by Aristophanes
PENGUIN CLASSICS
FROGS AND OTHER PLAYS
ARISTOPHANES was born, probably in Athens, c. 447–445 BC and died between 386 and 380 BC. Not much is known about his life, although there is a sympathetic portrait of him in Plato’s Symposium. Early in his career, during the 420s, he was prosecuted for attacks on the prominent politician Cleon, but later, in 405, he was awarded public honours for promoting Athenian unity in Frogs. Aristophanes wrote forty plays in all. Of these the eleven surviving plays are Acharnians (425), Knights (424), Clouds (423), Wasps (422), Peace (421), Birds (414), Lysistrata (411), Women at the Thesmophoria (411), Frogs (405), Assemblywomen (c. 392) and Wealth (388).
DAVID BARRETT (1914–98) was born in London where he attended the City of London School, having already learnt Greek by the age of ten. He studied Classics at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and then worked at the British Museum Library where he developed a particular interest in the Finnish collection. After the Second World War he became a lecturer in English at Helsinki University. Over the years he translated many classic Finnish texts and was later made a Knight, first class, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland. On his return to England in 1965 he joined the staff of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. He was quite well versed in over thirty languages, some of them little known, and at the Department of Oriental Books he specialized in Georgian and Armenian books and manuscripts. As well as the plays in the present volume David Barrett’s translations of The Birds and The Assemblywomen are also published by Penguin Classics.
SHOMIT DUTTA was educated at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, University College, Oxford, King’s College, London, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He has taught classics at various schools and universities. Besides working as a freelance arts reviewer, he has published a translation of Sophocles’ Ajax and a volume of Greek tragedy for Penguin Classics.
ARISTOPHANES
Frogs and Other Plays
Translated by DAVID BARRETT
Revised Translation with an Introduction
and Notes by SHOMIT DUTTA
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN CLASSICS
Published by the Penguin Group
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This translation first published by Penguin Books 1964
Revised translation with new Introduction and Notes published in Penguin Classics 2007
3
Copyright © David Barrett, 1964
Revised translation, Introduction and Notes copyright © Shomit Dutta, 2007
All rights reserved
The moral right of the editors has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 9781101488942
Contents
Introduction
Further Reading
A Note on the Revised Translations
Preface to Wasps
Wasps
Preface to Women at the Thesmophoria
Women at the Thesmophoria
Preface to Frogs
Frogs
Notes
Introduction
The plays of Aristophanes, the oldest surviving genre of comedy in Western literature, still have much to tell us. As recently as 2003, a thousand one-off performances of Lysistrata – the play in which the women of Greece mount a sex-strike to bring about peace – were staged across the world (including one in every US state) as a protest against the invasion of Iraq.
Aristophanic comedy’s enduring relevance in spite of its antiquity is just one way in which it may be seen as simultaneously old and new. The tension between old and new is itself a prominent theme in several plays; none more so than Frogs, where the comic hero Dionysus is asked, in his capacity as the god of theatre, to judge a contest between the old-fashioned Aeschylus and the avant-garde Euripides. But while Frogs appears to condemn Euripides as a debaser of tragic convention, we should not infer from this that Aristophanes was an unequivocal conservative. The same Euripides is portrayed as the tirelessly innovative hero of Women at the Thesmophoria.1 Aristophanes is also at pains to emphasize his own innovativeness as a dramatist. The Chorus of Wasps, speaking on the poet’s behalf, openly berates the audience’s conservatism in failing to appreciate his previous, highly original and unconventional play Clouds.
Even Aristophanes’ method of constructing his plays reflects a preoccupation with the old and the new. As a poet and dramatist he borrows, plunders and parodies from earlier writers remorselessly and yet, as his recycling of Euripidean tragedy in Women shows, he transforms what he appropriates into something utterly new. For Aristophanes, as for T. S. Eliot, tradition and novelty (or originality) are not in conflict but rather complementary elements of artistic creation; this is evident in his implicit attempt in Frogs to incorporate the once-modern Euripides into an evolving tragic canon.
It is often said that classic works are both of their time and timeless. This is true of Aristophanic comedy. The plays are highly topical and firmly located in contemporary Athens, but in creating their own autonomous blend of fact and fiction they attain universal scope. Aristophanes is also the earliest canonical writer to use comedy systematically to examine and contest core cultural values – artistic, social, religious, political and philosophical – of the society to which he belonged.
Critical judgement of Aristophanes’ writing crosses the whole spectrum. Many have hailed him as an artist of the highest order, some damned him with faint praise, others condemned him unequivocally. One reason for such a mixed reception is Aristophanic comedy’s seemingly contradictory characteristics: ceaselessly innovative and irrepressible yet rooted in tradition and generic convention; unashamedly highbrow and yet inordinately fond of slapstick and vulgarity. Still, critical differences notwithstanding, most scholars across the ages agree on two things. First, Aristophanes has few rivals for sheer ingenuity. Secondly, he is one of the greatest exemplars of the grace, charm and scope of Attic Greek – the dialect of fifth- and fourth-century Athens in which its drama, history, philosophy and oratory were composed. Hopefully, the former of these qualities and something of the latter come across in these revised translations of three of his finest plays.
