Tag Archives: Ancient Greek Comedy

June 6, 2012 · 9:26 pm

ANCIENT GREEK COMEDIES: PHILYLLIUS

Welcome to Balladeer’s Blog’s latest look at ancient Greek comedy. In previous posts I examined 8 individual comedies from classical Athens. Since so many of the Attic Old Comedies survive in very fragmentary form I will periodically be dealing with the plays too fragmentary for full-length reviews in the manner laid out in this blog post.

Instead of examining individual comedies in these posts, I will focus on those ancient Greek comedians whose entire corpus is very, very fragmentary, touching briefly on all of their known works. For background info on ancient Greek comedy plus my previous reviews click here: https://glitternight.com/ancient-greek-comedies/ 

PHILYLLIUS – This comic poet’s career seems to have spanned approximately from the 410’s BCE to 390 BCE. One of his comedies won 1st prize at a Lenaea festival in the 390’s and he won 1st prize at an unknown Dionysia. His fellow comedian Strattis credited him with being the first Attic Old Comic to use real torches on stage.

My favorite random line from his fragments: “The most important element of health is to breathe clean and unsullied air.”   

I. HERAKLES – This comedy combined mythological burlesque with a comical look at the institution of phratries in ancient Greece. Phratries were the forerunner of and partial inspiration for college fraternities and sororities as well as Continue reading →

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March 8, 2012 · 8:07 pm

ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY: ORE MINERS (C 420’s BCE)

 I had planned on examining another comedy by Cratinus for my next Ancient Greek Comedy post here at Balladeer’s Blog. Understandably my sister Rosemary’s hospitalization has changed quite a few things. She is out of the hospital now but needs more assistance than usual for a while so with the limited time I have available right now I figured it was better to do a brief take on the VERY fragmentary remains of Pherecrates’ comedy Ore Miners AKA Metalles.

THE PLAY

A group of ore miners accidentally dig so deep underground that they stumble upon the Netherworld. While there they observe the automatist Utopia that Pherecrates depicts the souls of the dead as dwelling in.

Rivers flowed with porridge and soup instead of water and on the Continue reading →

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February 10, 2012 · 1:47 am

ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY: PYTINE (423 BCE)

Cratinus as we all like to remember him

 Welcome to Balladeer’s Blog’s seventh post on ancient Greek comedies. If Pytine was an episode of Friends it would be titled The One Where Cratinus Fires Back At Aristophanes. This play is also known under English language titles like Wine Flask, Flagon, The Bottle, and others along those lines.

Cratinus, seen at left posing for the Attic Old Disco soundtrack album for Saturday Night Fever (Travolta stole all his moves from Cratinus, by the way) and galvanized by the tongue-in- cheek caricature that Aristophanes presented of a drunken, washed- up Cratinus in his previous year’s comedy The Knights, turned that caricature into the premise of his final comedy.

THE PLAY

From the fragments of Pytine that remain it seems Cratinus had an actor portraying himself (Cratinus) as the booze-soaked Grand Old Man of Attic comedy at the time. I always picture the character as a cross between Dudley Moore in Arthur and Tom Conti in Reuben, Reuben. Anyway, in the play Cratinus is Continue reading →

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January 16, 2012 · 12:03 am

ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY: THE KNIGHTS (424 B.C.E.)

 In Balladeer’s Blog’s 6th installment on ancient Greek comedies I will examine The Knights by Aristophanes. For background info on ancient Greek comedies see my original post on the topic: https://glitternight.com/2011/09/22/at-long-last-my-ancient-greek-comedy-posts-begin/

In The Knights Aristophanes pioneered a new sub-genre of Attic Old Comedy: the  Demagogue Comedy. The villain of this masterpiece of political satire was a figure called the Paphlagonian, who was patterned on Cleon, a notorious Athenian politician of the time period. I’ll have Continue reading →

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December 28, 2011 · 12:08 am

