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Anonymous Male Parts in Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae and the Identity of the Δεσπóτης1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. Douglas Olson
S. Douglas Olson
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Extract

The staging of Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae is complicated considerably by the large number of individual male citizen parts in the play. These include Praxagora's husband Blepyrus (312–477, 520–727), Blepyrus' anonymous Neighbour (327–56) and his friend Chremes (372–477), the First Citizen (564–871) and the Second Citizen (746–876), the Young Man ‘Epigenes’ (938–1111; cf. 931), and the δεσπτης who leads out the Chorus (1128–83). These are not necesarily all independent characters, but the great difficulty with the play is in deciding precisely who is to be identified with whom. R. G. Ussher, the most recent Oxford editor of the text, distinguishes four separate characters, and divides the parts in the following way:

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , May 1991 , pp. 36 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

2 I refer throughout to the text of Ussher, R. G., Aristophanes: Ecclesiazusae (Oxford, 1973; hereafter ‘Ussher’).Google Scholar

3 Olson, S. Douglas, ‘The Identity of the Δεσπτης at Ecclesiazusae 1128f.’, GRBS 28 (1987), 161–6Google Scholar; hereafter ‘Olson’. I was not altogether fair to Dover, K. J., Aristophanic Comedy (London, 1972; hereafter ‘Dover’)Google Scholar, when I said (162 n. 6) that he noted and then ignored this problem. In fact, Dover, p. 193, offers a Suessian solution, without indicating any particular attachment to it.

4 Olson 162.

5 Olson 163–5. The Young Man cannot be the Master, since he is otherwise occupied after 1111, and no-one seems ever to have doubted that he is an independent character.

6 The question of the number of stage-doors in Ecclesiazusae has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate. Fraenkel, E., ‘Dramaturgical Problems in the Ecclesiazusae’, in Greek Poetry and Life: Essays Presented to Gilbert Murray (Oxford, 1936), pp. 257–77Google Scholar, and Ussher, pp. xxx–xxxi, opt for two doors. Dale, A. M., ‘An Interpretation of Ar. Vesp. 136–210 and its Consequences for the Stage of Aristophanes’, JHS 77 (1957), 207–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Dearden, C. W., The Stage of Aristophanes (London, 1976), pp. 20–30Google Scholar, believe there is only one. Gelzer, Th., ‘Aristophanes’, RE Suppl. 12 (Stuttgart, 1970)Google Scholar, 1498, and Dover, p. 198, argue for three. This is an important and interesting problem but, as I argue below, ultimately has little effect on how the male citizen parts in the play are distributed.

7 On the text and staging of this scene, see most recently Olson, S. Douglas, ‘The Staging of Aristophanes, Ec. 504–727’, AJP 110 (1989), 223–6.Google Scholar

8 Cf. Fraenkel, op. cit. (n. 6), 257; Dale, op. cit. (n. 6), 208; Dover, p. 198; Ussher ad 327–71. In 877–1111, ‘ownership’ of the house or houses on stage is transferred to a series of Hags, but it still seems reasonable to assume that some degree of consistency is maintained up to this point.

9 The woman who enters at 30 (Ussher's Γυν A) clearly enters from the wing (cf. 27–9), and is therefore appropriately distinguished from Praxagora's γετων, Woman B (33–4).

10 Thus also Fraenkel, op. cit. (n. 6), 272–3, who never explains how he arrives at his division of parts; Dover, p. 198.

11 That the Neighbour's ἱμτιον and μάδες have disappeared (340–2) does not keep him offstage, since he apparently still has his χιτών; cf. the remarks of Stone, L. M., Costume in Aristophanic Poetry (Salem, 1984), pp. 144–6Google Scholar. That the Neighbour mocks Blepyrus for wearing female costume (329–33), on the other hand, shows that he has not resorted to the desperate expedient of putting on his wife's clothes.

12 It might always be the case, of course, that the First Citizen is an anonymous character, who appears unexpectedly here for the first time and breaks into the conversation. As I argue below, however, this makes no difference in how we assign the other male parts, and in particular the role of the δεσπτης.

13 The staging of Ussher is chaotic and confused here: ad 356, he says that the Neighbour exits into his house, but ad 746–876 he insists that the same character appears as the Second Citizen ‘from the right’.

14 Thus, for example, Dicaeopolis is not given a name until Ach. 406; the Sausage-seller in Knights remains anonymous until 1257; Euelpides and Pisthetairus do not identify themselves by name until Birds 644–5; Cario in Wealth is only given a name at 624. All of these characters, however, continue to take part in the action after they are identified.