Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae: Philosophizing Theatre and the Politics of Perception in Late Fifth-Century Athens 1107040825, 9781107040823

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A R I S TO P H A N E S’ T H E S M O P H O R I A Z U S A E

Aristophanes’ comic masterpiece Thesmophoriazusae has long been recognized amongst the plays of Old Comedy for its deconstruction of tragic theatricality. This book reveals that this deconstruction is grounded not simply in Aristophanes’ wider engagement with tragic realism. It demonstrates that from the outset Aristophanes’ play draws upon Parmenides’ philosophical revelations concerning reality and illusion, employing Eleatic strictures and imagery to philosophize the theatrical situation, criticize Aristophanes’ poetic rival Euripides as promulgator of harmful deceptions, expose the dangerous complicity of Athenian theatre audiences in tragic illusion, and articulate political advice to an audience negotiating a period of political turmoil characterized by deception and uncertainty (the months before the oligarchic coup of 411 bc). The book thereby restores Thesmophoriazusae to its proper status as a philosophical comedy and reveals hitherto unrecognized evidence of Aristophanes’ political use of Eleatic ideas during the late fifth century bc. Ashley Clements is Lecturer in Greek Literature and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin.

cambridge classical studies General editors

r. l. hunter, r. g. osborne, m. millett, d. n. sedley, g. c. horrocks, s. p. oakley, w. m. beard

A R I S TO P H A N E S’ T H E S M O P H O R I A Z U S A E Philosophizing Theatre and the Politics of Perception in Late Fifth-Century Athens

ASHLEY CLEMENTS

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107040823 © Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge 2014 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2014 Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Clements, Ashley. Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae : Philosophizing theatre and the politics of perception in late fifth-century athens / Ashley Clements. pages cm. – (Cambridge Classical Studies) Includes bibliographical references. isbn 978-1-107-04082-3 (hardback) 1. Aristophanes. Thesmophoriazusae. 2. Aristophanes – Criticism, Textual. 3. Greek drama (Comedy) – Criticism, Textual. I. Title. pa3875.t5c48 2014 8820 .01–dc23 2013037429 isbn 978-1-107-04082-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Proagōn: A tragic fable 1 Introduction

page vii x xii 1

2 Rereading the prologue

12

3 Sophistic models: eristic and ἀντιλογία

28

4 On What-[It]-Is-Not: Gorgias and Empedocles

33

5 On What-[It]-Is: Parmenides, para-Doxa and mortal error

43

6 Conclusion

159

Appendices Bibliography Index of principal passages discussed General index

195 200 221 224

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I first stumbled across the kernel of this book as part of a Cambridge doctoral thesis begun in 2001. I had then set out to explore an Aristophanic comedy invested in ‘popular epistemology’ and, as such, a polemical respondent to philosophy, but what I began to glimpse in the Thesmophoriazusae was a comedy thoroughly embroiled with it – and Parmenides no less. The resultant book has taken so long to write because of the challenges of interpreting – in one case against the grain of orthodox readings – two of the most beguiling of ancient authors, whose difficult texts, I must freely confess, continue to elude me in all sorts of tantalizing ways. My ongoing experience of trying to grasp them leaves me with an abundance of debts to many extraordinary scholars and friends. It has been my rare privilege to have had a series of superlative teachers and advisors from whom I continue to learn, who, in various different ways, first taught me what one must learn in order to begin to see: they include Charles Stewart and Hans van Wees at University College London; Paul Millett, Paul Cartledge, who first supervised my doctoral studies of Aristophanes and has remained a source of encouragement ever since, and Robin Osborne in Cambridge; Michael Clarke in Galway; Barbara Graziosi and Christopher Rowe in Durham. I thank them all dearly here. I would also like to acknowledge those who kindly read earlier versions of parts of this book when in the form of the doctoral thesis and who offered valuable criticism and precious words of encouragement: my thanks to Paul Cartledge, John Dillon, Simon Goldhill, Barbara Graziosi, Jon Hesk, Liz Irwin, Nick Lowe, Hans van Wees, Carrie Vout, James Warren, as well as to Mark Bradley, Stephen Lambert and Keith Sidwell, who all provided support at crucial moments. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Cambridge University Press, as well as Liz Hanlon and Michael vii

a c k n o w l e d g e m e nt s

Sharp, Gaia Poggiogalli, and Jan Chapman, whose exemplary copyediting has manifestly improved the final book, and the academic editors of the Cambridge Classical Studies series, without whose support this work would not now be appearing. Various seminar audiences – at Manchester, at St Andrews, at conferences in Cork and in Maynooth – have in the last few years also offered their critical responses to the central claims of this work and are gratefully acknowledged here. I should also like to express my gratitude to my colleagues in our Department of Classics at Trinity College Dublin, who have afforded me two periods of sabbatical leave in which to develop and finish this work, and whose thoughts about various aspects of it have, often in unexpected ways, sharpened my own. I owe particular thanks to Anna Chahoud, Martine Cuypers, Monica Gale and Christine Morris, and to Brian McGing, who very kindly read a complete earlier draft of what follows and urged me to send it to a publisher. That such a draft existed to show to anyone, however, has a great deal to do with the involvement with this project, initially as doctoral supervisor, of Robin Osborne. From its tentative inception through to its appearance in print, Robin has been an indefatigable voice of encouragement and advice, insight and criticism, kindness and inspiration, and it is my great pleasure now to offer my profound thanks to him for everything he has done for me. Lastly, there are my personal debts, to which it is impossible to do justice here. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my Mum, to my Dad, to my sister and brother in-law, and my nephew and niece, for all their love and encouragement; and to Trish and Steve, and to Sophie and Adam, for all their manifold kindnesses and help along the way; and especially to two dear friends who have bolstered and sustained me now for many years: Tim Hill, who, with characteristic acuity and good humour, kindly read – as well as endlessly discussed with me – earlier drafts of this book to its great betterment, and to whose good-heartedness in this as in all things I am sorely indebted; and Trevor Lee, who has always found time to listen and rally, and whose friendship and example ever inspire; and finally, to Kate, for all her crucial love and support. This book is for her. viii

acknowledgements

Chapter 5 of the book incorporates a revised version of material that has appeared previously in print as: ‘Thesmophoriazusae’s two dawns’, Mnemosyne 62 (2009): 535–67. Permission to reprint is gratefully acknowledged. Excerpts from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead copyright © 1967 Tom Stoppard reprinted with the permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. Excerpts from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, copyright © 1967 by Tom Stoppard. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Excerpts from La Bête copyright © 2010 David Hirson reprinted with the permission of Nick Hern Books: www.nickhernbooks. co.uk Excerpts from La Bête, copyright © 1992 by David Hirson. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.

ix

ABBREVIATIONS

AP DK FGrH IG KA Kannicht LSJ MW POxy Radt Sandbach SH SM Smyth TrGF

x

Anthologia Palatina H. Diels and W. Kranz (1951–2) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols. Berlin. F. Jacoby (1923– ) Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Leiden. (1893– ) Inscriptiones Graecae. Berlin. R. Kassel and C. Austin (1983–91) Poetae Comici Graeci. Berlin. R. Kannicht (2004) Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vols. v.i, v.ii: Euripides. Göttingen. H. Liddell, R. Scott and H. S. Jones (1940) A Greek– English Lexicon. Oxford. R. Merkelbach and M. L. West (1967) Fragmenta Hesiodea. Oxford. (1898– ) The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. London. S. Radt (2008) Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol. iii: Aeschylus. Göttingen. F. H. Sandbach (1967) Plutarchi Moralia, vol. vii. Leipzig. H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons (1983) Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin and New York. B. Snell and H. Maehler (1975) Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis, vol. ii. Leipzig. H. W. Smyth (1920) Greek Grammar; reprinted 1972. Cambridge, MA. B. Snell, R. Kannicht and S. Radt (1971–85, 1986) Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 4 vols. Göttingen.

l i s t o f a b b r e vi at i o n s

UR Wilson

H. Usener and L. Radermacher (1899–1929) Dionysii Halicarnasei Opuscula. Leipzig. N. G. Wilson (2007) Aristophanis Fabulae, 2 vols. Oxford.

Abbreviations of journal titles correspond to those used in L’Année philologique.

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P R O A G Ō N : A T R A G I C FA B L E

(From Valere’s ‘Parable of Two Boys from Cadiz’ as staged in Act II of D. Hirson (2010) La Bête. London.) valere. mysterious these brothers were! and how! fraternal twins, and both named esteban! despite that curious phenomenon less likely twins there never, ever were: one juggled, valere hands de brie some juggling balls and de brie begins to juggle. one was a philosopher! He slips a tome into elomire’s hands. one wore a cape, the other wore a frock; one boy was big and solid as a rock, the other lost his leg in early life for proving wrong a bully with a knife. The troupe encircles elomire; valere lets out a banshee cry and ‘cuts off’ elomire’s ‘leg’ – a little wooden boot which he shows to the princess. (As an aside.) Unless your brain is smaller than a thimble, The missing leg has struck you as a symbol For just how costly it can be To fight for truth with one’s philosophy! but soft! we tarry! Back to our oration: the juggling twin, though skilled at his vocation, was, nonetheless, a wee bit ordinaire: beyond his keeping three balls in the air there wasn’t very much that he could do;

xii

de brie juggles, incompetently. his brother, though, was brilliant through and through . . . so brilliant that his thoughts were far too great for ordinary folk to contemplate! complex and subtle theorems he’d expound valere slides a spool of paper into elomire’s mouth and draws it out across the stage, the troupe bunching to read the ‘theorems’. of which the most aggressively profound was one that proved (and this is just the gist) catherine (reading). that no such thing as nothing can exist . . . marquis-therese (giggling). for if it is does, it can’t be nothing, can it? valere. amazing how one thought can shake the planet! The whole troupe giggles; with the exception of bejart and elomire, they’re really beginning to enjoy themselves. for this disproof of ‘nothing’, sharply put, the world . . . at least cadiz . . . was at his. . . He holds up the little wooden boot. . . . foot. The troupe laughs spontaneously; they’re having fun, and from this point forward they

p r o a g o¯ n : a t r a g i c f a b l e instinctively assume appropriate roles, their pleasure and enthusiasm building in an accelerando. in volta, though, he couldn’t find one fan! The members of the troupe act out the following characters. from sage aristocrat to working man, from oldest village coot to tiny shaver, the brother whom the voltans seemed to favor was esteban the second-rate magician de brie, incompetently, pulls a magic bouquet of flowers from his trousers. not esteban the dazzling logician; the latter’s work they couldn’t understand – his proof that nothing’s nothing was too grand, too eloquent a theory to advance in such a vain and shallow land. . . princess. Read france. elomire (through clenched teeth). i love that. . . princess. Shhhh! It’s almost over now. valere. but even more unsettling was how unflinchingly and swiftly esmerolta, herself debased by prejudice in volta, gave partial treatment to the juggling twin! a totally unpardonable sin, for she, (Indicating bejart). unlike her countrymen, could see (Indicating elomire). the brilliance of the one’s philosophy but like them And the troupe and bejart turn toward de brie.

chose the other anyway! now why on earth would she behave that way? He draws a tiny mole on bejart’s cheek. in volta, where a tiny mole could make a crucial difference to one’s social standing He turns bejart in the direction of elomire and shakes him. she shuddered at the merest thought of banding with someone so committed to ideals he’d sacrifice his leg for what he feels! she therefore told the genius to move on. . . was wed to He pushes bejart and de brie together in the frame, throwing rice over their heads. mediocre esteban . . . said fond farewells to sideshows and all that, embarked for spain aboard the titfor-tat de brie steers an imaginary gondola. which she misread instead as tit-for-tatra He shrugs as if to say, ‘Who knows why?’ was welcomed to cadiz like . . . cleopatra He winks at the princess, to celebrate his rhyme. de brie. ‘ruft laut mein hertz!’ catherine. brava! marquise-therese. well, good for her! valere. but . . . what of our esteemed philosopher? It’s clear at this point that there’s a real rapport between valere and the troupe; and valere now shoves elomire aside,

xiii

p r o a g o¯ n : a t r a g i c f ab l e himself assuming the role of ‘philosopher’ for the dramatic finale, as if elomire couldn’t possibly handle it. madeline. alas, his was a hideous demise! du parc. by hunger forced to pluck out both his eyes valere ‘plucks out’ two gelatinous ‘eyes’ and hurls them against the wall, where they stick; he then staggers tragically about the stage. and trade them for a slightly tainted quail catherine. he wandered, blind and destitute and frail de brie. from upper volta down to lower volta du parc. from lower volta back to upper volta madeline. in search of someone catherine. anyone at all madeline. intelligent enough to scale the wall of his complex and rich philosophy! marquise-therese. but nothing does exist, for tragically ’twas nothing that was left upon the ground

xiv

weeks later when his lonely corpse was found madeline. except, of course, the patches for his eyes and also valere. (Think what this might symbolise!) madeline. his wooden leg! valere. The wooden leg, you hear!? de brie. the leg, like . . . catherine. . . . truth! valere. Good! de brie. wouldn’t disappear! it stood for his convictions, in a way – du parc. unyielding, marquise-therese. hard, catherine. immune to all decay, de brie. a mark of what he’d fought for since his youth: du parc. eternal, madeline. if impenetrable all. truth!

1 INTRODUCTION

ἄκουε, σίγα, πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν, δεῦρ’ ὅρα.1 The first step in understanding anything at all is not to underestimate it.2

The purpose of this small book is to make one very strong claim: when theatre turns inward to theorize itself explicitly during the late fifth century in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, it does so using the lens of one particular philosophical framework and for expressly political purposes.3 The political dimension of what I have to say I will leave for my concluding remarks because I want to devote the majority of this book simply to establishing that our Thesmophoriazusae is a philosophical comedy. But because Aristophanes’ comic reflections on mimēsis and theatrical production in the famous ‘Agathon scene’, at the end of the play’s prologue (101–209), have been read in isolation from the dramatic frame which itself has never been properly understood, the philosophical treatment of theatre that our play offers us has never been fully appreciated. This book therefore focuses almost exclusively on the relatively small section of text that opens the dramatic framework at the beginning of the play. My aim is to draw the reader into an exercise in progressively more philosophical reading and thereby introduce anew a play that has long been known to its aficionados as the ‘jewel’ in Aristophanes’ literary crown.4 To this end, I offer not simply a new reading of an old play, but a new way of reading, 1 2 3

4

Cratin. fr. 315 KA: ‘Listen, be still, focus your mind, look here.’ Kingsley (2003) 496. See Valakas (2009) for a study of the beginnings of a theoretical discourse about theatre in extant fifth-century tragic texts that prefigures the direct and explicit theoretical reflexivity found in Cratin. fr. 342 KA and Aristophanic comedy, which ‘appear to be the earliest explicit sources for – and, at the same time, travesties of – critical terminology and ideas about theatre’ (182). Austin and Olson (2004) xxxii.

1

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

one that situates Aristophanic comedy as closely implicated in the nexus of sophistic and philosophical trends of the late fifth century. My intention is to challenge the tyranny of our own genre boundaries: to reveal comedy that is every bit as philosophically satirical as certain of the Presocratics are satirically philosophical. What I hope will emerge is both a new understanding of the popular reception of Presocratic philosophy by Aristophanes, and also a new basis from which to assess the relationship between this play and its political context. But it will almost certainly be objected that the way of reading comedy this book thereby presents often operates at levels of paradox and implication that simply cannot have been appreciated by an Aristophanic theatre audience and therefore is itself implausible. I am, some will say, trying to ‘extract from the text subtleties so tortuous that they could never reach the consciousness of an audience through a medium so fast moving and unhaltable as music’.5 Yet the notion that we already know the plausible limits of comic audiences and must therefore necessarily delimit our reading of the allusive possibilities of our extant texts is predicated upon fallacy. No less than the comic poets’ own constructions of Dionysian audiences as δεξιός, or σοφός, our picture of ancient audiences, too, is imagined, and if they are not entirely thereby created in our own image, it inevitably reflects our own preconceptions, prior interpretations, and limitations (e.g. what we think we know about the Aristophanic corpus, and so on).6 It is not at all coincidental that Sir Kenneth Dover’s now comical photographic evocation of a typical member of Aristophanes’ audience as a goatcarrying, modern Greek shepherd, rustically quizzical but happy, 5

6

2

R. David on Shakespeare in PBA 47 (1961) 158, cited by Taplin (1977) 18, reproduced by Lyne (1994) 197. The thinking of such sceptics, as Lyne has argued, in turn, will run: ‘We know for whom our writer was writing; we know what sort of effects they could absorb and understand. Therefore if a scholar posits the sort of effect that the imagined audience could not have grasped, he must be in error.’ A comprehensive and careful discussion of this issue is offered by Revermann (2006a), who pioneers a ‘bottom-up’ approach to spectatorial competencies amongst late fifthcentury theatre audiences. For objections, see Vander Waerdt (1994) 60 n. 44 (specifically on Clouds). As for what we think we know about the genre, it remains salutary to note that such generalizations about Aristophanic comedy as now exist are based upon a sample of only eleven extant complete plays of a known oeuvre which comprised at least forty and probably more (Ar. test. 1.59–61 KA).

introduction

the frontispiece to his Aristophanic Comedy, is complemented by a damning assessment of our Clouds (a play ironically, as we have it, probably never actually performed) as the product of a poet ‘to whom all philosophical and scientific speculation, all disinterested intellectual curiosity, is boring and silly’.7 Even if we accept, as we ought, the stratification of spectatorial competencies in the late fifth century, the competency of theatre audiences does not tell against the sophistication of the comic poets, as, indeed, the failure of the first, staged, but now lost, version of Clouds attests, nor should it limit our interpretations of their extant texts.8 Indeed, in the realm of paratragic allusion, it does not. But then, here we are far more comfortable, because, despite what Aristotle tells us about the limited audience knowledge of tragic stories, the Scholia who happen to survive have already noted, and therefore conferred plausibility upon, most of our accepted tragic allusions.9 But for scholars to endorse this error in the realm of philosophical allusion and the comedy we are about to read in particular is deliciously ironic. This is not simply because 7

8

9

Dover (1972), frontispiece of a Greek shepherd ‘to help us imagine the people who constituted the greater part of Aristophanes’ audience’. By so portraying the comic audience, Revermann (2006a) 99 n. 1 suggests, Dover ‘was implicitly militating against any attempts at idealization’. Quotation in main text from Dover (1968) lii. Dover continues: ‘Ar., as a successful writer of comedies for a mass audience, did not have to make a great effort to look at the world from a popular standpoint; he must in essentials have adopted that standpoint by nature, for otherwise he would not have been a comic poet . . . I suggest, then, that although the difference between Socrates and the sophists was known to Ar., in the sense that the data which constituted that difference were available to his organs of perception, he simply did not see it’ (liii). Against Dover (1968) xcviii, Rosen (1997) 410 and others, who posit a reading-audience for our Clouds, Revermann (2006b) 326–32 addresses the possibility that our play might have been restaged. For the failure of Clouds I in 423 bc as due to the influence of ‘vulgar men’ (φορτικοί), i.e. comedians, over its audience, see Clouds 521–5, with Biles (2011) 181–210; cf. Hubbard (1991) 91–2; Sidwell (2009) 7–15; and Revermann (2006a) 102 on Cratin. fr. 360 KA, which similarly censors dull spectators. Reciprocally, as Biles (2011) 181 notes, the implication of the parabasis is ‘that the exceptional sophia latent in a play like Clouds (522) requires an audience of the same quality (521, 526–7, 535), in order that their judgment (533) can bestow this title on the poet (520)’. Cf. now also M. E. Wright (2012). Arist. Po. 1451b23–6, discussed by Revermann (2006a) 99, 115–17. Tragic allusion, of course, is also indicated by metre, language and register (as well as, for its original audience, by additional signifiers in performance), just as is philosophical allusion by cognate markers (e.g. argument style, language, register). For a sample recent exploration of tragic allusion in our Th., see Platter (2007) 163–82; philosophical allusion, see, e.g., Willi (2003a) 96–156; Broackes (2009); Rashed (2009) (all on Clouds).

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a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

this is a text in which the ability to read allusion correctly is manifestly at issue. It is because our play is in fact all about fallacious reasoning and yet remains unappreciated as such precisely because of this fallacy of our own in shepherd’s clothing: the ‘Fallacy of Audience Limitation’.10 That in following this path scholars also unwittingly endorse the validity of our comedy’s philosophical criticisms adds a further layer of irony: for, as we shall see, paradoxically, in this play, as in the parabasis of our Clouds, it is the very incompetency of late fifth-century theatre audiences that is essential to the truth of its critique. Loosely described, the Thesmophoriazusae with which critics are more familiar takes as its premise the attempt of the tragic poet Euripides to infiltrate the annual all-female festival of the Thesmophoria. There, installed on the Pnyx under the ritual regulations of their religious celebration, the citizen women of Athens plan to use the privacy of their traditional rites finally to rid themselves of the poet. Euripides is to be brought to trial for telling women’s secrets and turning the minds of their husbands against them with his theatrical portrayals of duplicitous tragic heroines. His counterscheme is to get a man to disguise himself as a female celebrant, to infiltrate the women’s festival, and to charm the female quasiekklēsia with a persuasive defence. But he cannot go himself, and having tried, and failed, to recruit the soft and overly refined tragic poet Agathon whose mastery of mimēsis accommodates both the masculine and the feminine, he resorts to disguising a male relative instead. Shaved, singed and dressed up in female attire, Euripides’ Inlaw is sent off in matronly drag to infiltrate the festival and voice his kinsman’s defence. There, whilst attempting to pass himself off as one of the women, he is ultimately discovered, held hostage by the celebrating women and forced to make a series of attempts at rescue or escape, thereby acting out a string of tragic parodies of Euripidean drama, twice bringing the poet back on-stage in supporting roles as each attempt is thwarted. Finally, it is left to Euripides, this time swapping his appearance for an old madam and bringing along a dancing girl, to smooth things over with the women, save his kinsman from the clutches of a Scythian archer policeman and make 10

4

The phrase is Lyne’s (1994) 196–8.

introduction

good their escape. Throughout, metatheatrical jokes about gender inversions, role-playing, mimēsis and deception abound.11 Yet the first scene of the play – ostensibly, at least – presents its audience with a quite different set of comic concerns. Here we find a frenetic exchange that places an impatient spectator on-stage and implicates him in a perceptual puzzle of sensory segregation, first fragmenting, then negating, his capacity to see or to hear. Scholars have treated this scene briefly, and largely as a playful and deliberately abstruse precursor to the contradictions and ironic inversions of the better-known boundary games on offer to its spectators later in our play.12 It is part of a typical ‘journey-to-the-door’ scene and, as such, they assume, merely a warm up for the cleverer stuff to follow when its audience has passed through that door and finally met Agathon, jokes about transvestism, mimēsis, paratragedy, and so on. But, as we shall see, this beginning, in fact, secretly holds the key to the real purpose of every other thing in this comedy that follows. Thesmophoriazusae opens as two travellers arrive on-stage. One is leading the other, a man of similar age, who, wearied by hours of walking, now pauses to ask his companion where he is being taken. ΚΗΔΕΣΤΗΣ ὦ Ζεῦ, χελιδὼν ἆρά ποτε φανήσεται; ἀπολεῖ μ᾿ ἀλοῶν ἅνθρωπος ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ. οἷόν τε, πρὶν τὸν σπλῆνα κομιδῇ μ᾿ ἐκβαλεῖν, παρὰ σοῦ πυθέσθαι ποῖ μ᾿ ἄγεις, ωὐριπίδη;

11

12

Readings of the play exploring these themes include Zeitlin (1981); Bobrick (1997); Stehle (2002); Tzanetou (2002). For Austin and Olson (2004) ad 5–22, it is simply ‘an interruption in the forward movement of the dialogue’; fuller, but still cursory, treatments are offered by Whitman (1964) 219 and Silk (2000) 325–6 discussing characterization; Taaffe (1993) 79 and N. W. Slater (2002) 151, both influenced by ‘gaze’ film theory, briefly point to the metatheatrical dimension this opening adds to the play in the course of their discussions of spectatorship but, in their emphasis on the visual, elide its focus on the interrelationship of the senses. Nichols (1998) 78–83 offers a metaphorical reading of its language of seeing and hearing but misses the parody of contemporary sophistic and philosophical thought this enacts, a feature of the scene hinted at by Whitman (1964) 264 and explored variously by Hays (1990); Mureddu (1992); Sansone (1996) 339–45; Rashed (2007); cf. Rau (1967) 156–60; Tsitsiridis (2001). Bowie (1993) 220–5, by contrast, briefly notes the treatment of perception in Th.’s opening scene, and explains it as part of the programmatic concern of Aristophanic comedy to assert its superiority over Euripidean tragedy. He reads our first lines both as parodying ‘opaque’ tragic language (which is received with ‘incomprehension’ by ‘Mnesilochus’, 220) and as prefiguring Th.’s later treatment of the ‘tragic’ theme of illusion and reality in its parodies of Hel. and Andr. (221–3).

5

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΗΣ ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε πάνθ’ ὅσ’ αὐτίκα ὄψει παρεστώς. Κη. πῶς λέγεις; αὖθις φράσον. οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν. Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ. Κη. πῶς μοι παραινεῖς; δεξιῶς μέντοι λέγεις· οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; Ευ. χωρὶς γὰρ αὐτοῖν ἑκατέρου ᾿στὶν ἡ φύσις. Κη. τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; Ευ. εὖ ἴσθ’ ὅτι. Κη. πῶς χωρίς; Ευ. οὕτω ταῦτα διεκρίθη τότε. Αἰθὴρ γάρ, ὅτε τὰ πρῶτα διεχωρίζετο καὶ ζῷ’ ἐν αὑτῷ ξυνετέκνου κινούμενα, ᾧ μὲν βλέπειν χρή, πρῶτ’ ἐμηχανήσατο ὀφθαλμὸν ἀντίμιμον ἡλίου τροχῷ, ἀκοῆς δὲ χοάνην ὦτα διετετρήνατο. Κη. διὰ τὴν χοάνην οὖν μήτ’ ἀκούω μήθ’ ὁρῶ; νή τὸν Δί’ ἥδομαί γε τουτὶ προσμαθών. οἷόν γε πού ᾿στιν αἱ σοφαὶ ξυνουσίαι. Ευ. πόλλ’ ἂν μάθοις τοιαῦτα παρ’ ἐμοῦ. Κη. πῶς ἂν οὖν πρὸς τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς τούτοισιν ἐξεύροιμ’ ὅπως ἔτι προσμάθοιμι χωλὸς εἶναι τὼ σκέλει; K.

E. K. E. K. E. K. E. K. E. K. E.

K.

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20

24

O Zeus! Will that swallow ever show up? This guy will be the death of me, plodding around since dawn. Might it be possible, before I puke out my guts, to find out from you Euripides, just where you’re taking me? You needn’t hear it all, since you’re going to see it for yourself. 5–6 What? Say again? I need not hear? No, not what you’re about to see. And I need not see either? No, not what you need to hear. What are you telling me? It’s pretty subtle. You’re saying that I should neither hear nor see? 10 I’m saying that these two are by nature mutually distinct. What, not hearing and not seeing? To be sure. How do you mean, distinct? This is how they were separated long ago: For when Aither first was separating itself out and begetting living, moving beings within itself, 15 that with which one must see, it fashioned first, the eye, counter image of the solar disc, and for hearing, drilled the ear as a funnel. So because of this funnel I’m not to hear or see?

introduction

E. K.

I’m delighted to have this additional lesson. 20 These deep conversations really are something! You could learn many other such lessons from me. As a matter of fact I’d love to figure out how to learn another fine lesson: how to go lame in both legs!13

These first moments are replete with verbal ambiguities, and their effect is to puzzle the spectators about what is to come next, situating them alongside the anonymous figure on stage.14 Indeed, to the extent that Euripides’ interlocutor is the play’s token spectator, at first blush there is significant comic congruence between his experience and theirs. At this point, certainly, it is his eyes and ears, from which the action is similarly being withheld (5–6); his curiosity, aroused by the enigma of an opening verbal display (6), a premise within the scene for the merciless lampooning of Euripides’ pseudo-philosophizing of perception (δεξιῶς, ‘Sophisticatedly’, 9);15 and it is his hypothesizing as to what exactly is meant by this, or rather, what is implied in practice by it, grounded, of course, in his own repertoire of experiences and expectations (‘And I need not see . . .?’, 8; ‘You’re saying . . .’, 10; 12); and finally, his incredulous laughter at a puzzle of words that has been extrapolated in speech and rejoinder to become the perfect sophistic λόγος, a message paradoxically self-refuting in its performance (20–4), in which, as fellow spectators, the theatre audience share. At the same time, that audience comprises a body of spectators made up of diverse audiences, and thus analogous positions to this unfolding comic λόγος engender a range of different, developing, responses.16 13

14 15

16

Text Austin and Olson (2004) but following Henderson’s (2000) punctuation of line 10. Trans. Henderson (2000) modified. Bar noted disagreements, I use the text of Austin and Olson (2004) throughout. My translations of particular lines will vary throughout the book for reasons of emphasis. This observation builds upon the work of Taaffe (1993) 79. Pace Silk (2000) 322, for whom the notion that the comic Euripides is belittled in Th. is a significant misreading of the play. See Lada-Richards (1999) 10–12; Reckford’s (1987) 391 assertion that ‘Aristophanes wrote for a mass Athenian audience, not for an intelligentsia’ is at best reductive and, at worst, obstructive: the heterogeneity of comic audiences does not tell against the sophistication of Aristophanic comedy. Nor should the broad range of responses that comedy no doubt elicited from its diverse spectators predispose modern readers to privilege the (imagined) sense-making activities of ‘the village spectator’ over those of the ‘town-bred intellectual’ (I borrow Lada-Richards’ typology) as the default basis of our appreciation of comic poetry. In light of comedy’s self-promotion as original and sophisticated, δεξιός, such a view seems perverse. See Wasps 1044, on the failure of the first Clouds; Clouds 547–8; Ach. 628–30; and for the ideal comic audience as δεξιός, see Knights 233, Clouds

7

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

Yet modern scholarly responses to these early lines tend to endorse reading strategies that circumscribe their comic possibilities. Many critics, for instance, follow a set of assumptions which close down discussion of the sorts of sense-making hypotheses an original audience might have generated in piecing together a portrait of the figures on-stage (and so, in developing an idea of what is going on) – eliding a, if not the, central question on its lips at this early point: ‘just who is it that questions Euripides?’ The ancient commentators on the text, for example, long sanctioned the practice of naming Euripides’ anonymous interlocutor ‘Mnesilochus’, after the elderly father-in-law of the historical Euripides.17 Yet the remarkable fact remains that he is never named in our play; he is given only the generic appellation of 521, 527. That here Ar. is flattering actual audiences does not invalidate the point; as comedy self-reflexively treats its own reception, δεξιός predicated of an audience is open to be exploited in all manner of ways: note, for instance, how in the prologue of Peace (43–8 cited below) Ar. draws the intellectual and political allegorizing of some of his spectators up onto the stage to be itself an object of laughter (the same allegorizing, in fact, which he had relied upon only a few years earlier in Knights, there certainly lampooning Cleon); and, in so doing, he elicits precisely such a response from those listening to and watching this scene (what does this mean . . .? what am I meant to see . . .?; see Slater (2002) 116 on the ‘guessing game’ that ensues). Thus the action of Peace pauses as two slaves speculate about and act out what two intellectuals (a young smarty pants (δοκησίσοφος) and an Ionian) out in the audience might be concocting from the enigma of the dung beetle, 43–8 (text Wilson): Οιβ. οὐκοῦν ἂν ἤδη τῶν θεατῶν τις λέγοι νεανίας δοκησίσοφος, “τόδε πρᾶγμα τί; ὁ κάνθαρος δὲ πρὸς τί;” κᾆτ’ αὐτῷ γ’ ἀνὴρ Οια. Ἰωνικός τίς φησι παρακαθήμενος· “δοκέω μέν, ἐς Κλέωνα τοῦτ’ αἰνίσσεται, ὡς κεῖνος ἐν Ἀΐδεω τὴν σπατίλην ἐσθίει.”

17

8

45

See Rosen (1984) 389–96 on this passage, who points to a line of scholarship arguing that Ar. parodies enigmatizing intellectuals in this scene (i.e. Ionian physikoi who find deep meanings in anything); cf. Struck (2004) 41, who suggests a spoof of the allegorizing followers of Anaxagoras. But note that by uncritically accepting the premise of the slaves’ conversation (i.e. that when it comes to political allegory and the αἶνος of a dung beetle, ‘he who smelt it dealt it’), these readings gloss over precisely the comic disclaimer a δεξιός audience might provide a master of (politically) pregnant jokes (once bitten, Ach. 377– 82). The key point is that whoever the comic vehicle of displacement is – or, is set up to be – in these lines, this mention of Cleon of course is far from random or innocent (as even Rosen (1984) 391, cf. n. 9 must acknowledge). See Ach. 377–82, with Halliwell (1980), (1991) on the problems of this passage. See Austin and Olson (2004) ad 74, who note that the name ‘Mnesilochus’ is attested in the Scholia, and in marginal notes in R, which identify Th.’s anonymous character with the father of the historical Euripides’ first wife (see anon. vit. Eur. §5, 13, Suda ε3695 with Sommerstein (2003/4) 8–9) probably because these ancient commentators drew upon the

introduction

κηδεστής (a term, in fact, which need not denote ‘father-in-law’ any more than ‘son-in-law’ or ‘brother-in-law’), and then not even until some fifty lines after our opening exchange.18 To be sure, the most recent editors have succeeded in eradicating the name ‘Mnesilochus’ from our text,19 yet, despite this, it continues implicitly to flavour conceptualizations of the sort of character first depicted (e.g. as elderly and plodding as opposed to a younger, and sharper, Euripides).20

18

19

20

comic charge made by Telecleides in the early 420s (but possibly earlier) against Euripides that accredited a Mnesilochus (probably Euripides’ father-in-law) with contributing to the production of his new plays, the intellectual subtleties of which were supplied by Socrates, see Telecl. fr. 41 KA: Μνησίλοχός ἐστ’ ἐκεῖνος, φρύγει τι δρᾶμα καινόν∣Εὐριπίδῃ, καὶ Σωκράτης τὰ φρύγαν’ ὑποτίθησιν (‘Mnesilochus is the man is roasting a novel drama for Euripides, and Socrates is placing underneath the kindling [for the roasting]’, i.e. according to Sommerstein (2003/4) 11, ‘supplying the ideas and arguments’ (cf. Telecl. fr. 42; Call. Com. fr. 15; Ar. fr. 392 KA, and p. 66 n. 58 for the wider comic tradition). As Sommerstein (2003/4) 11 observes, the implication is that whichever crucial element this ‘Mnesilochus’ may contribute to Euripides’ plays, it is not their ideas and arguments. Cf. Ruffel (2011) 353 n. 114, who defends his use of the name by citing this comic tradition, which was available, he argues, also to Th.’s original audience. But on the lack of evidence for, and improbability of, any specific family identification intended here, see Rogers (1904) xvii; Sommerstein (1994) ad 1; Slater (2002) 295 n. 6; Silk (2000) 229–30; cf. Bierl (2009) 244–9. See line 74; κηδεστής (‘male relative by marriage’) is used again at 210, 584, 1165. A further generic form of address, ὦ γέρον, is used of the κηδεστής (by Agathon’s Servant) at 63, which alongside Agathon’s later assumption at 164 that he is familiar with the poetry of Phrynichus, probably indicates that the actor was identified as an old man by his mask at the outset of the play, as Slater (2002) 151, 295 n. 6 suggests; that this unambiguously makes him Euripides’ elderly father-in-law is less certain. See, for example, the lack of any clear division in age between the two characters at 190, where Euripides identifies himself as πολιός ‘grey(-haired)’). Sommerstein (1994) ad 1 advocates ‘brother-in-law’ as the more probable intended sense of the term. Beyond this, however, the audience is told nothing specific about the κηδεστής at any point within the play; even the allusion to the character’s personal history (a wife and children) at 1204–6 is vague and general, see Silk (2000) 229–30. See Sommerstein (1994); Henderson (2000); Austin and Olson (2004); N. G. Wilson (2007a); contra Hall and Geldart (1901); cf. Bergk (1852). On the ways in which some critics retain the name whilst acknowledging its problems, see, for instance, Slater (2002) 295 n. 7, who suggests that the κηδεστής ‘is simply an extension and parody of Euripides’. But the name dominates Slater’s main discussion as if the fact of this character’s strict anonymity adds little in terms of an interpretative problem to the spectators’ early experience of the play but instead represents an omission that does something of a disservice to an otherwise well-developed character: ‘while this name has no authority and is perhaps even improbable, he is so fully realized and significant a character in the play that it seems to be better to use this personal name rather than a functional designation (such as the “Old Relative”)’ (151). For scholars similarly wedded to the name, see Silk (2000) 208 n. 4, who acknowledges the audience’s ignorance of the character’s identity (229 n. 41) but sees use of the name as both ‘convenient and harmless’; see also Reckford (1987); Whitman (1964); Zeitlin (1981); Ruffel (2011). Contra: Taaffe (1993); Hansen (1976); Dover (1972); Voelke (2004).

9

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

Another way of delimiting the comic possibilities of these opening lines is the assimilation of our protagonists to a comic pairing in the mould of Strepsiades and Socrates from Clouds.21 A typical reading of this sort proposes that the humour here derives from a clash of two well-tested comic caricatures: one, the comic ‘man on the street’, an ageing Athenian of ‘limited intelligence’22 whose persistent reduction to the concrete of what is put to him marks him as one ‘who is having difficulty keeping up (both literally and figuratively) with his intellectually advanced relative’;23 the other, the comic philosopher, abstract, modish, given to trivialities, played, of course, by Euripides, the ‘riddling sophist’.24 As Silk puts it, as they are introduced in the first scene: ‘The two central characters of the Thesmophoriazusae are clever Euripides and his dumb and docile relative Mnesilochus.’25 On this reading, if the first moments of our prologue present us with a comedy of errors, they must belong to the stooge who tangles with Euripidean subtlety – not to that poet, a notorious peddler of sophistry. In

21

22

23 24

25

On the pairing of Strepsiades and Socrates see O’Regan (1992) 35–48; for the model of Strepsiades and Socrates used to discuss the relationship between ‘Mnesilochus’/the κηδεστής and Euripides, see Paduano (1982) 109–10; Hubbard (1991) 185; Sansone (1996); Silk (2000); Austin and Olson (2004) ad 5–10, 19; Voelke (2004) 131. But see Whitman (1964) 12, 218–19 on pertinent differences between these characters. ‘Limited intelligence’, Sansone (1996) 342; other characterizations include: ‘Mystified’, Whitman (1964) 219; ‘mystifié par les subtilités d’ Euripide’, C. Austin (1990) 12; ‘clumsy incomprehension’, ‘the baffled victim of Euripides’ mystifications’, or just a ‘buffoon’, Silk (2000) 326, 245, 233, or ‘stooge’ 320; ‘naïve’, Taaffe (1993) 79; ‘befuddled’, Austin and Olson (2004) ad 5–22; full of ‘admiration for Euripides’ cleverness [which] is scarcely reduced by his [sc. the Kinsman’s] confusion before Agathon’s door’, Moulton (1981) 111; cf. ‘Admiratif face aux discours habiles (9) et savants (21) que tient Euripide’, Voelke (2004) 131; cf. Bowie (1993) 220. Sansone (1996) 341. Taaffe (1993) 79; see also Slater (2002) 151, for whom it is Euripides who plays the ‘word games’; cf. Austin and Olson (2004) ad 5–22 who, whilst acknowledging that Euripides’ ‘professorial’ posturing is ‘mercilessly exposed’ during these opening lines (cf. lv: ‘most of what he has to say is nonsense (5–21)’), suppose this occurs only through his interlocutor’s unintentional ‘ludicrous distortions and misunderstandings’ of ‘Euripidean verbal subtlety’ (citing ΣR: ‘The one character speaks in a very elevated, tragic style, while the other hears [his words] more stupidly than is necessary’). Silk (2000) 208, cf. 233, 324, 326, a characterization which holds for our opening lines, but which, Silk claims, is tempered by Ar.’s subsequent ‘recreative’ play with character featuring ‘discontinuities between Mnesilochus the docile bumbler [sc. of the first scene] and Mnesilochus the inventive poseur, between clever Euripides and Euripides so witless that he accepts Mnesilochus’ unlikely offer’ (223).

10

introduction

fact, one recent editor is so committed to that model that he resorts to endorsing emendation of the text in order to preserve it.26 But as the severity of that last editorial intervention suggests, looking outside these lines for their intrinsic logic simply obfuscates what they themselves have to offer, fostering an image of two protagonists that is significantly at odds with the characters that emerge strictly from a close reading of the text. Indeed, presupposing a solution to the problem of identity deliberately posed at the outset in this way imposes a misleading stability onto a comic terrain that, for its original audience, presented entirely shifting ground. Our interpretation of these opening moments, then, will begin, first, as does the play, with the comic Euripides and an interlocutor who is strictly anonymous; and, secondly, with the task its original audience faced, the task of piecing together an understanding of its emergent characters through their rapid flow of speech. In practical terms this will entail close, sequential, line-by-line analysis; and, if we are to appreciate the experience of listeners making sense of what they have heard, a style of reading sensitive to an audience’s movement back and forth within it, induced by the key expository cues they encounter.27

26

27

In a move most recently endorsed by N. G. Wilson (2007a) (2007b), but first proposed by Van Herwerden (1882) 88, Sommerstein (1994) deletes line 12 (Κη. τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; Ευ. εὖ ἴσθ’ ὅτι, 12), which he construes as ‘“neither hearing nor seeing?” to which Euripides replies “That’s quite right”’, conjecturing the survival in our text of an author’s variant and offering two grounds for this supposition: the first concerns sequence of thought and is that our interlocutor’s retort, ‘How do you mean, distinct?’ (13) should respond directly to the comment of Euripides to which it refers (11). (Sommerstein compares Frogs 96–8.) But there is no reason for insisting on this here: it is clear that K.’s two questions follow from Euripides’ comment at 11, each seizing upon the new terms presented there, and that they are voiced in succession, first at 12, and then at 13 (E. The nature of each of the two of them is distinct (11). K. What, [the nature] of not hearing and not seeing? E. You can be certain of that (12). K. Distinct in what way? (13)). Sommerstein’s second reason, however, concerns the apparent illogicality of Euripides’ words at 12: ‘while hearing and seeing are two things, “neither hearing nor seeing” is only one. Inlaw might well, indeed, make such a mistake, but one would not expect this sophistic, pedantic Euripides to endorse it’ (my emphasis); but why not? Sansone (1996) 342 n. 20 proposes that the line be saved, but only by rescuing Euripides from having made such a mistake: ‘the nature of not hearing and not seeing are two things’. See p. 21 n. 21. For Ar.’s fondness for delaying the release of the ‘expository snippets’ that aid his audience in making sense of his comic scenes, see Felson-Rubin (1993).

11

2 REREADING THE PROLOGUE

ros. guil. ros. guil. ros. ros. guil. ros. guil.

We’re on a boat. (Pause.) Dark, isn’t it? Not for night. No, not for night. Dark for day. Pause. Oh yes, it’s dark for day. [. . .] We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? No, no, no . . . death is . . . not. Death isn’t. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can’t not-be on a boat. I’ve frequently not been on boats. No, no, no – what you’ve been is not on boats.1

The first such cue is also the linchpin of the entire scene, the quibble over the sort of necessity (δεῖ) that is invoked by Euripides to save himself the trouble of describing for his fellow traveller what will soon enough be seen (ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε . . ., ‘Ah, but you don’t need to . . .’, 5): it is straightforward, objective, impersonal, quite unintellectual, as it is meant by Euripides, but subverted in tone as it is seized upon and echoed by his companion, for whom it takes emphatic word position – sentence focus – in a clarifying rejoinder: ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΗΣ ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε πάνθ’ ὅσ’ αὐτίκα ὄψει παρεστώς. Κη. πῶς λέγεις; αὖθις φράσον. οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν.

1

5

Stoppard (1967) Αct III. For a general comparison of Ar. and the work of Stoppard, see Reckford (1987) 143–52.

12

r e re a di ng t he pr o lo g u e Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ. Κη. πῶς μοι παραινεῖς; δεξιῶς μέντοι λέγεις· οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; E. You need not hear all that you’ll see instantly when you’re present. K. What’s that? Say again: I must not hear . . .? Lit: E. It’s not necessary for you to hear . . . K. What do you mean? Say again: It’s necessary for me not to hear . . .?

10 5–6

7

For listeners swept up in the spontaneity of this leading question, this switch of word order, inverting δεῖ and ἀκούειν in order to stress the leading verbal idea, is over in a flash, and it is only some seconds later (at 10–11) that its ramifications are fully appreciated. By then, the joke is not fleetingly about a bumbled attempt at understanding, reminiscent, for instance, of Strepsiades’ mindless jumbling of snippets of Socratic theory in Clouds;2 it has become altogether larger. That early reformulation of δεῖ3 – as personal compulsion, moral imperative – already gestured at in its reshuffling to emphatic word position as it is echoed at 7 (‘I must not- . . .?’) has gained momentum, picking up additional nuances of external intention or orchestration from μέλλω in Euripides’ reply (‘E. . . . Not, at any rate, whatever you are to see . . .’, 7), until, finally, at the climax of his purported attempts to clarify what is being meant (10), it has been made explicit with an unambiguously subjective χρή:4 οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; [So . . .] ‘You’re saying I should not . . .?’ More importantly, with that fleeting switch, in the intervening lines, 7–8, the negative particle οὐ (5) has also been reshuffled. Not, 2

3

4

See O’Regan (1992) 41–2, 163 n. 38 on Clouds 236, where Strepsiades’ regurgitation of the theory behind Socrates’ elevated entrance on-stage repeats and jumbles up the philosopher’s original words. Schein (1998) 304 points to a similar subversion of δεῖ at S. Ph. 1049 by the sophistic operator par excellence of the play, Odysseus. On the relationship between χρή and δεῖ configured in these terms, see B. Williams (1993) 184 n. 57; W. S. Barrett (1964) ad E. Hipp. 41; Redard (1953); Benardete (1965) 285–98. Traditionally, δεῖ is used of objective requirements, general and independent compulsions, and χρή of personal obligation, the internalization of such general rules. Cf. Schein (1998).

13

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

this time, in word order, but in scope of focus,5 exploiting an ambiguity generated by the negation of a modal which can be made explicit in Greek syntactically, through the (re-)ordering of οὐ δεῖ and then ἀκούειν:6 that is, first, from being coupled in broad focus with δεῖ and its dependents at 5, E. ‘It’s not necessary . . .’ or ‘You needn’t . . .’, as it is meant by Euripides, to being associated narrowly with ἀκούειν, as it is quizzically echoed at 7, ‘It’s necessary for me not-to-hear . . .?’ or ‘I must not-hear . . .?’; and then, supposedly back again, to its original emphasis at 5, as this shift in scope is glossed over by the poet as if his companion just

5

6

The semantic ‘scope’ of a modifier or an operator such as a negative is a measure of the extent of material to which it applies. In Classical logic a distinction is drawn between narrow-scope predicate-term negation generating contrary opposition (A is not-B) and a (relatively) wide-scope predicate-denial generating contradictory opposition (A is not B, A is-not B), see L. R. Horn (1989) 122 with 86–8 on the peculiarities of negation in modal contexts where broad and narrow scope variant readings can transform a negative injunction (‘What A must-not do is B’) into a positive injunction (‘What A must do is not-B’). Note that οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ at 5 is evidently (and I suggest deliberately) construed as ambiguous in its negation by our interlocutor (cf. Austin and Olson (2004) ad 5–10), who by his reshuffling of word order at 7 further exploits its ambiguity by creating a syntactical unit of οὐ δεῖ (cf. Henderson (1987) ad Lys. 119) by which he intends to pair οὐ now in narrow focus with the infinitive (‘it is necessary not-’). This kind of ‘negraising’ whereby a negative may be transferred from a dependent infinitive to the principal verb is attested in many languages, see L. R. Horn (1978); specifically Greek: Smyth §2692 on ‘adherescent οὐ’: οὐ closely paired with the leading verb forms a quasi-compound but belongs in sense to its following infinitive (if that infinitive depends on the leading verb). οὔ φημι exploited here at 10 (‘You’re saying that [I should] not . . .’, rather than ‘You’re not saying . . .’) is the most usual example, see J. R. Wilson (1988) 88–92; Slater (2001) 360–7; and L. R. Horn (1978) 205–6 (for the syntactic and semantic membership of φημί in the ‘Greek verbs of the opinion/belief class’, which also includes deontics like δεῖ, that neg-raises); cf. Moorhouse (1959) 123, 129, who also notes the phenomenon is ‘widespread’, ‘not confined to simple verbs of saying or thinking’, and seen also with verbs of necessity (χρή) and others (although less common after verbs that take μή like δεῖ); cf. F. D. Miller (2006) on Arist. Eth. Nic. 1138a6–7 (οὐ κελεύω) (citing the forthcoming discussion of Young ad 1138a7). Specifically on neg-raising in relation to δεῖ, see further Smyth §2693 and §2714b, where it is noted that οὐ δεῖ ‘may be equivalent in sense’ to δεῖ μή (narrow-scope negation of the infinitive). Cf. Ar. Lys. 119, Wealth 477 (cf. 478); E. IA 1392, Or. 1143; Pl. Smp. 216b4, Cra. 411b2, Chrm. 156e1, La. 840d3, Phd. 62e1, Phileb. 22c1, Tht. 204a5 (all arguably instances of adherescent οὐ closely paired with δεῖ to form a syntactical unit that effects narrow scope negation of a dependent infinitive); with such cases, contrast Moorhouse (1959) 137 on ‘οὐ infinitive φημί’ at Knights 576 and Wasps 593, who notes ambiguity in the scope of the negation; but also p. 114 for further instances where οὐ immediately precedes the infinitive but belongs in sense to the leading verb and does not transfer (e.g. Clouds 1415 (δοκέω), Frogs 950 (χρή), Eccl. 769 (διανοέω)); cf. Page (1938) ad E. Med. 48 (φιλέω).

14

r e re a di ng t he pr o lo g u e

mindlessly repeats what has already been said (which, as astute listeners will have picked up, of course he does not . . .):7 Κη. οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; K. It’s necessary for me not to hear . . .? Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν. E. . . . Not, at any rate, whatever you are to see.

7a 7b

For the listening audience switching between actors, this reshaping of the mildest of negative injunctions into a forceful injunction should occur only for a disappearing second. But, it does not, for next there has been: οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; ‘And so, it’s not necessary for me to see . . .?’ or, ‘And so, I must not see?’ (8) – a cause for surprise, another negation, but this one an apparent non-sequitur, taking the audience back to Euripides’ original in word order, yet substituting one sensory focus for another: a jump from what we might next expect, (not) hearing (ἀκούειν), to (not) seeing (ὁρᾶν): Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; K. And so, it’s not necessary for me to see . . . ? Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ. E. . . . Not, at any rate, whatever you must hear.

8a 8b

And then, a summary understanding – Κη. πῶς μοι παραινεῖς; δεξιῶς μέντοι λέγεις· οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; K. How are you recommending this to me? Of course you’re speaking Sophisticatedly. You’re saying I should not either hear or see?

10

– and only then, realization for the audience. By deviously following up on what Euripides has been led to propose a second earlier, at 7, the inference at 8 (indicated by ἆρα)8 springs a trap already set by the switch of δεῖ and ἀκούειν (also at 7): 7

8

Euripides means what he thinks he states at the outset: ‘Whatever you will see, you needn’t hear about’ (5), but the conditional he constructs here in fact proposes something quite different: ‘Whatever you are going to see, you must not-hear.’ On ἆρα as inferential, an unambiguous ‘so’ indicating a logical connection equivalent to ἄρα, see Dunbar (1995) ad Birds 91; cf. Stevens (1976) 44; Denniston (1954) 44 I (2); Sommerstein (1994) and Henderson (2000) in trans. Pace Austin and Olson (2004) ad 7–8, who read interrogative ἆρ’ οὐ expecting a positive answer but in exegesis ad 5–10 adopt an inferential construal.

15

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae Κη. οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; K. I must not-hear . . .?

7a

Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν. E. . . . [You must]Not[-hear], at any rate, whatever you are to see.

7b

For, in his reply there (at 7b), Euripides’ οὐ has meant to negate the verbal idea δεῖ (as he did in his original words (5): ‘It’s not necessary for me to hear? E. Not [-necessary . . .]’). Yet by swallowing up the word switch into a relative clause and reiterating only its negative particle, he has instead reiterated the negation of its infinitive, ἀκούειν (‘I must not-hear? E. Not [-hear . . .]’).9 Seeing this, his interlocutor has next seized upon a syntactical ambiguity generated by the elision of the verb in such a reply and deliberately exploited it, now pressing the poet even further – Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; K. And so, I must not see . . . ? [. . . You must] Not[-see], E.

8a Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ.

8b

at any rate, whatever you must hear. [. . . You must-]Not [see],

in order to prise apart his original statement (at 5–6) and reshape its constituents into a bogus antinomy (10): ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΗΣ ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε πάνθ’ ὅσ’ αὐτίκα ὄψει παρεστώς. Κη. πῶς λέγεις; αὖθις φράσον. οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν. Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; Κη. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ. Κη. πῶς μοι παραινεῖς; δεξιῶς μέντοι λέγεις· οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν;

5

10

E. You need not hear all that you’ll see instantly when you’re present. 5–6 K. What’s that? Say again? I must not-hear . . .? E. . . . [must]Not[-hear], at any rate, whatever you are to see. 7 K. And so, I must not see . . .? 9

For an alternative construal of the grounds for the conclusion drawn at 8 by the interlocutor (‘So, then, I must not see?’) that draws upon the implication of μέλλω in Euripides’ preceding statement at 7 (‘Not . . . whatever you are going to see’) see pp. 72–5.

16

r e re a di ng t he pr o lo g u e E. . . . [must]Not[see], at any rate, whatever you must hear. K. How are you recommending this to me? Of course you’re speaking Sophisticatedly. You’re saying that I should not hear and not see?

10

At the point at which this strategy becomes evident – the coup de grâce at 10 – the audience have become alive not only to the ambiguities active in this prosody of negations but also, through expository cues laced into the flow of speech that follows (11–14), to a probable intellectual context for them. Yet irrespective of this context, it should be noted that in no way has the effect of these first seconds of banter been to reduce Euripides’ interlocutor to a Strepsiades, a mindless ‘buffoon’ (even if that is precisely what he has been taken for by the careless Euripides). Indeed, quite the opposite: it has been to push, with his subtle wordplay and comic pedantry, the seriously pedantic Euripides into advocating (παραίνω, 9) an extreme, and increasingly philosophical, (per)version of his original words (5–6), sifting out (6, ‘What’s that? Say again . . .’), then extrapolating (‘I must nothear . . .?’, 7; ‘. . . I must not see . . .?’, 8), then, lavishing solicitous praise upon (δεξιῶς, 9)10 all his pretensions to superior knowledge. Framed by the movement within the dialogue from δεῖ to χρή (5–10), the sly logic-mongering of this strategy has also steadily manoeuvred the poet into a ‘dilemma, either horn of which leads to a contradiction’;11 for by foolishly allowing his words to be reshaped, he has also allowed hearing and seeing to be transformed from two equivalent and mutually substitutable experiences, into two mutually exclusive and mutually negating activities.12 10

11 12

See Eccl. 243–4 with Rothwell (1990) 85–7 for δεξιός of sophistic speech. For a sophistic analogue of Euripides’ statements at 7b and 8b, see Antipho Soph. 87b44 DK fr. a col. 3.1–15; Euripides as a ποιητὴς δεξιός see Frogs 66–71, 1009; for the term associated with tragedy more generally: 762, 1121, 1370. Cf. Silk (2000) 48–53. I borrow this phrase from Chance (1992) 106. Note that the distinction between seeing and hearing at the start of this dialogue is one drawn between present and future experiences of an implicit equivalency: 5–6, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε πάνθ’ ὅσ’ αὐτίκα | ὄψει παρεστώς (extrapolated with μέλλω at 7). Any tacit preference for sight over hearing here does not reflect an epistemic ranking of these senses; it points to the preferability of direct rather than indirect experience (i.e. of seeing for oneself, which also includes and subsumes hearing for oneself, rather than relying on the purely auditory testimony of others, as at Heraclit. 22b101a, b55 DK with Curd (1991) 541, 549 n. 60; Robb (1991); Pritzl (1985) 305–7, esp. 307). It is our interlocutor’s protracted quibble over the point of necessity (δεῖ) invoked that

17

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

Indeed, by carelessly sanctioning the shuffled negation of 7 (‘I must not-hear . . .?’ E. [. . . must] ‘Not [-hear] . . . at any rate, whatever you are to see’),13 and treating similarly the same ambiguity implicit at 8,14 this poet has been edged toward the brink of the absurdity that his audience is obliged (δεῖ, χρή) to not-hear him in order to see him, and to not-see him in order to hear him; thereby providing his comic interlocutor, and everyone else in the theatre, with all the means necessary to refute him. The subtle reformulation of Euripides’ words through the tossing around of negations which the poet seems unable properly to distinguish has thus culminated in the trap set at 10: οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; – a question which wilfully introduces even more ambiguity into the dialogue by accommodating both a disjunctive (‘So, you’re saying that I shouldn’t either hear or see?’) and a conjunctive (‘So, you’re saying I should neither hear nor see?’) pairing of the senses.15 Yet the possibility of hearing

13 14

forces the issue of the relation of these senses to one another into present time (i.e. into the frame of immediate first-person experience); and it is Euripides’ inept handling of modal negation that follows (6–10) which destroys the possibility of their coexistence here (with the enantiomorphic logic A = Not-B, and B = Not-A). See my discussion pp. 72–9. See my pp. 14–15 nn. 6–7. With his reply at 8, οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ, Euripides echoes in word order his original remark at 5: ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε . . . He is led to do so by his interlocutor, who reintroduces this order into the dialogue with a leading question, also at 8: οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’ (see underlined text below); predicting from the response he has received at 7 that Euripides will again fashion an answer that reduplicates the same word order employed in the question (see bold text below). In this way Euripides is tricked into creating a closed, circular system, restating the same ambiguity of modal negation his interlocutor was originally able to exploit in reshaping 5, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε into 7, οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΗΣ ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε πάνθ’ ὅσ’ αὐτίκα ὄψει παρεστώς. Κη. πῶς λέγεις; αὖθις φράσον. οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν. Eυ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ. Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; Κη. πῶς μοι παραινεῖς; δεξιῶς μέντοι λέγεις· οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν;

15

5

10

Strictly speaking, line 10’s οὔτε . . . οὔτε are conjunctive negative coordinators (as are μήτε . . . μήτε in line 12), but this does not prevent the disjunctive as well as conjunctive pairing of the senses here (as is also the case for line 12, see my pp. 20–1, esp. n. 21); my translation ‘either . . . or’ (as well as ‘neither . . . nor’ = ‘not . . . and not’) follows Smyth §2942 (cf. §2761) and is an attempt to draw out the two extreme paraphrases possible for οὔτε . . . οὔτε after the leading adherescent negation οὐ, which, I suspect, can be taken

18

r e re a di ng t he pr o lo g u e

in this line ‘neither . . . nor’ as well as (or instead of) ‘either . . . or’ has not been seen by this Euripides. Confounded in his attempts to support his trivial point at 5–6 and undercut in what has ensued by the rapid concretization of δεῖ into χρή (5–10), he has simply assumed one reading – a disjunctive one – and focused instead upon the use here of χρή, flying from it into an abstract justification for his marshalling of necessity, δεῖ (11). Now, his commitment pressed, the point really in need of clarification – for this is not a matter of what should be, but a matter of what is – he has abandoned ‘needs’ and ‘musts’ (5) to marshal a higher authority, a philosophical account of the senses: Κη. πῶς μοι παραινεῖς; δεξιῶς μέντοι λέγεις· οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; Ευ. χωρὶς γὰρ αὐτοῖν ἑκατέρου ᾿στὶν ἡ φύσις. Κη. τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; Ευ. εὖ ἴσθ’ ὅτι. Κη. πῶς χωρίς; K. How are you recommending this to me? Of course you’re speaking Sophisticatedly. You’re saying that I shouldn’t either hear or see? E. That the nature of each of the two of them is distinct. K. What, of not hearing and not seeing? E. You can be certain of that. K. Distinct in what way?

10 12

10 12

The linguistic cues that mark this change in register, between 11 and 13, have also prompted the audience to orient themselves afresh to the comic antics playing out before them. By the quibble over χωρίς (13) they have been bombarded not only with a battery of negations but also with a rapid succession of marked phrases and philosophical jargon, the cumulative weight of which has been to signal a dramatic frame for the dialogue – and a preliminary setting for the play – that emerges as unambiguously sophistic. Euripides’ philosophizing of a separation, χωρίς,16 of the senses by nature,

16

here either as broad-scope and merely reinforced by οὔτε . . . οὔτε (which are therefore construed as redundant: following Smyth §2942, ‘I shouldn’t either hear or see?’), or more narrowly, and as reprised twice by οὔτε . . . οὔτε (‘I should not hear and not see?’ = ‘. . . neither hear nor see?’). For the logical equivalence of the two construals, see Haspelmath (2007) 17, who notes the ‘logical equivalence of disjunction with widescope negation and conjunction with narrow-scope negation (in the notation of symbolic logic: ¬ (p ∨ q) ≡ ¬ p & ¬ q) [i.e. not (p or q) = not p and not q]’. See H. W. Miller (1946) 172 (cited by Sansone (1996) 341): ‘this is the philosophical meaning of χωρίς’, comparing Pl. Phlb. 44a10: χωρὶς τοῦ μὴ λυπεῖσθαι καὶ τοῦ χαίρειν ἡ

19

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

φύσις,17 as a wider corrective to the comic nonsense made of his words has set him up as a peddler of avant-garde theoretical concepts (E. [What I’m saying is this] ‘. . . each of the two of them is essentially separate [that is, each has a separate senseorgan and a separate sense-object]’, 11).18 Yet pitted against the argumentative powers of this interlocutor, Euripides’ allusion to such high ideas has served only to draw attention to a tragic inability to deploy them persuasively. For no sooner have they been voiced, than his sophistic interlocutor has seized his opportunity to test the poet’s sophia continuing his attack – Κη. . . . οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; Ευ. χωρὶς γὰρ αὐτοῖν ἑκατέρου ᾿στὶν ἡ φύσις. Κη. τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; K. . . . You’re saying that I shouldn’t either hear or see? E. That the nature of each of the two of them is distinct. K. What, of not-hearing and not-seeing?

10

10

– again exploiting the ambiguities of Euripides’ speech, again splintering his theorizing into its constituent parts, φύσις and χωρίς, so as to reshape and refute it. To this end, the αὐτοῖν ἑκατέρου ‘of each of the two of them’ (11) – an emphatically plural reference, the first indication that Euripides has committed himself to a disjunctive pairing of the verbs at 10 – has presented his first opportunity. For the interlocutor’s very next question (12) has been to adopt a conjunctive construal of 10, thereby shifting the context

17

18

φύσις ἑκατέρου. Cf. χωρίς at E. Alc. 528 in the midst of a discussion of being and not-being that has obvious sophistic overtones; in the context of clever speech, cf. S. OC 806–8; Pl. Prt. 336b. On φύσις as a marked philosophical term, the ‘catchword of the new philosophy’, as Kahn (1960) 201 puts it (cited by Sansone (1996) 342), see Hajistephanou (1975); Mannsperger (1969). For the basis for this extrapolation, see Sansone (1996) and Rashed (2007), who see traces in Euripides’ words of Empedocles’ theory of sensory perception (Emp. 31a86 DK), which posited mutually exclusive senses able to register only those effluences commensurate to the πόροι of each sense organ, see Long (1966) 260 and my discussion, pp. 36–42. The doxographical tradition records that not only Empedocles, but also Parmenides before him, Anaxagoras and later Democritus also drew upon these principles in their treatment of perception, see Thphr. Sens. 1, Aët. iv 9.6 (= Stob. Ecl. 1.26.2 / 28a47 DK). But see Laks (1990) on the likely reasons for this later tradition attributing to Parmenides a fully articulated theory of perception; cf. Mansfeld (1999) and my p. 47 n. 11.

20

r e re a di ng t he pr o lo g u e

of the poet’s philosophizing at 11 back from referring abstractly (and disjunctively) to hearing and to seeing, and thus echoing current speculation into the distinct φύσεις of these senses, to referring instead to a conjunctive pairing of the negated verbs – only using a question that is as wilfully ambiguous as that first given at 10: τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; (‘[What,] – of not-hearing and not-seeing?’, 12). With this, the interlocutor’s trap is set, for the comic implication of his ambiguous question is that what Euripides has posited at 11 is not the ‘distinct’ φύσις of hearing and the ‘distinct’ φύσις of seeing, but rather, the ‘distinct’ φύσις of this singular anatreptic state (‘. . . of neither hearing nor seeing? – of perceptual nothingness – [. . . the nature of this is distinct?!]’, 12).19 Yet so swept up is Euripides in his assumptions of disjuncture and segregation (and so deaf to the negations that have thus far tied him up in (k)nots), that all he has heard in that query is disjuncture ( ‘What, [the nature] . . . of (not-) hearing as opposed to (not-) seeing?’, 12). And so he has offered happy affirmation of this distortion of his thesis – Κη. τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; Κη. πῶς χωρίς;

Ευ. εὖ ἴσθ’ ὅτι.20

12

K. What, of not hearing and not seeing? E. You can be certain of that. 12 K. Distinct in what way?

– quite unaware that by ignoring the possibility of a conjunctive pairing of the verbs (and their (non-)experiences), he has just set himself up for the knock-out blow that follows at 13: πῶς χωρίς; ‘How do you mean ‘separate’?’ ‘How can the nature of neither hearing nor seeing – a unity of nothingness – be ‘separate’?’21 ‘Separate’ from what? 19

20

21

Contra Sansone (1996) 342: ‘This philosophical language poses a challenge to the kinsman’s limited intelligence . . .’ εὖ ἴσθ’ ὅτι at 12 is colloquial (see Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc.), cf. Socrates’ εὖ ἴσθ’ ὅτι at Pl. Tht. 149a6; but for εὖ ἴσθι as also characteristic of sophistic posturing, see Xen. Smp. 8.40, and esp. Dover (1980) ad Pl. Smp. 208c: καὶ ἥ, ὥσπερ οἱ τέλεοι σοφισταί, εὖ ἴσθ’, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες. ‘Whereat she, like the perfect sophists, said: “Be certain of it, Socrates.”’ Cf. Euthd. 274a, Hp. Ma. 287c. Line 12 has generated considerable confusion among commentators, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. Most recently, Wilson (2007b) ad loc, following Sommerstein (1994), aporetically suggests it is ‘better deleted’; ‘. . . I confess to finding the syntax so odd that I do not see how to get an amusing line out of it’. One of Sommerstein’s (1994)

21

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

Run rings around in speech yet again, then, by the beginning of his longest speech of the dialogue, the poet has been seen abandoning the dangerous fallibilities of λόγος in order to continue his philosophical display under the cover of a handy μῦθος. Lines 13–18: Κη. πῶς χωρίς; Ευ. οὕτω ταῦτα διεκρίθη τότε. Αἰθὴρ γάρ, ὅτε τὰ πρῶτα διεχωρίζετο καὶ ζῷ’ ἐν αὑτῷ ξυνετέκνου κινούμενα, ᾧ μὲν βλέπειν χρή, πρῶτ’ ἐμηχανήσατο

14

two reasons ad loc. for endorsing this deletion (the other concerns sequence of thought) is that ‘while hearing and seeing are two things, “neither hearing nor seeing” is only one’, and that this ‘pedantic, sophistic’ Euripides would never endorse such an absurd reformulation of his words (see my p. 11 n. 26). Sansone (1996) 342 n. 20, by contrast, dismisses Sommerstein’s objection on the grounds that ‘Euripides has just (10–11) endorsed his kinsman’s observation that he is being asked to neither hear nor see’, and he continues: ‘And anyway – to be, for the moment, pedantic and sophistic – the nature of not seeing and the nature of not hearing are two things’, citing the gloss τοῦ μὴ ἀκούειν καὶ τοῦ μὴ ὁρᾶν in Blaydes (1880) ad loc., and the translation ‘Not seeing and not hearing?’ in Kovacs (1994) 79. Whilst that is undoubtedly true (at least within this closed system of only either hearing or seeing; outside it things are less certain – smelling, for instance, is both), the important point here is rather to recognize the line for what it is: one more airing of a device (first voiced at 10) which uses its ambiguous double meaning to elicit a commitment to one or other reading, the counter to which can then be taken up. Blaydes’ gloss represents only one possible interpretation of τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; (12), one that prevails only if the line is read through the lens of an a priori disjunctive pairing of the verbs (the very same habit which Euripides exhibits as he responds to the similar construction at line 10 οὐ . . . οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; with 11, αὐτοῖν ἑκατέρου, ‘[sc. the nature] of each of the two of them . . .’) Thus, as they are voiced at 12, the pair of negated articular infinitives, τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; pick up on and reiterate the same ambiguity that enables a conjunctive as well as a disjunctive reading of the verbs at 10 and throughout the rest of the scene (see again at 19): see the identical translations of Henderson (2000) and Silk (2000) 326, with n. 63 for similar recognition of ‘the continuing possibility of a disjunctive, rather than a conjunctive, pairing of the two verbs’ although Silk does not read the disjunctive construal at line 11 as an ‘answer’ to line 10). My translation of the line at various points as ‘neither hearing nor seeing’ (rather than the more properly ambiguous ‘not-hearing and not-seeing’) is an attempt to make explicit the way in which I suggest the argument develops from 10: first, the formulation of a question that allows for both a conjunctive and a disjunctive reading of the verbs throughout what follows, 10: οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; then one character, Euripides, committing himself (whether intentionally or not) to a disjunctive interpretation of this, 11: ‘E: That the nature of each of the two of them is distinct’; which, consequently, is met at 12 by his interlocutor, who, as author of this ambiguity (10), exploits it once more to take the opposite conjunctive construal and push the poet toward an absurdity that, precisely because of his strictly disjunctive reading and his deafness to negations, he just cannot hear (or see): ‘[What?] – of neither hearing nor seeing?’, ‘. . . of not-hearing and not-seeing?’. Cf. Austin and Olson (2004) ad 12: ‘E. reacts as if Inlaw has said τοῦ ἀκούειν καὶ ὁρᾶν, and is too absorbed in his own thoughts to notice the mistake.’

