Aristophanes and Politics: New Studies

297 Pages·2020·3.691 MB·English

by  Ralph M. Rosen (editor), Helene P. Foley (editor)

Aristophanes and Politics
Columbia Studies in the
Classical Tradition
Editorial Board
Holger A. Klein (editor)
Kathy H. Eden, Gareth D. Williams,
Seth R. Schwartz, Deborah Steiner, and Katja M. Vogt
Series founded by
Walther Ludwig and W. V. Harris
in collaboration with
W. T. H. Jackson and Paul Oskar Kristeller
volume 45
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/csct
Aristophanes and Politics
New Studies
Edited by
Ralph M. Rosen
Helene P. Foley
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Aristophanis Comoediae Novem, pages from the play Knights. Editio princeps of the
Greek text of Aristophanes. Edited by Marcus Musurus and Aldo Manuzio, Venice, 1498.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rosen, Ralph Mark, editor. | Foley, Helene P., 1942– editor.
Title: Aristophanes and politics : new studies / edited by Ralph M. Rosen,
 Helene P. Foley.
Other titles: Columbia studies in the classical tradition ; vol. 45.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020. | Series: Columbia studies in
 the classical tradition, 0166–1302 ; volume 45 | Includes bibiographical
 references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020002376 (print) | LCCN 2020002377 (ebook) | ISBN
 9789004424456 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004424463 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Aristophanes—Criticism and interpretation. | Greek drama
 (Comedy)—History and criticism. | Politics in literature. | Politics
 and literature—Greece—Athens.
Classification: LCC PA3879 .A69 2020 (print) | LCC PA3879 (ebook) | DDC
 882/.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002376
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002377
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 0166-1302
ISBN 978-90-04-42445-6 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-42446-3 (e-book)
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Contents
Contributors vii
Introduction  1
Helene P. Foley and Ralph M. Rosen
1 Prolegomena: Accessing and Understanding Aristophanic Politics 9
Ralph M. Rosen
2 Politics and Laughter: the Case of Aristophanes’ Knights 24
Robin Osborne
3 Patterns of Avoidance and Indirection in Athenian Political Satire 45
Jeffrey Henderson
4 Conservative and Radical: Aristophanic Comedy and Populist Debate
in Democratic Athens 60
I. A. Ruffell
5 Aristophanes’ Political Comedies and (Bad?) Imitations 90
Olimpia Imperio
6 Politics in the Street: Some Citizen Encounters in Aristophanes 113
Stephen Halliwell
7 The Politics of Diversity: a Quantitative Analysis of Aristophanes 137
Carina de Klerk
8 Strong Household, Strong City: Space and Politics in Aristophanes’
Acharnians 163
Nina Papathanasopoulou
9 Aristophanes’ Birds as Satire on Athenian Opportunists in Thrace 187
Edith Hall
10 The Politics of Dissensus in Aristophanes’ Birds 214
Mario Telò
vi Contents
11 Inscribing Athenians: the Alphabetic Chorus in Aristophanes’
Babylonians and the Politics and Aesthetics of Inscription and
Conscription in Fifth-Century Athens 248
Deborah Steiner
12 Afterword: the Boy from Cydathenaeum Some Concluding
Reflections 273
Paul Cartledge
Index 279
Contributors
Paul Cartledge
is A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of
Cambridge, and emeritus A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture in the
Faculty of Classics. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of some
30 books, including Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd (Bristol
Classical Press, latest edition 1999). His most recent monograph is Democracy:
A Life (Oxford, 2018) and Thebes: Forgotten City of Ancient Greece (London &
New York, 2020). He co-directs the Oxford History of the Archaic Greek World
(Oxford, New York).
Carina de Klerk
is a PhD student in Classics at Columbia University. She is completing a disser-
tation on the comedy of Aristophanes, and she directed the Barnard Columbia
Ancient Drama Group’s production of Frogs (2018).
Helene P. Foley
is Claire Tow Professor of Classics, Barnard College, Columbia University. She
is the author of books and articles on Greek epic and drama, on women and
gender in Antiquity, and on modern performance and adaptation of Greek
drama, including Ritual Irony: Poetry and Sacrifice in Euripides, The Homeric
Hymn to Demeter, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, Reimagining Greek Tragedy on
the American Stage, and Euripides: Hecuba.
Edith Hall
has been Professor of Classics at King’s College London since 2012. She is
the Co-Founder and Consultant Director of Oxford University’s Archive of
