Poets, Politicians and Perverts
Personal humour in Aristophanes [Part 1]

Ian Storey

(I) Introduction

Old Comedy is not the sort of comedy that we are familiar with, i.e. situation comedy, comedy of errors and manners, of misassumptions and mistaken identities, of type characters, plot and sub-plot, with a romantic interest and an emphasis on the familial and the domestic. All of this depends on Greek New Comedy, the comedy of Menander (career: 325-290 B.C.) which was adapted by the Romans (Plautus and Terence) and through Shakespeare and others became the form of Western Comedy as we know it.

I would ask you to imagine (if you can) in dramatic form a combination of: the slapstick of the Three Stooges, the song & dance of a Broadway musical, the verbal wit of a television show like Cheers or Frasier, the exuberance of Mardi Gras, the parody of a Mel Brooks movie, the outrageous sexuality of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, the political satire of Doonesbury or your favourite editorial cartoonist, the fantastic imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien, all wrapped up in the format of a Monty Python movie. Such a creature might be closer to a comedy of the Aristophanic sort.

Old Comedy is fantasy or farce rather than what we might understand by "comedy"; it depends not on complicated plot or subtle interaction of characters, but on the working out of a "great idea" (the more bizarre, the better - e.g. a "private peace" with Sparta [Acharnians], the establishment of Cloudcuckooland [Birds], the "sex strike" that stops the War [Lysistrate]. Imagine a fantastic idea, bring it to pass, and watch the logical (or illogical) conclusions that follow. "Plot" is not a useful word in Aristophanic criticism; of the eleven extant comedies, only Thesmophoriazousai has anything like the linear plot of a modern comedy. The background is always topical and immediate, although we can notice in Ploutos, his last surviving comedy (388), a shift from the problems of Athens to those of all Greece.

In the very best sense of the word, then, assuming that there is a "best sense", Old Comedy is political, rooted in and centred on the polis of Athens in a particular place in time; Aristophanes (and the other comedians of this period, roughly 440-380[1]) make their comedy from the ideas, people, events and issues of the day; his plays are full of politics and politicians, thoughts and thinkers, poets and their poetry, as well as more than the occasional 'pervert', whose private life could be twisted by comedy for humorous effect. And nowhere is this topical nature more apparent than in personal humour (a rendering of the Greek to onomasti komodein --"to make fun of by name"), jokes against real people familiar to the audience and very likely sitting in the theatre on that day. One of the great uncertainties is how the 'victim' reacted. Was one just expected to take the joke in the festival atmosphere?[2] Was there ever a response against a comic poet (in the case of Kleon and Aristophanes, the answer appears to be "yes")? Was there even perhaps a perverse delight in being singled out, the sign that one had 'arrived' by becoming prominent enough for public mention?

In Aristophanes the verb komodein is used in three different ways (1) "to make fun, fool around" (as at Plout. 557), (2) "to include something in a comedy" (as at Ach. 655), and (3) "to make fun of (the most common usage, see Ach. 631, Peace 751, Frogs 368); a useful related term will be komodoumenoi ("those made fun of in comedy"). Both words occur as technical terms in the scholiastic tradition; ancient writers wrote books of komodoumenoi in the various comedians (see Galen de lib. propr. 17). If the "Old Oligarch" (= [Xen.] Ath. Pol.) is in fact a fifth-century text, it is interesting to note that both komodein and komodoumenoi are used in their technical senses as early as the time of the comedians (II.18).

In the extant eleven plays and the several hundreds of fragments of Aristophanes, there are at least 300 such komodoumenoi; these we can be reasonably sure are real people, and not just names thrown in by the poet with no intended reference. Add such mere names (e.g. the members of the chorus in Acharnians or Wasps or Ekkl.) and we reach perhaps 400 in all. The fragments of the other comic poets might raise this to about 500 -- in most cases the fragments of other poets yield komodoumenoi already familiar to us, as the scholiast (or whoever) cites Eupolis et al. for another reference to a man mentioned by Aristophanes (an example cited below will be Syrakosios at S Birds 1297). The komodoumenoi range from such well-known figures as Sokrates, Perikles, Kleon, and Euripides through instances where more than one identification with a known Athenian is possible (e.g., Antiphon, Lysistratos, Phrynichos at Wasps 1299ff.) to allusions to utterly known persons (e.g., Orsilochos at Lysist. 725 or Myrmex at Frogs 1506). I am currently at work on the preparation of a data-base covering the komodoumenoi in Aristophanes; formally titled, "A Critical Prospography to Aristophanes", but informally "Poets, Politicians, and Perverts".

