Aristophanes: A Guide to Selected Sources

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Sarah Burges Watson

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Aristophanes, Athenian Vita (ch. 1) Passage 2 Passage 12 poet of Old Comedy, was born in the 450s and died ca. 386 BCE. His earliest plays, beginning with Banqueters (427), were produced by Callistratus or Philonides Vita (ch. 2) Passage 3, a decision which Aristophanes defends in Knights Passage 4 (512-19), probably responding to comic jibes Vita (ch. 2) Passage 3 that he was ‘toiling for others’. He won at least six times in the Athenian dramatic festivals. Eleven of his comedies survive. We have titles of thirty-two more and almost a thousand fragments. Sources on Aristophanes are collected by Kassel/Austin 1984 (Greek) and Rusten 2011 (English). His plays have been translated into English by Sommerstein and Henderson.

Comedy and Ancient Biography

Aristophanes’ Vita Passage 1 raises pertinent issues for ancient poetic biographies, since much of their material derives from comedy (Lefkowitz 2012). That of Aristophanes is no exception, being ‘largely a mere stringing together of passages from his plays which the ancient scholiasts considered to be reliably autobiographical.’ (Cartledge 1999: xiii). For the most part, historical facts about Aristophanes’ life must be sought elsewhere (see Cartledge 1999: xiii-xviii), but the Vita’s and scholiasts’ assumption is worth probing for what it can teach us about ancient biography. Three characteristics of Old Comedy seem particularly relevant:

(1) The genre’s ambiguous position on the boundary between fiction and reality. Like some iambic (invective) poetry, comedy refers to people and events in the ‘real’ world (see Guide to Archilochus; Rosen 1988, 2007). Ancient commentators and biographers tend to treat its satirical statements as factual (Halliwell 1984).

(2) The prominence of the poet’s voice, especially in the parabasis, a convention whereby the chorus turned to address the audience on behalf of, and sometimes in the voice of, the comic poet (see Hubbard 1991). That voice—fragmented, unstable, and elusive—is not the unmediated voice of a historical figure, but a ‘fictionalized representation of the author’ (Goldhill 1991), in dialogue with similarly fictionalized representations by/of his rivals and enemies (see Dobrov 1995; Storey 2003; Bakola 2008; Rosen 2010; Biles 2011).

The literariness of ‘stage autobiographies’ and their inseparability from the dynamics of comic competition is well illustrated by the confrontation between Aristophanes and Cratinus (see Sidwell 1995; Luppe 2000; Rosen 2000; Biles 2002, 2011; Bakola 2008, 2010). In Knights Passage 4 (424 BCE), Aristophanes represented his rival as an alcoholic has-been, probably literalizing a wine metaphor in which Cratinus had laid claim to the ‘Dionysian’ heritage of Archilochean iambos (Biles 2002, 2011). The following year, Cratinus responded to Aristophanes’ insult by creating an entire drama (Pytine) with himself as (anti-?)hero—the legitimate, alcoholic husband of a despairing Comedy. The play was a resounding success, trouncing Aristophanes’ Clouds, which came third. In the Clouds’ (re-written) parabasis Passage 5, the poet describes the defeat as one of his greatest disappointments.

(3) As this example demonstrates (see also Guides to Euripides and Aeschylus), ancient comedians took great delight in making poets resemble their works. The biographers’ tendency to extrapolate poets’ lives from their literary outputs is a closely related phenomenon (Graziosi 2006: 164-5). Both reflect the ancient view, humorously embodied and stated by Agathon in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (149-52), that composing poetry requires imitative identification with one’s creations. From here to the cliché that life imitates art and vice-versa is a small step. Biographers played the game of generating lives from art with varying degrees of earnestness and sophistication. The fact that they considered it unproblematic reveals the differences between ancient and biography and our own (Momigliano 1993, Graziosi 2002, Hägg 2012). Historicity was not a priority, nor was historical evidence readily available; other agendas were in play (see Bing 1993, Graziosi 2002).

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Bibliography

• Bakola, E. 2008. ‘The Drunk, the Reformer and the Teacher: Agonistic Poetics and the Construction of Persona in the Comic Poets of the Fifth Century.’ CCJ 54: 1-29.
  • 2010. Cratinus and the Art of Comedy. Oxford.
• Biles, Z. 2002. ‘Intertextual Biography in the Rivalry of Cratinus and Aristophanes.’ AJP 123: 169-204.
  • 2011. Aristophanes and the Poetics of Competition. Cambridge.
• Bing, P. 1993. ‘The Bios-Tradition and Poets’ Lives in Hellenistic Poetry.’ In R. Rosen and J. Farrell eds. Nomodeiktes: Greek Studies in Honor of Martin Ostwald. Ann Arbor. 619-31.
• Bowie, A. 1993. Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual, and Comedy. Cambridge.
• Cartledge, P. A. 1999 (1990). Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd. Bristol.
• Dobrov, G.W. 1995. ‘The Poet’s Voice in the Evolution of Dramatic Dialogism.’ In Dobrov ed. Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy. Atlanta. 47-97.
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• Konstan, D. 2011. ‘Socrates in Aristophanes’ Clouds.’ In D. Morrison ed. The Cambridge Companion to Socrates. Cambridge. 75-90.
• Laks, A. and Saetta Cottone, R. 2013. Comedie et Philosophie. Socrate et les Presocratiques dans les Nuées d’ Aristophane. Paris.
• Lefkowitz, M. 2012 (1981). The Lives of the Greek Poets. Baltimore.
• Luppe, W. 2000. ‘The Rivalry between Aristophanes and Kratinos.’ In Harvey/Wilkins eds. 15-23.
• MacDowell, D. 1971. Aristophanes’ Wasps. Edited with Introduction and Commentary. Oxford.
• Momigliano, A. 1993 (1971). The Development of Greek Biography. Cambridge MA.
• Olson, S. D. 2010. ‘Comedy, Politics, and Society.’ In Dobrov ed. 35-70.
• Rashed, M. 2009. ‘Aristophanes and the Socrates of the Phaedo.’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 36: 107-36.
• Rosen, R. 1988. Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition. Atlanta, GA.
• Rosen, R. M. 2000. ‘Cratinus’ Pytine and the Construction of the Comic Self.’ In Harvey/Wilkins ed. 23-40.
  • 2007. Making Mockery: the Poetics of Ancient Satire. Oxford.
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• Rusten, J. ed. 2011. The Birth of Comedy. Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic Competitions, 486-280. Baltimore.
• Scott, D. 2000. ‘Plato’s Critique of the Democratic Character.’ Phronesis 45: 19-37.
• Sidwell, K. 1995. ‘Poetic Rivalry and the Caricature of Comic Poets: Cratinus’ Pytine and Aristophanes’ Wasps.’ In A Griffith ed. Stage Directions: Essays in Ancient Drama in Honour of E. W. Handley. London. 56-80.
• Sommerstein, A. H. 1990-2012. The Comedies of Aristophanes. Edited with Translation and Notes. Warminster.
• Storey, I. 2003. Eupolis: Poet of Old Comedy. Oxford.