,i6ov.29 Aristophanes presents two ways of

reaching Hades, one over water via a straight line, and one over land, at the end of a circular
path. If it is true, as most editors say, that Xanthias exits at this point, then the journeys of
Dionysos and Xanthias correspond to the layout of the stage. In the imagined progress from the
land of the living to Hades, the two travelers part ways. Xanthias travels around the marsh
through "darkness" (OKOTOC; , 273) and meets Dionysos on the other side:
ROUTE OF XANTHIAS

Fig. 5: Dionysos and Charon travel across the stage in view of

the audience, in a straight line. The roundabout journey of Xanthias
takes him through "darkness " in a semicircle.

In terms of stage movements, Xanthias exits stage left. He waits until Dionysos, Charon and the
28

How this boat was represented on stage is a riddle. Dover (1972) suggests a boat on wheels pulled across the
stage by ropes. Allison (1983, 11-12) points to Eupolis' Taxiarchoi as precedent for a scene involving a boat and an
incompetent rower. The banishment of Xanthias is probably for practical considerations of staging and blocking.
29
The exact translation of this place-name is uncertain, but if Auaivou is an imperative rather than a genitive, as
Dover (1997, 117) proposes, then the name would literally mean something like "perish from dryness." Dover cites
the widespread belief that the dead arrive in the underworld withered and parchedfromthirst, but it is also possible
that the rock at the terminus of the overland journey is named "dryness" in contrast to the watery marsh.

125

Xanthias
exits...
Dionysus crosses stage in boat
STAGE

"

ORCHESTRA

Fig. 6: In terms of theater space, Xanthias also travels in a semicircle

"around" the marsh, by exiting through one parodos, going around the
back of the Skene through its interior darkness, and meeting Dionysos at
the other end of the stage.

boat prop have made their way from left to right across the stage, and then re-enters by the
opposite eisodos. Compare this to the imagined journey through/around the marsh, and it
becomes clear that Xanthias' elliptical journey and Dionysos' straightforward one conform to the
geographical realities of the stage as well as those of Hades. The "darkness" through which
Xanthias travels is the darkness of the skene interior. This is one way that interpretations of the
stage as theater space and as underworld space are kept within reach throughout the play.
At the other end of the marsh, Dionysos and Xanthias look around for the "parricides and
oath breakers" (7taTpataricc<;...Kai TOIX; emopKoug 273-5) mentioned by Herakles. "Haven't you
seen them?" Xanthias asks, and Dionysos assures him that "I can see them right now" (vuvi y'
op, 277). Editors universally take this as acknowledging (and twitting) the audience.30 By doing

Dover (1997, 124) observes: "The reference to the audience (with a gesture towards them) resembles Nu. 1096-8

126
this, the actor playing Dionysos brings the civic space of the theater into the underworld. The
spectators are given a "role" to play, and the interpretation of the stage space as Hades
encompasses the theater benches and the city beyond. As demonstrated earlier in chapter 2, the
illusion of stage-as-Hades is not "broken" by this sort of aside, but extended. The audience in the
Theater of Dionysos includes most prominent Athenians. One could say that the city is already
inside the theater. When the theater is reinterpreted as Hades, the city is transformed along with
it, and the resurrection of Aeschylus soon to come is presented by the poet as a transformation
not only of the Athens Dionysos has left behind in the world above, but of the Athens he has
brought down with him.
Theater space is foregrounded again in the encounter with the Protean monster Empusa.
Dionysos and his companion are unarmed, and his Heraclean garb is a sham. He has only one
defense against the horrors of mythological realms. Although his power as god of the theater
seemed questionable when his Herakles costume provoked ridicule, here his power to reinterpret
tragic fiction as stage space saves him. The Empusa is associated with Hecate, goddess of night
phantoms and witchcraft, as the scholiast notes. Dionysos tries to ward her off with two
traditional apotropaic formulas, one that means something like"aroint thee!" (i'0' fjrcep spxsi.,
301) and another that runs "take heart, all good things have been wrought" (Gdppsv Jidvx' dyaOd
7t83ipdyauev, 302).

These benedictions evidently do not work by themselves. It falls to

where Wrong forces Right to admit that the great majority of the audience is 'wide-arsed.'"
"An apparition, a familiar sent by Hecate ((p&VTaoua 8aui0Vic&8e<; imb 'EKfani; e7ruteu7i6nevov, Hsch., Schol.
Ran. 293)"
32
According to Borthwick (1968, 201) this and Gdppsv TIOVT' dyaOft 7re7tp&yauv (302) are echoed in other
religious contexts; the former (used in the sense of "avaunt" ) is echoed at Lysistrata 834 (10' 6p0f|v fivnep Sp^si Tf|v
686v) and the latter, a "hieratical benediction in the mouth of a priest" is a formula used in the Eleusinian mysteries.
31

127
Dionysos to combine a metatheatrical reference to the breaking of tragic illusion with an
apotropaic formula appropriate to a familiar of Hecate. He quotes the famous lapsus linguae of
the actor Hegelochus: "After the storm, I see again the weasel" (SK lcuuaTCOv yap auSic; au yaXrjv
6pa>, 303). This line, not normally regarded as apotropaic in any way, may actually serve two
apotropaic functions. The Empusa shape shifts into many forms in this passage - cow, mule, dog
- but by invoking the weasel, Dionysos names a "true form" of Hecate, and by so naming her
drains her of power.33 By referring to a notorious breaking of the audience's concentration on a
tragic fiction, however, Dionysos also reinterprets the Hades space dominated by Empusa back
into theatrical space, and so reduces her to the status of stage trick.34
In Peace, Trygaios used the audience as a link between interpretations of the stage as
theatrical space and sky space, and by doing so brought ordinary Athenians with him on his
journey. At 277, Aristophanes cast the audience in the "role" of tormented shades, bringing them
down to Hades with the cast. Now a similar metatheatric trick occurs here. The chorus which
enters after the dissipation of Empusa is generally supposed to represent initiates in the mysteries
of Eleusis.35 Why should they be initiates? Many reasons have been proposed for this choice of
chorus, from the economy of having a chorus dressed in ragged clothes to their connection with

In certain versions of the myth of the birth of Herakles, the attendant who fools Eleithyia, Galinthias (=yaXfjv) is
transformed into a weasel as punishment. In the Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis, Hecate, out of pity, adopts
her as her iepd 8i&Kovoq. Although this is a late antique work, one can assume the folk-belief associating Hecate
with the weasel is much older, cf Borthwick (1968, 203). For the power of naming, cf. Dover (1997,126).
34
Probably off-stage sounds; Dover (1997, 127) is probably right when he suggests that this monster was not
represented visually.
35
Although the chorus never identifies themselves specifically as participants in the Eleusinian mysteries, the
implications are strong. Haldane (1964, 207-209) makes a strong case for the uuw|n6voi (319) as being Eleusinian
celebrants, and discusses how Aristophanes could get away with "mocking" something so appntov.

128
Dionysos' incarnation as Iacchus. I suggest that an important part of the chorus' identity as
uut>r|Uvoi is their connection with Persephone. She is a dweller in the underworld who twice a
year ventures below and comes back. The mysteries evidently had a strong connection to the
myth of Persephone and Demeter. The procession of initiates is in one sense a journey to the land
of the dead, to a state of communion with the shades, and with Persephone and Pluto. The leimon
to which the procession marches (326) is both the field where the pannychos festival is held, and
the Fields of the Blessed which initiates will occupy after death. The journey of initiates, then, is
a parallel to the journey of Dionysos and Xanthias, a trip to the underworld with the prospect of
return. By making the chorus a processional, comprised of ordinary Athenians participating in a
public rite, Aristophanes blurs the line between the mythological space represented on stage and
TO

the city beyond. The chorus' song emphasizes the connections between attendance at a comic
festival and attendance at the procession of the Mysteries:
jtcopei VDV 7ia<; avSpeiax;
eq xovq t>av8ei<; ycoXnovq
A,sifitf)VG)v syKpoucov
Ka7naK(03tTO)v
m i naiCpw Kai %ljsx>aCp)v.
Everyone proceeds towards the flowery hollows of the meadows, marching in
time, mocking, jesting and jibing. (Ar. Ran. 373-7)
The chorus, like the Demeter and Persephone worshipping chorus of Thesmophoriazusae 319-80

Haldane, op.cit.
Even if Dover's assertion (1997, 130) that these are the shades of those who were initiated while alive is true, I
don't think it rules out a metatheatrical connection of chorus to audience, since at 277 the audience was identified as
the shades of sinners.
38
See also Weaver's comments (1996, 559-596 ) on the chorus of Eumenides and its identification with the
Panathenaia, as well as Bowie (1993, 10-31).
37

indulges in a song banishing those unworthy of the comic poet's approval from the sanctified
space they occupy. The list of unworthy komoidoumenoi not only includes those who sell goods
to the enemy (362) and bribe takers (359), but those who have not "been inducted into the
Bacchic mysteries of the tongue of beef eating Kratinos" (ur|8 Kpaxivou xou xai)po(payou
yA,coxxr|<; Bonc^sT sxeXecOn, 357), which, as Dover notes "assimilates Kratinos to Dionysos
himself (Dover 1997,131). It can also be seen as assimilating the revelers at the Iacchic rite of
the Mysteries to revelers in the audience at a comedy, once more bringing the audience, by
extension, down into the underworld. Dionysos and Xanthias actually join the choral procession,
which ends at the door of the oikos of Pluto himself (460).
"In what manner shall I knock? I don't know the customary way of knocking in this
country," says Dionysos (461). This stage door, we are to understand, is located far from Athens
and is not the Athenian house of most comedies. At this second liminal space, the door of the
house of Plutus, Dionysos encounters Aiakos, judge of the dead. He does not meet him in the
way departed souls encounter him, in his capacity as judge of their lives on earth. Instead, he
meets a comically reduced Aiakos, cast as a disgruntled porter. Aiakos names more features of
underworld geography: the "black hearted rock of Styx" (xuyo<; ueA,avoKap8io<; raxpa, 470),
and the "blood dripping cliffs of Acheron" (Axspovxiot; xe cKonekoq aiuaxoaxayf|c;, 471).