(II) Examples and types of joke

(i) By far the most common sort of personal joke in Aristophanes is the one-liner, the quick jab that hardly disturbs the flow of the action -- I try to avoid the word "plot" in dealing with Aristophanic comedy. Three examples will illustrate this:

(1) Lysist. 283: "these women whom god and Euripides hate" (2) Clouds 399f. [explaining the nature of thunder]: STR. Isn't the thunderbolt Zeus striking down the wicked?
SOKR. You fool, if he's striking down the wicked, how come he hasn't hit Simon yet, or Kleonymos or Theoros? (3) Ach. 136-40 with reference to Theognis, nicknamed the "frigid" (psychros), a tragedian whose plays really "left one cold" - the scene is a mission returning from the North, the speaker its leader Theoros: TH. We wouldn't have spent so much time in Thrace... DIK. (...if you hadn't been drawing full pay)
TH. ... if it hadn't been for a snow-storm that covered all of Thrace and froze the rivers solid.
DIK. That must have been around the time of the Dionysia, when Theognis was putting on his plays.

(ii) What I call variations on a malicious theme -- a series of brief jokes at various people, but with a connecting theme. Once the theme is established and as the lists goes on, audience expectation is assured. A good modern parallel is David Letterman's "Top Ten ...", where an expanding sequence on a common theme engages the audience's interest. Again I cite three examples:

(1) In the prologue of Wasps, the slaves have three dreams, each about politicians (demagogues in fact), set in a public place and involved with public matters, each having a transformation of a politician into an animal form, and depending for the punch on a bad Aristophanic pun. In its own right, the sequence is highly imaginative, but also sets the political mood for what will be a very political comedy.

(2) At Clouds 347-55, the chorus of Clouds enters, dressed as women. The ensuing conversation explains their guise, since the Clouds appear in imitation of whomever they see: SOKR. The clouds become whomever they want. If they see one of those long-haired sex-fiends, like the son of Xenophantos, to mock him they turn into centaurs.[3]
STR. Suppose they catch sight of Simon, who's been robbing the public treasury, what do they do?
SOKR. To show his nature, they turn into wolves.
STR. So seeing Kleonymos yesterday, the man who threw his shield away, they became deer.
SOKR. So that's why they're women, they've just seen Kleisthenes. This is a classic instance of the sequence with each appropriate element building to the final punch-line, the joke at Kleisthenes, the man most made fun of as a woman in Old Comedy, also the only man allowed into the council of the women in Thesmophoriazousai

(3) At Birds 1290ff. Athenians have become so bird-crazy that they have turned into whatever bird is appropriate for each (if X were a bird, what bird would he be?). This is quite a long list, sometimes with the human first, sometimes the bird. Again the audience would wait in anticipation, especially if the speech were punctuated with appropriate and pregnant pauses, even suggestions from the audience.

(iii) Sometimes an entire song, usually in a break between episodes or in the parabasis, is devoted to a developed attack upon one person (or a related group); one could quote several; here are two. In the first the birds describe their sights they have seen (Birds 1470-91, tr. Arrowsmith): Many the marvels I've seen/the wonders on land and sea
But the oddest thing I ever saw/was the strange Kleonymos-tree.
It grows in faraway places,/its lumber looks quite stout,
But the wood is good for nothing/as its heart is rotten out.
In spring this tree grows law-shoots/of sycophantic green,
And bitter buds of slander/on every bough are seen.
But when like war cold winter comes,/the strange Kleonymos yields
Instead of leaves, like other trees,/a crop of coward's shields.Knights is devoted to a major developed attack on the politician Kleon (a demagogue whom Aristophanes loathed, and about whom more later). In the play he is usually called "Paphlagon", a name that combines foreign extraction (Paphlagon = "from Paphalgonia", and would denote a slave from that region, cf. "Thratta" ["Thracian woman"]) with his distinctive manner of speaking (from the verb paphalzein ["to splutter']),[4] but once (and only once) is his real name used in a bright little song that begins (vv. 973-6): The brightest sunrise it will be
for Athenians now living
and for those to come,
when Kleon is destroyed. We know that songs from drama entered the public domain on their own as separate "hits" (see Kn. 529-30); I agree with Rogers that here Aristophanes is creating his own song that (he hopes) will leave the play and be on everyone's lips, especially with the elections only weeks away.

(iv) The final sort of personal joke employs a rather different technique; instead of attacking from the stage persons in the community outside, the poet can bring on real people as characters in his plays, actors who would represent real Athenians of the day. The best and most notorious example is of course Sokrates in Clouds (I shall deal with later the caricature of this revered thinker and the problems which it has raised). But other major examples are Euripides (in Thesm., Frogs), Kleon in Knights thinly disguised as "Paphlagon", and perhaps also Lysistrate whom Lewis argued was based on Lysimache (priestess of Athene), the best-known woman in Athens possibly and one known for what she was, not as anyone's mother, wife, daughter or sister.[5] But there are also minor "cameo"-scenes with real persons appearing for a short scene, e.g. the appearance of Euripides in Acharnians , the trial of the dogs in Wasps. (where the dogs Labes ["Snatcher"] and Kyon ["Dog"] are in fact the rival politicians, Laches and Kleon), and the presence of Kinesias (a new-age poet) and Meton (a city-planner) among those seeking entry to the city of the Birds. Each comedy from Acharnians to Frogs has at least one; Acharnians in fact has five or even six.[6]