22

r e re a di ng t he pr o lo g u e ὀφθαλμὸν ἀντίμιμον ἡλίου τροχῷ, ἀκοῆς δὲ χοάνην ὦτα διετετρήνατο. K. [Neither hearing nor seeing is . . .] Distinct! – in what way? E. This is how they were distinguished long ago: When Aither first was separating itself out, and begetting living, moving beings within itself, that with which one must see, it crafted first, the eye, ‘in imitation of the solar disc’, and for hearing, bored the ear as a funnel.

14

The rhetorical purpose of such an epideixis at this point of the dialogue is signalled by its very first word: οὕτω(ς), [Distinct? How so? Well, listen . . .] ‘Once upon a time . . .’ (13).22 In the following lines, 14–18, the shift into fable that it introduces emerges as a sophistic strategy that has enabled Euripides blithely to sidestep the rigour of logical argument (λόγος),23 escaping the need to theorize further the exclusivity of the senses. His tactic of telling a μῦθος instead has been to invoke mythological authority to explain why (not) hearing and (not) seeing are essentially separate things (‘Cosmogony recapitulates ontology!’, 13),24 thereby eliminating the awkward problem of having to offer any supporting proof – a criterion alien to mythological discourse – of how (or even that) this is so. Indeed, by its close at 18, Euripides’ μῦθος has been seen to presuppose precisely what he has otherwise entirely failed to demonstrate by λόγος.25 Its new fifth-century spin26on traditional ideas about the coming into being of a differentiated world from 22

23 25

26

See Sansone (1996) 342, with his n. 22 for parallels for οὕτως (a typical marker of fable) introducing a story or μῦθος, suggesting also that we read ποτέ here for τότε (as at Wasps 1182); see also Van Dijk (1997) 76, 113, 172–3, 189, 362–6; cf. W. H. Thompson (1868) and Yunis (2011) ad Pl. Phdr. 237b2, and the opening words of Protagoras’ μῦθος at Pl. Prt. 320d1 with Denyer (2008) ad loc.: ἦν γάρ ποτε χρόνος ὅτε . . . Contra Sommerstein (1994) ad 11–18. 24 Trans. Slavitt (1998). For a later parallel of this use of myth as an evasive rhetorical strategy used by the sophists, see Pl. Prt. 320c2–7 with Morgan (2000) 138–47, esp. 139, 145 for this observation. For the more general tactic of launching into a long speech so as to elude further arguments and drag out the issue until one’s interlocutors have forgotten their original question (according to Alcibiades, a habit also exemplified by Protagoras), see Pl. Prt. 336b–d. The intellectualism of Euripides’ spontaneous μῦθος, striking to its original audience but less evident in its overly literal translation into English, is captured well by William Arrowsmith’s unpublished translation of the speech discussed by Scharffenberger (2002) 439–40. Here Arrowsmith plays up the pretensions of the poet, and with a

23

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

primal chaos – the separating out of Aither (14),27 the begetting of living creatures within it (15), and the crafting of their sense organs by a deity (16–18)28 – has not only taken separation (χωρίς) as its axiomatic principle (14) but also, in so doing, made its audience privy to a world of Presocratic science – or at least to a playfully Euripidean (which is to say, typically truncating) image of Presocratic science, for the μῦθος the poet has offered at this point has conjured an eclectic and muddled regurgitation of Empedoclean-esque cosmogony, zoology and biology. Its aetiology of division and segregation harking back to the original shaping of distinct sense organs, explicitly the first biological features of living organisms crafted by Aither (πρῶτ’ ἐμηχανήσατο, 16), has sought to persuade his interlocutor of the truth of its premise of essential separation. But this poet’s redeployment of Presocratic sophia has in fact only unwittingly reiterated his own inability to maintain such a separation himself; for if his source is (among possible others), indeed, Empedocles, his spontaneous cosmologizing has merely conflated the separation of Aither to be found in Empedocles’ zoogony of Strife, with the crafting of sense organs by Aphrodite in the zoogony of Love. What is more, if his words change in register to elevated speech and ‘exceptionally formal diction’, 13–18 becomes:

27

28

This is how it happened. When parturient Ether first began to divide her womb pullulating with organic life, she endowed each organism with sight. She devised eyes, tiny orbicular organs modelled on the sun, and then, having bored a shaft through the skull, created small acoustical funnels, or ears. Examples of the motif of separation, already implicit in the earliest extant mythical cosmogonies: Hes. Th. 154ff. (the separation of Ouranos and Gaia) and 695ff. discussed by Kirk et al. (1983) 34–9; philosophical examples, see Parm. 28b8.53–60 DK; Anaxag. 59b1 DK; Diog. Apoll. 64b2 DK, and for a philosophical parallel for Euripides’ substitution of Ouranos with Aither, see esp. Emp. 31a49 DK: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τὸν μὲν αἰθέρα πρῶτον διακριθῆναι (sc. ἔφη). Cf., e.g., Emp. 31b84, b86, b87 DK (the fashioning of the eye by Aphrodite). The cosmologizing of the sense organs as a new characteristic of fifth-century thought: Austin and Olson (2004) ad 14–18, highlighting the sudden appearance and ubiquity of this concern; debate about the number and nature of the senses in fifth- and fourthcentury philosophy and science: Jouanna (2003) and Laks (1999) 262–7; an example of an extant fifth-century ‘inquiry into nature’ that situates an account of senses within the first principles of cosmology, cf. Hipp. Carn. esp. 15–18 with Jouanna (1999) 227. See Clements (forthcoming) for an introductory survey.

24

r e re a di ng t he pr o lo g u e

ἀκοῆς δὲ χοάνην ὦτα διετετρήνατο at line 18 echo the original version of the now corrupt Empedoclean line describing Aphrodite’s crafting of the eye in manuscript P (Vaticanus 1339), a verse speculatively restored by Blass to χοάνῃσι δίαντα τετρήατο θεσπεσίῃσιν at 31b84.9 DK, it would seem that this Euripides has thus conflated not only the actions of Empedocles’ cosmic opposites of Strife and Love, but also, tellingly (as we shall see), the eye and the ear themselves.29

29

For the possible implicit suggestion of a philosophical failure correctly to differentiate the eye and the ear here and its wider significance, see my discussion, pp. 77–87. Sommerstein (1994) ad 11–18 and Kovacs (1994) 81 look to cosmogonical passages from Euripidean drama for antecedents to Ar.’s Euripidean μῦθος, suggesting a parody of the cosmology at E. fr. 484 (Kannicht) (Melanippe the Wise). Mureddu (1992), Sansone (1996), and Rashed (2007), by contrast, posit a comically abbreviated caricature of the stages of creation of the Empedoclean cosmos. Its three components: the separation of Aither, the begetting with earth of living beings within it, and the fashioning of specialized sense organs find parallels in Empedocles’ cosmogony, zoogony and biology: see, for instance, 31a49 DK, the separating off of Aither; 31b62 DK, b73 DK, the generation of life (from earth) within its enveloping canopy; 31b84, b86, b87 DK, the fashioning of specialized organs of sense. For the muddling of the Empedoclean domains of Strife and Love that Euripides’ cosmology may represent, see Rashed (2007) 28, who discusses the possibility that χοάνην and διετετρήνατο (at 18) of the ear may allude to Emp. 31b84.9 DK, which Blass (1883) restored to χοάνῃσι . . . τετρήατο (of Aphrodite’s crafting of the eye), a conjecture endorsed by DK and also discussed (more cautiously) in relation to our line 18 by Sansone (1996) 344–5 and dismissed as a comparandum by Austin and Olson (2004) ad 16–17 (citing M. R. Wright (1981) 241). For τετραίνω generally of pores in Empedocles, see 31b100.3 DK, and of the ears in earlier tragedy, see Rösler (1970) 90 on A. Ch. 451 (positing Empedoclean influence, contra Garvie (1986) ad loc.); but see also τετραίνω of ἡ ἀκοή in Thphr.’s accounts of Diogenes of Apollonia’s (τῇ ἀκοῇ τέτρηται) and Democritus’ theories of hearing, Thphr. Sens. 41, 56; cf. συντετραίνω at Plut. De Garr. 502e; and διατετραίνω at Hipp. Loc. Hom. 2.1 with Craik (1998) ad loc. on use of the verb in early accounts of the senses that becomes ‘formulaic’. And note also that Empedocles’ cosmology itself in some respects probably followed the divinely orchestrated metaphysical processes of the now no longer extant cosmology of Parmenides’ Doxa, see Censorinus, DN 4.7.8; Bollack (1969b) 429–30; Palmer (2009) 316–17, although on the issue of perception, cf. also Laks (1990), my p. 20 n. 18 and p. 47 n. 11. See Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. for an indication of the range of scholarly attempts to read a parody of ‘a particular philosophical system’ in 14–18 based upon alleged specific allusions (none of which they find compelling), including the cosmology of Anaxagoras, the influence of which on the Melanippe fragment (fr. 484 (Kannicht)) has been suggested since antiquity, see Dion. Hal. Rhet. 9.11 and Diod. Sic. 1.7.7, and doubted by Collard et al. (1995) 270 and others. For examples of the sort of intellectual butterfly collecting typical of Euripidean drama that informs Ar.’s caricature and his eclectic reworking of contemporary cosmologizing, see esp. E. fr. 839 (Kannicht) (Chrysippus) with Collard and Cropp (2008) 466–7 on its philosophical ideas (again acknowledged since antiquity), and fr. 484 (Kannicht) with Collard et al. (1995) 269–70 (who is sceptical about Euripides’ philosophical debts); cf. frs. 877, 941,

25

a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae

Yet, of course, this Euripides’ deafness to the ambiguities brought by negation has meant that, even as rhetorical sleight-of-hand, his μῦθος of confused opposites has always been doomed to comic failure; for it is not, in any case, as he thought, the essential distinctness of hearing or seeing that he has been pressed to explain but, rather, the essential distinctness of not-hearing or -seeing.30 Hence, far from ensuring the blind acceptance of his regurgitated axiom (‘the nature of each of the two of them is distinct’, 11), our poet’s sudden launch into his display of scientific erudition has been merely to set himself up once more, though now more entertainingly than ever, to be tied up in the same old nots (and the same old joke), all over again, 19ff. – Ευ. . . . ᾧ μὲν βλέπειν χρή, πρῶτ’ ἐμηχανήσατο ὀφθαλμὸν ἀντίμιμον ἡλίου τροχῷ, ἀκοῆς δὲ χοάνην ὦτα διετετρήνατο. Κη. διὰ τὴν χοάνην οὖν μήτ’ ἀκούω μήθ’ ὁρῶ; νὴ τὸν Δί’ ἥδομαί γε τουτὶ προσμαθών. οἷόν γε πού ᾿στιν αἱ σοφαὶ ξυνουσίαι. E. . . . that with which one must see, it crafted first, the eye, ‘in imitation of the solar disc’,31 and for hearing, bored the ear as a funnel. K. Aha! So, because of this funnel I’m neither to hear nor to see? I’m beside myself to have learnt that! Intellectual conversations32 are really something!

30 31

32

20

20

182a (Kannicht). But see my p. 47 n. 11 and pp. 77–87 for the genuine issue at stake in Ar.’s parodic cosmology here, and p. 83 n. 107 for further discussion of the particular significance of E. frs. 839, 484 (Kannicht) as possible Euripidean antecedents. See p. 21 n. 21. Line 17, ἀντίμιμον ἡλίου τροχῷ, may allude to a Euripidean verse: Blaydes (1880) and Sommerstein (1994) ad loc. both point out that Eratosth. Cat. 13 uses similar language when retelling the Athenian myth of Erichthonius, a character said to have invented the chariot ‘in imitation of the sun’, and cites Euripides as his authority for the story (E. fr. 925 (Kannicht)). But for the philosophical currency of such comparisons of the eye to the sun or comparable light source, see Sansone (1996) 343 and Rashed (2007) on Empedoclean imagery, and for earlier appearances of the visual ray in Pythagoras and Parmenides, see also Aët. iv 13.9–10 (= 28a48 DK). See also Pl. R. 508b, where the eye is said to be: ἡλιοειδέστατον . . . τῶν περὶ τὰς αῖσθήσεις ὀργάνων. See Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. for ΣR’s comparison of S. fr. 14 (σοφοὶ τύραννοι τῶν σοφῶν ξυνουσίᾳ), a line he alleges Ar. attributed to Euripides (at fr. 323 KA) (as do fourthcentury writers). But (as Austin and Olson imply) the allusion is probably more general; for the sophists’ supplanting of the traditional institution of συνουσία during the late fifth century, see, e.g., Pl. Prt. 316c–d, with Robb (1993).

26

r e re a di ng t he pr o lo g u e

– until, for his interlocutor, it is simply a matter of mopping up this Euripides, still seemingly oblivious to half of what has come before, with one final reduction to absurdity, Ευ. πόλλ’ ἂν μάθοις τοιαῦτα παρ’ ἐμοῦ. πρὸς τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς τούτοισιν ἐξεύροιμ’ ὅπως ἔτι προσμάθοιμι χωλὸς εἶναι τὼ σκέλει;

Κη. πῶς ἂν οὖν

E. Many such things you could learn from me. K. So how, in addition to these fine things, might I discover how I might yet learn to be lame in my legs?

24

24

and with it, a last comic plea from this exasperated follower of the poet, for respite . . .

27

3 S O P H I S T I C M O D E L S : E R I S T I C A N D Α Ν Τ Ι ΛΟ Γ Ι Α

The sophistic strategies paraded and parodied in these first lines find striking parallels in the eristic tactics ascribed to two late fifthcentury sophists in another philosophical satire, Plato’s Euthydemus. The dropping of contextual qualifiers to get to the terms at the heart of a proposition (5–8); the reshaping of those terms into antinomies using verbal ambiguity (5–8); and the relegation of the original assertion to self-contradiction and absurdity (10, 12, 19): precisely the style of argument that arguably marks the interlocutor of our opening lines also characterizes the ἀντιλογικὴ τέχνη of the sophist brother-pair portrayed by Plato.1 Indeed, it is perhaps no coincidence that the probable dramatic date of this dialogue places its image of an Athens enamoured by epideictic contest and eristic technique at around the same time as the performance of our Thesmophoriazusae.2 As Plato presents them, the Euthydemus’ sophist protagonists, the elderly brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, had originated from Chios and 1

2

Numerous examples could be cited, but for the particular strategy of dropping qualifiers to generate a conjunctive formulation of opposites and contradiction, see Pl. Euthd. 293b7– 294a8, with S. Austin (1986) 116–23, esp. 122; cf. Chance (1992) 130–6. For the tendentious application of Eleatic logic underlying such eristic tactics, see S. Austin (1986) 116–23; Palmer (1999) 126–39; and my following discussion. For the affinity between Plato’s Euthd. and Aristophanic comedy, see Chance (1992) 191–2: ‘all those grotesqueries which he [sc. Plato] used to characterize the [. . .] antithesis to his own dialectic – the misuse of verbal triggers, the devious employment of ambiguous words and syntax, incomprehensible talk, non sequiturs and sophisms, even radically abrupt transitions, insults and slanders of every description, eristical dodges, puns – are precisely the signs that point to the discourse of actors on the comic stage’; and 277–8 n. 30 with the utility of the Euthd. for scholars interested in ‘the problems of antilogy’ in Ar. (among others). See p. 31 n. 11. This is based upon the extrapolation of Nails (2002) 317–18 of a dramatic date of ≥ 407. There is general consensus that Th. was performed at the Dionysia of 411 bc and Lys. was performed at the Lenaea of that year, see Austin and Olson (2004) xxxiii–xliv, esp. xli–xliv; Sommerstein (1977); cf. Revermann (2006b) 166; Rogers (1904) and now Tsakmakis (2012) argue in support of a performance date for the Th. at the Lenaea of 410 bc.

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ΑΝΤΙΛΟΓΙΑ

later joined the mainly Athenian colony at Thurii from which they then fled to Attica, probably as part of the political expulsion of Athenians and Athenian sympathizers that occurred in Thurii in 413 following the Athenian disaster in Sicily.3 Plato thus evidently thought it plausible to suggest that at the time of the staging of our Thesmophoriazusae (with its two ageing protagonists, and setpiece epideixis of eristic method by a sophistic ‘kinsman’ character, κηδεστής – ‘brother-in-law’?),4 probably at the City Dionysia of 411, his eristic exemplars had been in or around Attica for some two years at least, first plying their trade as teachers of generalship and then, according to the demand they encountered in Athens, also as teachers of sophistry.5 Here they rapidly perfected their eristic 3

4

5

Nails (2002) 136–7, 317–18. For the failure of the Sicilian expedition and its consequences for the Athenian war effort (including widespread revolt against Athens of numerous subject allies) as the implicit political backdrop to the Th., see Austin and Olson (2004) xxxvi–xxxvii. See Euthd. 272b9 for the brothers as γέροντε; for the comparably advanced age of Euripides and his interlocutor, and for κηδεστής as ‘brother-in-law’ see my pp. 8–9 nn. 17–18. Nails (2002) 317. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus themselves are obscure, but scholarly consensus is that certainly Euthydemus and probably Dionysodorus were historical personages, see Palmer (1999) 126, esp. n. 9; see also further references to Euthydemus at Pl. Cra. 386d and Arist. SE 177b, Rh. 1401a27, and to Dionysodorus at Xen. Mem. 3.1, where the sophist’s early ambition to teach generalship upon his arrival in Athens is mentioned. But irrespective of the historicity of these two sophists, their Platonic dramatis personae are certainly crafted so as to raise the issue of their ontological independence: see Crito’s confusion in the dramatic frame at 271a–b about whether there is one or two of them (which makes Plato’s repeated use of the dual seem surely significant), and Chance (1992) 270 n. 113, who argues that Plato’s brothers are ‘enantiomorphs’; cf. Hawtrey (1981) 13–14, who also notes the suggestion that the two constitute ‘a virtually indistinguishable pair’ and compares the comic effect of such a characterization to the effect of Shakespeare’s characterization of Rosencrantz and Gildenstern as a semi-comic pair shaped from ‘essentially one character’. This aspect of their Platonic characterization may also owe something to the protagonists of our prologue, see my earlier discussion pp. 8–9 on the problem of the Aristophanic hapax of Euripides’ anonymous interlocutor (according to N. W. Slater (2002) 295 n. 7 essentially an extension and parody of, which is also to say, a philosophical foil to, Euripides himself), and my p. 31 n. 11, p. 103 n. 165, p. 108 n. 176, p. 141 n. 259, p. 184 n. 81 for the Euthd.’s likely debts to Ar. and our Th. Certainly, the displays of Plato’s brothers elicit no less a theatrical and comic audience, see 276c–d. According to the Euthd., the elderly brothers added sophistry to their skills during the course of several years spent in and around Athens (271c). Socrates relates that they acquired their eristical wisdom (τῆς σοφίας [. . .] τῆς ἐριστικῆς, 272b9) within only a year or two of the dramatic date of the dialogue, which is why they are not known by name to Crito (271c–272b). In this respect, they are not remarkable; Socrates witheringly notes both the speed (272b10–c1) and the ease with which anyone, even the many, can pick up and mimic their eristic skills (as first Ctesippus and then he himself demonstrates, 300b–d, 301b5–6), see 304a.

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skills and quickly added themselves to the ranks of those practising the sort of Eleaticizing ἀντιλογία that their parodic portrayal in the Euthydemus was later to have them exemplify.6 Indeed, further evidence from Aristotle suggests that at some point during these years Euthydemus, for one, very likely produced eristic arguments for public consumption and, if this is so, his work evidently contributed to an ever-growing number of display speeches (epideixeis) and manuals (technai) on the art of speaking written by intellectuals, poets and sophists during the late fifth century.7 That Aristophanes composed our prologue in response to the appetite that existed amongst his contemporaries for the sophistic displays of such figures seems especially plausible if we consider that our extant Thesmophoriazusae is one of two versions of the play produced during the last decades of the fifth century; the other was probably staged either just before or just after 411.8 The little that we know about the plot of this lost version suggests that the 6

7

8

For many of the sophist brothers’ arguments as pastiches of earlier sophistic topoi, see Palmer (1999) 126. An example of one such anonymous treatise, the Δισσοὶ Λόγοι, believed to have been written around 400, survives in an appendix to Sextus Empiricus. Protagoras himself wrote two books of ἀντιλογίαι: Diog. Laert. 9.55; (= 80a1 DK). Euthydemus: WilamowitzMoellendorff (1919) 155–6; Praechter (1932) 122–7; the circulation of Euthydemus’ arguments in some form is certain: see the tantalizing (and perplexing, since it is incomplete) reference to a sophism attributed to him by Aristotle at SE 177b12–13 and unattested in Plato. Chance (1992) 5–6 discusses the Protagorean influence on later eristic, but see Hitchcock (2000) 60–2, who sees fundamental differences in their styles of argument. For the large number of texts on the art of speaking written by sophists, see Pl. Phd. 266d; Xen. Mem. 4.2; R. Thomas (2003) on the issue of audience and performance; and for the widespread dissemination of Eleatic ideas appropriated by the eristics, my following discussion, pp. 43–6. A lost Th. is attested among the fragments of Ar. Traditionally, it has been dated to some time after our extant play of 411, and the departure of Butrica (2001) from this assumption with a date in the late 420s, and specifically the Lenaea of 423, a sister play to the lost Clouds, has not proved persuasive to the most recent commentators; Austin and Olson (2004) lxxxiv–lxxxvii; but cf. Butrica (2004) for a response. However, his case has prompted the revision of our placing of the lost play to within the range of dates 415/ 14–407/6. That the play seems unlikely to have been staged before that earliest date (415) is suggested by a reference to Agathon attributed to the lost play (fr. 341 KA) which assumes his poetic tendencies are well known to the comic audience and implies a date of sometime after the staging of his first set of plays at the Lenaea of 416, and before his departure to Macedon (sometime earlier than 405); Austin and Olson (2004) lxxxvii. However, the question of whether our extant play was the ‘original’ version and the lost version a rewrite or vice versa, remains open. But see Karachalios (2006) for a challenge of the attribution of fr. 341 KA to the lost play and an attempt to find further support for Butrica’s dating of the lost play to the early period of Ar.’s career (i.e. pre-421) and specifically to the Lenaea of 423.

30

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ΑΝΤΙΛΟΓΙΑ

prologue of our extant play was very different if not entirely new.9 If that is so, then it seems we are dealing with a scene either written or rewritten in, or just before, 411 in order to stage a set-piece epideixis of the popular art of eristic sophistry,10 that same art which just a few years later, c. 405, Aristophanes would explicitly pin to his comic Euripides (cf. Frogs 771–6) and which, some years after that, Plato would parody in its highest form in his Euthydemus, drawing upon Aristophanes’ earlier popularizing treatments performed on-stage during his youth.11 Certainly, 9

10

11

According to the scholiast (ΣR298 = fr. 331 KA) of our extant version, the prologue of the lost Th. opened with the speech of Calligeneia, a minor deity associated with the Thesmophoria. The play almost certainly began at the festival on its last day, a day named in honour of this Goddess (cf. the title given to the play by Demetrios of Troizen: αἱ Θεσμοφοριάσασαι (Th. II test. ii = SH 377), cited by Austin and Olson (2004) lxxxvii). According to Butrica’s (2001) 62–70 speculative reconstruction, the prologue which followed probably consisted of ‘a scene of deliberation in which the celebrants agreed upon the necessity of doing away with Euripides’ before setting out for Salamis to apprehend the poet in his cave and kill him. An earlier, pre-411, date (say, 415/14) for the lost Th. implies that the prologue of the first play was rewritten to take the shape of our extant version and so fit with the sophistic Zeitgeist of 411/10. A later, post-411, date (say, 407/6) for the lost version, on the other hand, suggests either that the original prologue (now, our extant version) was perfectly timed for its first airing in 411 but less relevant a few years later and so was reworked accordingly, or else that, like the first Clouds, our extant beginning simply flopped, perhaps because of its similarly intellectual subject matter, and it was this failure which prompted a rewrite. Alternatively, if Karachalios (2006) is right to see our play as the second version of a play that was performed in 423 but, like the first Clouds, failed (cf. Wasps 1043–5), then our extant play may well mark a poetic castigation of the first play’s earlier audience just as does our extant Clouds, see my discussion, pp. 144–58. But see my conclusion for a full discussion of the reasons motivating our Th.’s parody of Euripides and his audiences in 411. For the sophistic epideixeis of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, see Pl. Euthd. 274d–275a. For the formulaic nature – instantly recognizable to those in the know – of the crossquestioning displays exemplified by these brothers and by the sophistic interlocutor of the Th., see Chance (1992) 42–7, esp. 43, on the ‘standardized question-chains’ of eristic which enact ‘frozen pieces of reasoning, stored away for future recall and requiring only a set of triggers or cues’ in order to ‘set in motion a crystallized refutation’. Cf. R. Thomas (2003) 177. On the issue of intertextuality: the depth of the relationship that exists between Plato and Ar. is only now beginning to be appreciated, see Nightingale (1995) 172–92; Brock (1990); Chance (1992) 191–2; Nails (2006); Tordoff (2007); Rashed (2009); Charalabopoulos (2001) (2012); Sissa (2012). The Euthd., in particular, deserves a study of this kind; it is the Platonic dialogue ‘probably richest in allusions to Aristophanes’: Hawtrey (1981) 34, see esp. n. 21, listing allusions to Clouds (Clouds 439–42 and 453f., Euthd. 285c–d; Clouds 143, Euthd. 277e; Clouds 254, Euthd. 277d); Tarrant (1991) 162–66 (Clouds); a likely allusion to our Th. and Agathon’s theory of mimēsis (Th. 149–50, 168–70) at Euthd. 284d5, see Hawtrey (1981) ad loc.; ‘with the largest number of references to laughter’ and possibly mirroring in its five-part structure the five acts of a comedy, Charalabopoulos (2012) 69; and exhibiting close affinities to comedy in its sophistic conversational strategies and wordplay, see Chance (1992) 191–2

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since the ambassadorial visit of Gorgias of Leontini to their city in 427 the intellectual community of Athens and its wider theatregoing public had steadily demonstrated their appreciation for precisely such sophistic epideixeis.12

12

and my discussion pp. 102–13; cf. Collins (2004) 50–3, and my p. 28 n. 1, p. 103 n. 165, p. 108 n. 176, p. 141 n. 259, p. 184 n. 81; cf. Brock (1990) 45–6 and D. Tarrant (1946) and (1958) on Plato’s redeployment of colloquialism and comic wordplay. In light of these considerations, it is entirely implausible to suppose that Plato composed his comic exposé of eristic without at least some knowledge of Ar.’s satirical handling of eristic procedure in our prologue. Indeed, by Plato’s time, Th. had evidently acquired an international audience: see the depiction of its (Telephian) hostage scene (688–764) on an Apulian bell crater from southern Italy c. 370, Martin von Wagner Museum, Würzburg, H5697, cited by Henderson (2000) 446; for a full discussion, see Taplin (1987) 102–5 and (1993) 36– 40. None of this, of course, is to detract from the dialogue’s fourth-century political and philosophical agendas, for which see Dusanic (1999) and Rappe (2000) respectively. For the suggestion that Gorgias may have been lampooned by Ar. in the very next year (426) in Babylonians, see O’Sullivan (1992) 126–9, esp. 127 on Ar. fr. 67 KA; and for likely references to Gorgianic deception in Ach. 634 see my p. 191 n. 102; in 422 Ar. explicitly mocks an Athenian emulator of Gorgias, a certain Philippus (Wasps 421), and by 414 the characterization of Athens as an unbearably litigious city by two Athenians seeking to escape is made in terms of Gorgias’ impact on the practice of rhetoric: Birds 1694–1705; lastly, for castigation of Athenian audiences under the spell of Gorgianic style rhetoric in 427 in a piece of rhetoric that is itself Gorgianic, see Thuc. 3.38.4–7 with my discussion pp. 160–3. Impact of Gorgias outside Athens: see Pl. Men. 70a–b on the Thessalians’ newly learnt wisdom, and Philostr. test. 35 (Buchheim (1989)) for the scholarly cliché that, in Thessaly, ‘to gorgiasize’ became an idiom for ‘to orate’.

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4 O N W H AT- [ I T ] - I S - N O T: G O R G I A S AND EMPEDOCLES

The extent of the influence Gorgias had on intellectual life in Athens is reflected not least by the readiness with which scholars assume that it is the spectre of his work that lies behind the key features of our prologue. Most significantly, the ʻtheoryʼ setting out the relation of the senses of sight and hearing to their respective objects and to one another that is solicited from Euripides here has been identified as a specific homage to Gorgias’ famous treatise On What Is Not – a suggestion seemingly bolstered by the ostentatious plays on negation of the early lines in which it occurs.1 In a pivotal

1

Bobrick (1997) 179 voices the popular view that Euripides’ words of the prologue bode for ‘a Gorgian fantasy in which that which is not is’; Hays (1990) 333–4 offers a lengthier but similarly glossing discussion of our lines as a parody of Gorgianic scepticism; so too Mureddu (1992) and, most recently, Nichols (1998) 81 n. 76, building upon Whitman’s (1964) 226 (cf. 219) unsubstantiated characterization of Euripides’ musings about the objects of sight and hearing as ‘almost a quotation from the book “On Non-Being”’. Against the force of that characterization should be weighed the fact that Gorgias’ treatise survives in two Hellenistic versions, one in the work of Sextus Empiricus (M vii 65–87 = 82b3 DK), the other in the pseudo-Aristotelian De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia (MXG, text and German trans. Buchheim (1989)), neither of which can be said to have preserved Gorgias’ own words, nor even necessarily to have rendered intact the original sequence of his thought; see Wardy (1996) 15, and 152 n. 12, for ‘the indubitable evidence for heavy reworking by Hellenistic philosophers’ in both texts, a fact which prompts Gagarin (1997) 38 wryly to ask ‘does On Not Being even exist? Or is it, like Gorgias’ Being, something that does not exist, cannot be known, and cannot be communicated to others?’ On the problems of both texts, and particularly of the version preserved by Sextus Empiricus (which most scholars now consider more of an extrapolation than MXG), see Wardy (1996) 14–15; Sedley (1992); Mansfeld (1988). I have followed the practice of Wardy (1996) 15, 152 nn. 14–15, endorsed by Sedley (1992), in basing what follows upon MXG. Significantly, Hays’ (1990) 333–4, esp. nn. 13–14, reading of our prologue as a popular reception of Gorgianic scepticism, noting the epistemological uncertainty that follows at lines 27–8, can suggest only two points of linguistic commonality with the MXG text: the use of χωρίς at Th. 13 (cf. MXG 980b10) and the negated articular infinitives τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν at Th. 12, which he compares to Gorgias’ τὸ μὴ εἶναι (MXG 979a27), and both the use of χωρίς and ‘of such negations’, Hays must concede, was ‘evidently common enough’ amongst the eristic appropriators of Eleaticism to be parodied by Plato (see Euthd. 284a, 284b–c); i.e. allusion specifically to Gorgias is far from established.

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passage of that work, dating from the 440s,2 Gorgias is said to have drawn upon a similar premise, extrapolating from the notion of the mutual exclusivity of sight and hearing in order to argue the paradoxical thesis that communication itself is impossible (MXG 980a20–b3):3 εἰ δὲ καὶ γνωστά, πῶς ἄν τις, φησί, δηλώσειεν ἄλλῳ; ὃ γὰρ εἶδε, πῶς ἄν τις, φησί, τοῦτο εἴποι λόγῳ; ἢ πῶς ἂν ἐκεῖνο δῆλον ἀκούσαντι γίγνοιτο, μὴ ἰδόντι; ὥσπερ γὰρ οὐδὲ ἡ ὄψις τοὺς φθόγγους γιγνώσκει, οὕτως οὐδὲ ἡ ἀκοὴ τὰ χρώματα ἀκούει, ἀλλὰ φθόγγους· καὶ λέγει ὁ λέγων, ἀλλ’ οὐ χρῶμα οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα. Even if things are knowable by us, how, he asks, could anyone make them known to another? For how, he says, could anyone express in λόγος what he has seen? Or how could a thing the listener has not seen become clear to him? For just as sight does not recognize sounds, so neither does hearing hear colours, but rather sounds; and the speaker speaks but does not speak colour or the thing.

Gorgias’ argument, staked out at the beginning of the third part of a spiralling epideixis which attempts to demonstrate that nothing is, or, if something is, that it cannot be known, or, if it can be known, that it cannot be made clear to anyone else (979a12–13), takes as its starting point a scenario parallel to that staged in our prologue: a speaker has seen and therefore knows (οἶδα) something that another has not seen and does not know and so is faced with only hearing about. But whereas our comic dialogue extends from this premise (K. ‘Might it be possible . . . to find out from you, Euripides, just where you are taking me?’, 3–4) to play out one possible consequence of the exercise of theorizing the mutual exclusivity of the senses, that is, the reductio ad absurdum of each sense to (a) non-sense (E. ‘You needn’t hear all that you’re about to see . . . K. . . . I must not-hear?’, 5–7), Gorgias’ epideixis aims at quite another goal: a reductio ad absurdum that preserves the integrity of the senses in order to infer from their absolute segregation the absolute segregation of human beings per se, a 2

3

Gorgias is said to have written On What Is Not or On Nature in the eighty-fourth Olympiad (444–441), see 82b2 DK but see Mansfeld (1985) 247 on the chronological difficulties in this testimony. Nichols (1998) 81 n. 76 notes the superficial similarity in the most general terms, but in the absence of any detailed analysis of either the possible allusion, or On What Is Not, he is not able to frame our opening lines correctly. Hays (1990) 333–4 discusses in more detail but similarly glosses.

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rhetorical move which extrapolates from the theoretical impossibility of communication between individual senses to an impossibility of communication between individuals themselves.4 For if the senses of sight and hearing can discern (γιγνώσκω) only their own sense objects, Gorgias asks, how is it possible for a speaker to make clear (δῆλος) to his listener using invisible λόγοι those visually acquired objects of knowledge (χρώματα) which only the eyes are able to perceive? (980a20–1); and, how, in turn, is it possible for the listener, for his part, to gain access to the visual knowledge of the speaker through merely the sounds of articulate speech (φθόγγοι), sensory objects which only the ears can possibly

4

See Bux (1941) 404 on Gorgias’ expertise in drawing out theories to their logical conclusions; and Levi (1941) 29 in support of the causal connection posited here between sorts of mutual exclusivity, there reconstructing Gorgias’ argument as follows: ‘it is surmised by some philosophers that there exists a reality equipped with sensible qualities and therefore perceptible, and it is also accepted, with Empedocles, that perception is explicable as he claims. Even if one starts from these premises, one must necessarily arrive at the theory of the incommunicability of the knowledge of this reality.’ (For the issue of Empedoclean premises, see p. 36 n. 6.) By contrast, Mourelatos (1985) 609 argues that a relationship of analogy and not explanation connects Gorgias’ use of the doctrine of mutual exclusivity between sensory domains and the inadequacy of λόγος, basing this upon the use of “ὥσπερ . . . οὕτως . . .” at MXG 980b1. However, a key feature of the passage implies that the incapacity of λόγος to communicate visual knowledge in the first instance follows from its status as an aural object: the use at 980b1 of φθόγγοι, a term which can mean articulate speech as well as inarticulate sounds, for the special object of hearing, ‘sounds’, suggests the inclusion of λόγος within the domain of the aural, cf. Wardy (1996) 17–18, and the absence of φθόγγοι in the final clause at 980b3 (. . . καὶ λέγει ὁ λέγων, ἀλλ’ οὐ χρῶμα οὐδὲ πρᾶγμα). Indeed, for some commentators, the indeterminacy of φθόγγοι in this respect raises the issue of whether a heard λόγος can in fact effect the communication of aural realities, and whether Gorgias’ demonstration of the impossibility of communication is therefore flawed: see Wardy (1996) 17–18; Mourelatos (1985) 609. But it might just as easily be said that at this point of Gorgias’ epideixis aural realities are simply not yet at issue: in these lines it is specifically the communication of ‘things seen’ by means of a ‘thing heard’, λόγος, that is at stake (hence the use of φθόγγοι). In fact, if we recognize the causal connection that is being posited at this early stage of the argument between the distinctness of the sensory modalities of sight and of hearing and the inadequacy of λόγος (a medium held to be audible, but not visible) therefore to mediate between them, the use of φθόγγος to emphasize the aural dimension of λόγοι is entirely fitting. The tactic is thrown into relief just a few lines later: witness how, when Gorgias generalizes from this example to assert the incapacity of λόγος to communicate not only the reality of ‘things seen’ but also the reality of ‘things heard’, he shifts tack, explicitly deemphasizing the sonority of the word by replacing the inclusive term φθόγγος to designate the special object of hearing with ψόφος, ‘noise’ (never, ‘articulate speech’) (980b3–8, noted by Wardy (1996) 19). λόγοι do not cease to be aural but, as semiotic media, what they are now shown to offer detaches them from the content of any direct sensory object they may be asked to convey (ὃ οὖν τις μὴ ἐννοεῖ, πῶς αὐτὸ παρ’ ἄλλου λόγῳ ἢ σημείῳ τινὶ ἑτέρῳ τοῦ πράγματος ἐννοήσει, . . . 980b3–5; ψόφος, 7–8); pace Wardy (1996) 18–19.

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recognize? (980a22). The answer, Gorgias flatly asserts, is simple: it is not (980b4–8).5 As Plato chose to portray him, Gorgias arrived at the extreme reaches of that position by exploiting premises about the senses consistent with the principles of a theory of perception proposed by his fellow Sicilian, Empedocles, a figure with whom he is closely associated in the Meno.6 At an early stage of that dialogue Socrates is

5

6

This argument is further developed at 980b4–8, wherein audible λόγοι are shown to exist as a class of objects separate from the colours and noises they purport to express: ἀρχὴν γὰρ οὐ λέγει γων οὐδὲ χρῶμα, ἀλλὰ λόγον· (980b6); and at 980b14–17, wherein Gorgias’ final proof of the impossibility of communication returns us to its theoretical beginnings: the dissolution of perceptual experience. Now, however, this impossibility is no longer hung on the failure of λόγος, but rather, on the fragmented experience of the sense-making individual (in Gorgias’ terms, a perceptual isolate). Even if communication could somehow occur, he argues (980b8), even if the same thing could be made present in the minds of two people (980b11), even then, there is still no reason why it should appear the same to both, for (980b14–17): φαίνεται δὲ οὐδ’ αὑτὸς αὑτῷ ὅμοια αἰσθανόμενος ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ χρόνῳ, ἀλλ’ ἕτερα τῇ ἀκοῇ καὶ τῇ ὄψει καὶ νῦν τε καὶ πάλαι διαφόρως. ὥστε σχολῇ ἄλλῳ γ’ ἂν ταὐτὸ αἴσθοιτό τις. On Plato’s numerous allusions to On What Is Not in the Prm., see Mansfeld (1985) 258–65. For his portrayal of Gorgias as a proponent (satirical or otherwise) of Empedocles’ theory of sensory mutual exclusivity, see Pl. Men. 76c–e, with my following discussion; cf. Diog. Laert. 8.58–9; Olymp. in Gorg. 9 proem ( = 8 2 a 3 , a 10 DK) on the tutelage of Gorgias by Empedocles in the doxographical tradition; and for elaboration of this association specifically in relation to On What Is Not, see Untersteiner (1954) 158; Guthrie (1962–9) iii. 198; Calogero (1977) 266–8; Kerferd (1985); J. B. Davis (1997) 34–5. The primary context within which to situate On What Is Not is mid-fifth-century Eleaticism, see my p. 44 n. 5; the third section of On What Is Not can be read as a direct challenge to Parmenides’ assertion that he can provide ‘trustworthy discourse and thought about Truth’ (28b8.50–1 DK), see Schiappa (1997) 23. Yet insofar as it is the mutual exclusivity of sight and hearing that is used as the vehicle for contesting this, I suggest a broader concern with Empedoclean-type premises, which, as Kerferd (1985) 604–5 argues, provide the physiological grounds Gorgias needs to force the issues of the interrelation of the senses and the status of λόγος, in On What Is Not can legitimately be posited; however, I do so with the qualification that for Gorgias this theory is not merely the premise for the third part of his anti-Eleatic epideixis, but also an implicit and subsidiary target of it. Cf. Blass (1887) 49 and my p. 35 n. 4. Pace Mourelatos (1985) 609–10, who argues that in order for this section of Gorgias’ epideixis to have been persuasive its instrumental notion of the distinctness of the senses must have been based upon ‘ordinary intuitions or commonly held beliefs’ (610) rather than their explanation by contemporary theories of perception: ‘Since Gorgias has highly paradoxical conclusions to defend he would have been foolish to draw on speculative theses that are in themselves controversial’ (610). Cf. 622. But for On What Is Not as a piece of ἀντιλογία aimed more toward attacking a range of philosophical positions known to its intellectual audience than toward defending paradoxical conclusions to an imagined ‘uneducated’ one, see the statements of Anonymous to this effect at the outset and conclusion (979a14–18, 980b19–21) and the fact that Gorgias’ arguments throughout take their cue from contestable premises (the arguments of Zeno and Melissus) in order to show that their logical

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pressed to provide a definition of colour (χρῶμα) by a former pupil of Gorgias, the young Meno – a character, who, thus far in the dialogue, has shown himself adept at evading the real issue at hand (i.e. what is ἀρετή?) with his eristic questioning. Now, in order to circumvent Meno’s contentious streak, Socrates’ treatment of colour must satisfy Gorgias’ young protégé in such a way as to present him with nothing he might want openly to dispute.7 Socrates’ strategy is twofold: first, he primes Meno to behave as if he were a φίλος engaged with him in dialectic, rather than a ‘sophist of the eristic and contentious sort’ (75c8–d6);8 then he resolves to offer him the sort of answer Meno will find most persuasive (ᾗ ἂν σὺ μάλιστα ἀκολουθήσαις), an account of colour κατὰ Γοργίαν (76c4–5).9 What follows under these auspices is a definition of χρῶμα somewhat wryly cobbled together from agreements elicited from

7

8

9

implications are absurd. Contrast the view, closer to that advocated here, of Levi (1941) 29–32, who argues that Gorgias tries to demonstrate in On What Is Not that the rationalizing accounts formulated by philosophers in order to explain customary beliefs are ultimately ‘not valid’ (32) or at least result in paradoxical conclusions; cf. my p. 35 n. 4; and Striker (1996) 14 (building upon Sicking (1964)): ‘Gorgias was not making the philosophical claim that nothing can be known; he was just pointing out that the arguments presented so far did not impress him’; with Mansfeld (1985) 247, cf. 259, also citing Sicking (1964) 402–5, on the certainty that Gorgias argued against not only Eleatics but physikoi also. See Sicking (1964) 395–6 for Sickingʼs own interpretation of Gorgiasʼ possible relation to Empedocles here. Finally, for the sensory fragmentation posited by Empedocles’ theory of mutually exclusive senses as exemplifying only one half of the wider ontological processes of separation and coming-together governed by the cosmic forces of Strife and Love, see Laks (1999) 266–7, with 31b3 DK on the complementary processes of synthesis by which the fragmentation of the senses is overcome in noetic grasp. Socrates’ preliminary objective is to extract a definition of ἀρετή that stipulates the single element all kinds of ἀρετή have in common (the εἶδος, 72c). The challenge of defining colour, initially set for Meno, is therefore raised to begin with because, alongside the definition of shape, it offers useful practise in such definition-making (75a9–10); it becomes a question put by Meno as part of an eristic tactic designed to defer the need to answer about ἀρετή, and it is finally answered by Socrates only as part of a bargain that Meno will then immediately reciprocate by finally providing Gorgias’ definition of ἀρετή (76a10–b2). For Socrates’ explicit equation of Meno’s views with those propounded by Gorgias, cf. 71d–e; 73c8–10; 76c7–8; and for the direct comparison of the training and tactics of paid sophists specializing in eristic to those offered by Gorgias’ school, see Arist. SE 34.183b36– 184a4. It is Meno’s obstructive questioning into colour (a concept with which he has already shown himself to be familiar) that prompts Socrates to distinguish between eristic and dialectic and establish the future grounds of their discussion: Pl. Men. 75c8–d6. For the phrase κατὰ Γοργίαν as ‘after the doctrine propounded by Gorgias’ rather than ‘in the manner (i.e. style) of Gorgias’, see the phrase κατὰ Ἐμπεδοκλέα that follows at 76c8, and Sansone (1996) 340, with the following Platonic parallels: Pl. Phd. 229e5; Cra. 401d4; Smp. 174c6.

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Meno as to the existence of a thing called sight (ὄψις) and a general model of mutual exclusivity between the senses (76d4–5). But, as it is related by Socrates in the Meno, that model itself is not simply assumed; rather, it is gradually extrapolated from a step-by-step exposition of the first principles of a specifically Empedoclean physiology (κατὰ Ἐμπεδοκλέα, 76c8), a set of teachings with which, Socrates is careful to establish, a young student of Gorgias should be only too familiar: Σω. Οὐκοῦν λέγετε ἀπορροάς τινας τῶν ὄντων κατὰ Ἐμπεδοκλέα; Μεν. Σφόδρα γε. Σω. Καὶ πόρους, εἰς οὓς καὶ δι’ ὧν αἱ ἀπορροαὶ πορεύονται; Μεν. Πάνυ γε. Σω. Καὶ τῶν ἀπορροῶν τὰς μὲν ἁρμόττειν ἐνίοις τῶν πόρων, τὰς δὲ ἐλάττους ἢ μεíζους εἶναι; Σω. Ἔστι ταῦτα.

76c7

76d1

Do not both you and Gorgias10 say there are certain effluences of existent things, as Empedocles held? M. Certainly. S. And passages into which and through which the effluences pass? M. To be sure. S. And some of the effluences fit into various passages, while some are too small or too large? M. That is so. S.

Existent things, it is here agreed, constantly give off a stream of effluences (ἀπορροαί) into the world, some of which, being suitably sized, fit into certain pathways or openings (πόροι) of objects that they encounter; others, being either larger or smaller than these πόροι, do not. For Socrates’ present purposes this general principle is enough: his theoretical grounds laid, he swiftly moves to secure the last proposition necessary for extrapolating a definition of χρῶμα ‘κατὰ Γοργίαν’ – Σω. Οὐκοῦν καὶ ὄψιν καλεῖς τι; Μεν. Ἔγωγε.

10

76d2

For λέγετε as including both Meno and Gorgias, or Gorgias’ followers in general, see Bluck (1961a) ad loc.

38

o n w ha t - [ it ] - i s-n o t S. And further, there is something you call sight? M. Yes.

– before unveiling his Gorgianic conclusion, a revelation already there for the seeing, and so announced with an air of Pindaric solemnity plucked straight out of Aristophanes:11 Σω. Ἐκ τούτων δὴ “σύνες ὅ τοι λέγω,” ἔφη Πίνδαρος. ἔστιν γὰρ χρόα ἀπορροὴ σχημάτων ὄψει σύμμετρος καὶ αἰσθητός.

76d3

S. So now ʻconceive my meaningʼ, as Pindar says: colour is an effluence consisting of shapes12 commensurate with sight and perceptible.

Yet so utterly swept up is Meno in the echo of his former professor’s pedagogy, that he, by contrast, seems deaf to the comic overtones that flavour these words (76d9–e1). Against the lavish praise he now heaps upon Socrates (76d6–7), it falls to Socrates himself to hint that the Empedoclean account with which he seeks to placate his young friend is really as hollow as the grand eloquence lent to it by his ironic use of Pindaric poetry. Having first deflated Meno’s declaration that an answer of this sort is truly ἄριστα (76d6), countering, on the contrary, that it is merely one familiar to him (κατὰ συνήθειαν, 76d8), Socrates next pursues an irony in its perceived utility (76d8–e1). For if, as Meno evidently prefers, one is to define χρῶμα (or χρόα) κατὰ Ἐμπεδοκλέα, that is, in terms of a mechanistic theory of like by like, supposing a world of effluences (ἀπορροαί) perceptible only in their mutually exclusive pairing with commensurate πόροι, how would this definition differ in any substantive sense from a definition by which one would be led to define sound (φωνή)?13 Or, likewise, to define

11

12

13

Socrates’ quotation at 76d6 of Pindar’s words “σύνες ὅ τοι λέγω” almost certainly does not refer to their original use by the poet but to the comical meaning the phrase has acquired from Ar. Birds 945, see Klein (1965) 67–8 n. 40 with exegesis of both passages. σχημάτων is ambiguous; for its construal as genitive of material rather than genitive of origin, see Kerferd (1985) 603; but see Scott (2006) 45 for discussion of both possible translations and their wider implications. Substituting ἀκοῇ for ὄψει accordingly so that sound would be ‘an effluence of shapes which is commensurate with hearing and so perceptible’.

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smell (ὀσμή)?14 Or even numerous other things of this kind (καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ τῶν τοιούτων, 76e1)? To Gorgias’ young protégé, by contrast, a character who, from the outset of this work, is more interested in learning how virtue comes into being than what it actually is (70a; cf. 72c7), the very appeal of an Empedoclean answer lies in its capacity to furnish a universal model of the process by which perceptual objects are generated, applicable to each of these things (or so Socrates explains, 76d9–e1): hence, that his answer is formulaic is a positive bonus (as Meno readily agrees, 76e2). Yet so convinced is he of its utility that he fails to detect Socrates’ implicit criticism: how can a theory that offers merely an account of how its definiendum comes-to-be, and that is equally applicable to all such things, yield anything but the emptiest of definitions of the essential nature (εἶδος) of any single one?15 What Socrates says next must be read in light of this tacit objection, against the ironic failure of Empedoclean principles of differentiation to produce adequate definitions. For now, as if vindicating the comic overtones of his earlier Pindaric quotation, Socrates encapsulates his formulaic answer about χρῶμα with a single word, τραγική, saying it is lastly because of its ‘tragic’ nature that Meno finds this account more agreeable than any other that has come before (τραγικὴ γάρ ἐστιν, ὦ Μένων, ἡ ἀπόκρισις, ὥστε ἀρέσκει σοι μᾶλλον . . ., 76e3–4). Meno does not object, yet his ready agreement (at 76e5) should not prompt us to suppose that this epithet merely gestures to a pretentious, ‘high poetic’, or ‘high-flown’, style of expression:16 the subtext of Socrates’ τραγική is more pointed, and its focus is patently substantive.17 Whatever superficial nuances of élite culture or refined sensibility, or even popular currency, τραγική might plausibly 14 15

16

17

Again, substituting ὀσφρήσει this time for ἀκοῇ. On the problems of such a definition and its materialist conflation of γένεσις and εἶδος, see M. Davis (1988) 113–14; problem of generality, cf. Weiss (2001) 30–1, 32 n. 39: (unlike Socrates’ first definition of shape) ‘the definition of color in terms of effluences does not pick out color uniquely’; cf. Sharples (1985) ad 76e3; J. E.Thomas (1980) ad 76d6–8; Bluck (1961a) ad 76e6; Klein (1965) 67–70; Sedley and Long (2010) xiv–xv point to further possible difficulties. Bluck (1961a) ad loc. and (1961b), there taking into account forty years of scholarship on this line, concludes that the term alludes to the answer’s ‘high-flown language’ and to its ‘grandiose’ and ‘difficult’ subject matter; cf. Weiss (2001) 28–30. E. S Thompson (1901) ad loc.; Bluck (1961b) 295.

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evoke for Meno,18 for Socrates, the term sums up his implicit criticism with a single idea: an answer κατὰ Γοργίαν is an answer rich in obfuscating hyperbole.19 In the Meno, however, that hyperbole is not found in the sort of sophistic exploitation characteristic of Gorgias’ earlier epideixis; it is unearthed in the exaggerated claims of the very theory Plato leads us to believe lies behind it, a theory which purports to explain and define a plurality of perceptibles yet on closer scrutiny yields little, save a single formulaic account of the material conditions of coming-into-being, as to the essential nature (εἶδος) of any of these things (a fact perhaps wryly foreshadowed by Plato’s framing association of χρόα with ἀπορία at 75c5–7, and subsequent punning repetition of πόρος and ἀπορροή throughout this account; cf. 77b3–5, 78c1–79e7).20 18

19

20

All these glosses of the term have been offered by commentators: for τραγική as élite as opposed to popular, see E. S. Thompson (1901) ad loc.; for the opposite reading, ‘known to the masses through tragedy’, a reading which does not account for the use of the term elsewhere, see Sansone (1996). For τραγική connoting the idea of ambiguation through embellishment, dressing-up and exaggeration see Pl. Cra. 418d, 414c; R. 413b, 545e; Plut. Art. 18.7; and esp. Thphr. HP 9.8.5: Ἔτι δὲ ὅσα οἱ φαρμακοπῶλαι καὶ οἱ ῥιζοτόμοι τὰ μὲν ἴσως οἰκείως τὰ δὲ καὶ ἐπιτραγωδοῦντες λέγουσι. ‘Further we may add statements made by druggists and herbdiggers which in some cases may be to the point, but in others contain exaggeration’ (trans. Hort (1926)); see Pl. Cra. 408c, where ψεῦδος ‘trickery’ belongs to the category of τραγικός. See M. Davis (1988) 113–14; Weiss (2001) 30–2. This is not to say that Socrates implies in the Men. that the Empedoclean theory is false, as Scott (2006) 44 n. 38 has argued (following Vlastos (1991) 122 n. 65; who compares Timaeus’ materialist account of colour at Tim. 67c). For possible plays on ἀπορία here in the repetition of πόρος and ἀπορροή (forms of which occur respectively three and four times in eight lines at 76c–d), see Gordon (1999) 100; and note that Meno’s leading question, ‘what if someone were to say that he didn’t know what colour was but was aporetic (ἀποροῖ) in the same way as he was about shape’ (75c5–7), asked in response to Socrates’ first definition of shape (sc. ‘that which alone always accompanies colour’, 75b9–11) teasingly associates colour and ἀπορία (and disingenuously, for Meno has already shown that he is well aware of what colour is, 74c5ff.), and that what Socrates’ Gorgianic (dis)ambiguation of that concept leaves all – bar the uncritical Meno – with is exactly this, an implicit ἀπορία borne from Empedoclean πόροι and ἀπορροαί (what is the unique εἶδος of ‘colour’, as opposed to the εἶδος of ‘sound’, or ‘smell’, etc.?), just as, indeed, Socrates’ next disparaging remarks about the deficiency of Meno’s preferred Gorgianic/Empedoclean answer implicate their audience in a further ἀπορία concerning his previous ‘better’ definition of shape (ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἔστιν, ὦ παῖ Ἀλεξιδήμου, ὡς ἐγὼ ἐμαυτὸν πείθω, ἀλλ’ ἐκείνη βελτίων, 76e6–7; for it is not clear to which of his two earlier definitions of σχῆμα Socrates here refers); see Ionescu (2007) 37 n. 36 for conflicting scholarly views; for the subsequent development of this wordplay in Meno’s next attempt at defining virtue (at 77b2–5) as ‘to desire good things and have the capacity to get them (πορίζεσθαι)’ in refutation of which Socrates is eventually able to get Meno to agree that ἀπορία (‘not-acquiring’) itself should qualify as virtue if ‘not-acquiring good things’ is chosen for just reasons, see Sharples (1985) ad 78d3–6 and 78e5–6 with Politis (2006) for the positive value of ἀπορία in the Men.

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Socrates’ grounds for mocking the utility of an Empedoclean answer to the problem of perception when charged with definitionmaking may be quite different from those that inform its satirical exploitation by Gorgias in On What Is Not. Yet in so far as it is the logical failure – and attendant ἀπορία – of the same theoretical παράδειγμα that is Socrates’ implicit message in this episode (cf. 76e6–7), playing Gorgias on χρῶμα (even playing him straight) inadvertently throws into relief a critical affinity between his actor cum-critic and what we have seen of the sophist that he caricatures for his part. For if τραγική – understood as exaggeration or overstatement shown later to exact an aporetic price21 – marks a ‘Gorgianic’ response, both here and in the paradoxical conclusions of the third part of On What Is Not, it is Empedoclean-type theorizing that provides its inspiration and cause.22

21

22

Cf. M. Davis’ (1988) 113 interpretation of τραγική here ‘built upon the necessity of an initial mistake that later extracts an enormous price’; he detects such a mistake both in the generality of the Empedoclean definition (which ‘could apply to any of the senses’) and (more importantly for Davis) in its dependency upon the definition of shape thus far arrived at, which itself has inadequacies. As Scott (2006) 45 points out, the ‘Gorgianic’ Empedoclean account of colour at 76d4 is ambiguous in even its formulation, see my p. 39 n. 12. Cf. Diog. Laert. 8.70, there attributing a τραγικὸς τῦφος to Empedocles; see also 8.73, 8.66. For Empedocles’ reputed flamboyance and the ‘carnival atmosphere’ of philosophical and sophistic epideixis, see Lloyd (1987) 101–2.

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5 O N W H AT- [ I T ] - I S : PA R M E N I D E S , PA R A - D O X A A N D M O RTA L E R R O R

You’re acting like you’ve never heard of him, And everybody has. He’s world renowned! His writings turned philosophy around By altering the then-prevailing view – That what is real is really falsely true – To what is true is really falsely real . . . (A perplexed squint; then, resuming.) Well, either way, it’s BRILLIANT! Don’t you feel?1 . . . to own to being a mortal is to invoke negation and distinction fundamentally in whatever one conceives and whatever one does . . .2

If Gorgias and Aristophanes seem to share a common object in the passages we have examined, it is an apparent concern with exploiting the absurdities engendered by pressing fifth-century theories of the mutual exclusivity of the senses.3 Yet readings of our Thesmophoriazusae that collapse their parodic responses into one, supposing an Aristophanic homage to Gorgianic scepticism, clearly obfuscate the nuances of both.4 A more fruitful approach situates Aristophanes in relation to Gorgias, to be sure, but repositions our prologue alongside On What Is Not as one of a number of intellectual responses to the widespread dissemination of the philosophy from which his epideixis derives; and this means not simply to Empedoclean-type theorizing in general, but also, and in fact, far more explicitly, to Gorgias’ principal targets in composing his speech, Parmenides, and, or rather, the Parmenideanism of eristics such as Zeno and Melissus, for

1 3

4

Hirson (2010) Αct I. 2 Cherubin (2005) 20. For evidence of a thriving rival poetic discourse of sensory relations amongst the comic poets, see Clements (2013) and Telò (2013). The approach is illustrated by, e.g., Whitman (1964), Hays (1990) and Nichols (1998), see my p. 33 n. 1.

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some, at least, the exemplars of Eleaticism during the late fifth century.5 Here the linguistic similarities between our prologue and the eristic strategies of the Euthydemus again prove telling. As Plato caricatures the activities of the sophist-brothers, not only do their linguistic manoeuvres emerge clearly as ‘sophistic deformations’ of Parmenidean logic,6 but also, in their hands, Parmenides’ philosophy, in turn, to borrow an image from Plato, is shown to supply a feast for the eristic scavenger: serving as a repository of abusable logic and argumentatively useful premises that can be appropriated and redeployed to refute undesired philosophical positions and support counterintuitive and paradoxical claims.7 Indeed, both in the Euthydemus and when trying to define the sophist in the Sophist, Plato explicitly dramatizes the tendentious and selective appropriation of Parmenidean strictures against what-is-not by the eristics (who variously argue for the impossibility of falsehood and contradiction (Euthd. 283e7–286b6; Sph. 236d10–237a9, quoting Parm. b7.1–2; cf. 258d2–3), or for elevating the realm of 5

6

7

In addition to exploiting tenets consistent with Empedocles’ theory of perception, Gorgias’ On What Is Not appropriates premises from Parmenides, Melissus and Zeno, as well as ultimately Zenonian argument strategies (antilogia and reductio) which precipitated Zeno’s later categorization as a sophist (see Palmer (2009) 195–6) in order to attack the idiosyncratic Parmenideanism of Melissus, who (perhaps as an extreme ontological monist) seems to have been regarded as ‘a more prominent representative of socalled “Eleaticism” than Parmenides in certain circles of the philosophical world of the later fifth century’, see Palmer (2009) 220; cf. 189–224, for the dangers of following Gorgias’ reductive grouping of these thinkers as subscribing in common to the claims that ‘what-is is one’ (ἓν τὸ ὄν) or ‘everything is one’ (ἓν τὸ πᾶν), assimilating Parmenides’ monism to Melissus’, and failing to distinguish Zeno’s quite different ‘Eleatic’ agenda. For Zeno and Melissus as eristics in the doxographical tradition, Palmer (2009) 196 n. 13; and for the popular identification of eristics with Eleaticism (and vice versa), see Pl. Sph. 216b8–c2 (Theodorus assuaging Socrates’ worries that the Eleatic visitor of the Sophist (a philosopher of the circle of Parmenides and Zeno) will be ‘some kind of god of refutation’ (θεὸς ὤν τις ἐλεγτικός) by dissociating him from eristics, thereby implying that the eristics have become the most publicly recognizable face of Eleaticism), Palmer (1999) 120. On the brothers’ use of Parmenides’ logic to create their pairs of antinomies, see S. Austin (1986) 116–35; and Lloyd (1966) 134, on the brothers’ Eleatic tactic of ‘putting a choice between a pair of opposite alternatives’. The phrase ‘sophistic deformations’ is Palmer’s (2009) 43. See Chance (1992) 192–3: ‘As for eristics themselves, it is not right to call them “Eleatics”, for they are not committed to “a metaphysics and a logic that is incompatible with change”. They are not committed to anything but themselves. If they produce Eleatic arguments, that is the result of historical accident, not philosophical commitment. [. . .] In terms of Plato’s imagery, eristics are scavengers . . .’ Contra Sprague (1962) xiii, for whom the brother’s arguments make them ‘Neo-Eleatics’.

