1. Carriere, J.-C. (Le carnaval et la politique [Paris 1979], 41f.Google Scholar) discusses in different terms the paradoxical attitude of comedy: on the one hand, critical of the present order, yet on the other hand, of excessive innovation. Athenian comedy is a genre, he argues, focused at once on an idealized past and on a present in need of regeneration. See also Whitman, C.H., Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, MA 1964), 119–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sommerstein, A., ‘Aristophanes and the Demon Poverty’, CQ 34 (1984), 320f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The case for the serious expression of political positions through comedy and irony is made by de Ste.-Croix, G.E.M., The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (Ithaca, N.Y. 1972), 355–71Google Scholar; while I am in this paper focusing on aesthetic rather than political positions, it will be clear that I reject the view taken by some scholars that, because Aristophanes is funny, nothing he says can be taken seriously (see, e.g., Rosen, R., Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition [Atlanta 1988], 5–7Google Scholar and ch. 4 passim.) Rather, while the comic poet’s positions are formulated according to the rules of his genre (that is, through humor), they still possess a serious historical dimension. See Henderson, J., ‘The Demos and Comic Competition’ in Nothing to Do With Dionysus?, ed. Winkler, J. and Zeitlin, F. (Princeton 1990), 271–313Google Scholar.

2. I assume that the Aristophanes whose views are expressed in this parabasis and elsewhere is a persona created by the real Aristophanes; how precisely this persona resembles its creator is, of course, an imponderable.

3. See Dover, K.J., Aristophanes Clouds (Oxford 1968), ad 14Google Scholar.

4. That Aristophanes identifies with the sophists, the objects of his condemnation in Clouds, or that he shows familiarity with their rhetorical techniques, has been noticed by several scholars, among them Murphy, C.T. (‘Aristophanes and the Art of Rhetoric’, HSCP 49 [1938], 69–113Google Scholar, who sees Aristophanes as informed by the Zeitgeist, yet critical of the abuse of rhetoric by democratic politicians. Rivers, J.E. (‘Rhetoric and Irony in Aristophanes’ Clouds’ in Hypaha: Essays in Classics, Comparative Literature and Philosophy Presented to Hazel E Barnes on her Seventieth Birthday, ed. Calder, W., Goldsmith, U., Kenevan, P. [Boulder 1985], 169–85Google Scholar) notes the adherence of Clouds’ parabasis to formal sophistic rhetorical structure (prooimion, diegesis, etc.) and concludes that Aristophanes is engaging in self-satire. See also Whitman (n. 1 above), 124, who sees Aristophanes as ‘playing both ends of these antinomies … against each other, till both are attenuated and reduced to absurdity’. Insightful as these analyses are, Aristophanes can be identified with a more precise and positive position than they suggest.

5. In translating the OCT text of Aristophanes I have consulted in particular A.H. Sommerstein’s editions of Clouds (Chicago 1982)Google ScholarPubMed, Peace (Chicago 1985)Google ScholarPubMed, Acharnians (Chicago 1980)Google Scholar, Knights (Warminster 1981)Google ScholarPubMed, Wasps (Warminster 1983)Google ScholarPubMed, and Birds (Warminster 1987)Google ScholarPubMed.

6. Aristophanes tends to use idea to designate either the formal or the conceptual aspect of a thing as opposed to the thing itself; the word approaches in some cases ‘genre’ (eidos) and in others ‘ideas, concepts’ (epinoia, heurēma, or dianoia, as at Wasps 1044). Starkie (The Clouds [Amsterdam 1966]. ad 289) compares idea at 547 to Thes. 436f., where Mikka’s speech is praised for its formal or intellectual prowess (pasas d’ ideas exetazei). For idea as ‘genre’ see Frogs 384; Birds 993, 1000; cf. eidos at Wealth 317; although Van Leeuwen’s preference at Clouds 547 for the meaning ‘genre’ seems to rest on Hermann’s emendation of the ms. eideas to the singular idean (Aristophanis Nubes [Leiden 1968]). It is significant that this term embraces what are, to us, the semantically opposing notions of form and content.