(III) Later views of Old Comedy:

The ancient critics (especially the Romans) regarded Old Comedy with a mixture of fascination and horror, in particular where the freedom to attack real people was concerned. For later critics personal humour become the heart and soul of Old Comedy. To explain the origin of Old Comedy, one explained where personal jokes came from, i.e. as Aristotle does in Poetics 3-5, from the iambic tradition; to explain the change of Old Comedy, a law on comic freedom is postulated or an alteration in the political situation. This means that often all the other features that strike us so forcibly and with such pleasure, the fantasy, the parody, the social values, the language, the style were ignored in favour of the notion that Old Comedy was a sort of personal satire.

I have selected a number of passages from later authors; much of the serious study will have begun with the Alexandrian critics of 3rd c., but the Romans are the first we have in any detail.[7]

(1) Horace Ars Poetica 281-4: Then there came Old Comedy, not without a considerable reputation. But its freedom degenerated into licence, and into a violence that had to be curbed by law. A law was passed and the chorus became quiet, having lost its right of shameful abuse.I would note the association of comedy with freedom that became licence, the need for a law to curtail the "shameful abuse", and the grudging admission "not without a considerable reputation". This was popular, Horace admits; it still retains a reputation, but...

(2) Horace Satires I.4.1-7: Eupolis and Cratinus and Aristophanes and the other poets of Old Comedy, if there was anyone deserving of being pointed out as a wicked man or a thief or an adulterer or murderer or as notorious in any way, would single him out with great freedom.Here for the first time are set out the "Big Three" of Old Comedy, the triad of Eupolis (career: 429-411) and Kratinos and Aristophanes (an Alexandrian attempt to match the famous tragic triad of Aeschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides?). Two points stand out here. First, comedy is being viewed by Horace as the literary ancestor of satire and thus provides authority for Horace's own poems;[8] second we can find "redeeming moral value" for comedy in selecting deserving targets. Here we encounter what will become a frequent assumption in both ancient and modern criticism that the victims deserved their ridicule at the hands of the comedians.

(3) Cicero de Re Publica 4.11: Among the Greeks comedy was allowed by law to say whatever it wanted about whomever it wanted ... and whom did it not attack, rather persecute? It may be that it savaged wicked demagogues who fomented rebellion in the state, Kleon and Kleophon and Hyperbolos, and we might allow that, even though citizens of that sort are better singled out by a censor rather than by a poet. But that it assaulted Perikles, who had been the leader of his state for so many years at home and in the field with the greatest authority, that it assaulted him on stage is no more fitting than if Plautus or Naevius had wanted to slander Scipio or Caecilius Marcus Cato. Cicero's Roman ethos shows through clearly here. You will have noticed the "law" again, but here a formal licence in Athenian law, with the undertone of "only in Athens ...". Cicero fastens only on the political jokes, seeing men such as Hyperbolos and Kleon as populares who would harm their state if not checked; note the very Roman reference to the censor as well. Finally the possibility that great men such as Perikles could be attacked is an affront to dignitas.

(4) Platonios I.3-12 (a Greek author of two short treatises on comedy, date unknown):In the time of Aristophanes and Kratinos and Eupolis, the democracy was in power at Athens and the people had supreme authority, being lord and master of political affairs. Since all had freedom of speech, the writers of comedy had no fear about joking at generals, at jurors who gave bad judgements, and at those citizens who were greedy for money or who lived outrageously. For the people, as I said, removed any fear from the comic poets, as they liked to hear them attack such men -- as we know, the people are fundamentally hostile to the rich and enjoy their discomfiture. This almost Marxist view of comedy sees it as the weapon of the poor against the rich. For him comedy was an expression of the vigorous democracy at Athens in the late 5th c., and Platonios is totally right here. One of the casualties of the less substantial 4th c. will be Old Comedy. Notice the reference to "fear", for Platonios will go on to say that once the oligarchy came, fear descended upon the poets and the choregoi with the resulting change of comedy. It is interesting to note that this class-based view of comedy can be found also in the "Old Oligarch" (II.18) where the people enjoy the attacks on the rich and powerful or on anyone who gets above himself. This view is found also in Henderson's recent [1993] model of comedy as the average man's revenge upon anyone who would be deemed "elite".

(5) Quintilian 10.1.65: Not only is Old Comedy almost the only form of poetry to preserve the true grace of Attic speech, but it also possesses a most eloquent freedom in attacking vice for which it is especially famous. However, it has a great deal of power in other areas; it is eloquent, grand and delightful ... Quintilian is rare among ancient writers in that he sees more than just the attack of vice which he does mention; for him Old Comedy is true Attic -- the 2nd c. A.D. would devote itself to what we call "the Attic revival" with its insistence on finding and using the "correct" modes of classical Attic -- and in his words it is "eloquent, grand, and delightful". One is reminded here of Platonios' emphasis on grace (charis) in assessing the comedians (Platonios II) but also the epigram attributed to Plato (Epigr. 14P):

The Graces were searching for a sanctuary that would never fall;

they looked and found the soul of Aristophanes.