39

The

cl Odyssey 10.513-14

Ev9a |iv dq A%6povxa Ili>pu()A,Eye9a)v t s peouaiv

KrincuTog 9', Si; f] Ixvybc, vbazdq EOTIV dTtoppd)^,
jiETpn TE Bfivsak, TE 8I3CG 7tOTa(ii&v EpiSoikoov
There Periphlegethon and Kokytus flow into Acheron, which is a branch of the water of the Styx and there is a
rock, at the meeting place of the two roaring rivers.

frightening and outlandish nature of this description of underworld space is undercut by its
characterization as an underworld Athens. Plutus and Persephone are the kurios and lady of an
ordinary, if sumptuously appointed dwelling, as the descriptions of kitchen activity indicate.
Dionysos runs afoul of a female innkeeper, a type frequently denigrated in comedy. This
innkeeper and her associates, as it turns out, are metics (569). Even in the afterlife, it seems, ties
of Athenian citizenship still hold, and this woman can only legally press her case against
Herakles/Dionysos by enlisting the patronage of a litigious citizen. That citizen, it transpires, is
Kleon (569). Seventeen years after his death, the machinations of Kleon still haunt Aristophanes'
heroes.
Are we still in Athens, then? The underworld is inhabited by Athenian criminals,
Athenian celebrants, Athenian stock characters like the innkeepers, and Athenian politicians, not
only Kleon but Hyperbolos as well (570). Dionysus in effect encounters a synchronic version of
his city, in which past and present merge. The Athens of both the virtuous distant past and the
scurrilous recent past is very much in evidence. Dionysos has come in search of an Athenian
playwright, and finds all three members of the famous trio waiting for him. Like the culturally
debased theater goers of Aristophanes' day, the people of Hades are clothes stealers, cutpurses,
parricides and burglars (xoiq A,cojio8i3xaic; Kai xoTai PaAXavxioxouon; Kai xoTai Tcaxpatanaiai icai
xoixcopt>xoi<;, 772-73) and are passionately fond of the work of Euripides. Aeschylus, by default
the poet of virtue and uprightness, has a much smaller fan base. The reason which Aiakos gives
is that "virtue is scarce...just as it is here" (sv0&8s, 784). With this, most editors agree, Aiakos

indicates the audience. Why use ev0d8e instead of avo, the customary way of referring to the
living? The audience are included by Aiakos among the visitors to Hades. The stage, the theater
seats and the surrounding city have become Hades for the duration of the play. Hades has, at the
same time, become a theater. The contest between Aeschylus and Euripides is like an all-star
dramatic competition, watched by spectators and judged, as in real dramatic competitions, by
Dionysos. The use of scales to weigh the profundity of the poets' verses recalls the scales used in
the judging of the dead. Dionysos becomes a reverse Aiakos, weighing the worthiness of the
dead to enter the land of the living.
When Dionysos makes his choice of poet to bring back to Athens, he will transform the
cultural life of the city to the way it was when Aeschylus was alive. Here as in other underworld
comedies, the returning of dead figures from the underworld to the contemporary city results in
a kind of citywide time travel, restoring the polis to a fondly remembered point in its recent
history. The question "which poet should Dionysos choose?" can thus be stated another way:
which Athens should Dionysos restore? Euripides is quite recently dead, while Aeschylus has
been gone nearly fifty years. Dionysos' choice of two poets is also a choice of two time periods.
By choosing Aeschylus, he rolls back the aesthetic life of the city to the years pre-455, when the
empire was nearly at its peak, and, tellingly, before the Peloponnesian War. Pluto advises
Aeschylus "Save our city by your wise counsel" (1500). The chorus for their part, wishes that
they may "cease utterly from these sorrows and clashes of arms" (7iauoai|ie9' av OUTGX;
dpyaA,8(ov x' sv 67tA,oi<; ^w68cov, 1530-1) and that modern warmongers like Kleophon (1531)
40

Dover (1997), Sommerstein (1983) and Rogers(1910) all take it this way, and it seems plausiblefromthe
context.

might carry on their mischief only in the land of shades.

Conclusion
Over time, the polis gets worse. The great leaders and poets die, the good life falls away, and
decadent modern politicians and poetasters conspire to ruin a once-great city. So intractable are
the problems facing Athens that it seems the only recourse is through magic. Trygaios' strategy
for restoring the lost Peace is to infiltrate the power center of the cosmos and work his change
from there using the power of the gods. Only when he arrives in the sky does he find that the true
cause of the sorrows of Greece is the absence of the gods and the hiding-away of Peace.
Dionysos, on the other hand, knows from the beginning that Euripides is hidden away in Hades,
along with the other great poets of the past. Both heroes "travel" to their respective other realms,
but travel for a comic hero involves standing still and reinterpreting the space around him. Both
plays conceive of the worlds above and below as space analogous to polis space. The gods'
dwelling is an oikos, ruled by a citizen Zeus whom Trygaios intends to indict in a court of law.
The underworld turns out to be a shadowy Athens where the figures of the past, heroes and
rogues, run loose. In both cases, the presence of the audience is kept in the foreground, as a
bridge between the real world, the imaginary Athens of the stage, and the mythological fantasy
of the travelers' destinations. When the comic hero brings back his goddess or poet, he presents
them to an Assembly of real Athenians, and works his transformation on both his stage city and
the real one.
The sixth and final chapter will connect the transformations of space that take place in
the course of Aristophanes' plots with his advice for the polis, and his seeming nostalgia for the

133
Athens of a bygone era. The schemes of Aristophanes' heroes create a polis awash in food,
dancing and easy sex for the benefit of the hero and his like-minded compatriots. Aristophanes'
reimagined festive polis seems to be modeled on what could almost be called a sub-genre of
Attic Old Comedy, the Golden Age plot. In these comedies, which now exist only in fragments,
beings living the life of the Golden Age described in Hesiod's Works and Days somehow come
into contact with the contemporary polis, creating a space where ordinary citizens live the
blessed toil free life of the Golden Race. Aristophanes foregoes many elements of this standard
plot to create his own variation, in which the polis is returned to an era which resembles in many
respects the Athens of one or two generations in the past, but which has magical qualities of
abundance and ease which recall the long-ago Golden Age. Aristophanes' Golden Age polis is
more immediate and less magical than the remote Golden Age created by other poets, and
highlights the overturning of social norms for the benefit of the hero as much as it does a life of
carefree abundance.

Chapter 6

The Polis Transformed

The preceding chapters have examined the methods by which Aristophanes' characters interpret
space, the kind of interpretations they impose on the stage, and their attempts at control and
mastery of space, both the interpreted space of the stage, and, as it is implied, the city beyond the
theater. Many of the spaces they transform and create have something magical or fantastic about
them: the law kitchen with its talking dogs and testifying cheesegraters, the abode of the gods
with its ogre War, the sky kingdom of Peisetairos where human beings grow wings and control
the cosmos. Even the more earthbound transformations of stage space, such as those portrayed in
Acharnians and Lysistrata, seem magical in the way they banish the realities of war and bring
peace to both the warring cities of the Greek world and the squabbling factions of Athenian
politics. This chapter will discuss the telos of these transformations. What do comic heroes
actually accomplish by their schemes? What kind of polis space do comic interpretations and
transformations leave behind? This chapter will argue that Aristophanes' transformed and
idealized polis is a variant on a motif that was a mainstay of comedies by other comic poets. In
these comedies, as far as one can judge from synopses and fragments, a protagonist encounters
members of a Golden Race. This Golden Race inhabits space in which time has stood still since
the Golden Age, when, according to Hesiod, human beings lived a life free from toil and sorrow.

By contact with these beings, the polis is transformed into a paradise, in which automata ambulatory tools, self harvesting crops, and self-cooking foodstuffs - solve all the problems
afflicting the polis and create an ideal life for contemporary Athenians.
This chapter will trace the idea of a Golden Age and its characteristic feature, automata,
from its earliest appearances in Homer and Hesiod to its enthusiastic adoption by the poets of
Attic Old Comedy. It will examine fragments of Attic Old Comedy in which automata make an
appearance and demonstrate that, in these comedies, a transformation of a troubled polis into a
space characteristic of life in the Golden Age is a common theme. Unlike other comic poets,
however, Aristophanes does not feature members of the Golden Race, nor does he depict space
characteristic of life in the Golden Age. Neither are automata a characteristic feature of
Aristophanes' transformed spaces. Yet in their affinity for a fondly remembered past, and in their
transformation of the polis into a war free zone of abundant food and sex, the spaces depicted at
the end of many of Aristophanes' comedies seem to have a lot in common with the Golden Age
spaces depicted by other poets. Aristophanes' Golden Age is not the remote pre-Olympian past
recounted in Hesiod and recreated by other comic poets. Instead, it is a period on the verge of
historical memory, the early years of the democracy, and occasionally the period preceding the
democratic reforms of Kleisthenes. Aristophanes' transformed polis often resembles the polis of
this earlier era. His comedies do not demonstrate a yearning for the "remote past" as Slater
(1997, 123) asserts, or at least not as remote as comedies which restore the Age of Kronos.
Instead, they idealize a more recent past, the Athens of one or two generations ago. Several
comic transformations, such as those depicted in Knights, Frogs and Ecclesiazusae, send the

polis back in time, so to speak, to a period before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, and
before the rise of the lower classes eclipsed the dominance of the aristocracy. Within these
transformations into the Athens of the historical past, one may nonetheless detect scenes and
motifs that recall the blessed life of the Golden Age.
The Golden Age in Homer and Hesiod
Aristotle {Pol. 1252b) states that the polis is the culmination (xekoq) of the smaller units of oikoi
and village which comprise it, and that the telos of the polis, in the sense of its final purpose, is a
state of living the good life (TO ex> ^fjv, 1252.31). It is not surprising that Attic Old Comedy,
which sees the polis as a problem-ridden institution whose citizens are currently living anything
but the good life, should look elsewhere for examples of TO ex> fjv. Comedy turns to myth, to
fable and to fantasy for its depictions of the ideal life, expressed in its most basic Bakhtinian
terms of desire for unlimited food, repose and sex. This search for an endless revel recalls
Homer's depiction of how the gods live. Homer depicts Olympus as giant banquet hall. Scenes
involving the home life of the gods show a palatial life of feasting, as a Greek might have
imagined a bronze-age king or Eastern monarch to lead. l The food is in never-ending supply,
the music never stops. Although there are references here and there to servants, what really
seems to have caught the Greek imagination is the notion, of which there is the barest hint in
Homer, that in the ideal world of the gods, inanimate objects can move of their own accord and
perform the tasks they were designed for without the aid of humans. Objects of this sort are
given the name automata by fifth century comic poets, and the term is also applied to crops that
1

cf. Iliad 1.561-611 which shows the gods in "halls" (8d)uaTa) quarrelling over domestic matters, passing cups
around and listening to musical performances.

harvest themselves, and food that leaps into the diner's mouth. The word first appears in the Iliad
to describe the gates of Olympus:
"Hpn 5e udaTvyi 0oooc, ETCUCXIET1 dp' irmouc/
autouatai 5e iruAai UUKOV oupavou.

But Hera quickly touched the horses with the whip and the gates of the sky
opened on their own. (77. 5.749)

and here, the tripods of Hephaestus:

tpiTtoSotc; yap EEIKOGI Tidvtaq eteuxev
scrduevai Ttepi TOIXOV evaxaQioq ueydpoio
Xpuaea 5e acp' uito KUKAOC eKaata) 7tu0uvi 6f|KV
ocppd oi auTOuatoi 6sTov Suaaiat1 dycova
r|5' avxic, itpoq Scoua VEoiato 9auua i5o9ai.

