Comedy was an opposite to tragedy—the word itself, a ‘revel’ or ‘riot, suggests a moment of release. It appears much later than tragedy, in 486 for the Dionysia, 442 for the Lenaea, and the genre is openly contemptuous of its rival. It is now understood that comedy originated in Greek-speaking Sicily—perhaps through the inventive rewriting of the myths of the Trojan War by one Epicharnus who was active even before Aristophanes was born. (See the essays in Kathryn Busher (ed.), Theater Outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy, New York and Cambridge, 2012.) Comedy in Athens was, in fact, an essential element of its democratic system in that the dramatist could ridicule virtually any aspect of life from the gods to contemporary politicians, from philosophers to other dramatists. The outrageous nature of many of Aristophanes’ jibes, at a time when the city was under immense threat from outside, is remarkable and overturns the Periclean image of a city coldly dedicated to patriotic virtue.
Very little is known of Aristophanes (c.450-385 Bc) but it is assumed he was Athenian by birth. His attitudes are elitist, and he was ready to taunt anyone who represented new values or a less than cultured lifestyle. Aristophanes was writing at a time when Athens was at war and he yearns for peace, presenting the past as more civilized and noble than the present. It is hard to summarize his political views because his targets were so varied, but he shows some nostalgia for the early days of democracy, a time when he considered that the ‘people’ were wiser than they had since become. He had the aristocrat’s weakness for mocking the background of others. Euripides, for instance, was taunted for being the son of a greengrocer (even though evidence suggests his background was quite a wealthy one). Cleon, the dominant political figure in Athens after the death of Pericles, is portrayed in The Knights as a slave to an unsteady and stupid old man, Demos (The People), who is happy only when he is given handouts. Euripides is derided for betraying the traditional conventions of tragedy.
The Clouds, a satire on contemporary philosophy, was produced for the first time in 423, a time when Athens was hoping for peace. A dissolute old farmer, Strepsia-des, has heard that philosophers can make even a bad case appear good and he is determined to have his son learn how he can do this so as to get his own back on his creditors. Part of the play takes place in a school, the ‘Thinkery’, where students engage in all kinds of meaningless intellectual exercises and where it is taught that Zeus does not exist and it is the clouds instead which produce thunder and rain. ‘These people’, notes Strepsiades, ‘teach anyone who pays them to win any argument right or wrong.’ Socrates himself appears in a basket examining the clouds. Aristophanes is well attuned to the debates of the sophists but senses their vulnerability. Do intellectuals ever really achieve much? Do they use their brilliance to obfuscate the weakness of their arguments?
The Clouds, like most of Aristophanes’ work was set in contemporary Athens, though Aristophanes’ scripts often quickly translate the action into an unrecognizable world. Perhaps the finest of Aristophanes’ plays is The Birds, written at the anxious time when the Athenian expedition of Sicily (see Chapter i8) was under way but its fate unknown. Aristophanes creates an ideal state, an escapist kingdom of birds halfway between the world of men and that of the gods. The birds are able to cut off the flow of sacrifice to the gods and so force them to accept the primacy of the birds. In Lysistrata, the women of Greece launch a sex strike in order to force their men to give up war. In The Frogs, the theme is tragedy itself. With Euripides and Sophocles by now both dead, Dionysus has to go down to the underworld to bring back Euripides to keep the Dionysiac festivals going. In fact Aeschylus puts in a counter-claim, and in a debate between him and Euripides it is Aeschylus who wins. He is considered a better guardian of traditional morals—a reflection without any doubt of Aristophanes’ own preferences.
These accounts do nothing to show the wit, outrageous double entendres, fantastic characters, and sheer hurly-burly that make up Aristophanes’ work, or the lyrical quality of much of his writing. The choruses, whether made up of birds, clouds, wasps, or frogs, dress up in appropriate costumes to add to the colour and hilarity of the performances. In Aristophanes there is a marriage between the most sophisticated wit and the most unbridled vulgarity. No other comedian of the Greek world comes near to equalling it, and it is only recently that producers have felt able to revive his plays with an unexpurgated text.
By the end of the century, however, freethinking on religious matters was less tolerable. Optimism was not possible in an age of plague and military defeat, one which saw the destruction of the Athenian expedition to Sicily in 413 and the defeat of Athens by Sparta in 404. It was natural for conservatives to see these disasters as the revenge of the gods on those who had slighted them. Already, in the 430s, a decree of the Assembly had allowed public prosecution of both those who criticized the practice of religion and those who taught ‘rational’ theories about the heavens. Protagoras was forced to flee Athens and was drowned on his way to Sicily.
World History