Thus the ancient commentators on Old Comedy:

(a) single out personal humour as the essence of the art-form,

(b) tend to explain rise and fall of the genre in terms of the existence or absence of personal jokes,

(c) assume the necessity of a moral justification - [Plutarch] makes a revealing comment: "Aristophanes seems to have written his slanderous and bitter passages for the envious and malicious",[10]

(d) explore the possibility of a formal connection between comedy and the law.

(IV) Comedy and the Law:

A play by Aristophanes or any other Old comedian today would keep a law-firm busy for a year with slander suits, especially in the litigious atmosphere of the 1990s and the public willingness to seek legal redress for any slight. We ask: what was the relationship between Old Comedy and the law, specifically a law on slander?[11] The evidence for this law (the dike kakegorias) is found in Lysias 10 (his kata Theomnestou, a speech of 385/4), about 20 years after the heyday of Aristophanes, but from what Lysias says, the law seems to have been in effect for some time. We may assume then that the provisions of the dike kakegorias were in effect during the late 5th c.

The law specified three "forbidden things" (aporrheta) that one may not say of another: that one had "killed one's father" -- this is the provision being invoked in Lysias 10 -- that one had "beaten one's parents", and that one "had thrown one's shield away" in battle. Aristophanes does seem to have avoided using the first two of any komodoumenos,[12] but what about Kleonymos, one of Aristophanes' favourite and repeated targets, "the tree that sheds shields", made fun of at least a dozen times in 7 plays over more than ten years and specifically called a rhipsaspis at Cl. 354? We seem to have a possible area of confrontation: the law forbade this, but Aristophanes does it, repeatedly.

We could offer a number of solutions to the problem:

(1) Aristophanes is in fact telling the truth; Kleonymos did throw his shield away, and in the dike kakegorias truth was a legitimate defence . BUT rhipsaspia was a serious offence in Athenian law and carried atimia (loss of citizen rights). We know Kleonymos to have been a political figure of some prominence for nearly 20 years - how would he have escaped prosecution and conviction if he had in fact been so openly guilty of cowardice? As we shall see, we should be wary of taking comedy too literally on any point.

(2) We might argue that comedy had an official exemption from the law on slander. Cicero does say that personal humour was "allowed by law". Perhaps comedy's official exemption from the law on slander was the origin of Cicero's comment. BUT Kleonymos is the only person so made fun of; if there were an exemption, we would expect lots of such jokes and against more people. Aristophanes seems to be the only one to attack Kleonymos (or anyone else) for this; I get the hint also that the comedian knows that he is treading on dangerous ground.[13]

(3) Radin suggested that the part of the law on slander prohibiting the mention of rhipsaspia was added later than 414 (the last joke at Kleonymos). Thus there is no problem, since this clause belongs to the period 414-384. BUT again we would expect many such jokes and many targets, and then a falling-off and this is what we do not get.

(4) A further possibility is that comedy was subject to the law but Kleonymos declined to prosecute. Both Lysias (10.2) and Demosthenes (18.123) insist that one should take a joke rather than resort to the law on slander, except in serious cases (which theirs of course are). This is a good possibility and one worth considering. As stated earlier, we have no good contemporary evidence for the victims' reactions to comic humour.

(5) But what is probably the best answer and one that has been much taken up in recent assessments of the comedian's larger intentions is to suppose that comedy was by its nature part of the spirit of carnival, where normal restraints did not apply, where one stepped outside the normal limits of the polis, that it was comedy after all and not paid much serious political attention. There is evidence for the abusive "jokes from the wagon" at the Lenaia or the ritual insulting of the initiates in the Mysteries; comedy is just part of the festival, outside the normal routine which included the law. Look at Frogs 367-8 where a certain politician has proposed (surely for reasons of financial exigency in the economic crisis of 405) a reduction in the poets' subsidy: or the politician who nibbles away at the poets' pay
because he was made fun of in the ancestral rites of Dionysos We notice two key words: rites (Gk. teletai) used of religious ritual and laden with strong overtones, and ancestral (Gk. patrios), an equally loaded adjective in view of such current political catch-phrases as the "ancestral laws", "ancestral constitution" (patrios politeia). Personal humour, says Aristophanes, enjoys the double sanction of religion and tradition.

