Amy S. Lewis (Gustavus Adolphus College)
The significance of the frog chorus in Aristophanes’ Frogs has long been a source of debate. For example, some scholars have viewed the frogs as symbolic of comedy’s low register (Reckford, Hubbard, Biles); some suggest that the agōn between Dionysus and the frogs prefigures that between Aeschylus and Euripides by offering a critique of the frogs’ musical abilities (Defradas, Worman); and one especially ingenious interpretation analyzes the amphibians as a parody of Aristophanes’ rival at the Lenaea of 405 BCE, Phrynichus Comicus (Demand). In this paper, I argue that it is not the comic Phrynichus whom the frogs parody, but the eponymous tragic poet of the early fifth century. I compare the frogs’ song with Aristophanes’ parody of Phrynichus in Birds, and the attack on Phrynichean music in the hyporcheme of Pratinas.
In the first part of this paper, I analyze similarities between the frogs’ and the birds’ choral songs: both include animal noises (the birds’ tiotiotiotinx and the frogs’ brekekekex), both invoke a similar set of deities, and they contain verbal parallels including claims to the sweetness of their music (Birds 750; Frogs 213-4) and its variation (Birds 739; Frogs 226). These similarities were first demonstrated by Sifakis, who argues that they are due to both songs’ derivation from the hymns typical of early animal choruses. It has, however, been convincingly argued that the birds’ song, which names Phrynichus as a source of inspiration, is a parody of that poet’s music (de Simone). I show that though the frog chorus does not name Phrynichus explicitly, it contains many of the same metrical features and musical claims (such as sweetness and variation) that were associated with Phrynichus in antiquity and traces of which can be seen in the fragments of his tragedies.
I then turn to the hyporcheme of Pratinas (PMG fr.708) – likely a song from an early fifth-century satyr play (Shaw, Seaford, though disputed by Lloyd-Jones and Zimmerman). The song shares many verbal and thematic similarities with the frog chorus, and appears to be an attack on a contemporary musician – Phrynichus tragicus. In fact, I argue, the frogs’ claims about their music in Aristophanes systematically and programmatically undo the criticism levelled at Phrynichus by Pratinas. For example, in the hyporcheme, the chorus complains about the noise of hired aulos-players, saying that they are fit only to be in charge of drunken revels (7-9), while the frogs celebrate their ritual role as musicians to the drunken revellers at the Anthesteria (Frogs 218-19).
Finally, I consider the broader implications of Aristophanes’ Phrynichean frogs. Aristophanes visualizes, in the frogs, the archetype of tragic sweetness, beauty, and sublimity in the guise of a traditional, ugly, old comic animal chorus, reflecting a combined nostalgia for early Athenian tragedy and comedy. I ask how this representation of Phrynichus relates to Frogs’ other references to Phrynichus, and to the comedy’s second chorus of mystic initiates.