7. Such an image, applied to Cleon, appears at Knights 864ff; see Starkie (n.6 above) and Dover (n.3 above), ad loc. At fr.54, Aristophanes similarly complains that other poets have made three light cloaks from his coat. Cf. also Peace 739–60, Wasps 1044ff.

8. But see Dover (n.3 above), ad loc, who makes it clear that Aristophanes did not leave these objects of abuse alone, either. See, e.g., Aristophanes on Hyperbolus’ mother at Thes. 839ff.

9. See Dover (n.3 above), ad loc, on this not very precise analogy. The reference is to the Electra in Aeschylus’ Choephori; Newiger demonstrates Aristophanes’ preference for the Aeschylean version over the Euripidean here (‘Elektra in Aristophanes’ Wolken’, Hermes 89 [1961], 422ff.Google Scholar). See n.21 below.

10. Tragedy is personified as a sick female whom Euripides doctored at Frogs 939ff. Thus also the ephemeral tragedian complained about in Frogs is compared to a lad (meirakullion, 89) who can only urinate on, not copulate with, his lover (tragedy: hapax prosourēsanta tei tragōidiai, 95), in contrast with the ‘fertile’ (gonimos, 96) poet Euripides. The ‘lad’s’ poetry is ‘fruitless babbling’ (epiphullides, 92). On fertility and poetic creativity see Denniston, , ‘Technical Terms in Aristophanes’, CQ 21 (1927), 113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Cf. Wasps 1049, 1059. The synonymy of Prodicus (who is named at Clouds 361 by the chorus as the one man whose sophia outstrips Socrates’) is parodied by Plato (Prot. 337c) with the example of his distinction between euphrainomai and hēdomai as that between intellectual and physical pleasure. Thus Aristophanes might be making a point which would strike his audience as sophistic in flavor. Khairomai and euphrainō can both be ‘physical’ and vulgar, but they are euphemistic expressions when they are, e.g. Clouds 1070. See Taillardat, , Les images d’Aristophane (Paris 1962) 15Iff.Google Scholar, and Henderson, J., The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven and London 1975), 221Google Scholar. Demetrius (De Elocutione, 128 and 163–72) identifies the difference between kharis and to geloion as that between pleasure (euphrainein) and laughter (168). Comedy inspires both laughter and pleasure, while tragedy produces strictly kharis (169). This kharis is of two kinds: the more lofty (meizones kai semnoteroi), and the more comical (kdmikōterai, skōmmasin eoikuiai) (128).

12. Aristophanes’ claims fit in with G. Norwood’s somewhat overstated distinction between the refined school of Crates (influenced by Epicharmus) and the lampoonist comedy of Cratinus, which was the inspiration for most Attic comedy (Greek Comedy [London 1931], 143–47Google Scholar). There is, in fact, considerable positive evidence to be found in the fragments to contradict Aristophanes’ claims to ‘innovation’ as well as to moral superiority over his rivals and predecessors: see, e.g., Eupolis frs. 78, 244, Cratinus fr. 200–213 K.-A, Metagenes fr. 14, Pherecrates frs. 145, 95. See, for further discussion of the aesthetic, philosophical and political focuses of the comic fragments, Norwood, op. cit, 114–201; Dover, K.J., Aristophanic Comedy (London 1972), 214–16Google Scholar; Pickard-Cambridge, A.W., Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (2nd ed., Oxford 1982) 137Google Scholar; and Carriere (n.l above), 55–66. Also see Schol. V on Clouds 542ff. and Murphy, C.T., ‘Popular Comedy in Aristophanes’, AJP 93 (1972), 170ff.Google Scholar, for examples from the Aristophanic corpus which refute his own disavowals of vulgarity; and cf. n.8 above.

13. Clouds 908–10, 969: anaiskhuntos, bōmobkhosr, 992: skōptēi; 1078: gelōs as the key to getting a charge of adultery against one dismissed.

14. Frogs 1521: pseudobgos kai bōmobkhos; 1085, 1089ff: Euripides fills the city with bOmobkhoi who are always tricking the people.

15. Stanford, W.B., Aristophanes: The Frogs (Basingstoke and London 1963)Google Scholar, ad be, compares to this passage Plato Laws 816E, where the relation between the comic and the serious is discussed.