Two much later passages confirm this view. The first is from Plutarch describing the conduct of Sokrates and addressing one of the frequent questions "why did the comic poets attack Sokrates?" When Aristophanes produced his Clouds, heaping all sorts of abuse on him, one of the audience said to Sokrates, "Aren't you angry, Sokrates, that he made fun of you in that way?" "Oh no", replied Sokrates, "for in the theatre I am made fun of as if I were among friends at a great party." [Plutarch, Peri Paidon Agoges, 10c-d] The other is from Lucian (one of the few ancient writers spiritually akin to Aristophanes and one who made great use of Old Comic themes in his own works). Lucian has Philosophy speak as follows: Is that all you're worried about? A few rude remarks? You know the way that Comedy treats me at the Dionysia, but we're still the best of friends. I've never taken her to court or even complained privately to her. I just let her enjoy the fun that's all part and parcel of the festival. For I know that no harm can come from a joke. [Lucian Halieus 14] These passages are unusual among the ancient descriptions of Aristophanes and Sokrates in that they do not take the comedian to task for his jokes against the revered Sokrates, and they sum up well the view that I would take of comedy and the law.

Still there are three places where Old Comedy and the Athenian legal system do seem to cross paths:

(1) According to the scholiast to Ach. 67 in 440/39 (the archonship of Morychides) a decree was passed me komodein; since we know that comedies were still presented in the subsequent years, critics usually take this to mean "no personal humour", rather than "not to put on comedies". The obvious question is why? The Samian revolt of 441/40 is usually trotted out as an explanation; it was a serious situation, requiring the presence of all ten generals (Thuc. 1.116.1). But why a law on personal humour? Some think that only specific persons were forbidden, but which ones and again why?[14] The most important thing about this law was that it was repealed in 437/6; the Athenians seem to have liked their comedy unregulated. The example of Paphlagon=Kleon shows how one could get round such a law.

(2) In 415 there may have been a decree passed by one Syrakosios. The entire matter depends on a scholion to Birds 1297 which runs as follows: Syrakosios: he seems also to have passed a decree against making fun of anyone by name, as Phrynichos says in his Monotropos [a comic poet, career: 429-405; the comedy Monotropos, "the Hermit", belongs with Birds to the Dionysia of 414] "Syrakosios has the mange; I hope he gets a good and obvious case of it, since he has taken away those whom I wanted to make fun of" That's why they attack him so bitterly. [S Birds 1297 = fr. 27 of Phrynichos] One of the many problems of interpretation is the possibility that the words "since he has taken away those whom I wanted to make fun of" could also be the scholiast's words, "since he has taken away those whom they wanted to make fun of". Thus the whole of Phrynichos' curse at Syrakosios might be "Syrakosios has the mange; I hope he gets it really good". The problem is then how the scholiast extrapolated a decree on comedy from only that bit. Thus we probably do want to keep the words "since he has ..." as part of the comic source for the scholiast. Radin thought that Syrakosios had passed the part of the law on slander against calling someone a "shield-thrower", Sommerstein (1986) that he had passed a law forbidding the comic poets to mention anyone involved in the scandals of 415, in essence to make them "non-persons", Atkinson that Syrakosios had passed a law that forbade the comedians to make fun of anyone that was unfairly involved in the scandals, but like Halliwell, I think the whole thing a scholiastic fiction, a false deduction from the text of Phrynichos (whatever it really means). I remain sceptical of trusting any scholiast who begins an entry with "seems" (dokei).

(3) At the Dionysia of 426 Aristophanes put on a play (now lost) called Babylonians, that had something to do with the allies and Athens. Kleon, a leading demagogue of the day, lodged some sort of official complaint about Aristophanes before the boule (Council) -- there is good evidence that Kleon was a member of that body in 427/6 -- on some charge like "insulting the city" especially in the presence of the foreigners. We do not know the actual nature or wording of the charge or the result (probably not proven), but in his next play (Acharnians) witness these comments by the poet (Ach. 377-81, 502-3, 514-8, 630-1):

And I know myself what I suffered at Kleon's hands last year, when he dragged me into the council-chamber and started accusing me, telling all sorts of outrageous lies against me, roaring at me like a river in flood, just about drowning me

.......

Kleon will not be able to accuse of insulting the city with foreigners present ... for why do we blame the Spartans, since some of our people (I don't mean the city; remember that, I don't mean the city), worthless counterfeit foreign trash ...

.......

being accused by his enemies that he makes fun of our city and injures the people ...

One thing is clear: there was no formal law against personal humour that brought Old Comedy to an end in the 4th c.; Horace's lex est accepta is a fiction, and we must seek to explain the change in comedy by other means. This I shall tackle in the last section of this discussion.

(V) The comedies as a whole

Aristophanes wrote 40 plays over a career of 40 years, of which we have 11 spaced over 37 years, with five plays bunched together from the 420s. On the larger scale we may ask questions about Aristophanes' use of this technique such as: is there a chronological evolution of personal humour? Do any plays stand out with much more (or much less) personal humour? Is there a `norm'? Do the late plays show signs of change? An examination of the plays in terms of personal jokes reveals:

(a) that the five plays of the 420s plus Birds and Frogs are very close in the number and style of personal jokes (one-liners, variations, songs, real characters etc.). Thus there is a `norm' represented by these seven plays.

