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Aristophanes and Kallistratos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Douglas M. Macdowell
Douglas M. Macdowell
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

The purpose of this article is to explain what I believe to have been the nature of the relationship between Aristophanes and the producer of his earliest plays, Kallistratos. My view was indicated in my edition of Wasps (pp. 124, 263–4) without full explanation. It is much the same as the view taken by Rennie in his edition of Akharnians (pp. 11–21), but I think that it can be given more cogent support than Rennie gave it. Recently the whole matter has been discussed afresh by G. Mastromarco (QuadernidiStoria 10(1979), 153–96)andS. Halliwell (CQ n.s.30(1980),33–45).1 This has enabled me to make my article briefer; I need not repeat the full bibliographical references to other views which Mastromarco and Halliwell have given, and I can, for the most part, confine my comments to the points on which I disagree with them.2 Everyone accepts the statements of the Hellenistic scholars that the earliest plays of Aristophanes (Banqueters, Babylonians, Akharnians) were produced δι⋯Καννιστρ⋯του. Consideration of what this meant may begin from his own justification of the arrangement, given in the parabasis of Knights.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , May 1982 , pp. 21 - 26
Copyright
copyright © The Classical Association 1982

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References

1 Mastromarco kindly sent me a copy of his article; and I had the privilege of seeing Halliwell's before publication, because I was the referee mentioned in his n. 30.

2 The first version of this article was written in 1964, and I am grateful to Professor H. D. Westlake for reading and commenting on it at that time. I was dissatisfied with that version and put it aside nonum in annum. The second version was given as a discussion paper at the Triennial meeting of Greek and Roman Societies in Cambridge on 4 August 1978. The article has been entirely rewritten for the present third version.

3 I agree with Mastromarco and Halliwell that Aristophanes was not prevented from producing earlier plays by a law prescribing a minimum age.

4 ούκ ⋯ννοτρίων in Wasps 1022 is a negative phrase inserted to emphasize οίκείων. It is not permissible to extract from it a positive statement that Aristophanes did, at an earlier date, control other men's muses; such a statement would, in fact, be incompatible with ⋯φικουρŵν.

5 I cannot see any validity in Halliwell's claim (p. 36) that the fact that Aristophanes is called διδάσαανος or αωμ***δοδιδάσαανος in Knights and Peace, for both of which he was the producer, supports an assumption that he could be called διδάσκανος in Akharnians, for which he was not the producer.

6 See pp. 18–21 of Rennie's edition of Akharnians (1909); cf. Dover, Aristophanic Comedy(1972), p. 14 n. 5.

7 The dispute between Kleon and Kallistratos arising from Babylonians was distinct from the dispute between Kleon and Aristophanes arising from Knights; see the note on lines 1284–91 in my edition of Wasps (where, however, the phrase ‘Kleon's prosecution of Ar.’ needs amendment). Halliwell (p. 35 n. 11) rejects my interpretation of Wasps1284–91, but I think that he is wrong. For it is not true that the aorist έξ ηφάτησενcannot refer to something which has been done within this play; cf. Wasps 1451 for another aorist referring to a change of attitude which has occurred within the play. Nor do I accept that εἷτα νû νmay (like νû ν δέ in the sense ‘but as it is’) be a-temporal. The phrase is not unique, as Halliwell alleges; there is a striking instance in Dem. 18. 243, έμβρ⋯ντητε, εἷτα νū ν νέγεις, which is emphatically temporal.

8 In the modern cinema a man who ‘makes’ a film does not always, or even usually, write the script. ‘Hitchcock's films’ are films directed by Hitchcock, not written by him.

9 Halliwell (p. 37) not unnaturally wants to know how this fact became common knowledge.I do not know the exact answer, but I find no difficulty in believing that, in a city the size of ancient Athens, information would circulate quite quickly if people once began to take an interest in it.

10 But not Wasps; I prefer the view that Waspswas produced by Aristophanes himself, not by Philonides. See p. 124 of my edition, to which I should add the point that Philonides produced Proagon and therefore can hardly have produced Wasps too, since it is not credible that the same man would be awarded two choruses at the same festival.

11 IGii2 2325 col. ii. See Gould and Lewis's second edition of Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens(1968). On p. 112 they give the text of the inscription, where 'Aρι[στοφ⋯νης] is restored as the comic victor at the Dionysia of 426. On p. 86 they say ‘It still, of course, remains possible that the official record of the archon may have entered the name of the producer… and in that case the compilers of the records for our inscriptions, at a later date, may have corrected the archon's entries by substituting the names of the actual poets; but there is no evidence that it was so.’ My submission is that the circumstances of production, as recounted by Aristophanes himself, do supply evidence to support that possibility. Cf. Dover's edition of Clouds (1968), p. xvii n. 2.