Greek Comedy

Erected in a corner of the Epigraphical Museum of Athens is a fragment of the Athenian Victors List preserving the names of a handful of victorious comic poets at the Athenian Lenaia (EM 8194). This fragment is remarkable because it includes within a tight grouping four of Greek New Comedy’s five canonical poets: Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, and Philippides. This would-be unbroken sequence of esteemed poets is split down the middle by an unsung Apollodorus (see 60-64, Col. IV, IG II² 2325E, Millis and Olson, 184).

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).

While there has been some influential scholarship on the relationship between law and comedy (Carey 2000, MacDowell 2013, and Buis 2019), the remit of these studies has been limited to Aristophanes’ earlier plays.

In the multilingual Ancient Mediterranean, many people experienced first-hand the obstacles presented by linguistic difference. Interpreters were frequently employed to allay such difficulties (Feeney 2015, Mairs 2020, McElduff 2013). Yet despite the international scope of Greco-Roman literature, such interpreters are practically erased from the literary record.

In this paper I argue that Aristophanes stages different perspectives on mimesis in the Acharnians, revealing a concerted interest in theorizing mimesis as metamorphosis. Aristophanes first depicts mimesis as a change in appearance effected through costume (e.g. Cleisthenes “dressed as a eunuch”; εὐνοῦχος ἐσκευασμένος, Ach. 121), but I argue that mimesis is treated as a metamorphic process that ultimately affects a person’s being.

Scholars have seen the influence of Old Comedy on Lucian’s work, but not the extent and significance of his engagement with Aristophanes’s Clouds in the Icaromenippus.

A scholiast on Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae 135 informs us that the line is a citation from Aeschylus’ tragedy Edonians, part of his Lycurgeia tetralogy. In this paper I argue that the scholiast was mistaken.

What does Peisthetaerus give the Rebellious Youth, the first of three intruders in search of wings? The interpretation of Birds 1360-9 has divided commentators since antiquity: does the youth receive wings to be viewed as weapons or weapons to be viewed as wings? I argue for the latter option: instead of the requested eagle-wings, Peisthetaerus offers military equipment!