(b) There is no evolution and development since the first play we have (Acharnians), Aristophanes' third comedy, is full of personal jokes of all sorts and shows Aristophanes at the top of his form - add whatever there was in his second play (Babylonians) that offended Kleon, probably jokes against Kleon, and we may assume that Aristophanes was working within in an established tradition of personal humour in Athenian comedy. This in my view was largely due to the influence of Kratinos. Aristophanes thus owes much to his predecessors in this respect.

(c) The two last plays (Ekkl., Ploutos) are not lacking in personal jokes; the former in fact ranks third in numbers, BUT no real characters appear among the dramatis personae, there are no songs of abuse and only one mild variation (on Athenian beards at Ekkl. 70ff.). The jokes are all one-liners and tend to be found in the first half of each play. There is no parabasis in either play. What humour there is is almost pro forma and both plays seem very tired as if the comic life were beginning to ebb.

(d) Two aberrations may be observed. First one play has substantially more personal jokes, two sequences in the prologue alone, two real politicians thinly disguised appearing in a scene, two main characters named after a politician, two imaginary parties with real people as the guests - that is Wasps. We may observe that is this eight months after the failure of Clouds, his first production since then; twice in the play (54-66,1043-5) he berates the audience for their rejection of his sophisticated comedy, promising them something that is good, but not beyond them. I would argue that the heavy use of personal jokes (especially in the prologue) is part of his response to that failure and an attempt to win the audience over.

Second, the two plays with the fewest jokes are not the late plays, but the two comedies of 411 (Lysistrate, Thesmophoriazousai). These have the fewest number of jokes, perhaps three political jokes in the two plays combined. Any songs are distinctly non-topical, and any real persons on stage are non-political (Agathon, Euripides, Kleisthenes, Lysimache). What was going on in 411? The right-wing coup that we know as the Revolution of 411, a dangerous time (a good account is given in Thuc. VIII). I conclude that the poet is aware of the background, is maintaining a low profile, and avoiding political jokes; remember that Aristophanes would survive two right-wing coups and two democratic restorations. Henderson argues that at the time of Lysistrate (411-L)[16] Aristophanes was not yet aware of the impending dangers, but I think that the evidence from personal jokes suggests otherwise, that he realised that this was not the time for a comedy such as Wasps or Birds.

(VI) Interpreting (very) old jokes:

When one comes to deal with a particular person and the comic joke, the technique of the comedian needs to be considered, as well as the other question of who (among possible candidates in late 5th-c. Athens) the komodoumenos might be. I would make the following observations can be made about how Aristophanes works.

First, he is direct and rarely uses nicknames or subtle disguises to mask a target so well that only ingenious scholars 2300 years later will get the reference (e.g that beneath Amphitheos in Acharnians lurked the figure of Hermogenes the brother of Kallias).[17] When he does use a disguise, the identity is obvious, e.g. Paphlagon (Kleon) in Knights is associated with tanning hides by v. 44, the "voracious sea-monster" speaking to the people on the Pnyx with the voice of a blazing pig likewise stinks like a tannery (Wasps 38), or the easy change from Lysimache to Lysistrate which when taken with the background of the Acropolis would make the identification sure.[18] These ingenious theories unfortunately still flourish today, e.g. Katz' identification of the three gods at the end of Birds (Poseidon, Herakles, the Triballian) with the three generals sent to Syracuse, or Vickers' fantasies about Alkibiades lurking beneath the text of just about every play (tragedy and comedy) of the late 5th c.[19]

Second, praise of a target is rare; after all, compliments do not get laughs. Where there are words of praise, it is sometimes lead-in to an insult at another. For example at Wasps 1275-83 Automenes is praised for his brilliant son the actor (Arignotos) and another equally accomplished son a lyre-player, but these are set up to contrast the arch-pervert Ariphrades "who has learned by himself how to get his tongue into every brothel". Aristophanes uses the same technique at Kn. 1274ff. again to set up Ariphrades in contrast to his brother.

But some people are usually well treated: certain artists and musicians, the politicians of an older generation (Kimon, Thoukydides), the knights (an elite group on the right of the Athenian political spectrum), the tragedian Sophokles - here I quote the encomium of Phrynichos in 405: Sophokles was a truly blessed man; he lived a long life, and died a happy and accomplished person. He wrote many fine tragedies, and died happily, without experiencing anything bad. [Phrynichos fr. 32 (Muses) - 405] Yet even Sophokles can be the object of a joke, as in Peace Aristophanes pokes fun at him for allegedly taking money to write poems -- "Sophokles has turned into Simonides " (695-9).

Thirdly, the dead are usually spared. In Acharnians and in Peace the general Lamachos (whose name appropriately means "battle") is presented as a war-loving young dandy, using the war to advance his career, the prototype of the later comic figure of the miles gloriosus . But after his death at Syracuse in 414, he becomes a hero even to comedy (see Thesm. 836ff. and Frogs 1039). Even after Kleon's death in 421, he is left alone by the comedian (although in Peace, only a few months after his death, Aristophanes does prod the corpse a few times, just wants to make sure he is dead).