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appearance to all that there is (that is, reality, by means of the reduction of what-is-and-is-not to what-is-not simpliciter, Sph. 239c9–241d9), or for relegating one who is to become one thing and no longer to be something else simply to one who is no-longerto-be (Euthd. 283d)).8 And what arguably emerges from the testimony of Plato’s sophist caricatures and the evidence of Gorgias, and his fellow appropriators of, or respondents to, Parmenides – Zeno, Melissus, Protagoras, Xeniades, and others – is the remarkably diverse and widespread intellectual culture of ʻsophisticʼ receptions of Eleaticism current during the late fifth century across the Greek world, but especially in Athens.9

8

9

The selective appropriations and ‘reductive and distorting’ understandings of Parmenidean ontology underlying these arguments and Plato’s efforts to counter them as part of his project of defining the philosopher against the sophist have been thoroughly charted by Palmer (1999) 118–47 (this characterization, of the eristics: p. 133): Euthydemus and Dionysodorus’ Eleaticizing arguments against the possibility of falsehood, see 124–34; the Sophist’s elevation of appearance to reality by means of reduction of what-is-and-is-not to what-is-not-at-all, see 135; the brothers’ own reduction of what is to become one thing and not something else to what-is-no-longer-to-be, see 139; and (for the Euthd.) see also Hawtrey (1981) ad loc. The widespread circulation of Parmenides’ poem (or distillations of it) and responses to it across the Greek world during the fifth century is no better illustrated than by the geographical origins of Zeno (from Elea) and Melissus (from Samos), see Warren (2007) 104, 16–19, who, taking his cue from the fact that Plato thought it plausible to portray Parmenides in philosophical conversation in Athens around 450 bc (Prm.127b–c), speculates that Athens ‘was just the place for Melissus to find out about Parmenides’ (19). Indeed, significantly, A.’s Ag. (first produced in Athens at the Dionysia of 458 bc) itself shows evidence of engagement with Parmenidean ideas among the intelligentsia of the mid fifth century, see Kouremenos (1993). Parmenides’ thought certainly will also have circulated in mediated or distilled form in the collections of earlier thinkers’ views made by sophists such as Gorgias, Hippias and (another) Euthydemus, Xen. Mem. 4.2.1; significantly, Gorgias prefaced On What Is Not with such earlier views on τὰ ὄντα (MXG 979a13–18) ‘in which Parmenides would have figured prominently’, see Palmer (1999) 133. Diversity of interpretation: for Zeno’s paradoxes as independent challenges to ‘common-sense pluralism’ that were received as indirectly supporting Parmenides against a range of detractors who opted for reductive understandings of his claims, see Palmer (2009) 189–205 on Pl. Prm. 128a–d; for (evidently plausible) portrayals of Zeno in Athens: Pl. Prm. 127b–d; Alc. I 119a; and Plut. Per. 4.5., asserting that: ‘Pericles heard Zeno of Elea discoursing on nature like Parmenides, and practising a kind of skill in crossexamination and in driving one’s opponent into a corner by means of contradictory argument.’ For Melissus’ material monism as a crude and ‘a radicalizing development of Parmenidean ontology’ analogous to the eristic extrapolation of Parmenidean premises in Plato, see Palmer (2009) 218 (who also lists evidence for its currency amongst the philosophical élite in Athens); Porphyry follows both Plato and Aristotle in asserting that Protagoras’ Alētheia presented at some length counter-arguments ‘against those who propose that what-is is one’ (πρὸς τοὺς ἓν τὸ ὂν εἰσάγοντας, 80b2 DK), i.e. Parmenides and/or the Eleatics, and for Protagoras’ ‘man is the measure’ aphorism as a polemic

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Certainly, it is here, I will suggest, in this climate of popular Parmenideanism, where Eleaticizing arguments of all kinds circulate widely, deploying Parmenidean premises for pragmatic purposes, that, on linguistic grounds alone, our opening comic lines most naturally find their home. Resituating our prologue as belonging to this intellectual milieu thus means replacing the assumption of a vague comic allusion to Gorgias’ epideixis, a comparison that obscures its workings, with a close appreciation of what the scene arguably yields: a deliciously clever dramatic reception of Eleaticism. And this is what the rest of this book will set out to provide. My first claim in what follows, then, will be that our prologue is neither a popular deformation of Gorgianic scepticism, nor simply random comic nonsense: rather, there is a logic to this scene, that logic is philosophical, but, more precisely, just like the Eleatic arguments of the eristics Plato portrays as a feature of Athenian intellectual culture in the 410s, it is drawn tendentiously from the poem of Parmenides.10 I shall argue that while Gorgias’ On What Is Not exploits Eleatic and Empedoclean-type premises in order to refute Eleatic arguments, our prologue reverses this object

10

defence against Parmenides’ condemnation of mortal δόξαι that echoes his language (ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν), see Schiappa (2003) 121–5; Striker (1996) 14–21; Lee (2005) 28–9; the little we know about Xeniades’ Eleaticism, by contrast, suggests he adopted Parmenides’ claims about the nature of δόξαι and change to develop the radical position that ‘all things are false’ and ‘everything that comes to be comes to be from what-is-not, and everything that perishes passes away into what-is-not’ (81 DK), see Palmer (1999) 129 (who also stresses ‘the diversity of the sophistic engagement with the logic of Eleaticism’); Brunschwig (2002); and for others, see Palmer (1999) 128 (the ‘Eleatic undercurrent’ of Prodicus’ claims about language). The indisputable currency of Eleatic ideas underlying these diverse receptions of Parmenides thus leads Schiappa (1997) 21 to surmise: ‘By Gorgias’ time, it is reasonable to assume that most educated people had heard some form of Parmenides’ position – either read from a copy of Parmenides’ poem or passed on by word of mouth.’ Cf. Kingsley (2003) 488 for an insightful characterization of the deformation of Parmenides by subsequent thinkers; and for the ease with which eristic deformations of Parmenidean logic could be learned and mimicked, see Pl. Euthd. 304a. Finally, for the adoption of Parmenidean strictures by Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Diogenes of Apollonia, see Curd (1998) 151–4 (Anaxag.), 155–64 (Emp.); McKirahan (2005) 181–2 (Emp.); Vander Waerdt (1994) 62–3 (Diog. Apoll.), with Osborne (2006); Palmer (2009) 225–317 for a different view; and for the profound influence of Parmenides’ poem on later Greek thought, see Palmer (1999) esp. 1, establishing Parmenides’ influence on Plato as second only to Socrates. For Ar.’s ‘marked interest in the content of contemporary thinking’, see Carey (2000) esp. 430, a feature of Aristophanic comedy that leads Carey to conclude that comic audiences ‘who were familiar with contemporary ideas could play “spot the sophist”’ (speaking specifically about Clouds I). Cf. Willi (2003a) 96–117; Vander Waerdt (1994) 52; Rashed (2009), Broackes (2009), and my concluding remarks, pp. 172–84.

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and emphasis, exploiting Parmenidean premises in order to refute a muddled, eclectically philosophical (and, in part, perhaps pseudoʻEmpedoclean’) comic Euripides, the recent dramatizer of Parmenidean mortal confusion and Gorgianic ideas about the primacy of doxa and the epistemological limits of perception.11 My second claim is that our prologue’s use of popular Parmenideanism is not simply a matter of embroiling the poet character in an eristic routine ultimately rooted in Eleatic patterns of argument;12 it involves the practice of a far more sophisticated, indeed hitherto unappreciated, form of paraphilosophy. In the following pages I shall argue that by appropriating both Parmenidean strictures and the intrinsically satirical imagery by which Parmenides enacts the fallaciousness of mortal doxa, and by employing an Eleaticizing sophistic interlocutor of the sort Plato pictures in the Euthydemus or 11

12

For the view that Euripides’ cosmology represents a ‘muddled’ version of Empedoclean theories of perception, zoogony, the divine construction of the eye, see Mureddu (1992), Sansone (1996) and Rashed (2007) (cf. my p. 25 n. 29), in readings that fail to appreciate that the true comic charge of Euripides’ cosmology cannot be understood correctly until it is situated in Th.’s wider paraphilosophical exposé of the fallacious way in which the tragedian redeploys philosophical wisdom; if, as Sansone and Rashed argue, Ar. writes into Euripides’ cosmology Empedoclean elements (as well perhaps other non-Eleatic, e.g. Anaxagorean, allusions), that is, they signify primarily within a wider Parmenidean elenctic frame through which the poet’s inability to redeploy them in a metaphysically sound way is revealed (and against which Rashed’s (2007) suggestion of a muddling of opposites and confusion of eye and ear (see my p. 25) takes on a deeper significance, as we shall see). For the way in which Empedocles formulates his cosmology expressly in response to Parmenidean strictures, see Curd (1998) 155–71 (cf. 152–5 on Anaxagoras); McKirahan (2005) 181–2; alternative assessments of the extent to which the pluralists are indebted to Parmenides: Osborne (2006); Palmer (2009) 225–317. For the similarities between Parmenides’ theory of knowledge and Empedocles’ theory of the senses which led the doxographers like Theophrastus and Aëtius to attribute to Parmenides a theory of perception analogous to that fully articulated by Empedocles (Thphr. Sens. 1, Aët. iv 9.6. (= Stob. Ecl. 1.26.2 / 28a47 DK) with Palmer (2009) 316), see Laks (1990), who argues that Parmenides did not in fact describe the mechanism of the various senses. Cf. Mansfeld (1999) and Vlastos (1946) for Empedocles’ development of Parmenides’ treatment of sensation/perception. On the relation between Empedocles and Parmenides, and the similarities (and differences) between Empedocles’ cosmology and the divinely orchestrated metaphysical processes of the now no longer extant cosmology of Parmenides’ Doxa, see Palmer (2009) 316–17, esp. on Censorinus, DN 4.7.8; and Bollack (1969b) 429–30; Finkelberg (1997), who sees Empedocles’ teaching as a ‘vindication and philosophical defence of the way taken by Parmenidean mortals’ (8); cf. Kingsley (2003) for the complementarity of the two thinkers’ insights about the nature of the mortal condition. For the dramatic enactment of Parmenidean mortal confusion and the Gorgianic exploration of mortal doxa and perception presented to the audiences of Euripides’ Helen in 412, see my concluding remarks, pp. 163–72. For these patterns see p. 28; for further evidence (from Plato) that the late fifth-century eristics were prominent sophistic appropriators of Eleaticism, see Palmer (1999) 120.

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Sophist, the prologue of our Thesmophoriazusae stages a comic transposition to theatre of Parmenides’ revelations about reality and illusion. In fact, the sophistic exchange of our opening lines transforms the physical path of its journeying protagonists into an Aristophanic version of the wandering metaphysical path trodden by all Parmenidean mortals as they characteristically fail to differentiate clearly between what-is and what-is-not. And as its ludicrous steps are revealed, as we shall see, it not only casts Euripides as exemplar and perpetuator of the typical mortal predicament of intellectual ἀμηχανίη (‘helplessness’) that belongs to those who flounder about on that confused Parmenidean way (now known as the Doxa) but also thereby lays the grounds quite precisely for a revelatory philosophizing of theatre as the very progenitor of the seductive illusions that hold tragic mortals fast in their helplessness, later encountered in the climactic comic epiphany of the ‘Agathon scene’ (101–209). Indeed, to this epiphanic end, as we shall see, the opening moments of our Thesmophoriazusae issue a subtle enjoinder to their comic audience to negotiate the mortal confusion ahead as any other Parmenidean traveller must: by marking carefully the σήματα (‘signs’ or ‘proofs’) of mortal speech and action that together (ironically) expose the path of ‘mortal error’.13 Only then will it become apparent that the prologue of this comedy presents us with a paraphilosophical exposé of the faulty thinking characteristic of all naïve mortals and warned against by Parmenides’ goddess in the Doxa section of his poem, but first satirically dramatized by her as the archetypal predicament of mortal confusion described at b6: χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ’ ἐὸν ἔμμεναι· ἔστι γὰρ εἶναι, μηδὲν δ’ οὐκ ἔστιν· τά σ’ ἐγὼ φράζεσθαι ἄνωγα. πρώτης γάρ σ’ ἀφ’ ὁδοῦ ταύτης διζήσιος , αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ’ ἀπὸ τῆς, ἣν δὴ βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδὲν πλάττονται, δίκρανοι· ἀμηχανίη γὰρ ἐν αὐτῶν στήθεσιν ἰθύνει πλακτὸν νόον· οἱ δὲ φοροῦνται κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, τεθηπότες, ἄκριτα φῦλα, οἷς τὸ πέλειν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶναι ταὐτὸν νενόμισται κοὐ ταὐτόν· πάντων δὲ παλίντροπός ἐστι κέλευθος. 13

5

The phrase ‘mortal error’, used by Gallop (1984) 11 and Curd (1998) 51ff., denotes the archetypical mortal habit of conflating what-is and what-is-not epitomized in the goddess’s account (28b8.51ff. DK) of the fallacious mortal reasoning at the heart of the Doxa.

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o n w h at - [ it ] -is It must be that what is there for speaking and thinking of is; for [it] is there to be, Whereas nothing is not; that is what I bid you consider, For this is the first route of inquiry from which you, And then also from this one, on which mortals knowing nothing Wander, two-headed; for helplessness in their Breasts guides their distracted mind; and they are carried Deaf and blind alike, dazed, uncritical tribes, By whom being and not-being have been thought both the same And not the same; and the path of all is backward-turning.14

Beginnings: the routes of inquiry and an inquiry into route, the pathways of Parmenides’ poem and our play Parmenides’ proem plunges its audience straight into the flight of a traveller en route to meet a goddess, and thereafter travel is the ‘leitmotif of the whole poem’.15 In a first-person narrative awash with epic imagery, the mythical details of this first journey are gradually described, but, notably, the identity of the narrator is withheld.16 An anonymous traveller first tells of being escorted by ‘muchguiding’ (πολύφραστοι, b1.4) mares on to the ‘very famous’ (πολύφημος, b1.2) path of the divinity, ‘which/who carries the man who knows over everything dark and unknown’ (ἣ κατὰ †πάντ’ ἀδαῆ†17 φέρει εἰδότα φῶτα, b1.3). Swiftly driven along this route ‘as far as longing might reach’ (ὅσον τ’ ἐπὶ θυμὸς ἱκάνοι, b1.1), his mares straining at a speeding chariot streaming with blazing light and shrill sound, he describes how he is led on by 14 15 16

17

Text (following DK) and trans. Gallop (1984) modified. Gallop (1984) 6; Mourelatos (2008) 14–25. Epic allusions and imagery: Mourelatos (2008) 12–46; anonymity of the narrator, and the question of whether this anonymity implies that what is described is the experience of the poet himself: Morgan (2000) 74. The traveller is implicitly alluded to only as a φὼς εἰδώς at 28b1.3 a formulaic expression for an initiate, see Kingsley (2002) 377 (but possibly later ironized, see Cosgrove (2011) and my p. 66 n. 59, p. 144 n. 270); but he is not directly addressed until 28b1.24 DK, where he is called κοῦρος, a term which does not indicate age but, again, the status of an initiate, cf. Ar. Birds 977 (of an elderly Peisetaerus); cf. Cosgrove (1974); and esp. Kingsley (1999) 71–5, (2002) 377 n. 107; cf. (2003) 61–3 for Parmenides’ poem as itself an initiation. The MSS have suffered corruption; against the usual emendation of N’s πάντ’ ἄτη as κατὰ πάντ’ ἄστη, which has no textual authority, I follow Karsten’s (1835) reading of ἀδαῆ as defended by Kingsley (2002) 377 n. 108. Further significance of ἀδαῆ as a property of Night at Parm. 28b8.59, 9.3 DK, see my p. 82. Palmer (2009) 376–8 discusses alternative conjectures.

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the Heliades, the daughters of the sun (b1.5–10). Having earlier left the House of Night and unveiled their faces, these immortal guides now spur the traveller on through the Hesiodic gates where the paths of Night and Day meet to deliver him to his encounter with the goddess on the road beyond (b1.11–21). There, the goddess – thought by some to be Persephone – receives him as ‘an initiate into the mysteries that she will reveal’;18 from this point onward the poem is her direct address to him (b1.22ff.). It will set out, the goddess says, to teach the traveller the nature of reality (ἀληθείη), how things really are, and in the process also to impart the beliefs of mortals and warn against relying, as mortals typically do, upon the misleading impressions of untutored senses (b1.28–32).19 This lesson will be an exposition of the only paths of inquiry open for those seeking genuine knowledge of that which is, and it will first distinguish two: one, the pathway of what-is, leading to being and reality (ἀληθείη); the other, the ‘pathway’ of what-is-not, leading to non-existence and so nowhere (and thus as a route, paradoxically, not itself existent), b2: εἰ δ’ ἄγ’ ἐγὼν ἐρέω, κόμισαι δὲ σὺ μῦθον ἀκούσας, αἵπερ ὁδοὶ μοῦναι διζήσιός εἰσι νοῆσαι· ἡ μὲν ὅπως ἔστιν τε καὶ ὡς οὐκ ἔστι μὴ εἶναι, πειθοῦς ἐστι κέλευθος (ἀληθείῃ γὰρ ὀπηδεῖ), ἡ δ’ ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν τε καὶ ὡς χρεών ἐστι μὴ εἶναι, τὴν δή τοι φράζω παναπευθέα ἔμμεν ἀταρπόν· οὔτε γὰρ ἂν γνοίης τό γε μὴ ἐόν (οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστόν) οὔτε φράσαις. Come, I shall tell you, and do you listen and convey the story, What routes of inquiry alone there are for thinking: The one – that [it] is, and that [it] cannot not be, Is the path of persuasion (for it attends upon reality); The other – that [it] is not and that [it] needs must not be,

18

19

Gallop (1984) 6; Jaeger (1947) 98; Kingsley (1999) 71–5. The identity of Parmenides’ goddess is debated, but there is growing consensus that she is Persephone or a Persephone-like figure, see Kingsley (1999) 93–100, (2002) 373–5, (2003) 43, 217– 20; M. Miller (2006) 19 ‘a Demeter- or Persephone-like figure’; Gemelli Marciano (2008) 35–6; contra, Cornford (1912) 215 ‘Justice’; Mourelatos (2008) 26, 161, ‘polymorph deity’; cf. Coxon (2009) 166–7; Jaeger (1947) 94 and Guthrie (1962–9) ii.10, a philosophical ‘counterpart’ to Hesiod’s Muses; Granger (2008) 8–10, reflective of both ‘the Muse and a cult goddess’ but fully identified with neither; Palmer (2009) 58–9, ‘Night’ (and see his n. 27 for further identifications). On ἀληθείη in Parmenides see Cherubin (2009).

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o n w h at - [ it ] -is That I point out to you to be a path wholly unlearnable, For you could not know what-is-not (for that is not feasible), Nor could you point it out.20

The goddess will guide the traveller through each of these routes, the way of what-is and the specious ‘way’ of what-is-not (in the so-called Alētheia at b8.1–49). But before their natures are fully revealed, she will first (at b6 and b7) warn her initiate of the error committed by those mortals who fail to make a clear distinction between the two paths, always imagining themselves to be on the positive route to what-is, when in fact they repeatedly stray onto the fallacious negative route and so remain caught wandering aimlessly on a backward-turning path (παλίντροπος . . . κέλευθος, b6.9) of their own at the point of intersection between the two. Here, mortals circle back and forth ‘two-headedly’ (δίκρανοι, b6.5) on their specious, third ‘way’, unable to distinguish the only path that is real (the path of what-is), from that which is not, or perceive the ludicrousness of the ‘route’ of their own design (a path first physically evoked at b6, b7, and then cognitively illustrated in the mortal cosmology recounted in the Doxa section of the poem, b8.50–61).21 Against this fate, the goddess exhorts, the traveller must guard by trial and judicious direction of νόος, judging any talk he hears about what-is by marshalling a ‘much-contesting’ (πολύδηρις) ἔλεγχος of the sort exemplified by her own account (b7.5–6). He must cease to follow his guide passively and instead consider, test and judge all that is said to him, sifting any claims about what-is for intimations of what-is-not, weighing them against the proofs offered by the goddess in her description of the nature of reality in the

20

21

Text DK, but I have followed Palmer (2009) 360–1 in decapitalizing 28b2.4 DK’s Πειθοῦς and Ἀληθείῃ; trans. Gallop (1984) modified. See Kingsley (2003) 85–92, 99–110, for the comical predicament of two-headed mortals who, caught in their indecision at which of the two paths to take of the forking routes ahead of them, constantly vacillate to-and-fro between both (even though one does not exist), esp. 109, on the humorous implications of goddess’s image of the three paths of inquiry: ‘There is a path that turns back on itself and goes nowhere. There is a path that doesn’t exist. And there is a path that finishes where it begins. [. . .] All of the goddess’ paths are just a trick. The second is an illusion, the third a joke. And as soon as you put one foot on the first, it stops you in your tracks [i.e. it confronts you with simply what-is, reality]’ (110).

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Alētheia at b8.1–49.22 Only in this way, by judging all by λόγος, being ever mindful of the ‘signposts’ (σήματα, b8.1–3) that mark out the way of what-is, and not relying on habit, appearance or the untested theories of mortals, can the traveller retain his way on the genuine path of inquiry and avoid straying back into the usual state of mortal confusion beyond.23 Set off against Parmenides’ metaphysical use of the motif of the quest, what is done with the dramatic convention of the journey-tothe-door in our prologue is already suggestive of the sustained allusion to follow.24 Just as Parmenides’ poem plunges its audience midway into a journey through all things ‘dark and unknown’ that began at the coming of the dawn (but will, nonetheless, reach its decisive point at a site at which night and day meet, b1.3, 8–11, cf. my pp. 57–66); is driven by longing (θυμός, b1.1); focalizes its narrative through the eyes of an anonymous traveller with whom its audience is expected to identify;25 casts as his guide an instructor promising to reveal ἀληθείη (b1.28–9; on a journey to divine revelation, cf. my pp. 49–50, 122–44); and finally primes him (and by extension, the listener/reader also) to judge by critical 22

23

24

25

See Curd (1998) 103–4; Lesher (1984) 25 notes how the change in the role of the traveller from passive passenger to active critic is effected through the goddess’s exhortations: ‘the situation changes, as he is issued a steady stream of commands: come, attend (or carry away) my word, reflect on these things, keep away your thoughts, judge, keep in mind, etc.’ We might compare the exhortations of the anonymous interlocutor of our prologue to scrutinize and interrogate what Euripides is saying (6, 9); and examine Euripides’ own later exhortations (25–8). Cf. Robbiano (2006) 106–20. See Mourelatos (2008) 94–114 (on 28b8.1–3 DK: μόνος δ’ ἔτι μῦθος ὁδοῖο∣λείπεται ὡς ἔστιν· ταύτῃ δ’ ἐπὶ σήματ’ ἔασι∣πολλὰ μάλ’ . . .) for Parmenides’ imagery of ‘signposts’ along the way of the Alētheia; cf. 241–6, 250 (on 28b8.55 DK), for the ‘signs’ that bear witness to mortal confusion that have been added to reality by mortals in the Doxa, with the observation of J. Barrett (2004) 275–6 (discussing 28b8.1–3 DK), applicable to both parts of the poem, that: ‘a σῆμα does not refer in a straightforward manner; rather it always poses itself as an enigma to some degree, compelling the listener/reader to ponder the linguistic content as such’ – an observation that will prove highly pertinent to what is to follow in our comic scene. Cf. my pp. 81–2 nn. 100–1, p. 89 n. 117, p. 98 n. 149, p. 99 nn. 154–5, p. 138 n. 252. Parmenides’ use of motif of the journey and Parmenidean δίζησις as a quest: Mourelatos (2008) 21–5, 67–8; cf. J. Barrett (2004) for Parmenides’ poem as itself both a ‘pathway of song’ and the road upon which the traveller must travel in its proem. Comic motif of the journey-to-the-door, see the prologues of Birds and Frogs and cf. the openings of Pl. Prt., with Charalabopoulos (2001) 154–8, (2012) 63, and Smp. Mourelatos (2008) 16–17, esp. 17: ‘The expectation of the poet is, presumably, that his story will help us take our bearings much as the Kouros’ superhuman experience enabled him to take his.’

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testing exactly where he is being taken (b7.5–6), so the first lines of our Thesmophoriazusae present its audience with a parallel situation, albeit evoked retrospectively: ΚΗΔΕΣΤΗΣ ὦ Ζεῦ, χελιδὼν ἆρά ποτε φανήσεται; ἀπολεῖ μ᾿ ἀλοῶν ἅνθρωπος ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ. οἷόν τε, πρὶν τὸν σπλῆνα κομιδῇ μ᾿ ἐκβαλεῖν, παρὰ σοῦ πυθέσθαι ποῖ μ᾿ ἄγεις, ωὐριπίδη; K. O Zeus! Will the Swallow ever appear? This man will be the death of me, tramping around in circles since dawn. Might it be possible, before I throw up my spleen, to learn from you, Euripides, just where you are leading me?

Thesmophoriazusae’s comedy of (mortal) errors opens with a set of travel complaints. Through them, and the physical movements of the figures making their way (or not making their way . . .) from one of the eisodoi around the orchēstra, its audience infer that here too a quest is playing out; most obviously there are two comic travellers, one apparently ʻguidingʼ the other. But as the trailing figure voices these first lines, it rapidly becomes apparent that the path cut by the man ahead, a guide soon identified as Euripides, leaves much to be desired . . . Signposts of the Doxa, 1. ἀλοῶν . . . ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ: this poet’s ridiculous backward-turning path νυκτιφαὲς περὶ γαῖαν ἀλώμενον ἀλλότριον φῶς. αἰεὶ παπταίνουσα πρὸς αὐγὰς ἠελίοιο.26

For this Euripides is getting nowhere fast; in fact, if we listen closely to 2, he is circling around the orchēstra floor, moving first in one direction, then in the other: ἀπολεῖ μ’ ἀλοῶν ἅνθρωπος . . . (2). The image cast out to the audience in this line is difficult. Following the manuscript’s ἀλοῶν (from ἀλοάω, ‘to thresh [cut grain]’, by causing livestock to trample it on a threshing floor) and 26

Parm. 28b14–15 DK: ‘Shining by night, wandering around the earth, a foreign light. Always gazing towards the rays of the sun.’

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the scholiast on line 2, Austin and Olson read a comic reference to ‘thrashing’ or plodding steps, from which they infer the meaning ‘[This man will be the death of me . . .] tramping endlessly about, pounding along’.27 But working from the scholiast also (who in addition says: ἐν κύκλῳ περιάγων ὡς οἱ ἐν ταῖς ἅλωσι), Rogers and Taillardat (and, implicitly, Austin and Olson as well) recognize that what is elided by this construal, and probably first evoked by ἀλοῶν here, is the comical image of a path that endlessly circles around as does the circular path of livestock driven around the threshing floor.28 Yet that suggestion itself, I suspect, elides a significant detail: an audience familiar with traditional methods of threshing with livestock would be well aware that using a threshing floor efficiently involves not simply driving draught animals endlessly in a circle but also periodically reversing their pattern of movement so as to cause them to circle now in one direction and (after a time) now in the other; and hence, to tread a path that not only circles but also leads them back on themselves.29 And it is this notion, 27

28

29

C. Austin (1987) 69–70; (1990) 11; Austin and Olson (2004) ad 2; for use of the verb to denote threshing see Hom. Il. 20.495–7; Xen. Oec. 18.3–4, and extended meaning ‘to thrash, crush’, as at, e.g., Frogs 149, Ar. fr. 932 KA, leading Austin and Olson (2004) to the meaning cited. Reiske’s (1753) ἀλύων, after ΣR on line 1 (ἐχειμάσθη περιαγόμενος ὑπὸ Εὐριπίδου ἀλύοντος), endorsed by, among others, Maas (1913) and Henderson (2000), which would denote mental distress (as at Wasps 111, Ach. 690) but, in later prose, acquires the meaning of ‘wandering’ or ‘roaming’ (LSJ s.v. II), has no textual authority. Austin and Olson (2004) ad 2: ‘ἀλοῶν: ‘thrashing around’ (cf. ΣR)’ (my emphasis). Taillardat (1965) §138 n. 3 (cited by Austin and Olson (2004) ad 2) notes the two senses of the verb: ‘ἀλοᾶν est devenu un synonyme expressif tantôt de τύπτειν, avec le sens de broyer de coups (voir §606), tantôt de περιιέναι, tourner en rond (voir §218)’, but at §218 on our ἀλοῶν at Th. 2 says: ‘Cette métaphore agricole est très claire, quoiqu’unique, et il n’y a pas lieu de corriger le texte; la scholie explique: [. . .] Le verbe est un synonyme expressif de περιελθεῖν, Ois. 6, où la plainte est la même.’ So also Rogers (1904) ad loc., who, following Hesychius’ listing of πλανῶν and τύπτων as meanings of ἀλοῶν, likewise notes ‘the double signification of driving round and round and pounding’ but, contra Austin and Olson (2004), also argues that πλανῶν is the primary meaning here (original emphasis). Our extant ancient literary references to the practice of threshing by driving livestock over ears of grain on threshing floors (understandably) do not dwell upon the path of the animals, which are simply said to be driven around (i.e. in circles) (see, e.g., Hom. Il. 20.495–7, cf. 5.499; Xen. Oec. 18.3–4; cf. Varro, Rust. 1.52; Columella, Rust. 2.20 (who also mention the use of threshing sledges, devices unattested in our Classical literary sources and whose employment in the fifth century bc is debated, see Isagar and Skydsgaard (1992) 53, cf. 25). But the ethnography of traditional methods of threshing in modern Greece enables us plausibly to hypothesize such details: I cite the testimony of the ethnoarchaeologist Dr Hamish Forbes, who during fieldwork conducted between August 1972 and August 1974 on Methana in the northeastern Peloponnese

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coupled with the idea of endlessly circling, that I suspect underlies the full comic charge of our opening ἀλοῶν. Once this is understood, it can then also be appreciated that the ridiculous image ἀλοῶν thereby brings to these first moments in fact ingeniously concretizes satirical imagery from Parmenides at b6, where, as we have seen, the endless wandering (πλάττονται, b6.5; cf. πεπλανημένοι εἰσίν, b8.54) of those mortals who are steered by their helplessness to tread a path that repeatedly turns them back on themselves in parodic circlings (παλίντροπος . . . κέλευθος, b6.9) is marked as symptomatic of the confusion suffered by all who conflate what-is and what-is-not.30 As it appears at 2, then,

30

(from which a well-known modern threshing floor is analogously used by Isagar and Skydsgaard (1992) 54 fig. 3.5 in order to understand the ‘structure and form’ of ancient threshing floors (53)), witnessed traditional methods of threshing by driving livestock in circles around a threshing floor, and who relates the contents of an interview with an informant conducted on 1 and 2 July 1973: ‘The farmer carrying out the operation specifically stated that after a period of time driving his animals round in one direction he would stop and then drive them round in the other direction. I was not told whether there was any specific need to start in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction: my guess is that it did not matter. However, the main point is that they certainly changed direction so as to thresh efficiently’ (personal correspondence). I am extremely grateful to Dr Forbes for his invaluable insights here. See J. Barrett (2004) 280 on 28b6.5–9 DK: ‘the change from the present in lines 5–6 to the perfect in line 8 suggests that the “wandering” of mortals [sc. at 5–6] follows-and therefore results from [. . .] the (faulty) judgment described in lines 8–9’. Cf. Mourelatos (2008) 225 on ἀλάομαι ‘to wander’ in Parmenides: ἀλώμενον (at 28b14 DK) ‘wandering’, because it recalls 28b6.5 DK’s πλάνη, ‘is a signal of falsehood [i.e. mortal confusion] all by itself’. On endless mortal circlings on a backward-turning path: in view of 28b6 DK’s description of mortals as δίκρανοι and ἄκριτα φῦλα, the image of the παλίντροπος [. . .] κέλευθος (28b6.9 DK) should be understood as evoking a path whose forward motion in one direction is at some point stopped and turned back on itself (as if in vacillation between two alternatives), not as a path that is ever moving forward as is the path of a complete circle; indeed, such a path of unbroken forward circular movement in Parmenides is associated by the goddess with reality itself, which is held in the limits of a circle, like a complete, homogeneous, and still well-rounded sphere, 28b 8.42–9 DK, with no beginnings and no ends, see Kingsley (2003) 36 (the proliferation of circle imagery in the proem), and esp. 179–80, 186–7 with my p. 155 n. 301. Pace Crystal (2002) 212–13; Robbiano (2006) 137, the problem with the path of mortal reasoning is thus not that it comes back to its own starting point (cf. the goddess’s words at 28b5 DK) but rather that it does so by stopping and turning directly back on itself (as παλίντροπος implies). Cf. Kingsley (2003) 182–7, on the ‘endless circlings’ of helpless mortals as ‘only a parody and mockery of a circle, because we have no idea of how to bring the beginning together with the end’. (184) with my p. 155 n. 301). Vacillation and parodic circling elsewhere in comedy, cf. Birds 3–6 with Taillardat (1965) §218; and for the later association of unbroken circle imagery and circular movement with the bastions of comic reality in Th., the women, see 953–1000 with Bierl (2009) 108–9. Deployed as a comic way of evoking the theatrical situation and characterizing Euripides as a thinker who turns his passive audiences back on themselves in parodic circles, the agricultural image of ἀλοῶν at

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Euripides’ ἀλοῶν, that is, his very path itself, is already positioned as the first signpost of the mortal thinking of the Doxa that will soon be excavated in hilarious detail in the λόγος to follow (and one that could easily have been played up to greater comic effect in a set piece of physical comedy performed as our prologue began).31 Yet, of course, his ἀλοῶν is also the catalyst for this λόγος; for this Euripides’ lead has been turning back on itself in endless

31

Th. 2 is thus wonderfully apposite: not only does it construct the physical congruence of the space of the threshing floor and the space of the orchēstra and evoke a practice associated with both Demeter and Dionysus but it also ingeniously concretizes in one image both the circle imagery through which Parmenides’ goddess evokes reality and, thus, what actually is (which is held fast ‘in the limits of a circular bond’, see 28b8.42–9 with Kingsley (2003) 179–80, quotation: 179), and the fallacious path of mortals entrapped by deception within it, upon which mortals turn back on themselves in their own helplessness. For the mortal conflation of what-is and what-is-not at the root of this predicament as a characteristic feature of Euripidean style: see Breitenbach (1934) 238 on Alc. 521 (corrected at 528: χωρὶς τό τ’ εἶναι καὶ τὸ μὴ νομίζεται); Hec. 566, 948, 1121; Tr. 1223; IT 512; Ion 1444; Hel. 696, 1134; Ph. 272, 357, 1495; Ba. 395; Or. 819; El. 1230: see the comic capital made of this already in 425 at Ach. 395–6, where the Aristophanic Euripides is οὐκ ἔνδον ἔνδον. For a further possible exploitation of the motif of endless circling on a backward-turning path as a marker of those who confuse what-is and what-is-not, see Pl. Prt. 315b5–8, where the hilarious choreography of the dazed followers of the Orpheus-like Protagoras, who, like a comic chorus (315b2–3, possibly the chorus of Eupolis’ Flatterers (Kolakes), see Nightingale (1995) 186) forever part and circle back to fall into line when their master turns about, is followed by Socrates’ redeployment of Odysseus’ words at Hom. Od. 11.601 (τὸν δὲ μετ’ εἰσενόησα . . ., 315b9). For his quotation retrospectively situates the Orpheus-like (hence already chthonic) Protagoras in Homer’s Underworld and implicitly identifies both his backward-turning sophist followers and the sophists that Socrates next describes (Hippias and Prodicus) with the souls of the dead, and this surely can be only on the metaphysical level of beings that illegitimately mix being and not-being (already spotted by Wayte (1880) ad loc: both sophists and psychai maintain ‘the identity of “being” and “seeming”’). But, more specifically, Plato’s reuse of Od. 11.601 here, just after evoking the backward-turning path of Protagoras and his sophist chorus, also draws a tacit comparison on parallel grounds between their endless comical display and the eternal forward-and-backward rolling of Sisyphus’ rock (described by Odysseus just two lines earlier at 11.597–8): for Homer describes this rolling in language (κυλίνδω, 598) that at least from Ar. onwards, and certainly in Plato, becomes closely associated with phenomena that hover between being and not-being, see my p. 135 n. 248, p. 182 n. 73, and Segvic (2006) esp. 256–7 for the way Plato’s Odyssean allusions in the Prt.’s dramatic frame cast Socrates’ pre-dawn journey to Callias’ house as an implicit Odyssean katabasis to the Underworld and thereby lay the grounds for Plato’s consequent ‘revelation’ of all three sophists as ‘beings’ associated only with appearances (εἴδωλα). On Parmenidean allusion in Plato, see Crystal (1996); Palmer (1999) esp. 79 on Plato’s use of the Parmenidean image of wandering (πλάνη) as a mark both of the Doxastic state of the lovers of sights and sounds and a characteristic of the phenomenal objects that can be apprehended by them, see R. 485b1–3, 479d7–9, cf. p. 182. Against Plato’s redeployment of this imagery, cf. Socrates’ resolutely stationary contemplation of any problem at Smp. 175b, 220c, with my discussion esp. pp. 63–6 for its comic and philosophical debts.

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circlings ever since daybreak, when this journey began (ἑωθινός, 2). Just like the ἀλοῶν they describe, these words, . . . ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ (2) ‘wandering . . . since dawn’, too raise difficulties. From them it is commonly inferred that the action of our Thesmophoriazusae begins in the early morning just after dawn and, thus, that the temporal period alluded to in our play is simply a single day (later identified as the middle day of the festival, 80; cf. 375–6). Yet long after these opening words, at 277–8, Euripides will prompt his fellow traveller to hurry off to the women’s Assembly so as to arrive there by ‘dawn’ (ἕωθεν, 375).32 He does so at the Assembly herald’s usual signal (ὡς τὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας∣σημεῖον ἐν τῷ Θεσμοφορίῳ φαίνεται, 277–8) and his warning is in good time; Kinsman sets out, spots the Assembly-bound women by their torchlight, joins them and is not at all late in arriving (cf. 279– 94). Our Thesmophoriazusae, then, makes reference to not one, but two dawns (i.e. at 2 and 375), which for orthodox readers creates a paradox; for if we interpret them according to a single festival day, our traveller would seem to arrive at the women’s Assembly (375) before he sets out on the journey that ultimately leads him there. Austin and Olson on line 2 posit temporal inconsistency.33 But, as we shall see, such mitigations are unnecessary. If we listen carefully to the text, it becomes clear that Thesmophoriazusae’s two dawns belong to two separate days, which has significant implications for our play’s paraphilosophical frame. The key to this identification is a temporal marker in the play’s very first line: ὦ Ζεῦ, χελιδὼν ἆρά ποτε φανήσεται; From ΣR onwards critics have taken these words to refer to seasonal time: χελιδών, ‘the swallow’, is read as a metonym for spring, the season with which the 32

33

Cf. 372–6, ἔδοξε τῇ βουλῇ τάδε∣τῇ τῶν γυναικῶν . . . εἶπε Σωστράτη·∣ἐκκλησίαν ποιεῖν ἕωθεν τῇ Μέσῃ∣τῶν Θεσμοφορίων, ‘Decision of the Women’s Council . . . Sostrate proposing: to hold an assembly at dawn of the middle day of the Thesmophoria’. For ἕωθεν as the usual time for meetings of the Assembly, see Ach. 20, Eccl. 85. (2004) ad 2: ’This [sc. ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ] is hardly consistent with ἕωθεν in 375 [= 376 Wilson] (marking the start of the women’s Assembly), but Greek drama is notoriously flexible in its handling of time (cf. Taplin (1977) 290–4) and the audience cannot be expected to worry about matters of this sort.’ They implicitly (and, in my opinion, correctly) reject the view of Sommerstein (1994) ad 375, on Critylla’s opening address to the women’s Assembly at 373–7, who assumes that all involved in the event collude in pretending to have started their meeting (and their day of festivities) at the time specified in Sostrate’s decree.

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migratory return of that bird was commonly associated in antiquity as it is now.34 On the orthodox reading, the play thus begins with a despairing winter appeal for warmer days to come. Yet, as Austin and Olson note, the fictional date of our play, the 12th of Pyanepsion (our October–November), the middle day of the Thesmophoria (80, 375–6), is ‘much too early to be impatiently awaiting the arrival of spring’.35 In fact, on that understanding of χελιδών (sc. as ‘spring’), even trying to explain the allusion as relative to the date of performance is little help either; for if our play was, as is generally accepted, produced at the City Dionysia of 411, that is, between 10th and 17th of Elaphebolion, our early to mid-April, mid-spring, that would be to posit an Athenian yearning for the arrival of a swallow that has already come.36 The allusion would be less problematic were our play staged some months earlier, at the Lenaea (Gamelion 12th–21st, our January–February), presumably alongside its sister comedy of 411, the Lysistrata; but that performance date is itself equally unlikely given the different assumptions both plays make about contemporary politics.37 Thesmophoriazusae’s opening words too, then, are difficult, and scholars have had to range as far afield as to Shakespeare in order to explain the problem away, claiming that our play opens with our traveller longing for ‘the end of the metaphorical winter of his discontent’.38 34

35

36

37

38

For the swallow as a sign of spring, see, apart from ΣR: Rogers (1904); Sommerstein (1994); Prato (2001); Austin and Olson (2004) with references all ad loc. D. W. Thompson (1966) 319, catalogues the evidence (and, misguided by Th. 1, incorrectly refers to the Thesmophoria as a spring festival). Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. For the festival dates of the Thesmophoria as 11th–13th of Pyanepsion (by the late fifth century extended to run from the 10th), see Mikalson (1975) 71–2. For the dates of the City Dionysia, see Mikalson (1975) 201. The pertinent ancient evidence indicates a date in late March for the arrival of actual swallows from wintering in Africa (the same approximate date as given by modern observations of migrating birds); see Blomberg (1992) 54–5. Austin and Olson (2004) xxxiii–xliv, esp. xliii; there is general consensus that Lys. was performed at the Lenaea, see xli–xliv; cf. Revermann (2006b) 166 and my p. 28 n. 2. So Sommerstein (1994) ad loc., ‘Inlaw, seeing Euripides stop, hopes that this marks the end of the metaphorical winter of his discontent – i.e. his long traipse around Athens.’ Cf. Austin and Olson (2004) ad 1–2, ‘since the second verse immediately converts the image into a metaphor (“Will this long period of misery ever come to an end?”) in order to begin the process of introducing the plot, it may be that the idea of the swallow’s arrival was already proverbial by this period and could be used at any time of year. Similar dramatic imagery is used at the start of Shakespeare’s Richard iii: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.”’

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But there is another possibility. Aristophanes’ audience would be well aware that χελιδών was not only a bird whose arrival was taken to herald spring; it was also a bird associated with a specific time of night, the dark, pre-dawn hours of νύξ known as ὄρθρος.39 What is more, to that audience, the χελιδών was not even simply a bird but also a celestial body, a star. As Blomberg has shown, it is the heliacal rising of this star that Hesiod refers to at Works and Days 564–70:40 Εὖτ᾿ ἂν δ᾿ ἑξήκοντα μετὰ τροπὰς ἠελίοιο χειμέρι᾿ ἐκτελέσει Ζεὺς ἤματα, δή ῥα τότ᾿ ἀστήρ Ἀρκτοῦρος προλιπὼν ἱερὸν ῥόον Ωκεανοῖο πρῶτον παμφαίνων ἐπιτέλλεται ἀκροκνέφαιος· τὸν δὲ μέτ᾿ ὀρθογόη41 Πανδιονὶς ὦρτο Χελιδών 39

40

41

565

For the association of the swallow with ὄρθρος, see Antip. Sid. AP 6.160, Phili. AP 6.247; Anacreont. 10.9 West; see also Page (1955) 145 on Sappho fr. 135; West (1988) on Hes. Op. 568 (emended; see my n. 41 below); Wallace (1989) 205. For ὄρθρος as a period of darkness leading up to sunrise, see Wallace (1989). As Wallace (1989) 201f. notes, it is possible to introduce considerable confusion into Greek categories covering the temporal period from night to sunrise by using English terms (daybreak, dawn, sunrise) interchangeably: to clarify what follows, then, (1a) ὄρθρος is the final stage of νύξ which spans several hours leading up to ἕως, ἕωθεν, dawn; (1b) ὄρθρος can also designate the beginning of this period, i.e. a specific time of night; (2) ἕως, dawn, is either the period of light just before sunrise, or simply sunrise itself; as Wallace (1989) 204 n. 14 notes, dawn and sunrise can be distinguished in Greek but often are not. Blomberg (1992). Blomberg’s identification of Hesiod’s χελιδών as the elsewhereattested star Χελιδών has been disputed by Beall (2001) 162–3; but Beall’s criticisms are passing and do not detract significantly from Blomberg’s case. Minor points of disagreement are at 162 on the meaning of μετά at Hes. Op. 568, and when and where it is appropriate to invoke figurative rather than literal interpretations of Hesiod’s language: see Beall’s own shifting onus between reading language figuratively and not literally (‘nornumai es phaos is not appropriate for birds, that is, if taken literally. Yet it is easily seen as a figure’, 162), to yet again, literally and not figuratively (‘one wonders why stars as opposed to birds would be thought of as mourning. [. . .] to say that a bird is what actually calls (goaô usually entails vocalization, and –goê here must refer both to Pandonis and to chelidôn, contra Blomberg) remains more natural’, 163). Beall’s most substantial objection against Blomberg’s (1992) 57 reading of Philomela’s iconographic portrayal alongside other mythical figures (Orion and Perseus) who will be immortalized as stars and give their names to constellations in the same part of the sky is that Blomberg has shown ‘no connection of a celestial object to the swallow qua Philomela’ (163); but Hesiod himself may well be making that connection. In any case, it is difficult to see how, for a Greek audience, the astronomical and mythological associations of χελιδών did not conjoin these things. For the general significance given to the risings and settings of fixed stars and star-clusters as seasonal and temporal markers during the fifth and fourth centuries, see Pritchett (2002) 152–3. West (1988) ad loc. emends ὀρθογόη to ὀρθρογόη after Livrea (1967). For a thorough discussion see Blomberg (1992) 50–1, who rejects Livrea’s arguments as biased in favour of the assumption that Hesiod alludes to the actual bird, rather than to the star, which has its first heliacal appearance ‘well before the arrival of actual swallows’ (as Blomberg shows from a range of ancient calendrical attestations, 53).

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a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae ἐς φάος ἀνθρώποις, ἔαρος νέον ἱσταμένοιο. τὴν φθάμενος οἴνας περιταμνέμεν· ὣς γὰρ ἄμεινον.

570

When Zeus brings to an end sixty wintry days after the solstice, just then the star Arcturus leaving the holy stream of Ocean, shining brightly, rises for the first time at twilight; after him the truly-grieving daughter of Pandion, Swallow, rose to the light for mortals, when spring is newly begun; prune the vines before she comes; for it is better so.42

According to Hesiod, Χελιδών, the star, just like χελιδών, the bird, was not simply associated with a seasonal time (ἔαρος νέον ἱσταμένοιο, 569), but also with a particular time of night. Χελιδών rises just before the sun (ἐς φάος, ‘into the light’, 569), a day, or a few days, after Arcturus is first seen rising at dusk (ἀκροκνέφαιος, ‘at the tip, or, beginning, of total darkness’, 567) sixty days after the winter solstice.43 The behaviour of Hesiod’s Χελιδών is verified by the late fifth-century calendar of Euctemon, the fourth-century calendars of Philippus, Callippus and Eudoxus, and the later observations of Columella; all similarly identify the ‘Swallow’ (Χελιδών), with Eudoxus and the later Roman author placing its heliacal rising in close sequence with the acronychal rising of Arcturus, as on, or around, 21 February.44 Now, if we give priority to what will later be known (first, at 67) by our audience of the fictional winter setting of our play,45 an opening reference to Χελιδών, the star, at Thesmophoriazusae 1, would therefore seem 42 43 44

45

Text and trans. Blomberg (1992). See Blomberg (1992). Also Reiche (1989) 49–53 (on Arcturus). The relevant fragments of the calendars of Euctemon, Callippus and Eudoxus are preserved in Geminus Astronomicus’ Calendarium; see Lasserre (1966) 90, f229a; Philippus, Callippus and Eudoxus are found in Ptolemy’s Appearances of the Fixed Stars (cf. f229b). For Eudoxus, the rising of Χελιδών occurs in conjunction with the rising of Arcturus on 19 February; Euctemon, Philippus and Callippus, place the rising of Χελιδών at approximately the same date (17–19 February); Columella more explicitly places the rising of Χελιδών at 21 February, three days after the twlight rising of Arcturus, see Columella, Rust. 11.2.21 with Blomberg (1992) 53–4. Reiche (1989) 49–53 and West (1988) 253 place the beginning of the acronychal rising of Arcturus on 14 February; it continues to rise so until around 20–24th. Scholars disagree only upon whether Hesiod’s ‘πρῶτον παμφαίνων’ (567) refers to the star’s first rising (14 February), see Reiche (1989) 49–53; or its last rising (20–24 February) within that range, see Blomberg (1992). Confirmation of our play’s winter setting, beyond what an audience might infer from its title (which may or may not have been known in advance) or the festival proagōn (where,

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every bit as difficult as our allusion to χελιδών, the bird; in either case, seasonal time, spring, would seem to be its most likely referent.46 Yet if we consider the possibility of an astral allusion in light of the Elaphebolion Dionysiac performance date of our play (sc. early–mid-April, mid-spring), quite a different picture emerges. Certainly, by Elaphebolion, Χελιδών would not still be rising visibly just before the sun; yet it would still be visible rising earlier than this, during ὄρθρος, the pre-dawn hours of darkness leading up to sunrise.47 Significantly, ὄρθρος is precisely that final stage of night associated both with pre-Assembly activity (preparation, rendezvous, travel, etc.) and also, in the Greek wisdom tradition, with revelation and adjudication.48 Hence, for an Elaphebolion (i.e. a mid-spring)

46

47

48

nothing of Th.’s plot would have been revealed that would have undermined any aspect of its comic unpredictability – if, indeed, its plot was discussed at all), is given only at 67, 80; see Sommerstein (1977) 117; Revermann (2006b) 169–71. Χελιδών would not rise again heliacally until early spring (late February), just before actual swallows arrive (in March). On heliacal rising, see Reiche (1989) 39: ‘a given star which is today seen rising before dawn for the first time will, on succeeding nights, be seen to rise at ever earlier hours, until, after several months, it will have its last visible rising as it approaches the time of sunset’s afterglow’. Also Dicks (1970) 12–15. Summarizing Hesiod’s calendar, West (1988) ad 381–617 calculates that Arcturus’ cycle through 12 hours of night from its acronychal to its heliacal risings takes approximately 7 months, beginning in midFebruary (acronychal rising) and ending in mid-September (heliacal rising). On this basis, the movement we might expect from Χελιδών over a period of 7–8 weeks (from late February to mid April) would mean that at the time of the City Dionysia this star was rising approximately 3 hours before sunrise, i.e. at, or, just before, the beginning of ὄρθρος. For pre-Assembly activity at ὄρθρος see also Wallace (1989) 201, and 203 for the standard joke in Ar. ‘that meddlesome Athenians got up at ὄρθρος to make sure of getting a seat in court or the Assembly’. That is, they get up at the beginning of ὄρθρος (1b in p. 59 n. 39), rather than during it, as would everyone else going to a dawn meeting of the Assembly; see Eccl. 462 (Blepyros) and Hesiod’s exhortation to his brother to get up at ὄρθρος and set off for work at Op. 574–77. For the stars being still visible at this early time, see Eccl. 83. ὄρθρος is also the time specified by Plato for his Nocturnal Council to meet at Laws 951d, ostensibly because everyone was then free, 961b; but for the association of this temporal period from ‘earliest dawn [sc. ὄρθρος] until sunrise’ with revelation and adjudication, see Kingsley (1999) 211–15 and esp. 212 on Orpheus’ night-time rising to be the first to see the sun (whom he addressed as Apollo and elevated above Dionysus), and thereby re-experience what he had previously experienced in the Underworld, at A. Bassarai fr. 23a (Radt), the second play of the tetralogy that comprised Aeschylus’ Lycurgeia, a series that will be alluded to by Ar.’s Kinsman at Th. 134–5 (there citing the first play, Edonians) in the midst of our comic revelation, cf. Seaford (2005); and for the Underworld as the place of origin of all laws, see Kingsley (1999) 214–15, (2003) 146; and note that this same nexus of associations connecting ὄρθρος with revelation and adjudication is clearly also exploited in the Crito, whose entire dialogue takes place at ὄρθρος βαθύς (43a4) and culminates with an imagined visitation of the personified Laws,

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audience, a first-words’ traveller’s plea for χελιδών finally to appear, would most naturally evoke two meanings, both of which are pertinent to its present. Either our traveller’s words are addressed to the heavens, and, in similar fashion to Euripidean tragedy’s prologue allusions to those disappearing stars which herald the approach of daylight,49 he refers to Χελιδών, the star, which has been getting progressively earlier in its heliacal rising over the previous weeks and, by this date, is rising during ὄρθρος.50 Or, he refers to χελιδών, the bird whose song is presently heard during those same nocturnal hours, ὄρθρος, the first period of everyday waking activity. The choice between star or bird is, itself, of course, unimportant; for on what is most crucially at stake, both the birdwatchers and the stargazers will agree: it is not primarily a seasonal allusion that occurs first at Thesmophoriazusae 1. Rather, by momentarily situating the play within the world of its audience and temporarily bridging any divide between the reality-of-thepresent (spring Dionysia) and the fantasy-yet-to-be (winter Thesmophoria), our opening words, ὦ Ζεῦ, χελιδὼν ἆρά ποτε φανήσεται, elegantly place their speaker and the beginning of our play at some unspecified time before dawn.51

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who are depicted as arriving like apparitions (ἐλθόντες . . . ἐπιστάντες, 50a7–8) and go on to reveal not only their own reasoning but also what lies in store for their audience after death at the hands of their ‘brothers’, the Laws of the Underworld; cf. my following discussion on Plato’s further exploitation of the period from ὄρθρος to sunrise to associate Socrates with the Apolline Greek wisdom tradition at Smp. 220c3–d5 and its Aristophanic Parmenidean foil, with Appendix I for the full signifieance of ὄρθρος for our prologue. For the tragic convention of beginning a drama in total darkness, the protagonists awaiting the arrival of dawn and tracing the departure of night by poetic reference either to the approaching light or to the disappearance of seasonal stars, see the prologues of E. Andr., Phaeth., El. and IA, with Diggle (1970) 98–100. Phaeth. 63–70 is exemplary; see Diggle (1970) ad 66 for Euripides’ use of the Pleiades, and other star-clusters in order to evoke the approach of light; and ad 67–9, for use of the nightingale’s song to signify the arrival of ὄρθρος. This convention, as used in E. Andr., will later be parodied explicitly in our comedy, Th. 1065–9. Were our Th. staged not at the City Dionysia of 411, but at the Lenaea of that year (January–February), such an appeal to the appearance of Χελιδών (then, imminent) would be even more timely. See Revermann (2006b) 172–3, on the ‘bridging’ effects of Ar.’s opening routines, and Zeitlin (1981) 171–2 for the suggestion that the fictive and actual festival time frames of our play may work to elaborate one another. For parallel pre-dawn openings in Ar., cf., e.g., Clouds, Wasps, Eccl. (esp. 83–5 for astral allusion); in Plato, see Prt. 310–12a (further associated with katabasis at 315b9 by allusion to Odysseus’ pre-dawn journey to the Underworld, see my p. 56 n. 31) with Charalabopoulos (2001) 154–8, (2012) 63.

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Herein, I suggest, lies the solution to the problem of our play’s two dawns; at 2, our traveller has indeed been walking ‘since dawn’ (ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ, 2), and he will travel on to the women’s Assembly and arrive there at (or just before) dawn (ἕωθεν, 375, cf. 277–8) because his very first words situate these two ἑωθινοί as the dawns of two consecutive days. For this weary traveller, following the lead of this Euripides has meant treading a circling path all day yesterday, and (almost) all night, so that, by the time we encounter him, he is quite understandably looking for any sign that his backwardturning ordeal (day-to-night-to . . .) nears its end. This man is not desperate for a metaphorical ‘spring’. He is desperate for daybreak.52 A nocturnal opening for our Thesmophoriazusae not only solves our problems with the play’s temporal sequence (especially the apparent contradiction of 2, 277–8, 375) but also reveals the dramatic use of a specific period of time in order to characterize a style of thought and its thinker; and that provides us with a clear Aristophanic precedent for a significant aspect of Plato’s characterization of Socrates as the legitimate heir to Parmenides in the 52

Later temporal evidence from the play confirms this reading. A pre-dawn setting, for instance, explains why Agathon has not yet emerged to finish composing his verses ‘to the sun’ (πρὸς τὸν ἥλιον, 69) by the time this opening journey ends (25) but will soon do so (τάχα, 66); evidently, it is, by now, only ambiently light. It also explains why Agathon’s Servant at 46–7 in anticipation of that moment, hieratically sings for the birds to go to sleep (κατακοιμάσθω) and that the feet of the beasts of the forest ‘not be released’ (θηρῶν τ’ ἀγρίων πόδες ὑλοδρόμων∣μὴ λυέσθων); for they are evidently still asleep, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. This, also, is why at 204–5 Agathon objects that if he were to go to the Thesmophoria right now as Euripides asks he would likely ‘appear to be stealing the nocturnal doings of women and absconding with the female Cypris’ (δοκῶν γυναικῶν ἔργα νυκτερήσια∣κλέπτειν, ὑφαρπάζειν τε θήλειαν Κύπριν (text Austin and Olson (2004)); and why, at 280, our traveller first points out the procession of female Assembly-goers that he will follow to the women’s dawn meeting by reference to their torchlight (καομένων τῶν λαμπάδων). These events are all staged during a temporal sequence which, very approximately, places the beginning of the play at some point during the last phase of night, brings its protagonists through the first modulations of ambient light between 25 and Agathon’s appearance at 101 (cf. Euripides’ words at 71: ὦ Ζεῦ, τί δρᾶσαι διανοεῖ με τήμερον;), takes them to sunrise (ἕωθεν) at some point between 277–9, the herald’s signal, and 295, the opening of the women’s Assembly, and thus, to the daytime action beyond: the middle day of the Thesmophoria. Cf. Austin and Olson (2004) li on the Thesmophoria: ‘The constant references to torches hint at night-time ceremonies.’ For the wider significance of sunrise that underlies Ar.’s dramatic conceit of a pre-dawn longing for signs of ὄρθρος here, see Kingsley (1999) 211–12 and my p. 61 n. 48 and following discussion on the association of the period ὄρθρος to sunrise with revelation.

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Symposium, a wisdom figure who (quite unlike those rival appropriators of Parmenidean stricture, the eristics) deploys his own much-contesting ἔλεγχος in the service of Apollo, for whom he exposes the reality of mortal self-contradiction, namely that all those who think they know something are really εἰδότες οὐδέν (b6.4; cf. Ap. 21b–23b).53 Plato’s dialogue and our Thesmophoriazusae, of course, exhibit several points of shared interest: most obviously, the didactic use of blending (and for Plato, transcending) the genres of comedy and tragedy in order to address error and illuminate how things really are;54 but also, implicitly, Euripides, the quintessential fifth-century playwright to whom it belongs to mix both genres (as at 223d3–6), and whom Socrates, Plato’s own master of the comic and the tragic (i.e. the serious, Laws 7.817a2–3), satirically quotes when it is his turn to speak (199a5–6; cf. E. Hipp. 612, also parodied at Th. 275–6).55 In the present instance, however, I refer to the story about Socrates told by Alcibiades at 220c3–d5: συννοήσας γὰρ αὐτόθι ἕωθέν τι εἱστήκει σκοπῶν, καὶ ἐπειδὴ οὐ προυχώρει αὐτῷ, οὐκ ἀνίει ἀλλὰ εἱστήκει ζητῶν. καὶ ἤδη ἦν μεσημβρία, καὶ ἅνθρωποι ᾐσθάνοντο, καὶ θαυμάζοντες ἄλλος ἄλλῳ ἔλεγεν ὅτι Σωκράτης ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ φροντίζων τι ἕστηκε. τελευτῶντες δέ τινες τῶν Ἰώνων, ἐπειδὴ ἑσπέρα ἦν, δειπνήσαντες – καὶ γὰρ θέρος τότε γ᾿ ἦν – χαμεύνια ἐξενεγκάμενοι ἅμα μὲν ἐν τῷ ψύχει καθηῦδον, ἅμα δ᾿ ἐφύλαττον αὐτὸν εἰ καὶ τὴν νύκτα ἑστήξοι. ὁ δὲ εἱστήκει μέχρι ἕως ἐγένετο καὶ ἥλιος ἀνέσχεν· ἔπειτα ᾤχετ᾿ ἀπιὼν προσευξάμενος τῷ ἡλίῳ. There he was at daybreak with something on his mind, standing and reflecting on it; and when he couldn’t make progress with it, he didn’t give up but stood there looking for a way forward. By now it was midday, and people began to notice him; amazed they told each other that Socrates had been standing there thinking about something since dawn. Finally when evening came some of the Ionians, after 53 54

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See Kingsley (2003) 150–6. For Socrates’ typical slides from the comic to the serious, see Rowe (1998) ad 223d2–5 citing Pl. Smp. 216e4–6; cf. Nails (2006) 179; Sedley (2006). Shared concerns with exposing fallacy and illuminating truth: Nails (2006); Bobrick (1997); cf. my discussion pp. 179–84. Hipp. 612 was the line allegedly used to underwrite an attempt (by a certain Hygiainon) to charge Euripides with asebeia in life as in Aristophanic fiction (see Arist. Rh. 1416a28– 33; cf. Ar. Th. 356–67, 450–1) just, indeed, as will happen to many of Plato’s symposiasts (and ultimately, of course, to Socrates himself) in the years following Agathon’s party, see Nails (2006). For evidence of Plato’s engagement with Th. see, most recently (on the Smp.), Sissa (2012) and my discussion pp. 179–84, and p. 31 n. 11, p. 103 n. 165, p. 108 n. 176, p. 141 n. 259; cf. also Schefer (2003) 181–2 on Pl. Phdr. 278b7 and Th. 1227.

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o n w h at - [ it ] -is they’d finished their evening meal, took palliasses outside (it was summer at the time) and slept there in the cool, at the same time looking out to see if he’d stand there all night too. And so he did – stand there, until dawn came, and the sun rose; then, with a prayer to the sun, he went off.56

Just like Aristophanes’ Euripides, Socrates is here portrayed as having been searching (ζητῶν) for the solution to a problem for a full twenty-four hours, since dawn (ἐξ ἑωθινοῦ, 220c7; cf. Th. 2), through the whole subsequent day and night, up until the sun rises again the next day (ἕως, 220d3; cf. ἕωθεν, Th. 375). Unlike the ‘thinker’ with whom our comedy begins, however, he is not a man to take to the streets like a circling ox (ἀλοῶν); when Socrates is lost, he is aware of that fact. And he simply stands still (εἱστήκει, 220c4, d3). Alcibiades’ story is told at a late point in the symposium, and for Plato’s audience it recalls a similar event that occurred on the same day of the party just before the socializing began. At this earlier point Socrates’ companion, Aristodemus, had been forced to arrive without him; for, as the two of them make their way to the party, Socrates once again becomes preoccupied with his thoughts and, being unable to find a way forward, he tells Aristodemus to go on ahead (174d4–7). As Plato’s dialogue unfolds, Aristodemus’ brief story and Alcibiades’ epideictic tale of Socratic wisdom, of course, elaborate each other and, as they do so, they work together to typify Socrates (cf. ἔθος γάρ τι τοῦτ᾿ ἔχει, 175b1–2).57 Yet as this fuller picture of the philosopher emerges from the glimpses they provide, they also throw into relief the comic subtext of the image at which we arrive; for not only does this Socrates share with Aristophanes’ Euripides a comical propensity for dawn-to-dawn thinking (clearly 56 57

Trans. Rowe (1998). See R. L. Hunter (2004) 33 on the ‘performance’ of wisdom that Socrates’ periods of silent reflection evoke, but importantly also Kingsley (2003) 155–6 for the Apolline associations of ‘extraordinary states of stillness’ (with which Socrates’ ‘final prayer to the sun’ at 220d5 is surely resonant), by means of which, along with his use of the ἔλεγχος to expose men as ‘know nothings’ (150–5), Plato situates his Socrates in a Parmenidean tradition. Cf. with the Smp.’s (i.e. Alcibiades’) portrayal of Socrates as filled with arguments bursting with godlike images of virtue at Smp. 216c4–217a, 221d7–222a6, Socrates’ self-portrayal in the Ap. as himself a wanderer (22a6) who is ‘wiser’ than all others (his ἔλεγχος reveals) only by virtue of the fact that he alone does not think he knows what he does not: Pl. Ap. 21d3–7, with Prior (2009) 33–5. Plato’s Socrates and the Greek Sages: Kurke (2011) 326–9.

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here a pretext for exhibiting their hugely divergent styles of thought, one manifest in the confused wanderings of a Doxastical mortal; the other, in the Apolline stillness of the philosopher), but also, as Plato reuses that motif, both end up displaying something of it on the way to Agathon’s door.58 For Aristophanes’ audience, by contrast, no one yet knows of that destination – least of all, the traveller just four lines into our play, whose journey, it can now be appreciated, having begun at dawn, presently very much negotiates all things ‘dark and unknown’ (ἀδαῆ, b1.3; cf. 8.59, 9.3, explicitly of Night) just like the opening journey of Parmenides’ poem (and will, in fact, also culminate at a site at which night and day meet, when night becomes day, cf. b1.3, 8–11; my pp. 49–50, 124–44, having primed its audience for revelation).59 He is faced only with the constant circling and regress of more Euripidean ἀλοῶν, hence his despairing cry at 3–4: οἷόν τε,∣ . . . παρὰ σοῦ πυθέσθαι ποῖ μ’ ἄγεις, ωὐριπίδη; ‘Is it possible to learn from you just where you are leading me, Euripides?!’, an appeal framed in terms reminiscent of the traveller of Parmenides’ proem who should learn all things (χρεὼ δέ σε πάντα πυθέσθαι, b1.28), including the mistaken beliefs of mortals (ἠδὲ βροτῶν δόξας, ταῖς οὐκ ἔνι πίστις ἀληθής.∣ἀλλ’ ἔμπης καὶ ταῦτα μαθήσεαι . . ., b1.30–1; which are precisely what now follow, 7–24; cf. μανθάνω, 20), so that he will never again be 58

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Against the comic tradition which blames Euripides’ association with Socrates for his bad pseudo-intellectual poetry (see esp. Ar. Frogs 1491–9 with Nightingale (1995) 63–4), Plato’s reformulation of the Aristophanic motif of 24-hour wandering thus might be read as polemically asserting just how different from the tragedian his Socrates is, the backward-turning circlings of Th.’s Euripides constituting a tacit foil for the 24-hour Apolline stillness of Smp.’s Socrates. On Aristophanic and wider comic association of Euripides and Socrates, cf. also Ar. fr. 392 KA; Clouds 1364–79; Call. Com. fr. 15; Telecl. fr. 41, 42 KA (where Socrates again supplies the material for Euripides’ plays); Satyrus in POxy 1176 fr. 39 i.21–ii.22; Carey (2000) 419–30, esp. 429; Wildberg (2006). For the specifically Parmenidean revelatory significance of the phase of phenomenal experience from ὄρθρος to sunrise, a phase in which the distinction between Light and Night (mortal opposites) collapses, and its misunderstanding by mortals, which is highlighted by Parmenides’ goddess just before describing the thought-world of the Doxa, see Mansfeld (2005) 558–9 on 28b8.38–41 DK, and my further discussion, pp. 113–22; and note also the possibility that Parmenides’ φὼς εἰδώς at 28b1.3 DK., later resounds ironically to evoke not only an initiate to the goddess’s revelations but also a ‘man who has seen the light’ (φῶς), i.e. a truster in perceptual knowledge alone and, therefore, a mortal knowing nothing, whose path, the course of the sun, is changed fundamentally when the Heliades meet him and take him down to the Underworld, see Cosgrove (2011) and my pp. 144–6 and n. 270, for the double audience this implies.

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misled.60 It casts Euripides as a guide posturing as a speaker of ἀληθείη – though one already flagged by his day-to-night(-to- . . .) ἀλοῶν to be hopelessly astray from it61 – and directs the audience’s attention to the framing questions of the scene: where is this ridiculous backward-turning poet leading his anonymous follower/audience? Just what is it possible to learn (πυθέσθαι) from this Euripides? Contrary to the claims of the latest commentators on our text, the answer to those questions is not simply deferred until after the opening banter of our prologue;62 rather, it is set out in this, forged for all to see (-and-hear) in the trial by λόγος of the ἔλεγχος (‘testing’ but also ‘revealing’) that is the rest of our opening scene. Testing the Doxa: scrutinizing Euripides’ λόγος in the trials of the ἔλεγχος (5–10) Ironically, Euripides’ side-stepping reply to our traveller’s scenesetting inquiry into his comical route makes explicit the shared motif of the journey to mystic revelation. His half-priestly, halfteasing use of παρεστώς at 6 invokes the ritual frame of the Mysteries and, patently in the hope of removing the need to answer the question, thus implicitly makes an initiate of his anonymous follower (the joke is, hopefully a passive and silent one) (5–6, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε πάνθ’ ὅσ’ αὐτίκα∣ὄψει παρεστώς, ‘You need not hear all that you’ll see instantly when you’re present’).63 With it, Euripides dangles the promise of revelatory sights like a carrot but, 60

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See p. 78 n. 92 for the significance of the movement from πυνθάνομαι at 4 to μανθάνω at 20. For the best tragedian as the one who deceives most in making things equivalent to ἀληθείη, see Δισσοὶ λόγοι 3.10, with Detienne (1996) 85, 184, and my p. 41 n. 19 on the relationship between τραγική, exaggeration, ambiguity and trickery. See Austin and Olson (2004) ad 3–4. παρεστώς marks ‘a deliberation manipulation of the audience’s expectations’, according to Austin and Olson (2004) ad 5–6, who assert that Euripides ‘speaks like a priest and misleadingly implies that he is taking Inlaw to some sort of initiation’. See Lada-Richards (1999) 87–90 on the parallel use of the motif of the guided journey for initiation into the Mysteries in Frogs. For the obligation to be silent during initiation rituals, see Montiglio (2000) 23–32 (cf. the play on silence to come at 27–9), and 28–9 on the revelatory significance of seeing as part of initiation ritual and reflected in the terminology related to the Eleusinian Mysteries, δείκνυμι and φράζω; but see 29–32 for the parallel presence of hearing. For parallel exploitation of these motifs in tragedy and Plato, see Schefer (2003)

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with evidently little idea of how to reach them himself, he shirks the prerequisite of showing his initiate, by means of ‘words that indicate’, exactly what to look for, or how to see (unlike Parmenides’ goddess, b2, b8).64 And so his follower finds himself in the position described by the goddess in her exhortation at b7 (a passage that warns against accepting the lot of the mortals of b6); that is, the position of being expected to trudge passively along Euripides’ wandering path, a route trodden only by those who confuse what-is and what-is-not (b6), and there circle around with nothing definite to hear (ἠχήεσσα ἀκουή, b7.4), plying only an undirected, and therefore, ‘aimless’ (ἄσκοπον, b7.4), eye. There, at b7, the goddess urges her follower to guard against slipping off the path of what-is by accepting without test any route of inquiry that purports to give a genuine account of something and yet invalidates itself by drawing upon what-[it]-is-not: οὐ γὰρ μήποτε τοῦτο δαμῇ εἶναι μὴ ἐόντα· ἀλλὰ σὺ τῆσδ’ ἀφ’ ὁδοῦ διζήσιος εἶργε νόημα μηδέ σ’ ἔθος πολύπειρον ὁδὸν κατὰ τήδε βιάσθω, νωμᾶν ἄσκοπον ὄμμα καὶ ἠχήεσσαν ἀκουὴν καὶ γλῶσσαν, κρῖναι δὲ λόγῳ πολύδηριν ἔλεγχον ἐξ ἐμέθεν ῥηθέντα.