16. The scholiast gives two possible translations: the one above (which is also Aristotle’s usage, e.g., Rhet. 1404b36, 1405a8) and ‘words of foreigners’. The words in the latter sense have been taken to refer either generally to the foreign origin of many sophists (so Murphy [n.4 above], 74) or specifically to the mission of Gorgias to secure Athenian aid against Syracuse in the Sicilian war (Starkie, , The Achamians of Aristophanes [Amsterdam 1968]Google Scholar, ad loc.); Aristophanes is thought to have cautioned against giving such aid in Babybnians. The two senses are reconcilable, however: see Williams, B.H.G., ‘The Political Mission of Gorgias to Athens in 427 B.C.’, CQ 25 (1931) 52–56Google Scholar, who argues that Ach. 634 refers to the same brand of new-fangled words that Aristophanes attacks in Banqueters (fr. 198), and for which Gorgias stood. The context (discussion of Aristophanes’ purification of language) as well as external evidence (see Starkie, ad loc.) lead me to prefer the former for purposes of translation.

17. Dicaeopolis prefaces his long speech at 497–556 with the warning that he is about to speak about public affairs in a comedy, for ‘comedy also knows (oide kai) justice’. This ‘also’ probably suggests that tragedy is the genre to be associated with the teaching of justice: see Taplin, O., ‘Tragedy and Trugedy,’ CQ 33 (1983), 331–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Such an interpretation of this line would also lend support to Aristophanes’ claims to an affinity with tragic values, the matter to which we shall turn in the next section of this paper.

18. See also Vit. Aristoph. (Arist. test. 1 K.-A.), where Aristophanes is said to have been the first to bring comedy from its ‘rambling’ (planōmenēn) ways to ‘greater usefulness and solemnity’ (to khrēsimōteron kai semnoteron).

19. He may well be copying Pherecrates, who claims something similar in fr. 185 as he discusses older comic poets.

20. Cf. Sch. on Peace 749 (-fr. 94), where Pherecrates is said to have had Aeschylus claim to have built (exoikodomesas) a great art.

21. Newiger (n.9 above). Euripides’ skeptical Electra does not seek her brother. Newiger notes that the contrast between the tragedians is picked up again at 1364ff., where Strepsiades describes how Pheidippides insulted his favorite Aeschylus. See Pucci, P. ‘Euripides Heauton Timoroumenos’, TAPA 98 (1976), 365–71Google Scholar, for a different and subtle reading of Euripides’ relationship to rationalism as revealed in the Euripidean recognition scene.

22. It is actually Euripides here articulating this view of the purpose of poetry in response to Aeschylus’ query, but his response plays right into Aeschylus’ hands, as Aeschylus is able to argue that Euripides’ poetry does not serve this end.

23. Denniston (n.10 above), 114, discusses this image of ‘bridling’ as signifying artistic restraint. Stanford notices (n.l5 above, ad loc.) that the chorus’ diction in this passage is a mixture of ‘epico-Aeschylean’ language and sophistic terminology.

24. The metaphor here is from a cavalry maneuver, as Stanford describes it (n.l5 above, ad loc.). However, Radermacher, (Aristophanes Frösche [Vienna 1921], 301Google Scholar) rightly emphasizes the contrast between the straightforward violence (biaiōs) of Aeschylus, and the defensive subtlety of Euripides, epanastrephein recalling the twists and turns of 775. Indeed torōs also has connotations of cleverness. Cf. fr. 638 (−682K.−A.), where Euripides is called ‘tangle-fleeced (strepsimallos) in respect to his art.’

25. Radermacher (n.24 above), 319.

26. See n.10 above. Likewise Euripides advises Agathon that the wise man (ho sophos) abbreviates his language (en brakhei/pollus… suntemnein bgous, Thes. 177)

27. Cf. Sat. Vit. Eur. fr.8. col.2. (fr.33a Supplementum Comicum, I. ed. Demianczuk [Hildesheim 1967]), and Radermacher (n.24 above), 349f. See also Aristophanes fr. 376–392 K.-A., where Socrates is said to write Euripides’ lines. Mnesimachus is said to have used the epithet sōcratogomphos, ‘patched up by Socrates’, of Euripides (see Teleclides fr. 39). Denniston (n.10 above), 119, shows that leptos is applied to Euripides and philosophers, but not to Aeschylus and Sophocles; so also Taillardat (n.l1 above, 294), argues that leptos is almost always pejorative.