There is one major exception; four years and eight years after his death, Aristophanes makes two lengthy attacks on Perikles for his responsibility in starting the War. In Acharnians the War begins by some drunken young men kidnapping a whore from Megara, the Megarians stealing two of Aspasia's girls in return, and then "Olympian Perikles in rage thundered and lightened and stirred up all of Greece" (523ff.), while in Peace Perikles' friend Pheidias embezzles money and Perikles starts the War as a smoke-screen to cover this up (605ff.). The comment by de Ste Croix may be extreme, "For the dead Perikles there is no mercy", but these passages are interesting in that rancour seems to survive well after Perikles' death and that the usual picture of Perikles after his death was favourable, e.g. in Eupolis' Demoi (a lost play in which we know that Perikles and three other dead leaders returned to life) we hear: Perikles was the very best of men at speaking; whenever he came forward, like a good athlete, he would outrace the others at speaking by ten feet. And in addition to his speed upon his lips persuasion sat; he was the only politician who could charm his audience and leave a sting as well. (fr. 102) The usual comic technique is exaggeration (as opposed to pure nonsense or irony). After all, irony is dangerous in an audience of more than 17,000, as they would have to know that A is not A, but B. We may notice that when Aristophanes does use irony, he telegraphs the joke. An example is the description of Agathon at the start of Thesmophoriazousai - the truth (or at least the truth that the joke depends upon) is that Agathon was a young, clean-shaven, rather delicate and effeminate tragic poet (vv. 29-35, Barrett's translation): EUR. This is where the famous Agathon lives, the tragic poet
REL. Agathon? What sort of fellow would he be? I knew an Agathon once - big, tall, swarthy, chap?
EUR. No, not that one.
REL. Do you mean the fellow with the long, bushy beard?
EUR. Come on, you must have seen Agathon.
REL. No, I'm sure I haven't - at least not to recognise him.
EUR. Well, he does do most of his work at night.
[the actual Greek is a crude intimation of Agathon's personal life]
This is a clear instance of irony and elaborately set up by the poet. For the most part then the comedian's technique is exaggeration, of something in the victim's life or personality that can make him a good target. In other words, beneath the comic smoke there is some bit of fire that sparks it all off, but the comedian can exaggerate this out of all proportion. For example on the subject of Kleonymos the "rhipsaspis", I have argued [Storey 1989] that he was not a coward or deserter, but had used influence to avoid military service. A passage at the end of Knights suggests this (vv. 1369-72): S-S: And when a soldier's name is entered on the military list, there it stays and won't be removed through influence.
DEM: That stung Kleonymos, in the shield-band.The point is that affixing the shield-band (porpax) readied the shield for action (cf. Kn. 849); Kleonymos, it would seem, had in some way got his name removed, and this Aristophanes has turned maliciously into cowardice.

We should thus look for the kernel of the joke that sets the comedian off: Amynias is called a "woman" because "she doesn't serve in the army" (Cl. 690f.); the truth seems to be that Amynias served on an embassy to Thessaly in 424/3 which was seen by his detractors as a way of avoiding military duty. Kleophon is said to be a Thracian alien with a distinct accent ("a swallow perched upon his lips" - Frogs 680ff.). The best explanation is that he was probably born in the late 450s of an Athenian father (Kleippides) and a Thracian mother, before the citizenship decree of Perikles in 451 which laid down two Athenian parents as requisite for citizenship, did have a Thracian mother and very likely a trace of an accent.[20]

We must also allow for stereotypes and running-jokes, for once a joke takes hold, it might as well be true as far as comedy and public opinion were concerned. Once comedy had branded Kleonymos as a "shield-thrower" or Kleisthenes as an effeminate, comedy could exploit that caricature whatever the truth may have been. One good example is the stereotype that intellectuals (e.g. Sokrates and his followers) are pale and wan because they don't go out by day in the sun, but stay inside and think and talk. In Clouds when Strepsiades sends his son to study with Sokrates, he is delighted at his pale complexion when he emerges (1171-7). An especial target of such jokes was Sokrates' friend Chairephon who is called "pale-yellow", "half-dead", and "the bat" (Gk. "night-bird").