1

6

For never shall this prevail, that things that are not are; But do you restrain your thought from this route of inquiry, Nor let much-experienced habit force you along this route, To ply an aimless eye and ringing ear And tongue; but judge by λόγος the much-contesting ἔλεγχος Spoken by me.65

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178–9. Against this connotation of παρεστώς, the frame of the Mysteries is perhaps already implicit in the endless (Parmenidean) wandering in backward-turning circles in darkness with which this play begins, cf. Plutarch’s description of the ritual search at Eleusis at On the Soul, fr. 178 (Sandbach). But as with our backward-turning circling and temporal setting, note that this general schema does not, however, provide the only (or even, I suspect, the primary) resonance of παρεστώς here, see my discussion, pp. 116–22. See Montiglio (2000) 30–1 on the importance of hearing the sacred words of the hierophant in contexts of initiation ritual. Trans. Gallop (1984) modified. For the view that the goddess’s imperative at 28b7.3–6 DK (κρῖναι δὲ λόγῳ) refers specifically to her already spoken ‘critique’ (. . . ἔλεγχον∣ἐξ ἐμέθεν ῥηθέντα, 5–6) of the implicit cognitive failure of those confused mortals of b6, b7, see Mourelatos (2008) 90–1, esp. n. 46; Tarán (1965) ad 5–6; Palmer (2009) 108–9, and n. 3 (the translation ‘critique’ is his); Robbiano (2006) 106–7 agrees the reference is to what precedes but argues the subsequent arguments of the Alētheia ‘have again the form

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Her exhortation is to turn instead to ‘discourse’ (λόγος), to shun judgements of habit (ἔθος) or past experience and instead extract and put to the test by trial of argument the true nature of any such account (b7.5; b8.15–18).66 Just as the mortal predicament described here, at b7.3–4, resonates with the lot of the traveller of our prologue, so, too, does this strategy: Euripides’ comic turn as the guiding hierophant is met not by quiet acceptance, as perhaps he had hoped, but by challenge: πῶς λέγεις; αὖθις φράσον (6). It signals that an ἔλεγχος has begun.67 On one, colloquial, level, this line may be read simply as: ‘What’s that? Say again . . .’; but, against the parodic Mysteries frame, this use of φράζω is also pregnant with ritual connotations of showing and, as it is used in Parmenides, also of route giving (cf. b2.6, 2.8; b6.2). (Hence the line also resonates: ‘What are you saying? Show me again in words that make visible for all to see . . .’).68 With this question, any idea of this travellerʼs simply passively following the lead of our poet is dispelled; now enters a contentious interlocutor, and, with him, the goddess’s imperative of b7.5–6 (κρῖναι δὲ λόγῳ πολύδηριν ἔλεγχον∣ἐξ ἐμέθεν ῥηθέντα) is subtly reissued to the Aristophanic audience.69

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of an elenchos and [. . .] clarify and support the given elenchos’ (107); Curd (1998) 62 and n. 107 suggests the goddess’s imperative and her allusion to her own ἔλεγχος pertains both to her preceding critique of mortal confusion and also to what follows, where Curd interprets the word ἔλεγχος to resonate not in the sense of the ‘invective’ the goddess has already voiced, but in the sense of a ‘trying’ or ‘testing’ of her proofs about what-is. But preferably J. Barrett (2004) 274 n. 24, citing parallels, notes that the ‘temporal value’ of the aorist passive participle ῥηθέντα may simply be ‘understood relative to κρῖναι, an act by definition as yet unperformed’. For the goddess’s ἔλεγχος (which I understand to mean ‘a testing using the criteria set out explicitly in the Alētheia’, 28b8.1–49 DK) as a model for our own evaluation of any account of what-is, and the tacit imperative here to do so, see Curd (1998) 62; Robbiano (2006) 107–20. For λόγος at 28b7.5 DK as ‘discourse’, see Coxon (2009) ad 7.3–6, though also invoking ‘reason’ in his comments; Curd (1998) 63 n. 109, suggesting also the meaning ‘thought’ or ‘reckoning’ citing the parallels adduced and discussed by Guthrie (1962–9) i. 419–24, esp. 421 (on Parmenides); so, Robbiano (2006) 97. Kingsley (2003) 129–34 notes the paradoxical implication of the goddess’s imperative to ‘judge her talk by talk’ (132), ‘judge by discussion’ (134), when ‘Judgement has already been passed’ (133) and so proposes (139–40) to emend λόγῳ to λόγου (‘[judge] in favour of the highly contentious demonstration of the truth∣contained in these words spoken by me’, 140). For Parmenides’ ἔλεγχος as a ‘putting to the test’, ‘challenge’ or ‘cross-examination’, see Lesher (1984) 1–9; Coxon (2009) ad 7.3–6; see also my n. 65 above: ‘a testing using the criteria set out explicitly in the Alētheia’, 28b8.1–49 DK. For ritual connotations of φράζω against the Mysteries frame hinted at by παρεστώς at 6, see p. 67 n. 63 above. For the ‘temporal value’ of ῥηθέντα here see p. 68 n. 65.

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Signposts of the Doxa, 2. Entering the νόος that binds us: b8.50–61, Euripides’ thought-world and the Doxa as comic dialogue (7–24) With the scene now framed around the idea of scrutinizing Euripides’ λόγος (6, 9), the comedy takes a more explicitly intellectual turn: the frenetic burst of speech and rejoinder at 7–8 (extrapolated at 9–24) prompts its audience no longer simply to laugh at the slapstick physicality of mortal error (that silly circling path), but also at the fallacious thought-world of the Doxa. For the purpose of this ἔλεγχος is to trick Euripides into making explicit all the fallacies of thought that have sent him and countless others astray from the Alētheia and back onto his ludicrous third way (thereby, completing the image conjured by ἀλοῶν (2) with the idea that, just like all those mistaken others, this poet treads a path that turns back on itself not only on foot, but also in νόος, b6.5–6). Indeed, as we shall see, the interlocutor will soon extrapolate from his replies at 7–8 precisely the same errors that the goddess reveals as characterizing the selfcontradictory reasoning of mortals at b8.19–20, 50–61 (the Doxa). But the genius of this comic ἔλεγχος lies in the way in which Aristophanes appropriates that quintessential account of the Doxa by the goddess (at b8.50–61) and recasts it into dialogue form (at 7–24), flagging this enactment even at its outset by making flesh, as it were, as its first argument strategy, the framing idea of the deceptive ordering of words with which the goddess introduces her own exposition of the Doxa at b8.51–2 (there, signalling it to be wholly untrustworthy): for after the goddess has portrayed the physical symptoms of mortal confusion (at b6–7) and given us her true account of reality – told us that what-is is ‘ungenerated’ (ἀγένητον, b8.3) and ‘deathless’ (ἀνώλεθρον, b8.3), ‘whole and of a single kind’ (οὖλον μουνογενές, b8.4), ‘still’ (ἀτρεμές, b8.4), ‘complete’ (τελεστόν, b8.4),70 ‘one’ (ἕν, b8.6), ‘continuous’ (συνεχές, b8.6), and so on – she breaks to introduce mortal thought, saying: δόξας δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦδε βροτείας∣μάνθανε κόσμον ἐμῶν ἐπέων ἀπατηλὸν ἀκούων, ‘. . . from here onwards mortal beliefs∣Learn [by judging them], listening to the 70

For a discussion of this reading 28b8.4 DK for which there are several variants, see Palmer (2009) 382–3, and my p. 156 n. 305.

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deceitful ordering of my words’.71 Consider how it is also this idea (in Parmenides, enacted in the next line, at b8.53) that signals the beginning of our prologue’s dialogical exposition of Euripides’ path of mortal error, realized here by our interlocutor’s sly reshuffling of ἀκούειν δεῖ at 5 (‘You needn’t . . .’) to δεῖ and then ἀκούειν at 7a (‘I must not-hear . . .?’): ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΗΣ ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε πάνθ’ ὅσ’ αὐτίκα ὄψει παρεστώς. Κη.πῶς λέγεις; αὖθις φράσον. 7a οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν. 8a Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ.

5 7b 8b

E. You need not hear all that you’ll see instantly when you’re present. 5–6 K. What are you saying? Point it out to me again [this path of yours!] I must not-hear . . .? 7a E. Not, at any rate, whatever you’re going to see. 7b K. And so, I must not see . . .? 8a E. Not, at any rate, whatever you must hear. 8b

Indeed, this is a double parody, for by creating an adherescent οὐ (οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν, 7a) with which to trip up our poet, our traveller’s deceptive (re)ordering of words also cleverly enacts the goddess’s very next next words at b8.53–4, where, immediately following her own deceptive ordering of words at b8.53,72 an adherescent οὐ similarly exposes the essential fallacy of mortal error: μορφὰς γὰρ κατέθεντο δύο γνώμας73 ὀνομάζειν·∣τῶν μίαν οὐ χρεών ἐστιν – ἐν ᾧ πεπλανημένοι εἰσίν – . . ., ‘for they laid down notions (i.e. they decided) to name two forms∣Of which it is obligatory not to name one’ (or, ‘Of which they should not name one’) – wherein they have wandered . . .’74 71

72

73 74

See Curd (1998) 103 ‘a hearer’s response to the Doxa must be the same as the response to the claims of Alētheia: there we are exhorted to judge by logos what we are told. [. . .] to judge, ponder, and consider’. For the meaning of μανθάνω as learning that implies active judgement, both in Parmenides and our prologue, see p. 78 n. 92. For the deceitful ordering of words enacted in the goddess’s syntactically ambiguous μορφὰς γὰρ κατέθεντο δύο γνώμας ὀνομάζειν at b8.53 and the double meaning it effects, see my following discussion, pp. 93–5. For γνώμας at 28b8.53 DK, see p. 94 n. 135. See Curd (1998) 110: because the two forms are enantiomorphic opposites ‘naming both of them entails negations in the natures of the two, so one of them ought not to be named’ (see also 110 for a further possible translation, endorsing the construal of Furley (1989) 30–3: ‘not one of which is it right to name’). The construal of οὐ χρεών ἐστιν is a site of

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Signposts of the Doxa, 3. A ‘ringing ear’, an ‘echoing tongue’ and the extrapolation of futurity: Euripides and the symptoms of mortal error (7–8) Euripides’ reply to this (not only deceptive, but also parodic) word switch, at 7b, gives the audience their first taste in λόγος of the comic confusion of mortal error. It casts the backward-turning poet as an archetypal traveller of the Doxa, as quite literally possessing a ‘ringing ear and echoing tongue’ (ἠχήεσσα ἀκουή∣καὶ γλῶσσα, b7.4–5); as ‘carried’ helplessly along the path of mortal confusion (φοροῦνται, b6.6); as ‘uncritical’, or, ‘without judgement’ (ἄκριτος, b6.7); and with no idea of where he is, or of the mistakes that have led him there, or what is really going on (εἰδὼς οὐδέν, b6.4). Thus, unable correctly to distinguish what-is from what-is-not, his ears ringing only with the misperception of οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; at 7a (which resound to him as if they are his own words at 5),75 Euripides comically fails to hear the shift in negation effected by the deceptive switch of word order that ushers in the Doxa; and so, quite unwittingly, he literally echoes it: 7a, οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; 7b, Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ . . . (‘. . . not-hear? E. . . . Not[-hear], at any rate, whatever . . .’).76 Next, blissfully unaware of that mistake, he is

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intense scholarly disagreement; but this debate itself nicely illustrates the capacity of an adherescent οὐ to confound mortals (as is our comic Euripides confounded at 7a), some scholars endorsing the view that οὐ should be taken with χρεών and not ὀνομάζειν (or even καταθέσθαι) so as not to imply obligation but merely the absence of an obligation or logical necessity (‘it is not necessary . . .’ rather than ‘it is necessary not . . .’) (see, e.g., Croissant (1937) 102–3; Mansfeld (1964) 123–31; Tarán (1965) 217–20; Meijer (1997) 203–6), and others drawing out the prohibitive connotation of the adherescent construction, translating ‘it is not right’ rather than ‘it is not necessary’ (e.g. Curd (1998) 109–10; Palmer (2009) 170; cf. Woodbury (1986) 5 n. 15, who, although reading τῶν μίαν as referring to γνώμας rather than μορφάς and understanding καταθέσθαι with οὐ χρεών ἐστιν, translates ‘it is wrong . . .’), with the different interpretations of Cornford (1939) 46; Verdenius (1942) 62; Vlastos (1946) 74; Curd (1998) 110; and Robbiano (2006) 184, 219 making fully explicit the obligation the goddess’s adherescent οὐ really effects: e.g. ‘. . . should not be named’ (Cornford, Verdenius, Vlastos), ‘. . . ought not to be named’ (Curd), ‘. . . of which they are obliged not to name . . .’ (Robbiano). This misperception is Euripides’ own: missing the shift in word order at 7a, he hears in οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; only an echo (of half) of his statement at 5, ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ . . ., and thus rushes to complete it at his 7b: see my exegesis of the scene at pp. 12–17. See also J. Barrett (2004) 268, who highlights a key aspect of the poem of Parmenides comically exploited here by Ar.: ‘. . . central to what the poem has to offer is precisely the challenge of struggling with its linguistic difficulties [. . .] mortal failure [. . . is] linguistic failure’. As already explained, pp. 12–17.

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shown to wander off even further down this fallacious route by reintroducing the idea of futurity: E. 7b, . . . ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν (‘[Not(-hear)] . . . at any rate, whatever you’re going to see’, or, ‘whatever you are to see’), 7b ostensibly merely extrapolating upon the imminent futurity of αὐτίκα∣ὄψει παρεστώς at 5–6, but thereby also unwittingly introducing the notion of a beginning yet to be (just, in fact, as Parmenides’ goddess draws upon μέλλω to this same effect at b8.19–20 in her own didactic extrapolation of the [prohibited] simple future of b8.5, οὐδ’ ἔσται). For according to the proofs of the goddess’s ἔλεγχος at b8.19–20 even to entertain this idea is to let in by a backdoor what-is-not all over again, for whatis-going-to-be patently is-not right now: πῶς δ’ ἂν ἔπειτα πέλοι τὸ ἐόν; πῶς δ’ ἄν κε γένοιτο; εἰ γὰρ ἔγεντ’, οὐκ ἔστ(ι), οὐδ’ εἴ ποτε μέλλει ἔσεσθαι. And how could what-is be in the future; and how could [it] come-to-be? For if [it] came-to-be, [it] is not, nor [is it] if at some time [it] is going to be.77

Here, at b8.19–20, the goddess explicitly rules out any account of the nature of a thing that is predicated on what-is-going-to-be in the future (μέλλει ἔσεσθαι), arguing that becoming implies beginning from what-is-not.78 On a Parmenidean understanding, Euripides’ use of μέλλω at 7b thus involves an illegitimate mix of what-is and what-is-not that can only send a traveller astray from the genuine path of inquiry (the Alētheia).79 But if that is so, then it is abundantly clear that the apparent non sequitur from our bemused interlocutor that follows at 8a, Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; (by which he means ‘And so, I must not see . . . ?’, cf. 5, 7a), is no non sequitur at all;80 77 78

79

80

Text and trans. Gallop (1984). See Mourelatos (2008) 102–14; Palmer (2009) 140–50; Curd (1998) 79–80; Gallop (1984) 13–14. For μέλλω expressing ‘future realization of present intention or arrangement’ (and, hence, two semantic notions, present intention/expectation and future realization), and its possible relations to the future indicative, see Wakker (2006) esp. 247 and (1994) 168– 73; cf. Goodwin (1889) 20, 146–7; see Markopoulos (2009) 20–33, esp. 31–2, for the capacity of both future and present infinitival complements of the verb to convey reference to the future; and cf. Willi (2003a) 257–8 (noting Ar.’s preference for the construction with the present infinitive). For the absence of a non sequitur at 8a: against Parmenides’ strictures against futurity at 28b8.5–21 DK (which, at 28b8.20 DK, significantly, themselves exploit the semantic properties of μέλλω as a verb denoting not simply future being but future beginning, to

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rather, it is precisely the right inference (indicated by ἆρα)81 to draw for any traveller judging the Euripidean λόγος at 5 by running its constituent ideas of modal negation (οὐ δεῖ, ‘tested’ at 7a) and futurity (ὄψει, judged in light of 7b) through the tests of the ἔλεγχος. In turn, the fact that 8a is then affirmed by Euripides’ echoing tongue at 8b (Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ. ‘Not . . . at any rate, whatever you must hear’) simply provides the cue to recap what has been learnt so far in this ἔλεγχος (at 10: Κη. οὐ φῂς χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; ‘So you’re saying I should not hear and not see?’). Indeed, the best way to bring all this out, without losing its comic flavour, is in the form of an internal monologue set in the midst of our unfolding exchange: ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΗΣ ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε πάνθ’ ὅσ’ αὐτίκα ὄψει παρεστώς. Κη.πῶς λέγεις; αὖθις φράσον. 7a οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν.

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5

7b

extrapolate upon the prohibition of what ‘will be’ at 28b8.5 DK, see Gallop (1984) 14), 7a–8b read as follows: from 7a, ‘Not [-hear] . . . whatever you are (going) to see’, our Parmenidean interlocutor infers (ἆρα; cf. p. 15 n. 8): 8a, ‘So I must not see?’, because if you ‘are going to see’ you must not be seeing right now; ‘going-to’ implies a beginning that is yet to be, and what is yet to be is not. But note also that the word order between infinitive, modal and negation, which is reshuffled at 7a from Euripides’ original order (5) and echoed by the poet character at 7b, moves back at 8a (again, echoed at 8b) to that of Euripides’ original statement (at 5) creating a Doxa-like circularity to 5–8 (cf. Austin and Olson (2004) ad 5–10, 7–8; my p. 18 n. 14). 8a therefore reissues the comic ambiguity of Euripides’ opening use of δεῖ at 5 (see my p. 14 n. 6), whose interpretation by our interlocutor as ‘must not-’ rather than ‘needn’t’ is made explicit by his subsequent shift of word order at 7a, but which here is left suitably unmarked by the scope of the negation: 8a: ‘So I need not see . . .?’ Instead of clarifying his meaning, Euripides’ reply at 8b then simply swallows this inference up in another relative conditional clause which recapitulates the fundamental opposition between hearing and seeing that we have just seen at 7b: (8a, ‘So, I need not see . . .?’ 8b, ‘E. [need] Not [–see?] . . . whatever you must hear.’). For, just as the poet character’s reply there at 7b unwittingly sanctions the deliberate shift in negation which ushers in the Doxa at 7a, so, here at 8b, his response thus at once sanctions our interlocutor’s translation of μέλλω into negation of the possibility of present seeing and plays into the hands of the interlocutor by failing, just as before, to disambiguate the central comic ambiguity of 5: is the sense of 8a ‘needn’t . . . see?’, which Euripides’ reply to it presupposes, or ‘mustn’t . . . see?’ (or even (judging from 7a), ‘must . . . not-see?’), as the interlocutor means? The culmination of the interlocutor’s exploitation of this ambiguity, and of the negation brought by futurity before it, is that Euripides is manoeuvred into committing himself quite unintentionally to an account of hearing and seeing which, from both sides of their pairing (7b, 8b), transforms each of these things into mutually exclusive opposites. See my following discussion. On this ἆρα as inferential rather than interrogative, see p. 15 n. 8.

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o n w h at - [ it ] -is INTERNAL MONOLOGUE [K. thinks: ‘So I have to “not-hear” (7a/b) . . . “whatever I’m going to see” (7b), . . . which activity, for now, must not be, apparently (b8.19–20: . . . for if “I’m going to see” implies a beginning that is yet to be, . . . there is no seeing for me right now, obviously (8a)). So, it seems, I’m being told I must [not hear and] not see . . .! (8, extrapolated fully, in light of 8b, with χρή at 10).]82 8a

Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ. Κη. πῶς μοι παραινεῖς; δεξιῶς μέντοι λέγεις·

8b

οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν;

10

Signposts of the Doxa, 4. Explaining nothing: Euripides hopelessly astray on the path of the Doxa (11–13) His ears now surely also ringing with the laughter of the comic audience, Euripides’ response to this reductio ad absurdum is at 11: Ευ. χωρὶς γὰρ αὐτοῖν ἑκατέρου ᾿στὶν ἡ φύσις ([The view that I’m advocating (picking up παραίνω at 9) is this . . .] ‘. . . the nature of each of the two of them is distinct . . .’). It moves us ever more deeply into the mortal error of the Doxa at b8.50–61, showing us explicitly Euripides’ conflation of what-is and what-is-not, for, though believing himself to be speaking about what-is (hearing and seeing),83 by falling into the trap of treating his interlocutor’s conjunctively paired senses (at 10) singly, what he unwittingly now begins to give is its opposite: an account of what-is-not (11, ‘(not-)hearing is just different from (not-)seeing . . . [Look, I’ll explain . . . cue 13–18]’); which thereby affirms his place among the ‘two-headed’ (δίκρανοι, b6.5) mortals of b6, another mistaken traveller who believes himself to be on the positive route of what-[something]-is, but who, by (unknowingly) speaking of what-[it]-is-not (b6.8–9), shows himself to be hopelessly circling on the path of the Doxa. 82

83

For parallelism of use of χρή between Euripidean tragedy and Parmenides, see Mourelatos (2008) 206–7, who observes that in the work of both poets, the word is infused with the same ‘element of censure’; see E. Med. 573, Hipp. 925; Parm. 28b1.30 DK. Picking up on the interlocutor’s use of χρή at 10: see my earlier exegesis, esp. p. 19: ‘for this is not a matter of what should be, but a matter of what is . . .’

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Yet if Euripides is just like those mortals, ‘by whom it [sc. whatis] has been supposed to be and not to be the same and not the same’, i.e. ‘to be subject to both being and not being’ (οἷς τὸ πέλειν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶναι ταὐτὸν νενόμισται | κοὐ ταὐτόν, b6.8–9),84 then his appeal to φύσις as the principle upon which this radical separation rests does not resonate as a claim about ‘nature’ in a general sophistic late fifth-century sense, that is, as opposed to νόμος.85 In Parmenides the concept of φύσις is associated not with the quest for ‘genuine nature’86 but with mortal doctrines of becoming, the δίζησις for origins (as it is here, cf. 13–18) as opposed to ἀληθείη or the essence of being; hence it occurs explicitly only in the Doxa (b10.1; 10.5; 16.3).87 Thus, its explicit use here already speaks of the mortal cosmology that will manifest itself fully in our backward-turning poet’s (backward) turn to aetiology and Aither just a few lines later at 13–18 (another stamp of the thought of the Doxa, εἴσῃ δ’ αἰθερίην τε φύσιν τά τ’ ἐν αἰθέρι πάντα ∣ σήματα . . ., b10.1–2, b8.55–9). But for now there is more fun to be had from it in the ἔλεγχος: Euripides’ inability correctly to distinguish what-is and what-is-not is milked for laughs as his appeal to origins is checked against the twin negations (first spoken at 10) to which, quite nonsensically, it seems to refer: Κη. τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; ‘What, not-hearing and not-seeing?’ [is/are88 separate by nature, i.e. origin, growth?!] Ευ. εὖ ἴσθ’ ὅτι. ‘Exactly!’∣Κη. πῶς χωρίς; . . . ‘How so?’ . . . (12–13), prompting Euripides to muster a cosmological μῦθος by way of an answer:

84 85

86 87

88

See Palmer (2009) 115–16 for this construal of 28b6.8–9 DK. This is true even if a broad general sense of φύσις as ‘“essence” or “nature”, the way a thing is made’ (which includes the idea of growth), is precisely what Euripides means, see Kirk (1954) 228, cited by Mourelatos (2008) 62. For the usual reading of φύσις as ‘nature’ as opposed to νόμος, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad 11, and my earlier exegesis, pp. 19–27. Understood as the ‘essence’ of a thing, rather than ‘beginning’, or ‘becoming’. Or in contexts ‘which bring out [. . .] the sense of “becoming” in the stem φυ-’. Mourelatos (2008) 62–3; Curd (1998) 47 n. 65. As Mourelatos (2008) 247 says, ‘Parmenides is telling us that mortals turn the legitimate quest for ἀληθείη into a misguided adventure after “origins” . . .’ Here, at 12, as at their first airing at 10, and their subsequent one at 19, the negated verbs are active in both their conjunctive and disjunctive pairings; see my exegesis pp. 18–21 and p. 21 n. 21.

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o n w h at - [ it ] -is Ευ. χωρὶς γὰρ αὐτοῖν ἑκατέρου ᾿στὶν ἡ φύσις. Κη. τοῦ μήτ’ ἀκούειν μήθ’ ὁρᾶν; Ευ. εὖ ἴσθ’ ὅτι. Κη. πῶς χωρίς; Ευ. οὕτω ταῦτα διεκρίθη τότε. Αἰθὴρ γάρ, ὅτε τὰ πρῶτα διεχωρίζετο καὶ ζῷ’ ἐν αὑτῷ ξυνετέκνου κινούμενα, ᾧ μὲν βλέπειν χρή, πρῶτ’ ἐμηχανήσατο ὀφθαλμὸν ἀντίμιμον ἡλίου τροχῷ, ἀκοῆς δὲ χοάνην ὦτα διετετρήνατο. Κη. διὰ τὴν χοάνην οὖν μήτ’ ἀκούω μήθ’ ὁρῶ; νὴ τὸν Δί’ ἥδομαί γε τουτὶ προσμαθών. [K. You’re saying that I should not either hear or see?] E. That the nature of each of the two of them is distinct. K. What, of not-hearing and not-seeing? E. Exactly! K. [Ha! The nature of not-hearing-and-not-seeing is . . .] Distinct, in what way . . .? E. This is how they were distinguished long ago: When Aither first was separating itself out, and begetting living, moving beings within itself, that with which one must see, it crafted first, the eye, ‘in imitation of the solar disc’,89 and for hearing, bored the ear as a funnel. K. Aha! So, because of this funnel I’m neither to hear nor to see? I’m beside myself to have learnt that!

12

14

20 10

14

20

Signposts of the Doxa, 5. Final proofs, the root of all mortal error: b8.50–61 and Euripides’ backward turn to beginnings (13–18) But as Euripides finally turns to his cosmology, at 13–18, what is really seen is his ἀλοῶν, his circular wandering, arriving back at its own beginnings; for this story of the genesis of hearing and seeing also takes its audience to the very roots of the deceptive ontology of the Doxa (at b8.50–61) wherein those wandering mortals of b6 first go astray (πεπλανημένοι, b8.54; the comic irony is perfect). In fifth-century terms (which means in isolation from this scene), its theory of the coming-into-being of separate sense 89

Cf. Aët. iv 13.9–10 (= 28a48 DK), who alludes to a Parmenidean theory of the visual ray.

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organs, at 14–18, seems quite typical,90 even plausible, just as the (Doxastically) ‘appropriate’ (ἐοικώς, b8.60) cosmology of the Doxa at b8.53–60 appears so to the eyes of uncritical mortals (ἄκριτα φῦλα, b6.7).91 But, as those who are properly attuned to the ‘signposts’ (σήματα, b8.2) that mark out the route of what-is already know (by lessons just learned, μανθάνω, 20, but implicitly active from 7; b1.31, b8.51–2),92 the way to and from this poet’s cosmology is not based on what-is but, rather, on what-is not; and it has been shown to be so, by the utter failure of all the ontological assumptions it has generated to pass the tests of the ἔλεγχος (7–8, 10, 12). As these fallacies of thought are now followed back to their point of origin by means of Euripides’ backward turn to beginnings, they throw into relief the fundamental mortal error described by the goddess at b8.53–60. Just like the mortals there, it is this poet’s belief that what he describes with his story of the primordial (physical) ‘separation’ (κρίσις, cf. διακρίνω, 13; κρίνω, b8.55) and ‘placing apart’ (χωρίς, 11, 13, διαχωρίζω, 14; b8.56) of two primary forms are senses that are (by φύσις) genuinely independent and ontologically distinct. But that belief is mistaken, for what he has already committed himself to in the trials of the ἔλεγχος (7–8) is the 90

91

92

See my pp. 24–5 nn. 28–9; for the possible conflation of Empedoclean ideas in Euripides’ cosmology, see my earlier discussion pp. 23–5. For the play of positive and negative senses in Parmenides’ ἐοικώς (‘appropriate’, ‘fitting’, ‘probable’, and ‘specious’, ‘likely seeming’), see Mourelatos (2008) 231; and Bryan (2012) 58–113, who understands the ambivalence to connote ‘subjectively plausible but objectively false’ (74). As Curd (1998) 113–14 notes, μανθάνω implies ‘learning and understanding by performing an act of judgment’. In Parmenides’ proem there is a development between the sorts of learning the traveller is exhorted to perform: the use at 28b1.28 DK of πυνθάνομαι (of the Alētheia and the Doxa), a word which may denote learning by another’s exposition as much as by one’s own experience (cf. Robbiano (2006) 52–3), is supplemented just a few lines later at 28b1.31 DK by the use of μανθάνω (of the Doxa), which implies learning or understanding acquired by performing an act of judgement oneself; cf. the goddess’s imperative to her audience (stressed by enjambement) when introducing her account of the Doxa at 28b8.51–2 DK, δόξας δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦδε βροτείας∣μάνθανε κόσμον ἐμῶν ἐπέων ἀπατηλὸν ἀκούων. The same development is also present in our prologue: our traveller moves from requesting to learn, πυθέσθαι, Euripides’ reasoning at 4, to presenting what he has learnt through his own judgement at the end of the scene, using μανθάνω (20). The moment of transition between these two sorts of learning is signalled by Ar.’s comic exploitation of Parmenides’ goddess’s ‘deceptive ordering of words’ in our traveller’s deliberate actual shift of word order (at 7, ‘I need not-hear?’); a rearrangement of Euripides’ words at 5, which constitutes the first test of the ἔλεγχος and thus signals the beginning of our prologue’s dialogical exposition of the Doxa.

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position that these two seemingly independent things are not ontologically separate at all; rather, they form a ‘dualism of opposites’:93 7a Κη. οὐ δεῖ μ’ ἀκούειν;

Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν.

7b

K. I must not-hear? E. Not [-hear], at any rate, whatever you’re going to see. [K. thinks: ‘So I have to “not-hear” (7a/b) . . . “whatever I’m going to see” (7b), . . . which activity, for now, must not be, apparently (b8.19–20): . . . for if my beginning to see is going to be, . . . there is no seeing right now, obviously (8a).’

8a Κη. οὐδ’ ἆρ’ ὁρᾶν δεῖ μ’; K. And so, I must not see?

Ευ. οὐχ ἅ γ’ ἂν ἀκούειν δέῃ.

8b

E. [Must]Not[see], at any rate, whatever you must hear.

This ἔλεγχος offers a set of propositions (or assumptions) from our poet about the natures of hearing and seeing. Euripides’ replies, at 7b and 8b, show him to be on the path of the Doxa, for he fails to practise the essential κρίσις of the Alētheia that guides travellers to the genuine path of what-is: ἔστιν ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν; (‘is it or is it not?’, b8.16). Instead, quite unwittingly, he blissfully echoes both the deceptive shift of negation that ushers in the Doxa at 7a (‘. . . nothear?’ echoed at 7b: E. ‘Not[-hear] . . .’), and the negation of 8a (‘. . . -not see?’ echoed at 8b: E. ‘Not[-see] . . .’), and so, without realizing it, he produces an account of hearing (7b) and seeing (8b) in terms that are wholly negative. Hopelessly astray from what-is, our poet (unknowingly) tells his follower that he must ‘not-hear whatever he is to see’ (7b) and ‘not-see whatever he must hear’ (8b), thereby implicitly binding together each of these things (hearing and seeing) as interrelated opposites. For on this λόγος, to be hearing is to be not-seeing and to be seeing is to be nothearing; and thus to be both hearing and seeing is to be neither hearing nor seeing at all (or should be), just like all those other followers of the Doxa at b6 who helplessly wander along this same backward-turning path ‘deaf and blind alike’ (κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, b6.7 (which is the implication drawn on-stage, and repeatedly stressed, by our interlocutor: οὐ φῂς σὺ χρῆναί μ’ οὔτ’ ἀκούειν οὔθ’ ὁρᾶν; 10, 12, 19)). 93

The phrase is Curd’s (1998) 106.

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Yet if hearing and seeing are each to be distinguished in terms of what the other is not (7b, 8b), then they are not ontologically separate at all; rather, to speak of one is to imply the negation of the other (and vice versa) and, thereby, implicate oneself in a dualism that is forever backward-turning (παλίντροπος, b6.9; e.g. . . . to be hearing is to be not-seeing . . . which is to be hearing . . . which is to be not-seeing . . . and so on). In Parmenidean terms, each of this poet’s opposites is therefore ‘an illegitimate mix of what-is and what-is-not’, for its nature is thoroughly intertwined with its counter.94 Thus, whilst Euripides’ cosmology of seeing and hearing at 13–18, may posit the existence of two seemingly independent primary forms/senses (telling a story of the physical separation (διακρίνω, 13) of the eye and the ear), the λόγος it has generated in the ἔλεγχος has already revealed that the natures of its opposites are actually co-dependent, based upon a mixture of what-is and what-isnot that can only lay out a negative route of inquiry. Thrown into this light by our persistent interlocutor, it is thus a close analogue of the mortal cosmology of the Doxa described by the goddess at b8.50– 61:95 ἐν τῷ σοι παύω πιστὸν λόγον ἠδὲ νόημα ἀμφὶς ἀληθείης· δόξας δ’ ἀπὸ τοῦδε βροτείας μάνθανε κόσμον ἐμῶν ἐπέων ἀπατηλὸν ἀκούων. μορφὰς γὰρ κατέθεντο δύο γνώμας96 ὀνομάζειν· τῶν μίαν οὐ χρεών ἐστιν – ἐν ᾧ πεπλανημένοι εἰσίν – ἀντία97 δ’ ἐκρίναντο δέμας καὶ σήματ’ ἔθεντο χωρὶς ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων, τῇ μὲν φλογὸς αἰθέριον πῦρ, ἤπιον ὄν, μέγ’ ἐλαφρόν, ἑωυτῷ πάντοσε τωὐτόν,

94

95

96 97

50

55

Each of these observations is also applicable to the opposites at the heart of the Doxa, as noted by Curd (1998) 106–10; see 107 for this sort of ‘enantiomorphic’ opposition, with each opposite ‘defined in terms of what the other is not’; 109 for the backward-turning account generated by such a dualism. Quotation: 110. See Curd (1998) 122–3: ‘The account of the natures of the opposite forms Parmenides gives in lines b8.55–9 shows that, despite the appearance of two separate entities, each of which has its own positive and complete nature, a system of enantiomorphic opposites actually imports what-is-not into the very heart of a cosmological system. Despite thinking that they are on the positive route of inquiry, all theorists who depend on opposites [cf. our 7b–8b] and who insist that coming-to-be and passing-away are real [cf. our 7b] (and this includes most of Parmenides’ predecessors) are actually on the negative route . . .’ For the reading of γνώμας, see my p. 94 n. 135. Following one MS, see Palmer (2009) 386; DK emend to τἀντία on the basis of 28b8.59.

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o n w h at - [ it ] -is τῷ δ’ ἑτέρῳ μὴ τωὐτόν· ἀτὰρ κἀκεῖνο κατ’ αὐτό τἀντία νύκτ’ ἀδαῆ, πυκινὸν δέμας ἐμβριθές τε. τόν σοι ἐγὼ διάκοσμον ἐοικότα πάντα φατίζω, ὡς οὐ μή ποτέ τίς σε βροτῶν γνώμη παρελάσσῃ.

61

Here I stop my trustworthy speech to you and thought 50 About reality; from here onwards mortal beliefs Learn, listening to the deceitful ordering of my words. For they decided to name two forms, Of which it is obligatory not to name one – wherein they have gone astray – And they distinguished opposites in body and established signs 55 Apart from one another: here, on the one hand, aitherial fire of flame, Which is gentle, very light, everywhere the same as itself, But not the same as the other; but on the other hand, that one too by itself In contrast, dark night, a dense and heavy body; All this arrangement I proclaim to you as plausible; Thus no opinion of mortals shall ever get ahead of you.98 61

Having set out the way of what-is (b8.1–49), here, at b8.50–61, the goddess turns her attention to relating the fundamental error of mortal beliefs, the first mistake made along their circling way. Mortals flounder from the Alētheia at the ‘very beginning’ of their attempts to account for the nature of reality, she implies, for they found their Doxastically ‘fitting’ (ἐοικώς, b8.60) cosmology on a dualism of primary forms that are ontologically unsound (b8.53–60).99 Just like the eye and the ear of Euripides’ cosmology, these primary forms or μορφαί (named at b9 as Light and Night), have been (physically) distinguished (κρίνω, b8.55; cf. διακρίνω, 13) in visible body (δέμας) as opposites (ἀντία, b8.55); but the mortals of the Doxa have also established ‘signs’ (or ‘qualities’, σήματα)100 that recapitulate this dualism and have set these apart 98 99

100

Trans. Gallop (1984) modified. The positive associations of ἐοικώς of the opinions of mortals, which taken on their own Doxastical terms are ‘fitting’, are emphasized by Cherubin (2005) 9–10; Robbiano (2006) 182–4; Palmer (2009) 162–3. For ambivalence in the term when seen through the eyes of the ‘man who knows’, see Mourelatos (2008) 231; cf. Bryan (2012) 54–113, esp. 77. My exegesis of ‘mortal error’ is indebted to the interpretation of the Doxa offered by Curd (1998) 98–110, quotation: 110. As Mourelatos (2008) 250 notes: ‘In “Doxa” [. . . σήματα] is used with reference to the various manifestations of the dualism [constituted by the κρίσις of contraries at 28b8.55 DK].’ Note that this is a physical κρίσις, a separation in δέμας, rather than the logical κρίσις between what-is and what-is-not that is at the heart of the Alētheia, see my p. 118 n. 201, p. 132 n. 240, p. 138 n. 252; cf. Coxon (2009) ad 7.3–6. See Mourelatos (2008) 222 on the shared vocabulary of the Doxa and the Alētheia; σήματα as both ‘signs’ and

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from one another as well (χωρὶς ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων, B8.56; cf. 11; διαχωρίζω, 14). As the goddess describes these signs, at b8.56–9, it is clear that they too find analogues in the set of opposites shaped from seeing and hearing (also explicitly χωρίς, 11) in the λόγος given by our backward-turning poet (7b, 8b).101 For the contrary σήματα of the Doxa, tacitly reveal that Light and Night here also have each been distinguished only in terms of what the other is not: thus although Light (evoked at b8.56–7 through its assigned perceptual properties as φλογὸς αἰθέριον πῦρ,∣ἤπιον ὄν, μέγ’ ἐλαφρόν, ‘an aitherial flame of fire,∣mild, greatly light’) is characterized as ἑωυτῷ πάντοσε τωὐτόν, ‘in every way the same as itself’, it is also emphatically τῷ δ’ ἑτέρῳ μὴ τωὐτόν· ‘not the same as the other’ (b8.57–8; cf. b6.8–9), and for each property allocated to it there is an appropriate opposite given to Night (it is τἀντία νύκτ’ ἀδαῆ, πυκινὸν δέμας ἐμβριθές τε: ‘by contrast, dark night, a dense and heavy body’, b8.59).102 Hence, in this cosmology: ‘to be Light is to be not-Night, and to be Night is to be not-Light’.103 For Parmenides, as for our interlocutor, herein lie the ontological failings of mortal cosmology and the root of the deception at its core:104 whilst mortals posit two primary forms that appear to be quite independent, as soon as they attempt to give an account of either, they will stray, two-headed, just like Euripides, onto the path of what-is-not to wander a route that is endlessly παλίντροπος (b6.9; cf. ἀλοῶν, 2). Like his story of origins, at 13–18, and like all others that posit such opposites as their principal forms, the cosmology of the Doxa and the beliefs of mortals are worthy of ‘no true trust’ (οὐ . . . πίστις ἀληθής, b1.30) because, despite their (subjectively plausible) appearances, the opposites upon which they are based are not ontologically basic or genuinely independent.105 Rather, whether revealed through Euripides’ λόγος of hearing and

101

102

103 105

82

‘attributes’, see Palmer (2009) 139 (on the Alētheia); and on the interpretative challenges presented by the σήματα of either section of the poem, see J. Barrett (2004) 275–6, 286– 7, with my discussion, pp. 93–115. To this extent, hearing and seeing also recall the σήματα of the Doxa spoken about by the goddess at 28b10.1–2 DK (i.e. those mortal σήματα in the aither whose origins will be revealed): εἴσῃ δ’ αἰθερίην τε φύσιν τά τ’ ἐν αἰθέρι πάντα ∣ σήματα . . . See Curd (1998) 106–8 and Cherubin (2005) 4–8 on how these (sensible) qualities expose the enantiomorphism of the (ostensibly separate) forms. Cf. Mourelatos (2008) 242–6. Curd (1998) 108; Cherubin (2005) 7–8. 104 Curd (1998) 109. Curd (1998) 109.

o n w h at - [ it ] -is

seeing or the mortal σήματα of Light and Night, the natures of these contraries are interwoven in such a way as for each to present an illegitimate (con)fusion of what-is and what-is-not, and thus a theoretical beginning from which any traveller setting out is already astray (cf. b9.3–4; indeed, all opposites in the ἐοικὼς διάκοσμος (b8.60) of the Doxa are thus contaminated).106 Yet all this becomes apparent only if such cosmologies are put to the test in an ἔλεγχος.107 It is this process that is performed in 1–19 of our prologue. But the genius of this comic realization lies in how Aristophanes crafts his enactment of the mortal error of b8.50–61, implicitly assuming the role of Parmenides’ goddess by first evoking the physical predicament of mortal confusion (with a backward-turning path of parodic circling: ἀλοῶν, 2, recapitulating her first mention of mortals at b6);108 then framing the ensuing exchange around an inquiry into route (4–6; b6); taking his audience directly into the thought-world of the Doxa with the deceptive 106

107

108

See Gallop (1984) 11: ‘Mortal error consists not in the naming of two forms per se but in treating them as mutually exclusive, so that in any given context “it is not right to name one”.’ For the Doxa’s ἐοικὼς διάκοσμος as thoroughly contaminated with this sort of enantiomorphic opposition, see Curd (1998) 108 and esp. Cherubin (2005) 8–15: the Light/Night framework set out by the goddess is operative implicitly in all mortal ways of thinking: it is a conception which ‘can provide a foundation (albeit for the goddess a flawed one) for the way mortals customarily speak of the sensible world and the way they speak of distinct things in general’ (9). Indeed: ‘it [sc. the Light/Night schema] seems to provide requisites for description of the kinds of sensory experiences mortals say they have’ (8). Cf. my p. 86 n. 112, p. 138 n. 252, p. 140 n. 257. Significantly, the principal Euripidean cosmological precedents supposed by Sommerstein (1994) ad 11–18 to underlie Ar.’s parodic cosmology of 13–18 not only feature reworkings of traditional ideas (e.g. Hes. Th. 154–206) in fifth-century philosophical terms but do so by positing the distinguishing of primal forms in language similar enough to Parm. 28b8.53–6 DK to provide grist for Ar.’s comic mill in Th., see E. fr. 484.2–3 (Kannicht) (the separation from what was originally a single form (μορφὴ μία) of two forms (οὐρανός τε γαῖά τ’) set apart from one another (ἐχωρίσθησαν ἀλλήλων δίχα), and which together beget all things) and fr. 839.13–14 (Kannicht) (stating that none of the things that come into being perish but each is distinguished one from another and exhibits a different form (διακρινόμενον δ’ ἄλλο πρὸς ἄλλου∣μορφὴν ἑτέραν ἀπέδειξεν)). Whatever philosophical influences might inform these examples (on which see my p. 25 n. 29), they are clearly enough to provide a basis for Th.’s comic caricature and elentic testing of Euripides as an eclectic fabricator of ‘likely seeming’ cosmologies founded upon two primary forms. Significantly, b6’s description of the physical symptoms of the wandering thought of the mortal authors of the cosmology given in the Doxa section of the poem (28b8.52ff. DK) occurs in the Alētheia section (i.e. in Parmenides’ revelation, as in our comic prologue, their backward-turning path is presented to us before we receive an exposé of the cognitive error that causes it).

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order of his words (7a; b8.51–2); staging the cognitive symptoms of mortal fallacy (7b, 8b; b7.4–5), and exposing the full reality of our poet’s ludicrous path with his nonsensical negative accounts of hearing and seeing in the trials of the ἔλεγχος (7–10; b8.55); before, finally, tracing their fallacious separation back in this poet’s own λόγος to the seemingly plausible (ἐοικώς) cosmology from which it derives (13–18; b8.53–60). From 7a, what the goddess of Parmenides’ poem compacts into one cosmology, at b8.50–61, our prologue therefore splits between dialogical exposition (ἔλεγχος) and cosmological epideixis. With that Euripidean turn to cosmology, at 13–18, its comic dramatization of the fundamental mortal error at b8.50–61 is, thus, in theory, fully realized (the practice is yet to come, cf. 25–8, with my pp. 87–113). But the jokes with which it is now met, at 19 and 24, continue to exploit its fallacies. Euripides’ μῦθος for the last time: Ευ.

οὕτω ταῦτα διεκρίθη τότε. Αἰθὴρ γάρ, ὅτε τὰ πρῶτα διεχωρίζετο καὶ ζῷ’ ἐν αὑτῷ ξυνετέκνου κινούμενα, ᾧ μὲν βλέπειν χρή, πρῶτ’ ἐμηχανήσατο ὀφθαλμὸν ἀντίμιμον ἡλίου τροχῷ, ἀκοῆς δὲ χοάνην ὦτα διετετρήνατο. Κη. διὰ τὴν χοάνην οὖν μήτ’ ἀκούω μήθ’ ὁρῶ; νὴ τὸν Δί’ ἥδομαί γε τουτὶ προσμαθών. οἷόν γε πού ᾿στιν αἱ σοφαὶ ξυνουσίαι. Ευ. πόλλ’ ἂν μάθοις τοιαῦτα παρ’ ἐμοῦ. Κη. πῶς ἂν οὖν πρὸς τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς τούτοισιν ἐξεύροιμ’ ὅπως ἔτι προσμάθοιμι χωλὸς εἶναι τὼ σκέλει; E. This is how they were distinguished long ago: When Aither first was separating itself out, and begetting living, moving beings within itself, that with which one must see, it crafted first, the eye, ‘in imitation of the solar disc’,109 and for hearing, bored the ear as a funnel. K. Aha! So, because of this funnel I’m neither to hear nor to see? I’m beside myself to have learnt that! Intellectual conversations are really something!

109

84

Cf. Aët. iv 13.9–10 (= 28a48 DK).

14

20

24 14

20

o n w h at - [ it ] -is E. Many such things you could learn from me. K. So how, in addition to these fine things, might I discover how I might yet learn to be lame in my legs?

22 24

As ludicrous as it may sound, the interlocutor’s very next question, at 19, in response to Euripides’ cosmology, is absolutely right:110 according to Euripides’ λόγος it is precisely because of (and through, διά) that ‘funnel’111 (ἡ χοάνη, 19), or rather, the deceptive physical κρίσις that it represents (cf. διακρίνω, 13; διαχωρίζω, 14; διατετραίνω, 18; ἐοικὼς διάκοσμος, b8.60), that he apparently is neither to hear nor to see (Κη. διὰ τὴν χοάνην οὖν μήτ’ ἀκούω μήθ’ ὁρῶ; 19, its force: ‘So . . . it’s because I have a hole in my head for hearing . . . [but physically distinct organs, eyes, for seeing,] that I’m not to hear and not to see . . .?). It is in this first setting up of physically separate opposites that our backward-turning poet’s (quite unwitting) negation of hearing and seeing begins (the logic runs something like this: the ear and the eye are deemed to be physically different, and therefore, ontologically distinct . . . but not really . . . for to hear is to not-see, and to see is to not-hear (7b, 8b); to do one or the other is possible (though not without straying onto the Doxa, cf. my pp. 87–113), but to do both . . . Which is a problem, not least in a theatre). This has been the comic lesson learnt (μανθάνω, 20) throughout the trials of this ἔλεγχος and the destination already set for any follower of our poet’s meandering νόος by

110

111

Contra Austin and Olson (2004) ad 19, who compare Clouds 227–8 ‘where Strepsiades offers a similarly puzzled response to Socrates’ closing remarks . . .’; however funny, 19 is no puzzled question; it is a logical inference, understandably incredulous because correct. Identification of the ear with a χοάνη elsewhere, cf. Pherecr. fr. 113.30–1 KA; IG I3 386.127; 387.144; Amyx 255–9; Pl. R. 411a. For the spatial and causal meanings of διά see Burnyeat (1976); for διά + acc. as ‘through’, see LSJ s.v. B.I, ‘So it’s through the funnel (i.e. the ear, which is to say, by your λόγος) that I’m not to hear nor to see.’ I am grateful to Brian McGing for alerting me to the cumulative play on this meaning of διά. But it is also perhaps ‘through’ this ‘funnel’ in another sense that the mortal confusion of Euripides’ cosmology is implied: for if, as Rashed (2007) 27–9 has argued, Euripides’ ἀκοῆς δὲ χοάνην ὦτα διετετρήνατο (18) of the boring of the ear alludes to the original of Blass’ (1883) reconstruction of Emp. 31b84.9 DK ( χοάνῃσι δίαντα τετρήατο θεσπεσίῃσιν, of Aphrodite’s crafting of the eye), then this muddled redeployment of Presocratic sophia itself recapitulates Euripides’ comically confused conflation of the eye and the ear that the preceding ἔλεγχος has shown to infect his entire way of thinking, see my earlier discussion pp. 23–5.

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the goddess’s description of those mortals of b6 who wander ‘deaf and blind alike’ (κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, b6.7). But is there escape? Well, perhaps a last joke: it involves that attempt of our traveller, at 22–4, to free himself from Euripides’ backward-turning path by learning to go lame in both of his legs (σκέλη, 24). For the final irony of this (leg of the) journey is that following Euripides’ λόγος has taught our traveller to be deaf and blind and, thus, to be lame (χωλός) in one set of ‘(much-wandering) limbs’ (μελέων πολυπλάγκτων, b16.1), his sense organs, but not in those whose failure might actually help, his legs (σκέλη).112 To follow this Euripides is, aptly enough, rather, to end up lame and not-lame and, as it is voiced by our comic interlocutor at 24, the

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For Parmenides’ μέλεα ‘limbs’ at 28b16.1 DK as ‘sense organs’, see Popper (1963) 408–13, (1998) 73–6, 93 n. 12 (citing Arist. PA 1.645b36–646a1); Meijer (1997) 62– 7. Prior to Plato and Aristotle there is no specialized word in Greek for the sensory faculties or sense organs; the eyes and the ears are spoken of as ‘limbs’ (μέλεα or γυῖα) or ‘palms’ (παλάμαι), see, in addition to Parm. 28b16.1 DK, and Parmenides’ use of νωμάω ‘to move/ply’ (a word used in Homer of the knees, cf. Il. 10.358) of the eyes and ears of mortals at 28b7.4–5 DK, Emp. 31b2.1 and esp. b3.9–13 DK, where Empedocles’ use of γυῖα probably answers Parmenides’ depiction of the senses as mortals conceive of, and use, them at 28b16, b7 DK, with Meijer (1997) 64, and where Empedocles’ γυίων πίστις at 31b3.13 DK itself is a ‘delightful play’ on the expression χειρòς πίστις, Kingsley (2003) 590. Like other limbs, eyes significantly could also have ‘joints’ (ἄρθρα), see S. OT 1270. Arist.’s quotation of 28b16 DK (Metaph. 1009b22) has the variant μελέων πολυκάμπτων ‘much-bent limbs’, and κάμπτω is a word in Homer also often used of the knees; but Arist.’s πολυκάμπτων is generally regarded as less reliable than Theophrastus’ πολυπλάγκτων (at Sens. 3), see Coxon (2009) ad 17.1 (= 28b16.1 DK); Palmer (2009) 386–7; Passa (2009) 48. For σκέλη (which lack νόος) explicitly compared to (and contrasted with) the senses as both μέρη ‘members’ of the body, see Thphr. Sens. 47.10–13, 5.1, 2.7. Part of the joke here must be that Parmenides’ μελέων πολυπλάγκτων (28b16.1 DK) already evokes the idea of ‘the weary limbs of a luckless traveller’ and, reading μελέων as the adjective μέλεος, might even connote ‘[the confusion/muddle] of the wretched/luckless/miserable wanderers’: Mourelatos (2008) 255 and n. 83; but note also that Ar.’s comic concretization of Parmenides’ μέλεα here might exploit the possibility that in Parmenides the term connotes both the sense organs and the enantiomorphic opposites of the Doxa, see Hussey (2006) 17. Certainly, against our opening comic lines, the fact that the Homeric word μέλεα itself implies parts that, in their capacity as bearers of the muscular sinuosity or tension that enables flexibility, bend back on themselves (see Wersinger (2008) 56 and my p. 118 n. 201) is very suggestive: used of the senses in 28b16 DK (where the goddess speaks as a mortal), it perhaps implies that naïve mortals contend with duality and enantiomorphic opposition not only in the phenomenal world they discursively construct by positing the primal forms of Light and Night, but also inherently in the way they constitute their own senses (which are after all, in 28b16 DK, part of that Doxastical world so constructed). See my pp. 117–22, esp. p. 118 n. 201.

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only path of escape from that, is a path of no walking (24, cf. 25, Ευ. .Βάδιζε . . .).113 Journey’s end, or a fork in the road? Para-Doxa and the door seen (25–8) But if, as I have argued, the more astute listeners have laughed at the mortal error of Euripides during these early lines (1–24) and thus with the on-stage author of its comic exposé (our once merely exasperated, but now utterly aporetic traveller), that situation clearly changes at 25–8: Κη.

. . . ἐξεύροιμ’ ὅπως ἔτι προσμάθοιμι χωλὸς εἶναι τὼ σκέλει; Ευ. Βάδιζε δευρὶ καὶ πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν. Κη. ἰδού. Ευ. ὁρᾷς τὸ θύριον τοῦτο; Κη. νὴ τὸν Ἡρακλέα οἶμαί γε. Ευ. σίγα νῦν. Κη. σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον. Ευ. ἄκου’. Κη. ἀκούω καὶ σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον.

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K. . . . might I discover how I might yet learn to be lame in my legs? E. Just you hot-foot it over here and give me your νόος. K. There! 25 E. You see that door? K. By Herakles, I believe I do! E. Be still now! K. I’m being silent about the door. E. Listen . . . K. I’m listening and being silent about the door. 28

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This joke thus places a pointed philosophical spin on Euripides’ actual predilection for creating lame heroes, a habit that, at Frogs 846, earns him the title χωλοποιός; see also Ach. 410–11, 426–9; Peace 146–8. N. W. Slater’s (2002) 152 observation (extrapolated from Peace 146–8) that to learn to be lame from Euripides is to become one of his tragedies (something with which this traveller will be saddled several times before the day is out) is quite right but misses the philosophical critique that this comic parody of ‘tragic’ lameness articulates. My reading of the irony of line 24 follows Austin and Olson’s (2004) ad 22–4, who print Ellebodius’ ἐξεύροιμ’ ὅπως ἔτι προσμάθοιμι (endorsed also by Henderson (2000) and N. G. Wilson (2007a)) rather than R’s ἐξεύροιμ’ ὅπως ∣ ἔτι προσμάθοι μή . . ., which they find ‘metrical but nonsensical’. Yet against the understanding of σκέλη as ‘limbs’ here, R’s text may perhaps resonate as a last despairing aside to the audience about this Euripides’ ridiculous wanderings as a thinker who disables ‘limbs/sense organs’: Κη. πῶς ἂν οὖν ∣ πρὸς τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς τούτοισιν ἐξεύροιμ’ ὅπως ∣ ἔτι προσμάθοι μὴ χωλὸς εἶναι τὼ σκέλει; (‘K. So how might I discover in addition to these fine things [sc. how to go deaf and blind, be lame in one set of limbs] how he [sc. Euripides] could yet learn not to be lame in his [other set of limbs, his] legs?’). For further conjectures in emendation of R’s text, including προσμάθω μή endorsed by Gannon (1987) and others (‘. . . how I am also to learn not to be lame in both legs’), see Rogers (1904) ad loc. and 183.

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Having introduced this Euripides, and then made explicit in λόγος the error of his way (1–24; an ἔλεγχος staged, it is now apparent, so that no such ‘mortal thought’ shall get ahead of us on the journey of this play; cf. ὡς οὐ μή ποτέ τίς σε βροτῶν γνώμη παρελάσσῃ, b8.61), our traveller now falls back to following the fallacious footsteps of our poet, driven to this aporetic end not by timely application of the goddess’s κρίσις (at b8.15–16) but by the same comical helplessness that ‘drives’ (or ‘steers’) the faulty reasoning (or wandering νόος) of those two-headed mortals at b6 and b7 (. . . ἀμηχανίη γὰρ ἐν αὐτῶν∣στήθεσιν ἰθύνει πλακτὸν νόον·. . ., b6.5–6; cf. 24). Their predicament resonates with that of our traveller at 25 in another key respect also, for in Parmenides those who slip off the Alētheia back onto the path of Doxa and into ἀμηχανίη do so owing to their basic failure to control νόος (both ‘mind’ and ‘understanding’).114 As the goddess implies at b7, in their confusion about the nature of that which-is, mortals fail to direct their νόος to its natural object, what-is, (the only fruitful target for νόημα), and instead, unwittingly cause it to stray onto a path that implicitly invokes what-is-not, where, driven by helplessness, νόος can only wander, fruitlessly searching for a stable object, or a complete account (b6.5–9).115 Accordingly, the goddess’s exhortation to her traveller at b7 is to keep his νόος away from the path of mortal error, and, from its first aimless step, saying and thinking what-is-not (ἀλλὰ σὺ τῆσδ’ ἀφ’ ὁδοῦ διζήσιος εἶργε νόημα, b7.2), for there is nothing here for νόος to grasp.116 Doxai must be put to the test, to be sure, but only to the extent necessary for the validity of any claim to be a 114

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On the necessity for mortals to control νόος in Parmenides, see Lesher (1984) 27–9. As Curd (1998) 36 puts it: ‘[Mortal] Error results when noos is led astray or is not properly controlled and is allowed to wander away from its proper goal or object . . .’ A stable object is an object that meets the goddess’s criteria for what-is, i.e. an object that is ungenerated and deathless, complete, unchanging, motionless, permanent, a whole of a single kind: see 28b8.3–49 DK with Curd (1998) 75–94; a complete account of what-is is an account not predicated on or in any way involving negation, see my next note. For the commitment of νόος to what-is, see Mourelatos (2008) 164–93. As Curd (1998) 49–50 points out, an account of anything that involves negation can never be a complete or genuine account: such an account would merely say ‘it is not this, or this, or this . . .’ (49); it would thus render a ‘something’ into ‘not anything in particular, thus nothing at all, and so not something that can be said or thought’ (50 n. 73).

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genuine account of what-is to be determined in the trials of the ἔλεγχος (where, as we have seen, each test must always end in the fundamental κρίσις of the Alētheia: ἔστιν ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν; b8.16); the crucial point is that the instant the slightest intimation of what-is-not (‘that things that are not are’: εἶναι μὴ ἐόντα, b7.1) invalidates such an account, νόος should be withheld, and the negative path ahead swiftly abandoned (b7.2). In this lies the comic demise of our interlocutor (at 25–8); for, as our prologue begins, our traveller is already on the path of mortal confusion and, by explicating the fallacy implicit in every step of our poet’s thought (rather than simply abandoning it at the first sign of negation, (5)), he has steered his νόος further along this mistaken route, so that with every step of his comic exposé it has been set ever further astray from its proper object (i.e. what-is: b3; b6.1).117 His has been a comic δίζησις (a ‘delving into’), not into reality 117

This is expressly against the advice of the goddess, see 28b7.2 DK. In order to understand what is at stake in this instruction we might refer to the useful image offered by Curd (1998) 51 n. 75 of the tests or proofs (σήματα) that form the basis of the ἔλεγχος and that must be used to evaluate any route of inquiry. These she likens to ‘turnstiles’ that regulate passage along the path of what-is. These ‘turnstiles’ bar further access to the route of what-is if any of the various conditions which they represent are not met by an account of what-[a thing]-is (that a thing which-is is ‘ungenerable’ would be one such condition). But speaking about or thinking of what-[a thing]-is-not, as Euripides has done earlier, would equally invalidate any account and bar further productive travel. The next step for a traveller able to draw upon the insights of the Alētheia would be to restrain his νόος from slipping off onto the negative path that has opened ahead (b7.2) and redirect it to the path of what-is (continually testing that he is moving in the right direction at every step of the way by applying the proofs of b8). But the comic situation of our prologue begins with our traveller already astray on the mortal path, having allowed himself to be led onto this route by habit (explicitly the next thing warned against by the goddess after her warning against steering νόος to the negative path: μηδέ σ’ ἔθος πολύπειρον ὁδὸν κατὰ τήνδε βιάσθω, 28b7.3 DK); and, instead of retreating from the negative path as soon as he sees Euripides’ accounts fail the most basic criterion for a valid route of inquiry (that it not be predicated upon negation), our interlocutor sets about debunking it (7a, 8a). He begins a δίζησις not into what-is but into mortal fallacy, and thus, by thinking and speaking in terms of what-is-not, he is swept up himself in this fallacy (see my following discussion). Here, then, is the circular path of periodic regress comically enacted by 1–24: whilst previously our traveller followed Euripides’ path merely by habit (cf. 1–4; 28b7.3 DK), now, by critically engaging with our poet (i.e. by not restraining his νόος from this path, 6ff.; 28b7.2 DK), he is forced to do so by an incapacity that his own sardonic δίζησις (‘delving into’) has (unwittingly) authored; the joke is that whilst the comic audience have been shown the reality of Euripides’ fallacious thinking and, as we shall see, now have opportunity to escape its incapacitating path, all that our traveller has learnt through his ἔλεγχος is to be deaf and blind, lame and not-lame, i.e. to be precisely what he now becomes (25–8): an archetypal mortal carried along that forbidden way.

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(ἀληθείη) and what-is, but into (Euripidean) fallacy and what-is-not (or, if a δίζησις for reality, only for the reality of the underlying existence and nature of this essential fallacy). The irony of our earlier ἔλεγχος, then, is that our traveller’s explosion of Euripides’ mistaken way as invoking a path that is impossible to grasp (παναπευθές, b2.6) has been achieved only at the cost of his own νόος (which, directed to this end throughout, has, of course, been striving to grasp it!); for, in demonstrating that fact (sc. that this poet’s ἀλοῶν cuts a path wholly unlearnable, παναπευθές), our traveller’s νόος itself has been left wandering on that very path, bereft of any genuine objects upon which to fix (K. ‘. . . should nothear . . . not-see?! . . .’, 7a, 8a, 10, 12, 19), and fated ever to turn back on itself (K. ‘. . . seeing is not-hearing . . . which is seeing . . .?!’ 7b, 8b).118 Herein lies the comic epilogue of 1–24: by failing at the very outset to practise the essential κρίσις of the Alētheia (ἔστιν ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν; b8.16), our traveller also fails to let go of Euripides’ vacillations as ‘unthinkable’ (ἀνόητος, b8.17)119 and, thereby, to redirect his νόος to any genuine account of what-is (b7.2); and so he ends up, at 25–8, in ἀμηχανίη120 (cf. 19, 24), that is, not directing it (sc. his νόος) at all: 25, Ευ. . . . πρόσεχε τὸν 118 119

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His νόος will ever turn back on itself in search of a complete account. What is denied at 28b8.17 DK is not the thinkability per se of the way of what-is-not; rather this path is ἀνόητος ‘unthinkable’ insofar as it has no true object, and thus no ultimate destination; its end is ‘unthinkable’, see Hermann (2004) 201 n. 555. Cf. Parm. 28b6.5–9 DK. Note that the helplessness to which Euripides has reduced his audience by line 24, who should be both deaf and blind and comically entrapped in the condition of seeing yet not-seeing and hearing yet not-hearing, is a wonderful enactment of Parmenides’ evocation of the ἀμηχανίη of mortals who are both deaf and blind (b6.7) and driven on by their helplessness ‘to ply an aimless eye and ringing ear’ or to see but not-see, hear but not-hear (b7.4). For this as the proverbial condition of ἀμηχανίη (‘being without a μηχανή’ – the predicament that his Kinsman occupies throughout this play) elsewhere, cf. the archetypal state of human nature prior to the gift of technai from the gods tacitly evoked by use of this imagery in Hermes’ warning to the sole mortal witness of his thievery at Hymn. Herm. 91–2 (καί τε ἰδὼν μὴ ἰδὼν εἶναι καὶ κωφὸς ἀκούσας,∣καὶ σιγᾶν, ὅτε μή τι καταβλάπῃ τὸ σὸν αὐτοῦ) with Strauss Clay (1989) 115–16. As Strauss Clay has argued, these verses implicitly allude to the primitive (‘pre-agricultural, prepastoral, and pre-political’) and guileless condition of post-Promethean man before Hermes’ benefaction of civilizing τέχνη, the closest parallel to which is the state of the Odyssean Cyclops (who famously fails correctly to recognize (what-is and) what-is-not, cf. Hom. Od. 9.364–70). She compares Aeschylus’ cognate characterization of the natural human state of ἀμηχανίη prior to attaining the divine help of Prometheus, at Pr. 447–8: οἳ πρῶτα μὲν βλέποντες ἔβλεπον μάτην,∣κλύοντες οὐκ ἤκουον . . .. Cf. Heraclit. 22b34 DK; with Dem. 25.89 for the proverbial status of the expression. Cf. also Snell (1953) 60, 62.