ANCIENT GREEK COMEDIES: DIONYSALEXANDROS (C: 430’s BCE)

For this 5th installment of my posts on Ancient Greek Comedies I’ll examine Dionysalexandros by Cratinus. For my post providing background info on ancient Greek comedies click here: https://glitternight.com/2011/09/22/at-long-last-my-ancient-greek-comedy-posts-begin/

Cratinus was one of the Big 3 in Attic Old Comedy along with Aristophanes and Eupolis, both of whom were much younger than he was. I chose Dionysalexandros as the first of his comedies to examine because it is a brilliant and, from the fragmentary evidence available on all non-Aristophanic comedies, a bold and possibly unique hybrid of Attic Old Comedy and traditional Satyr Plays.   

THE PLAY

In Dionysalexandros Cratinus pushed the envelope by Continue reading →

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October 14, 2011 · 12:29 am

ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY: DEMOI (C 417 BCE)

FOR BACKGROUND INFORMATION IF YOU MISSED MY FIRST POST ON ANCIENT GREEK COMEDIES CLICK HERE: https://glitternight.com/2011/09/22/at-long-last-my-ancient-greek-comedy-posts-begin/

As promised this time around I’ll depart from the works of Aristophanes to examine the fragmentary remains of a work by another genius of Ancient Greek Comedy, in this case Eupolis. Eupolis was part of the Big Three of Ancient Greek Comedy (henceforth AGC) along with Aristophanes and Cratinus. Some people confuse Eupolis with the later Greek comedian Eubulus but manage to lead fairly normal lives just the same. (rimshot)

THE PREMISE

Demoi is considered to be Eupolis’ greatest political satire. The premise is simplicity itself. An Athenian named Pyronides, like many of his fellow citizens, is disgusted with the pettiness, corruption and incompetence of the current crop of political and military leaders in the great city-state. Thus motivated, Pyronides retrieves four of the greatest figures of Athens’ storied past from the Netherworld and brings them back with him so they may set things right.

THE PLAY

In my introductory post about AGC (see above) I illustrated the similar problems faced by the Athenians’ ancient experiment in popular rule and our own often teetering enterprise. Corruption, partisanship and a tendency to subordinate the general good in the name of personal gain  were as rampant then as now.

As all Continue reading →

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October 7, 2011 · 1:13 am

ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY: THE CLOUDS (C 423 BCE)

FOR BACKGROUND INFORMATION IF YOU MISSED MY FIRST POST ON ANCIENT GREEK COMEDIES CLICK HERE: https://glitternight.com/2011/09/22/at-long-last-my-ancient-greek-comedy-posts-begin/

The Clouds was written by Aristophanes around 423 BCE and next to Lysistrata, which I examined last week, is the Big A’s most- discussed satire, mostly because of its lampooning of the philosopher Socrates, a contemporary of Aristophanes. Many modern readers, who have been programmed to sneeringly “deconstruct” old works of art rather than understand them, love to regard this comedy with hostility. They accuse Aristophanes of being “anti – intellectual” for subjecting Socrates in particular and the Sophist philosophers in general to the same satirical criticism that every other aspect of Athenian society was subjected to in comic plays.

There are many arguments I can use to refute this claim, and  I’ll present them below following my synopsis of the play itself. To provide just a brief argument right now since you may be curious, let me remind everyone that Shakespeare is famous for the line about killing all the lawyers, but I’ve never met one rational person who thinks that line means Shakespeare was seriously proposing the execution of all lawyers or the elimination of the law and/or the  judiciary system. By the same token I hardly think Aristophanes was railing against every form of education or intellectual inquiry. More on this controversy, including the trial of Socrates, below. 

THE PREMISE

In the ancient Greek democracy Athenian citizens were expected to represent themselves in court in both criminal and civil proceedings.

Since juries are the same no matter what the time period a guilty person who was a good speaker could get acquitted while an innocent person who was an inept speaker could get found guilty.