He [Hephaistos] was fashioning twenty tripods to stand by the wall of his wellbuilt palace, and underneath them he set golden wheels so that they, moving, on
their own, could enter the contest of the gods and then go back home, a marvel to
behold. (//. 15.376)

In Homer, these extraordinary possessions are a feature of the ultimate privileged life of the
gods. Technology has a way of trickling down to the lower classes, however, and in Hesiod, we
find the privilege of living an automata-served life extended to the "Golden Race," the perfect
humans who lived an ideal life free from toil sorrow and death in the Age of Kronos:

XPU08OV UVTCpOOTlGTCXyeVOC, UgpOTTCOV &V0pOOTC(jOV

&0dvocTOi roinaav 'OA.UUTU<X Soouax' Exovreq.

o'i UEV jti Kpovou rjaav, 6Y oupavco u(kaiAUv
WOT 0Ol 5 ' E^COOV dKr|5(X 0UUOV EXOVTEC,

voacpiv atp reTOVCOVKQCI OI^UOC- OU5E TI 5EIA6V

Yfjpaq eitfjv, aid 5e Ttodaq Kai xetpac; ouoiot

TepTiovT1 EV SaAvnot KCXKOOV EKTOOSEV ararvroov
0vf|oKov 5' coaQ' uirvw SsSunuevor eoQXa 5e Ttdvta
Totoiv errv Kaprcdv 5' ecpeps ^eiScopoc; apoupa
cmia\i<in\ noAAov xe Ktxl acpGovov.

The immortals who hold the Olympian halls first made a Golden Race of mortal
men, who were of the time of Kronos when he was king in the sky. They lived as
gods, without grief in their hearts, apart from and free of toil and woe. Nor did
evil old age afflict them, but always with rejoicing hands and feet they delighted
in feasts beyond the grasp of all evils. When they died, it was as though they fell
asleep, all good things were theirs and the bountiful earth bore them fruit
ungrudgingly of its own accord. (Hes. Op. 109-117)

In Homer, the description of automata referred to implements, while in Hesiod, it refers to crops
and foodstuffs. Later Greeks seem to have seized on both meanings of automata and used them
interchangeably. Hesiod gives the presence of these magic items, and the lifestyle that they
bestow, a temporal fix. They existed in the Golden Age when the Titan Kronos ruled. Now that
Kronos is gone and the Olympians rule, so the story goes, men are inferior to the Golden Race
and no longer worthy of such a blessed existence.
The Golden Age in the Fragments of Attic Old Comedy
A generalized longing for life in the Age of Kronos, lived among labor saving automata, can be
seen throughout fifth and fourth century Greek literature.

The hope remains that the privilege,

once extended from gods to golden humans, could once more be handed down from the Golden
Race to ordinary mortals, possibly by seeking out space where these golden people live and
Plato (Plt.nie) has the Stranger give an extended description of life in the Age of Kronos , which he calls
6 auToudtoc; Bioc;, and its benefits.

acquiring the benefits of automata by contact. This wish fulfillment fantasy is ubiquitous in the
plots of Attic Old Comedy, as evidenced by the fragments of many lost plays, among them
Eupolis' Golden Race, Kratinos' Ploutoi, Pherekrates' Miners. An unusually large number of
comic fragments on this theme may be found in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae (6261 Q -270a).
Here, Athenaeus quotes from a series of comedies which, according to him, demonstrate that in
the remote Age of Kronos there was no slavery, since plants bore fruit by themselves and utensils
magically moved and worked on their own. H.C. Baldry (1953, 49) argues that these passages
do not illustrate the absence of slavery very convincingly, and that Athenaeus seems to have
lifted the collection wholesale from a work dedicated to illustrating the frequency with which
ancient comedy (excluding Aristophanes) depicted what he calls the automata paradise.
The next section will discuss the depiction of the automata paradise as it appears in the
fragments of three plays: Kratinos' Ploutoi, Crates' Animals and Eupolis' Golden Race. The goal
is not to thoroughly explicate any of these fragments, nor is it to reconstruct the plots in any
greater detail than that suggested by motifs of automata paradise and spatial transformation.
This section will show that even these short passages suggest a recurring theme of space
transformed from corrupt city of the present to ideal city of the past.
Remnants of the Golden Age: Kratinos'Ploutoi
In a play for which we have abundant and relatively intact fragments, Kratinos' Ploutoi, plants,
streams, trees and other features of the wilderness give of their bounty in an Eden-like setting:
auTOudTri 5e cpepei xiQvuoiXkov KQCI acpaxov Ttpdq autco
aacpapocYov Kutiaov TE, vcmaunv 5' dvGepiKoc; vr)|3aT
3

Baldry (1953, 50) notes that the word aino/iata appears in all of these fragments save two.

Kou cpAouov a<p0ovov coerceraxpetvounaai toiq aypoiaiv

On its own it bears spurge and sedge-apple beside that.

And asparagus and trefoil and in the vales blooms the asphodel
and abundant sage, so as to supply all the rural folk (fr. 363 K-A).

This wilderness is a revival of the long-past pre-Olympian age of Kronos:

olc; 5r]fiaoikevc,Kpovoc; r\v TO TttxAtxiov
ore Tolq aptoiq rioTpcxyaAi^ov, ua^ai 5' ev zonal TtaAaioxpaic;
Aiywouai Kaxa^>e^Xr\vxo bpvnenelt; & tjJtoA.oiqt re Kouooaai

they over whom Kronos was king long ago

when they played at dice with loaves of bread and on the wrestling grounds
cakes from Aigina had rained down, ripe with the earth clinging to them... (fr. 176
K-A)

Ploutoi presents two versions of the wilderness paradise: the one that existed in the Age of
Kronos, and what appears to be a recreation of this Golden Age by way of reversing Hesiod's
Kronos-to-Zeus succession myth. The Ploutoi are Titans. They introduce themselves in a passage
of choral lyric:
Tvccxvec, uev Yevedv eauev
nXoutoi 5' KaA.ouue8' 6V fjpxe Kpovoq
We are a race of Titans
Though we were called Ploutoi when Kronos ruled...(fr. 171 K-A 11-12)
As Hesiod relates, the Titans were "hidden away" when Zeus came to power (autdp eitei 5r)
TOUTO yevoq KOCTOC yai

eKdAui|je, Op. 121). The play has certain affinities to the hypotheses of the

lost plays of the Prometheus trilogy, since the Ploutoi seem to have been freed in order to bring

141
Golden Age benefits to mankind. They announce their freedom, however, in fifth century
language of democratic reform:
cbq 5E Tupavvi5oc, apxr] A[eAutai
5fjuoq 5e KpareT

Now that the reign of the tyrant is undone

and the people rule. (fr. 171 K-A22-3)

There is enough here to draw the very vague conclusion that this play in some way retells a
Golden Age myth and applies it to fifth century politics. It is not clear that the "mythological"
genre of Attic Old Comedy was ever purely about myth, but here at any rate there is a tying of
myth to contemporary concerns, and an extended metaphor - fifth century political figure as
monster/divinity - that recalls the "domestic" comedy of Knights. The implications for the
demos, if they are indeed identified with the chorus of Ploutoi, is that they are naturally a product
of an uncorrupted pre-democratic pre-urban world, much like the women of Ecclesiazusae who
carry on their timeless rituals "as they have forever and always" (wcmep KOCI Tipo TOO, ECC.
22 Iff.). Although the details of the plot are unrecoverable, the result clause in the above fragment
suggests that the wilderness described is a transformed space, either a polis or a desolate area
made over into a paradise. Since comic plots are character driven (random chance seldom plays a
part) it is likely that the unnamed protagonist of Ploutoi effects this transformation somehow.
The verb XeAutai in fr. 171 is passive, but it is hard to imagine another secenario than that
someone has done the "freeing."
Krates' Animals

One of Athenaeus' few quotations from Animals contains another description of an automata
paradise:
A: 7tiTa SouAov OU5E EIC, KKxr\aex' OU5E 5ouA.nv.
B: aXX autoq aurw bf\x' dvfip yepwv SiaKOVfjaei;
A: ou 5fj9\ oSomopouvta yP TICXVT' 700 itoinaco.

A: And then not one person will own a male slave or a female slave.
B: But will an old man have to do his work on his own?
A: Not at all! I'll make all the tools march about and work! (fr. 16 K-A1-3)

The verbs KEKTrjoETCxi, SiaKovrjaei and noir\o(x> are all in the future tense, indicating that this
discussion concerns a scheme by a character to transform the space of the play into an automata
paradise. The terms of achieving this transformation are laid out in a fragment in which a
speaker, most likely one of the chorus of beasts, lays out the terms of the new order:
A: nod TCOV pacpdvoov eipsiv xpfj
ixBuc, x' OTCTSV TOUC, TE tapixouq, riucov 5' CCJIO xsipac, X^0i
B: OUK dp' ex' OU5EV Kpaxq, (be, UUETC, AEYET', OU5' OTIOUV 56ua9a
ou5' ^ dyopaf;, OU5E tdKoovaq Ttoiria6u6' ou5' akkavxac,;

A: And you'd better boil radishes

and fry fish and pickle kippers, and keep your mitts off us.
B: You mean to say that we won't eat any meat whatsoever
not even from the agora, nor make any meatloaf or sausages? (fr. 19 K-A)

Ecclesiazusae (588-725) contains a similar set of exchanges as Praxagora informs the men that
their old way of life must be given up. In answer to Blepyrus' queries, e.g. "Shall men not play at
dice anymore" (OU5E Kufteuaoua' dp' dvSpamoi; 672), Praxagora explains that the things that

gave men pleasure will be abolished, and furthermore "that I propose to put a stop to the
prostitutes, one and all" (eitsvrcx xac, Ttopvaq Kataraxuaou (3ouAouai aTca^araxaaq, 718). The
schemes of comic heroes are often deeply disadvantageous to at least one group of characters
and here we see the outlines of a transformed world, ideal for the Theriai of the title, but not
much fun for carnivores.
Eupolis' Golden Race
Eupolis' Chrusoun Genos is another automata paradise play that seems to be mainly concerned
with contemporary people and politics. Evidence for the presence of automata in this play may
be seen in a fragment that describes an ambulatory cheese:
Aovjioq yp ouSeiq. <r\> xpocpaAiq eKsivnl
ecp' uSoop (JaSi^ei, atapov rjuisauevn.4

No-one's left. That cheese there is trotting off to the bath, wearing its rind. (fr. 299
K-A)

Other fragments are harder to connect with a depiction of the Golden Age. Ruffell (2000, 491)
suggests that the name "Golden Race" is used ironically, and that it really applies to a chorus of
freakish misfits. A longer fragment suggests a tirade of insults directed at this sort of group:
A: 5oo5K<XToq 6 tucpAoq, Tpvtoc, 6 xr\v KdAnv e'xcov
6 a-rvyuaTiaq Tstapoq eativ em 5eK<x
KEUTttoc; 5' 6 nuppoq, EKzoq 6 Sieatpauusvoc;*
Xouxoi uev eia' EKKOCISSK' sic;'Apxeatpatov
eq TOV 5e (paAaKpov 7raxKai5K'
B: iaxe5iq
4

According to Ruffell (2000, 501) the deictic iota is an emendation of Meineke accepted by Kassel and Austin,
and indicates that the cheese was represented walking across the stage. Stage space occupied by such a cheese could
only be interpreted as Golden Age space.