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νοῦν. Κη. ἰδού. (E. [‘Lame?! Keep walking you, and . . .] give me your νόος.121 K. Have it!!’). Thus each reductio ad absurdum won earlier in the ἔλεγχος is now seen actually to have been recoiling silently on the head of its author;122 for this traveller, in fact, never abandoned the ‘no win’ path (οὐ γὰρ ἀνυστόν, b2.7),123 and, by failing to do so and continually redirecting his νόος back to it and to the δίζησις (‘delving into’) of Euripidean fallacies, he has set himself up only to arrive right back where he (and his audience) first began (εἰδὼς οὐδέν, b6.4; cf. 1–4) (though now comically incapacitated by all he has learned along the way – a proper Parmenidean mortal): another two-headed wanderer steered by a deceived and helpless νόος along the Doxa’s circling path (cf. b7.3), swept away (φοροῦνται, b6.6), equally deaf and blind (κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, b6.7, cf. 10, 12, 19; but also intellectually ‘dulled’ and ‘devoid of understanding’, cf. 27–8),124 amazed and uncritical (τεθηπότες, b6.7, cf. 19; or ‘dazed’, cf. 24; ἄκριτος, b6.7, cf. 27–8), able to ply only an eye that is unseeing (ἄσκοπον ὄμμα, b7.4): 26, Ευ. ὁρᾷς τὸ θύριον . . .; Κη. . . . οἶμαί γε (E. ‘See that little door? K. I think (?) I do . . . [do I?]’);125 an ear that gives false readings (ἠχήεσσα ἀκουή, b7.4): 27, Ευ. σίγα νῦν. Κη. σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον (E. ‘Be still now! K. I’m being silent about the door’); and a tongue that merely echoes (ἠχήεσσα . . . γλῶσσα, b7.4–5): 28, Ευ. ἄκου’. Κη. ἀκούω καὶ σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον (E. ‘[Just] Listen! K. [I’m just . . .] Listening and being silent about the door . . .ʼ).126 If the comedy of earlier lines focalizes the audience’s laughter through the wry observations of our traveller, milking the fact that 121 122

123 124

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For the usual meaning of this common expression, ‘Pay attention!’, see, e.g., Th. 381. Indeed, the only purpose of the ἔλεγχος is to determine which accounts of what-is contain intimations of what-is-not and fail the tests of the Alētheia. Those that do should be ‘cast aside with no further examination’: Curd (1998) 51 n. 75, 74. For the translation ‘no-win’, see Lesher (1984) 27. Curd (1998) 60; for κωφός as ‘dull’, see S. OT 370–1; for τυφλός used to characterize intellectual error, see Tarán (1965) ad loc. citing Pi. Pae. 7b 13ff.; and for ‘devoid of understanding’, see Chadwick (1996) 291. For οἶμαι as colloquial understatement, ‘of course’, ‘no doubt’, see Stevens (1976) 23; for the sense of γε as adding intensity to a positive answer, see Denniston (1954) 130–1; for the opposite sense, reading γε as limitive, ‘I think so (but I’m not entirely sure)’, see Rogers (1904) ad loc.; on both, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc., and my following discussion for the significance of its polyvalence here. Lines 26–8 also have an important hidden dimension, not strictly relevant here, to which I shall return.

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all that he has learnt by explicating this poet’s λόγος are the contradictory lessons of the Doxa,127 then this ironic twist in our traveller’s tale prompts a backward turn for them also, shifting their laughter from Euripides onto the now not-so-critical on-stage recipient of his tragic tuition.128 It also marks a transitional moment in terms of the play itself. With our traveller’s surrender of νόος, at 25, the audience will be no longer treated to an unmasking of the Doxa (not, at least, in these terms, and by him); rather, having been shown the hidden fallacy of Euripides’ ἐοικὼς διάκοσμος (b8.60), they now settle to laugh at this as it bedevils the minds of ἄκριτοι mortals; that is, as Doxa plays itself out disguised in all its ‘appropriate’, ‘likely seeming’ (ἐοικώς, b8.60), paradoxical (i.e. paraDoxastical), costume(s).129 From here on, that is, this audience will engage with a world of deception, wherein shifting perceptions cannot be trusted (but will be), and where meeting our traveller’s earlier injunctions to test for exactly what-is and what-is-not (and to question just where this poet is leading them) now falls solely to them (cf. ποῖ μ’ ἄγεις . . .; πῶς λέγεις; πῶς μοι παραινεῖς; 4, 6, 9). On this comic path, it will be for the spectators to implicate themselves in making the essential κρίσις our traveller never did, and to recognize his fate as their ironic warning: a comic exemplum of the dangers of being carried along by this Euripides instead. It is this shift at 25 to the surface level of Doxa, or, rather, to the phenomenal world of para-Doxa, as the basic philosophical realm of Aristophanes’ comedy, that explains the difficult lines at 27–8 (lines which, until now, I have presented as if quite 127 128

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A journey from πυθάνομαι, at 4, to μανθάνω, at 20, see p. 78 n. 92. Of course, this only sharpens the comic attack on Euripides by showing the audience the insidious effects of his teaching, for a full discussion of which see my conclusion. As Mourelatos (2008) 225–6 writes: ‘The ἔλεγχος [. . .] that the goddess issued to mortal men in b6 and b7 is that they do not realize that their positive terms could be shown to make reference to unqualified negation. Her argument in b8 was designed to reveal this discrepancy [. . .] But [in the Doxa section of the poem . . .] we find the reverse effect – not unmasking, but concealment.’ This switch in emphasis is paralleled in our prologue in the shift from our traveller’s theoretical exposition of the Doxa (at 1–24) to his unwitting exemplification of its comical surface symptoms or effects (at 25–8). See my p. 78 n. 91, p. 81 n. 99 for the possible play of negative and positive meanings in ἐοικώς, both ‘likely seeming, apparent, objectively specious’ and ‘fitting, appropriate, subjectively plausible’.

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unambiguous).130 Yet in order to appreciate fully their double meaning as final ironical signposts (σήματα) designed to signal that we are now watching two protagonists cognitively astray on the path of Doxa, we must turn back to Parmenides: as the goddess describes this fallacious route at b8.51–60 (which is to say, as mortals ‘knowing nothing’ (εἰδότες οὐδέν, b6.4) speak of it, for the goddess there speaks as a mortal), the path of what-is-and-is-not masquerades under a veneer of positive terms; ‘“Doxa” resembles “Truth”’ (Alētheia), indeed, therein lies its very ‘deceptiveness’, both for those who would avoid it, and for those already on it.131 Whilst believing themselves to be on a genuine route of inquiry, ‘mortals think and speak in terms which obscure or disguise’ from their eyes the reality that they are hopelessly astray from what-is, steered to their mistaken route by terms that implicitly bring with them negation (cf. to be ‘hearing’ [is . . . to be ‘not-seeing’]).132 But to the ‘man who knows’ (εἰδὼς φώς, b1.3), the fact of their mistaken way is revealed unwittingly; for whilst mortal speech both intends, and appears (at least to those εἰδότες οὐδέν) to be positive, it is laced with ambiguity, oxymoron and paradox. Throughout the Doxa, mortal imagery unwittingly conflates contrary ideas or, in syntax, turns back on itself, unknowingly giving rise to conflicting meanings, thereby revealing the reality of mortal two-headedness.133 The very first line of Doxa, spoken by the goddess at b8.53, there describing the first mistake made by mortals (the positing of two opposite forms), exemplifies this tendency for mortal language to engender contrary meanings (and thus to be received quite differently by two different audiences).134 Here, (at b8.53), the syntactical ambiguity of μορφὰς γὰρ κατέθεντο δύο γνώμας ὀνομάζειν·∣τῶν μίαν οὐ χρεών ἐστιν . . . generates a tension between the goddess’s surface portrayal of mortal cosmology, that: ‘they 130

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These lines have long troubled commentators, see my following discussion, esp. p. 95 n. 139, pp. 96–7 nn. 144, 146, p. 103 n. 164. Mourelatos (2008) 226. Mourelatos (2008) 176–7. See also Curd (1998) 59: ‘What Parmenides will show in b8 is that, despite appearances, mortals turn out to be on the negative path, though they think they are on the positive route.’ Mortal speech is laced with ‘amphilogy’, see Mourelatos (2008) 227–8; Curd (1998) 59–60. This example is taken from Mourelatos (2008) 228–30.

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laid down notions (i.e. they decided) to name two perceptible forms . . .’, and its deeper reality, a reality quite contrary to this first image, which yet surfaces through it, in the goddess’s revealing choice of word order (and γνώμας, pl.): κατέθεντο δύο γνώμας . . ., ‘they were of two minds . . . (i.e. they did not decide) to name perceptible forms . . .’135 For Parmenides, the question of whether or not the ironizing effect of this contrary sense is lost or heard and kept alive differentiates who is listening: distinguishing those uninitiated mortals (εἰδότες οὐδέν), for whom only the positive veneer of the first image occurs, from that more exclusive group travelling with the ‘man who knows’ (εἰδὼς φώς, b1.3), for whom the goddess’s warning at b8.52 still resounds (a line that ushers in the Doxa with the instruction specifically to listen for deceit in the wor(l)d ordering that will follow: δόξας . . . βροτείας | μάνθανε κόσμον ἐμῶν ἐπέων ἀπατηλὸν ἀκούων, b8.51–2).136 Only these travellers, 135

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See Mourelatos (2008) 229–30 for full discussion with parallels. As he has shown, by saying γνώμας rather than γνώμην and then placing this word in close proximity with κατέθεντο and δύο, Parmenides ‘achieves a double effect’ (229). He intends that his hearer or reader should feel a tension between the sense γνώμην κατέθεντο (which emerges with the pairing of δύο with μορφάς) and γὰρ κατέθεντο δύο γνώμας and detect the ‘contrary message’ these rival construals generate (229). The notion of a deliberate syntactical ambiguity here is further supported by Parmenides’ placement of the pivotal word δύο metrically dead centre. Indeed, the capacity of this ordering of words to engender contrary meanings at 28b8.53 DK is no better illustrated than by a brief survey of its scholarly reception. Even the MSS variant reading for γνώμας, the dative γνώμαις, which itself may have originated from an attempt by ancient readers to reduce the ambiguity of the line, has done little to curb conflicting construals. Furley (1973) 30, cf. n. 14, who rejects Mourelatos’ double entendre as ingenious but unconvincing, for instance, advocates this variant (γνώμαις) in order to read: ‘they set up two forms in their minds for naming’; cf. Gallop (1984); Curd (1998). But Mourelatos (2008) 230, who, by contrast, reads γνώμας, gives γνώμαις a precisely opposite sense, proposing that it ‘arose because [ancient] readers could not resist the suggestion “they were of two minds”’ (engendered by γνώμας) and, therefore, sought to concretize it with the dative γνώμαις: ‘ “they proposed through a double opinion” ’ (original emphasis). This is precisely the same ambiguity that surrounds γνώμας. Woodbury (1986) 2, who dismisses γνώμαις as ‘not congenial in archaic verse’, reads γνώμας with δύο to give the single sense: ‘for, as to forms, they came to two decisions (put themselves into two minds) concerning their meaning’ (30); see Cordero (2004) 156, ‘two viewpoints’. J. Barrett (2004) 282, who also reads γνώμας, by contrast interprets the line to give a precisely opposite (surface) meaning, pairing δύο with μορφάς: ‘they decided to name two forms’. I infer from his n. 53 that he agrees with Mourelatos’ diagnosis of implicit double meaning. My reading of γνώμας is an attempt to keep the ambiguity of the line fully open; hence I follow Mourelatos (2008) 228–30. 28b8.52 DK is itself ambiguous, see Nehamas (2002) 60 for the reading: ‘From this point on, learn mortal opinions, coming to know (through listening) the deceptive world my words concern.’

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thus freshly primed for the ambiguities belying mortal speech, will bring to the surface the double entendre at b8.53 and appreciate its exclusive message (i.e. the fundamental two-headedness of mortals); for all others, this, along with the irony it engenders (an irony, aptly, itself double, for δύο γνώμας is at once both the unwitting slip of a mortal tongue and also a knowing wink from the goddess), will be lost.137 This idea, that for an exclusive audience the negative reality of mortal confusion manifests itself in the seemingly positive ordering (κόσμος) of Doxastic language is, I suspect, precisely what our prologue parodies in dialogue form at 25–8.138 For here, too, first mortal words similarly reward careful listeners with ironical double meaning, redirecting those mindful of what has come before (1–24; cf. b8.53, b8.52) to the paradox at the heart of para-Doxa. Ευ. Βάδιζε δευρὶ καὶ πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν. Κη. ἰδού. Ευ. ὁρᾷς τὸ θύριον τοῦτο; Κη. νὴ τὸν Ἡρακλέα 27; 27aðboldÞ οἶμαί γε. Ευ. σίγα νῦν. Κη. σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον. 28a Ευ. ἄκου’. Κη. ἀκούω καὶ σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον.139

25 27b 28b

Apart from the possibility of hearing two contrary meanings in our traveller’s colloquial οἶμαί γε at 27 (either [E. . . . see that door?] ‘K. Of course I do . . .’ or ‘K. I think I do [but I’m not entirely 137

138

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See Mourelatos (2008) 227–30; esp. 228 for the double irony here: ‘Mortals practise amphilogy [double-talk] innocently, and thereby fall into error; the goddess practises amphilogy with full knowledge, and thereby reveals the truth.’ If the preceding parody runs as I have argued, then this makes perfect sense; this pattern of ironical slips is offered by the goddess explicitly as a paradigm of mortal speech (cf. 28b8.51–3 DK), and a mortal is what our traveller has just become (25). I use the text endorsed by Austin and Olson (2004) and N. G. Wilson (2007a). Hall and Geldart (1901), by contrast, construe our traveller’s replies at 27b–28b as deliberative subjunctives (‘Am I to . . .?’), punctuating these lines with question marks. See Blaydes (1880); Rogers (1904); Anderson (1913) 44, who cites 27b–28b as part of a wider discussion of ‘repudiative’ echo-questions in Greek and Roman drama; see also Marzullo (2003). However, an alternative tradition, at least as old as ΣR, renders 27b– 28b as a series of indicatives: see ΣR ad loc.: Van Leeuwen (1904); Coulon (1928); Sommerstein (1994); Henderson (2000); Prato (2001); Austin and Olson (2004). That Gannon (1987) ad 27 (two-headedly) looks to both available precedents in his version of the text, punctuating 27b with a question mark, but not 28b, just illustrates the fact that what is at stake in the reading of deliberative subjunctives is a priori interpretation. I follow the punctuation of Austin and Olson (2004) (rendering 27b–28b as indicatives) in order to keep the full ambiguities of these lines open and to draw out their comic polyvalence across double strata of ostensible (i.e. positive) and deeper (i.e. (ultimately) negative or contradictory) meanings. See my comments at p. 98 n. 150 on the restriction of meaning effected by punctuating 27b–28b as subjunctives.

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sure . . .]’),140 the pivotal break between ostensible and exclusive readings of these lines is at our traveller’s misconstrual of σίγα at 27a; it is taken as if transitive with an object (τὸ θύριον), the central stage door, to which our poet has just directed his, and our, attention.141 (Ostensibly, this is: ‘E. . . . see that door? K. Of course I do! E. Be quiet [about it]! K. I’m being quiet about the door . . .’, 26–7, echoed also with ἀκούω at 28b). Indeed, when the lines are understood in this way, it is perfectly possible to hear little else here at 26–8b beyond a set of silly affirmations, each one eagerly echoing, but in truth confounding, the content of our poet’s imperatives at 27a–28a (Ευ. σίγα νῦν. Κη. σιωπῶ . . . Ευ. ἄκου’. Κη. ἀκούω . . .):142 E. Come here and pay attention! K. There. 25 E. Do you see that door? K. By Herakles, 27; 27a of course I do! E. Quiet now! K. I’m being quiet about the door. 27b 28a E. Listen. K. I’m listening [to you] and being quiet about the door.143 28b

The emergence into view of distinct layers of meaning in these lines hinges upon whether one accepts this ostensible, positive reading (or some other ἐοικός version of it) and, in effect, follows our poet’s directions to steer νόος to the world of appearances;144 or, rather, hears the contrary sense of our traveller’s οἶμαί γε at 27 140 141

142 143

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See p. 91 n. 125. Cf. Clouds 91–3: Στ. δεῦρό νυν ἀπόβλεπε.∣ὁρᾷς τὸ θύριον τοῦτο καὶ τᾠκίδιον;∣Φε. ὁρῶ. . . . See Sommerstein (1994) ad loc., whose construal is correct in this detail, but who otherwise conflates several layers of meaning that should be differentiated. See my n. 139 above, n. 146 below. For σιωπάω responding to σίγα see Frogs 1134; Lys. 530; E. Hipp. 911. ἄκουε at 28a can of course be read as if taken to be transitive with τὸ θύριον (just as σίγα has been thought to be a line earlier). Cf. Sommerstein (1994) ad loc. I advocate a construal as if simply an intransitive imperative at this point in order to illustrate the positive surface meaning of the line. For the alternative construal, see my discussion, pp. 109–13. This is implicitly the route taken by all commentators who, by relying only upon habitual understanding (ἔθος πολύπειρον, 28b7.3 DK) in order to elucidate these lines, ultimately give in to their own ἀμηχανίη and dismiss our traveller’s words as meaningless: see, for instance, Rogers (1904) ‘this seems to be simple nonsense . . .’; Sommerstein (1994); Austin and Olson (2004) all ad loc.: ‘Inlaw – who is eager to cooperate but (as frequently in this scene) a bit behind the curve . . .’ In terms of the reading strategies active here, the deliberate oxymoron of Parmenides’ ἔθος πολύπειρον, 28b7.3 DK (‘much-experienced habit’) seems particularly pertinent. In dramatic terms, part of the comedy at 25 must play upon the fact that the actual Euripides was notorious for directing the attention of his audiences to stage doors in order to draw them away from what they might otherwise see: Arnott (1973).

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(‘I think I do . . .’) and then takes heed of the implicit prompt to reexamine Euripides’ mortal speech as it is put together by our echoing traveller (27b–28b, cf. 28a, ἄκουε . . .), to κρῖναι λόγῳ,145 and thus follow the very same words to that which lies concealed beneath it: paradox(a).146 Indeed, that such a κρίσις is to be made at this point (26–8b) is signalled by a single joke that suggestively fractures the positive veneer of what is ostensibly spoken in this exchange, in order to serve as a σῆμα of the fallacy that was earlier made explicit in the trials of the ἔλεγχος.147 That joke is the ‘silence’ expressed in the first rendering of our poet’s words at 27b (a claim echoed to even greater comic effect at 28b): Ευ. σίγα νῦν. Κη. σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον. Ευ. ἄκου’. Κη. ἀκούω καὶ σιωπῶ . . . (E. ‘Quiet now! K. Shutting up . . . [no “speaking” here . . . not at all talking . . .] about the door. E. Listen! [i.e. Shhh!] K. [. . . and now . . .] I’m listening and I’m . . . [blah, blah, blah . . .]’).148 For those who comprehend what has come before (1–24), the status of this joke as a σῆμα of the Doxa, a sign added (ἔθεντο, b8.55) by mortals that recapitulates the dualism at the heart

145

146

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148

That is, ‘to make distinctions in terms of (this) λόγος’ (28b7.5 DK), see J. Barrett (2004) 274–5; cf. 4, 6, 9. For how this imperative translates to the audience of (this) drama, see my following discussions, pp. 119–22, 122–44, 144–58. Modern commentators fail to respond in this way to the challenges of the text; they acknowledge the possibility of a positive and a negative meaning of οἶμαί γε (explicitly, Rogers (1904); Austin and Olson (2004); implicitly, Sommerstein (1994), all ad loc.; also Henderson (2000) in trans.), but εἰδότες οὐδέν of the parody that has come before, they fail to make a firm κρίσις at 25–8 between what-is and what-is-not, thereby mixing up in their construals of these lines the negative meaning of οἶμαί γε, with the ostensibly positive meanings of what follows at 27a–28b. (So Sommerstein (1994) trans. ‘E. Do you see that door? Inlaw. By Heracles I think I do! E. Keep quiet then. Inlaw. I’m keeping quiet about the door.’) Consequently, just like the mortals of Parmenides’ b6 (who also quite unwittingly advocate an illegimate mix of what-is and what-is-not; cf. 28b6.8–9 DK), modern interpreters remain confused and bewildered as to what our traveller’s mortal speech at 26–8b genuinely (if unwittingly) says: see p. 96 n. 144, p. 100 n. 157 for various perplexed responses, and my following discussion for both the full (negative, or paradox[ast]ical) reality which they fail to see at 27b–28b, as well as the issue of the exclusive audience that its recognition implies. On σήματα see p. 52 n. 23, pp. 81–2 nn. 100–1, p. 89 n. 117 and my following discussion (esp. n. 149 below). On my reading, the humour of 27b–28b does not derive from sarcasm, but from irony: the comedy here is ‘structurally triadic’, situating a speaker, who is oblivious to the reality of his situation, in between the ironist (Ar.) and his (knowing) audience; and it directly plays upon the binary distinctions between intention/expression, and ideal/real, integral to the logic of ironic speech. See Gillooly (1999) xxi–xxii.

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of mortal error,149 is not difficult to see; for here, at 27b, even the most ostensible humour (this [mis]construal of σίγα) audibly is inseparable from a conflation of the same sort of contrary opposites that we have already seen to infect the thought-world of paraDoxa (cf. those earlier mortal σήματα, hearing and seeing, 7–8; b8.53–9).150 No less than hearing and seeing, on the implicit logic of the scene, silence and speech are mutually negating alternatives: to be silent is to not-speak, and to speak is to be not-silent.151 Hence, to say ‘σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον’, as does our traveller, is not only to misconstrue (and thus, inevitably confound) exactly what our poet has called for at 27a (σίγα); it is also (unwittingly) to give voice to no voice,152 utter words that, simply by virtue of being spoken, can only turn back on themselves, negate their own (ostensibly positive) meaning, and signal mortal two-headedness.153 149

150

151

152 153

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See 28b8.53–4 DK, with my discussion, pp. 93–5. As J. Barrett (2004) 286 notes: ‘insofar as the phenomenal world described in the “Doxa” is discursively constituted (as the goddess in b9 teaches), the semata of b10 [i.e. of the Doxa] prove to be aspects of mortal discourse’. In contrast to the σήματα of the Alētheia, these σήματα are not already existent features of the path they mark out but have been added by mortals (ἔθεντο, 28b8.55 DK), see Mourelatos (2008) 250. These comments are strictly limited to our surface reading of σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον. Here, there may be a construal of σίγα as transitive with τὸ θύριον which does not involve the enantiomorphic opposition of speech and silence, but on the text that I advocate (see p. 95 n. 139), there is no joke; for this construal becomes explicit only by being articulated, which (if we read 27b as an indicative, and as carrying the sense of: ‘I am silent about the door’) inevitably brings with it all the self-contradictory implications of speaking of one’s present silence. (Note that this is not true if 27b is read as a deliberative subjunctive: here our traveller may yet confound the call for silence, but he does not contradict himself, i.e. this glimpse of mortal error is missed and thus elided (‘Am I to be silent about the door?’). Nor is it the case if we progress from this surface level of interpretation to look harder at the linguistic form of 27b, as, I suspect, we are meant to. See my following discussion.) This is not to make the stronger linguistic claim that λέγω and σιωπάω are antonyms; strictly speaking, they are not – they are ‘complementaries’ (that is, each one implies the negation of the other, and, reciprocally, the negation of one implies the affirmation of the other); see Krischer (1981) 97–9, drawing upon the classification of Lyons (1973) 471, (1977) 271, (1995) 128. My observation is more simple: that all forms of spoken sound (e.g. λέγω, φθέγγομαι, βοάω, κλαίω) will, if the issue is pressed, stand in a relationship of enantiomorphic opposition (or in the linguist’s terms ‘complementarity’) with silence (σιγάω, σιωπάω). See Pl. Euthd. 300b5–8. Cf. E. Ph. 960: . . . τί σιγᾷς γῆρυν ἄφθογγον σχάσας; See Lyons (1977) 781 on analogous logical paradoxes engendered by performative utterances which have the property of ‘token-reflexivity’ (e.g. the famous liar paradox, ‘What I am saying now is false’, said to have finished off Philetas of Cos). On its surface construal, the same tension between the illocutionary act and the sentence that is uttered gives σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον at 27b the force of an oxymoron. It is thus a comic enactment of

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Those with no grasp of our parody may, of course, appreciate the humour of this joke just as readily as those able to see its wider (para-Doxastical) reference; but for this audience, who hear only as does this comic Euripides, there is no recognition of the speaking silence at 27b as a σῆμα of para-Doxa. What is bound up in that recognition is not simply laughing (again) at the absurdity of (mortal) self-contradiction, or even identifying it as akin to the earlier absurdities of our poet’s backward-turning accounts of hearing and seeing (7–24). Rather, recognizing a σῆμα of the Doxa implies heeding its implicit invitation to reflect upon it as an artefact of mortal speech, that is, to consider its ambiguous words, and its syntactical possibilities, and thus draw out from its linguistic form an otherwise hidden meaning.154 Just like the listeners of b8.53, only those able to respond in this way to the ostensible joke at 27b (i.e. to hear the misconstrual of σίγα; to see the σῆμα of being and not-being silent; and be guided by it to re-examine both)155 will find it eclipsed by an implicit double meaning. And only they, in turn, will finally appreciate the incipient paradox(a) enacted through this exclusive sense a line later, at 28b, and thereby recognize the full (comical) reality of mortal error. (As we shall see.) To this extent, fully transcending what seems to be played out in the para-Doxa at 25–8 hinges upon applying νόος to ‘reading’

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the semantic oxymorons of mortal speech discussed by Mourelatos (2008) 235–40, esp. 240 n. 56 citing: ἔργα [. . .] περίφοιτα (‘wandering works’) 28b10.4 DK; μέγ’ ἐλαφρόν (‘greatly slight’) 28b8.57 DK; and esp. ἄγουσ’ ἐπέδησεν (‘driving she shackled’) 28b10.6 DK. See Krischer (1981) 100 for σιωπάω as implying willing, positive action as opposed to σιγάω which does not. The Hesiodic image of the σῆμα set up at Pytho by Zeus to serve as both a sign and a wonder (θαῦμα) to men is pertinent here, see Hes. Th. 498–500 (cited by Lesher (1984) 28 n. 38). In analogous terms, as J. Barrett (2004) 275–7 has argued, in Parmenides verbal σήματα both indicate a meaning and also themselves constitute part of that meaning, seizing their listeners’ attention and demanding that they ponder their (linguistic) content: ‘[their] . . . significance [. . .] is precisely the challenge they present in understanding how they operate’ (277). Similarly, as I have shown, understanding the σήματα of para-Doxa in our prologue, and appreciating the sophisticated parody they help to enact, also necessitates this: treating seriously the syntactical and semantic challenges of their difficult linguistic forms. See p. 52 n. 23, p. 98 n. 149 for σήματα as artefacts of mortal speech; and (with Parm. 28b.8.55–6 DK) pp. 77–87 for the Euripidean formulation of the nature of hearing and seeing (interrogated by our Parmenidean interlocutor) as prime examples of such σήματα. This capacity to identify and then to allow oneself to be guided by a σῆμα is a characteristic of the correct exercise of νόος. Lesher (1984) 27; Nagy (1983), (1990) 202–22.

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σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον against the force of the customary or familiar construals from which its ἐοικóς meaning derives: μηδέ σ’ ἔθος πολύπειρον ὁδὸν κατὰ τήνδε βιάσθω,∣. . . κρῖναι δὲ λόγῳ . . . (b.7.3–5).156 By contrast, those listeners who are not guided by this comic σῆμα to κρῖναι λόγῳ will remain caught up in habits of thinking and speaking that simply direct νόος to what is Doxastically ‘fitting’ (ἐοικóς). Guided in this way, only by conventional beliefs (doxai), this group will see a single answer as to how and what the words spoken at 27b must mean: they will be likely to hear only ‘I’m being silent about the door’, or ‘I’m keeping silence on [the subject of] . . .’, and they will take that construal (and its unwitting joke; our unrecognized σῆμα) as the basis for their understanding both of the misconstrual of σίγα (E. ‘Be silent now [about . . .]’, 27a) and of the comic dénouement yet to come (‘I’m listening and being silent about . . .’, 28b; effectively the same joke, louder).157

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The goddess’s warning against customary ways of thinking and speaking at 28b7.3–5 DK concerns all mortal formulations that implicitly bring with them what-is-not: most explicitly, speaking of changes, the coming-into-being and the passing away of things. For the common pattern of verbs of silence taking external, direct objects, see Smyth §1557 on σιωπᾶν τι (‘to be silent about something’). This sort of ostensible construal is considered the only one possible at 27b–28b by most commentators, and endorsed with comment by Sommerstein (1994); Austin and Olson (2004) both ad loc.; and in translation by Henderson (2000). Note that in Parmenides it is precisely this sort of reliance on the familiar that prevents mortals from seeing through Doxa. As J. Barrett (2004) 287 writes: ‘just as the phenomenal world described in the “Doxa” appears plausible and familiar to conventional thought, so the kind of “naming” [i.e. language use] it displays may pass as entirely unremarkable to the unsuspecting. The lessons of the poem’s second part lie substantially in what seems unremarkable about it.’ See 280 on 28b7.3–5 DK, where ‘the failing of mortals is the result of their adherence to conventional thinking’ and Mourelatos (2008) 194–204 on Doxa as ‘acceptance’, that is, an uncritical dependence on conventional thinking. The scholiast’s suggestion on 27b, by contrast, is to supply a preposition: λείπει ἡ “διά”, οἷον “σιωπῶ διὰ τὸ θύριον” (ΣR ad 27b), this διά thereby echoing διά in 19: διὰ τὴν χοάνην οὖν. . ., ‘so it’s because of this funnel . . .?!’ (‘I am being silent because of the door’). For the causative force of διά, see Luraghi (1994). This emendation is rightly rejected by Rogers (1904) ad loc., who, in translation at least, offers another construal of the line (‘Be silent the wicket?’) but who, in terms of the philosophical challenge cast out to the audience by it, ultimately adopts a parallel position to the scholiast, allying himself with an audience of confused and uncritical listeners: ‘this seems to be simple nonsense . . .’ (where, unbeknownst to this critic, ‘seems to be’ is precisely the point: see 28b1.31–2 DK on τὰ δοκοῦντα, with Mourelatos (2008) 204; Curd (1998) 22). For similar construals of 27b to that given by Rogers, offered independently and without discussion, see Dickinson (1970), Slavitt (1998) (in rather more impressionistic translations), and lastly, Montiglio (2000) 169 (in the course of a general treatment of silence in drama), with my p. 103 n. 164, p. 112 n. 185.

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Yet those not compelled by habit to accept τὰ δοκοῦντα (‘things as mortals deem them to be’,158 b1.31–2) at 27b, will come to construe an amphiboly; for whilst our traveller means to say ‘I’m being silent about the door’ (the usual transitive usage of the verb), to the ‘man who knows’ (εἰδὼς φώς, b1.3), his words also have the potential to resound quite differently, unwittingly effecting another (transitive) meaning: ‘I’m making the door itself (be) silent.’ Now, this alternative construal of σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον is recherché, to be sure, yet it is precisely this art of ‘(re-)reading’ the syntax of the σῆμα at 27b(–28b) that differentiates our exclusive audience from those ἄκριτα φῦλα (b6.7) who settle for what is ἐοικός; that is, it is meant to involve some (ostensible) difficulty.159 Nevertheless, as this idea is enacted at 27b–28b, recognizing these words as amphibolous is clearly not that difficult: for syntactically equivalent uses of verbs of sound with objects that are consequently ‘made to clash’ or ‘to ring out’ appear in Greek poetry as early as Hesiod (where they are equally irregular, yet understood).160 At least for the most general of these verbs, ψοφέω, this unusual way of relating verb and object actually gains currency on the later comic stage, as linguistic conventions change over time. Here, our veiled transitive syntax (‘I’m making the door . . .’), still very much only a (secondary) 158 159

160

Or ‘things which mortals deem acceptable’: Mourelatos (2008) 204. See J. Barrett (2004) 268–70. More generally, we might compare the recipe for mortal speech assembled by Mourelatos (2008) 260: ‘(a) Speak in the manner which is directly intelligible to ordinary mortals. (b) Speak in a way that indicates the felt attractiveness of what-is. (c) Also choose words that point toward what-is-not. (d) Choose words that have a familiar-but-incoherent and an unfamiliar-but-illuminating meaning. (e) Choose words that are equivocal even at the ordinary level. (f) Speak as an ironist, so as to give the lie to the mortals’ own beliefs.’ (For ‘. . . but-illuminating’, see my following discussion). As our play enacts these ideas, I suspect our ‘unfamiliar’ syntactical construal (sc. ‘I’m making . . .’) may have recommended itself to a late fifth-century audience far more readily than I have been able to suggest – especially at an implicit second prompting and heard with ears now freshly attuned (28a, ἄκουε . . .). For instance, κτυπέω, ἄχω, ψοφέω, all occur with an accusative of the sound-producing object. Cf. Hesiod’s use of κτυπέω at Sc. 61–2: χθόνα δ’ ἔκτυπον ὠκέες ἵπποι∣νύσσοντες χηλῇσι (‘the swift horses caused the earth to ring out with their sharp hooves’), and the hapax legomenon of Theocritus’ later parallel use of ἄχω at 2.36 (cited by Bader (1971) 43): τὸ χαλκέον ὡς τάχος ἄχει (‘quick the bronze clashes’); see Gow (1950) ad loc., who also cites uses of παταγέω. In these cases, the accusative is not taken as limiting or qualifying the verbal action (as in our ἐοικóς reading of 27b); rather, it is taken to be performing it (even if caused to do so by an external agent). Hence the construction seems to nuance the evocation of an audible event so as specifically to emphasize the sonority of the affected object.

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possibility at 27b–28b, openly surfaces as a usual means of describing the sound of the stage door: consider, for instance, τὴν θύραν∣ψοφοῦσιν at Men. Dysk. 689–90.161 In fact, by the heyday of New Comedy, ψοφέω (still then ordinarily meaning ‘to resound’ or ‘to yield a sound’) is so regularly seen in this (ostensibly odd) syntax that it appears to have taken on precisely our second transitive meaning: ‘to make . . .? . . . resound’.162 (Thus, Menander’s τὴν θύραν∣ψοφοῦσιν is not ‘they’re making noise at the door’, but rather, ‘they’re causing the door itself to make noise’).163 It is essentially the same way of relating verb and object underlying that idiom (and other poetic examples like it) which, I suspect, permits σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον at 27b–28b to effect its incipient double meaning: 1. τὴν θύραν ψοφοῦσιν (unconstrued: ‘They’re making sound . . . the door’) ‘They’re causing the door to make noise.’

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162

163

See Bader (1971) 36–7. ψοφέω is not found in this syntactical construction in Ar., nor is the verb used in Old Comedy of the stage door (even the noun is applied to the door only twice, cf. Knights 1326, Frogs 604). On the diachronic and synchronic relationship(s) between Old and New Comedy (a distinction meaningless to its fifth- and fourth-century audiences), see Csapo (2000). A preliminary study of patterns of linguistic change between Ar. and Menander is offered by Willi (2003b). In transitive constructions the verb is found in two sorts of syntax. The first and more usual usage, in which the object describes the sound, is: (ἡ χαλκὶς) ψοφεῖ οἷον συριγμόν, Arist. HA 535b19 (‘The chalkis [an unknown species of bird] makes a noise like a pipe’); the second is τὴν θύραν ψοφεῖ τις ἐξιών, Men. Perik. 126 (‘Someone coming out is causing the door to make noise’), both cited by Bader (1971) 43, 35; Frost (1988) 6–7. Further examples of this transitive use of ψοφέω from Menander, see Bader (1971) 35–6, 44. If this second transitive sense of the verb derives originally from a comic idiom, note that its currency grows well beyond this; it is also attested in first-century bc emancipation documents from Delphi (where ψοφεῖν is used as a substitute for μαστιγοῦν), see Bader (1971) 43; see also Frost (1988) 6–7. Bader (1971) 43 explains the alternative transitive meaning of ψοφεῖν as the result of a ‘development of a transitive meaning of an intransitive verb’, citing Schwyzer and Debrunner (1950) ii.1 72. The reminder of Gildersleeve (1902) 125, that the distinction between transitive and intransitive is ‘from a higher point of view [. . .] futile’, and all that essentially matters is ‘habits’, seems especially pertinent here, where the danger of relying upon ‘habitual’ or ‘conventional’ understanding is precisely what is at issue; see p. 96 n. 144. In dramatic terms the function of the idiom is to break the character’s direct address to the audience and direct attention toward an entrance from which an as yet unseen player will eventually emerge. (Note that this irregular syntax, which nuances the noise so that the object visible to the audience is emphasized as sound-producing, would seem to fit nicely with this theatrical convention, presumably heightening the mystery of what or who waits off-stage. I suspect that the currency of the idiom also owes something to the comic personification of the stage door.) Finally, it is only the linguistic element that is new here; the theatrical convention certainly is not, e.g. E. Hel. 859–60; Ion 515.

102

o n w h at - [ it ] -is 2. σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον (unconstrued: ‘I’m silent . . . the door’) ostensibly, as is ἐοικóς: ‘I’m being silent about the door’, but also, for ὁ εἰδὼς φώς: ‘I’m causing the door to be silent.’164

Yet, by far our best illustration of the possibility that a deeper syntactical reading of this sort could be heard and exploited in (syntactically equivalent) expressions of silence is to be found amidst the parodies of late fifth-century eristical topoi offered by Plato in the Euthydemus, a text significantly composed with Aristophanic sophistic caricatures in mind.165 In fact, Plato’s comic portrayal of the eristic protagonists of that dialogue wrestling (each other) with the sophism of σιγῶντα λέγειν provides us both with a clear dialogical exposition of the double meaning

164

165

Cf. Rogers’ (1904) ‘Be silent the wicket?’, Dickinson’s (1970) ‘Silence the door?’, and Slavitt’s (1998) ‘You want the gate to be still?’; all of these (without comment) try to some extent to suggest the transfer of the action of the verb over to its object; cf. Montiglio (2000) 169, ‘Shall I keep silence on the door?’, with my p. 95 n. 139, p. 98 n. 150 on the error of construing this line as a deliberative subjunctive. For Plato’s Aristophanic models in the Euthd., the dialogue ‘probably richest in allusions to Aristophanes’: Hawtrey (1981) 34, see esp. n. 21, listing allusions to Clouds (Clouds 439–42 and 453f., Euthd. 285c–d; Clouds 143, Euthd. 277e; Clouds 254, Euthd. 277d); H. Tarrant (1991) 162–6 (Clouds). Note also the likely allusion to our Th. and Agathon’s theory of mimēsis (Th. 149–50, 168–70) at Euthd. 284d, again, Hawtrey (1981) ad loc. Several of the fallacies of equivocation portrayed by Plato in the Euthd. represent the reuse of well-attested fifth-century literary or dialectical topoi, see Sprague (1967), (1968); Ausland (2000) 25. Aristotle’s later codification of σιγῶντα λέγειν affirms the earlier currency of this amphiboly, see SE 166a12, 171a7, 177a22; Schreiber (2003) 26– 8. He is almost certainly working from the Euthd., to be sure (cf. Bolton (1993) 121 n. 1; Robinson (1953) 22), but he knows a range of other texts also (perhaps even the book possibly written by Euthydemus himself; see SE 177b12–13, Rh. 1401a27; also my p. 30 n. 7; cf. Praechter (1932) 122–7 and Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (1919) 155–6, for Plato’s possible use of such a text). The idea of a late fifth-century sophistic interest in the syntactical possibilities of σιγάω and σιωπάω as parodied by Ar., then explicated in dialogue by Plato, and then catalogued by Aristotle, is compatible with the historical trajectory of other literary/philosophical motifs (where, crudely put, Plato is to Ar. and earlier sophistic writings, what Aristotle is to Plato). Cf. Ausland (2000) 25 on the recurring trope of opsimathēs, a motif used by Plato in the Euthd. (and elsewhere in the dialogues), but also found earlier, in Clouds, and later, in Thphr.’s Char.: ‘Theophrastus’ characterological treatment [sc. of that topos] bears a relation to Ar.’s comic and Plato’s dialogical uses of the type analogous to that of Aristotle’s systematic classification of fallacies in the SE to their earlier appearances in the Dissoi Logoi and in Plato.’ For suggestive parallelism implying that the Euthd.’s comic plays on silence represent a development of Ar.’s in Th., see my p. 108 n. 176, and for further evidence that Plato knows our prologue, see p. 128 n. 230, p. 141 n. 259, p. 181 n. 72 and the intertextuality discussed earlier between Ar.’s portrayal of Euripides in our Th. and Plato’s portrayal of Socrates in the Smp., pp. 63–6.

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I have sought to explicate and a philosophical dramatization of it in the early 410s.166 We enter the Euthydemus at 300b in the midst of the third and final eristic display of those Eleatic operators, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus – just, in fact, as Euthydemus finds himself toppled by Ctesippus, a fast-learning newcomer to eristic. Revelling in his victory, the younger man derides his defeated elder for speaking yet saying nothing (λέγοντα μηδὲν λέγειν, 300a8; thereby joking that he is both speaking and not-speaking). It is left to Dionysodorus to meet this mockery with a counter-attack, this one designed to entrap Ctesippus in his own joke by shaping from his words a new pair of trigger questions, 300b1–3:167 Ἦ γὰρ οὐχ οἷόν τ’, ἔφη ὁ Διονυσόδωρος, σιγῶντα λέγειν;

300b1

‘Why’, asked Dionysodorus, ‘may there not be a speaking of the silent?’ Οὐδ’ ὁπωστιοῦν, ἦ δ’ ὃς ὁ Κτήσιππος. ‘By no means whatever’, replied Ctesippus. Ἆρ’ οὐδὲ λέγοντα σιγᾶν; ‘Nor a silence of the speaking?’ Ἔτι ἧττον, ἔφη.

300b3

‘Still less’, he said.

At the heart of this new attack is a twofold play on syntax. Here, by exploiting the capacity of σιγῶντα and λέγοντα to serve either as the subjects or as the objects of their respective infinitives, Dionysodorus creates a pair of amphibolies and, thereby, readies a trap certain to ensnare a hasty opponent. For whilst his οἷόν τε . . . σιγῶντα λέγειν; (at 300b1) ostensibly asks ‘is it possible for what is silent (σιγῶντα) to speak (λέγειν)?’, it can also be construed as ‘is it possible to speak (λέγειν) about what is silent (σιγῶντα)?’; while, for its part, the question that (οἷόν τε . . .) λέγοντα σιγᾶν; 166

167

The irony is that precisely because such alternative transitive interpretations draw out unusual meaning from usual syntax for verbs of silence, they are not necessarily made explicit by modern commentators. My general exegesis is indebted to the reading of Chance (1992) 170–3. Like him, I treat σιγῶντα λέγειν and λέγοντα σιγᾶν as converse parts of the same sophism; see Hawtrey (1981) ad loc.

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(at 300b1–2) ostensibly puts, ‘is it possible for what speaks (λέγοντα) to be silent (σιγᾶν)?’, can also be taken to be ‘is it possible to be silent (σιγᾶν) about what speaks (λέγοντα)?’168 His trap set, by 300b3, then, Dionysodorus has successfully elicited two firm denials from Ctesippus on what οἷόν τε . . . σιγῶντα λέγειν and λέγοντα σιγᾶν ostensibly say (sc. respectively, is it possible for what is silent to speak, and for what speaks to be silent? (which it isn’t . . .)).169 The brothers’ tactic in what follows will therefore be to manoeuvre the young man into affirming what each amphiboly alternatively says (sc. respectively, is it possible to speak of what is silent, and to be silent about what speaks? (which it is . . .)).170 If they are able to do this, then they will have made Ctesippus seem to be endorsing what he has just denied, since, in either case, what he will have heard differently in terms of meaning will have been identical in terms of words.171 Dionysodorus leads, attempting to clinch a swift victory by imagining a scenario against which Ctesippus’ first denial (sc. of οἷόν τε . . . σιγῶντα λέγειν; . . ., 300b1–2) must assuredly fall: Ὅταν οὖν λίθους λέγῃς καὶ ξύλα καὶ σιδήρια, οὐ σιγῶντα λέγεις;

300b3–4

‘But whenever you speak of stones and timbers and irons, aren’t you speaking of what is silent?’ Οὔκουν, εἴ γε ἐγώ, ἔφη, παρέρχομαι ἐν τοῖς χαλκείοις, ἀλλὰ φθεγγόμενα καὶ βοῶντα μέγιστον τὰ σιδήρια λέγεται, ἐάν τις ἅψηται· ὥστε τοῦτο μὲν ὑπὸ σοφίας ἔλαθες οὐδὲν εἰπών. ἀλλ’ ἔτι μοι τὸ ἕτερον ἐπιδείξατον, ὅπως αὖ ἔστι λέγοντα σιγᾶν. ‘Certainly not, he [sc. Ctesippus] said, if I’m walking by the blacksmiths’ shops, for there, irons are said to speak and cry out most loudly if anyone handles them; so here your cleverness has made you fail to realize that you’ve said nothing. But come, you have still to demonstrate to me your second point, how on the other hand there may be a silence of the speaking.’

168 169

170

171

See Chance (1992) 171; Hawtrey (1981) ad 300c2ff.; cf. Arist. SE 166a12–15. This amounts to Ctesippus treating the participles as the subjects, rather than the objects, of their respective infinitives, see Chance (1992) 171. Only the appearance of contradiction is necessary to score a victory in a bout of eristic, see Arist. SE 165a. Note that the strategy pursued here of presenting an amphibolous question, allowing one’s opponent to commit to one reading, then setting out to dupe him into affirming the other in order to stage a reductio ad absurdum is precisely the technique parodied in the earlier dialogue of our prologue, see my earlier exegesis, esp. p. 28 n. 1. Chance (1992) 171.

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Confronting Ctesippus with a host of inanimate objects, stones, timbers and irons, about which one might easily speak, Dionysodorus deals his opponent a knock-out blow. Or rather, he appears to . . . (300b3–4). For the young man sidesteps, and, by exploiting the everyday capacity of φθέγμα to denote both the sounds of articulate speech as well as simply noise, he parries this first attack with a scenario of his own – one in which iron is not silent but is said to speak (300b4–6). Then, having successfully evaded self-contradiction on the first limb of this argument-pair (σιγῶντα λέγειν), he calls for an epideixis of the second (λέγοντα σιγᾶν). Now, Euthydemus steps up: Ὅταν σιγᾷς, ἔφη ὁ Εὐθύδημος, οὐ πάντα σιγᾷς;

300c2

(a) ‘Whenever you are silent,’ Euthydemus said, ‘are you not being silent about all things?’ Ἔγωγε, ἦ δ’ ὅς. ‘Yes indeed I am,’ he said. Οὐκοῦν καὶ τὰ λέγοντα σιγᾷς, εἴπερ τῶν ἁπάντων ἐστὶν [τὰ λέγοντα].172 (b) ‘So then you are being silent about speaking things, if things that speak are to be included among all things.’ Τί δέ; ἔφη ὁ Κτήσιππος, οὐ σιγᾷ πάντα;173 (c) ‘What?!’, Ctesippus said, ‘Aren’t all things silent?’ Οὐ δήπου, ἔφη ὁ Εὐθύδημος.

300c5

‘Apparently not,’ said Euthydemus.

172

173

Reading Stephanus’ τὰ λέγοντα at 300c4 in place of the MS’s τὰ λεγόμενα, which, according to Hawtrey (1981) ad 300c4, is ‘undoubtedly wrong’ and deleted as such by Schanz. Cf. Chance (1992) 172; Levenson (1999) 133. Reading Ctesippus’ ‘τί δέ’ as not simply marking a break away from the preceding exchange or the introduction of a new topic as it is taken by Hawtrey (1981) ad 300c4 (‘Ctesippus diverts the argument’) and Chance (1992) 172, translating: ‘But what about this? . . .’; such a construal is apposite when ‘τί δέ’ precedes a new question asked in the midst of a series of questions put by the same speaker, as, for instance, at Pl. Gorg. 497d6–498b4, cited by Sicking (1997) 169, or Euthd. 279e4–6, 280a2, c3; but this is not the case here. Rather, Ctesippus’ ‘τί δέ’ marks a reaction to what has been said that invites its speaker to provide further explanation, thereby setting him up for the new eristical question chain that follows at 300c5ff., see my p. 108 n. 176, and cf. Lamb (1924) in trans.; aptly, surprise and incredulity (which we might well imagine Ctesippus feigning at this point) are often concomitants to this usage, see Sicking (1997) 169–71.

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Euthydemus’ gambit is twofold: first, he secures agreement from Ctesippus that, when he is silent, he is silent about ‘all things’ (πάντα) (a); then, slyly, he smuggles ‘speaking things’ into the dispute as part of that category (b). The ploy is effective: the young man seems to be teetering on the brink of affirming what, in word, he has just denied: he is silent about what speaks (τὰ λέγοντα σιγᾷς; cf. λέγοντα σιγᾶν, at 300b1–3, as before, still fresh). Yet just at the point at which Euthydemus’ victory seems assured, Ctesippus seizes the initiative, exploiting a latent ambiguity in his adversary’s trigger question (at (a)), so as, effectively, to disqualify what he has proposed next (b) and thus deliver himself safely from the jaws of the sophist’s trap. For whilst the scenario that Euthydemus has offered at (a) is, ostensibly, one of a subject (Ctesippus) being silent about all things (οὐ πάντα σιγᾷς;), i.e. not-speaking about anything . . ., his words can also describe quite another: a subject who, by being silent, is making all things silent.174 It is this possibility that Ctesippus capitalizes upon in his reply at (c): ‘What?! Aren’t all things silent?!’ (Τί δέ; . . ., there answering (b); but οὐ σιγᾷ πάντα; referring back to οὐ πάντα σιγᾷς; at 174

See Chance (1992) 172–3, who does not comment on the syntactical ambiguity exploited by Ctesippus here, despite this being the only logical connective between his counter-attack at 300c4, ‘Hang on! I thought all things are silent?’, and what has been agreed before (‘When you are silent, you are being silent about all things / . . . making all things silent’). The ambiguity is recognized, however, by Levenson (1999) 133–4, who reads it not as latent but as already active and first exploited by Euthydemus in his trigger question: ‘Panta sigas [sic] means, “you are silent concerning all things.” Panta sigas also and equally means, “you cause all things to be silent.” Suppose, then, that thunder crashes, or swords clash, or there is music, shouting, and laughter. Suppose that we, hearing these things, preserve a silence concerning them. We then have panta sigas in the sense that we ourselves are silent. But suddenly there occurs the subject – object transposition to which the brothers, with their joke, call attention. We are silent in the face of that which sounds, and then suddenly our silence encloses that which sounds, pervades that which sounds. Thunder crashes, swords clash, the laughter swells to a maximum, but all are enclosed within spheres of silence . . .’ It is interesting to note how modern translators tip-toe around this double-meaning, evoking something of the possibility of a syntactical ambiguity in (ὅταν σιγᾷς . . .) οὐ πάντα σιγᾷς; at 300c2, but failing to draw out the implicit sense open to be exploited by a listener such as Ctesippus: compare Chance (1992) 172: ‘Whenever you are silent . . . aren’t you silent on all things?’; Lamb (1924): ‘When you are silent . . . are you not making a silence of all things?’; both of these are more sensitive than Hawtrey (1981) 172: ‘you are silent, when you are silent, about everything . . .’ or Sprague (1965): ‘. . . are you not silent with respect to all things?’ (both of which, on the reading advocated here, are entirely correct accounts of what Euthydemus means to say but fail to allow for what an eristic like Ctesippus might be able to do with what he actually does say).

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(a)).175 On this implicit construal, if (a) is true, then the knock-out blow at (b) cannot be: for if, by being silent himself, Ctesippus is inadvertently making ‘all things’ (about which he is not-speaking) silent (a), then how can ‘all things’ (which are silent) possibly include speaking things (which are not) . . . (b) . . .?!176 175

176

Sprague (1965) reads this line: ‘What,’ said Ctesippus, ‘all things are not silent, are they?’ and consequently finds it difficult to explain: see 54 n. 94 ‘Ctesippus’ objection is not very clear’. Chance (1992) 172–3. Ctesippus’ ploy reactivates the idea that silent things and speaking things necessarily exclude one another, as the next lines illustrate. For now forced to deny that ‘all things’ are silent (so as not to contradict his claim at (b) that speaking things form part of them), Euthydemus is promptly manoeuvred onto the other horn (sc. if ‘all things’ are not silent, ‘all things’ must then speak): Τί δέ; ἔφη ὁ Κτήσιππος, οὐ σιγᾷ πάντα; Οὐ δήπου, ἔφη ὁ Εὐθύδημος. Ἀλλ’ ἄρα, ὦ βέλτιστε, λέγει τὰ πάντα;

300c5–6

Euthydemus is in an equally nasty bind: if 300c6 is true, then Ctesippus (being clearly part of ‘all things’ himself) cannot have been silent about anything in the first place; the older sophist’s trigger question (a) is disqualified too! Euthydemus’ only way forward now is to qualify his answer (300c6), but, by so doing he falls foul of the law of the excluded middle (300c6–7) and thus, finally, goes down in defeat (300d1): Τά γε δήπου λέγοντα. Ἀλλά, ἦ δ’ ὅς, οὐ τοῦτο ἐρωτῶ, ἀλλὰ τὰ πάντα σιγᾷ ἢ λέγει; Οὐδέτερα καὶ ἀμφότερα, ἔφη ὑφαρπάσας ὁ Διονυσόδωρος· εὖ γὰρ οἶδα ὅτι τῇ ἀποκρίσει οὐχ ἕξεις ὅτι χρῇ. Καὶ ὁ Κτήσιππος, ὥσπερ εἰώθει, μέγα πάνυ ἀνακαγχάσας, Ὦ Εὐθύδημε, ἔφη, ὁ ἀδελφός σου ἐξημφοτέρικεν τὸν λόγον, καὶ ἀπόλωλέ τε καὶ ἥττηται. Καὶ ὁ Κλεινίας πάνυ ἥσθη καὶ ἐγέλασεν, . . .

300c6 300d1

See Chance (1992) 173 for an exegesis, and Levenson (1999) 135–6 for the insight that Dionysodorus’ interjection οὐδέτερα καὶ ἀμφότερα ‘neither and both’ is not simply a sign of defeat but also means what it says: ‘all things are silent and all things speak – at one at the same time’. As Levenson argues, within the frame of Plato’s wider dramatization of the sophist brothers as practitioners of Corybantic mystic initiation and ‘disclosers of an ecstatic vision of being’ to their audiences (a role made explicit at 277d, see Chance (1992) 48–9, with the criticisms of Levenson (1999) 72 n. 13, quotation: p. 13), Dionysodorus’ paradoxical interjection enacts a climactic Dionysian (but ultimately Parmenidean) revelatory experience, a moment of ‘mystical ecstasy where silence and sound (or being and non-being) at last prove to be one’ (136). Indeed, in addition to its content (which collapses opposites), note the sudden, epiphanic, nature of Dionysodorus’ interruption, and the obvious new salience of his name; but most significantly, as Levenson (1999) 136 points out, it is only now, at this moment of the dialogue, that we encounter the Forms, objects of knowledge that meet Parmenides’ criteria for what-is. See 300e–301c, with Chance (1992) 178, where, in the next argument chain, Socrates’ answer to the question of whether the beautiful is the same as or different from beautiful things, which exploits the notion of presence (παρουσία) to mediate between the brother’s new antinomies, in so many words echoes Dionysodorus’ revelation here (οὐδέτερα καὶ ἀμφότερα): beautiful things are ‘different from the beautiful itself, though there is some beauty present (πάρεστιν) with them’

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Here, then, deployed in Plato’s parody of late fifth-century eristical practice, is the alternative syntactical reading which, I have argued, is similarly exploited by our exclusive audience in order to draw to the surface the double meaning of σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον at 27b–28b (‘I’m making the door silent’).177 Yet the genius of Aristophanes’ use of this amphiboly as the enigma at the heart of the σῆμα of our prologue (27b) lies in the transformation it effects in the lines that surround it; for once it is recognized, then the incipient amphilogy of mortal speech at 27a–28b, too, is suddenly thrown into relief: Ευ. Βάδιζε δευρὶ καὶ πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν. Κη. ἰδού. Ευ. ὁρᾷς τὸ θύριον τοῦτο; Κη. νὴ τὸν Ἡρακλέα 27; 27aðboldÞ οἶμαί γε. Ευ. σίγα νῦν. Κη. σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον. 28a Ευ. ἄκου’. Κη. ἀκούω καὶ σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον.

25 27b 28b

Ostensibly, or as is ἐοικóς and heard by those ἄκριτα φῦλα, βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδέν:

27a 28a

E. Come here and pay attention! K. There. E. Do you see that door? K. By Herakles, of course I do! E. Quiet now [about the door]! K. I’m being quiet about the door. E. Listen [to me]. K. I’m listening [to you] and being quiet about the door.

25 27b 28b

Here, working backwards, from 27b (‘K. I’m making . . .’) to the negative meaning already implicit in our traveller’s οἶμαί γε at 26–7 (‘E. . . . see that door? K. I think I do . . .’), our exclusive audience will now infer quite a different sense in our poet’s imperative at 27a from that which is ἐοικóς: for, if taken transitively with τὸ θύριον,

177

(301a3–4), i.e. they are neither identical to nor other than the beautiful itself. And see Hawtrey (1981) ad 301b3 for the sophistic Parmenideanism of the brothers’ eristic reduction of difference to what-is-not simpliciter, and the aporia it induces in the dialogue that now ensues (Δ. Πῶς γὰρ οὐκ ἀπορῶ, ἔφη, καὶ ἐγὼ καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ἅπαντες ἄνθρωποι ὃ μὴ ἔστιν; 301b3–4). The culmination of this section of Plato’s eristic comedy therefore bears a suggestive resemblance to Ar.’s exploitation of compresent sound and silence (i.e. hearing and not-hearing) that we find at Th. 27–8, itself prefatory to Dionysian-Parmenidean revelation, see my following discussion, esp. pp. 122–28 and for the final comic epiphany that follows, pp. 128–44. Plato’s portrayal of eristics exploiting the syntactical ambiguity of σιγάω therefore may appropriate and develop not only Ar.’s earlier comic-mystical syntactical play on σιωπάω in our comic lines, then, but also the Dionysian-Parmenidean epiphany structure of which it is a part (which, as we shall see, similarly culminates in an encounter with what-is-not). In what follows I treat σιωπάω as equivalent, in respect of this syntactical behaviour, to σιγάω; note that these verbs can be used synonymously, see Krischer (1981) 107 on E. Ion 431–2, Supp. 297–8. See p. 96 n. 142, p. 98 n. 153.

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not only does σίγα νῦν resound ostensibly, as ‘E. Be silent now [ . . . about the door]’ but it also says ‘E. Silence [it] now! (i.e. Make the door [be] silent . . .!).’178 (Hence the reply that follows: σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον, ‘K. I’m making the door silent’, 27b). Similarly, working forwards (sc. from that reply; our σῆμα at 27b), our traveller’s next words, at 28b, will no longer appear simply to offer a positive affirmation of Euripides’ double call for attention, σίγα . . ., ἄκουε (as those ἄκριτα φῦλα hear it: ‘E. Listen! K. I’m listening [to you] and being silent about . . .’, 28a–b).179 Rather, the composite of Euripidean (mortal) speech offered here (sc. at 28b) is now revealed to harbour an incipient contradiction: ‘K. I’m listening [to the door] and making it silent’180 (i.e . . . trying to hear and to make silent the same object (!), which, as we shall shortly see, is to try to be both hearing (it) and not-hearing (it) at the same time . . . a new comic dénouement that, I suspect, we are implicitly enjoined to hear (cf. 28a, ἄκουε . . .)).181 To κρῖναι λόγῳ (i.e. apply the art of making distinctions) at the amphibolous words of the σῆμα at 27b, then, is to cause these lines to reveal an implicit reality of mortal two-headedness elided by those who simply accept what our traveller seems to say (‘I’m being silent . . .’[sc. (not-)]). Yet in order fully to appreciate the deeper vein of irony that rewards those who (re-)read our σῆμα in this way, we must recall the earlier lines of our parody (1–24); for it is in light of the fallacious reasoning exposed there, in the trials of the ἔλεγχος, that our exclusive audience reveal the veiled comedy of the (mortal) words at 25–8. Here, it will pay briefly to recapitulate the two stages of the path of mortal confusion as it is

178

179

180 181

For comic doors as ‘speaking things’ (φθεγγόμενα), an association clearly necessary if the act of being silent, i.e. not-speaking, is to be possible, see Wealth 1098–9, and my following discussion at p. 111 n. 183. Strictly speaking, to take ἄκουε as transitive with τὸ θύριον, as σίγα has been taken earlier (i.e. ‘I’m listening [to the door] and being silent about it . . .’), at this level of ostensible meaning (as advocated by Sommerstein (1994) and Austin and Olson (2004) both ad loc.) is to confuse two layers of meaning which must remain separate (or, in Parmenidean terms, to conflate what-is and what-is-not). See p. 97 n. 145 explaining this (mortal) error of interpretation. Now reading ἄκουε as transitive with τὸ θύριον, cf. p. 96 n. 143. Compare the much less funny dénouement enjoyed by those ἄκριτα φῦλα who fail to recognize our σῆμα, see my discussion, pp. 95–100.

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comically realized in the first thirty or so lines that we have discussed.182 First, para-Doxa as it was explicated in theory by means of our traveller’s ἔλεγχος (7–8): Mortal fallacy, the ἔλεγχος and the thought-world of para-Doxa . . . . . . where the eye and the ear have been (physically) distinguished (διακρίνω, 13) as separate (χωρίς) by origin (φύσις) (14–18), and yet where seeing is not-hearing (7a–7b), and hearing is not-seeing (8a–8b); and where νόος will therefore always be left wandering, bereft of any genuine objects (my object is to not-hear . . .?! . . . not-see . . .?!, 7a, 8a) and fated ever to turn back on itself in its search for a complete account (seeing is not-hearing . . . which is seeing . . . which is nothearing . . . which is seeing . . .?!, 7b, 8b).

Second, para-Doxastical reasoning as it is now implicated in practice, played out in the comic amphilogy of mortal speech (25–8): Mortal amphilogy, the door seen, and the phenomenal world of para-Doxa . . . Ευ. Βάδιζε δευρὶ καὶ πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν. E. Keep walking, and give me your νόος.

Κη. ἰδού. K. There!

26a

Ευ. ὁρᾷς τὸ θύριον τοῦτο; E. You see that door?

27a

Ευ. σίγα νῦν. E. Silence [the door] now! (sc. Well, make it silent then, because:

25

Κη. νὴ τὸν Ἡρακλέα∣οἶμαί γε. 26b–7 K. By Herakles,∣I think I do (sc . . . but I’m not really certain; ‘seeing’, after all, is . . .?! (7a–b))

(a) ‘seeing’ [it] is not-hearing [it]! (7a–b) and . . . (b) when a speaking thing (φθεγγόμενον), such as that door, is silent, it will not be heard183

182

183

For a full structural summary of the paraphilosophy of these lines see Appendices I and II, pp. 195–8. Ancient doors turned not on hinges, but on two metal pivots housed in metal sockets in the lintel and the threshold: grating sounds were produced whenever the door swung and are commonly referred to, see Bader (1971) 41–3. Notably, Parmenides, who offers a detailed description of the gates of the paths of Night and Day (cf. 28b1.11–20 DK), evokes the sound of the gates opening by using σύριγγος of the sockets in which they turn (28b1.19 DK), a term which recalls the shrill sound produced earlier by the spinning axle of the chariot of the Heliades (ἄξων δ’ ἐν χνοίῃσιν ἵει σύριγγος ἀυτήν, 28b1.6 DK). For Aristotle, the sound of pivots turning in such sockets was equivalent to the sounds made by bronze (χαλκός) and iron (σίδηρος) (both are exemplarily σκληρός (‘harsh’) at Aud. 802b30, 39–42); and it is these very sounds (sc. of iron) that are singled out by Plato’s Ctesippus as colloquially referred to as ‘speech’ (φθέγμα), see Pl. Euthd.

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a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae and . . . (c) well, however else does one not-hear something anyway?!).184 Κη. σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον. K. I’m making the door silent.

27b

28a Ευ. ἄκου’. Κη. ἀκούω καὶ σιωπῶ τὸ θύριον. 28b E. Listen [to the door] . . . K. I’m listening to the door and making it silent. (. . . which amounts to trying both to hear and to make silent the same object, . . . which amounts to both hearing (which is not-seeing) and not-hearing (which is seeing) at the same time . . . !)185

Here, revealed in the amphilogy of mortal speech, is the full comic reality of para-Doxa, the comedy missed by the ἄκριτα φῦλα but implicit throughout; for having heard the absurdity of Euripides’ 300a5–8. For an equivalent personification of the metallic grinding or creaking of the door as its φθέγμα see Wealth 1098–9, where the idiom is extended to a evoke a whining fit (κλαυσίαω) (text Wilson): ΚΑΡΙΩΝ τίς ἔσθ’ ὁ κόπτων τὴν θύραν; τουτὶ τί ἦν; οὐδείς, ἔοικεν· ἀλλὰ δῆτα τὸ θύριον φθεγγόμενον ἄλλως κλαυσιᾷ;

184

185

1098

See Taillardat (1965) §9 cf. §272. For κλαυσιάω here we should read ‘suffers a whining fit’ rather than ‘wants to weep’, i.e. ‘is asking for a beating’, as advocated by LSJ; Sommerstein (2001); Henderson (2002), see Green (1892); Holzinger (1940) both ad loc.; and Willi (2003a) 85, on verbs in –αίω. Such was the noisiness of ancient doors that making a discreet exit required some forethought: certainly, for those stealing out at night for some clandestine fun, silencing the courtyard or house door (by pouring water in the sockets, a solution possible only from the inside) was a prerequisite, see Th. 487; to get in quietly apparently required more muscles; Lucian, DMeretr. 12.3, Bader (1971) 43. Finally, for the enantiomorphic relationship that holds between σιωπάω and φθέγγομαι, see Arist. HA 535a 20–1, where σιωπάω is explicitly presented as the negation of φθέγγομαι and is performed with the intention that those being silent (in this case, fishermen) will then not be heard: ὅταν θηρεύσωσιν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ δέλεαρ, οὐδὲ φθεγγόμενοι ἀλλὰ σιωπῶντες ὡς ὀσφραινομένων καὶ ἀκουόντων· . . . The only way to not-hear something apart from by blocking the ears is to cause it to notmake a sound (φθέγμα) or to not-speak or to be silent. See S. OT 1386, the locus classicus of the problem that ears are sense organs that are permanently open (or of having a funnel for hearing . . ., see Th. 18). But note also that the reason why the Doxa is a deceptive ordering is that what-is-not is implicit and masquerades under a veneer of positive terms; the act of ‘not-hearing’ must therefore be approximated in terms which are positive, i.e. its object must be made silent. Cf. Dickinson’s (1970) impressionistic translation, which partly captures the enantiomorphic relationship between hearing and seeing parodied here: E. See that door? M. I see it, clear as I hear. E. Silence! M. Silence the door? E. Sssh! Do you hear? Silence. See. M. Silence the door and hear it? I see.

