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A Eupolidean Precedent for the Rowing Scene in Aristophanes' Frogs?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

A. M. Wilson
A. M. Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Extract

The scene in Aristophanes' Frogs where Dionysus rows Charon's boat across the Styx to the accompaniment of the chorus of frogs is, of course, one of the most famous passages of Greek Comedy, and an essential element of the humour of the passage is the ineptitude of Dionysus as a rower. As a large part of the Athenian audience would have served in triremes as rowers, Dionysus' inability to perform this familiar task adequately will have been immediately ridiculous. Aristophanes was thus exploiting an easy source of humour in depicting Dionysus as an unaccomplished rower battling against the difficulties and discomforts of the task. Had so obvious a source of humour been neglected by the playwrights of Athenian Old Comedy till the time of Frogs? We should have been obliged to answer that we had no positive indications to the contrary till the publication in 1968 of Pap. Ox. 2740, but this now furnishes us with grounds to infer that some other Old Comedy, very probably the Taxiarchs of Eupolis, contained a scene where some person was represented as rowing ineptly.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , December 1974 , pp. 250 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1974

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References

page 250 note 1 Oxyrhynchus Papyri, xxxiv (1968), 49.

page 252 note 1 Even if does denote the chorus, it does not seem impossible for Phormio's fellow officers to be on board the craft and to be assisting in the rowing and taking a hand in schooling Dionysus in the art. The ship in Cratinus' was evidently capable of carrying Odysseus and his crew, at least a , even if there was a of Cyclopes later in the play (so J. Pieters, Cratinus, 35, after Kaibel). The idea of a large number of persons in the craft, whether sailors, ‘taxiarchs’, or whatever, is not open to objection because of any problem of staging.