Today we may read Aristophanes simply for entertainment. Over and above this, however, there have been three main approaches to his work. The first is to treat Aristophanic texts as documents for understanding the cultural life of fifth-century Athens. This idea can be traced back to Plato who, when asked by the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse to
explain the Athenians’ system of governance, responded by sending him the complete works of Aristophanes. The second is to regard Aristophanes as a comic writer. From such a perspective his work may be studied in its own context, compared with other comic literature, or considered in terms of its influence on later forms of comedy. The third is to see Aristophanes as a comic dramatist. Aristophanes may well have intended his work to be read (the fact that we have the second, unperformed version of Clouds, and evidence in the plays themselves, such as Dionysus’ recollection of perusing a play of Euripides in Frogs 52–3, suggest that play texts existed in Aristophanes’ day), but it primarily was through spectacular one-off performances in dramatic festivals that his plays made their impact on the culture of fifth-century Athens.
Performance radically enhances, or alters, our understanding of any dramatic text. With Aristophanes the gap between the texts and their realization as performances is especially wide. The aspects of performance about which we know very little include delivery, stage action and theatrical effects. We do know from vase-paintings depicting theatrical scenes that various kinds of scenery and props were used in the ancient theatre (according to Aristotle, scene-painting was introduced by Sophocles), although the exact configuration of the stage for original performances of particular comedies remains conjecture. We can also tell where stage machinery – a crane (mēchanē) for aerial appearances and a revolving platform (eccyclēma) for showing indoor scenes – was used. In Aristophanes such occasions, which often parody stage practice in tragedy, are usually alluded to openly in the text (e.g., Women 96, 265).
A significant proportion of ancient drama involved musical accompaniment. Some such passages were lyric and would have been sung, others would have been recited, or chanted, as opposed to spoken as dialogue or monologue. The Chorus danced during some, though not all, of their lyric passages. While we can usually tell at what points musical accompaniment would have occurred in Aristophanes, we know almost nothing of what it might have sounded like. Likewise with dancing, we can generally tell when it would have occurred, but only occasionally are there any specific clues about the movements involved; one such instance is Philocleon’s burlesque of tragic dancing in the finale of Wasps, where he gives a running commentary on his series of highly demanding manoeuvres.
There are considerable obstacles to reconstructing fully the original performance of a specific Aristophanic comedy, but we are better placed to gain an idea of the general theatrical experience of Aristophanes’ fifth-century Athenian audience, and, firstly, the life of Aristophanes.
The Life and Times of Aristophanes
Little is known for certain about the life of Aristophanes: even the dates of his birth and death are speculative. His birth date is somewhere between 447 and 445 BC, as his first play, Banqueters (427), was performed when he was young but probably no less than eighteen. The date of his death, probably not long after 386, is conjectured on the basis of his having written two plays after his last surviving play, Wealth, staged in 388.
Aristophanes was born and educated in Athens, and belonged to the deme (city district) of Cydathenaeum. His father was Philippus and his mother Zenodora. His family may have had some connection with the island of Aegina (Aristophanes hints at this in Acharnians 653–4). If his family did own property there, it may have been acquired after Athens’ defeat of the Aeginetans in 431. Other biographical facts are few and far between. He had three sons: Philippus, Araros and Nicostratus (or Philetaerus). All three seem to have embarked on the same career as their father, and we know that Araros put on Aristophanes’ last two works, Cocalus and Aeolosicon (both lost), early in his career. As for Aristophanes’ physical appearance, humorous remarks in Clouds and Peace suggest that he went bald at an early age, although some sculptural portraits show him, in early middle age, as having ample hair.
In a writing career spanning forty-odd years, Aristophanes is known to have had forty comedies produced. Of these, apart from numerous fragmentary quotations, eleven plays survive: Acharnians (425), Knights (424), Clouds (a revised version of the play that was produced in 423), Wasps (422), Peace (421), Birds (414), Lysistrata and Women at the Thesmophoria (411), Frogs (405), Assemblywomen (probably 392) and Wealth (388). Comedy, like tragedy, was performed as part of state-sponsored competitions (on which see below). Of his surviving works, Aristophanes is known to have won first prize in the comic competition with Acharnians, Knights and Frogs; second prize with Birds and Wasps; and third prize with Clouds. We do not have results for the other five. Of his lost plays, we know that he won first prize with Babylonians (426) and Preview (422).
It was probably in the 380s that Plato (c. 427–347 BC) wrote his Symposium, a fictional dramatic account of a drinking party given by the tragedian Agathon in 416 to celebrate his first victory in the tragic competition. Among the guests are Aristophanes and Socrates. Though written several years after its supposed date, Symposium is our only source for what Aristophanes may have been like in person. It presents him as sociable. Socrates suggests that he ‘devotes all his time to Aphrodite and Dionysus’.2 He seems on friendly terms with the other guests and his host. Indeed, the first thing he says is that he has a hangover from drinking with Agathon on the previous day.