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λόγος exposed in theory, our exclusive audience now see played out in practice the unwitting confusion in store for all those who fail to break free from this poet’s path. To those unable to see the para-Doxa of these lines, there is here simply a confusing, and thus comic, door scene. Yet for those who have heeded the implicit call to κρῖναι λόγῳ, a sharper dénouement awaits: the greatest irony amidst this comedy of amphilogy and oxymoron is that on Euripides’ λόγος a comic door-seen can only destroy a comic door-scene.186 In this respect, the exclusive comedy of 25–8 models an encounter with the conventions of theatre of precisely the sort in which the comic spectators as a whole have been engaged throughout (for they too have been told to not-hear what they see, and not-see what they hear). Yet in order to draw out the full philosophical implications of their position as viewers of this comedy, we must again look back in our discussion, this time to its very beginning: the literary drama of Parmenides’ proem. There, the site of the goddess’s revelation to her traveller of the paths of what-is and what-is-not, and of the typical mortal error that leads countless thinkers to wander on their ludicrous third way, was revealed as being beyond the Gates of the paths of Night and Day in the region of the House of Night (b1.9–21).187 In the Homeric and Hesiodic traditions this is a place where all the familiar oppositions of mortal experience collapse, since it is here, deep in the Underworld, that all opposites finally converge. It is here, for instance, that Earth, Tartarus, Sea and Sky all have their common sources and limits; and that Night and Day pass each other by, crossing over the same threshold as they exchange dominion over earth (or, conversely, 186

187

For the conventional way in which a door-seen should beget a door-scene, see Clouds 91–3. The direction of the traveller’s journey, that is, whether the Heliades escort him from Darkness to Light, or vice versa, or to a realm beyond these distinctions (as I argue here), is a perennial topic of scholarly debate. Hermann (2004) 164–5 provides a synopsis of the scholarly positions. I follow Furley (1989) 29–30; Gallop (1984) 6–7; Sedley (1999) 113; Nightingale (2004) 33, in reading the journey as one to the House of Night. Insofar as this is a region of paradox, inversion and blurred distinctions (cf. Kingsley (1995) 77), I hold this not to contradict Mourelatos (2008) 15–16, who argues that the journey is ‘blurred beyond recognition’; see also Curd (1998) 19; such ‘blurring’ is precisely what we should expect from the poetic evocation of a journey to this location, see Morgan (2000) 77–87.

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alternate their occupancy of the House of Night).188 Even before the goddess of Parmenides speaks, then, the Underworld setting of her revelation cleverly anticipates her message; for she speaks at the meeting place of mortal opposites, a physical location in which the primal forms of mortal cosmology, Light and Night, will not simply be revealed as co-dependent by means of λόγος but are actually experienced as undivided.189 Far from being mutually exclusive opposites (their phenomenal properties, χωρὶς ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων, b8.56) as mortals claim, here, at this physical site, Light and Night reveal themselves to be complementary aspects

188

189

For the common ‘sources and limits’ (πηγαὶ καὶ πείρατ’) of Earth, Sky, etc., at this location, which Parmenides evokes by saying that his Gates have a stone threshold and yet are aitherial (28b1.11–12 DK), see Hes. Th. 807–10; Day and Night and their single path, trodden in alternate directions: Hes. Th. 748–57. Furley (1989) 29–30. See Gallop (1984) 7: ‘the youth’s encounter with the goddess is located where all difference or contrast has disappeared. Even the antithesis between Night and Day, which will later emerge as the foundation of all other mortal dualisms (28b8.53–9, b9.1–4 DK), has there been transcended. In that region all is a single undifferentiated unity. Hence the scene of Parmenides’ “poetic vision” anticipates the conclusion of his philosophical argument.’ See also Kingsley (1995) 77 on the House of Night, and the Underworld more generally, as a place of paradox ‘where polar opposites coexist and merge’; and Robbiano (2006) 150–5, on Parmenides’ reuse of myth to create a ‘mostly Hesiodic’ Underworld setting. The crucial point here is that even before Parmenides’ goddess has spoken, at this location, her doctrine of the essential unity of Light and Night is already a reality to be experienced. Indeed, as Furley (1989) 30 has argued, that reality accounts for the fame of the Laestrygonian shepherds at Hom. Od. 10.82–6, who are said to live on the periphery ‘close by’ the roads of Night and Day and thus in the constant ambient brightness of aither, and yet whose mortal alternations, founded on habit, continue (indeed, like the Hesiodic Day and Night, they greet one another in passing when coming home from and going out to tend their flocks): . . . ὅθι ποιμένα ποιμὴν ἠπύει εἰσελάων, ὁ δέ τ’ ἐξελάων ὑπακούει. ἔνθα κ’ ἄϋπνος ἀνὴρ δοιοὺς ἐξήρατο μισθούς, τὸν μὲν βουκολέων, τὸν δ’ ἄργυφα μῆλα νομεύων· ἐγγὺς γὰρ νυκτός τε καὶ ἤματός εἰσι κέλευθοι. For ἐγγύς as spatial rather than temporal, see Woodbury (1966) 612, citing Vos (1963) 18–34. As Granger (2008) 13 also notes, Parm. 28b1.11 DK, ἔνθα πύλαι Νυκτός τε καὶ Ἤματός εἰσι κελεύθων, clearly mimics Hom. Od. 10.86 but repositions the paths it describes in the Underworld through use of Hesiod’s ἔνθα, ‘a marker of places and deities in the underworld’. The point is not simply to make the location of Parmenides’ revelation undecidable (cf. Granger (2008) 12–13), but rather to stress its association with a reality that transcends mortal distinctions and alternations. Indeed, the fact that these Gates elsewhere serve as a marker of a physical point at which the distinctions usually drawn by mortals have no meaning is very probably why Parmenides devotes a third (28b1.11–20 DK) of the thirty-three lines of the proem to describing them. Cf. Gallop (1984) 7.

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of a single process;190 in phenomenal terms, there is simply no difference between them. In this respect, too, the setting of our prologue’s parody succinctly encapsulates its (philosophical) content. Whilst within our play the mortal σήματα (both Doxastical ‘signs’ and ‘qualia’) of the ear and the eye (sc. hearing and seeing) are shown to be intertwined in the trials of the ἔλεγχος (7–8), ultimately it is the site of that testing, the perceptual frame of the theatre, that most readily belies their opposition. Just as at Parmenides’ Gates, where night becomes day and day becomes night, so, too, here, in the ‘place for viewing’, hearing and seeing prove to be virtually indistinguishable, fused together in the single activity of looking-and-listening that is at the core of active, participatory spectatorship.191 This, as we shall see, is the philosophical lesson of the theatron. Yet it is not simply recognizing hearing and seeing, like night and day, as a single, undivided, whole that is at stake in the philosophy of these first lines (nor even, realizing the 190

191

Cf. Heraclit. 22b57 DK: διδάσκαλος δὲ πλείστων Ἡσίοδος· τοῦτον ἐπίστανται πλεῖστα εἰδέναι, ὅστις ἡμερην καὶ εὐφρόνην οὐκ ἐγίνωσκεν· ἔστι γὰρ ἕν, with Kahn (1979) 107–10; Pritzl (1985) 312–14; Mackenzie (1988) 18–20; see Curd (1998) 121–2 on the possible influence of Heraclitus on Parmenides’ thought with respect to the unity of opposites, and the more general case put by Graham (2002) of intertextuality between the poem of Parmenides and Heraclitus. Cratin. fr. 315 KA, which echoes the call to attention routinely used at meetings of the Athenian Assembly (clearly also another resonance of our 25–8), nicely illustrates the synergy of the ear and the eye by balancing their activities either side of what together they achieve, the full direction of attention (looking-and-listening): ἄκουε, σίγα, πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν, δεῦρ’ ὅρα. See Ar. Th. 381, with Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. for parallels. For the constitutive role played by the eyes in turning passive hearing into active listening and by the ears in the activity of looking, see Ingold (2000) 243– 87; esp. 277, where the co-implication of hearing and seeing in the activity of perception is shown to belie common scholarly assumptions about the radical opposition of these senses; i.e. that the nature of one (vision) is observational, or objectifying, whilst the nature of the other (hearing) is immersive, or participatory. Fallacy of radical separation: see esp. 268: ‘the eyes and the ears should not be understood as separate keyboards for the registration of sensation but as organs of the body as a whole, in whose movement, within an environment, the activity of perception consists’, citing Merleau-Ponty (1962) 234, for whom the body is not ‘a collection of adjacent organs, but a synergic system, all the functions of which are exercised and linked together in the general action of being in the world’. An easy illustration of such synergy: see Vroomen and de Gelder (2004) on the perceptual lessons of ventriloquism, where it is precisely this incorporation of vision into audition that engenders the illusion that it is the moving mouth of the dummy that speaks, and not the (visually silent) ventriloquist; but, more importantly, for evidence that what the eyes see affects what the ears hear, see McGurk and MacDonald (1976) on the so-called ‘McGurk effect’, a perceptual phenomenon that proves, as Ingold (2000) 277 has argued on different grounds, that ‘we “hear” with the eyes as well as with the ears’.

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mortal error of theorizing splits in experience that only seem to be).192 Rather, it is learning to use those senses, to engage the eyes and ears fully, to look-and-listen, to let ‘nothing go unperceived’.193 In strictly negative terms, this, of course, has been implicit throughout; it is precisely the subtext of why this Euripides discourages the very first comic spectator who tries to trace his route on the circling path of this play194 from both hearing and seeing what follows (what will be seen; his are truly deceptive words, ‘there simply is no need . . .’; Ευ. ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἀκούειν δεῖ σε πάνθ’ ὅσ’ αὐτίκα∣ὄψει παρεστώς, . . . in fact, there is every need, 5–6). Yet the true extent of this deception is not fully apparent until we draw out from these words their Parmenidean resonance (i.e. what they really say, rather than what they seem to say). Earlier I translated this remark: ‘You need not hear all that you’ll see instantly when you’re present’ (or ‘are standing by’), as if παρεστώς expresses merely circumstance.195 But this construal is not the only sense of that word active here; nor, as we should by now expect, do the (mortal) words it qualifies simply echo a ‘commonplace’ (sc. the preferability of autopsy over hearsay).196 In Parmenidean terms – indeed, also in the terms of Aristophanes’ earliest extant attack on Euripidean deception at Acharnians 440–4 – the 192

193

194

195

196

For, just as any Euripidean attempt to give an account either of hearing or of seeing will inevitably introduce a negation, so too, in practical terms, the only way of disentangling hearing from seeing for his audience (that is, to close one’s eyes, or block one’s ears) is to do the same. The formulation is Kingsley’s (2003) 185. As we shall see, it is the critical engagement that the philosophy of these lines demands which causes the collapse of hearing into seeing and seeing into hearing. Of course, it is quite possible to see and hear our prologue without engaging with it appropriately: this is the behaviour of the archetypal Doxastical audience. They fail to detect our prologue’s Parmenidean injunction (κρῖναι λόγῳ), readily assume Euripides’ interlocutor is a fool, accept Euripides’ λόγος about hearing and seeing as essentially true and, thus, just like him, fail to transcend the Doxa, and they continue to regard their own experience as merely a mixture (κρᾶσις) of ‘essentially separate’ opposites (hearing and seeing); see my following discussion, esp. pp. 121, 156. A path, made of his plays, for our comedy is, of course, a composite of Euripidean tragedy. Numerous studies have explored the parodies of Euripides’ Telephus, Palamedes, Hel. and Andr., from which our Th. is constructed; Zeitlin (1981) is the classic reading. But note also the final parody of IT, see my pp. 151–3. For the general use of the verb to denote presence, see Coxon (2009) ad 17.2 (= 28b16.2 DK). For the construal of the participle as ‘situational’ or ‘circumstantial’ (and in Smyth’s terms ‘temporal’) modified in sense by αὐτίκα, see Smyth §2060–1 and §2081. Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. list literary usages of the adage, but omit Heraclit. 22b101a, b55 DK, cf. p. 17 n. 12.

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assumption that an audience ‘will see παρεστώς’ signals of its speaker an expectation that those to whom he speaks will rely upon their senses in a manner that is essentially passive, blindly accepting of Doxastical thinking.197 It resonates suggestively with the goddess’ words at b16: ὡς γὰρ ἕκαστος ἔχει κρᾶσιν μελέων πολυπλάγκτων,198 τὼς νόος ἀνθρώποισι παρέστηκεν·199 τὸ γὰρ αὐτό ἔστιν ὅπερ φρονέει μελέων φύσις ἀνθρώποισιν καὶ πᾶσιν καὶ παντί· τὸ γὰρ πλέον ἐστὶ νόημα.

1

4

For as each man has a mixture of the much-wandering limbs [sc. sense organs], So mind is present to men; for it is the same thing which the nature of the limbs [sc. sense-organs] thinks, both in each and every man; for the full is thought.200

197

That is, ‘in the manner of a (passive) bystander’, cf. Smyth §2062. For Ar.’s earlier use of παρίσταμαι in Ach. to contrast an implied comic audience equipped with the knowledge of what-really-is with an internal tragic audience left unable to differentiate between what-is and what-is-not and which therefore ‘stands by’ guilelessly (‘as do fools’) when faced with Euripidean illusion, see Dicaeopolis’ explanation of his requirements to Euripides at Ach. 440–4 (440–1 itself a quotation from the prologue of the Telephus (fr. 698 (Kannicht)) with Ruffell (2011) 349–50, and esp. 349 for the tragic audience’s ‘simple-minded acceptance of the tragic fiction’ (text Wilson): δεῖ γάρ με δόξαι πτωχὸν εἶναι τήμερον, εἶναι μὲν ὅσπερ εἰμί, φαίνεσθαι δὲ μή· τοὺς μὲν θεατὰς εἰδέναι μ’ ὅς εἰμ’ ἐγώ, τοὺς δ’ αὖ χορευτὰς ἠλιθίους παρεστάναι, ὅπως ἂν αὐτοὺς ῥηματίοις σκιμαλίσω.

198

199

200

440

444

Cf. Olson (2002) ad 442–4; with my pp. 135–6, p. 135 n. 248, and p. 191 for Th.’s reworking of Ach.’s lampooning of Euripides and its critical agenda. The only other use of the perf. ptc. παρεστώs in the nom. sg. masc. in Ar. is attributive and describes the bystander at Eccl. 641 who, Praxagora explains, whilst previously being content passively to watch the spectacle of a son beating his father, will be transformed by the new communistic reforms into a socially responsible vigilante at such sights (since, because wives will be shared under this regime, it will always be possible that any father so beaten might be one’s own). Lanni (1997), by contrast, discusses the influence on court proceedings exerted by οἱ περιεστηκότες, those spectators who ‘stand at the edges of the courtroom’ and actively listen to the cases. For the reading ἕκαστος ἔχει κρᾶσιν, see DK; Gallop (1984); Meijer (1997) 58; Palmer (2009) 386–7 discusses the variant ἐκάστοτ’; Aristotle’s quotation of 28b16 DK (Metaph. 1009b22) has the variant μελέων πολυκάμπτων, ‘much-bent limbs’, but is generally regarded as less reliable than Theophrastus’ πολυπλάγκτων (at Sens. 3), see Coxon (2009) ad 17.1 (= 28b16.1 DK); Palmer (2009) 386–7; Passa (2009) 48. DK, for the reading παρέστηκεν, attested at Thphr. Sens. 3, see Tarán (1965) 170; Coxon (2009) ad 17.2 (= 28b16.2 DK); Meijer (1997) 65 n. 393; Palmer (2009) 386–7; Vlastos (1946) and Passa (2009) 48–51 accept the variant παρίσταται (following Arist. Metaph. 1009b22). Trans. Meijer (1997) 58 modified.

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Here, perhaps still speaking in her guise as a mortal, the goddess reveals the primal state of human cognition. Mind (νόος), she says, ‘is present to’ or ‘stands by’ (παρέστηκεν, b16.2) all mortals in exactly the same way, that is, through the mixture of the opposites of the Doxa, Light and Night, received by a mixture of the senses, or ‘much-wandering limbs’ (κρᾶσις μελέων πολυπλάγκτων, b16.1).201 Mortal thought (νόημα) is thus solely composed of our Doxastical sense-impressions (b16.3–4).202 The passivity of this Doxastical engagement with the world is frequently taken to imply 201

202

Whether Parmenides’ μέλεα refers to the elements posited by mortals in the Doxa, Light and Night, the bodily ‘frame’, or the ‘limbs’ of the body implicated in thought (or all three) is debated: for the primal forms, see Laks (1990); for the ‘frame’ of the body as a whole, see Vlastos (1946), and for parts of the body and, specifically, the sense organs, see Popper (1963) 552–5, (1998) 75; and esp. Meijer (1997) 62–73, who argues that it is the effect of the physical mixture of Light and Night on the organs of perception (μέλεα) that results in mortal thought, see esp. 65 n. 393: ‘Impressions, quantities [of] light and darkness, proportioned in accordance with the objects they originate in, arrive at the sense organs, mingle and with that action simultaneously the mind has come’ (see n.393 also for the error of comparing Hom. Od. 18.136–7 with 28b16 DK). But see Hussey (2006) 17, for the suggestion that both meanings (primal forms and senses) may be active, cf. my p. 86 n. 112 for Ar.’s possible exploitation of this and further polyvalence in our prologue. In particular, note that the Homeric μέλεα, which is here a mortal name, itself implies parts that, in their capacity as bearers of the muscular sinuosity that enables flexion and flexibility, bend back on themselves, see Wersinger (2008) 56, who argues that ‘La flexion est assurée par l’existence des melea’, citing Arist.’s (Metaph. 1009b22) variant reading of 28b16.1 DK (μελέων πολυκάμπτων), as the exemplary extrapolation of the term’s Homeric meaning. Cf. Pl. Phd. 98c–d for an example of the bending of μέλη in later Attic prose. Pace Popper (1963) 554 and Beekes (2009) s.v. μέλος, the Homeric μέλεα does not connote ‘articulation’ (which is rather the preserve of the Homeric γυῖα), see Wersinger (2008) 45–56. On the connotation of both ‘physical mixture’ and ‘confusion’ implicit in κρᾶσις, see Mourelatos (2008) 256, with 348 for the spurious mortal physical κρίσις to which it gestures, and my p. 81 n. 100; and for the equivalent mixture of Light and Night, see the exemplary model of μίξις at 28b12 DK, with my following discussion, and 28b9.3 DK, where, since mortals have named the basic opposites of their cosmos as Light and Night, all in that cosmos is full of Light and Night together: πᾶν πλέον ἐστὶν ὁμοῦ φάεος καὶ νυκτὸς ἀφάντου . . . But this means not only that the world of appearance comes into being through the physical mixture of these opposites, but also that everything in this (discursively constituted) phenomenal world is likewise ‘full’ πλέον (28b9.3 DK) of their fallacious separation. The kindred use of πλέον at 28b16.4 DK in order to evoke mortals’ conflation of thought and perception thus further supports the notion that Parmenides’ mortal μέλεα not only present ‘the material foundation of erroneous thinking’ (Cordero (2004) 161) but also, as constituted by mortals, themselves embody the confused thinking of the Doxa, see my p. 86 n. 112. Foregrounding these connotations, we might then perhaps read the goddess’s use of κρᾶσις and μέλεα together at b16.1 to intimate: ‘As each man has a muddle of muchwandering limbs (sc. Doxastical senses and primal forms), which, in their separation or division, bend back on themselves, so . . .’ Meijer (1997) 66: ‘thinking is nothing but the sum of . . .’. See Thphr. Sens. 4 for further evidence of the passivity of perception in Parmenides; in conjunction with 28b16 DK, it

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that Parmenides rejects the senses as irretrievably misleading.203 Yet, as others have noted, there is more subtlety in the poem than this;204 to be sure, the imagery of μέλεα πολύπλαγκτα, at b16.1, recalls the wandering minds of those ἄκριτα φῦλα at b6, mortals who are carried along, eyes unseeing, ears unhearing (ἀμηχανίη γὰρ ἐν αὐτῶν∣στήθεσιν ἰθύνει πλακτὸν νόον· οἱ δὲ φοροῦνται∣κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, b6.5–7).205 But, as the goddess returns to their predicament at b7, a more nuanced picture emerges; for, here, what is warned against is not the eye and the ear per se but, rather, a use of them that is aimless, undiscriminating or hollow:206 οὐ γὰρ μήποτε τοῦτο δαμῇ εἶναι μὴ ἐόντα· ἀλλὰ σὺ τῆσδ’ ἀφ’ ὁδοῦ διζήσιος εἶργε νόημα μηδέ σ’ ἔθος πολύπειρον ὁδὸν κατὰ τήνδε βιάσθω, νωμᾶν ἄσκοπον ὄμμα καὶ ἠχήεσσαν ἀκουήν καὶ γλῶσσαν, κρῖναι δὲ λόγῳ πολύδηριν ἔλεγχον ἐξ ἐμέθεν ῥηθέντα.

1

6

For never shall this prevail, that things that are not are; But do you restrain your thought from this route of inquiry, Nor let much-experienced habit force you along this route, To ply an aimless eye and an echoing ear And tongue; but judge in terms of λόγος the much-contesting ἔλεγχος Spoken by me.207

It is this aimless, or unguided, passive use of the senses, a use enslaved to habitual thinking, that is contrasted with the key imperative the goddess gives to her traveller in this poem: κρῖναι λόγῳ

203 204

205 206

207

implies that for mortals, νόος attends upon only what is present to the sense organs. See Mourelatos (2008) 253–9 for a thorough exegesis of the ambiguities of 28b16 DK, and for a different interpretation, Laks (1990). See Vlastos (1946); Meijer (1997) 57–73. Kingsley (2003) 120–2, esp. 120; Laks (1999) 261–2 on 28b7.3–6 DK: ‘Despite appearances . . . it is a mistake to say (as is often the case) that Parmenides rejected the senses. What is true is that the senses cannot contribute to knowledge of truth. But what Parmenides’ goddess promises is to teach mortal opinions as well as knowledge of the truth (b1, b10). Now certainly this implies exercising sense perception and exercising it in a correct way . . . Under certain conditions (of wisdom or insight), the senses might well be “good witnesses”’ (original emphasis). Cf. Schofield (2003) 62. Kirk (1961); Meijer (1997) 63. As Kingsley (2003) 121 explains: ‘the reason why we keep falling into this state [sc. of mortal confusion] is not because the senses themselves are misleading. It’s because we see and hear in a daze, because we don’t know how to look or listen. Our problem is not that we see and hear. It’s that we don’t.’ See also Laks (1999) 262; Curd (2011) 131. Trans. Gallop (1984) modified.

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(b7.5). In late fifth-century public culture, the exhortation to pass judgement in this way evokes the context of the lawcourts. Here, the goddess’s words at b7 might serve equally to define the role of the evaluating juror whose eyes and ears must be directed to the scrutiny of λόγος.208 Addressing his own audience of spectators, Aeschines makes the association explicit: νῦν μὲν οὖν ὑμεῖς ἐστε τῶν ἐμῶν λόγων κριταί, αὐτίκα δ’ ὑμέτερος ἐγὼ θεατής· ἐν γὰρ ταῖς ὑμετέραις γνώμαις ἡ πρᾶξις καταλείπεται (‘Now you are judges of my words; but I shall shortly be your spectator; for the matter rests on your judgement’, 1.196). The emphasis on actively spectating to this effect is no less prominent in the context of the Assembly; for here too those who do not adjudicate on political matters are said to fail appropriately to direct their eyes and ears, thereby accepting all that is said to them without discrimination, and allowing themselves to be lulled into inactivity by persuasive speech and untested theory. It is for displaying precisely such passivity that Cleon attacks the Athenian dēmos – his own spectators – at Thucydides 3.38: for they have become an audience, he says, ἁπλῶς τε ἀκοῆς ἡδονῇ ἡσσώμενοι καὶ σοφιστῶν θεαταῖς ἐοικότες καθημένοις μᾶλλον ἢ περὶ πόλεως βουλευομένοις. (3.38.7) simply overcome by the pleasure of listening, more like seated spectators of the sophists than decision-makers for the city.

Like the ἄκριτα φῦλα of Parmenides, these are spectators who fail actively to judge, who accept merely the echoes of events (ἀκροαταὶ . . . τῶν ἔργων, 3.38.4), direct their sightless eyes merely to oratory, sophistry, and display (θεαταὶ . . . τῶν λόγων, 3.38.4). In this expressly political frame, their fragmented and confused use of the senses stands in stark contrast to the formalities that should be followed in the Assembly. Here active, participatory, spectatorship entails the full direction of attention; all who attend must: ‘Listen, 208

For the relationship between early legal procedures and the methodology (μέθοδος, ‘way of inquiry’) advocated by Parmenides’ goddess, see Hermann (2004) 144–50; for the forensic identity of several of Parmenides’ key terms (κρίσις, ἔλεγχος, πίστις, σήματα), see Bryan (2012) 80–93. For the synonymity of spectatorship and active judging in the context of the fifth- and fourth-century Athenian lawcourts, see Goldhill (2000) 169–72; for the influence exerted on the legal process by the presence of actively spectating bystanders (οἱ περιεστηκότες), see Lanni (1997).

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be still, focus your mind, look here’ (ἄκουε, σίγα, πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν, δεῦρ’ ὅρα, the Assembly call, as parodied by Cratinus, fr. 315). Later in our play the women will mimic this formal exhortation as they convene their own Assembly to judge Euripides’ λόγοι (σίγα, σιώπα, πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν, 381); yet for the comic spectators who sit in judgement on his λόγος from the beginning, that call has been resounding throughout, indeed it has even been voiced, ironically, by the poet himself: πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν . . . ὁρᾷς . . . σίγα . . . ἄκου’ (25–8). If the first twenty-five lines of this play expose mortal error for their audience, then, ultimately, they do so in order to prompt us to take up the same active, evaluating role practised in each of these late fifth-century frames of spectatorship: for be it in the lawcourts, or the Assembly, or this theatre, actively to spectate is to meet the goddess’s injunction: κρῖναι λόγῳ. To do so here, however, in the prologue of Aristophanes’ design, is to go even further – it is to practise philosophy (indeed, what else could practising this philosophy mean?);209 for if the framing of this prologue sets its audience alongside the traveller of Parmenides’ poem, then how they will journey on the path of this play is precisely what is implicitly at stake. It is the same charge that was given to him at b7.3–6 (μηδέ σ’ ἔθος πολύπειρον ὁδὸν κατὰ τήνδε βιάσθω,∣νωμᾶν ἄσκοπον ὄμμα καὶ ἠχήεσσαν ἀκουήν∣καὶ γλῶσσαν, κρῖναι δὲ λόγῳ πολύδηριν ἔλεγχον∣ἐξ ἐμέθεν ῥηθέντα)210 that they must now strive to meet, relying not upon habit to guide their way, but upon the judgement of targeted eyes, attuned ears (cf. Euripides’ words at 25–8). Those who fail to respond in this way will simply accept Euripides’ λόγος of the essential separation of hearing and seeing and, content in that fallacy, thus move on directing νόος passively to rely upon a κρᾶσις of ‘much-wandering limbs’ (μελέων πολυπλάγκτων, b16.1). Only by actively striving to κρῖναι λόγῳ can one transcend passively accepting such Doxa, reveal the underlying unity of hearing and 209

210

For the way in which Parmenides’ poem similarly stimulates such philosophical activity by ‘incorporating talk of inquiry within a revelatory framework’, see Bryan (2012) 103, cf. 63. And note, simply by virtue of its dialogue form, the philosophy of our opening lines invites its audience to participate themselves in the philosophical activity of its speakers, just as do the dialogues of Plato. On 28b7.5–6 DK cf. p. 68 n. 65.

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seeing and thus escape wandering on the journey of this play.211 To that extent, our play sheds light on what Parmenides’ goddess leaves unsaid; just how to use to positive effect senses that, if followed thoughtlessly, will simply mislead.212 For the first lines of our Thesmophoriazusae point us ‘not away from our senses, but toward them’ – to acuity,213 and thus, to the exposure of fallacies we might yet transcend. In that respect, Aristophanes’ message is clear: faced with his Euripides, all in this comic theatre can experience the ironic revelations of Parmenides’ θεά; for the genius of staging this philosophy is that each of us has a θέα (a ‘viewing’) of our very own. From para-Doxa to para doxa: revealing the φύσις of theatre in the unthinkability of Agathon (29–205) τόν σοι ἐγὼ διάκοσμον ἐοικότα πάντα φατίζω, ὡς οὐ μή ποτέ τίς σε βροτῶν γνώμη παρελάσσῃ.214 The goddess’ work is to show us we are living in an illusion.215

It perhaps should come as no surprise, then, that, at 29–30, after we have been shown the confusions of those dazed mortals incapable of treading a constant path – how mortal error leads the luckless into ἀμηχανίη – ‘what we’ll in an instant see . . .’ (5–6) is implicitly revealed to be the very figure (this play situates) at the centre of the para-Doxastical world that holds tragic mortals fast in their helplessness, the conjurer of τὰ ἐοικότα par excellence, Agathon, the τραγῳδοποιός.216 Yet that revelation is prefaced first by a new 211

212

213

214

215 216

For νοεῖν in Parmenides’ proem as a kind of understanding of ‘the fundamental unity in kind as beings’ of mutually negating opposites that emerges precisely through contemplating their negation, see M. Miller (2006) 30–2. See Laks (1999) 262 on Parmenides’ lack of an answer. But perhaps the answer is already implicit in the goddess’s instruction to judge by discourse? See Kingsley (2003) 121 for this formulation and the suggestion that this is also the implicit purpose of Parmenides’ goddess. See my following discussion (pp. 122–44) for the revelations of 29–205 that now immediately follow. Parm. 28b.8.60–1 DK: ‘This whole world-ordering I proclaim to you as plausible, | so that no opinion of mortals shall ever overtake you.’ Kingsley (2003) 161. For Agathon as exemplar of the world-creating tragic poet, see Arist. Po. 1451b19–25, who cites Agathon’s Antheus as the paradigmatic non-mythic play whose characters and action were entirely fabricated by the poet. For a comic glimpse of his creation of tragic

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echoing inquiry into nature (Κη. ποῖος οὗτος Ἁγάθων; . . ., 30, presaging a joke not only on Agathon’s fame, ‘Agath-who?!’217 but also on his incipient ontological ambiguity, Ευ. ὁ τραγῳδοποιός, ‘. . . of some sort’. Κη. ποῖος . . ., ‘Of what sort?’218), the (Doxastical) sum of which establishes only what its object is not (tanned, strong, heavilybearded . . . a ‘real’ man), 29–35: Ευ. ἐνταῦθ’ Ἀγάθων ὁ κλεινὸς οἰκῶν τυγχάνει, ὁ τραγῳδοποιός. Κη.ποῖος οὗτος Ἁγάθων; Ευ. ἔστιν τις Ἀγάθων– Κη. μῶν ὁ μέλας, ὁ καρτερός; Ευ. οὔκ, ἀλλ’ ἕτερός τις. Κη. οὐχ ἑόρακα πώποτε. μῶν ὁ δασυπώγων; Ευ. οὐχ ἑόρακας πώποτε; Κη. μὰ τὸν Δί’ οὔτοι γ’ ὥστε κἀμέ γ’ εἰδέναι. Ευ. καὶ μὴν βεβίνηκας σύ γ’· ἀλλ’ οὐκ οἶσθ’ ἴσως.

30

35

E. K. E. K. E. K.

Here the famous Agathon happens to be living, the tragedy-maker. What sort of chap is this Agathon? There is a certain Agathon – – not the tanned one, the strong one? No, but some other. I’ve never seen him! Not the big-bearded one? E. You’ve never seen him? K. No, by Zeus, certainly not – at least, so far as I know. E. But surely you’ve fucked him (but perhaps you didn’t know).

And then, by the intrusion of one of Agathon’s servants, whose sacralizing presence suddenly prompts Euripides and his follower

217 218

worlds independent of inspiration, cf. 52–7, with Muecke (1982) 43 on the central focus on ποιεῖν in what follows. For audience expectations of an imminent encounter with the poet, cf. Ach. 396ff., Clouds 133ff. Importance of the concept of the tragic poet: cf. the further specification of Agathon as ὁ τραγῳδοδιδάσκαλος at 88–9. His association with τò εἰκóς, see Arist. Rh. 1402a10–13; Po. 1456a23–5. Slater (2002) 153. For ποῖος here in a qualitative sense, cf. Gannon (1987) ad loc. Petersen (1915) 63–6, esp. 65, argues that the qualitative sense of ποῖος ‘must be absent when ποῖος is used when sarcastically repeating a word of a preceding speaker’ (citing Ach. 62, 157); but this ποῖος is echoing and, thus, answering, a ποιός, and at any rate, Agathon’s nature (sc. the nature of his ποίησις) is expressly at issue in the scenes to follow. It is also likely that a qualitative ποῖος again regarding Agathon should be read, following Rogers (1904), at 96, garbled as ποῖο in R, and emended to ποῦ by Dobree, endorsed by Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. and N. G. Wilson (2007a).

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to duck for cover, thereby making of them not simply tragic spectators, but expressly mortal ones, 36–51: Ευ. . . . ἀλλ’ ἐκποδὼν πτήξωμεν, ὡς ἐξέρχεται θεράπων τις αὐτοῦ πῦρ ἔχων καὶ μυρρίνας προθυσόμενος, ἔοικε, τῆς ποιήσεως. ΘΕΡΑΠΩΝ εὔφημος πᾶς ἔστω λαὸς στόμα συγκλῄσας· ἐπιδημεῖ γὰρ θίασος Μουσῶν ἔνδον μελάθρων τῶν δεσποσύνων μελοποιῶν. ἐχέτω δὲ πνοὰς νήνεμος αἰθὴρ κῦμά τε πόντου μὴ κελαδείτω γλαυκόν – Κη. βομβάξ. Ευ. σίγα. τί λέγει; Θε.πτηνῶν τε γένη κατακοιμάσθω θηρῶν τ’ ἀγρίων πόδες ὑλοδρόμων μὴ λυέσθων. Κη. βομβαλοβομβάξ. Θε. μέλλει γὰρ ὁ καλλιεπὴς Ἀγάθων, πρόμος ἡμέτερος – Κη. μῶν βινεῖσθαι; Θε. τίς ὁ φωνήσας; Κη. νήνεμος αἰθήρ.

36

40

45

50

E. . . . But let’s cower down out of the way, because one of his servants is coming out with fire and myrtle in order to burn an offering, it seems, on behalf of his poetry-making. SERVANT Let all the people speak no words of ill-omen gating the mouth, for there visits a holy band of Muses within the dwelling of my master, fashioning lyric song. Let aither windless hold its blasts Let the grey-green swell of the sea not make a sound. K. Bombax! E. Silence! What’s he saying? S. Let both the race of birds sleep, and the coursing feet of the wild beasts not be loosed. K. Bombalobombax!

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45

o n w h at - [ it ] -is S. K. S. K.

For the melifluous Agathon, our leader, is going to – Surely not get fucked? Who made a sound? W-w-w-indless aither.

50

The effect of all this apotropaic religiosity, with its abrupt escalation of register from (already) highfalutin ritual formality, burnt offerings and εὐφημία (for the ἐπιδημία of the Muses, 36–42) to stark anticipatory silence (at 43ff., for the activity of Agathon), is to take us from the realm of poetic inspiration and the Muses (Hesiod’s original masters of truths and false things equivalent to realities, Th. 27–8),219 to the quasi-divine figure that will supplant them in this play (the τραγῳδοποιός, 49ff.).220 (For far from simply being not-a-‘real’-man, οὗτος Ἁγάθων, it now seems, is not really even a man.) Yet if by the hyperbole of this sudden epiphanizing we are implicitly primed to approach his poiēsis (52–7, 101–29) through a hymnic frame first associated with Apollo (43–50; cf. Pi. Pyth. 1.5–13; and my p. 149 for the prefatory Thesmophorian frame),221 that is not simply to set up the new 219

220

221

For ὁμοῖος at Hes. Th. 27–8 as ‘equivalent to’ as opposed to ‘resembling’, see Heiden (2007). For the (only) apparent comic ambivalence (immediately dissipated by the suggestion of epiphany at 43ff.) of the term θίασος of the Muses at line 41, cf. the reading of Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc.: a routine use of the term ‘in Euripidean lyric to mean “band”’ and here designating a troupe of Muses in visitation to a human poet in order to bestow inspiration, with Sommerstein (1994) ad 41, who understands θίασος as ‘a company or guild of votaries of a particular god’ and posits a use here in comic reversal of its normal pattern: ‘the divine Muses from [sic] a thiasos in honour of Agathon’ (perhaps also in prefiguration of the poet’s later allusive identification with Dionysus at 134–5). For the formal proclamation of εὐφημία (‘pronounce words of good omen’) in Ar., see Willi (2003a) 42–5; for the further intensification added by the call for universal silence and its implication of imminent epiphany, cf. Birds 777–8; Pi. Pyth. 1.5–13; E. Ba. 1084, with Dodds (1960) ad loc.; W. Horn (1970) 95–7. Agathon’s supplantation of the Muses is implicit in the pairing of εὐφημία for (γάρ) the ἐπιδημία of the Muses but worldstopping anticipatory silence for (γάρ) the epiphany of Agathon’s poetry making, cf. Austin and Olson (2004) ad 39–57; Given (2007) 43; and my previous note; for the same collection of epiphany motifs (i.e. ‘divine ἐπιδημία, itself introducing an additional epiphany scene’) exploited in later literature, see McKay (1967). Muecke (1982) 44 (on the authority of Fraenkel, cf. Dodds (1960) ad E. Ba. 1084); in addition to Pi. Pyth. 1.5–13 (Pindar’s poetry lulling nature into silence with and for the music of Apollo), cf. also Call. Ap. 13ff. with F. Williams (1978) ad loc.; McKay (1967); Austin and Olson (2004) ad 43–8, Sommerstein (1994) ad 43–50 and W. Horn (1970) 95–7 compare these lines to Mesom. Sol. 1–4 (a piece of ‘new music’ for Apollo clearly indebted to our Th.); cf. West (1992) 47–50 for the shared motif as probably originating from ‘one of the esoteric cults of the fifth century’ (49); cf. my p. 126 n. 223, pp. 127–8 nn. 227–30.

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(cf. κλεινός, 29) poet as pretender;222 for it is expressly the incantations of Apollo, soothing their hearers to trance-like stillness, that facilitate katabasis to and anabasis from the site of Parmenidean revelation, the Underworld (cf. 101–29, itself, notably, a cult song to Apollo);223 as, indeed, it is the sound of silence (above all others, most important to Apollo) heard at the acme of that stillness that, in Apolline esoteric cult, marks the initiate’s arrival at the altered state of awareness essential for that journey to take place – notably, by way of a prefatory descent into deafness and blindness.224 Indeed, for those, like us, who have practised the imperative of Parmenides’ goddess in what has come before (κρῖναι λόγῳ; cf. 26–8), that is precisely the state to which we too have been brought (and thus through which we have been primed to see (cf. 10, 12, 19, and then (Κη.) ἀκούω καὶ σιωπῶ . . ., 27–8)).225 Likewise if, in turn, now against that imperative, our mortal traveller’s mocking interjections (at 45 and 48, in travesty of the 222 223

224

225

Pace Austin and Olson (2004) ad 52–7; O’Sullivan (1992) 140–1. For the nature-altering effects of Apollo’s poetry and lyre, see Pratt (1993) 76 on Pi. Pyth. 1.5–13; and for the well-known relation between (Apolline) incantatory poetry and access to another world, see Kingsley (1999) 91–2, 121–3, (2002) 379–80; for the common and close association of Apollo with esoteric wisdom and its claimants, see Tell (2011) 129–30; Kurke (2011) 108–12; and specifically Parmenides (who was himself very likely a priest of Apollo in Velia): Kingsley (1999) (2003). And for the close relationship between the wandering or twisting (Th. 99–100) ‘new music’ (of which both our Servant’s hymn and Agathon’s own song to Apollo are prime examples) and incantatory magical hymns (in addition to West (1992) 47–50), see Csapo (2004) 226: ‘Rejecting the logical organization and syntactical variation of hypotaxis, the poets of New Music preferred paratactic strings of parallel syntagms, as they preferred concantenating strings of different rhythmic metra, to achieve an incantatory effect, accelerating or adding to the impetus of the music’ and 226 n. 84 on its ‘riddling and circumlocutory’ form: ‘The enigmatic style may be a development from traditional dithyramb and Dionysian art, cult, and mysteries generally (though not exclusively, since it can also be found in lyric poets like Pindar and Simonides).’ Practices of incubation (involving sensory negation) and katabasis as ‘the most direct way to wisdom and truth’ in Archaic and early Classical wisdom traditions, see Gemelli Marciano (2008) 22, esp. n. 3 (citing among other examples Epimenides’ encounter with Dikē and Alētheia during his incubation at 3b1 DK) and 29–32; Kurke (2011) 114–15, for the practice of katabasis and the acquisition of esoteric knowledge as ‘a general feature in older traditions of the life cycle of the sage’. For the climactic sound of silence, represented in Parmenides’ proem at 28b1.6, 19 DK by the piercing sound of the σῦριγξ, see Kingsley (1999) 128–35, (2003) 36–7, and for the experience of blinding light precipitating divine revelation, see Gemelli Marciano (2008) 32–3. Cf. Gemelli Marciano (2008) 33 on the piping tones (the sound of silence) and blinding light precipitating divine revelation in Parmenides’ proem: ‘These are the signal for a change in the state of consciousness that makes it possible to see the goddesses [sc. the Heliades].’

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Servant’s lyrics) appear to deflate all that is implied by this incantatory call (sc. approaching revelatory divinity) even before its ostensibly unlikely beneficiary is revealed (S. ‘Let air, sea, birds, beasts, everything, be silent . . .’ K. ‘Blah-blah-blah!’. . . ‘Yada-yada-yada!’ – S. ‘. . . For mellifluous . . . Agathon [!] is going to . . .’, 43–9), that is so, again, I suspect, only to uninitiated ears.226 For against our opening frame of mystic initiation, now intensified by the priestly sonority of this Servant’s hymn (cf. πτήσσω at 36, hieratic ἔστω at 39),227 our traveller’s βομβάξ . . . βομβαλοβομβάξ . . . (45, 48) not only mimics the rhythms of ritual chant (thus fracturing this song’s power to effect cosmic still)228 but also evokes the sounds of anabatic/katabatic climax229 (thereby, making of us initiates to chthonic revelation; 226

227

228

229

For the surface connotations of βομβάξ, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad 45, citing Phot. β 212 = S β 370 (cf. Hsch. β 787) (my ‘bolomochic’ translation is Austin and Olson’s); and Sommerstein (1994) ad loc., comparing the derogatory use of βομβός by the Scythian at 1176 (of the low rumble or buzzing of pipes). Cf. Bain (1977) 89–90; Moulton (1981) 114. For Euripides’ earlier turn as guiding hierophant see my pp. 67–8; Agathon’s Servant as hierokēryx, see Bierl (2009) 140 n. 144, 142; in this regard, πτήσσω ‘to cower in fear’ at 36 (cf. Ar. Wasps 1490; Birds 777) does not merely contribute to the parody of tragic convention, cf. A. Cho. 20ff.; S. El. 78ff.; OC 111ff.; E. El. 107ff.; it is also evocative of the Mysteries, cf. Frogs 315; Muecke (1982) 42–3; Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc.; similarly, for the ‘hieratic’ content of the Servant’s hymn, sung in anapaests (the usual metre for ritual chant), see Moulton (1981) 115 with Austin and Olson (2004) ad 39–40 (on ἔστω at 39); and for the retrospective significance of the Mystery schema, cf. Plutarch’s description of the ritual search at Eleusis in On the Soul, fr. 178 (Sandbach), with the wandering in endless circles through darkness, sensory negation, fear and finally revelation of our prologue, noting in addition to πτήσσω at 36 the holy voice that follows (43ff.). For the culmination of the ritual search in the summoning of Persephone/Kore from the Underworld by the hierophant (Apollod. FGrH 244 f 110b) see my following discussion, esp. in n. 230. For the hymn as a ‘virtuoso display of alliteration and assonance’, and the rythmic complementarity of our traveller’s interjections, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad 39–62. Cognate soundscape of mystic revelation, esp. the juxtaposition of soft and violent sounds accompanying katabasis and anabasis, see Hermesian. fr. 7–1–14p (Orpheus’ descent, with Kingsley (1999) 94 for his meeting with Persephone at the end of this descent); Plut. Mor. 590c–f, with Hardie (2004) 17. For the sounds of Persephone’s advent in the mysteries, see also Hardie (2004) 17 on Philostr. VS 2.20; cf. Plut. Phoc. 28.2 (the hierophant’s mellifluous voice), and Lada-Richards (1999) 84, 91, citing Apollod. FGrH 244 f 110b (the striking of a gong by the hierophant during his climactic chant, which, according to R. Parker (2005) 353 ‘may have in fact occurred out of doors’, i.e. in front of the telestērion); and Sourvinou-Inwood (2003) 37 and 33, for the invocation of Persephone in her persona of Queen of the Dead. For this acoustic dimension of the mysteries exploited elsewhere in Ar., see Clouds 291–9, where use of the bronteion (thunder machine) as the Clouds appear (Σ ad 292) also recalls the hierophant’s use of the gong when invoking Persephone (in a scene similarly framed

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and the yet-to-emerge poet, a quasi-divine counterpart to Persephone).230 And, lastly, if, as that very climax arrives, at 52–7, it is finally to the twists and turns of (Agathonian) poiēsis that we are directed (capping the cliff-hanger of 49: S. Agathon is going to . . .?; 52–7 –

230

around the fear and silence of its audience), see Byl (1980) 15–16; cf. (1988); Bowie (1993) 123 n. 102. And for the role of thunderous, clattering or clashing sounds in the calling up of chthonic deities, see Bérard (1974) 75–87 with Theoc. 2.36–40 (Hecate) for the specific conjunction of burnt offerings, clashing bronze and the call for cosmic silence in such divine invocations. Hardie (2004) 16 points to the ‘strong mimetic element’ already in these ritual noises, but see Ar.’s mimetic use of parallel vulgar –άξ suffix words to create onomatopoeic effects elsewhere, cf. παππάξ, παπαπαππάξ, at Clouds 392, εὐράξ πατάξ at Birds 1258, κοάξ . . . βρεκεκεκέξ at Frogs 209f., with Peppler (1921) 158–9. For the sound of bronze as βομβός (from which βομβάξ clearly derives), cf. Diog. Ath. TrGF 45 F 1 with Kaimio (1977) 196 n. 583; Zenob. 2.84 with Cook (1902) 22, on an eponymous prophet at Dodona whose name was probably derived from the reverberation of the oracular gong. Finally, consider the added humour given to our traveller’s rejoinder at line 51 (echoing the Servant’s words at 43, to the effect that it has not been him, but νήνεμος αἰθήρ that has been responsible for his joke at 50) once we realize that Greek ritual gongs such as those at the temple of Zeus at Dodona were frequently set off by the wind, and that, at least in the case of the acoustic arrangements of Dodona’s notoriously windy sanctuary, they were almost interminably reverberating. (Hence, at least by the fourth century bc, τὸ Δωδωναῖον χαλεῖον had even become proverbial for people one just cannot shut up, see Cook (1902) 5–13, with references.) For the general schema of the Mysteries, i.e. the wandering search for the goddess by mystai, her invocation by the hierophant, and the climactic ‘finding of the kore’ or advent ritual, see Sourvinou-Inwood (2003), esp. 35 for this last element in practice involving either ‘the finding of a statue, or . . . something closely connected with the deity which was in some way miraculous’, usually identified as an out-of-season ear of corn. Note that the search and advent ritual took place before the sacred drama which constituted a ritual enactment of the myth of Demeter’s withdrawal, mourning and reunion with Persephone, and which provided the ritual script also for the Thesmophoria, see Sourvinou-Inwood (2003) 30, 32–3, 39–40; Tzanetou (2002) on the Thesmophoria. Later evidence from the play concerning Agathon vis à vis the Kinsman is suggestive of the early identification of Agathon as a counterpart figure to Persephone: see, for instance, the Kinsman’s ‘evolution’ into both an Agathon and a Kore through the assimilation of Agathon’s clothing and traits, subsequent anodos/ kathodos to the women’s festival and mimetic performance of ‘Persephone-in-theUnderworld’ roles (Helen and Andromeda); cf. Stehle (2002) 384–96 on the symbolic rape of the Kinsman attendant upon the very first stages of his ‘Agathonization’ (the jokes at 50 and 157–8 finally backfiring on their author, perhaps paralleling the rape and abduction of Kore as the first stage of the sacred drama acted out by religious personnel following the ritual of Persephone’s advent in the schema of the Mysteries, see Sourvinou-Inwood (2003) 29, cf. 31). Cf. Stehle’s general view that the Kinsman is a ‘ritual substitute’ for Agathon (384), and my p. 190 n. 101 for the deeper significance of his transformation. Parmenides’ revelatory goddess as a ‘Demeter- or Persephone-like figure’ also: M. Miller (2006) 19; Kingsley (1999) and (2003). Agathon’s relation to this figure, however, lies in his comic identification not with the goddess of the Alētheia but with her symmetrical counterpart, the goddess of the Doxa, see Meijer (1997) 245 and Kingsley (2003) 217–19 for the two goddesses as ‘two faces of a dual goddess’, and my

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o n w h at - [ it ] -is Θε. δρυόχους τιθέναι, δράματος ἀρχάς. κάμπτει δὲ νέας ἁψῖδας ἐπῶν, τὰ δὲ τορνεύει, τὰ δὲ κολλομελεῖ, καὶ γνωμοτυπεῖ κἀντονομάζει καὶ κηροχυτεῖ καὶ γογγύλλει καὶ χοανεύει – Κη. καὶ λαικάζει.

55

S. – lay stocks, foundations of a drama. He bends new rims of verses; some he turns, others he joins together, and he forges maxims and swaps names and moulds and rounds and funnels . . . K. And sucks off . . .

– cf. 67–8) that is not to dispel the framing idea of Agathon as quasi-divine poet (40ff.; for the Agathon of this play simply is his poiēsis and his divinity thus lies in its nature-altering power to shape its own (illusory) realities, cf. 146–72). Nor, for that matter, is it merely to afford fresh opportunity to lambast poetic meretricity with concretizing comic obscenity (although, of following discussion. That Agathon is implicitly identified with Apollo (the god of poetry and the god through which Parmenidean revelation takes place), and as a counterpart to Persephone, before being assimilated to Dionysus (cf. Bierl (2009) 147 on the divine models of Apollo and Dionysus) at 134–5 (prefigured at 41), the god that occupies a cognate position to Parmenides’ Doxastical goddess in respect to the construction of plausible fictions taken for reality, makes good sense from the perspective of our Parmenidean reading and was probably recognized by philosophical readers. Note, for instance, Plato’s choice of Agathon as the quintessential tragedian in the Smp., and the knowledge of Ar.’s Agathon that Plato’s portrayal strongly suggests, esp. his implicit identification of the poet as a Gorgon/ias wielding counterpart to Persephone (at 198c4– 6 by allusion to Hom. Od. 11.633–5, see my p. 181 n. 72), an association significant not only for its tacit exploitation of the Gorgianic debts of Agathon’s style, see O’Sullivan (1992) 30 on Ar. fr. 341 KA and 35, but also for the simple reason that for Gorgias, too, doxa – inherently unstable, deceptive, and malleable by spell-binding persuasion – is for the majority simply all there is (see Gorg. 82b3.77, 11.11, 13, 11a.35 DK, and my p. 171 n. 40, p. 185 n. 86); note this Platonic Agathon, too, corrects Parmenides (at 195b6–c7, because, like Hesiod, he made desire the oldest rather than the youngest of the gods, see Morrison (1964) 49–51). For Plato’s Agathon in general as a response to Ar.’s earlier portrayal, see Sissa (2012) and my p. 181 n. 72. And cf. Hawtrey (1981) ad Euthd. 284d5, for the likelihood that this nexus of (Aristophanic) associations connecting Agathon with appearance underlies further Platonic characterizations, there noting Plato’s reuse of aspects of Ar.’s Agathon scene (169–70) in order to satirize the sophism of ‘speaking of things as they are’ that is developed by the brothers from their earlier applications of Parmenidean stricture, see my p. 141 n. 259.

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course, for our token mortal spectator, a πρόμος that bends, and turns, and moulds, and rounds, and funnels, i.e. hardens, and is not-a-[‘real’]-man, can do little else, 57–62, cf. 35, 50).231 Rather, it is to pre-empt in (a poetic fabrication of) this poet’s fabrication of poetry, the idea central to the Agathon of this play as exemplar of the tragic art: that of the τραγῳδοποιός as originary fabricator, supreme manipulator of illusion (cf. 101–29).232 Yet it is not until we understand more fully the philosophical world into which (at 24) we have been led, the ἐοικὼς διάκοσμος of Parmenides’ Doxa (b8.60), that we can appreciate the purpose of the craft imagery at 52–7 and experience the epiphanous power of our perceptual encounter with the Agathon of this play. Thus far, for the sake of the insights they have lent us, we have considered only the fundamental error at the heart of the mortal cosmology of the Doxa (the dualism of 8.53–61) and the consequent Doxastical perceptions of its practitioners (founded upon an attendant model of mixture, κρᾶσις, b16.1); but as the poem shifts its perspective to describe the cosmos as it appears to mortals, an all-encompassing vision of Doxastical duality and mixture emerges, at the orchestrating heart of which lies a mirror image of the goddess we have

231

232

Bronze-casting imagery of 56–7, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc.; χοανεύω at 57 evokes the smelting and casting of metal; cf. χόανοι as crucibles ‘in which metal is place to be fired and smelted’ used for ‘the ‘forging’ of [a] hard substance. . .’ (here, bone) at Emp. 31b96 DK: see Palmer (2009) 301–2, and my p. 134 n. 245. Pace Austin and Olson (2004) ad 52–7, who read the overall effect of this ‘chaotic jumble of images’ as ‘to present Agathon not as a divinely inspired poet (cf. 40–2) but as a mere wordsmith’, and O’Sullivan (1992) 140–1, 146–50, esp. 149, who suggests this imagery is merely in keeping with Ar.’s lampooning of Agathon against a wider comic association of ‘sexual and poetic creativity’ (cf. Frogs 96) as a passive and unvirile effeminate who does not ‘beget’ a tragedy as do virile poets but ‘builds one up with care like a carpenter or sculptor’. Against this reading, which remains wedded to the binary thinking of Dover (1978) and identifies (one reading of) the Kinsman’s vulgar mockery with Ar.’s poetic criticism, see the correctives of Duncan (2006) 38– 40, who builds upon Davidson (1998) 167–82 (cf. now (2007) 60–4) to reread Th.’s Agathon, as configured both by Euripides (cf. line 35) and the Kinsman, as a katapugōn (line 200) and as such not merely a passive object but an ‘actively desiring’ and ‘sexually insatiable’ subject (40); and Sissa (2012) 53–6, esp. 55 on the mistake of equating this on-stage reception with Ar.’s primary intended criticism (as does Duncan (2006) 41): ‘the play does not tell us what Aristophanes thought of Agathon, but what a regular guy . . . could think about him’ in which ‘Aristophanes exhibits to the Athenian people a tableau of crude binary thinking’ (55), and n. 91, building upon Muecke (1982): [‘Th.’s Agathon’s:] Effeminacy is in the eyes of the vulgar beholder.’ His particular ‘softness is compatible with virility’ (53).

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met before (b1.3, 22), to whom, at b12,233 we are now reintroduced as if through mortal eyes: αἱ γὰρ στεινότεραι πλῆνται πυρὸς ἀκρήτοιο, αἱ δ’ ἐπὶ τῇς νυκτός, μετὰ δὲ φλογὸς ἵεται αἶσα· ἐν δὲ μέσῳ τούτων δαίμων ἣ πάντα κυβερνᾷ· πάντῃ γὰρ στυγεροῖο τόκου καὶ μίξιος ἄρχει πέμπουσ’ ἄρσενι θῆλυ μιγῆν τό τ’ ἐναντίον αὖτις ἄρσεν θηλυτέρῳ.234 For the narrower [sc. rings]235 are filled with fire undiluted, and those by them with night, though a share of flame is admitted; and in the midst of these the divinity who steers all things: for everywhere she rules over hateful birth and mixture, directing female to mingle with male and the opposite in turn, male with female.236

Here, at b12, in the very first moments of the mortal cosmology built on Light and Night in which that (in)decisive opposition is given physical expression in the ordering of a cosmosenclosing system of heavenly spheres or rings,237 Parmenides introduces the divine agent of change in this world of appearances: a goddess ἐν δὲ μέσῳ τούτων who steers everything (ἣ πάντα κυβερνᾷ, b12.3) by bringing (back) together the opposites mortals so fallaciously separate. Whilst her divine powers here instigate procreation, the sexes in b12 also serve merely as the most exemplary case of the ‘erotic’ intermingling (μίξις) of the opposites in the cosmology of the Doxa, in which, conceptually, ‘all things have been named light and night∣and these according to their powers have been given as names both to these and to those . . .’ (αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ πάντα φάος καὶ νὺξ ὀνόμασται∣καὶ τὰ κατὰ σφετέρας δυνάμεις ἐπὶ τοῖσί τε καὶ τοῖς, 233

234 235 236

237

For the placement of 28b12 and b13 DK in the original poem just a few verses after 28b8.61 DK (i.e. at the beginning of the Doxa section, following the positing of the opposites of Light and Night), see Simp. in Ph. 38.28–39.18, with Coxon (2009) 362. For the comparative signifying opposition, see Smyth §313b. See Aët. ii 7.1 (= 28a37 DK) with Finkelberg (1986). Text and trans. (modified) Palmer (2009) 373, with 386 in defence of πλῆνται in line 1 and πάντῃ in line 4. Mourelatos (2008) 253; Finkelberg (1986); cf. Cherubin (2005) 7, who reads the arrangement of cosmic rings to indicate that: ‘Both [sc. Light and Night] are present in portions that combine, detach, and mix in various ways to form familiar things.’

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b9.1–2).238 For those travelling with the ‘man who knows’, this goddess is thus the Doxastical counterpart to the goddess of the proem for whom unity is the primal reality obfuscated by mortal activities of naming (the laying down of two forms or appearances, μορφαί, b8.53–9; cf. b9.1–2),239 since her very agency in their physical (yet discursively constructed) world implicitly reveals the deficiency of that world arrangement.240 Yet she is also simply the goddess who through mixture brings into being all things and presides over their passing away,241 fashioning the (deceptive) order of this (illusory) cosmos through her mastery of mētis with which she first contrives unifying Erōs (πρώτιστον μὲν Ἔρωτα θεῶν μητίσατο πάντων . . ., b13) and then her primal powers of separation (later called Bellum and Discordia,

238

239

240

241

Simp. in Ph. 31.11–17 introduces 28b12.2–6 DK thus: ‘And Parmenides has clearly presented the efficient cause not only of bodies that undergo generation, but also of incorporeal things that bring generation to completion, saying: “And those over them [were filled] with night . . . male conversely with female” (28b12.2–6 DK).’ Cf. Finkelberg (1997) 2 (with her n. 6): ‘The Parmenidean goddess is then the cause of the intermingling of the “forms” [sc. Light and Night], the mutual attraction of the sexes and animal procreation being only the most familiar and illuminating instance of the “erotic” attraction and intermingling of opposites, in the final analysis, of the two opposite “forms”’; μιγνύς of the interaction of Light and Night: Plut. Adv. Col. 1114b. on 28b9.1–2 DK: conceptually, the Light/Night schema is at the roots of the mortal judgement based upon appearances that there are discrete things, see Cherubin (2005) and my p. 83 n. 106. For a fuller discussion of 28b9 DK see Palmer (2009) 170–5. According to Simp. in Ph. 39.20, this δαίμων also sends souls from the visible realm to the invisible (sc. Hades) at one time, and back again at another; Gemelli Marciano (2008) 36 n. 44 notes that the Pindaric thrēnos fr. 133 (SM) attributes the same role to Persephone. On the goddess of 28b12 DK’s tacit exposure of mortal error, see Mourelatos (2008) 252: ‘the goddess of mixture is herself a projection of mortal indecision’ (i.e. the failure to make a firm logical κρίσις) whose action reverses the fallacious separation of 28b8.53–9 DK. For Mourelatos this manifestation of divinity ‘is no longer the mediator between the real and man, but a force that induces the worldly contraries to come together in mixture or intercourse’ (251), but who, in this capacity, ‘plays an activist, creative, demiurgic role’ (235). Thanassas (2006) 214 agrees on different grounds, namely that, in contrast to the mistake of 28b8.53–9 DK (the positing of enantiomorphic opposites), 28b12 DK offers a glimpse of an ‘appropriate, positive Doxa which, by recourse to mixture rather than separation, furnishes a partial critique of human error [sc. the mortal tendency to distinguish opposite forms according to appearances] and eliminates the “deceit” (28b8.60ff DK)’. I suggest that the goddess’s recourse to mixture itself implicitly exposes the fallacious mortal presupposition that the opposites she will make intermingle are genuinely separate (which, as we know from 28b8.53–9 DK, they are not). From this perspective, mortals mislabel as mixture what is really only a return to and glimpse of primal unity. Simp. in Ph. 34.12–17; 39.12 (= 28b12 DK); cf. Aët. ii 7.1 (= 28a37 DK).

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Cic. Nat. D. i. 11.28).242 As creator of Erōs and orchestrator of coming-into-being, her role in the constitution of the phenomenal world is thus equivalent to that of Aphrodite (hence she is so named by Plutarch, Amat. 13.756e10), and, as the steersman who directs the phenomenal changes that mortals take to be genuine, she is implicitly identified as the authoress of the very ἀμηχανίη that itself comically ‘steers’ (ἰθύνει, b6.6) the wandering minds of those caught, deaf and blind, in the world she creates, the Doxastical world of appearances (b6; Th. 1–28).243 And this is why the goddess of b12 holds the key to the epiphanic climax of our prologue and to Aristophanes’ characterization of Agathon, the quasi-divinity of para-Doxa: this Agathon, it now transpires, is no less the steersman (κυβερνήτης) of this illusory world than is the δαίμων of the cosmos of the Doxa (b12.3; cf. δρύοχοι, 52); nor, for that matter, are his wor(l)ds any less brought into being from a mixture of (ostensibly merely sexual) opposites (as we shall shortly see). Rather, just like the worldengendering acts of the goddess of the Doxa, his divine activity, at 52–7, too is cast as a virtuoso display of mētis, the (quasi-)divine conjuring of a διάκοσμος (of drama) laid from the keel up (cf. δρυόχους τιθέναι, 52), the new ‘felloes’ (or even ‘orbits’, ἁψῖδες, 53) of its verses ‘bent’ (κάμπτω, 53), ‘turned’ (τορνεύω, 54), ‘joined’ (κολλ-, 54), ‘moulded’ (κηροχύτω, 56), ‘rounded off’ (γογγύλλω, 56) and ‘fired’ (χοανεύω, 57) into the shape of familiar things by poiēsis.244 Indeed, Agathon’s supposedly comical style of composition here in fact merely transposes into theatre the 242

243 244

For the likely role of separation as well as mixture in the cosmology of the Doxa (undiscussed in the extant fragments), see Finkelberg (1997); Curd (2002) 126, 154. For the goddess as a mistress of mētis, and for the peculiarly intellectual nature of Erōs’ origin (‘a kind of creation but one which involves not so much giving birth as a mothergoddess as a mental operation carried out by the intelligence typical of a knowing daimōn who steers (kubernai) the world, plotting out its route in advance, just as a pilot guides a ship over the sea’), see Detienne and Vernant (1978) 146; cf. Kingsley (2003) 215–16. See Kingsley (2003) 215. With the use of κάμπτω and γογγύλλω at 52–7 and μελοποιεῖν implying κατακάμπτειν τὰς στροφάς at 68, cf. Detienne and Vernant (1978) 46, who discuss ‘the almost systematic use of the terminology of the curve to describe mētis [which] is not just a matter of the word agkulómētis but also of an adjective such as skoliós, a noun such as stróphis, terms composed from the root *gu used to indicated curving [. . .]; and the root *kamp, used to refer to whatever is curved, pliable or articulated’.

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divinely orchestrated metaphysical processes – which is to say, the metaphysics of illusion – of early Greek cosmologizing from the Pythagoreans to Plato (and very likely those of the ἐοικὼς διάκοσμος of Parmenides’ Doxa also).245 (The implication is that just like the audience of that Doxa, in the mechanical assembly of Agathon’s poeticizing, we too will witness the genesis of the sort of illusory world in which we, also, are immersed.)246

245

246

See Mourelatos (1987) 173–5, esp. 173 (citing Wright (1981) 34–40) for the parallel observation that in Empedocles, cosmos-generating ‘mixture is, in all cases, a mechanical juxtaposition or assembly’ of elements (see, for instance, 31b33 DK), and note that in the case of Empedocles this is replete with the same sexual imagery involving hardening and penetration as that exploited here, see 175–6 on earth’s χόανοι at Emp. 31b96.1 DK and cf. Ar.’s χοανεύω at 57, vulgarly extrapolated at 62. For philosophical use of the metaphor of beginning ‘from the stocks’ (ἐκ δρυόχων) and its concomitant laying the ‘keel’ (ἡ τρόπις), see Philol. 44a17 DK (of the cosmos, performed by a creator god ἐν τῷ μέσῳ) with Kingsley (1994) 295 and Morrison (1955) 65 on the points of resonance between Philolaus and Parmenides; ‘ἐκ δρυόχων’ in the context of demiurgic activity in Plato, see Tim. 81b; cf. Laws 803a (fashioning of character). For use of the model of wheel-felloes (ἁψῖδες) in Anaximander’s description of the orbits of the heavenly bodies (in a cosmos likened to great chariot wheels), see Aët. ii 20.1, 25.1 (= 12a21, a22 DK) with Morrison (1955) 62–3 (and cf. 64, and Guthrie (1962–9) ii.62 on affinities with Parmenides’ στέφαναι) and M. Miller (2006) 11, and for ἁψίς as ‘orbit’, Hymn. Is. 38, or ‘arch’, ‘vault’ see LSJ s.v. 5a–b; for the expert use of ‘dowels’ (γόμφοι) and ‘joints’ (κόλλαι) by Empedocles’ world-creating Aphrodite (who also joins together μέλεα (or γυῖα), ‘limbs’, as at 31b20 DK just as she joins together bodies by means of their ‘joints’ (ἄρθρα), i.e. genitals, 31b17.22 DK; cf. Ar.’s κολλομελεῖ at 54 with my p. 143 n. 264), see 31b87, b96 (κόλλαι of Harmony), cf. b33 DK, with Mourelatos (1987) 174 on κολλάω; and for this Cypris as a potter as well as a carpenter, kneading, modelling and baking, see 31b73, b75, b95 DK; with Ar.’s κηροχυτέω at 56, cf. Plato’s demiurge as ὁ κηροπλάστης at Tim. 74c6; and for the ‘turning’ (τορνεύω) of the cosmos (and its constituents) see his cosmic carpentry at Tim. 33b, 69c, 73e, cf. 44d, with Solmsen (1963) 480ff. for the similarity between the eclectic technai of Plato’s divine κηροπλάστης and those of Empedocles’ Aphrodite; with Ar.’s χοανεύω at 57, cf. earth’s χόανοι at Emp. 31b96.1 DK, with Palmer (2009) 301; finally, for testimony that Empedocles’ cosmology followed closely the divinely orchestrated metaphysical processes of the now no longer extant cosmology of Parmenides’ Doxa, see Censorinus, DN. 4.7.8; Bollack (1969b) 429–30; Palmer (2009) 316–17. For a reading of Th. 52–7 which elides these resonances in favour of perceiving simply a satirical use of concretizing craft metaphor in general parody of convoluted language, novel compounds (as at Frogs 819 of Euripides and 824 of Aeschylus) and (possibly) new technical terms for rhetoric, see Muecke (1982) 44–6; Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc.; O’Sullivan (1992) 140–1, comparing Frogs 797–802. Our experience therefore recapitulates that of the traveller of Parmenides’ poem: just like him, having been liberated from mortal perceptions, seen mortal fallacy exposed and wilfully colluded to enter the Doxa, we arrive at the very place at which our world – or a world equivalent to ours – comes into being and there witness its creator at work (for us, the orchestrating divinity of para-Doxa, the τραγῳδοποιός as comically epitomized by Agathon).