A: ovSooc, 6 zpifi&viov e'xcov (fr. 298 K-A)

A: Number twelve's the blind guy, thirteen's the guy with the hump, the branded
one's number fourteen, fifteen's the red haired freak, sixteen's the fellow with
crossed eyes, you look past those sixteen at Archestratos, seventeen's the bald
one...B: Knock it off! A: Eighteen's the one wearing a ratty old cloak, (fr. 298 KA)
Who is doing the abusing? At whom is it directed? Ruffell thinks that these far from perfect
people are the not-so-golden members of the chorus, and that the title is intended ironically. Yet
there is no example in Aristophanes or elsewhere of a play's title used in such a contradictory
sense, nor of a chorus called one thing but presented as its complete opposite. On the other hand,
the sort of negative contrasts pointed out by Ruffell do occur all the time in Attic Old Comedy.
Aristophanes routinely offers critiques of polis space and then stages idealized spaces that
improve or redesign the polis. More likely, the negative example of malformed individuals is
Eupolis' own Athens, and that the "alternative, Utopian conception " is Golden Age space. It
seems probable that Golden Race points to the audience of Athenian citizens for its critique, and
interprets the stage space as a world inhabited by automata foods and a chorus of "golden
people," a positive example to which the citizenry can aspire. As in Frogs and elsewhere, the
audience would be carried along on the journey, and held up as examples of sorry characters in
need of correcting.
With regard to fr. 298 quoted above, more compelling than Ruffell's casting of the chorus
as carnival sideshow is Edmonds' suggestion (1957, 411) that the numbers refer to rows of
benches in the audience. The speaker would then be contrasting the imperfect, corrupt citizens

145
of modern Athens with a "golden race" chorus.5 Two more fragments that imply audience
address suggest an address from inhabitants of an idealized space to the citizens of a decadent
polis:
to KaXkiaxx] TTOAI TIOLO&V oca<; KAitov ecpopai
obq EuSaiuoov Ttporepov T' rjaGa, vuv 5e uaAAov earn
Oh most beautiful city of all, which Kleon oversees
How lucky you were before, but now you'll be luckier! (fr. 316A K-A)
dpi0uetv Gearac, thauuaKociouc,

I count gajillions of spectators (fr 308 K-A).

A final fragment seems to be from a Praxagora-like program of civic improvement:
s'5ei 7ipci)Tov usv UTtdpxew Ttccvtcov ianyopicxv

Equal right to speak must be granted to all (fr. 316B K-A)

Ttcoq ouv OUK dv nq ouiAwv xaipoi toidiSe TtoAei

vv e^eanv Tidvu AeTrrcoi KotKcdi re xr\v iSeav

Who wouldn't rejoice belonging to the kind of city

Where someone scrawny and ugly in appearance...(fr. 316C K-A)

As in many of Aristophanes' comedies, we would begin with contemporary polis space presented
as space that is corrupt and troubled. The hero of the comedy would then undertake a journey to

The audience is similarly maligned at Nu. 1096-8, where the citizenry are referred to as "wide-arsed" and
Ran.277-8, where they become the thieves and parricides in the Stygian mire.

146
find the titular Golden Race, in order that they, like any other comic chorus, might address the
audience with a program of reform for the city. The hero's first task would be to find them.
Distance, Space and Time
What kind of space would members of the Golden Race inhabit? The Hesiod myth is a myth of
time and cycles. The Golden Race are gone under the earth {Op. 121), replaced by inferior beings
of the present day. They are denizens of a bygone era. In the imagination of Greek travelers,
however, traveling outside of the civilized Greek world, or even outside one's own polis, undoes
the certainty of time measured by waterclocks and local calendars. The riddle quoted in Krates'
Samioi "What day is it in Keos" (EV KECOI TIC, r|Upoc;, fr. 32 K-A) illustrates the lack in the ancient
world of any universal system of timekeeping.6 Time, then, is a nomos that is merely local. The
residents of distant spaces, whose nomoi differ radically from those of the civilized world, may
sometimes resemble the peoples of past ages in their habits and their customs. Space that is
distant enough can even exist in a kind of Golden Age. Odysseus on his travels routinely
encounters or hears about beings who live in a world of timeless abundance such as Phaikians,
Cyclopes, and the inhabitants of the island of Syrie (Odyssey 15.403-14). In the wilderness,
Peisetairos and Euelpides find the birds living in what Pozzi (1985, 122) identifies as a "personal
paradise" as they have since the creation of the universe. As noted in Chapter 5, the underworld,
too, serves as a holding tank for the people of past ages. Accordingly, voyages to Hades
frequently result in contact with Golden Age life. A lengthy fragment of Pherekrates' Miners is
an account of a voyage to Hades and the automata-like foodstuffs encountered there:
6

Edmonds comments "Names of months were local and adjustment of the lunar to the solar calendar often
clumsy., .the day of the month at Ceos...was proverbial for something nobody ever knew" (Edmonds 1957, 165)

147
jtorauoi usv dGdpnc, KOU UEAOCVOC, ^oouou TiXeooi
5id TCOV CTEVOOTICOV TOV6OAUYOUVT<; eppeov
auraTai uucrriAaiai KOCI vacnxov Tpu<pm
war' euuapfj re Kau-coudTnv xr\v evQeaiv
Xoopeiv Antapdv Kara TOU AdpuvY0<>T0^ veKpoiq

Streams, from full founts of broth and porridge fed

Gurgled along the lanes with sops of bread
Ready-to-hand and rich with rolls afloat
And dainty morsels slid down each dead throat
Of their own accord...(fr. 113 K A, translation Edmonds)

Whether it is located on distant islands or down in Hades, space in which one can live the life of
the Golden Age is remote in time and place. To approach it and transfer its benefits to the city,
polis space and Golden Age space must somehow meet.
We do not have enough of the plays to reconstruct how other comic poets would have
brought Golden Age space and contemporary polis space together. The issue is complicated
further because no surviving play by Aristophanes depicts the sorts of automata paradises seen in
these fragments. Yet there may be an equivalent to Golden Age space present in Aristophanes'
plays. It is curious that many of his comedies seem to recreate the polis of the past; not the
mythological past, but the more recent historical past, a period falling anywhere between the age
of Solon and the early years of the democracy, the age of Miltiades and Themistocles. His
characters laud this period as a time of magnified individual virtue, respect for tradition, and
agricultural abundance. The following section will demonstrate how Aristophanes creates his
own version of the Golden Age out of the Athenians' historical memory of an era which, by the
end of the fifth century, was already on the verge of receding into legend.

148
Aristophanes' Version of the Golden Age
The schemes of Aristophanes' comic heroes, as often as they have been called "Utopian," do not
look forward to a brighter future for Athens. They do not yearn for more modern ways of
thinking, nor for innovation of any kind. The object of comic longing is always for a semiimaginary idealized past. Although the comedies sampled by Athenaeus recreate a past that
existed only in myth, Aristophanes' comedies return the city to a time only a few generations
past. Time and again, his characters long for the days of Aristides and Miltiades (#.1324-5) the
glory days following the Battle of Marathon (Lys. 285), the days of Solon's laws (Av. 1660), the
battle at Byzantium in 478 (Vesp. 236-6), and the days of Aeschylus' preeminence (Ran. 1472ff).
The Golden Age is ahistorical and remote, while the era evoked by Aristophanes' nostalgic comic
heroes is one out of comparatively recent history. Surely Aristophanes must have known that,
although the recent past may have been preferable to the present in many ways, it was far from
ideal. Could the Athenians really have equated such recent times with the Golden Age?
Thomas Braun makes a distinction between two aspects of Athenian historical memory.
On the one hand, their attested history stretched back a very short time, to the conspiracy of
Cylon circa 632, while their "ancestral memory" as Braun calls it, contained shadowy facts about
autochthonous origins, the names of mythical kings, and the synoecism of Theseus. The Golden
Age belongs to the mythological past, but Braun demonstrates that the historical past had a way
of becoming mythologized, and idealized, quite quickly for the Greeks. By Aristophanes' day, a
strain in Golden Age myth seems to have arisen in which the pre-democratic era of Peisistratos
7

Braun (2000, 192) notes "Eupolis in his Demoi recalled statesmen from the dead to rescue demagogue- and
sycophant-ridden Athens from sleaze. He did not need to recall them from very long ago."

149
was remembered fondly as a time of agrarian bounty and freedom from the woes of politics.
Fifty years after Aristophanes, Aristotle attributes this idea to a fond remembrance of Peisistratos'
rule.
ou5ev 5e TO jiAfjGoq ou5' ev TOIC, aAAoic, TiapcoxAsi Korea xr\v apxrjv, aXV aiel
Ttapeoxeua^ev dprjvnv Kai kzr\pei xr\v iqcuxiav 5io Kal TTOAACCKK; 0puAAouv coq f\
neiaiarpdcTou tupavvic, 6 em Kpovou pMoc, euy ovve$r\ yap uarepov SiaSe^auevcov
TOOV uieoov TIOAACO YevecrGai rpax^Tepav zr\v dpxnv.

In other matters as well he [Peisistratos] did not irk the masses while he ruled, but
always strove for peace and safeguarded tranquility; and on account of this it was
often said that the tyranny of Peisistratos was the Golden Age of Kronos; for later,
when his sons had succeeded him, the government became much harsher. (Arist.
Ath. Pol. 16.7)

There is no clear boundary between the mythological past and the historical past. Aristophanes'
transformed polis displays elements of both; it is associated with periods ranging from the
decrees of Solon to the early years of the democracy (although figures from these eras never
actually make an appearance) and in its abundance and blessedness, it resembles the Golden Age
spaces depicted by other comic poets (although Kronos and the Golden Age are never
mentioned.) Aristophanes seems to take the Golden Age associations of the more recent
historical past to create transformed spaces which resemble an early uncorrupted version of
contemporary Athens. In this way, Aristophanes can have his spaces both ways. His recreated
polis spaces have roughly the same buildings as the contemporary polis, the Acropolis, the agora,
the Prytaneum and so on. They are dominated by influential politicians, but instead of corruptible
rogues like Hyperbolus and Kleon, the recreated Athens is the Athens of Miltiades, Aristides and
Themistocles. By recreating an Athens on the edge of generational memory, Aristophanes

150
interprets the stage as a space that is familiar, yet at the same time glowing with a penumbra of
legend.
The next section will examine three plays in which Aristophanes explicitly recreates the
historical past in the contemporary polis, and four plays in which echoes of the Hesiodic Golden
Age make an appearance. With the exception of Birds, they are not the same plays, which
suggests that Aristophanes' conflation of historical past with mythological past was not a perfect
synthesis. Knights, Lysistrata, and Birds show elements of the historical Athens, while
Ecclesiazusae, Wealth, Acharnians, and other parts of Birds depict spaces strongly reminiscent of
Golden Age space.
The Athens of Old and the Golden Age
The closing episode of Knights shows Demos "made beautiful by parboiling" (dcpeiprjaaq, 1321)
so that he becomes rejuvenated, in the manner of Medea's father Aeson. Since he is an allegory
for the small-d demos, his rejevenation also rejuvenates the polis and recreates the pre-Periclean
era of the early fifth century. The Sausage Seller announces that Demos now "resides in the
violet-crowned Athens of the old days" (sv taiaiv ioarecpdvoic; oiKeTtatq apxaiaiaw 'ASrivaiq,
1323), named specifically as the days of Aristides and Miltiades (1324-5). The stage doors are
now interpreted as the gates of the Propylaia, and Demos emerges into the recreated city. His
dress is archaic and he binds his hair with a golden grasshopper (TErrvyocpopac;, 1331) in the soQ

called Asiatic style popular in those bygone decades.