28. Euripides’ plan for Agathon to infiltrate the women’s assembly is called by Mnesilochus kompsos and entirely in keeping with his character (Thes. 9Iff.).

29. Cf. 881, where, whereas Euripides manipulates linguistic ‘sawdust chips’ (paraprismata), Aeschylus is empowered with ‘grand language’ (rhēmata). At 82Iff., Aeschylus’ language is ‘horse-prancing phrases’ while Euripides’ is ‘verbal examination’ (epōn basanistria). Elsewhere the diminutives rhēmatia and epullia are applied to Euripides’ language (Ach. 398–400, 447; Peace 532–34). Cf. the schol. ad loc, who assigns rhēmata to Aeschylus, the paraprismata to Euripides — a point on which there is some uncertainty. See also Radermacher (n.24 above), 269, who comments that rhēma is a particularly unpoetic term for word(s), but rather has the sense of ‘Kraftworte’.

30. Frogs 1050ff., 821, 824, 828, 854,924, 940, 1004.

31. In connection with ‘lightness’, note how often Euripides is associated with ‘ether’ (e.g., Frogs. 892, Thes. 1068, 1099, etc.).

32. Phil. 77, 1246. Probably even the sophia at Pindar Ol. 9.38 ought to be understood as akin to the sort of impious sophia condemned at, e.g., Eur. Bacch. 203 and 395. See also Odysseus’ suspicious sophia at Pindar Nem. 7. 21ff. and 8. 26.

33. Pseudei kalupsas ten aletheian logoi. Other relevant passages include [Aesch.] PV 944–46 and 962, where a sophistes is the stealer of fire; Xenophon Mem. 1.2.46, of Alcibiades’ youthful cleverness; Soph. fr. 97 Nauck, where a just soul is superior to any sophistēs.

34. Contra, see Dover (n.l2 above, 187, and n.3 above, ad 94) who states that sophos never carries the ambivalent connotation of ‘shrewd subtlety’ in Aristophanes. See Gladigow, B., ‘Zum Makarismos des Weisen’, Hermes 95 (1967), 422.Google Scholar, and cf. Thes. Ill, 21, 1130; Birds 934, 375, 1426, 1401; Lys. 368. It seems that in its Euripidean associations sophia does take on a sinister sense, not only in Frogs but also in Clouds: see, e.g., Frogs 968 and Clouds 763, 1207. Dover (n.3 above ad 148) holds the same view of dexios, although it is used in connection with Socrates’ brand of intelligence (cf. also 428, 834, 852). Surely the fact that Aristophanes uses these terms to boast of his own art does not free them of ambiguity.

35. See for a discussion of Dionysus’ complex attitude R. Friedrich, ‘Euripidaristophanizein and Nietzschesokratizein: Aristophanes, Nietzsche, and the Death of Tragedy’, Dionysius4 (1980), 18–20. Also see Strauss, L., Socrates and Aristophanes (New York and London 1966), 262Google Scholar.

36. Most commentators have taken Euripides as sophos and Aeschylus as the object of enjoyment in 1413, but in view of Aeschylus’ imminent victory as sophōtatos and Dionysus’ original affection for Euripides, this is not entirely certain. So Radermacher (n.24 above), 335; Van Leeuwen (Aristophanis Ranae [Leiden 1968], ad loc.) and Stanford (n.l5 above), ad loc. The scholiast (v) also so identifies the references but notes that while Aristarchus took Euripides as the sophos, others said otherwise. Contra, see Dover (n.l2 above), 182–86, who relates Aeschylus’ image of the lion cubs (1421–33) to his sophia, while Euripides is pronounced ‘clear’ because of his statement at 1446ff. It is perhaps helpful to note that when the chorus of Achamians boast of Aristophanes’ efforts to rid comedy of excess verbiage they refer to the pleasure of hearing such excessive language (hēdesthai thōpeuomenous, 635). 1434 has caused even more controversy because of the fairly well-developed association of Aeschylus with unclarity (asapheia: see, e.g., 927) and Euripides with sophia. Radermacher (341) and Dover (186f.) takes 1434’s sophōs to refer to Aeschylus, sophos to Euripides, since ‘imagery and enigmatic allusion’ would be Aeschylean traits. Yet Dionysus perhaps accuses Euripides of unclarity at 1445; and the chorus only moments later, clearly thinking of Aeschylus, praise the ‘sharp intellect’, ordinarily associated with Euripides (xunesis ēkribōmenē, 1482f.: cf. Radermacher, 270 and 349). There are big problems with line assignations here: see, e.g., G. Wills, ‘Aeschylus’ Victory in the Frogs’, AJP 90 (1969), 54–56.