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Yet what follows first sets out the comic premise of our play within its philosophical topography: entrapped by his own illusions into a comical limbo – in fact, caught, now quite explicitly, between being and not-being – this Euripides awaits the κρίσις of the city’s women (‘[for] . . . on this day it will be decided whether Euripides is still alive or is a goner’, τῇδε θἠμέρᾳ κριθήσεται∣εἴτ’ ἔστ’ ἔτι ζῶν εἴτ’ ἀπόλωλ’ Εὐριπίδης, 76–7), vacillating on this third, intermediate route (the Doxa), no less, on the paradox(ast)ically third and yet middle (?) day of their three-day festival (80, cf. 375).247 In this state, his only μηχανή – hence the opening journey of our play – is to recruit the theatrical mētis of Agathon, who, aptly enough, now recalls the helpless tragedian’s past mastery of illusion by rolling onto stage by way of the externalizing device of the ekkuklēma (οὐκ ἔνδον ἔνδον ἐστίν . . ., Ach. 396) just as a younger Euripides once did himself in Acharnians (408–9, 479), 95–100:248 Ευ. σίγα. Κη. τί ἐστιν; Ευ. Ἁγάθων ἐξέρχεται. Κη. καὶ ποῖός ἐστιν;249 Ευ. οὗτος· οὑκκυκλούμενος. Κη. ἀλλ’ ἦ τυφλὸς μέν εἰμ’; ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐχ ὁρῶ ἄνδρ’ οὐδέν’ ἐνθάδ’ ὄντα, Κυρήνην δ’ ὁρῶ. 247

248

249

95

For the paradox of ἐπεὶ τρίτη ’στὶ θεσμοφορίων, ἡ Μέση at 80, and scholarly attempts to explain it away, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. Most recently, N. G. Wilson (2007a) and (2007b) ad loc., following Sommerstein (1994), simply elides the τρίτη. For the correspondingly third and middle path of the Doxa that is the philosophical realm of our comedy, see 28b6, b7 DK. For this young Agathon at the height of his powers as a glimpse of the younger Euripides, see Th. 173f.; further comic capital made from the equation of the two poets, see Frogs 1327 (Euripides as Cyrene, i.e. full of ‘tricks’) and Th. 98 (Agathon as Cyrene), as well as the final portrayal of Euripides as deceiver at 1160–1226 with Sommerstein (1994) ad loc. For the metatheatrical language of ‘rolling’ (κυλίνδω) in our play, and its attendant associations of deception and illusion, see Bierl (1990) 385–6 on Th. 651 (cf. 767), arguing that the ekkuklēma as quintessential device of tragic ἀπάτη is replete with these connotations; cf. Broackes (2009) 58; Crystal (1996) 357–8, and my p. 182 n. 73 on Plato’s exploitation of κυλίνδω to characterize the movement of things existing between being and not-being. The intertext with Ach. (and not Telephus) as primary here: Hubbard (1991) 187 n. 87; Sidwell (2009) 36–7; the trip to Agathon’s house in general as a refashioning of Dicaeopolis’ visit to Euripides’ abode in Ach. (Ar.’s first extant deconstruction of tragic deception): Duncan (2006) 33; Compton-Engle (2003) 515–16; Muecke (1982) 41–2. Following Rogers (1904) ad 96; Austin and Olson (2004) and N. G. Wilson (2007a) emend to: Κη. καὶ ποῦ’στίν; οὗτος. . .; for ποῖος here in emendation of R’s ποῖο, see my p. 123 n. 218.

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a ri s t op h an e s ’ thesmophoriazusae Ευ. σίγα· μελῳδεῖν γὰρ παρασκευάζεται. Κη. μύρμηκος ἀτραποὺς ἢ τί διαμινύρεται;

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E. Silence! K. What is it? E. Agathon’s coming out. K. What sort of fellow is he? E. This man – the one who’s being rolled out. K. Perhaps I am blind, because I can’t see any man there at all, I see Cyrene. E. Shh; he’s preparing to sing . . . K. . . . ant paths,250 or what’s he vocalizing?

The lines that follow offer the most famous theatrical evocation of mixture, duality and confusion of extant Greek literature, and an epideixis of the tragic demiurgy at the root of para-Doxa. Just as, at the outset of the Doxa, Parmenides has us meet the goddess whose role in the creation of the world is evoked through her manipulation of the opposites of sex/gender, so too we now encounter the mixture that engenders the tragic world (para-Doxa, cf. 146–72), and its progenitor is cast precisely as the embodiment of the erotic intermingling of these opposites (indeed, as a projection of mortal indecision itself). Hymning a complex monody both of solo and choral female lyrics the metra of which seem to break apart and recombine in constantly changing ways (101–29; cf. 52–7) and whose titillating (‘new’) music amplifies the leitmotif of mixture and paradox (cf. κίθαρίν τε ματέρ’ ὕμνων∣ἄρσενι βοᾷ δοκίμων, 124–5), Agathon the τραγῳδοποιός enters our play just as an Aphrodite-figure might: to a reception of sexual arousal and mortal befuddlement, 130–45: Κη. ὡς ἡδὺ τὸ μέλος ὦ πότνιαι Γενετυλλίδες καὶ θηλυδριῶδες καὶ κατεγλωττισμένον καὶ μανδαλωτόν, ὥστ’ ἐμοῦ γ’ ἀκροωμένου ὑπὸ τὴν ἕδραν αὐτὴν ὑπῆλθε γάργαλος. καί σ’ ὦ νεανίσχ’ ἥστις εἶ, κατ’ Αἰσχύλον ἐκ τῆς Λυκουργείας ἐρέσθαι βούλομαι. ποδαπὸς ὁ γύννις; τίς πάτρα; τίς ἡ στολή; τίς ἡ τάραξις τοῦ βίου; τί βάρβιτος λαλεῖ κροκωτῷ; τί δὲ λύρα κεκρυφάλῳ; 250

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For the mētis of ants, see Paus. 7.4.5; further significance as the creators of complex (and archetypally wandering) tunnels and paths and thus analogues of late fifth-century ‘new music’, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc.

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o n w h at - [ it ] -is τί λήκυθος καὶ στρόφιον; ὡς οὐ ξύμφορον. τίς δαὶ κατρόπτου καὶ ξίφους κοινωνία; σύ δ’ αὐτὸς ὦ παῖ πότερον ὡς ἀνὴρ τρέφει; καὶ ποῦ πέος; ποῦ χλαῖνα; ποῦ Λακωνικαί; ἀλλ’ ὡς γυνὴ δῆτ’; εἶτα ποῦ τὰ τιτθία; τί φῄς; τί σιγᾷς; ἀλλὰ δῆτ’ ἐκ τοῦ μέλους ζητῶ σ’, ἐπειδή γ’ αὐτὸς οὐ βούλει φράσαι; K. How sweet the song, O Holy Genetyllides, and smelling of women and tongue-swelling and french-kissy, so that a tingle came over my bottom just upon hearing it! And you young man, whoever a girl that you are, I want to ask you in the manner of Aeschylus from his Lycurgeia. What sort of lady-boy are you? What homeland? What dress? Why the confusion of lifestyle? What does a lyre say with a saffron robe? And what a lyre with a hairnet? Why an oil-flask and a bra? How not compatible! What commonality between the mirror and the sword? And you yourself, child, are you being raised as a male? But where is your dick? Where is your cape? Where are your shoes? Well, then, as a women? Then where are your tits? What do you say? Why are you silent? Or from your song am I to seek you out, since you yourself don’t wish to explain?

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Our eyes now directed to the spectacle on-stage only by the helpless vacillations of a wandering νόος (again) caught between mutually exclusive alternatives (cf. b8.55–9; Th. 7–8), this Agathon finally emerges as a figure of κρᾶσις (or μίξις?),251 a mixture of 251

Casertano (2011) 44–5 n. 92 has most recently highlighted the different connotations of these terms in part on the basis of Empedoclean parallels. He argues κρᾶσις at Parm. 28b16.1DK connotes a blending or ‘melting’ of parts (‘limbs’) ‘in which each constituent does not stay itself but changes the others and is changed with the others, producing something new that could not be produced by the simple separate existence of each single part: the mind. . .’, whereas μίξις of the exemplary processes of 28b12.4 DK connotes rather a union in which ‘the opposites search for each other and unite even while staying distinct from one another’. But see Curd (2002) 146–8 for scepticism that any analysis of these terms is obvious from Empedocles’ fragments, and my p. 118 n. 201 for modern critics who attribute the κρᾶσις of b16 to the mixture of Light and Night. Indeed, Curd (2011) 129 even recognizes comparable ambiguity of κρᾶσις itself at 28b16 DK, asking ‘temper or mixture?’ For the view closest to that I suggest underlies Ar.’s enactment of the model of 28B16 DK, see Bollack (2011) 18, who asserts that Parmenides’ use of κρᾶσις ‘distinguishes it from fusion where frontiers are banned [and . . .] redefines it as the co-existence of separate elements’, and my discussion pp. 121, 156. For κρᾶσις as both a physical ‘mixture’ (like μíξις) and a ‘confusion’ or ‘muddle’ here too, see Mourelatos (2008) 256; and for use of the

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the opposites mortals make constitutive of their own phenomenal reality, but which here coalesce in the source of all (poetic) cominginto-being.252 Yet if by the Kinsman’s confused exposé of such mutually contradictory σήματα of gender (items brought together by the poet to effect his poiēsis, 137–40) and paradoxical absences of sexual identity (μορφαί upon which νόος fixes only not to find, 142–3), Agathon is rendered an ‘ontological puzzle’ (seemingly male and female, yet not male, and not female, hence neither male nor female at all), this is not because Aristophanes is primarily concerned to explore issues of gender or identity per se (as has been argued).253 Rather, this poet is rendered a projection of mortal confusion (a τάραξις τοῦ βίου, 137; κρᾶσις) precisely because, in parallel to the orchestrating goddess of the

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terms that implies interchangeability in exegesis of 28b16 DK, see Thphr. Sens. 4.3. Lastly, for the enactment of 28b16 DK that Agathon’s song and its on-stage reception represents, see my p. 143 n. 264. For the symptoms of Doxastical thinking manifestly on display here see Robbiano (2006) 198: ‘The Doxa is a way of looking at reality that focuses on differences and change, that relies on opposites in order to find an explanation for origin, differentiation and change’; and Palmer (2009) 174: ‘Mortals have no inkling of following the way of inquiry that focuses upon what is and cannot not be . . . Instead, mortals are represented as adopting as their starting point a conception of the world as formed from two fundamentally opposed principles, light and night.’ And for the status of the σήματα laid down at Th. 137–40, see Robbiano (2006) 187: ‘every sign [sc. in the Doxa] defines and separates something from what is then to be regarded as its opposite. These sêmata are what the humans “distributed upon” reality, by turning it into a system of oppositions. This way of focusing on what is different (instead of focusing on what is the same) is arbitrary.’ Cf. Thanassas (2007) 70: ‘While mortals are incapable of using nous to make the distinction between Being and Non-Being, they carry out a separation “according to the appearance,” in which they rend the world apart and create caesura.’ This is precisely the sort of physical κρίσις Ar. parodies in the Kinsman’s bewildered mortal response to Agathon, see now also Sissa (2012) 55 (cf. 57): [In the Agathon scene:] ‘Aristophanes exhibits to the Athenian people a tableau of crude binary thinking.’ For male and female as Parmenidean opposites, and the primal mixture of these forms as ‘the most primordial reality’ see Thanassas (2007) 73. For other examples of the use of ‘male’ and ‘female’ to structure experience see the co-option of these terms by Damon and his followers in order to theorize music and criticize the ‘new music’ of which Ar.’s Agathon is here the exemplar, Csapo (2004); and cf. the division to come at 151–6 between ‘female’ and ‘male’ plays. See Stehle (2002) 380–3; Taaffe (1993) 82; Given (2007) 40–2; but for alertness to the larger issue of the nature of reality and illusion raised by the Agathon scene, see Duncan (2006) 43 (the phrase ‘ontological puzzle’ is hers) and Saxonhouse (2006) 136 n. 13. Note that, against readers informed by gender studies, if anything, this scene makes a nonsense of the distinction between sex and gender; what is at stake here is the manifest failure of the mortal opposites of male and female as artifices of mortal κρίσις whether articulated through σήματα or μορφαί.

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Doxa,254 he comically embodies the processes at the very heart of the generation of this illusory world, wherein there is no ontological stability (as we shall shortly see, 146–72),255 and where, even as they are necessarily combined, the σήματα (and μορφαί) of male and female simply recapitulate as fallacious the dualism that infects all mortal thinking (cf. 1–24; b8.53–9; b12.1–2). (And therein, of course, lies the comic efficacy of casting this young poet – poetically autonomous, paradoxical but, most importantly, as caricatured by comedy, notoriously effeminate – as Aristophanes’ Doxastical deity).256 Thus it is not only in the ontological failure of the opposites of male and female as artifices of mortal thought (sc. of the Light/Night schema), and of the mortal κρίσις (a physical κρίσις in δέμας) from which they derive, that the epiphanous power of our encounter with this Agathon resides (as is the case, for instance, with the divine agency of the goddess of b12, or indeed, the 254

255

256

Note that at 135 the Kinsman’s inquiry is flagged (through the quotation of Aeschylus’ Edonians) as the inquiry into nature (cf. ποῖός ἐστιν; at 96, 30) of a tragic mortal (Lycurgus) into the patron divinity of theatrical illusion who merges opposites and renders them paradoxical (Dionysus), see Zeitlin (1981) 401. On Dionysus’ paradoxical nature, Segal (1982) 234; Csapo (1997) 254–5; Buxton (2009) 234; on the more obvious Dionysian aspects of Agathon’s costume and accoutrements, see Lada-Richards (1999) 33–6; Bierl (2009) 139–1: ‘Agathon appears . . . as . . . the comastic god himself’ (140–1), and on the close fit between the Parmenidean notion of underlying unity as primal reality and the power of Dionysus, cf. Gellrich’s comment that Dionysus ‘does not so much destroy or confuse distinctions as configure the nondifferentiation out of which such distinctions eventually arise’ (cited by Buxton (2009) 234 n. 14). Pairing of Dionysus and Aphrodite (superficially wine and sex) in Ar.: Pl. Smp. 77e; and for Euripides’ treatment of theatrical mimēsis in the Bacchae as a response to Th.’s comic reworking of Aeschylus’ scene, see Saetta-Cottone (2003), (2010). See also Duncan (2006) 42. Why the mixtures of which phenomenal things are composed stay together as stable things for different lengths of time and the processes by which they retain their composition cannot be accounted for on the basis of our extant fragments of the pluralists; see Curd (2002) esp. 156. For Agathon as the inventor of independently contrived drama, see Arist. Po. 1451b19–25 (Antheus); for his paradoxical compositions featuring τò εἰκóς, see Rh. 1402a10–13; Po. 1456a23–5 (cf. Pl. Smp. 200a7); for the popular perception of effeminacy explored in Th., see Sissa (2012) 53–61, esp. 61, and my p. 130 n. 232; further comic allusion, Ar. fr. 341 KA (a reference to both Agathon’s poetic style and his habit of shaving, usually attributed to the lost Th.), and post-(our) Th., Ar. fr. 178 (Gerytades), and (possibly) Frogs 84; cf. TrGF 39 test. 11, 12, with Csapo (2004) 232, who suggests that the wider caricature ‘owes just as much to contemporary music criticism [sc. as it does to the actual Agathon’s notoriety as a pais kalos]’. See my n. 252 above for the binary and gendered terms of such criticism. See also O’Sullivan (1992) 146 (cf. my p. 130 n. 232 for disagreements with his wider reading). Duncan (2006) and Sissa (2012) discuss the Platonic Agathon (a rehabilitating rejoinder to Ar.’s caricature).

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ἔλεγχος of 1–24).257 It is in the very absence of any ‘real’ persona behind the poiēsis (or illusion) to find. The two seemingly contradictory theoretical grounds the poet now offers for his appearance, at 148–56 and 159–67, in fact, bolster this revelation that what is genuinely at issue in our comic epiphany is not where to place Agathon in the Doxastical κρίσις between male and female (even if the obvious comedy of this question is kept alive), but where to place him (sc. theatre) in the κρίσις of the Alētheia: ἔστιν ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν; (b8.16). At 148–56 this Agathon replies and sets out his ‘theoretical’ conception of poetic mimēsis:258 Αγ. . . . ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν ἐσθῆθ’ ἅμα γνώμῃ φορῶ· χρὴ γὰρ ποητὴν ἄνδρα πρὸς τὰ δράματα, ἃ δεῖ ποεῖν, πρὸς ταῦτα τοὺς τρόπους ἔχειν. αὐτίκα γυναικεῖ’ ἢν ποῇ τις δράματα, μετουσίαν δεῖ τῶν τρόπων τὸ σῶμ’ ἔχειν. Κη. οὐκοῦν κελητίζεις, ὅταν Φαίδραν ποῇς; Αγ. ἀνδρεῖα δ’ ἢν ποῇ τις, ἐν τῷ σώματι ἔνεσθ’ ὑπάρχον τοῦθ’. ἃ δ’ οὐ κεκτήμεθα, μίμησις ἤδη ταῦτα συνθηρεύεται.

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A. . . . I wear my clothing with design. For a poet-man should, in relation to the dramas he must make, have ways in accordance with these. For instance, if someone is making female dramas, It’s necessary for the body to have a share of their habits.

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For the mistaken mortal assumption that names (such as ‘male’ and ‘female’) point to (aspects of) an ontologically independent phenomenal world, see 28b8.38–41 DK; as the goddess makes clear, the ‘phenomenal world of mortal belief is in fact constituted by the discursive act of naming’, see J. Barrett (2004) 285; and Palmer (2009) 173–4, on b9. Note that 28b17 DK makes clear that in the Doxa, mortals only see the world through the male/female schema in continuation of the Light/Night polarity that underlies their ἐοικὼς διάκοσμος so that even differentiation between the sexes implicitly brings with it what-is-not, see Robbiano (2006) 196 n. 497; cf. Saxonhouse (1992) 45 and 41 for part of the Parmenidean revelation effected here: ‘To learn from the Goddess [here Ar.], the young man must shed his deceptive senses that perceive what is many, that see the world as divisible into male and female, night and day, light and darkness. The unity of the world appears only as a sort of revelation.’ See Kingsley (1999) 125–6 for the reduction of ‘appearances to the basic oppositions’ encountered by Parmenides’ traveller, effected by his ‘travelling behind appearances’ to the ‘roots of existence . . . where everything merges with its opposite’; cf. 75, for the collapse of all mortal opposites, including male and female, at the site of his revelation. Valakas (2009) 188.

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o n w h at - [ it ] -is K. So do you straddle up, whenever you’re writing a Phaedra? A. But if someone is writing male dramas, this quality is pre-existent in the body; but those which we don’t possess, mimēsis helps to hunt down these things.

A ‘poet-man’, it is here famously claimed, must cultivate habits that correspond to his poetic objects, altering his body by mimēsis to participate in the gender of the drama he would write. Yet having proposed this impersonal (cf. τις, 151, 154) theorum, Agathon next appears to take a backward turn; in response to the lewd mockery of the gender-bound Kinsman (157–8), the poet now explains that his mode of dress is simply akin to that of those lyric and tragic poets of old whose poiēsis reflected their dress and, ultimately, their natures: men like Phrynichus, who, at 165–7: αὐτός τε καλὸς ἦν καὶ καλῶς ἠμπίσχετο. διὰ τοῦτ’ ἄρ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ κάλ’ ἦν τὰ δράματα· ὅμοια γὰρ ποιεῖν ἀνάγκη τῇ φύσει.

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was himself beautiful, and dressed beautifully. And for this reason his plays were also beautiful: for by necessity one composes things equivalent to one’s nature.259

If this conjunction of theories – one constructionist, one essentialist – appears to be paradoxical, two-headed, that is so only if, stuck fast in Doxastical assumptions, its audience take φύσις itself as a stable entity;260 yet as we have seen, in this para-Doxa, φύσις 259

260

For the role of a ‘natural necessity’ as a governing force that stipulates how natural things must be in the Doxa (presumably governing their generation, growth and passing away), identified by Aëtius with 28b12 DK’s goddess (Aët. ii 7.1 = 28a37 DK), see Palmer (2009) 175–6, and note the invocation of this Parmenidean force by Plato’s Agathon at Pl. Smp. 195b–c, see Morrison (1964) 49–51. Significantly, the jokes that follow in lines 168–70, which play with the ambiguity of the adverbs αἰσχρῶς, κακῶς and ψυχρῶς in order to posit a relation between the quality of poetry and the character of its writer (e.g. since Theognis is ψυχρός he necessarily writes ψυχρῶς, 170; cf. 182, where the charge of the women against Euripides then voiced by the poet, ὅτι κακῶς αὐτὰς λέγω (cf. 85), is now replete with comic implication), are also appropriated and developed by Plato at Euthd. 284c9–285a1 (first κακῶς λεγεῖν, then ψυχρῶς), in order to cast the ‘pseudo-logical arguments’ of the eristic sophists Euthydemus and Dionysodorus ‘as the distasteful jokes of second-rate comedians’, see Chance (1992) 92–5 with 244 n. 33; cf. Hawtrey (1981) ad 284d5, and my discussion, pp. 103–8. Given (2007) 48 n. 29 lists critics who perceive contradiction here, to which should be added, most recently, Duncan (2006) 44: ‘both [sc. theories] cannot be true, seemingly – and yet Agathon insists on keeping them both in play. He will not be categorized. He is self-creating . . .’

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is not connected to being (or what-is) but rather to becoming (and hence what-is-not).261 The nature of the poet is thus always already in flux and now transformed through mimēsis according to the drama (s)he writes, able to morph into all manner of new roles, where it reciprocally determines the nature of poiēsis, according to poetic necessity (‘Knowing this,’ Agathon (dis) ambiguates, ‘I altered myself’, ταῦτα γάρ τοι γνοὺς ἐγὼ | ἐμαυτὸν ἐθεράπευσα, 171–2). In their paradox(ast)ical conjuncture, Agathon’s two theories thus simply enunciate the message implicit in our comic epiphany: behind the appearance of the poet lies the process of ‘coming-into-being’ (mimēsis) of his poiēsis; behind the poiēsis, the ‘becoming’ (mimēsis) of the poet. Beyond this, the joke is on those who look harder but fail to see that there is nothing else to find, no reality behind the making of illusion, beyond, that is, ‘the illusion that there is’.262 But that, perhaps, is not quite true, paradoxically, of the Agathonian poiēsis of Aristophanes’ design. For Agathon’s song at 101–29, with which our epiphany began – a lyric duet to Apollo as builder of the walls of Troy (and probably a parody of the actual Agathon’s conjectured Ilioupersis, vel sim.) – enacts a chorus’s hymnic thanks for the freedom of its fatherland (ξὺν ἐλευθέρᾳ | πατρίδι χορεύσασθε βοάν, 102–3)263 and thus situates its Aristophanic audience amidst the festival celebrations of a city about to fall, sung by victims of the greatest δόλος of all. To seek out this Agathon from his song, 261

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See my earlier discussion, and also Given (2007) 41–2, who, drawing on Naddaf (2005) 2–3, reconciles Agathon’s theories on parallel grounds (one can change one’s φύσις) but misses the philosophical basis for their connection and so does not manage to transcend the desire to find the ‘reality’ of an effeminate Agathon behind his illusory play with costume (42). For the world of the poet as one of ontological flux, cf. Vernant (1991) 175 on this scene, where (for a Platonic reader) ‘greater emphasis is laid on the affinities of poetry, as a species of the mimetic, with the polymorphic and gaudy world of becoming and with the inferior part of the soul that is always unstable and in flux and is the seat in us of the desires and passions’. See Kingsley (2003) 255–8, esp. 255 and 256 for this formulation and the parallel insight from Parmenides. Cf. Saxonhouse’s (2006) 136 kindred observation that our play raises ‘the question of whether there is a truth that can be hidden or revealed or whether all rests within the poet’s mastery of illusion’, esp. n. 13 for a parallel assessment of Agathon: ‘In his case, there is no hiding or revealing since there is nothing to hide or reveal.’ Reading R’s πατρίδι at 103 as do Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. For the actual Agathon’s conjectured and ill-fated (because hubristically ambitious) Ilioupersis, vel sim., see Arist. Po. 1456a11–20.

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that is, from (the κρᾶσις of) his (much-wandering) μέλος, (as the confused Kinsman is wont to do, 130, 144–5; cf. b16), then, is not simply to witness the paradox(a) at the heart of theatre, see flouted by it the κρίσις of mortals, and to reveal, in the κρίσις of the Alētheia, its grounding only in what-is-not (thereby exposing its Doxastical claim that εἶναι μὴ ἐόντα, ‘things that are not are’, b7.1);264 it is to glimpse in the shifting poiēsis, a political audience disconcertingly similar to one’s own, unwittingly celebrating in this very κῶμος its own deception (104).265 Herein, 264

265

For the way in which the Kinsman’s seeking out of Agathon ‘from his song’ unwittingly enacts the faulty mode of cognition described at 28b16 DK (discussed on pp. 117–22, cf. p. 83 n. 106, p. 118 n. 201), in which νόος ‘stands by/is present to’ confused mortals as they experience a κρᾶσις of much-wandering μέλεα, note that it is through the κρᾶσις of Agathon’s much-wandering μέλος (130, 145) ‘song’ or μέλεα ‘parts of his song’ (received through a corresponding κρᾶσις of much-wandering ‘limbs [sc. sense-organs] that bend back on themselves’, hearing [and not-hearing] and seeing [and not-seeing]) that νόος ‘is present’ for Ar.’s confused Doxastical audience, see my pp. 136–40; for the dual resonance of the term μέλεα ‘limbs’ as both ‘sense organs’ (in the pl. form) in Parmenides (and in a rare sg. in Arist. PA 645b36–646a1), and elsewhere ‘songs’ or ‘parts of a song’, see Popper (1963) 553; Wersinger (2008) 56–61; and cf. κολλομελεῖ of Agathon at 54 (‘joins together μέλη’), Frogs 1327–8 and Cratin. fr. 276 KA for comic puns on μέλη ‘songs’ and ‘limbs/body parts (i.e. genitals)’; for the term’s Doxastical significance, see my p. 118 n. 201; and for the ‘(much-)wandering’ nature of Agathon’s song: my p. 126 n. 223, p.136 n. 250; but note also that Aristotle’s (Metaph. 1009b22) variant reading of b16.1 DK, πολυκάμπτων, ‘much-bent (sc. limbs)’ enacted here might also connote a song of ‘much mētis’, see my p. 126 n. 223, p. 136 n. 250 and p. 133 n. 244 on κάμπτω. Against following such wandering paths of perception of the sort comically exemplified by the confused Kinsman’s response, the goddess’s enjoinder, by contrast, is clear: οὐ γὰρ μήποτε τοῦτο δαμῇ εἶναι μὴ ἐόντα (28b7.1 DK); for her implicit target here as the third way, the wandering mortal path of confusion, see Palmer (2009) 123– 5; pace Coxon (2009) ad loc. Significantly, the culiminating and transformative experience of Parmenides’ proem is the paradoxically absent presence of the two mutually negating opposites that awaits the traveller after he has passed through the gates of the paths of Day and Night, as M. Miller (2006) has shown: at this site in the cosmos Day and Night alternate their dominion, and as they are shown to do so in the proem – the presence of one negating the other and vice versa, but also constituted by the absence of its counter – they reveal insights later to be experienced as doctrine in the Doxa section of the poem. For it is this universal pattern of oppositional mortal thought, characterized by mutually negating alternatives, that must be overcome (i.e. the traveller must literally go through and past the gates of the paths of Day and Night in order to meet with the goddess and experience her revelations beyond (40)), and it is the process of cognitively transcending these negations that results in the understanding (νοεῖν) attendant upon experiencing what M. Miller (2006) calls the ‘epiphanous power of the “is” ’ (45), the realization that ‘all is full of light and obscure night together’ (28b9.3 DK) (16). Herein, as we shall see in my following discussion, lies the further significance of the allusive prefiguration of our play’s Thesmophorian festival setting hinted at in 101–2,

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climactically staged as comic epiphany, lies the programmatic paradox of this para-Doxa and the rest of our play: the only reality to be found in this world of illusion is the reality of deception, and any freedom from it is as sure to be as illusory as the imagined reality of this play.266 ἀμηχανίη from beginning to end: para-Doxa and the play beyond ὅ τ’ ἀπατήσας δικαιότερος τοῦ μὴ ἀπατήσαντος καὶ ὁ ἀπατηθεὶς σοφώτερος τοῦ μὴ ἀπατηθέντος.267 Tragedians are fools, actors are fakes, spectators are the biggest dupes of all.268 And yet as soon as we discover what Parmenides’ poem once was – not an exercise for intellectuals, but a guide to transformation – then all the details of what this writer says fall into place.269

The ironizing comedy of Thesmophoriazusae’s beginning can now be seen to lie in situating us both on the ordinary mortal path of confusion, a (parodically) circling route that culminates in an audience with the creator of the very illusions that hold us fast in our helplessness, and on the extraordinary journey of an initiate guided safely by a goddess who reveals ἀληθείη (‘things as they are’).270 But, in so doing, our opening lines merely enact the

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268 270

whose ‘Χθονίαιν’ alludes to Demeter and Persephone, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad 101–3; Bierl (2009) 142 and my p. 149 n. 283. For τὰ πάτρια as a political slogan in 412/ 11, see [Arist.] Ath. 29.3 with Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc.: ‘the reference to the freedom of the fatherland may [. . .] represent a comment on the situation in contemporary Athens’. For κῶμος at 104 as a ‘performative shifter, mediating between the here and now of the performance and the then and there of the plot’, see Bierl (2009) 143, and for the identification of Athens with Troy in fifth-century Athenian art and literature (as cities both hubristically sacked by invaders), see Ferrari (2000); use of the paradigm of the Trojan war by the comic poets for contemporary political critique: Wright (2007). Cf. Kingsley (2003) 257–8. Gorg. 82b23 DK: ‘He who deceives is more just than he who does not deceive and he who is deceived is wiser than he who is not deceived.’ Bobrick (1997) 192. 269 Kingsley (2003) 300. The ironizing frame of our play might be further elucidated if we turn back a final time to Parmenides’ proem. For there we began with an anonymous traveller, speeding through the dark and unknown, guided by the Heliades, who have come up from the Underworld to lead him back down to the House of Night; this man is an φὼς εἰδώς (28b1.3 DK), a ‘man who knows’, or an initiate to the mysteries of the goddess. Yet, as Cosgrove (2011) has controversially argued, as the goddess introduces the world of appearance and characterizes those mortals εἰδότες οὐδέν, the phrase φὼς εἰδώς becomes pregnant with negative

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Parmenidean insight that the reality revealed by the goddess of the Alētheia and the world of the Doxa steered by its goddess are simply two different ways of approaching the same object, the world in which we are all immersed, that which is.271 There is the direct route, the path of what-is, which simply is, and the path of what-is-not, which does not exist, and our path, the path that comically fails to appreciate that and so teeters between what-is and what-is-not, floundering in its mistaken apprehension that ‘things that are not are’ (b7.1; Th.130–45).272 As the prologue of our play reaches its climax with a bravura display of the reality of this ludicrous mortal predicament as transposed to theatre (the world in which we are all immersed now), recasting the world of tragedy as this beguiling world of passively perceived para-Doxa, and comedy itself reciprocally as the implicit revealer of reality, its opening exposé of tragic epistemology and veiled political allusions (cf. 102–3) thus establish its wider

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connotations; it comes also to connote a man who has seen the light (φῶς), a truster in perceptual knowlege, or ‘an illuminated observer’, and thus at 28b1.3 DK retrospectively evokes a mortal knowing nothing, whose path, the course of the sun, is changed fundamentally when the Heliades meet him and take him down to the Underworld. On this second reading, the initatory connotations of φὼς εἰδώς are ironized; the ‘man who knows’ turns out not to be in the first instance an initiate but, rather, a man who thinks he knows, whose naïve view of the world is changed by divine revelation. Our proem thus begins not in medias res with the flight of an initiate to meet the goddess, but rather in the world of doxa, on the path of a typical mortal claimant to truth, whose understanding about what-is is about to be revealed as fallacious. If this reading of the ironizing duality of φὼς εἰδώς is correct, it may well explain why it is that the frame of our play takes as its premise the interrogation of a man who has seen, and who wanders on a path of darkness, along the course of the sun, and also casts his anonymous interlocutor as an initiate (an φὼς εἰδώς) into the mysteries that will thereby be revealed. The clue lies in the outcome of our ἔλεγχος: our initiate’s only prefatory lesson from this man ‘who knows’, who ‘has seen’, is how to not-see, be deaf and blind, a state which simply recapitulates the predicament of mortal confusion exemplified by his guide, even as it brings us to exactly the perceptual alertness necessary to experience the reality of the quasi-divinity whom he is made to encounter (Agathon). If Cosgrove is correct, that is, our play may well begin with the ironizing double meaning of φὼς εἰδώς comically concretized by its two protagonists, one a thoroughly confused mortal who has seen and therefore ‘knows’, one an initiate (or rather, the vehicle for our initiation) whose comical descent into ἀμηχανίη paradoxically holds the key to our own freedom from entrapment in tragic deception. If that is so, in turn, the Parmenidean intertext furnishes us with one reason for Ar.’s otherwise unprecedented creation of an anonymous Euripidean follower; Euripides and Anonymous are simply two faces of the same coin. For ‘double-coding’ in general as ‘central to comic poetics’, see Ruffell (2011) 349–51. Meijer (1997) 245; Kingsley (2003) 285–94; Robbiano (2006) 188; Thanassas (2007) 83; Palmer (2009) 180–8. See Kingsley (2003) 107–10.

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thematic concern with redressing its own audience’s complicit entrapment in tragic deception.273 Indeed, to this end, in a manner directly parallel to the goddess’s tactics of prefatory revelation (ἔλεγχος) and didactic deception (Doxa), the rest of our play can itself be seen as a para-Doxastical demonstration of the truth of its revelatory prologue (i.e. that we are all caught in ἀμηχανίη), and its implicit enjoinder to (re)engage critically and self-critically with the processes of theatre (101ff.) can be heard as an enjoinder that resounds implicitly throughout. In this respect, our opening paraphilosophy is thus comparable to another major unannounced parody of this play operating within the layered deceptions of our para-Doxa, the Telephus parody: for just as the effect of seeing Euripidean motifs at the flashpoint of our Thesmophoriazusae’s reuse of that tragedy’s plot sequence – the Kinsman’s seizure of Mica’s ‘child’ (689) – is to prompt some comic spectators to reflect that in several key respects they ‘have been in a play very like it [sc. Telephus] for some time’,274 so too 273

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This concern is also written into our play’s plot: the premise of our comedy is that Athenian men have taken Euripides’ illusory portrayals of female duplicity and excess (which, inconveniently for Athenian women, happen to be true) for reality and therefore no longer trust their wives. For the implicit identification of this audience of Thesmophorian husbands with the audience watching presently in the comic theatre, see my following discussion. And note that every single tragic parody in this play stages a tragic attempt to manipulate its audience by illusory means. As Bowie (1993) 222 notes, in restaging Euripides’ plays ‘Aristophanes demonstrates that the very idea of tragic drama is only possible if its audience suspends disbelief and accepts, on tragedy’s own terms, [. . .] the illusion of reality . . .[i.e. not the reality of illusion]’. For the erosion of the epistemic authority of the senses effected by Euripidean tragedy in the course of its deceptions, see, in addition to our opening lines, the uncertainty that hangs over the Kinsman’s sensory perceptions during the first third of the play, and the Andromeda parody’s further exposé of the bewildering effects of tragic epistemology at the end of the play (at 1056–1104). In addition to the (unwitting) confusion that surrounds seeing Agathon’s door at 26, the Kinsman is also not sure if he sees Agathon or Cyrene (97–8), or even himself or Cleisthenes (235) – both of which, of course, are good cross-dressing jokes but, nonetheless, also reiterate what it means to be an audience so inured by tragic illusions as to have entirely lost the ability correctly to discern what-is and what-is-not (or to be an audience taught by Euripidean theatre to see but not-see, hear but not-hear the reality of its own deception, 1–28). Note that the women, by contrast – bastions of comic reality in this play – constantly reissue the tacit imperative to scrutinize the stage: σίγα, σιώπα, πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν·. . . (381); πανταχῇ δὲ ῥῖψον ὄμμα, καὶ τὰ τῇδε∣ καὶ τὰ δεῦρο∣πάντ’ ἀνασκόπει καλῶς (665–6); ἐπισκοπεῖν δὲ πανταχῇ∣κυκλοῦσαν ὄμμα χρὴ χοροῦ κατάστασιν (957–8). Text Austin and Olson (2004). See Bowie (1993) 223; he continues: ‘in Telephus, the king, disguised as his opposite, a beggar, infiltrated the hostile Greek camp and made a speech in self-defence; he was forced to seize Orestes when a messenger brought news of the presence of a spy in the

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the effect of appreciating as Parmenidean our play’s πολύδηρις ἔλεγχος (b7.5) and opening journey to a comic ‘god(dess)’ of paraDoxa is to prompt the recognition that the subsequent contours of our comedy also conform to a wider (para-)Doxastical topography. Indeed, it is to reveal the truthful deceits of Parmenides’ goddess and her ironic mode of revealing mortal error as latent structuring devices at work in the comedy to follow.275 Consider, for instance, our play’s nested festival setting: for having warned its spectators of the dangers of following this Euripides into ἀμηχανίη, taken them to the origins of theatrical illusion and entrusted them with the pretence of privileged insight into the comically flawed Euripidean deceptions to follow (cf. ἁνὴρ μὲν ἡμῖν οὑτοσὶ καὶ δὴ γυνὴ∣τό γ’ εἶδος, ‘this one [sc. the disguised Kinsman] is a man to us, but a woman in appearance’, 266–7), our Thesmophoriazusae effectively begins again (a new prologue commences at 279),276 drawing its audience into an illusory structure parallel in didactic function to the Doxastical cosmology fabricated by Parmenides’ goddess. This audience now enters an imagined festival:277 a (Demetrian) world constructed within the (Dionysian)

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camp and a search was started. Nearly one hundred lines before Mnesilochus seizes the child (689), Cleisthenes has come in to warn the women (574), who institute a search (656ff.); before that Mnesilochus has infiltrated the Thesmophoria in disguise and made a speech of self-justification. The slightest of hints that we are in a “Telephus” is given in a quotation from that play in the last line of Mnesilochus’ scandalous speech (519), but this is scarcely sufficient to alert many to the double nature of the action’ (224). Cf. Austin and Olson (2004) lviii. By extension, the purpose of our play’s comedy – just like the goddess’s ironic jibing of mortals stuck fast in their fallacies – can be seen as essentially restorative, see Bobrick (1997) 192, building upon Reckford (1987) 3–13 (on Peace), and his emphasis (at 68) on the darker aspects of comic self-recognition. See Taaffe (1993) 87–8; W. J. Slater (2002) 159. For the Parmenidean precedent, see Kingsley (2003) 161: ‘The goddess’ work is to show us we are living in an illusion. But the only way for her to do this is by entering the illusion and creating an illusory structure in it that will help us to realize we are surrounded by illusion. If we listen to what she is saying, follow her in what she is doing, we will gradually start to find ourselves inside that structure she has built – able to look out at the world we used to live in from the perspective of this structure . . .’ As we enter the goddess’s creation, narrated to us as the Doxastical mortal world of 28b8.51ff. DK, we must orient ourselves using the σήματα given to us in the Alētheia, against which the fallaciousness of the σήματα laid down by mortals is revealed, see my earlier discussion, esp. p. 52 n. 23, p. 68 n. 65, p. 89 n. 117, and, on mortal σήματα: pp. 81–2 nn. 100–1, p. 98 n. 149, pp. 99 nn. 154–5. Ironically, the Thesmophoria of this play has become one significant area in scholarship where illusion has been taken for reality, see Clinton (1996) 119 esp. n. 27 on the common scholarly tendency to confuse comic creation with actual cult practice (especially with regard to Ar.’s placement of the festival

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world to which it has become inured, the purpose of which is to prompt its spectators to look again at the deceptions of the Dionysia and their own place within it: to re-experience as sham reality the recent constructs of the Euripidean stage (in the para-tragedies that follow) and witness tragedy’s insidious effects as it lands its first spectator in helpless straits and then attempts to engineer his (and ultimately its own) escape by duping a range of others.278 Time and time again in this play it is the illusory construct of comic reality – that is, the world of the women’s festival and its characters – that throws into relief the nature and operation of tragic illusion and its attempts to dictate reality, such that our Thesmophoriazusae – as a theatrical construct itself – implicitly enacts the central paradox of Parmenides’ poem: that there is no reality without illusion and no illusion without reality.279 Here, just as in Parmenides, to be undeceived by our play’s exposé of how theatre deceives us, we too must first subject ourselves to its deceptions.280 Yet whilst our play’s Demetrian illusion focuses our attention on the plight of our traveller (the Kinsman), thereby switching the premise of the play from the rescue of Euripides to the rescue of his (token) audience, it

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on the Pnyx). The point is that such congruence between male and female spheres is the achievement of the play: for the modelling of the women on the Athenian citizen Assembly, for instance, see Haldane (1965). Here, our comic audience is shown a chronological survey of Euripidean μηχαναί, three tragic ploys explicitly identified as deriving from Euripidean drama (Palamedes, Hel., Andr.), framed by two tragic parodies that are unannounced (the Telephus and IT). For studies of the metatheatrics of our Th., see Muecke (1977); N. W. Slater (2002). McClure (1999) 226 makes the general point that in revealing the mechanics of theatre this play illuminates the truth; cf. Foley (1988) 44. But note that the metatheatrics of this play are concerned also with voicing a critique of audience receptions and spectatorial competencies: a crucial issue here is Ar.’s theatrical exploration of the recognition and misrecognition of (as well as the utter failure to recognize) intertextual allusion. See my following discussion. For the collapse of tragic illusion against the ‘extra-dramatic realities’ of the comic stage, see Bowie (1993) 222–5; for the co-dependence of deception and reality in Parmenides, see Kingsley (2003) 257. See Kingsley (2003) 211 for the equivalent insight in respect to Parmenides. Here, it is surely significant that the one Aristophanic play that dwells at length upon the problem of correctly discerning the reality of illusion (or tragic deception) in general does not overtly draw attention by self-referential means to its own status as a comic drama (‘apart from the parabasis (where it is normal)’), see Bowie (1993) 224. For Ar.’s use of theatrical deception to castigate and educate his spectators, see Bobrick (1997) 191, who compares the stance Ar. must take in his deconstruction of theatre as a sham reality to the ‘Cretan liar of the famous paradox who declared that everything he said was false’. But note that this paradoxical position of the truthful deceiver is also the didactic stance assumed by Parmenides’ goddess (cf. 28b8.51–2 DK).

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does not simply force us to reflect again upon the ἀμηχανίη to which tragedy reduces its (complicit) spectators (cf. 1–28, even if his reward for deafly and blindly following this Euripides is to end up stuck fast in bonds of comic reality and his own deception as befits a Parmenidean mortal).281 Nor, for that matter, does it merely expose the futility of all the μηχαναί Euripides explicitly deploys to rescue him (which far from releasing those bonds simply serve to exacerbate his plight). Rather, just like the divine artifice narrated by the goddess of Parmenides,282 the purpose of the comic artifice of this illusory festival and of the survey of Euripidean theatre it provides us with opportunity to (re-)see, is to introduce a duped theatrical audience – its own spectators – to themselves (exactly as our prologue implies; for the political allusion of ξὺν ἐλευθέρᾳ∣πατρίδι, at 102–3, is nested, most significantly, at 101–2, within a prefiguring allusion to our play’s Thesmophorian frame, cf. 101–4: ἱερὰν Χθονίαιν ∣ δεξάμεναι λαμπάδα κοῦραι ξὺν ἐλευθέρᾳ∣πατρίδι χορεύσασθε βοάν.∣τίνι δαιμόνων ὁ κῶμος;).283 What is at stake in this issue of self-recognition – that is, distinguishing oneself from those ἄκριτα φῦλα unable to tell what-is from what-is-not; seeing the reality of illusion and thereby 281

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For the ‘tremendous emphasis’ given to the bonds (δεσμά, 1013 with Austin and Olson (2004) ad 1012–14) that hold the Kinsman after his discovery and arrest by the women, see Austin and Olson (2004) li and ad 930–1; cf. 940, 943, 1013, 1022, 1032, 1035, 1108, 1125; for this as the Kinsman’s explicit reward for following Euripides, see 1008; and for Euripidean μηχανή as a central thematic of our play, see 87, 765, 926–7, 1131–2, and Moulton (1981) 141. For the bonds of existence in Parmenides, see 28b8.26 (μεγάλων ἐν πείρασι δεσμῶν), 31 (πείρατος ἐν δεσμοῖσιν); cf. b8.13–15, 37–8 (πέδαι), 42–3, 49 (πείρατα) DK with Gemelli Marciano (2008) 41–4. For the divine insight given in the poem that we are all in fact trapped in a state of ἀμηχανίη, held fast in bonds of reality and deception; and that we fail to recognize the nature of our own condition because as mortals we have never learnt to discern what really is but have allowed our wandering minds to trust only the tricks of ἀπάτη over which Aphrodite presides, see 28b6.5–9; b12, b13 DK; Plut. Mor. 756e–f, 926f–927a. See p. 147 n. 277. The ‘two Chthonic goddesses’ referred to in 101 are Demeter and Persephone, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad 101–3 and Bierl (2009) 142, who note the prefiguration of the Thesmophorian action of our play that this allusion effects. For the ‘mirror that the comic playwright holds up to his audience’ throughout this play (esp. in the characters of the Kinsman, the women, who recall the Athenian citizen Assembly, and the Scythian), which is anticipated here in the nested political allusions of Agathon’s song, see Bobrick (1997) esp. 189–93. For the equivalent emphases in Parmenides on illusion as our only path to reality, and self-recognition – which is to say, the recognition of our own entrapment in illusions we have ceased to see – as our only route to breaking free of entrapment in deception, see Kingsley (2003) 196–9, esp. 288–90.

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breaking free from tragedy’s hold – crystallizes fully only at (what passes for) the resolution of our play. Here tragedy extricates itself from critical scrutiny by trickery and poetic sleight-of-hand, implicating its audiences in recognizing their own deception or simply being deceived. At 1160 Euripides returns in order to negotiate reconciliation with the Thesmophorians. His proposal is to cease to slander women in his tragedies, and in future depict them only as good (1160–3). Just as past audiences have been taken in by tragedy’s illusory portrayals of Stheneboeas, Phaedras and Melanippes (400–6; 545–50), so too future audiences, he expects, will similarly be deceived (1167–9). The women accept, yet by so doing, they too unwittingly join that future duped audience; for the irony of their position is that by endorsing Euripides’ new illusory image of women as good, they implicitly reinforce the idea that in reality they are, in fact, bad. By his deceptive handling of co-dependent opposites, Euripides extricates himself to dupe and dupe again (cf. 1– 28).284 Indeed, on several levels, his backward turn here is crafted precisely so that nothing will change. For Euripides’ offer to portray only virtuous heroines has already been fulfilled by the actual Euripides in the tragedies of 414–412 (Helen, Andromeda and Iphigeneia in Tauris).285 Thus by watching the same audience, who at the start of this play set out to censure the tragic poet and now at its close agree to be deceived by him on these terms (and, worse, to collude in the deception of others), the spectators of this comedy are shown a ‘reality’ congruent with their own past, whose future can only be . . . That Euripides’ deceptive proposal is patently fulfilled ‘proleptically’ in the very parodies he stages 284

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See Austin and Olson (2004) lxv: ‘The radical change [t]his Euripides proposes [. . . is] in a larger sense no change at all but a back-handed affirmation of the status quo. For women to be “good” in the way the Aristophanic Euripides and Mika would have them be, it must also be generally conceded that they are “bad” for the two categories are mutually dependent.’ Cf. lv: ‘. . . Euripides’ enemies get exactly what they ought not to want’. See Austin and Olson (2004) lxv for this point. They continue: ‘by proposing to bring “good” women on stage the comic Euripides offers to do something the historical Euripides had arguably undertaken a full year earlier’. See also Sommerstein (1994) ad 848, who argues that the change to staging virtuous women evident in the Euripidean plays of 412 was made in response to the failure of Euripides’ tragedies of 415 (one of which was Palamedes, which is a monumental flop in our comedy, 848). But see also my next note for the censure of earlier Euripidean women, and p. 152 n. 291 for the date of the IT.

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during the course of our play (sc. Helen, Andromeda and Iphigeneia in Tauris) simply concretizes the implication:286 by authoring for himself the role of ‘saviour of virtuous women’, this Euripides has, in effect, been coaching us for the only part his resolution scripts for us to play. (A part already sketched at 1–28.) Ironically, that is, to accept these parting terms – to allow Euripides to escape our critical judgment as he does the women’s – is to fall victim to a tragic deception that is the sum of every attempt at deceit by illusion that has come before: not to become, but to be, and to have always been, an audience deceived by the very escapeploys it thinks it has been watching fail all throughout this play.287 But Euripides finesses that deception; our attention is diverted from the deceptive backward turn of the play’s resolution by the last obstacle the tragic poet contrives to have us see: the Scythian guard. The women now allied to his cause, Euripides turns to a μηχανή able to secure the escape of the Kinsman from the clutches of the guard (1128–32): a Madam’s disguise and a dancing-girl named Fawn (Ἐλάφιον, 1172). Lured off-stage by the girl, the Scythian leaves ‘Artemisia’ (Euripides) in charge of the prisoner and by the time he returns . . . Our Thesmophoriazusae is ending with the laughter of catharsis that unites Euripides and all in this comic theatre at the expense of the duped barbarian.288

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See Austin and Olson (2004) lxv: [Euripides’ proposal merely] ‘. . . puts into words something that has been apparent on stage for over 300 lines and that simultaneously represents a coherent (if tendentious) interpretation of recent theatrical history’. What that interpretation implies in terms of the recent reception of Euripides, however, is an Athenian audience that once critically evaluated tragedy on the basis of its insidious effects (see Hall (1997) xviii on the lack of success of the Med. and first version of Hipp. because of their subversive females) but which, now placated by recent Euripidean heroines, has ceased to do so (just like the women of this play). Pace Bowie (1993) 226–7: ‘by imposing on Euripides the promise not to slander women again, the play has in effect restored normality to Euripidean tragedy and so to the city. . .’ Rather, in Euripides’ deceptive resolution, Ar. sets us a challenge; and if we fail to recognize what needs to be recognized (sc. our own entrapment in Euripidean illusion and the continued threat that tragedy represents), if we allow this Euripides to slip away, Euripidean tragedy will keep its audiences, and everything else ostensibly at stake in this play (sc. male – female relations), exactly the same. See Austin and Olson (2004) liv for the important point that, as far as Athenian men are concerned: ‘women are “good” (i.e. “desirable to have in one’s house or bed”) for the same reason as they are “bad” (i.e. “because of their potential complicity with someone who might manage to get them into his house or bed”)’. Hall (1989) 50.

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Yet if this is the last deception that we are primed to see (by Euripides: 1128–32; 1172–5), it is, again, on a deeper level, also one that threatens to dupe us too (and not merely on grounds of being diversionary). It is all too easy to gloss this concluding – and ‘logically superfluous’ – episode as a scene in which Euripides (now feminized like Agathon, but old and so even more ‘degraded’) is finally shown to succeed only by resorting to staging a comedy where his own tragedies have failed;289 or, to introduce, as it were, a poetic resolution to the finale of our play: to allow Euripides to redirect our hostilities and our laughter to the patsy of the scene, the Scythian (who, supposedly, is not like us, does not know what we know, 1128–32), and clear the way for simply reading comedy as trumping tragedy, Euripides curbed; the dangers of tragic drama ‘purged’.290 But, as Bobrick has shown, in fact, the genuine subterfuge of this scene lies in Euripides’ disguised deployment of one last of his own schemes, drawn this time, from the very first lines of Iphigeneia in Tauris (a play, which, if we are correct in dating to 412, significantly, was among, if not simply was, the most recent of Euripidean tragedies our comic audience could have seen).291 Here, unlike the three preceding μηχαναί mobilized from Euripidean drama, Aristophanes does not have the tragic performer signal for his spectators the source of his ruse (i.e. that a tragedy is being performed). Rather, irrespective of the privileged perspective we seem to have been given by Euripides’ words at 289 290

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The quotations and the reading are Sommerstein’s (1994) ad 1160–1226. This is the reading of Bowie (1993) esp. 227. For Euripides’ use of the term βάρβαρος at 1051 as the first step of a sustained strategy to divert critical attention away from him by the creation of a common enemy, see Austin and Olson (2004) ad 1050–1; Bobrick (1997) 190. Contra Austin and Olson (2004) lxvi, however, note that this is not simply a ploy designed to distract the comic spectators from ‘the irresolvable (although allegedly resolved) conflict between men and women with which most of the play is concerned’; it is a ploy designed by Euripides to distract the audience that would judge him, and that makes the issue of whether or not we succumb to it imperative. See Bobrick (1991). The date of IT is unknown, see Marshall (2009), who favours a date in the ‘probable range of 419–413’ and so argues that ‘IT surely predates Hel.’ (145). For the suggestion that IT was the third tragedy staged at the City Dionysia of 412, alongside the Hel. and the Andr. (explicitly parodied in our play), see M. E. Wright (2005) 50–2. Wright also argues that the parodies of Th. probably reflect the order in which these tragedies were staged, i.e. Hel.–Andr.–IT (52). For the philosophical connections between Hel., Andr. and IT (sc. the common theme of illusion and reality), see 50, 278–337.

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1128–32,292 the very reason for his last ploy’s success on-stage (that is, the fact that its illusion is not ruptured; that it is taken for reality)293 is used subversively by our comic scene in order to expose us to tragic deception; to force the issue of our difference from the Scythian, a character who, tellingly, cannot see tragedy.294 The last laugh of this comedy, that is, is not on a Euripides forced to abandon ‘tragic stratagems in favour of disguise as a comic bawd with a dancing girl’;295 it is on the duped audience that is content in that misperception that he leaves behind.296 An audience whose last image of this play – which it will assuredly fail to see – is of itself floundering at the fork of two paths as it tries to follow a Euripides whom it saw but entirely failed to see.297 292

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Euripides’ words at 1128–32 in fact explicitly point us away from thinking about his tragic scripts and thus prove deceptive, as N. W. Slater’s (2002) 178 innocent reading of them illustrates: ‘Euripides’ question in 1128 is despairing: there are no logoi, certainly none among his own compositions, to which he can now turn.’ Preferable is the reading of Bobrick (1997) 190 (although she, too, fails to see the insidious deception at work): ‘Even in appearing to give up on his theater as an effective weapon against the Scythian, Euripides cannot stop drawing on it as a source.’ See Bobrick (1991) 72–3: ‘[In Th.] theater that presents itself as theater is ineffective as a means of rescue, but theater that disguises itself as “real life” meets with better success.’ N. W. Slater (2002) 179 sees the power to create reality that this scene establishes reflected in Euripides’ use of the legal imperative λέλυσο at 1208 (R’s self-correction endorsed by Austin and Olson (2004) and N. G. Wilson (2007a)), language appropriate for a judge with the power to stipulate how things are. Sommerstein (1994) ad loc., following Bentley, disagrees, endorsing the emendation λέλυσαι. The implicit question is: can we? Pace Hall (1989) 50–2, who is correct to see the Scythian as a spectator who lacks the cultural background necessary to see tragic allusion, but whose scholarly attention is so diverted by Euripides’ strategy of selfdefinition against the barbarian Other, that she fails to read this back onto the Athenian audience who, by implication, should be able to see the tragic allusion (i.e. the Euripidean deception); cf. Bobrick (1997) 189; Willi (2003a) 224. Bowie (1993) 224; Sommerstein (1994) ad 1160–1226; Moulton (1981) 141; the suggestion that Euripides stoops to perform comedy here is also refuted by Silk (2000) 322 n. 57, who argues instead that the tragic poet engineers his escape simply by means of a ‘piece of theatrical-Euripidean disguise’ on the basis that: ‘a madam (“bawd”), though a strikingly low figure, is not in fifth-century terms as distinctively comedic a stereotype as in later Greek comedy; and in this last scene, symptomatically, E. impinges as almost a “straight figure” (and markedly more so than the satirical target he was in the first scene)’. Pace Bowie (1993) 224; Sommerstein (1994) ad 1160–1226; and Hall (1989) 52. For the Scythian in this final scene as a reflection of the gullible comic spectator, see McClure (1999) 236: ‘The part of the gull, now taken by the Archer, corresponds to that of the dramatic spectator, as well as to the juror in the courts, who is easily taken in by the illusory tableaux placed before him’; see also Bobrick (1997) 190, for whom the Scythian likewise represents an unflattering portrait of an easily duped Athenian citizen audience. Contra N. W. Slater (2002) 302–3 n. 100, who remains constrained in his

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Having cast into relief tragic illusion by staging the rupture of its parodies against the ‘extra-dramatic realities’ of the comic stage – shown us repeatedly that its audience must collude for its deceptions to succeed298 – the last scene of this play plunges us back into that very same illusion. If our Thesmophoriazusae gives its spectators a chronological survey of Euripidean tragedy, priming them to see the reality of tragic trickery, the final deceptions it offers its audience are pointedly ones it must negotiate alone. The issues of recognition and self-recognition that are implicitly raised here at the end of the play thus bear significantly on the opening paraphilosophy we have explored. In both cases, spectatorial competencies are crucially at stake, and it is the success or failure of its audience correctly to read ‘dramatic’ (which is also to say, philosophical) a/illusion that determines its critical awareness of the surrounding play and secures its freedom from entrapment in tragic deception.299 Indeed, in the case of our ἔλεγχος and epiphany reading of the character by the polarities of Hall (1989). For the παλίντροπος path of the Scythian, see Th. 1222a–6: Το. ὠ μιαρο γραο. πότερα τρεξι την ὀδο; Ἀρταμουξια. Κο. ὀρθὴν ἄνω δίωκε. ποῖ θεῖς; οὐ πάλιν τῃδὶ διώξει; τοὔμπαλιν τρέχεις σύ γε. Το. κακοδαιμον. ἀλλα τρεξι. Ἀρταμουξια. Κο. τρέχε νῦν κατ’ αὐτοὺς κόρακας ἐπουρίσας.

298

299

1222a

1226

For the image conjured by ἐπουρίζω here, cf. 723–5 (Χο. [. . .] τάχα δὲ μεταβαλοῦσ’ ἐπὶ κακὸν ἑτερότρο-∣πος ἐπέχει τύχη.) and the sea imagery at Hom. Od. 9.81 that resonates closely with Parmenides’ picture of backward-turning mortals adrift in their ἀμηχανίη at 28b6.5–6 DK: Mourelatos (2008) 19, 24–5. Hall (1989) 52 n. 71 also compares the role of the (pro-Euripidean) chorus here with the Greek chorus-leader of IT, who similarly misdirects the barbarian messenger who seeks to report the escape of Iphigeneia to King Thoas. For the necessary (knowing or unwitting) collusion of the tragic audience in creating tragedy’s illusion of reality, see Bowie (1993) 222–3 (quotation: 222); Muecke (1977); cf. my p. 146 n. 273. For examples within the play, see the failure of the Hel. (850–924) and Andr. (1010–1127) parodies due to the obstinate refusal of their on-stage audiences (Crytilla and the Scythian respectively) to play along. And note we might read the final IT parody also as an implicit castigation of self-interested Athenian audiences; for this last deception succeeds on-stage both because its theatrical source is unrecognized and because this comic Euripides gives his audience what it wants. With the recognition of the unannounced Telephus parody, the issue is whether or not the comic audience sees the first failure of Euripidean μηχανή; with the recognition of the IT parody, by contrast, it is whether or not we see the success of Euripides’ final tragic ruse – which is to say, whether or not it is truly successful. In the case of our opening paraphilosophy that frames these examples the issue is more basic still: how we will enter into the comic illusion that follows, what sort of audience we will be. See my following remarks.

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this is imperative; for what our opening ἔλεγχος is designed to enact is a ‘moment of crisis’, to bring us to a fork in the road, to the absolute necessity of critical distance from Euripides and theatre; of making a κρίσις.300 (That is, precisely the situation its audience will be left with at this play’s end.)301 In this respect, also, our Thesmophoriazusae echoes Parmenides’ poem. As Kingsley explains, whilst at b7.5–6 the goddess issues to us a clear imperative to judge the πολύδηρις ἔλεγχος spoken by her, that enjoinder is followed just lines later (at b8.16) with the explicit statement that the issue has in fact ‘“already been decided”, “judgment has already been passed”’.302 Irrespective or whether or not we are keeping up with her reasoning, the critical decision here has of necessity long since been 300 301

302

The phrase is Kingsley’s (2003) 135. Similarly, our play’s first tragic parody, the Telephus parody, which is not explicitly announced (see Austin and Olson (2004) lviii; Bowie (1993) 223–4) foreshadows the critical challenge issued to the comic audience by its last tragic parody (of IT): recognizing the reality of tragic deception (or spotting the extent of the parody). In other key respects, too, one might argue that our play is circular in design; most obviously, it takes its audience from one duped circling audience trying to follow Euripides (the Kinsman) to another (the Scythian), and from a past audience (Athenian husbands) duped by one contention of tragic theatre, to a future audience dupable by its opposite. This structure again can be taken to mirror Parmenides’ poem; here too, the goddess’s revelations are essentially circular (as she implies at 28b5 DK: ξυνὸν δέ μοί ἐστιν,∣ὁππόθεν ἄρξωμαι· τόθι γὰρ πάλιν ἵξομαι αὖθις). Through the correct exercise of his eyes and ears, her initiate will arrive back precisely at the point from which he began but wholly changed by the insight that he has received. This experience of transformation is enacted in the journey of the poem: the traveller is taken from the opinions of mortals to the realm of divine understanding and then back again to the realm of human understanding, see M. Miller (2006) 15. Affinities with our Th. are not difficult to see; for this is a play designed to take its spectators from uncritical immersion in the deceptions of tragic theatre into a realm of comic reality, wherein is exposed tragic theatre’s insidious illusions, and then suggestively place them back into the realm of tragic deception to renegotiate their own way. Just as in Parmenides, mortals here (by which I mean any audience not able to make a firm κρίσις between what-is and what-is-not) who are not able to recognize themselves as mortals – to acknowledge and rectify their failure to recognize the reality of their own deception – are precisely those destined to end up in endless circlings of their own: treading paths of perception that never manage consciously to connect the beginning of their experience (in the terms of our play, the predicament of the Kinsman in our first lines) with the end (the predicament of the Scythian). For this capacity of holistic critical awareness as the defining characteristic of the perceptual state to which our play implicitly incites its audience, that is, ‘the peculiar quality of intense alertness that can be effortlessly aware of everything at once. [. . . and that] feels, listens, watches [. . .] misses nothing’ known as mētis, see Kingsley (2003) 186–7; esp. 187: ‘Mêtis is the encircler; the completer of the circle; the awareness that allows us at any moment, in spite of the raging torrent of appearances, to connect the beginning to the end.’ Kingsley (2003) 133.

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made: ἔστιν ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν; κέκριται δ’ οὖν, ὥσπερ ἀνάγκη (b8.16), there is only one viable path to take, the path of what-is. Our critical powers in evaluating her ἔλεγχος in truth are neither here nor there; indeed, there is no time for reflection, only for κρίσις. Either we follow her lead and work hard to attain insight into reality, or we are ‘left behind’ to circle at the site of all mortal floundering, the fork of this road.303 Yet, of course, in practical terms, we have no option but to follow.304 Our only choice is how we make the journey that the goddess and this play compel us to take: do we set out seeing but not-seeing and hearing but not-hearing as this Euripides would have us, that is, plying a ‘κρᾶσις of much-wandering limbs’ (κρᾶσις μελέων πολυπλάγκτων, b16.1)? Or do we set out already primed to look-and-listen, to direct eyes and ears critically attuned to the only path of perception that is ‘singlelimbed’ (μουνομελές, or ‘whole of limb’ οὐλομελές, b8.4),305 the path of what-is? Here, for our comic spectators, just as for the initiate of the goddess, there is ‘no neutral territory’; simply by virtue of hearing and seeing we are already implicated, already participating, such that even the failure to register the need for κρίσις is already to have made our choice.306 Far from posing a problem to the staging and reception of its frenetic philosophical play, the brevity of our Thesmophoriazusae’s πολύδηρις ἔλεγχος (‘most controversial demonstration’) is precisely the point. 303 304 305

306

See Kingsley (2003) 132–5, esp. 135. As Kingsley (2003) 127, 143 has argued is true also of Parmenides’ poem. οὐλομελές (of the path of what-is) is attested by Plutarch (Adv. Col. 1114c) and Proclus (in Prm. 6.1077, 6.1084) and endorsed by DK. Proclus also gives οὖλον μουνομελές at in Prm. 6.1152, a reading endorsed by Gallop (1984) ad loc. on the basis of J. R. Wilson (1970) 32–4; but both variants are widely regarded as a modification of the οὖλον μο(υ)νογενές attested by Clement and Simplicius, and defended by Tarán (1965) 88–93; Coxon (2009) ad loc.; Passa (2009) 61–6; Palmer (2009) 382, and others. With both variants, Bryan (2012) 99 n. 141 compares Xenophanes’ description of holistic divine perception at 21b24 DK and suggests that these readings of Parmenides’ text might have derived from ancient readers’ desire to associate Parmenides’ Βeing with Xenophanes’ whole-seeing whole-hearing and whole-thinking divinity, noting that if μέλεα (at 28b16.1 DK) in Parmenides are to be understood as sense organs, and thus ‘if Parmenides describes Being as some kind of “whole-sense-organ”, the similarity to Xenophanes’ god, which senses and thinks as a whole, is striking’. See Kingsley (2003) 169 for this point in relation to Parmenides.

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Indeed, it is those spectators most likely to perceive as παρεστῶτες (that is, ‘in the manner of passive bystanders’) – to gloss the first moments of this play as merely a bit of fun at the expense of sophistic thought, and thereby, miss the epiphanic power of its culminating scene – who are also those most harshly judged by it (and the rest of our play); the mass of citizens that Aristophanes repeatedly castigates for its gullibility, the χαυνοπολῖται of Acharnians (635), those wandering theatre- and assembly-goers who see but do not-see, hear but do not-hear what is really played out before their eyes and ears (cf. Ach. 442–4). Even they can appreciate the general critique of Euripides articulated in our opening lines; it hardly requires great philosophical acumen to do so.307 Rather, it is the critique of itself that is not recognized by the audience who first complacently extracts itself from the comic predicament of Euripides’ on-stage follower by virtue of the fact that its members are all obviously hearing and seeing and then settles back self-contentedly to laugh at the transvestism of this comic Agathon. To that extent, the prerequisite of greater knowledge in order to see that it is how one perceives – how one participates in this play – that is crucially at stake here is entirely in keeping with the dual critical agenda of our Thesmophoriazusae (which castigates both Euripides and any audience that would willingly be misled by him); but it is also in keeping with the tensions that already surround the recognition of our play’s tragic parodies (especially those that are unannounced, the Telephus parody and the final parody of Iphigeneia in Tauris) and entirely resonant with those that attend upon the paradoxes of Parmenidean revelation. Parmenides’ own journey makes it quite explicit that in order to experience the revelations of the goddess one must have divine knowledge even before hearing what she has to say; one must be able to negotiate a journey far beyond the beaten track of men (ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων ἐκτὸς πάτου, b1.27) and descend to the

307

This is after all a scene that shows a tragedian already established in the comic imagination as a composer of deceptive speech who conflates being and not-being (cf. Ach. 395–479) persuading his audience that it should neither hear nor see precisely what (and while) it is hearing and seeing.