As demos of this Athens of the past,

cf. Thuc. 1.6.3 " Not long since have the old men stopped wearing linen chitons and binding their hair in topknots with golden grasshoppers (oi> TTOWX; xpovog ejisiSf) %u;cova<; re hvovq ETiatiaavTO (popowxeg Kai ypx>o(bv
TexTtycov evpaei Kpa>pt)A.ov &va8oi3usvoi T&V 6V TTJ KEcpa^fj Tpix<v).

151
Demos controls this polis space in a way he could not control the decadent contemporary Athens.
The pre-rebirth Demos acted the role of a ward under the power of a kedemon or protector, as a
nameless orator would tell him "Demos, I love you ardently; it is I alone who protect (Krj5ouoci)
you and watch over your interests" ('w Afju' tpaarr\c, eiui 00c, qnAco xi aeKori KiqSouai aou HOC!
TrpojfouAeuoo uovoq, 1342).9 "Made young" again, in a city made newly young, Demos now
begins to assert authority over polis space like a young bridegroom taking control of the oikos.
As kurios over this recreated polis, Demos imposes mastery of specific polis spaces, such as the
harbor (1366), enforces loyalty and fixity by outlawing the transfers of soldiers through bribes
(1369) and asserts his intention to put transgressors in their proper space, the Barathron (1363).
His final act is to accept his rightful bride Treaty (a7tov5aq, 1390), and take his place in the
Prytaneum (1404) the kurios of the city.
Women's revolutions can also feature a return of polis space to the nomoi of the predemocratic past under which the oikos was an insititution held in higher authority than the polis.
In Lysistrata, the womens' seizure of the Acropolis sends the men mentally back in time to the
year 508 and the attempted coup d'etat of Kleomenes, a time immediately preceding the
establishment of the democracy. The women are simultaneously cast as Spartans and as Amazons
(679), who were remembered as seizers of the Acropolis in the mythological past. The old men
who arrive to relieve the citadel do not understand. To the old men, impossibly superannuated
veterans of Marathon, the women are foreign invaders, compared to the Spartan king
Kleomenes:
9

Crane (1997,209) identifies this word as referring to an unequal and deceitful power relationship within a
household. In Wasps it signifies the deceitful relationship of Kleon to Philokleon, "protector" and client.

152
ou Y&P U(* T1 1 v AiqunTp' euou ^OOVTOC, eyxavouvrai:
Eixel ouo* KXeoyiivr\q, oc, avxr\v KGCTEOXE TcpQxoq,
dnrjSev dipdAaKToq, dAA'
ouooc, AQCKOOVIKOV Ttvecov
&Xxo 0amAaraxpaSouc,EUOI,
cuiKpov E'XWV itdvu Tpi(3coviov,
irivcov puircov draxpdTiA-coq,
^ TO)V dAoUTOq.

While I live, by Demeter, they won't mock us!

Not even Kleomenes who first held her [the Acropolis]
Got off unscathed, but breathing Laconian breaths
He went away, having handed over his gear to me!
Clad in a tiny cloak, unshaven, unwashed for six years! (Ar. Lys. 272-80)

Here the mention of Kleomenes shows up as a contextual archetype, into which the men fit the
women in their new roles as TroAiopKfjrai. The men also compare the old women to Artemesia,
Xerxes' Carian ally (675), and to Amazons, who were remembered as long-ago seizers of the
Acropolis (679). The Acropolis becomes, like the Old Athens of Knights, a space recreated out of
historical memory, a besieged space, occupied by alien strangers.
At the end of Lysistrata, with peace between the warring cities finally achieved through
the schemes of the women, the chorus of Lacedaemonians sings in praise of the battle at
Artemesium:

OKOC TO! usv ETC' 'AptauiTUp

Ttpawpoov OTOEIKEAOI
7iorc& xaAa TWC, MrjSooc, z' EVIKCOV

due 5' au AU)vi5ac,

dryv dbtp tax; xditpcoq
SdyovTac, old) TOV 656VTQC
TTOAUC, 5' ducpi rdc, yevua<; dcppoc, fjvaei

153
itoAuq 5' <xua KQCTTOOV oKeAoov acppoc, IETO.
rjv yap Twv5pe<; OUK eAdaoax;
rac, ipduuac, toi rigpoai

At Artemesium, they conquered the ships of the Medes like gods, a beautiful
victory! The soldiers of Leonidas were like savage boars sharpening their tusks.
Much sweat was on their cheeks, and much sweat soaked their limbs, for the
Persians were as numerous as sand grains on the shore. (Ar. Lys. 1251-61)

Athens and Sparta are reconciled by the presence of the female personification ofDiallage
(Reconciliation), and Athens has become once again as it was in the days of the alliance. This
period, between the Persian Wars and the fracturing of the alliance after the exile of Cimon in
462 is a particular locus of Aristophanic nostalgia, as De Ste. Croix observes:
He was very much against the war: he thought it should never have been allowed
to break out in the first place, and that any chance of bringing it to an end and
making peace with Sparta should be eagerly embraced; the admirable situation
which had existed before the coming to power of the radical democrats could then
be restored and Athens and Sparta could dominate the Greek world jointly. In this
last respect, as well as in his general political position, Aristophanes can be
described as a "Cimonian." (De Ste. Croix 1972, 358).
Longing for the past, desire for control over space (over the polis by the kaloi kagathoi and over
Greece by the hegemony of Athens and Sparta), and an antipathy towards the democracy in its
extreme forms are themes which permeate Aristophanes' politics, as De Ste. Croix (1972)
Gomme (1938), Sommerstein (1996, 327-356) and many others have noted. By transforming the
war torn city into a space which recalls the era of Cimon, all three desires may be fulfilled for the
city: peace reigns, Athenians and Spartans control the Greek world, and democratic politics are
dominated by the old families again, as they were before the enfranchisement of the lower

classes. The endings of Knights and Lysistrata especially seem to transform the polis into the
Athens of this period.
Birds calls for the recreation of two kinds of Golden Age space: one that recreates the
time of the tyrant Peisistratos, and one that resembles the ahistorical Golden Age spaces of other
comic poets. Birds creates a polis analogue under the sway of a sole ruler. Cloudcuckooland has
many affinities with earlier, pre-democracy versions of Athens. Peisetairos mentions "the Stork
wall of the city" (tfjq jtoAeooc, TO neAocpyiKOV, 832), a reference to the city wall of the Acropolis
destroyed in 480.' l Placing the recreated city even further back in time are the actions of
Peisetairos which recall the era of tyrants. One scholar has even famously argued that the
marriage of Peisetairos to Basileia is meant to recall Herodotus' account of the grand entrance of
the tyrant Peisistratos with the "tall woman" dressed as Athena.

There is, however, a

remarkable echo of real pseudo-Hesiodic Golden Age space in Birds. That is the reversal of the
comic order proposed in the parabasis, where the gods are to be replaced with a pre-Olympian
set of deities, the birds. In Ploutoi, the eponymous companions of Kronos were revived and
given some kind of sovereignty over polis space. In a similar way, the bird chorus of Birds claim
Aristophanes seems to blame the institution of dicastic pay circa 461 for the advent of a class of elderly jurors
under the sway of demagogue like Kleon. Wasps is entirely devoted to a transformational fantasy that undoes
this act. For more jibes at the juries, see also Nu. 208, and Thes.78.
11
The original city-wall of the Acropolis, the Pelargikon, was supposed by Herodotus (5.64) to have been built by
the autochthonous peoples of Attica, hence its alternate name "Pelasgikon." It was destroyed during the sack of
Athens by the Persians in 480 (Hopper 1963, 10).
12
Herodotus (1.60) tells of the scheme used by Peisistratos' enablers to dupe the Athenians into accepting him
back from exile. They found an unusually tall woman, dressed her in armor and stood her in a chariot next to the
returning tyrant, proclaiming her to be Athena, and urging the citizens to accept Peisistratos now that he was
divinely sponsored. Campbell Bonner (1943, 208-10) draws many parallels between the closing scenes of Birds,
with its "marriage" between Peisetairos and Basileia and the latter's assumption of sovereignty over the city and the
cosmos. He suggests that Aristophanes had this anecdote in mind, citing the similarities of the marriage-andinheritance motif, similarities between language used at Av. 1537 and language used to describe Athena at Eutn. 8278, and finally the curious similarity between the unusual names Peisetairos and Peisistratos.

155
to be the companions of Eros, a pre-Olympian deity (704). When Peisetairos encounters them,
they live a Golden Age existence, subsisting, like the Golden Race, on the bounty of the earth
which they do not have to harvest, such as abundant "myrtle and midges" (83) as well as
"sesame, myrtle, poppyseeds, and sysymbria" (159-60). When human beings replace the
Olympian gods with the birds, the chorus promises:
KOUK dnroSpdvTsq

Ka0e5ouu0' avco aeuvuvousvoi

raxpa talc; vecpeAaiq coarap x& Zeuc/
aXka TtapovTsq Swcousv uutv
auToTc,, Ttaiaiv, TKXISOOV rociaiv,
TiAouOuyieiav
eu5aiuoviav (3iov eiprjvnv
vsotnta yiXoixa xopouc, Qakiaq
ydXa T' 6pvi6cov. wore napiaxai
KOTriav uuiv UJIO xcov ayaQ&v
OUTO) TtAouTTJaETe itch/Tec;.

And we won't skedaddle off and hide ourselves to high up among the clouds like
that Zeus, but we'll dwell among you and give you and your children and your
children's children health and wealth, the good life of peace, youth, laughter,
feasting and singing, the delicacies of the birds so that you'll all have it so good
you'll be surfeited with wealth and happiness. (Ar. Av. 726-737)

Like the Ploutoi, the birds promise to free human beings from toil and want, directly promising
the audience the chance of life in an avian Golden Age (754). In an Aristophanic twist, they also
promise to sweep away constricting social nomoi and make life ideal for comic lowlifes and
pleasure seekers. Sons may beat fathers with impunity (767), social climbing slaves who lack
pedigree can create themselves "forefeathers" (TtccTntouq, 766 ) and spectators who tire of tragedy
may use their new wings to fly away from the theater, stuff their faces (790), defecate (791) and

156
commit adultery (795-6).
The revolutionary women of Ecclesiazusae also return Athens to a vaguely remembered
past, a time when the nomoi that governed the lives of men and women were not decreed in the
agora but grounded in cult and ritual. The new city is run like a giant oikos, with the citizens
compared to members of a "family" and all contributing equally. Praxagora abolishes the cash
economy (819-30) returning the city to an agrarian idyll of shared abundance. Her prophecy to
Blepyrus about the blissful life the poor will enjoy under her reforms recalls the life of the Age of
Kronos.
ouSdc; ou5v Tievioc Spdaa.TCCCVTCXyap e^ouaiv anavreq
apTOUc, teudxri ud^aq jkaivao, oivov atecpdvouc, eps^ivGouc;
The poor will no longer have to work, for all the people will have everything
Bread, salt fish, cakes, cloaks, wine, garlands, chickpeas. (Ar. Ecc. 605-6)

Praxagora's "reforms" are conceived, as she tells the women, not as innovations, but as a return
to a blissful past.
Kouxi ueTomapoouevaq
i5oiq ccv autdq. r\ 5' 'AOnvaiwv TioAiq,
d TOUTO xptloTOoq eixev, OUK CCV eaco^eto,
ei urj TI Kouvdv aXko Ttepinpyd^eTO

