Justin S Dwyer (University of British Columbia)
This paper presents a new historicist reading of the Greek comic fragment Apollod.Car. 5. By identifying a previously undetected allusion to Arsinoe II, it firmly establishes the Chremonidean War as the contemporary historical conflict with which the fragment engages. This recontextualization allows the fragment to shine as a rare example of pointed political commentary in post-Menandrian Greek New Comedy and reveals a unique new reception of Arsinoe on the Athenian stage.
In a discussion on pleasure (7.280d-281b), Athenaeus quotes a comedic fragment which is just over twenty-six verses of iambic trimeter. The fragment preserves an impassioned monologue that decries the influence of an unfavorable Tyche and longs for the pleasures of the world at peace. Athenaeus attributes this fragment to the Case Maker of Apollodorus of Carystus, a third-century comic playwright who competed in Athens.
Apollod.Car. 5 is valuable as a rare instance of candid civic commentary on a contemporary historical conflict in a New Comedy (i.e. Hellenistic) production context. It presents critical evidence for the persistence of political comedy at a time when it is believed to have already gone out of fashion. But Apollod.Car. 5 is often overlooked in discussions on New Comedy because the historical conflict to which it refers has not yet been firmly established. Some editors argue it references Demetrius Poliorketes’ activity in southern Greece near the end of the fourth century (e.g. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff: 261 n. 2, Edmonds: 189 n. e). Others have acknowledged that it could just as easily refer to the situation created by the Chremonidean War (268-262 BCE), a conflict pitting Athens, Sparta, and the Ptolemy II Philadelphus against Antigonus Gonatas (e.g. Bergk: 232 n. 214, Perez Asensio: 24-5).
The problem with these readings is that analysis is limited almost exclusively to the topical references at vv. 19-25. In this paper, I extend the historicist reading to the entirety of the fragment and make a critical new observation: the elaborate rendition of the goddess Tyche (vv.3-14, 26-7) is a thinly veiled allusion to the Ptolemaic queen, Arsinoe II.
Given the Panhellenic breadth of the speaker’s plea (vv. 1, 10), it is difficult to read the characterization of Tyche as anything but a commentary on the continued manipulation of polis politics in southern Greece by Macedonian successor kings (and queens). Ἄγροικος (vv. 5, 14) and ἀπαίδευτος (v. 26; see also vv. 5-6) were used to characterize Macedonians (Plut. Mor. 178.15) as well as political leaders (see Pl. Tht. 174d-e). The emphasis on this Tyche not being Greek (vv. 9-11) likely reflects a perpetuation of the fourth-century anti-Macedonian propaganda which framed their Hellenic identity as dubious at best (e.g. Dem. 9.31, 19.327).
From the Athenian perspective, a Macedonian Tyche who was perceived as the cause of a conflict can only be interpreted as a rebuke of Arsinoe II—who had begun to develop a unique association with Tyche at this time (cf. the Agathe Tyche Arsinoe faience oinochoe from the Athenian agora)—and her role in instigating the Chremonidean War.