Amy Susanna Lewis (University of Pennsylvania)
At Frogs 320 Dionysus and Xanthias hear the chorus of initiates for the first time. Xanthias comments ᾄδουσι γοῦν τὸν Ἴακχον ὅνπερ Διαγόρας (“they are singing the song that Diagoras sang”) (printed e.g., by Sommerstein 1996) or alternatively – as proposed in the ancient scholia – ὅνπερ δι’ ἀγορᾶς (“which they sang passing through the agora”) (printed e.g., by Dover 1993, Wilson 2007). In this paper I argue, through an analysis of Hellenistic comments preserved in the scholia vetera, that Διαγόρας is the correct reading, and that the textual alteration is one of several different methods employed by the scholiasts to deal with a joke about Diagoras that they deemed beyond the limits of acceptable humor.
In the scholia, Aristarchus notes that the mention of Diagoras is an ironic joke: he was an atheist who revealed and mocked the mysteries, so Aristophanes is portraying the initiates as performing a hubristic parody of their own rites. There follow three groups of notes: 320c (numbering of Chantry 1999) offers a political justification of the outrageous joke; 320d argues that Diagoras refers to a lyric poet; and 320f-g propose the alternative reading. Where these scholia are discussed in modern scholarship, they are examined individually, exclusively in terms of their accuracy (Janko 2001, Winiarczyk 2016, v. also Halliwell 1984). Recent work on ancient scholarship, however, has emphasized that instead of merely extracting realia from the scholia, we ought to analyze them in their own right; instead of focusing on their faulty conclusions we should look at what they can tell us about the methods and intentions of ancient scholars (Montana 2005, Chronopoulos 2011, Montanari 2020). In my paper, I treat the notes on Frogs 320 as a part of an ancient scholarly debate. I analyze their arguments and consider how the separate notes relate to each other, concluding that each offers a different way of coming to terms with the outrageously hubristic Diagoras joke.
The paper has three parts. In each I analyze one of the three sets of notes. For example, in relation to the argument of 320d (that Diagoras was a lyric poet), I demonstrate that the scholiast based his claim on a more extensive source preserved in the Suda δ 523. However, the scholiast only selected information from this source that he deemed relevant to his interpretation, highlighting, for example, Diagoras’ lyric poetry at the expense of his atheist philosophy. The scholiast also reinterpreted the floruit of Diagoras given in his source. In effect, this scholar “invented” a new Diagoras who was a lyric poet only. He did so, I argue, in order to claim that Aristophanes made no ironic joke – the initiates were singing a genuine song written by a lyric poet.
Though nominally a text-critical argument, this paper also offers a model for how we might productively engage with the Aristophanic scholia and why analyzing their arguments is useful not only for understanding the methods, aims, and tastes of ancient scholars, but also for furthering our own understanding of Aristophanes.