And you wouldn't ever see [the women] experimenting with something different.
But the city of the Athenians, if they had something useful, they wouldn't
preserve it if they could throw it out in favor of some novelty. (Ar. Ecc. 217-20)
Her reinterpreted Athens is presented to the men, however, as a radical innovation, to suit their
lust for the newfangled. The Neighbor assures Praxagora "Don't be afraid to do something novel
while scorning the old ways. Doing that sort of thing's a virtue as far as we're concerned" (586-

7). Her "new Athens," as radical as its communal agenda and enfranchisement of women may
seem, results in a generous citywide feast which, in its plenitude and free availability to all,
resembles the rural abundance of the Golden Age. The chorus describes the centerpiece of the
feast as what Sommerstein (1998, 238) calls "an impossible fantasy dish" consisting of multiple
ingredients, combined to form the longest word ever created in the Greek language. This "feast
of victory" (1182) celebrates not only a hoped-for victory in the comic competition, but a real
victory in the women's attempt to transform the polis into a space surreal and idyllic.
Chremylus, the hero of Wealth, through his restoration of sight to the blind god of the
same name, effects a change on the cosmos no less profound than that wrought by Peisetairos.
Like Peisetairos, his actions cause the gods to starve through dearth of sacrifices (1120-4). His
slave's description of the change in his house, a change that has come about through his
restoration of justice to the world, describes a life free from want and labor:

coq r|5u updrcew d)v5pec, ear' euSaiuovtoq,

Kori tauta un.5ev E^EVEYKOVT' OIKO0EV.
fiuiv yap dyaSoov aoopoc, EC, xr\v oiKiav
HcnTE7tavKv OU5EV ri5iKr|K6aiv.
OUTCO TO TTAOUTEIV EOTIV fi5u Tipdyua 5rj.
r| UEV amun. UECTOI 'cm AEUKCOV dAcpftcov,
oi 5' aucpopfjc, orvou UEAOVOC, &v8oaufou.
ajtavta 5' rjuiv dpyupiou Kori xpucnou
td GKEudpia TtAipri 'OTIV, ware 0auudaai.
TO cppeap 5' EAaiou UEOTOV ai 5E AiqKu8oi
uupou yeuouoi, TO 5' uitEpwov iaxd5cov.
o^lq 5E rcaaa nal AortdSiov Kal xuTpa
XcxAKfj yiyove- xovq 5e mvaKiaKouc, TOUC; oaixpouc;
TOUC; IxBuripouq dpyupouc, 7rdpo6' opav.
6 5' ijtvoc, yEyov' rjutv E^ajtivriq EAEcpdvTivoc;.
GTCXTfjpai 5' Oi 6pdTT0VTC dpTld^OUEV

158
Xpvoolc;' &Tto4>a>jjc9a 5' ou AiGoiq en,
aXka aKopoSioic; UTTO rpucpfft K6LCTOX.
Kori vuv 6 5eait6TT]<; uev evSov (tauOu-reT
uv xal rpdyov Kal Kpiov ea-rscpavoouevoc,'

How sweet it is, gentlemen, to live the good life and it costs the household
nothing! A flood of good things falls on our house and we haven't done anything
shady! Here's what a great thing wealth is: The hoppers are filled with white meal
and the amphorae are full of sweet smelling dark wine. All our coffers are full of
silver and gold, a miracle to behold! The jug is filled with olive oil, the lekuthoi
are full of perfume, and the attic with dried figs. All the flasks, the plates, and the
pitchers are made of bronze and the rotted wooden boards we served fish on are
now made of silver. The oven has suddenly become fashioned of ivory. The rest
of us, the servants, pitch pennies with gold pieces, and we don't even wipe our
arses with stones anymore, but use garlic bulbs. Even now, our master, crowned
with garlands, is indoors sacrificing a boar, a goat and a ram. (Ar. Plut. 802-820).

Chremylus and his household live in absurd hyperbolic luxury, even to the point of baking in an
ivory oven and giving the slaves gold pieces to play with. The hero's impossible magical scheme
has paid off, and humankind everywhere (the right sort of humans, at any rate: those formerly
poor and mistreated) live the life of the blessed. The entire world reverts to a version of the Age
of Kronos, missing only the ambulatory tools and foods that jump into the mouth.
Even in this overtly magical space, whose sources are unmistakeably mythological, there
is an absence of automata. Although automata appear briefly here and there, Aristophanes'
transformed polis does not need them. In earlier accounts of the Golden Age, the goal was
freedom for idleness and satisfaction of basic appetites. The transformations wrought by
Aristophanes' heroes aim for more. They want to live subversively, overturning the rules of
refined urban society. The schemes of Aristophanes' heroes do not result in spaces populated by
automata. Instead, his protagonists seek to create spaces where, as the chorus of Birds phrases it

159
"everything shameful and forbidden by law is thought delightful" (oca yap eaxiv v9d5' aiaxpa
TO) vouto

Kpatouueva, xaura jrdcvT1 eariv nap' nuiv TOIGIV opviaw

K<X\&,

757-8). Peisetairos and

Euelpides seek a city where people routinely invite them to gorge at wedding feasts (130-3) and
where the fathers of handsome youths take offense if rogues like the heroes do not avail
themselves of their progeny sexually (137-42). Dikaiopolis wants a city "free of war and pillage
and [the general] Lamachus" (270-1) where he can have free sexual access to his neighbors'
slave girls. Trygaios describes a politician- and general-free city ruled by the goddess Peace, a
place of unrestrained personal freedom, where "you'll be able to sail, or stay home, or fuck or
sleep, to watch parades, entertain, play Kottabos, live like Sybarites, and shout 'Io io!" (337-46).
There is very little about this bomolochus paradise that is magical or supernatural. Its unreality
comes in its subversion of social taboos and its disregard for necessities born of scarcity,
pragmata and conflict. It is a vision of public space that seems as though it would be almost
achievable if people did not insist on waging war, competing for profit, jostling for social
position. Like the past decades to which his heroes long to return, the transformed polis of
Aristophanes is something on the edge of possibility, but always just out of reach.
Conclusion
The "fantasy politics," as Dana Pozzi (1986,119) calls them, which drive Aristophanes' plots,
impose new sets of nomoi on the polis. They outlaw war, exclude corrupt and decadent
troublemakers, and transform polis space into an almost magical paradise of abundant goods and
unrestrained fulfillment of desires. They seem to involve the hand of some deity, but the only
gods shown exerting an influence over the comic heros' schemes are the mute female

personifications of Peace, Reconciliation, Sovereignty and others. It is clear from the fragments
of other comic poets that the motif of magically transformed polis space derives from a comic
subgenre in which members of the Golden Race somehow encounter Greeks of the present day,
transforming the city by their presence and wisdom. While Aristophanes' comedies owe
something to this genre, his Golden Age is altogether more real and tangible, despite its often
outlandish qualities. By expressing a desire to recreate the city as the polis of an era that existed
in historical memory, he holds an almost achievable ideal in front of his fellow citizens, all the
more tantalizing for its fantastic nature.
The conclusion to this dissertation will survey what has been discussed so far and will
also attempt to at least partially answer the question raised in the introduction of whether such
outlandish and fantasy driven plots can have anything of substance to say to the polis and its
citizens.

161

Overall Conclusion: Trugedy 's Truth

Summary
Chapter 1 of this dissertation, "Interpreting Space," demonstrated the fundamental difference in
the way tragedy sets the scene for the audience, and the way comedy does it. The first few lines
of a tragedy explicitly define the setting for the audience, after which it rarely changes.
Aristophanes, on the other hand, takes this act of "interpreting space" and makes it a central
factor in comic action. He gives comic heroes the power to interpret and reinterpret the space
around them as they work comic transformations on the polis. Comic characters are forever
presenting competing versions of stage space, arguing for the supremacy of one sort of space
over another, remaking the contemporary world of the play into the world of a tragedy, and
transforming the polis into a blissful festival paradise. The polis presented at the start of a
comedy is troubled, and it is up to the comic hero to transform this troubled space through his
power to manipulate space. The transformation of the Athens represented on the stage is meant to
mirror a hoped-for change in the Athens that surrounds and pervades the space of the theater.
Chapter 2, "Theatrical Space" argued that supposed "breaches" of dramatic illusion in

162
Attic Old Comedy do not shatter a fragile fictional world, but instead serve to highlight the
relationship between the comic polis of the stage and the real polis beyond. Comic heroes who
make use of the ropes and pulleys of the theater are given the power of the playwright to wreak
transformative havoc on their world. Trygaios, for example, inhabits a universe in which a
gargantuan dung beetle eats real excrement and can fly all the way to the gods, but which at the
same time is operated by a mechanopoios. Trygaios is able to draw on the theatrical dimension of
his stage world, and to use it to effect fantastic dramatic shortcuts to achieve his goal of bringing
Peace back to Athens. Thesmophoriazusae, on the other hand, depicts a cavalcade of failed
would-be playwrights, and of interpretations of stage space as the world of tragedy which fail to
persuade their surrogate audience of their viability. The reason given is that the playwrights
whose works are burlesqued are unfit by nature to furnish the material for paratragic
transformations of stage space.
Chapter 3, "Interiors and Exteriors," examined the connotations of the two spaces
represented by the two sides of the skene door, interior space and exterior space. Interior space,
in Attic Old Comedy, is associated with the oikos, and accordingly functions as a corrective to
corruptible exterior space, represented by the public spaces of the democratic polis. It examined
the ambiguous representations of interior spaces on the comic stage and showed that comic
heroes take advantage of these very ambiguities to recreate exterior spaces as interior, oikos
space. The aim of such a strategy is twofold. It trivializes the massive complex issues afflicting
the exterior world by reducing them to the scale of kitchen utensils and wool-tufts, and, having
done this, it allows a single individual to become kurios, or head of household, over spaces

163
normally communal and international.
Chapter 4, "Character-created Space," examined two instance of unique spaces created by
characters within the world of their respective plays, space designed, bounded, defended and
ruled by themselves alone, as single individuals. Both Dikaiopolis' New Agora and the
Cloudcuckooland envisioned by Peisetairos seek to remedy the same fault of the heroes' fellow
citizens; their lack of loyalty to their own polis and their zeal for seeking profit all over the Greek
world. The New Agora is the opposite of the real agora. It is rural, as opposed to urban, private,
as opposed to communal and it is lorded over by a single landholder, as opposed to the demos of
Athens. In creating an anti-agora, however, Dikaiopolis also solves the problems plaguing the
normative agora, which is overrun by foreigners, and cut off from the commerce which is its
raison d'etre. Peisetairos, for his scheme, initially seeks to find a city free of the excessive
litigation which renders Athenian life intolerable, but ultimately creates his own polis in the air,
strategically planted between earth and the sky in order to control the cosmos.
Chapter 5, "The World Above and the World Below," suggested that Aristophanes depicts
the distant spaces of the sky and the underworld in terms that invert familiar and even domestic
spaces by having his heroes reconceive the mythological and fantastic as something cozy and
everyday. The home of the gods becomes, in Trygaios' interpretation, the oikos of a corrupt
citizen, Zeus, whom he may indict as he would any fellow Athenian, on a charge of "Medizing."
Dionysos does not have to die in order to reach Hades, since he interprets the underworld as an
overseas tourist-destination. The fantastic worlds conjured up in these plays nevertheless have a
visible theatrical dimension, complete with "roles" for the audience to play. Trygaios makes his