Perhaps the best-known stereotype is that which comedy creates around the demagogues and which became a great staple of late 5th-c. comedy. Demagogues (literally "people-leaders") were a new force in Athenian politics in the 420s. The truth is that they came from the commercial middle class;[21] they had prospered and become wealthy since the Persian Wars; they made their money rather than inherited it. They were moving into politics with an expertise in finance, used flamboyant and populist tactics to sway the people, and tended to be chauvinistic and imperialistic in foreign policy, particularly in relation to the allies and toward Sparta. In short, they were "new men", not from the same stratum that had produced Athens' leaders up to Perikles.[22]

The comic fiction (found especially in Acharnians, Knights, Wasps, Frogs) is that these are tradesmen from the working-class (Kleon reeks of the tannery, Hyperbolos has his lamps) - it is worth pointing out that Kleon, at least, was anything but poor; his father, Kleainetos, was wealthy enough to have been a choregos in the 450s, and Kleon had a marriage-connection with the family of Harmodios the tyrannicide.[23] They are not even real Athenians: part of the presentation of Kleon as Paphlagon is to suggest a foreign slave, Hyperbolos is called "Marikas" in Eupolis' comedy of that name (the name is Persian, and suggests a young roguish slave), Kleophon has a Thracian mother and a distinctive accent, the unnamed demagogue of Eupolis fr. 99.23-34 can barely speak Attic at all.[24]

According to comedy demagogues were poorly educated; in Kn. a would-be demagogue is being interviewed [vv. 185-92 - tr. Sommerstein]: SLAVE: You're not of good birth, by any chance?
S-S: The lowest you could imagine.
SLAVE: Thank heaven. That's just what's wanted for a politician.
S-S: But look here ... I can just barely read and write.
SLAVE: What a shame "just barely". You don't think politics is for the educated and the literate, do you? It's for illiterate scum like yourself.A very frequent charge is that they were personally dishonest and used their positions for their own gains. In Knights Paphlagon has given the People only the scraps and kept the best for himself; the same point is made in the agon of Wasps (666ff.), that most of Athens' income has gone into the pockets of those who pretend to protect the people. Kleon as Kyon ("the Dog") in Wasps (914-30) is angry with Labes (Laches) not for stealing the cheese, but for not sharing it with him, and concludes with the nice twist on the proverb "the same hedge cannot hold two robins" into "the same hedge cannot hold two robbers [klepta]". Finally they used the tactics of threats, intimidation, and slander; the passage quoted above (p. 104) from Acharnians of Kleon's attack on Aristophanes is a good example.

And there is one further stereotype: the best politicians are those who were homosexual prostitutes in their youth. I quote two passages here, the first from Knights:

PAPH: Didn't I put a stop to buggery when I had Grypos struck off the citizen rolls?
S-S: You only put a stop to it because you were afraid the boys would grow up to be politicians. [vv. 876-9]

If one villain dies, two politicians spring up. For there is no Iolaos in our city to cauterise the politicians' heads. You've been buggered -- well then, you'll be a politician. [Platon fr. 202]

The final piece in the comic caricature of the demagogue was the creation (probably by Aristophanes with his Knights in 424) of the demagogue-comedy, a play devoted in very large part to the portrayal in very unflattering terms of one particular demagogue. In Knights Kleon is slightly disguised as "Paphlagon" for reasons mentioned above; Eupolis followed in 421 with his Marikas, a thinly disguised Hyperbolos (the demagogue who came to prominence after Kleon's death in 421). Aristophanes would complain in the revised parabasis of Clouds (551ff. - c.417) that Eupolis with Marikas, then Hermippos (with Artopolides - "Bread-sellers"), and then "all the rest" had followed his lead. For the comedian Platon we know of demagogue-comedies called Hyperbolos, Peisandros, and Kleophon (the last produced with Frogs in 405). In the case of Hyperbolos, his mother was also included in the comic caricature - Aristophanes (Cl. 555f.) says of Eupolis that he added "a drunken old woman for the sake of a vulgar dance". I have developed this at length; my point is that once this stereotype is up and running, the comedians will exploit it whatever the actual circumstances surrounding a particular demagogue are.

I move on to these jokes about effeminates and homosexual behaviour. We have the insinuation that the best politicians are those who were formerly youthful rent-boys; we meet Agathon the delicate tragedian, Kleisthenes the only male allowed in the assembly of the women, Epigonos the sight of whom causes a speaker to slip into the feminine gender (Ekkl. 166-8). Kleisthenes in particular has a 20-year career in Old Comedy.

The best studies are those of Henderson [1991] and Dover [1978]. The conclusion that one draws is that the jokes are not sexual jokes (aimed at the sexual practice of what we call "homosexuality")[25] but are gender jokes based on turning a male into a female. They take the following line: X. looks like a woman or can in some way be regarded as a woman; therefore he takes the sexual role of a woman (the passive role). Dover has demonstrated that no-one is made fun of in comedy for taking the active role in a homosexual union; in fact, there are places where this sort of behaviour is a pleasure of life, e.g. Philokleon's delight at seeing youths in the nude or the end of Knights where the rejuvenated Demos receives two gifts [1384-7]: S-S: Here for your comfort is a camp-stool to sit on, and to carry it, a very well-hung youth. And if the spirit moves you, just turn him upside-down and make him your camp-stool.
DEM: Dear me, I am back in the good-old-days. Only for taking the passive (the female or that of the eromenos) is there a comic slur.

A.H. Sommerstein, "Aristophanes and the events of 411", JHS