5 - Myth in Aristophanes

Summary

One possible desideratum from the application of new technologies to the problem of reading the carbonised Herculaneum scrolls might be, for students of Greek Old Comedy at any rate, a papyrus-roll of mythical comedies. When we look at the scanty remains of Old Comedy, it appears that something like a third of the extant titles could have come from comedies on mythological topics: and yet not one of them has survived in more than a tiny number of fragments. Indeed, the only play that gives us any idea of what they might have looked like is Plautus' Amphitryon, possibly based on Philemon’s New Comedy The Long Night. This treats the story of Jupiter’s lengthy dalliance with King Amphitryon’s wife, and the king’s awkward return. It makes much play with the fact that the god has disguised himself as the king, and pretends to have returned from the war; his servant Mercury disguises himself as Amphitryon’s slave Sosia. Mercury has a long scene in which he punishes Sosia’s presumption in claiming to be Sosia, in order to delay him to give Jupiter time to escape. Jupiter has the decency to step in to make up the quarrel that breaks out between husband and wife as a result of the misunderstandings, and makes an appearance at the end to sort everything out. As is generally the case in later Greek comedy, the gods are very much brought down to the level of mortals in terms of character and concerns, and come across as more rascally than the poor deluded mortals; their power to do whatever they wish makes for a good deal of the comedy. How far this later 'embourgeoisement' of the gods was a feature of Old Comedy is not possible to tell.