164
appeal for a pan-Hellenic effort to rescue Peace directly to the multiethnic audience at the
Dionysia, and the chorus, entering from the eisodoi, appears to be comprised of their number.
Dionysos remakes the spectators into a kind of mute chorus of tormented evil shades perishing in
the Stygian mire. When Trygaios and Dionysos reinterpret their distant stage worlds back into
improved versions of the stage polis, the theater, and by extension the city beyond the theater, are
transformed as well, as they revert to a version of Athens out of the recent past, which existed
before the loss of its iconic goddess or poet.
Chapter 6, "The Polis Transformed," discussed the Golden Age, the mythological
idealized era of leisure and bounty that existed under the rule of Kronos. In Attic Old Comedy,
members of the Golden Race inhabit distant spaces, such as Hades or the wilderness. This
chapter traced the motif of the Golden Age from its earliest appearance as a motif in Homer to its
earliest explicit mention in Hesiod, to its ubiquitous treatment by the poets of Attic Old Comedy.
Journeys to Hades and to the faraway wilderness result in encounters with creatures and peoples
who live a life indistinguishable from that enjoyed by the Golden Race. The results of these
journeys, as far as anyone can tell from the comic fragments, are transformations of the
contemporary polis into a space where the features of life in the Golden Age, such as the
presence of automata, are available to everyone. Yet Aristophanes presents a peculiar and less
explicit sort of Golden Age in his plays. His is apolitical Golden Age, which recreates the polis
not as a chronologically remote land of myth, but as the Athens of a few generations before his
time, before the rise of the Athenian empire led to decades of destructive war.
This dissertation has concerned itself thus far with the competing interpretations of stage

165
space which are a ubiquitous feature of Aristophanes' plots. Now it will return to the question,
raised in Chapter 1, of whether such a "multiple and confused overlay of settings" (Fisher, 1993,
38) could have been taken in any way as a serious and substantive commentary on contemporary
politics and culture. The rest of this conclusion will seek to make it clear that what seems on the
surface like whimsical and diverting nonsense may be seen as the plot equivalent of "fool's
privilege," in the service of a dramatic technique every bit as serious and relevant as that of
tragedy. It will examine two major steps in recent scholarship towards the recognition of
Aristophanes' oeuvre as a relevant and influential factor in Athenian public discourse. The first is
Appendix XXIX of G.E.M. De Ste. Croix's The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, a section
titled "The Political Outlook of Aristophanes." In this ancillary chapter, De Ste. Croix sets forth
his reasons for his (at the time) heterodox acceptance of Aristophanes as a valid historical source.
De Ste. Croix identifies certain serious and earnest passages in the plays where, in his view,
Aristophanes' real opinions and political views may be seen clearly. The second is Jeffrey
Henderson's article "The Demos and Comic Competition" in which Henderson goes further than
De Ste. Croix and makes the case for understanding not only unironic asides and parabatic
exhortations as something that held serious import, but for viewing mockery and humor
themselves as a valid mode of public discourse. This section will then argue that there is a third
facet of comic discourse which has not received its due: the outlandish and antinomian changes
wrought on polis space in the course of Aristophanes' plots. Rather than having "diverted the
audience from listening seriously to the argument, and confirmed them in the belief that it was a
silly invented story supporting a paradoxical argument," (Fisher, op. cit.) comic interpretations

and transformations of space, by the end of many plays, have involved the audience in a
participatory fantasy of spatial transformation which makes them citizens of a stage polis, one
which is at peace and laden with abundant feasts. The plot of a comedy worked a comic catharsis
on the audience, with an effect that could have been every bit as purifying as that of tragedy, no
less so for having achieved its effect through laughter.
De Ste. Croix and Aristophanes 'Politics
The approach taken by De Ste. Croix to the question of the political import of Aristophanes'
plays is important not so much for the conclusions he reaches but for his insistence, as a
historian, that Aristophanes can be taken as an important historical source for late fifth century
Athens. He refutes Gomme (1936) and others who declare Aristophanes' oeuvre essentially
apolitical and takes up the question of whether there is anything in the plays that can be relied
upon for an expression of Aristophanes' own political views. Although he acknowledges that
there may be much seriousness even in humorous passages (1972, 357), De Ste. Croix prefers to
keep his eye peeled for hortatory passages which are clearly not meant to be funny, in which the
chorus, in the persona of the playwright, harangues the citizens in the audience and sets forth a
program for an improved city. As an example, he cites the truncated parabasis of Frogs (674737), in which the chorus makes their brilliant comparison between the city's politicians and its
coinage. De Ste. Croix identifies a "real earnestness" (1972, 358) in the chorus's desire to be
"useful" (xpn0Td, 686), and concludes:
Passages... which express serious opinions and which are not funny in themselves
[italics his].. .are particularly likely to represent the poet's own views. He may, of
course, have found it desirable to keep them fairly brief and to sandwich them, so
to speak, between lines which are purely comic but if the bread in which the meat

167
is delivered is clearly separable from it.. .we may have no difficulty in
recognizing the meat for what it is" (De Ste. Croix 1972, 357).

There is no doubt that such passages exist, and De Ste. Croix seems correct in his verdict that the
chorus' address in Frogs is not humorous, but an instance of political discourse delivered without
irony. Such passages are rare, however. More often, parabatic exhortations are at least somewhat
fantastical or ironic, and it is hard to be sure how seriously to take them, especially when they are
delivered in character. What serious (in this case, cultural) views, for example, are expressed in
the following?

vra Kparivou ueuvnuevoq, oc; TTOAACO pEuaocq Ttot' ETtaivco

5va TCOV acpeAcovTCE5ICOVeppei, xai xfjc, ardaeooc, roxpaaupoov
scpopei tac. Spue, KQCI TOCC, nAaTdvouc, KOU TOUC, exOpouc. TtpoOeAuuvouc/
aaai 5' OUK fjv ev ^uuTcoaicp nkr\v "AcopoT auKoueSiAe,"
530xai "TEKTOVEC, EuraxAducov uuvcov" OUTCOC. rjvGnaev SKeTvoq.
vuvl 5' uuetc, aurov opcovtec; TrapaAnpouvT' OUK eXeevze,
EKKlTCTOUadiV TCOV X\XeKXp(x>V K a l TOU TOVOU OUKT' EVOVTOq

9' dpuovicov SiaxaaKouacov aXka yepcov a>v 7tpippex,

ooaicEp Kovvaq, aTEopavov uev E'XOOV a5ov 5ityr\ 5' dmoAcoAcoq.

TCOV

Kratinos, again, was like a torrent of glory rushing across the plain, uprooting
uprooting oak, plane-tree and rivals and bearing them pell-mell in his wake. The
only songs at the banquet were, "Doro, shod with lying tales" and "Adepts of the
Lyric Muse," so great was his renown. Look at him now! he drivels, his lyre has
neither strings nor keys, his voice quivers, but you have no pity for him, and you
let him wander about as he can, like Konnas, his temples circled with a withered
chaplet; the poor old fellow is dying of thirst. (Knights, 526-534)
The tone is similar to the parabasis of Frogs, one of pained outrage. If one knew nothing about
Kratinos, one could imagine that the Athenian people really had abandoned one of their greatest
poets to poverty and alcoholism. Yet we know that Kratinos made a "comeback" at the Dionysia

168
of the following year, and that he bested Clouds with his play Pytine or "The Wine Flask" which
took Aristophanes' evidently unfair portrait of him to absurd lengths.1 Here we have an example
of a passage of a type which De Ste. Croix calls "mock serious." The portrayal of Kratinos as a
drunkard is probably not completely without basis in fact, or else Pytine would not have been
funny. In passages like this one, the "meat" is rather difficult to separate from the "bread." since
we cannot tell the extent to which Aristophanes' description of Kratinos has a basis in truth.
Unambiguously serious passages, in fact, are very much the exception rather than the rule. If
Aristophanes has a serious contribution to make to public debate, his usual method must be
sought elsewhere.
Henderson and the Dynamics of Comic Persuasion
Jeffrey Henderson observes that the limitation of De Ste. Croix's search for a straightforward
message in Aristophanes' plays is that the serious passages to which De Ste. Croix points are not
typical of Aristophanes' usual modes of persuasion. The problem, according to Henderson, is that
in focusing on the serious passages, "humor is removed [along with] the distinctive outlook of
comedy. The comic poets may as well have delivered their criticisms and advice in Assembly or
court" (Henderson, 1990, 273). 2 Henderson's innovative notion is that the humor and mockery
of comedy are a persuasive mode of discourse in themselves, and that trying to separate
1

cf.

Henderson divides misreaders of Aristophanic humor into two camps: skeptics and carnivalists. The skeptics
separate seriousness and humor; anything humorous or tongue-in-cheek or even slightly exaggerated may as well be
detachedfromreality. (This does not accurately describe the position of De Ste. Croix, however, who clearly
acknowledges the value of humorous passages and the possibility that mockery may have serious import.) The
carnivalists (according to Henderson) likewise neuter the persuasive power of humor by declaring it to be part and
parcel of "ritual," viewing the festival as a sort of citywide "backwards day" where anything and everything goes
and nothing should be taken seriously.

Aristophanes' "message" from the clowning that supposedly surrounds it is to underestimate the
persuasive power of comic ridicule and of the comic agon. Henderson draws a comparison
between the competitive display of appeals to the demos in the Assembly, and the competition
between factions of comic characters in the agon, and shows that the humor on display in the
theater was an important component of the ideological background to Athenian public policy.
There is one aspect of Attic Old Comedy that receives no mention from De Ste. Croix and
a lone puzzled afterthought from Henderson. That element is comic fantasy itself, in particular
the surreal plots and distortions of space which characterize comic action. Of the outlandish
schemes enacted by comic heroes, Henderson says only:
their Utopian resolution is always one with which none of the spectators
could quarrel, though in real life, they could never get there [italics mine] by the
actions and arguments employed by the comic characters who do get there.
(Henderson 1990, 312)

What is the use of a resolution which gets one nowhere? What Henderson implies is that, while
there may have been some trenchant truth behind the insults hurled at Kleon and Socrates,
Aristophanes could not seriously have been telling the citizens to solve their problems by putting
dogs on trial or giving sight to blind gods or going to live with the birds. Yet it is necessary to
take the next step, and argue that just as there are good grounds for taking Aristophanes'
speeches seriously, as De Ste. Croix demonstrated, and just as it is evident, per Henderson, that
the humor of Attic Old Comedy was as persuasive and earnest in its own way as the poetry of
tragedy and the speeches in the Assembly, so are Aristophanes' fantasy plots, with their
outrageous inversions of space, part and parcel of a performance of transformation which had at