Performances of Greek & Roman Drama. She has published 30 books on clas-
sical civilization and its continuing influence today. In 2015 she was awarded
the Erasmus Prize of the European Academy, in 2017 an Honorary Doctorate
from the University of Athens, and in 2019 Honorary Citizenship of Palermo.
Stephen Halliwell
is Wardlaw Professor of Greek at the University of St Andrews and a Fellow
of both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His books
include Aristotle’s Poetics, The Aesthetics of Mimesis, Greek Laughter, Between
Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus,
viii Contributors
commentaries on books 5 and 10 of Plato’s Republic, the Loeb translation of
Aristotle’s Poetics, and a verse translation of the complete plays of Aristophanes
for the Oxford World’s Classics Series. His edition of pseudo-Longinus, On the
Sublime, is forthcoming in the Lorenzo Valla series.
Jeffrey Henderson
is William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature, and
former Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, at
Boston University. He is best known for his pioneering work on the language
and history of sexuality, on Greek drama (especially comedy) and politics,
and for his editions and translations of Aristophanes. Since 1999 he has been
General Editor of the Loeb Classical Library, and is a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Olimpia Imperio
is Professor of Greek Literature at the University of Bari (Italy) and the author
of books and articles on Aristophanic comedy and its reception. Her publica-
tions include the monographs Parabasi di Aristofane. Acarnesi, Cavalieri, Vespe,
Uccelli and Aristofane tra antiche e moderne teorie del comico, the translations of
Aristophanes’ Frogs and Knights for the INDA (Istituto Nazionale del Dramma
Antico) and the forthcoming volume Fragmenta Comica. Aristophanes 10.6.
Eirene b′—Lemniai, for the project KomFrag: Kommentierung der Fragmente der
griechischen Komödie. She is co-director of the series Biblioteca della tradizione
classica and Graeca Tergestina, and is Director of the review FuturoClassico.
Robin Osborne
is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of
King’s College Cambridge and of the British Academy. His work ranges broadly
over the culture and history of archaic and classical Greece, and his most re-
cent books are The Transformation of Athens: Painted Pottery and the Creation
of Classical Greece (Princeton, 2018) and (with P.J. Rhodes) Greek Historical
Inscriptions 478–404 B.C. (Oxford, 2017).
Nina Papathanasopoulou
is a member of the Classics faculty at College Year in Athens and works as
the Public Engagement Coordinator for the Society for Classical Studies. She
completed her PhD at Columbia University in 2013 and worked as a Visiting
Assistant Professor of Classics and Theater at Connecticut College from
Contributors ix
2013–2019. She writes on Aristophanes and on the reception of Greek mythol-
ogy by the American dancer and choreographer, Martha Graham.
Ralph M. Rosen
is Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities and Classical Studies at the
University of Pennsylvania. He publishes broadly in various areas of Greek and
Roman literature, with a focus on comic and satirical literary genres, compara-
tive poetics, ancient aesthetics, and ancient medicine. He is cofounder of the
Penn-Leiden Colloquia on Ancient Values and coeditor of five volumes (Brill)
of essays from these events. Recent books include Making Mockery: The Poetics
of Ancient Satire (Oxford, 2007), and Ancient Concepts of the Hippocratic (Brill,
2016), co-edited with Lesley Dean-Jones.
Isabel Ruffell
is Professor of Greek Drama and Culture at the University of Glasgow.
Publications include Politics and Anti-Realism in Athenian Old Comedy: The Art
of the Impossible (Oxford, 2011), and Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (Bloomsbury,
2012).
Deborah Steiner
is the John Jay Professor of Greek at Columbia University. She is the author
of numerous books and articles on archaic and early Greek poetry and visual
culture, including monographs on Pindar, myths and images of writing in early
Greek culture, a commentary on Odyssey 17 and 18, and a forthcoming study
of archetypal choruses in archaic Greek poetry, iconography, and the architec-
tural record.
Mario Telò
is Professor of Classics at UC Berkeley. He is the author of Aristophanes and the
Cloak of Comedy: Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon (Chicago, 2016). In 2018, he co-
edited, with Melissa Mueller, The Materialities of Greek Tragedy (Bloomsbury).
His book Archive Feelings: A Theory of Greek Tragedy is forthcoming in 2020 in
the series ‘Classical Memories/Modern Identities’ (Ohio State).