Conversely, since there were no public prosecutors, citizens could charge their fellow Athenians with crimes and if they were skilled enough at speaking they could railroad an innocent person. Many Athenian citizens who faced a court date would Continue reading →

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September 30, 2011 · 12:50 am

ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY: LYSISTRATA (C: 411 BCE)

FOR BACKGROUND INFORMATION IF YOU MISSED MY FIRST POST ON ANCIENT GREEK COMEDIES CLICK HERE: https://glitternight.com/2011/09/22/at-long-last-my-ancient-greek-comedy-posts-begin/

Lysistrata was written by the Big A himself, Aristophanes, and this comedy always makes a perfect introductory play for newcomers to Ancient Greek Comedy (henceforth AGC). Part of its accessibility to modern audiences obviously comes from the risque premise of the play, of course. For me the notion that we can understand and laugh at the same simplistic but brilliant story that Athenian audiences from 2,422 years ago laughed at and appreciated embodies the value of these ancient works. 

THE PREMISE

By 411 BCE the Peloponnesian War between Athens (and its allied city-states) and Sparta (and its allied city-states) had been raging for roughly 20 years. The war provides the backdrop for many of Aristophanes’ surviving comedies and is especially apt where Lysistrata is concerned.   Weary of the long, drawn-out conflict the women of Athens, led by the title character Lysistrata (supposedly based on Lysimache, the Priestess of Athena in Athens at the time), join forces with the women of Sparta and decide to withhold sex from the men until they agree to bring an end to the war. 

THE PLAY

Lysistrata convenes a covert meeting between the Athenian and Spartan women and, after the usual jokes about booze-hungry Greek women (“Patsy and Edina, 411 BCE” ), several ribald jokes about  Continue reading →

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September 22, 2011 · 12:27 am

AT LONG LAST – MY ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY POSTS BEGIN!

After months of feeling outrightly overwhelmed by how much information I want to share on this subject, I figured I’d better just get started and let the posts flow naturally. I could be organizing my thoughts on this topic from now until December 21st of next year (rimshot) and still not have an overall idea of the most efficient way of laying it all out.

If readers of my blog think I have a ton of books covering obscure global mythology brace yourselves for the sheer dorkgasmic level of material I have on Ancient Greek Comedy. (Henceforth AGC) I’ve been into this topic since I was 17 years old and not only do I have multiple translations of each of Aristophanes’ surviving comedies but I also have multiple books  covering those comedies of his that have survived only in fragmentary form.

And, since I immerse myself in this topic with the same semi-psychotic attention to detail that I bring to  mythology I also have multiple books (in addition to copies of much-sought-after academic papers delivered at AGC seminars) that cover the fragmentary remains of THE OTHER ANCIENT GREEK  COMIC PLAYWRIGHTS!  Yes, you read that right, and my fellow AGC geeks know how hard that info is to come by, so even hard-core fans of Aristophanic comedy will be treated to what I hope is a fresh perspective on the topic. Thank whoever for the internet, where virtually ANYTHING can be tracked down if you try hard enough.

BY DEFAULT, IT ALWAYS COMES DOWN TO ARISTOPHANES

Aristophanes is considered the greatest political satirist of ancient Athens, the cultural center of a large part of the world at the time. During the low 400’s BCE and high 300’s BCE he wrote approximately 40 comedies, of which only 11 have survived in “complete” form. His contemporaries, and there were dozens, were not so lucky. None of their works have survived in their entirety. Period. Today we have only fragments of the work of the other ancient Greek comedians, including the other 2 members of AGC’s Big 3 – the 2 joining Aristophanes in that trio being Cratinus and Eupolis. Of Susarion, credited with pioneering comedy in the 6th Century BCE, only his name has come down to us. Not even fragments of his plays survive.

The reason for the odd survival rate of Aristophanes’ works compared to the ancient Greek comedians who came before and during his period of activity is easy to explain. Aristophanes was Continue reading →

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