170
least as strong influence on Athenian public opinion as the parabases and the jibes.
The Persuasive Power of Comic Fantasy: Clouds and Apology
It has long been a problem for critics to elucidate just what message Aristophanes hopes
to convey with his convoluted plots. Surely, many have argued, such unreal fantasy could not
have influenced the citizenry in any profound way, but must have functioned as somewhat trivial
amusement. A favorite example of the influence of Aristophanes on public opinion, cited by De
Ste. Croix (1972, 371), is the conviction of Socrates. Socrates, in the Apology, famously
mentions Clouds as a major factor in the downfall of his reputation among the Athenian public. A
question seldom asked is this: what was it about Clouds that Socrates thought had ruined him in
the minds of the populace? Was it a speech by the chorus denouncing him? Or was it a
particularly cutting observation about his appearance or character, delivered by a sharp-eyed
bomolochus? The chorus of Clouds, speaking in the poet's voice in the parabasis, makes no
mention of Socrates. It is therefore not one of De Ste. Croix's unironic asides that has ruined
Socrates and misrepresented him to the masses. Nor, as Socrates tells it, is it the cumulative
effect of jibes and insults aimed at the philosopher in Clouds that have stuck in the public
memory for sixteen years. As persuasive as comic mockery may have been, pace Henderson,
Socrates does not bemoan the unflattering barbs aimed at him by other characters. Socrates
describes the damage done to his reputation by Aristophanes as follows:
raonep ouv Kaxnyopcov xf|v dvxcouociav 5eT dvayvcovai auxcov "EcoKp&Tng &8iKi
Kai 7tspiepydexai Qnxaiv xd xe x>nb yfjc; Kai oupdvia Kai xov fjxxco A,6yov Kpeixxco
1 9C7TOICQV Kai aXkovq xauxd xauxa SiSdcnccov." xoiauxn xi<; eoxiv xauxa yap
soopaxs Kai auxoi ev xfj Apiaxocpdvoix; Kooj4.cp8ia, EcoKpdxr| xivd SK&T
3

Konstan on Birds

171
7i8pi9sp6j4,svov, (pdaKovxd xe dspoPaxew Kai akfa\v noXki\v cpAaxxpiav
cpXuapowxa, a>v 6ycb ou8ev oi3xe jasya ouxs uticpov uepi 87uaco. Kai ox>% ax;
dxiud^oov A,SYCO rr\v xoiai3xriv enioxf\\ir\\, ei uc, Jtepi xcov xoiouxcov aocpoc; eaxiv.
I must read out their affadavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers:
Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling in that he inquires into things below the
earth and in the sky and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger and
teaches others to follow his example... You have seen it for yourselves in the play
by Aristophanes, where Socrates goes whirling round, proclaiming that he is
walking on air, and uttering a great deal of other nonsense about things of which I
know nothing whatsoever. (Plato, Apology 21c)
The Athenians who, early on, formed a low opinion of Socrates were induced to think of him this
way not because Aristophanes denounced him in a chorus (as he did to Kleon more than once),
nor because the stage Socrates was the butt of other characters' lampoons. In Socrates' own
account, the comic spectacle of the stage Socrates' actions is the main culprit. In this short
passage Socrates mentions his entrance on the mechane through the air, his depiction as the
leader of the interior space of the (fictional) Phrontisterion, and the play's reification of sophistic
debate as a cockfight. All of these plot elements show Socrates as a wrongheaded interpreter of
stage space; respectively, Socrates as would-be god, appropriating the mechane; Socrates as
kurios of a diseased oikos, which contains pallid malnourished dependents (the students); and
Socrates as the ringleader of a rigged cage match. He is a classic komodoumenos, on the wrong
side of the play's spatial agon, and he gets his just desserts when Strepsiades, in the ultimate act
of spatial rearrangement, bums down his school. Throughout the Apology, Socrates represents
himself as someone who has lost a debate before getting a chance to present his side, and he
blames his comeuppance in Clouds as a having been major salvo in that debate.
Clearly, a plot that features a sophistic philosopher who is able to walk upon air, keep
students in a state of abject misery, and set arguments against each other like fighting cocks, is

fantastic and absurd. No such philosopher could realistically exist. Yet according to Socrates it is
his spatial transgressions in Clouds which have had a greater effect on public opinion than the
more straightforwardly forensic or mocking aspects of the comedy. The absurd and impossible
reinterpretations of space wrought by comic characters are thus very much a part of the comic
argument. Reinterpretations of stage space are an answer to the problem presented at the start of
each play, and the rationales for these interpretations, their permutations and their results, both
positive and negative, are as much a part of the comic poet's "message" as any speech given by
the chorus.
Peitho and the Transformed Polis
Henderson is certainly correct when he says that a comic agon is a reflection of the larger
rhetorical straggles playing out in the Pnyx and the Agora. A citizen of Athens at the Assembly,
practicing his right of isegoria, competes with fellow-citizens to have his version of the truth win
out. A key word in the language of Athenian public debate is the word peitho, or persuasion.
Gorgias, in his Encomium on Helen makes a case that the power of peitho is something as
powerful as brute force {bid). Language, says Gorgias, is a kind of sorcery:
at yap ev0eoi 5id Aoyoov oupSai knayuiyox r|5ovfjc araxyooYoi
Auitric, yvvovTav ouYYlvouvrl Y&P Tfl 56^n Tfjc, ipuxfK H Suvauic,
Tfjc, erccpSfjc; e'6A^e KOCI eneiae KOU uETEOTnoev auTf|v yox\teiq.
By means of words, inspired incantations serve as bringers-on of
pleasure and takers-off of pain. For the incantation's power,
communicating with the soul's opinion, enchants and persuades
and changes it, by trickery. (Gorgias Encomium on Helen, 10)
Peitho, the goal of such enchantment, has a history as far back as Homer of associations with
witchcraft and poetry. Gorgias examines many aspects and sources of peitho, which were

173
previously thought of as the province of poetry, and claims them for rhetoric, which, according to
Guthrie (1971, 179) was the "democratic art par excellence." The Greeks, and the Athenians in
particular, attributed a substantial measure of their cultural superiority to their mastery of
persuasive speech. The Athenians even appear to have had a cult ofPeitho enshrined in the
vicinity of the Acropolis.
It is no coincidence that Aristophanes, by Rothwell's count (1990, 29), uses the words
KEvGco, TteiOew, Tii6ea0ai and related compounds 114 times in eleven plays. His comedies, as
James McGlew observes:
...make a substantial dramatic investment in relationships between individuals
who persuade and those individuals or groups who allow themselves to be
persuaded or resist persuasion. Dicaeopolis, the Sausage-Seller, Trygaeus,
Peisetaerus, Lysistrata, and Praxagora, Aristophanes' most memorable heroes, all
act by persuading: they realize their dreams and transform their world [italics
mine] largely through their good fortune in persuading reluctant or hostile
individuals or crowds to join them or, at least, to get out of their way. (McGlew
2004, 11)

When a comic hero offers a preferred version of stage space, or duels with another character to
force that character to accept his or her interpretation, or creates an entirely new kind of space
and persuades chorus and cast to accept it, this is an act ofpeitho, the rhetoric of comic
competition. The plot of a comedy itself is also an act of peitho, a rhetorical broadside aimed at
polis and audience. The transformations of polis space that occur in the stage polis reflect
changes in, and hopes for, the polis outside the theater. There was a thin line between the fantasy
Athens of the comic stage and the Athens beyond the benches. Citizens of the real Athens
appeared in caricature on the single street of the stage Athens, and their appearance in the latter

174
affected public attitudes towards the former, ans the case of Socrates has shown. More
importantly, neither tragedy nor comedy were physically isolated from the city around them.
The Theater of Dionysus was in the open air. It was not, as Hourmouziades (1965,109) observes,
visually isolated from its position in the heart of urban Athens. Behind the spectators on the left
towered the Parthenon. To their right, they could see the roofs of their own houses and public
buildings. Around them sat their fellow-citizens, some of whom were represented in caricature
on the stage in front of them when a comedy was in progress. There is no 'fourth wall' in comedy
because the audience and the performers share two versions of the same space. Comedy presents
a grand, overarching illusion in which the reality of the surrounding cityscape, built of brick and
marble and weighed down with its problems, is subsumed by the vision of the poet. In the
parabasis of Peace Aristophanes compares his comedies to a "palace with high towers,
constructed of fine phrases, great thoughts and jokes not common in the streets." In it, no
common people come in for ridicule, but the most powerful men of the time. Attic Old Comedy
was a performance that used the whole territory of Attica as its stage, and the whole population
as its cast. The transformations of space that occurred on its stage reflected and influenced the
profound transformations occurring in the city itself, transformations that sadly would lead, first
to the demise of Attic Old Comedy, and ultimately to the demise of the democracy itself.
Coda: The Later Greek and Roman Theater
By the middle of the fourth century, New Comedy had adopted the tragic practice of defining
stage space in a prologue delivered by a god. The opening lines of Dyskolos set a scene that does
not change throughout the play.

Tfjq 'A-mKfjq VOUI^ET1 eivoti TOV TOICOV,

OuArjv, TO vuucpatov
Know this place to be Phyle, in Attica, the Nymphaion...(Men.
Dysc. 1-2)
Roman comedy depicts urban space, but the stage space is a generic Everytown, not a mirror of a
unique recognizablepolis-commumty, as Plautus has his Peniculus offhandedly note:
haec urbs Epidamnus est, dum haec agitur fabula:
quando alia agetur, aliud fiet oppidum
This city is Epidamnus, as long as this story goes on
When another tale is told, it'll be another town. (Plaut. Men. 72-3)
By Roman times, the old polis theater was no longer sacred to Dionysos. It was a place of public
entertainments, open to paying customers. It had grown to enormous proportions. The skene
became an elaborate architectural marvel; multi-storied, multitiered, collonaded, filigreed,
baroque.4 It became impossible to impose any divergent vision on such a backdrop. One could
not see it as anything but a skene. Superficially, what was lost was the spatial palimpsest, which
had given the playwright's language the power to paint scenery and erect a mental skene more
vivid than any architect could build. But something else died with the fifth-century theater as
well. The fascinating dullness of Greek New Comedy and Roman comedy comes about because
these comedies are merely funny. The city they depict is nobody's polis, the people who fill the
stage space are nobody anyone ever knew up close. The stage of later periods ends at its edge. It
does not extend into the audience as Aristophanes' stage did, nor does it encompass the city and
the wider world.
4

See for example the illustrations of the mid 1st century AD theater at Orange in Green & Handley (1995, 86-89).

176
Fifth-century Attic Old Comedy could only exist in a community which produced it as
part of a deeply felt agon of public discourse. The Athenian democracy was contrived to prevent
any single individual from gaining too much mastery over the polis. By showing the polis
spatially realigned and transformed into the domain of a single irreverent bomolochus,
Aristophanes undermines and reinforces democratic ideals. The transformations of space that
Aristophanes' heroes worked on the polis-in-miniature showed the demos their own city in a
kaleidoscope of shifting viewpoints, fantastic reimaginings, corrective purgings. The city of
Athens is the focal point of every play, and the plot of every single comedy involves the righting
of some wrong within the city. Arguments, fights, mad schemes, journeys to exotic realms,
parodies of tragedy and other genres, disguise, and the notorious obscenity and all revolve
around correcting the city, ridding it of bad influences, denouncing the decadence of its
inhabitants, foiling conspiracies, and making sure that the rogues' gallery of its participants in
public life are not permitted 8p6tv ou5ev KXXKOV (Vesp. 340). Aristophanes' early output, in
particular, seems to be one great cry of co noTac, Jtotac; (Ach. 26). One wonders what triumphs or
disasters would have befallen the real polis space if his audience had chosen to listen.

177

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