37. Wills (n.36 above), 52–57, is, in my view, correct to argue that Aeschylus’ victory does not issue from the advice attributed to him at 1463–65: rather, he probably refused to give advice, as 146If. imply. More likely, Dionysus chooses Aeschylean silence and all it represents over Euripidean device. Both K.J. Reckford and C. Segal see Aeschylus’ victory as having to do with the poet’s greater vitality as against Euripides’ sterile sophia (Reckford, , Aristophanes’ Old-and-New Comedy [Chapel Hill and London] 1987, 428f.Google Scholar, and Segal, ‘The Character of Dionysus and the Unity of the Frogs’, HSCP 65 [1961], 226).

38. I use G.B. Walsh’s term ‘synthesis’ for what Aristophanes sees as the relevance of the dialectic between the two tragedians to his comedy, although I find it too bland to denote the position the poet is taking against sophistic ideology. Walsh, in a powerful analysis of the debate in Frogs, sees Aeschylus’ poetics as grounded in a virtually materialist linguistic theory and thus irreconcilable with Euripidean aesthetic formalism (The Varieties of Enchantment Early Greek Views of the Nature and Function of Poetry [Chapel Hill and London 1984], 85–96Google Scholar).

39. MacMathúna, S. (Trickery in Aristophanes, Diss. Cornell 1971), 218–42Google Scholar, argues in detail for two types of trickery in Aristophanes — the one rhetorical and deceitful, the other physical, comic and innocent. It is with this latter type that MacMathúna sees Aristophanes as sympathetic, and I think that, on the most fundamental level, this is certainly true. But, at the same time, he explicitly identifies himself with verbal cleverness despite the deceitful connotations it clearly has at some points.

40. See Dover (n. 12 above), 183f.

41. It is interesting that the Stronger Argument’s attitude towards speech seems particularly Hesiodic: the agorē is, in Works and Days (29f.), the locus of immorality. Moreover, the Weaker Argument’s defense of the agorētēs appeals to the authority of Homer, in particular the example of Nestor (1056f.).

42. Pucci, P. (‘Saggio sulle Nuvole’, Maia 12 [1960], 2Iff.Google Scholar) discusses the deed-word (ergonlogos) opposition in this agōn, showing that sōphrosunē is attached to the former and wantonness (hubris) to the latter, verbal arts being valued chiefly inasmuch as they facilitate injustice. He also makes the interesting point that, contrary to traditional associations, the youth here prevails over the elder in the arena of rhetoric.

43. As Dover notes (n.3 above, lxiif.), there are two important ways in which the ethics of the Weaker Argument depart from those of the Phrontisterion: the latter are associated with neither buffoonery nor sensuality.

44. Scholars have suggested thematic reasons for the different outcomes, e.g. Reckford (n.37 above), 428; Wycherley, , ‘Aristophanes and Euripides’, G& R 15 (1946), 106Google Scholar. The most compelling reason is certainly historical: in 423 Aristophanes saw the need for a warning about the insidious influence of sophistic rhetoric on traditional civic values; in 405, with the collapse of Athens imminent, the need was for a message of optimism.

45. See Sommerstein (n.5 above), ad 1102ff., for discussion.

46. It would be interesting to know if, as his disappearance at 887 suggests, the Socrates actor played one of the Arguments (probably the Weaker, although both Socrates and the Stronger Argument are arguably alazones). See Dover (n.3 above), lxxvii, and McLeish, K., The Theatre of Aristophanes (New York 1980), 150Google Scholar.