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The Frogs in the Frogs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

David A. Campbell
David A. Campbell
Affiliation:
University of Victoria
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Extract

W. S. Gilbert's very model of a modern majorgeneral knew among other things the croaking chorus of the Frogs of Aristophanes, and their refrain is perhaps the most widely-quoted line in Greek literature. But the interpretation of the Frogs’ scene gives rise to debate, and there is no agreement on even basic questions: for example, were the Frogs visible in the theatre or did they croak unseen behind the skene? What is the nature of the competition between the Frogs and Dionysus? Is the scene simply a self-contained piece of entertainment or has it an element of literary parody which would make it relevant to the main theme of the play? Here I attempt to answer the last of these questions.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 104 , November 1984 , pp. 163 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1984

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References

1 An early version of this article was read to the Classical Association of Canada in May 1980 and to the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast in November 1980. I should like to thank Rosemary Harriott for her helpful comments.

2 On both questions I should agree with D. M. MacDowell, who argues in ‘The Frogs' Chorus’, CR xxii (1972) 3–5Google Scholar that the Frogs were visible and that persistence may have been the only basis of the competition. On the first question see also Sifakis, G. M., Parabasis and Animal Choruses (London 1971) 94 f.Google Scholar with n. 1. The case for an invisible chorus is well put by Allison, R. H. in G&R xxx (1983) 8–20.Google Scholar

3 ‘The Identity of the Frogs’, CPh lxv (1970) 83–7.Google Scholar

4 At Eccl. 1101 it is uncertain whether the word is a proper name or not: see Ussher ad loc.

5 Socrates and Aristophanes (New York 1966) 241.Google Scholar

6 The Living Aristophanes (Ann Arbor 1974) 215.Google Scholar

7 Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, Mass. 1964) 247–9.Google Scholar

8 ‘Le Chant des Grenouilles: Aristophane Critique Musical’, REA lxxi (1969) 23–37.Google Scholar

9 The Maculate Muse (New Haven/London 1975) 93.Google Scholar

10 Pp. 171–3; cited also by Wills, G., ‘Why are the Frogs in the Frogs?’, Hermes xcvii (1969) 306–17Google Scholar, with the remark that Radermacher ‘realizes that [the style of the Frogs' chorus] is meant to satirize poetic ranting’ (316 n.1).

11 Silk, M. S., ‘Aristophanes as a lyric poet’, YCS xxvi (1980) 114Google Scholar notes the appropriateness of the pleonasm: ‘the laborious phrase Χρονίους … ἐνιαυτούς gives the feeling of overwhelming senescence, which the mystae can shake off so easily.’

12 On -μεσθα see Silk (n. 11) 125 n. 82.

13 Cf. Stanford on 210 ff.: ‘There is no need to imagine (with Tucker) that any special parody is intended’; Rau, P., Paratragodia (Munich 1967) 13.Google Scholar

14 The only humour that arises from their identity as Initiates lies in their references to their rags (404–6) and to the girl's peeping tit (409–12). Certainly the list of offenders in 354–71 begins and ends as a version of the proclamation that the uninitiated keep away, and the σκῶΨις of 416–30 can be seen as an example of the Initiates’ ἀκόλαοτος φιλοπαίγμων τιμή (331: cf. παίσαντα καὶ σκώψαντα, 392); but the spirit of both passages is little different from that of the parabasis in other plays. From 460 onwards the identity of the Chorus as Initiates is of no importance. Allison (n. 2) 18 n. 1 writes of ‘the occasionally rather lack-lustre and anonymous character of the principal chorus of shabbily dressed initiates’.

15 Charon gives three pieces of information in his answer to the question, ‘Whose beautiful songs?’: the songs are to be sung by frogs (if the play was ‘billed’ as Frogs, the audience will be ready for this answer); the frogs are as musical as swans; their songs will be astonishing.

16 So Spatz, L., Aristophanes (Boston 1978) 122.Google Scholar

17 I take it that all the βρεκεκεκέξ lines were shouted and not sung. At the beginning of the scene they are marked off also by their trochaic rhythm.

18 Aër. 3.

19 Il. xiii 798, Alc. 72.5 LP, Pyth. iv 121. On παϕλάζω in comedy see Neil on Eq. 919.