Though Symposium is a Platonic dialogue, it is largely made up of speeches aimed at defining love. Aristophanes, in his speech, contends that love is the desire and pursuit of spiritual and physical wholeness. The myth he invents to support this claim is amusing and absurd. People, he suggests, were originally one of three genders: male, female or hermaphrodite. They possessed two sets of everything – head, arms, legs, genitalia. However, the gods, feeling threatened by mankind, split them into two. This condition of being incomplete explains why people feel the urge to find, and conjugate with, their respective other halves (whether a different gender or the same). While Aristophanes aims to amuse by his speech, he does not expect to be dismissed as trivial; Plato makes him say as much himself. Symposium ends just as Agathon, Aristophanes and Socrates – the only guests still conscious – are about to discuss whether the technique of composing tragedy and comedy is fundamentally the same. What they might have said, according to Plato at any rate, we shall never know.
In Aristophanes’ lifetime the political circumstances of Athens changed considerably. During his childhood and early career the city was at its zenith. Radical democracy meant that all citizens could vote in the Assembly on all major policy decisions. They also stood a reasonable chance of gaining public office since a number of positions were appointed by lot. But generals and ambassadors were elected, and usually came from aristocratic or otherwise wealthy families; it was such men who tended to dominate politics. Pericles, one of the men responsible for establishing radical democracy in 462–461 BC, emerged as Athens’ single most powerful political leader. Through a mixture of diplomacy and aggression, and by building up naval supremacy, he turned an existing alliance of Greek states (against the threat from Persia) into a virtual Athenian empire. But Athens’ expansionism and harsh treatment of its former allies (now effectively subject states) caused other Greek citystates to fear for their independence. In 431 Sparta, the dominant military power in the Peloponnese, drew Athens into war.
When Pericles died in 429 BC he was soon succeeded by Cleon, a self-made man who was an unscrupulous, pro-war demagogue. Only after Cleon and the bellicose Spartan general Brasidas were killed at the battle of Amphipolis was an opportunity for peace seized in 421 (this is celebrated in Aristophanes’ play Peace). But this did not last. Athens soon resumed its imperialism, setting its sights on subjugating Sicily. The Spartans again endeavoured to thwart Athenian ambitions. A vast Athenian naval expedition to Sicily ended in catastrophic defeat. Meanwhile the Spartans, advised by Pericles’ nephew Alcibiades (who had defected), fortified their base at Deceleia, deep within Athens’ own territory. In 411, the year Women and Lysistrata were produced, dissatisfaction with the handling of the war led to Athens’ democrati
c system being replaced by an oligarchy, although democracy was restored the following summer. By this time, however, most of Athens’ subject states had either revolted or gone over to the Spartans, who had also secured Persian support. A costly Athenian naval victory at Arginusae in 406 did little to ward off final disaster, which came in 405 in the form of a crushing defeat at sea off Aegispotami (when Frogs was first performed early in 405 the city’s situation was desperate but this final blow had not yet been dealt). This cut off Athens’ grain supplies through the Hellespont and forced unconditional surrender in the spring of 404. Athens was stripped of all overseas territories and power was seized by oligarchs who established a reign of terror. As in 411–410 BC, democracy was soon restored, and lasted until Philip of Macedon’s conquest of Athens in 338. But defeat in the Peloponnesian War (404 BC), and the corresponding loss of empire, meant that the former intimate relationship between citizens and the state, a vital condition for Aristophanes’ highly politicized and topical comedy to flourish, was irrecoverably lost.
The Cultural Context of Old Comedy
Theatre in fifth-century Athens was one of the principal and most popular art forms. It was firmly rooted in its religious origins. Drama was composed for performance at two major festivals held in the city, the City Dionysia and the Lenaea, both in honour of Dionysus, the god of theatre.3 These festivals were major public events of civic as well as artistic and religious importance. Going to dramatic festivals was seen by Athenian citizens not just as a privilege but a duty and a right; there was even a ‘theoric’ fund for those unable to afford the price of tickets (two obols in Aristophanes’ day).
The festivals of the City Dionysia and Lenaea were each held over four days every year, the former around the beginning of March, the latter in January. The City Dionysia took place in the Theatre of Dionysus on the southern slope of the Acropolis. The location of the Lenaea is disputed. Originally it was probably held at a sanctuary called the Lenaeon, located by some scholars outside the city walls but identified by others with the precinct of ‘Dionysus in the Marshes’. The festival may have relocated after the building of the Theatre of Dionysus, as it would be surprising if a makeshift theatre were preferred to an available permanent one. In Aristophanes’ Acharnians (line 504), the hero Dicaeopolis speaks of himself and the audience as being ‘at the Lenaeon’, but this is not conclusive, as the phrase (also used by Plato and Demosthenes) may refer to the festival irrespective of its location.