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Underworld whilst yet still alive.308 An initiate into her divine insights about reality and illusion, that is, just like the comic audience primed by its very own comic epiphany to negotiate tragic deceptions ahead, can be none other than a man ‘who [already] knows’ (ἐιδὼς φώς, b1.3). 308

Kingsley (1999) 61–2; but cf. also (2003) 62–7 for the poem as ‘not just a text that only speaks to those in the know’ but also, as a text that affords its audience the prefatory knowledge its author’s own revelation presupposes, itself ‘an initiation’ and, as such, full of deceptive riddles that ‘stun’ and ‘mislead’ those who fail to negotiate them correctly (63, 67).

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CONCLUSION

ξυνὸν δέ μοί ἐστιν, ὁππόθεν ἄρξωμαι· τόθι γὰρ πάλιν ἵξομαι αὖθις.1

Where have we, another exclusive audience of Aristophanes, arrived? Our philosophizing Thesmophoriazusae ends as it begins, its tacit challenge to its audience, the necessity of seeing through (which is to say, in) the layered artifices of comic a/illusion, the reality of its own deception, and, in that liberating self-awareness, escaping the νίος that binds it in this play.2 In this concluding section, then, I expand the narrow focus of our discussion so far to follow the cues of our prologue’s nested and prefiguring political allusions (101–4), addressing the reasons for staging such an intricate philosophical critique of Euripidean tragedy and its complicit spectators at the Dionysia of 411. Our comedy’s elenctic exposé of Euripides and Parmenidean revelation of the deceptions of theatre, I shall suggest, is motivated by the philosophical challenges thrown down to the epistemic authority of the eye and the ear by the tragic explorations of mortal doxa staged by Euripides just a year earlier, in the tragedies of 412.3 Indeed, as we shall shortly see, in the uncertain climate of April 411 the epistemic authority of the senses, the proper use of the eye and the ear (which is to say, νόος) and the ability to negotiate illusion are intensely political matters. But in order to establish just how the philosophy of perception can be expressly political in this way, I first turn us back to Thucydides’ famous account of a disaffected Athenian dēmos at 3.38 of his History. 1

2

3

Parm. 28b5 DK: ‘It is the same to me, | from where I should begin: for there I shall return again.’ My phrasing is indebted to Kingsley (2003) 283, for whom deception is ‘the noose that binds us’. In what follows I focus exclusively on the Hel., which holds centre stage in our Th.; for a full discussion of the cognate philosophical themes of the Hel.’s companion plays of 412, the Andr., and probably the IT, see M. E. Wright (2005) 50, 278–337, and for the issue of the disputed date of the IT see my p. 152 n. 291.

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Spectator politics: Thucydides 3.38 Γοργίας δὲ ὁ Λεοντῖνος ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ μὲν τάγματος ὑπῆρχε τοῖς ἀνῃρηκόσι τὸ κριτήριον . . .4

In the summer of 427 Cleon stood before his fellow citizens to address an audience on the verge of a backward turn. Against an Assembly now vacillating over its previous day’s decision to destroy the city of Mytilene in punishment for its attempted revolt against Athenian ἀρχή, he launched a scathing attack. As Thucydides presents Cleon’s indictment of the dēmos, at 3.38, the source of the Athenians’ indecision and of the political malaise of which, Cleon claims, it is a part is simple: they are, he asserts, entirely in a daze, perversely estranged even from their own sensory experience. Instead of plying their eyes and ears in the practice of a single adjudicating activity (i.e. looking-and-listening), their attention is fragmented, their control over their senses confused: they direct their eyes to the words of speeches, and their ears to the events they purport to represent.5 In Cleon’s words, they are θεαταὶ μὲν τῶν λόγων . . . ἀκροαταὶ δὲ τῶν ἔργων (3.38.4):6 spectators

4

5

6

Sextus Empiricus’ introduction to On What Is Not, Gorg. 82b3.1–2 DK: ‘Gorgias of Leontini began from the same position as those who destroyed the criterion . . .’ Note that Cleon’s charge here is not that the Athenians are content with accepting hearsay as the basis for their judgements over gaining direct knowledge of the matter at hand by sight, or even that they should simply listen to words and be spectators of events. As Allison (1997) 199–200 says: ‘spectators of events, is irrelevant here; it would simply result in stating the obvious [. . . Rather . . .] the antithesis [sc. between listening to events and looking at words] is a rhetorical ploy; the pair are actually conjoined: Athenians do both of these absurd things.’ (More precisely, the point is twofold: first, the Athenians do two things instead of one (i.e. in their inattentive state they are simply hearing and seeing instead of looking-and-listening); secondly, they do those two things at cross-purposes to one another). See Allison (1997) 200: ‘If he [sc. Cleon] simply meant that people were guided by what they hear rather than what they personally have witnessed, he would not have needed the next clauses.’ For those clauses, see my p. 160 n. 7. See Gomme (1956) ad loc. ‘The rhetoric is effective; but the distinction is, of course, false (for in a theatre there is no difference between θεαταί and ἀκροαταί), and disappears in the next clause, where they [sc. the Athenians] listen to words (ἀπὸ τῶν εὖ εἰπόντων).’ The point stands even if the parallel with the theatre is not strictly correct; for Cleon it is an epideixis of the sophists which is the pertinent comparison, see Nightingale (2004) 51 n. 40; pace Goldhill (1994) 352–7. But the attention paid to the senses in this speech, coupled with the evidence of our philosophical Th., might in fact lend rather different support to Goldhill’s view that theatrical spectatorship could equally be implicated in such evocations of the sophists.

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profoundly alienated from their own experience,7 hardly aware of the reality around them, and utterly mesmerized by the accounts of clever speakers instead (3.38.5–6): . . . καὶ μετὰ καινότητος μὲν λόγου ἀπατᾶσθαι ἄριστοι, μετὰ δεδοκιμασμένου δὲ μὴ ξυνέπεσθαι ἐθέλειν, δοῦλοι ὄντες τῶν αἰεὶ ἀτόπων, ὑπερόπται δὲ τῶν εἰωθότων . . . . . . best [only] at being deceived by new-fangled accounts and not willing to follow what has been approved; slaves of every unfamiliar paradox, and disdainful of what is familiar . . .

In short, Cleon continues, his fellow citizens behave just like an audience of the sophists (σοφιστῶν θεαταῖς ἐοικότες καθημένοις).8 That is, they respond to words passively and uncritically, as if λόγοι were uncomplicated sense perceptions; they fail to direct their senses to uncover the reality that clever speechmakers may obscure. In their political passivity, Cleon suggests, they thus embody the effects of the καινότης promulgated by sophistic teachers:9 they are hopelessly confused, swept away by their passive perceptions, their eyes and ears misaligned, their capacity to κρῖναι λόγῳ completely destroyed.10

7

8

9

10

Indeed, as the next clauses stress, what is truly at stake in Cleon’s criticism of the dēmos as θεαταὶ μὲν τῶν λόγων . . . ἀκροαταὶ δὲ τῶν ἔργων is the Athenians’ failure to bring into play their own experience in evaluating the various accounts given by clever speakers of events they (sc. the Athenians) themselves have seen. See Allison (1997) 200 on οὐ τὸ δρασθὲν πιστότερον ὄψει λαβόντες ἢ τὸ ἀκουσθέν, ἀπὸ τῶν λόγῳ καλῶς ἐπιτιμησάντων· (3.38.4–5) ‘in this last clause, he [sc. Cleon] contrasts what was done (τὸ δρασθέν) with what was heard (τὸ ἀκουσθέν) on the one hand, and for each of these contrasts the means, by observation (ὄψει) on the one hand and the clever critics with their speeches (ἀπὸ τῶν λόγῳ καλῶς ἐπιτιμησάντων) on the other’. In this respect, the Athenians qualify as ‘spectators of words and listeners of events’ also by virtue of their failure to consider what they have seen and what they have heard together. See 3.38.7: ἁπλῶς τε ἀκοῆς ἡδονῇ ἡσσώμενοι καὶ σοφιστῶν θεαταῖς ἐοικότες καθημένοις μᾶλλον ἢ περὶ πόλεως βουλευομένοις. For the association of καινότης (3.38.5) with the sophists in general, see Macleod (1978) 70; for the specific connection of καινός with λόγος (and Gorgias), see Allison (1997) 202, esp. n. 68 citing Gorg. 82b11a26 DK. Note the use of καινός at Clouds 480 (of Socrates), 1397, 1399, 1423 (of his self-serving pupil, Pheidippides), 896, 936, 943, 1031 (of the Weaker Argument), 547 (of Ar. himself). See also Th. 1130 (of Euripides), and p. 177 n. 61, p. 193 n. 110. See Allison (1997) 198: ‘the point Cleon makes is [. . .] that uncritical reliance on sense perceptions, especially when coupled with pleasure (3.38.7), produces inversions and corruptions of reasoning’.

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It has not gone unnoticed that the spectre of Gorgias seems to lurk behind several key aspects of Thucydides’ account at 3.38.11 Cleon’s rhetorical tropes are not only all arguably Gorgianic but also suggestively staged in the same year as Gorgias is said to have visited Athens, and to have ‘struck dumb’ (ἐξέπληξε) a similar audience with the grandeur of his speeches12 and the rich ironies of his self-refutations.13 But Thucydides also draws upon the premise of sensory segregation, so prominent in Gorgias’ most stupefying speech – a speech defending the outrageous position that nothing is – and strikingly extrapolates this in the words of Cleon,14 as he juxtaposes the sensory befuddlement wrought on the audiences of sophistic (sc. Gorgianic?) epideixeis, with the devastating political consequences that such effects have in the arena of serious decision-making, the Assembly. That such imagery of sensory befuddlement should feature so prominently in Cleon’s evocation of an Assembly audience’s political passivity nicely illustrates the political dimension of the effects that the λόγος of our sophistic Euripides is similarly shown to have on the senses of his audience in our Thesmophoriazusae.15 Indeed, in the brief discussions to follow, I will suggest that the opening

11

12

13

14

15

See Gomme (1956) ad 3.38.4: ‘This is very much in Gorgias’ manner, parisosis, homoioteleuton, and the rest (just what Kleon professes to be attacking)’; see also Gomme ad 3.38.7; and Macleod (1978) 71, who, stressing that Cleon’s speech is Gorgianic, recognizes that Cleon ‘panders to the very tastes of the audience which he repudiates’. That this is the only mention of the sophists in the entire History is thus not coincidental. For the influence on Thucydides of the models of emotion and perception set out by Gorgias in his Encomium of Helen and especially on his depiction of fear as an affect brought into being through sight and λόγος, see V. Hunter (1986). Diod. Sic. 12.53.3; Dion. Hal. Lys. 3 (11.6 UR); see Verdenius (1981) 119–22 and O’Sullivan (1992) 127–8 on Gorgianic ἔκπληξις. See also Pl. Smp. 198b5–c6. For the air of self-refutation in Cleon’s speech, note that, as many critics have observed, Cleon produces just the sort of καινός argument by which he would have the Athenians not be persuaded. Indeed, in Ar., it is Cleon himself who is responsible for reducing the Athenians to such passivity, see Knights 261, 755, 804, 1032. For similar images of Assembly audiences alienated from themselves, eyes gaping, and νόος wandering, see Knights 752–5, 1111–20; cf. Montiglio (2000) 156–7. Like Gorgias in On What Is Not, Cleon here fragments his audience’s experience of spectatorship and then extrapolates the alienation bound up in that action by presenting each sensory component of the practice as utterly misaligned. See my earlier discussion, pp. 33–6. Indeed Loraux (1988) 121 has argued that the criticism voiced against the Athenians by Cleon at Thuc. 3.38 is precisely that they use their eyes to not-hear (‘leurs yeux à ne pas entendre’).

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Parmenidean elenctic comedy of our play directly answers the ideological threat posed by Euripides’ recent dramatic exploration of certain philosophical tenets about mortal perception and the primacy of doxa and their uncritical reception by complicit Athenian audiences. Those philosophical ideas, and their implications, will emerge as closely parallel to those presented by Thucydides in Cleon’s speech, with its conjoined motifs of sensory segregation, alienation and political passivity. In this respect I will argue that the affinity between the imagery drawn upon by Thucydides’ Cleon and that which Aristophanes associates with his Euripides should prompt us to position both as responses to the political implications of the teachings of Gorgias or of those in his milieu.16 Certainly, as we shall see, if Gorgias’ presence is implicit at Thucydides 3.38, his influence is manifestly felt in the plays (but, perhaps, especially in the Helen) presented by Euripides to the Athenian public in 412. Before I examine the political subtext of our paraphilosophy, then, I turn first to its comic pretext, and the contribution that our prologue might make to our understanding of the relationship between Aristophanes and philosophy. Comedy and tragedy, 412–411 bc δεῖν ἔφη Γοργίας τὴν μὲν σπουδὴν διαφθείρειν τῶν ἐναντίων γέλωτι, τὸν δὲ γέλωτα σπουδῇ, . . .17

The Helen, it has been said, is the ‘most explicitly philosophical’ of all Euripides’ escape-tragedies, a play that, in its self-conscious ruminations on illusion and reality, language and its objects, ‘comes as close as it can to a theory of theater itself’.18 But its 16

17

18

See V. Hunter (1986) for the ‘incontrovertible link’ between Thucydides and Gorgias in their treatment of perception; Verdenius (1981) on Gorgias’ theory of doxa and deception as a critical response to the Eleatic theory of knowledge; and my p. 45 n. 9 for comparably extreme theorists of mortal doxa such as Xeniades (who has been associated with Gorgias); cf. Palmer (1999) 129, esp. n. 19. For Ar.’s wider engagement with Gorgias, see my p. 32 n. 12 and following discussion pp. 189–94. Gorg. 82b12 DK: ‘Gorgias said one must destroy the seriousness of one’s opponents with laughter, and laughter with seriousness . . .’ M. E. Wright (2005) 278; Zeitlin (2010) 269.

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use of philosophical ideas is playfully sceptical, if not also deliberately self-contradictory, and its ‘theory of theater’ deeply ambivalent. The play’s manifest debts to sophistic thought, and especially to Gorgias, are well known; indeed, the patterns of influence traditionally drawn between Euripides’ retelling of the Helen myth and the sixth-century ‘palinode’ of Stesichorus have been challenged in favour of reading the Helen as a creative response to the epistemological and ontological themes of Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen and On What Is Not.19 But alongside its Gorgianic elements, the Helen’s exploration of illusion and reality also exploits parallel textual strategies and epic images to those also used by Parmenides in his own poetic evocations of the mortal predicament of untutored thought and perception.20 And the result is a backwardturning mediation on mortal confusion that spills its own crafted aporia from the stage in a multiplicity of ambivalent contrarieties. The conceit of Euripides’ tragedy is that the real Helen never was at Troy; unbeknownst to all who fought that war, in truth, an εἴδωλον was sent in her place to endure the conflict, whilst the real Helen was 19

20

For the view that Euripides draws upon the poem of Stesichorus, see Kannicht (1969) 26– 41; C. Segal (1971) 561 (though noting that unlike Stesichorus’ use of the notion of a phantom Helen, Euripides’ use of the εἴδωλον ‘has the philosophical function of asking what reality is’); Bassi (1993); Zeitlin (1981) 200–3; for the contrary reading favouring the influence of Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen, see M. E. Wright (2005) esp. §2.3 (80– 115), 277 cf. n. 200, who also argues for the influence of Gorgias’ On What Is Not. Cf. 272 n. 180 for a discussion of the dating of Gorgias’ Encomium, where it is argued, based upon Gorgias’ claim that at the time he was writing no poet had deviated from the traditional version of Helen’s culpability (82b11.2 DK), and the possible presence of Gorgianic themes in Euripides’ Trojan Women, that a date of 415 (or earlier) seems likely (although Preuss (1911) 9 argues for a date of 414). The treatment of the Helen myth by Gorgias at this approximate date, M. E. Wright (2005) 276 argues, ‘provides an answer to two questions – first, why Euripides should have turned his attention with such intensity to the reality-and-illusion theme in 412 (even though he had touched on it previously); and second, why Euripides should have chosen to explore this theme through the myth of Helen in particular . . .’ That is to say, ‘Euripides is responding directly to a new, exciting, “cutting-edge” philosophical debate . . .’ The general Parmenidean influence on the Helen is noted by N. Austin (1994) 27, 154 and Allan (2008) 47; Foley (1992) discusses the Egypt = Underworld setting evoked by Euripides’ use of the mythic schemata of the Demeter/Persephone story (also exploited of course by our Th., see Bowie (1993) 214–17, Stehle (2002) and my p. 128 n. 230); the specific tactic of using Parmenidean ideas about the mortal conflation of what-is and what-is-not in order to explore the limits of mortal perception arguably finds a dramatic precedent in 458 bc in A.’s Ag., see Kouremenos (1993). But for the new-found currency of Parmenidean ideas during the 410s attendant upon their widespread dissemination by means of the tendentious and selective appropriations of the sophists, see my earlier discussion, pp. 43–6.

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transported to Egypt. There she spent the war in isolation and chastity, while Greeks and Trojans fell in the futile hope of winning her as a prize.21 Amongst them, Menelaus, for whom the real Helen waits in Egypt, is the most painfully deceived, believing his wife to be living an adulterous life in Troy, while in truth she fights to remain loyal to him by rejecting the attention of the Egyptian king. Indeed, as Euripides’ play begins, and the Spartan king is shipwrecked on the coast of Egypt, it gradually becomes apparent that he is monumentally confused; what he has unwittingly brought back with him from Troy is merely a phantom. Hence, aptly, just like those backwardturning mortals of Parmenides’ b6, since leaving Troy with his prize (γέρας οὐ γέρας, 1134) this Menelaus (dubbed ὁ πλανήτης, 1676) has been wandering on a path that has caused him to criss-cross the sea (πορθμοὺς δ’ ἀλᾶσθαι μυρίους πεπλωκότα∣ἐκεῖσε κἀκεῖσ’ οὐδ’ ἀγύμναστον πλάνοις, 532–3) for seven circling years (ἑπτὰ περιδρομὰς ἐτῶν, 776).22 Even when finally reunited with his wife in the almost abortive recognition scene at the centre of the play, he continues unwittingly to confuse what-is (the real Helen) for whatis-not (an apparition), all the while locating his own floundering at the archetypal site of all Parmenidean mortal confusion, the fork of two roads (ὦ φωσφόρ’ Ἑκάτη, πέμπε φάσματ’ εὐμενῆ, 569; cf. Th. 858), where he, like so many others, plies an eye that looks yet does not see (οὔ που φρονῶ μὲν εὖ, τὸ δ’ ὄμμα μου νοσεῖ; 575; cf. 576–80). Yet Menelaus is not alone in his conflation of what-is and whatis-not; Euripides’ play is full of characters that cannot make or maintain a firm κρίσις between these things.23 And as this tragedy unfolds, their faulty reasoning not only infects but is designed to 21

22

23

As Euripides’ play opens, the situation is that Proteus, the king of Egypt, who had ensured Helen’s safety, has just died, and she is being pursued by Theoclymenus, the heir to the throne, with (a forcible) marriage on his mind. In the hope of bringing his plan to fruition he has sworn to kill all Greeks who land on Egyptian shores. But Menelaus has been shipwrecked off the coast. For ἀλάομαι see Hel. 532, 401; cf. ἀλατείᾳ βιότου∣ταλαίφρων, 523–4 (cf. ἀλώμενον, Parm. 28b14 DK, with my p. 55 n. 30); for πλάνη see Hel. 533, 774, 1676, (cf. Parm. 28b6.5, b8.54 DK, with Mourelatos (2008) 24–5 and Robbiano (2006) 137–8 on the Odyssean resonance of the term, also active in the Hel.). Indeed, for Menelaus’ predicament in the Hel. as a tragic development of Homer’s portrayal of Menelaus stranded on Paros at Od. 4.351–480 see Allan (2008) 27. In addition to the implicit equal confusion of Paris, there is also Teucer, Hel. 72–7, 116– 23; Helen and Menelaus, cf. 563–4; Theoclymenus is deceived into thinking that Menelaus is dead when he is not, cf. 1196f.; and in more general terms, as C. Segal

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infect its audience too. Almost from the play’s outset, for instance, the contrasts that Euripides initially uses in order to establish a relationship of polarity between reality and illusion (contrasts such as ὄνομα/σῶμα or πρᾶγμα, δοκεῖν/εἶναι, λόγος/ἔργον)24 are increasingly used in such a way as to blur any such tidy antitheses.25 When, early in the play, Helen laments her fate, saying ἀλλὰ πάντ’ ἔχουσα δυστυχῆ∣τοῖς πράγμασιν τέθνηκα, τοῖς δ’ ἔργοισιν οὔ, her words confound the audience’s expectations in precisely this way: as Wright observes ‘instead of [using] ὄνομα (illusory) versus πρᾶγμα (real), or λόγος (illusory) versus ἔργον (real), she makes two “real” terms opposed to each other’.26 Even in the very terms in which it leads the audience to think about what is (real) and what is not, that is, Euripides’ play deceptively turns back on itself. And its (deliberate) effect is not only to portray confusion; it is to confuse per se.27 Against this backdrop of deceptive speech and mortal floundering, only one character is distinguished positively: she is Theonoe (Θεονόη), the Egyptian prophetess who is associated with divine insight (as her name suggests). Her entrance is announced by two torch-bearing handmaidens reminiscent of the Heliades whose light-bringing actions prefigure our encounter with the goddess of Parmenides’ poem.28 Like the goddess, too, she also eschews untested appearances and, at least by the end of the play, has proved not only to be the sole sure conduit

24 25 26

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(1971) 559, 562, and others since have argued, Helen herself exists ‘in the world of both appearance and reality’ and thus everything with which she is intimately involved has a divided, self-contradictory, quality. Cf. in particular, Downing (1990) and Zeitlin (2010). The classic structuralist analysis is C. Segal (1971) see esp. 574, 582, 591. M. E. Wright (2005) 291–3. Hel. 285–6 cited and discussed by M. E. Wright (2005) 292 (he continues: ‘So what do Helen’s words here mean?’): ‘The escape-tragedies do not do what they at first seem to be doing, viz. simply replacing false, deluded opinion with true knowledge [. . .] as the plays progress it becomes impossible to assign a truth-value to anything’ (original emphasis). M. E. Wright (2005) 294 spells out the problem: ‘Because the plays (sc. Hel., Andr., IT) contain so much that is deceptive or illusory, and so many varying levels of ambiguity, we are bound to reflect that the words and appearances which are presented as true are no different in kind from those which are presented as false. We have no way of knowing which ones correspond to reality – and it becomes increasingly possible that none of them does. What proof is there?’ For the entrance of Theonoe, see Hel. 865–72; for the Heliades, see Parm. 28b1.5–10 DK, with my pp. 49–50.

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to reality, but also one who will deceive others in accordance with justice.29 The entire play can thus be read as a dramatic exploration of mortal error – but one whose poetic success is predicated upon its audience’s epistemic failure: for unlike Parmenides’ poem, here, on the tragic stage, there are no firm σήματα to mark out one path from another.30 Confusion is all there is; Euripides’ audience may watch mortals unwittingly turning back on themselves, but, ultimately, it is simply left to flounder too. Indeed, from its scene-setting prologue the Helen selfreflexively celebrates its own power to fragment its audience’s νόος through oxymora, amphiboly and palintropia of all kinds by extrapolating the traditional ambivalence of its eponymous heroine (that is, Helen’s propensity to embody and be surrounded by dualities and reduplications).31 As Downing has brilliantly shown, the play’s first lines, spoken by Helen herself, and situating their audience in Egypt, in fact elicit confusion in exactly this way: their most striking word (Νείλου μὲν αἵδε καλλιπάρθενοι ῥοαί, 1), itself carries incipient contradiction (the play of κάλλος, ‘beauty’ of appearance, and παρθένος, ‘virgin’, paradoxically connoting both 29

30

31

See Hel. 13–14: καλοῦσιν αὐτὴν Θεονόην· τὰ θεῖα γὰρ∣τά τ’ ὄντα καὶ μέλλοντα πάντ’ ἠπίστατο. Cf. 530, where Theonoe again is referred to as ἣ πάντ’ ἀληθῶς οἶδε (with Allan (2008) ad loc. on the authenticity of this line); cf. 317–18, 823. See C. Segal (1971) 587, for whom she represents ‘the embodiment of the highest reality’. Cf. 604; Burnett (1960) 157–9; Conacher (1967) 294–7, 301–2. But note that even this may be deceptive too, see my p. 185 n. 85. Theonoe’s collusion in the deception of her brother is expressly couched as collusion in the service of justice (998–1031), and one which will involve action that will appear to be harmful to her brother’s interests but in reality will be for his benefit, see esp. 1020–1: εὐεργετῶ γὰρ κεῖνον οὐ δοκοῦσ’ ὅμως,∣ἐκ δυσσεβείας ὅσιον εἰ τίθημί νιν. Cf. Kingsley (2003) 494 on the philosophical theme of deception intertwined with ‘rightness and justice’. Or if there are, they are the σήματα of the Doxa: self-contradiction, etc., see my p. 52 n. 23, p. 81 n. 100, p. 98 n. 149, p. 138 n. 252. Zietlin (2010) 263–4 discusses the ‘doubling and division’ and ‘repetitions and replications’ that are the essential feature of the Helen tradition: in addition to those discussed here, she points out that Helen is also given two mothers (Leda, and Nemesis, Hes. fr. 176 MW), is one of two sisters, has two brothers (the Dioscouri, Castor and Pollux, who are both dead and yet alive and, since made immortal by Zeus only every other day (see Cypr. 1.3), alternate their appearance in the same place of the night sky as a single star), marries one of two brothers, takes a further husband in Paris, remarries again when he is killed and, lastly, is herself divided ontologically by virtue of possessing an εἴδωλον. My discussion of Euripides’ extrapolation of this doubling motif in the following pages is indebted to Downing (1990) 1–4; cf. Meltzer (2007) 195–7.

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the εἴδωλον as opposed to the ‘new’ virginal Helen, and also the character who is speaking, in whose singular persona κάλλος and παρθενία yet coexist). The syntactical ambiguity of the very next two lines (ὃς ἀντὶ δίας ψακάδος Αἰγύπτου πέδον | λευκῆς τακείσης χιόνος ὑγραίνει γύας, 2–3) prompts vacillation of a further kind, between competing accusative objects of ὑγραίνω, πέδον and γύας. Next, allusions to both Homeric and Herodotean Helen traditions evoke two Proteuses (the polymorph sea-god, Proteus of Paros, and his Herodotean humanized reworking, Proteus of Egypt, 4–5) just as Helen introduces one (Φάρον μὲν οἰκῶν νῆσον, Αἰγύπτου δ’ ἄναξ, 5), thereby displacing earlier claims of truth and fiction with a new synthetic λόγος that advertises its own constructedness.32 This new dualistic Proteus (who is dead, yet later still dwelling in his house, οἰκεῖ, 460), in turn, is said to have wed, from among the maidens of the sea (of which there are fifty), one (μία, 6) whose name is proverbial for many (Ψαμάθη, ‘Sandy’, 7; hence, from many he got one, and from one, many). She, for her part in this tale, bore him ‘twofold children’ (τέκνα δισσά, 8), of which the first, a son, was called Theoclymenus, ‘god knowing’, a borrowing of an Homeric seer’s name (Od. 15.256), but one ironized by Helen’s etymologizing so as to intimate that it derives from yet another’s fame (cf. the emphatically placed, displacing aorist διήνεγκ’ at 9–10: †ὅτι δὴ† θεοὺς σέβων∣βίον διήνεγκ’, [sc. . . . a boy called Theoclymenus] ‘because he [i.e. Theoclymenus’ dead father, Proteus . . .?] spent his life worshipping the gods’); so that this Theoclymenus’ one name evokes two personas (seer and suppliant, i.e. ‘one who obeys, κλύω, the god(s)’), neither of which he himself can rightly claim.33 The other, Proteus’ daughter, by contrast, carries two names where we might expect one (Eido and Theonoe, in place of the Homeric Eidothea), the first of which (Eido), used only in pre-adolescence, evoking both appearance (εἶδος/εἴδωλον; cf. ‘ἀγλάισμα (image) of her mother’, 11) and knowledge, while the second, Theonoe, ‘god 32

33

Downing (1990) 4, reading line 5 as genuine, contra Dingelstad; see Allan (2008) ad loc. for the issue of authenticity. That this Theoclymenus entirely lacks his Homeric namesake’s foresight is crucial to the plot; and no less so is his lack of Protean piety, for when Theoclymenus finally obeys the gods this play ends. For the assumption that words correspond to reality as a fallacy typical of Parmenidean mortals, see 28b8.38–41 DK with my p. 140 n. 257. Allan (2008) ad loc., following Nauck, by contrast, argues that these words at 9–10 are interpolated.

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knowing’, bestowed in (still virginal) adulthood, enjoying the explanation (cf. τὰ θεῖα . . . ∣ . . . ἠπίστατο, 14–15) her brother’s never knew. Then there are two fathers for Helen (Tyndareus, the one who either just is Helen’s father, or perhaps ‘is only famous [alongside Sparta]’ (the absent copula at line 17 permits either), and Zeus, the one who is (only?) said to be, 17–18; cf. 21; inverting Gorg. Hel. 3). They, in turn, belong to two different λόγοι, of which the one recounted here, concerning Helen’s divine parentage, brings this cascade of doubling to pleonastic tail-chasing, as Zeus takes the form of a ‘swan bird’ (κύκνου . . . ὄρνιθος, 19) and then comes by this deceit to Helen’s mother, Leda, as if pursued by an eagle (20), a bird also symbolic of Zeus,34 until the entire λόγος is cast into doubt by Helen’s sceptical aside (εἰ σαφὴς οὗτος λόγος . . ., 21). Yet if all these bifurcations and backward-turning dualities evince the paradoxical mixing of what-is and what-is-not that underlies the fictive reality of Euripides’ new poiēsis, their effect is not simply to foreground the play’s thematic questions of identity; rather it is to enact in its audience, as artifice to be enjoyed, the very predicament of its doxa-bound protagonists, the archetypal Parmenidean state of mortal two-headedness: ἀμηχανίη.35 34 35

Downing (1990) 5–6. Indeed, later in the play, the chorus even sings this spectatorial condition into the action as they take the unknowability of the gods as an exemplary site of the general human epistemological and ontological helplessness epitomized by Helen’s predicament, 1137–43 (text Allan (2008)): ὅτι θεὸς ἢ μὴ θεὸς ἢ τὸ μέσον τίς φησ’ ἐρευνάσας βροτῶν; μακρότατον πέρας ηὗρεν ὃς τὰ θεῶν ἐσορᾷ δεῦρο καὶ αὖθις ἐκεῖσε καὶ πάλιν ἀντιλόγοις πηδῶντ’ ἀνελπίστοις τύχαις.

1139–40

Cf. Allan (2008) ad 1139–43: ‘δεῦρο . . . πάλιν: the zig-zagging run of the adverbs captures the bewilderment of the human spectator [i.e. of τὰ θεῶν]’; which is also to say, I would add, the ἀμηχανίη of the Euripidean audience of these very lines (cf. ὅτι θεὸς ἢ μὴ θεὸς ἢ τὸ μέσον), not to mention the numerous other backward-turning contradictions engendered from the outset of this play by the ‘divine dispensations’ of Euripides’ new Helen story. The bleakness of this picture of the discovery of the ‘furthest limit’ (μακρότατον πέρας) of doxa-bound human knowledge in the face of the unknowable workings of the gods, which to aporetic humans look merely like happenstance, is further emphasized when we consider that for Parmenides it is only insofar as they reach the furthest limits (πείρατα) of our phenomenal world and confront the divine that otherwise worthless doxai accrue any positive value, see Kingsley (2003) 277–80, esp. 279, on Parm. 28b1.32–3 DK: ἀλλ’ ἔμπης καὶ ταῦτα μαθήσεαι, ὡς τὰ δοκοῦντα∣χρῆν δοκίμως εἶναι διὰ παντὸς πάντα περῶντα, ‘nevertheless, you will learn these things also, how the things

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(Hence, what the first twenty or so lines of Thesmophoriazusae so comically parody, the first twenty or so of the Helen beautifully exemplify). Indeed, most ironic of all, to this end, even in its valuation of deception itself, Euripides’ play turns back on itself, such that the transformation of Euripides’ protagonists in the middle of the play from victims to agents of ἀπάτη does not simply reiterate – albeit now disconcertingly playfully – the essential ‘vulnerability of humans to deception and manipulation by appearance’, as Helen fabricates an εἴδωλον of her own (a ‘dead’ Menelaus) and with it dupes (scripts and acts) her way to escape, and Menelaus does likewise; it also leaves its twin-headed audience with two conflicting assessments of deception and of the charge of its key terms, ἀπάτη, τέχνη, δόλος, μηχανή.36 That these terms gain their positive connotations in ways that tacitly reflect, and reflect upon, the tragedian’s own craft as illusion-maker and the complicity (i.e. the self-deception) of his audiences, and yet retain their negative charge, of course only further problematizes that ambivalence.37 It is for this reason that the Helen provides a ready explanation for the comic pretext – the casting of Euripides as promulgator of ἀμηχανίη – of the Parmenidean critique staged in the first lines of our Thesmophoriazusae. Certainly, for Euripides, who for so long flirted with the theme of illusion and reality,38 to have staged a play that exploited both thematic imagery and linguistic strategies characteristic of Parmenidean mortal confusion alongside not just Gorgianic ideas about the primacy of doxa (cf. Gorg. Hel. 11)

36

37 38

they resolved to be, | ought to be trustworthy, passing through everything from end to end’. According to Kingsley, the ‘passing through’ (περῶντα) that renders doxai acceptable implies getting to the furthest limits of human thought, what we think we know, and ‘crossing the boundaries of existence’ (279) to encounter the goddess and her divine perspective that is otherwise always beyond us. Downing (1990) 8, 11–13, esp. 13 ‘In this way, the play perpetuates our moral along with aesthetic awareness of these key terms; it keeps their hybrid, paradoxical double identity, the embarrassment of multiple referents that frustrates easy exchange and keeps their character essentially plural, divided, geminated.’; cf. Allan (2008) 49, who points to the lighter tone of these scenes of deception as a corrective to M. E. Wright’s (2005) reading of outright nihilism. Downing (1990) 12. Euripides’ interest in this theme is parodied by Ar. as early as 425, see Ach. esp. 395–6, 440–4 (cited in p. 117 n. 197), a parody of the Telephus (fr. 698 (Kannicht)), itself performed in 438. See Segal (1993) 38, who notes that reference to the reality–illusion problem surfaces ‘somehow or other in nearly every Euripidean play’. Cf. my pp. 55–6 n. 30.

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and the nature of perception but also the ontological paradoxes of On What Is Not means that he could easily be caricatured as deliberately conflating what-is and what-is-not.39 Yet the sophistication of our comedy’s engagement with Parmenides suggests a deeper understanding of Euripides’ philosophical aims; for in bringing together these things, the Helen merely draws out the single premise upon which Parmenides’ revelations about the nature of what-is and Gorgias’ dizzyingly self-refuting refutation of Eleatic premises in On What Is Not and his account of the human condition in the Encomium of Helen all ironically agree: the fundamentally deceptive nature of our world of doxa.40 And it is rather that poetic choice upon which Aristophanes’ caricature seizes. Indeed, the way in which Euripides’ play reuses Gorgias, carefully synthesizing aspects of his Encomium of Helen and of On What Is Not to articulate a pessimistic vision of the limits of doxa-bound human knowledge, in philosophical terms, in itself, supports an identical conclusion.41 Either path, that is, circles around a Euripides of 412 thoroughly invested in the archetypal mortal conflation of what-is and what-is-not – and, in his confusing and sophisticated explorations of epistemological and ontological themes, glibly (mis) leading his audiences along that forbidden way too.42 This, I suggest, accounts for why it is that, a year later, Aristophanes casts his comic Euripides at the start of our Thesmophoriazusae (a play entirely made 39

40

41

42

In broad outline, the study of M. E. Wright (2005) also supports this kind of reading, see 295 on Euripides’ self-contradiction, a feature of the play which Wright attributes (in my view too narrowly) solely to Gorgianic influence, and 337 on what Wright perceives to be its nihilistic message. See Kingsley (2003) 489–90, esp. 489: ‘[Gorgias in On What is Not] . . . is being just as radical as Parmenides himself – and he reaches the same ultimate conclusion that our complicated world of existence and non-existence, of change and movement, is utterly illogical and completely unreal. [. . .] He [sc. Gorgias] is so effective in undermining his [sc. Parmenides’] position that, in the last resort, Parmenides’ position and his own become the same.’ For the primacy of doxa in Gorg. 82b11.11 DK, here, too, characterized as inherently unstable and deceptive, see C. Segal (1962) 111–14; Verdenius (1981). For the influence of Gorgias’ On What Is Not on E. Hel., see M. E. Wright (2005) 277 ‘Euripides’ original contribution [sc. to the Helen tradition] lies not in his novel defence of Helen [. . .] but in the fact that he has combined the separate theories of Gorgias’ Encomium and On What Is Not into a single, unified argument.’ Cf. M. E. Wright’s (2005) 280 interpretation of the message of Euripides’ play illustrates the potential for aporetically reading outright nihilism, even if it de-emphasizes the play’s (likely also Gorgianic) ambivalence about deception: ‘It is impossible for human beings to make any firm statements about reality, existence, or personal identity; it is impossible to tell the difference between reality and illusion, or even what “reality” is. Much of

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up of parodies of Euripides’ plays) as an archetypal mortal astray on the path of Parmenides’ Doxa. In this comic frame, our Euripides will, of course, eventually be enticed to play his own character of Menelaus explicitly;43 but the comic pretext of its opening lines is that this Euripides is unwittingly playing his own Menelaus (first victim then agent of deception) from the very beginning.44 One insight that emerges from a close reading of our prologue, then, is that our Thesmophoriazusae is not just parodying tragedy as a rival art form;45 it is staking out a polemical claim to greater mastery of illusion (i.e. doxa), and it demonstrates that claim, for those able to see, in those terms that evince the highest available form of such expertise in 411: that is, the terms of the fifth-century masters of illusion, and specifically, of the father of them all, the philosophical sophia – the metaphysics of illusion – of Parmenides.46 Comedy and philosophy τίς δὲ σύ; κομψός τις ἔροιτο θεατής. ὑπολεπτολόγος, γνωμιδιώκτης, εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων.47

43 44

45

46

47

human action is based on delusion. We cannot believe the evidence of our eyes and ears; we cannot trust language to represent reality [. . .]. In short, we cannot understand ourselves, other people, or the world’ (original emphasis). Th. 850–923. As Silk (2000) 242 has argued, ‘the Euripides of this play is [. . .] a personification of the “real” Euripides’ own plays’. But what this observation means in philosophical terms, in the wake of the escape-tragedies of 412, is that Ar.’s Euripides is the personification of Parmenidean mortal error. See Bowie (1993) 217–25, for whom Ar.’s parody of the Hel. answers Euripides’ use in that tragedy ‘of many things which comedy might have felt to be its own trade-marks’ (219). Pace Silk (2000) 322. Cf. Bowie (1993) 220, who likewise argues that Th. offers ‘a continuous demonstration in various spheres of the superiority of comedy as a dramatic form’ ‘in which Ar.’s general message is: “Anything Euripides can do . . .”’ (225). But note that our parody is not simply concerned with poetic competition; it is also offering damning political criticism both of Euripides and of the self-interested and complicit Athenian dēmos – even if that criticism is missed by more cursory readers; see my earlier discussion, pp. 144–58. Cratin. fr. 342 KA: “Who are you?” Some smart spectator might ask, | an elusively subtle one, a coiner of maxims, a Euripidaristophanizer.’ The only context of the fragment is the observation of Σ Areth. (B) on Pl. Ap. 19c: Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ κωμῳδιοποιός . . . ἐκωμῳδεῖτο δ’ ἐπὶ τῷ σκώπτειν μὲν Εὐριπίδην, μιμεῖσθαι δ’ αῦτόν. See most recently Bakola (2010) 24–9; but esp. O’Sullivan (2006), who makes a persuasive case that Cratinus here uses the same metatheatrical device (in which the ‘playwright refers to a question asked about the play by a sophisticated member of the audience’ (168)) as Ar. uses at Peace 43–8, there alluding in parallel terms to a young sophisticated spectator

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The last suggestion – that Aristophanic comedy might, albeit for its own ends, aggressively assert a claim to philosophical sophia – may seem surprising. Indeed, more familiar with a comedy characterized by coarse language and everyday concerns, some have dismissed comedy’s philosophical interests out of hand;48 comedy defines itself in opposition to philosophy. Despite the more nuanced image developed in recent decades of a poet simultaneously courting the attention of sophisticated viewers and mass appeal in his treatment of the sophists, the view that Dover articulates when discussing Aristophanes’ portrayal of Socrates in Clouds continues to provide a set of implicit judgements about what comedy is not:49 We study Greek literature and philosophy, and in this study we set ourselves very high standards of accuracy. In order to understand Nu. we must make an imaginative effort to adopt an entirely different position, the position of someone to whom all philosophical and scientific speculation, all disinterested intellectual curiosity, is boring and silly. To such a person distinctions which are of fundamental importance to the intellectual appear insignificant, incomprehensible, and often imperceptible.

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(νεανίας δοκησίσοφος, 43) who criticizes the dramatic action (cf. my p. 7 n. 16). ‘Cratinus’ devastating critique’, O’Sullivan argues, ‘is to identify the young smartalec with Aristophanes himself’ (168). Note that at Pl. Smp. 221e–22a2 Alcibiades implies it was possible to have a similarly mistaken reaction to Socrates on parallel grounds. Wians (2009) 2 acknowledges (and regrets) that Aristophanes receives only ‘scant mentions’ in his recent edited volume addressing the connections between Greek literary and philosophical texts of the Archaic and Classical periods. Dover (1968) lii; see now also O’Sullivan (2006), who likewise asserts Ar.’s close engagement with novel intellectual trends against the foil of Dover’s still-influential reading (169 n. 16). For the currency of Dover’s view, which derives from the claim that Ar. simply glosses intellectualism by creating composite images of trendy thinkers of the sort allegedly exemplified by the comic Socrates of Clouds, see Irwin (1989) 68–70, 232 n. 1, cited by Vander Waerdt (1994) 55 n. 22 (who rightly refutes the notion that Ar. was hostile to philosophy and contests the notion that he would ‘attach sophistic traits at will to a composite figure if he wished to illustrate the corrupting effects of a particular kind of philosophical activity’ (57) and instead sees in the Aristophanic Socrates an adherent to the views of Diogenes of Apollonia hinted at by Plato’s intellectual biography of his mentor (74)). Comparably contra Dover (1968) xxxii–lvii, Willi (2003a) 105–17, 116 also insists on the ‘inner coherence’ of Aristophanes’ Socrates, whom he reads as a figure who not only propounds Diogenean teachings but also ‘lives in a Pythagorean setting, and uses Empedoclean language’. Cf., e.g., Pl. Men. 76d–e with my pp. 36–42; O’Regan (1992) 42; Hubbard (1991) and Bowie (1993) 102–33, esp. 133 on Clouds: ‘“Aristophanes” is [. . .] an ambiguous figure in the text, who both displays and ridicules philosophical activity’ (where philosophical activity here means the study of philosophical texts through which to acquire the requisite knowledge for accurate parody).

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This failure to frame Aristophanes as a sensitive commentator on the trends of his own intellectual milieu is compounded by the assumption prevailing in recent scholarship that, unlike a tragic audience, a comic audience cannot possibly have appreciated anything more than a cursory treatment of philosophical ideas. So keen is Wright to rescue Euripides from being anything less than serious in his treatment of correspondingly ‘serious’ ideas, for instance, that he goes so far as to assert a fundamental difference in both the extent and the quality of tragedy’s engagement with philosophical thinkers. In contrast to Euripides, Wright argues: Comic poets, typically, treat philosophical ideas in a superficial way; they represent philosophy or philosophers, often in a caricatured or satirical manner, but they rarely engage with ideas in a dynamic sense or add new ideas [. . .] Aristophanes’ attitude may have been rather more complex, and his presentation of ideas more detailed, than that of his rivals, but it seems that the taste of the comic audience was for less philosophy and more jokes.50

Underlying this view is the insidious tendency prevalent in some recent studies of comic responses to the sophists to generalize about Old Comedy’s engagement with intellectual ideas based only upon the evidence of direct quotation or its passing references to certain individuals by name.51 The almost a priori result of such work is that, with the exception of Aristophanes’ ill-fated ‘gamble’ in Clouds, in which (a caricatured version of) the practice of philosophy is shown in greater detail, Old Comedy does not engage closely with philosophical thinking.52 Yet, as our close reading has 50 51

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M. E. Wright (2005) 234–5. See Carey (2000), whose fine discussion of the fragments of Ar.’s rivals prudently acknowledges both ‘the distorting effect of the accident of survival’ (most strikingly in relation to Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias and Thrasymachus, who are ‘ignored in the fragments of Aristophanes’ rivals’ (427)) and the possibility of the wider misrepresentation of Old Comedy using such fragmentary material (430); his tentative conclusions are used by M. E. Wright (2005) 234 n. 32 in support of the view cited; cf. Nightingale (1995) 61–3. See Carey (2000) 428–9, who observes that like Eupolis’ and Ameipsias’ explicit attacks on Socrates, ‘Aristophanes’ passing references to Prodikos and Gorgias, and to Sokrates in Birds show a [. . .] lack of interest in intellectual content’, although he acknowledges that ‘given the limited scope for detailed exposition in jokes made in passing, this is hardly surprising’. Carey’s conclusion (against which he judges Ar.’s Clouds to have been exceptional) therefore points to ‘the seeming avoidance of sustained engagement with the intellectual content of contemporary thought by the comic poets’ who ‘evidently [. . .] felt that the audience had little interest in the ideas of contemporary rationalists and little desire to see those explored in the theatre’ (431).

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shown, that conclusion simply projects onto comedy a failing that is largely (if not entirely) our own. Indeed, it is salutary to note that of the eleven Aristophanic comedies to have survived in their entirety, two plays, Clouds and Thesmophoriazusae, are concerned with negotiating and policing the use and abuse of philosophical ideas, at least one more, Ecclesiazusae, explores the pragmatic implications of a philosophical utopia, and the jokes of four others, Acharnians, Wasps, Birds and Frogs, give us further evidence of the comic poet’s critical awareness of a range of sophistic and philosophical themes, ideas and thinkers.53 If intellectuals are treated in cursory fashion in extant comic texts, however, it is likely to be because, by and large, they were not perceived by the comic poets as serious rivals.54 As Clouds demonstrates, when sophistic and philosophical thinkers are made the object of extended comic attention it is because of their alleged bad influence on society and the dynamics of their popular reception; that is, there is a strong moral dimension to comedy’s treatment of the sophists as poseurs and irresponsible, even self-serving, teachers, and of their self-interested and potentially distorting popular audiences as equally deserving of sanction.55 Social criticism in

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For the policing of certain kinds of philosophical activity and their popular reception in Clouds, see O’Regan (1992); Papageorgiou (2004); Hesk (2007); Broackes (2009); for Eccl. as a comic exploration of the pragmatic implications of utopian philosophical ideas, see Nightingale (1995) 176–8. For the philosophical parody of Euripides as a thinker who conflates being and not-being, see Ach. 395–400; similarly, arguably Ach. (634), and certainly Wasps (421) and Birds (1694–1705) comment upon the impact of the work of Gorgias on Athenian cultural and political life, see my p. 32 n. 12, p. 191 n. 102; Birds also alludes to Socrates (1553–64), who is alluded to again at Frogs 1491 and at Ar. fr. 392 KA, and to Prodicus (692), who is referred to at Clouds 361 (and whose Choice of Heracles (Xen. Mem. 2.1.21–34 = 84b1–2 DK) the play’s agōn inverts, drawing upon a range of sophistic sources in order to associate the sophists with vice (and not virtue), see Papageorgiou (2004)), and at Ar. fr. 506 KA; and Orphic (and perhaps also Empedoclean) ideas are parodied at Birds 693–702 (for which see my p. 180 n. 71). See Carey (2000). Griffith (2013) 93–6 offers a brief survey of Ar.’s sophistic debts in Frogs; but see Willi (2003a) 87–95 for the language of literary criticism the play ‘stages’ (94), and N. W. Slater (2002) 193, 198 for its sophistic Euripides. One can only speculate as to the intellectual topography of the remaining thirty or so known Aristophanic plays that do not survive; but it is perhaps apposite to note that there are good reasons why more explicitly paraphilosophical comedies might not have been preserved. Nightingale (1995) 62–3. Nightingale (1995) 63; Carey (2000) 429. For Clouds’ portrayal of Strepsiades’ distorted reception of Protagorean claims and his self-serving and unethical motivation to acquire the skills of sophistic argument, see 112–18 with O’Regan (1992) 31–3.

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these terms is even more prominent in the context of dramatic competition, wherein the poet is explicitly entrusted with the role of instructor of the city (διδάσκαλος).56 Indeed, from this public platform, new and innovative ideas deployed without due regard for what is sōphrōn for the city were regarded as profoundly dangerous: certainly, within our Thesmophoriazusae it is the allegedly harmful real-world consequences of the values promulgated by Euripides as well as the effect of his revelation of women’s secrets (his imprudent truth-telling) that are invoked by the women as the cause of their charge against him.57 For Aristophanes too, the pragmatic implications of tragedy’s exploration of mortal ἀμηχανίη and Gorgianic doxa in 412, I suggest, engendered a parallel response, prompting him to write a damning indictment of his own against Euripides into the subtext of our comic play. Here, as we have seen, the practice of philosophy itself is made the object of parody only on the most superficial level.58 What is genuinely lampooned is Euripides’ (deliberately) selfcontradictory and insidious deployment of philosophical ideas, that is, his promulgation of arguments that appear to be valid but result only in error, and, thus, his irresponsible, and, by comic extension, erroneous and confused practice of philosophy.59 In this respect Euripides’ exploration of epistemological 56

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The poet as teacher is a standard topos, see Frogs 1055–6; for the poet’s attendant moral responsibilities see the extended treatment given this theme in the agōn between Euripides and Aeschylus, 907f.; cf. Ach. 628, Peace 738, Birds 912. For Ar.’s rival claim as τὰ βέλτιστα διδάσκων to the city, see Ach. 658, and Frogs 686–7, where the comic chorus describes its task as to ξυμπαραινεῖν καὶ διδάσκειν the city. See Th. 445–58 alleging the harmful effects of Euripides’ atheism on the garland-seller industry, a claim then comically undermined at 458 by the garland seller’s closing reference to an apparently flourishing trade, see N. W. Slater (2002) 162; Sommerstein (1994) ad loc. That is, the level on which an audience genuinely in the thrall of the actual Euripides might perceive only comic nonsense (i.e. on the level of a reading that is essentially a misreading). Cf. Clouds’ complex and shifting comic exploitation of Socrates’ intellectualism and philosophical practices (and their on-stage reception) at 143–239 with O’Regan (1992) 35–48; Vander Waerdt (1994). Ar. mocks Euripides’ association with Socrates for parallel reasons, i.e. that for all his exposure to intellectual ideas, what results – according to Ar.’s comic extrapolation – is simply ‘bad tragic poetry’, see Frogs 1491–9 with Nightingale (1995) 63 (quotation hers), and my p. 66 n. 58. See Nussbaum (1980) esp. 81 and Vander Waerdt (1994) 76–7, cf. 57, for the view that, even if according his ideas (comic) philosophical integrity, Clouds likewise implicitly censures Socrates for irresponsibility, on the grounds that his deconstruction of social mores supplies no positive alternatives, and that his philosophy is open to popular misunderstanding and cynical exploitation (as is exemplified by Strepsiades’ and

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and ontological themes in the Helen, his deceptive conflation of what-is and what-is-not, always ran the ironic risk of being comically repackaged as ineptitude; indeed, in the strictly Parmenidean terms set by our prologue, it is.60 Aristophanes’ genius in 411 is partly to seize upon that possibility, lampooning the glib inconsistencies of Euripidean ‘philosophizing’. But, more seriously, it is also to call Euripides to account (on the meta-level, as the women do on the superficial level) for the damaging effects on his audience of his unsōphrōn use of new (καινός) and (potentially) dangerous sophia.61 Aristophanes’ strategy is subtle, but damning, both for Euripides, and for those among his spectators who would willingly be duped by him.62 Addressing the audiences of Euripides’ most recent tragedies, he implicitly stages a competition in sophia over the mastery of illusion between comic discourse, with its firm idea of what-is and what-is-not,63 and Euripidean tragedy, in which that distinction must be, has been and now on the comic stage continues to be entirely confused.64 In this contest the onus to judge is on each comic

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Pheidippides’ reception of it): i.e. that unlike Ar.’s sophia, which is deployed for the good of the polis, Socrates’ sophia is un-sōphrōn and has corrosive civic and political effects. Cf. Hubbard (1991) 95. For the essential philosophical context of Gorgias’ On What Is Not as a (self-refuting) attempt to refute Eleatic premises, see Wardy (1996) 9–14, and my p. 36 n. 6, p. 44 n. 5; for Ar.’s reply to Euripides’ Gorgias- and Parmenides-inspired philosophical explorations of the human condition to be to stage a Parmenidean reductio ad absurdum against him would thus be entirely appropriate. The serious point underlying the choice is that for subsequent thinkers Parmenides provided ‘a manual for constructing a responsible natural philosophy’, see Graham (1999) 175, and Curd (1998). For Ar.’s self-presentation, by contrast, as a poet both sōphrōn and sophos in equal measure, see Clouds 529, 537 with Hubbard (1991) 94–6; for the καινότης of Euripidean theatre see Th. 1130: καινὰ προσφέρων σοφά (itself a quotation of E. Med. 298); note that, like the claim to being sophisticated (δεξιός), originality or newness is also claimed by Ar. himself, see Clouds 547, 1044, Wasps 1053; see Silk (2000) 45–8; the tension between positive and negative uses, see Bowie (1993) 132–3; cf. my p. 193 n. 110. In this way, just as the women’s anger against Euripides for successfully teaching men that they are bad is really directed at the male audience’s reception of those Euripidean ideas (cf. Bobrick (1997) 183), so too the veiled philosophical criticism of our play’s early lines serves both as an indictment of Euripides and an indictment of any theatrical audience intellectually complacent (or indeed, in the wake of the failure of the Sicilian expedition, self-interested) enough to be corrupted by him. See my earlier discussion, pp. 144–58, and cf. the moral castigation of Socrates and Strepsiades in Clouds (cf. 1454–5). For comedy’s metatheatrical dimension, including the direct address to the audience – a convention that explicitly breaks the theatrical illusion – see Bain (1975); Thiercy (1987); N. W. Slater (2002) 61, 130, 133. For the direct address outside the parabasis see Peace 50–3, 664. The contrast that Ar. constructs between comedy and tragedy in these terms is explicitly illustrated within our Th. by his parody of the recognition scene between Helen and

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spectator; but their verdict decides only their own fate. Either they heed the call to make a firm κρίσις on the path of this play, or they are left behind to circle just like the tragic audience of the Helen.65 Cratinus’ comic jibe with which we began thus proves to be devastatingly accurate: Aristophanes was precisely that smart spectator of Euripides, and one who, as far as our Thesmophoriazusae is concerned, has proved far too ὑπολεπτολόγος, ‘elusively subtle’, in his philosophical answer to him to be appreciated by most modern critics.66 As for whether his philosophical re- and enjoinder (Th. 25–8) would or could have been heard by his own audience, the burden of proof clearly rests on those who implausibly imagine that those of Aristophanes’ late fifth-century spectators familiar with the public epideixeis of sophistic and philosophical debate saturated by Eleatic ideas could not and did not appreciate its call.67

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Menelaus at E. Hel. 555–639. Here, Critylla plays the comic audience to Euripides’ Menelaus and the Kinsman’s Helen and persistently refuses to be taken in by their pretence to be tragic personae they are not, see 855–924, but esp. 855–8 with Zeitlin (1981) 187–8, who comments that all ‘the questions of illusion and reality, of truth and falsehood, of mimesis and deception are [here] reframed in metatheatrical terms’ (188). Pace Zeitlin, however, I would suggest that Critylla does not ‘misrecognize’ the identity of the Hel. parody; she sees only what-is. Hence, as Austin and Olson (2004) lxi say, she ‘repeatedly insists that Menelaus/Euripides must be deeply confused, since he seems not to understand where he is or whom he is talking to (e.g. 879–80, 882–4)’. See pp. 144–58; cf. p. 183 n. 78. O’Sullivan (2006) 164–5 suggests that Cratinus’ use of the word alludes to ‘a subtlety [that] is underhand and escapes notice’. He continues: ‘lesser mortals may not notice the new-fangled subtlety of Aristophanes [. . .] but [it is . . .] there lurking beneath the surface’ (165). See also Bakola (2010) 24–9 on the tacit juxtaposition underlying Cratinus’ criticism in fr. 342 KA between his own inspired poetry and Ar.’s new brand of ‘intellectualist’ technical poetry. Certainly, any difficulty a modern audience may have in appreciating how ancient listeners could have followed philosophically sophisticated quick-fire dramatic dialogue should be recognized for what it is: a failure to situate the argument strategies of our extant philosophical texts in their original performance context. The audiences of sophistic and philosophical epideixeis would have been large and varied, see Gorg. 82b11.13– 14 DK; Guthrie (1962–9) iii.41; Bonanno (1997); and sophistic performances themselves were characterized by ‘amazingly short’ quick-fire argumentation, often with ‘almost no “theoretical” framework to speak of’, providing crowd-pleasing displays of intellectual ingenuity, see Lee (2005) 27–8 (discussing the Δισσοὶ Λόγοι). Indeed, it is salutary here to highlight again the significant affinities between Aristophanic comic dialogue and Plato’s portrayal of the sophist brothers’ displays in the Euthd. and especially the speed with which it was evidently possible to acquire the building blocks of Eleaticizing arguments, see my pp. 28–32, esp. p. 29 n. 5, and pp. 43–6. On the saturation of fifth-century intellectual culture with Eleatic ideas, see my p. 45 n. 9. For the public recitation of the hexameter poetry of Empedocles and others, see Diog. Laert. 8.63–70. Parmenides’

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That Aristophanes should advise the city through philosophy in this way and, what is more, that he should do so by dramatizing it in dialogue form therefore supplements the fact of his comic indictment of Socrates in Clouds in explaining the great interest in the comic poet shown by that philosophical dramatist par excellence, Plato.68 Plato’s relationship to Aristophanes is deserving of an extended study in its own right,69 as the commonalities between our Thesmophoriazusae and the Euthydemus, as well as the specific points of allusion traced earlier between our play and the Symposium, suggest. But the philosophical acumen paraded in our prologue – that is, Aristophanes’ use specifically of paraphilosophy to expose erroneous, un-sōphrōn and harmful philosophical activity – not only considerably sharpens the reasons for Plato to be so polemically engaged with answering the comic caricature of his mentor but also presents a telling precedent for aspects of Plato’s own rejoinding portrayal of Aristophanes and Agathon in that

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hexameters would have been easily memorized, of course (see Kahn (2003) 157–8), but, in addition to this, note the availability of written versions of such philosophical arguments during the late fifth century, see Pl. Ap. 26d–e (texts of Anaxagoras on sale in the orchēstra – a public space, whether this refers to the reused performance space of the theatre of Dionysus, or, as some scholars think, an otherwise unattested area of the agora – for less than a drachma), and their quotation in private conversation, Pl. Prm. 128b (Zeno reading aloud his own arguments); Pl. Sph. 237a, 285d (citation of verses from Parmenides’ poem by the Eleatic visitor for philosophical discussion). See R. Thomas (2003) 164–7 on the ‘written versions of the doctrines of Zeno, Anaxagoras and Parmenides’ alluded to by Plato in these and other moments; and Charalabopoulos (2012) for the performance of Plato’s dialogues. For Ar.’s comic indictment of Socrates in Clouds and Plato’s claims concerning its impact on the popular misperception of Socrates, see Pl. Ap. 18b–19d (Ar. deployed as part of Plato’s Socrates’ rhetorical denigration of his ‘present accusers’); cf. Xen. Oec. 11.3; this comic portrayal as the tacit grounds against which aspects of Plato’s own characterization of Socrates should be understood as a corrective, see Rashed (2009); Vander Waerdt (1994) 52 and n. 17 notes ‘the numerous Platonic texts’ that ‘undertake to answer’ Ar.’s indictment of Socrates. Plato’s interest in Aristophanic comedy, see Clay (1994) and Nightingale (1995) esp. 172–92. See Charalabopoulos (2001) (2012) for the performance of Platonic dialogue as itself a dramatic event. It is striking in this respect that Plato’s aporetic dialogues, those in many ways closest to our prologue, share similar themes and seek, as Von Reden and Goldhill (1999) 265–6 demonstrate, to ‘promote in the reader an awareness of a performance on the self – as the reader becomes a judging, participating spectator of his own performance also. The[se] dialogues [. . .] not only introduce and redefine spectatorship in (and through) philosophical discourse, but as a series contain a metadialogue about watching, listening and reading, which does not offer conclusions but encourages the audience to look at themselves for an answer.’ As Nightingale (1995), Broackes (2009), Rashed (2009) and Sissa (2012) have shown.

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dialogue. It is surely not coincidental here that Socrates goes on to redeploy a crucial idea dramatized by the comic poet (that love is in essence a lack or need) to reveal the deficiency of his immediate rival Agathon’s encomium, just as (Socrates’) Diotima is subsequently (and anachronistically) said to have once done so herself in correction of the young Socrates (200a–201c; 202d; cf. 205d10–e1, and 212c4–6, where Aristophanes, at least, is not taken in by Socrates’ fiction), or that the comic account in which this idea is central then elicits as serious critical attention from (Socrates’) Diotima as does the tragedian’s speech with its proto-philosophical (‘sub-Socratic’), mesmerizing, but ultimately doxa-bound and defective words (205d10–e1; 212c4–6; cf. 198b–201b10).70 That attention has much to do with comedy’s epistemological commitments, which are resolutely material, particular and wedded to the phenomenal, and with Plato’s own agenda to blend and transcend the genres of comedy and tragedy in the philosophically superior account of (Socrates’) Diotima; but, in the implicit contest in sophia (re-?)staged by Plato, it is, nonetheless, this essential insight of comedy, arrived at aetiologically through its own comic blend of the popular, the medical, and the philosophical (traditional fable, and Hippocratic and Presocratic allusion),71 no less than the ‘sub-Socratic’ Gorgianic offerings of tragedy, 70

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The phrase is Sedley’s (2006) 50. Whilst correct, the Platonic Aristophanes’ insight is itself also deficient, as Diotima later explains, for its omission of the notion that love desires not simply the completion or wholeness of the self, but what is good for it (205d10–e5). Diotima’s subsequent blending of ideas drawn from both Aristophanes’ and Agathon’s speeches: Corrigan and Glazov-Corrigan (2004) 135–7. Kurke’s (2011) 308–21 reading of Plato’s Aristophanes’ speech (189c2–193e1) as simply a ‘traditional fable’ vs. the superior ‘sophistic fable’ of Diotima omits the likely Presocratic elements of its comic aetiology. For greater complexity and even the possibility of Platonic allusion to Ar.’s popular Parmenideanism, see Ruffell (2011) 17, who argues that Aristophanes’ speech ‘can be read as a send-up of the Eleatic monism – reality as a fixed, unchanging sphere – that cast a shadow over fifth century thought, in the same way as it is parodying the content of traditional creation myths’. Indeed, with Aristophanes’ description of the shape of primordial humans at 189e5–7 as ‘spherical’ στρογγύλος (νῶτον καὶ πλευρὰς κύκλῳ ἔχον), cf. Diogenes Laertius’ testimony that Parmenides posited a στρογγύλος earth (28a44 DK), and Parmenides’ eternal, ungenerated, spherical (εὐκύκλος σφαίρη) image of reality (28b8.43 DK). But see Casertano (2011) 36–7 and Craik (2001) 112 (who discusses the Hippocratic resonances in Aristophanes’ speech as a sophisticated ‘para-medical’ rejoinder to Eryximachus), on the ubiquity of such sphere imagery amongst the early philosophers, and Rowe (1998) ad 189e5–7 and O’Brien (2007), who suggest that Plato has Aristophanes here allude to Empedocles’ ‘whole-natured forms’ (31b62 DK) and to his two-faced, two-chested monsters with their mix of genders (31b61 DK); see

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upon which (Socrates’) Diotima is shown to depend in elaborating her new philosophical understanding. Indeed, that Plato’s portrayal of Agathon itself (here too, significantly, a tragic poiētēs who extends the concept of poiēsis to render desire the cause of all creation, and who, by allusion to Hom. Od. 11.633–5, is subsequently himself rendered by Socrates a Gorgon/ias-wielding stand-in for Persephone) is almost certainly a reworking of Thesmophoriazusae’s earlier characterization of the poet as an Aphrodite-like counterpart to Persephone, whose identity is nothing more than his own poiēsis, only further ironizes the apparent precedence Agathon’s ‘sub-Socratic’ speech enjoys over the discourse of comedy in our gradual ascent to Diotima’s revelations.72

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also Rashed (2011); cf. Palmer (2009) 313–17 for the similarities and differences between Parmenides and Empedocles’ cosmologies, and Rowe (1998) ad 189e3, where Aristophanes’ ‘androgynous kind’ is also compared to the double-gendered Erōs found in Orphism (on which see Vernant (1989) 468), the cosmogony of which is parodied at Birds 693–702. On the comparably complex mix of Hesiodic, Orphic and, perhaps, Empedoclean influences in the Birds passage, see Guthrie (1935) 92–6; Dunbar (1995) ad loc.; Willi (2003a) 104, 107. For Plato’s satirical treatment of Aristophanes’ eikastic myth as inferior to Platonic philosophy in the Smp., see Corrigan and Glazov-Corrigan (2004) 70–8, 80–2, who notice that Aristophanes’ composition both embodies the kind of poetic mimēsis that Socrates criticizes in R. and contains at its centre a comically defective act – parody, even – of Platonic diairesis. For Agathon’s speech as the ‘most advanced non-Socratic account of love’ of a crucial sequence of speeches – Aristophanes, Agathon, Socrates – and, as such, an account that (re)constructs its speaker as the most fruitful candidate for the Socratic ἔλεγχος, see Sedley (2006) 52, 65–7, quotation: 66. For Agathon’s assimilation of poiēsis with erōs: 197a3–b3, an association later theorized by Diotima, 205b4–d9, see Sedley (2006) 61, and that renders erōs a poet just like Agathon, and Agathon, reciprocally, a wielder of erōs, in development of his (Aphrodite-like) Aristophanic precedent in Th. (who, as we have seen, elicits desire and simply is his poiēsis). (See Duncan (2006) 40 and Sissa (2012) 53–6 for readings of the virility of Th.’s Agathon, his erotic effects on Doxastical thinkers and their possible implications, pace O’Sullivan (1992) 146–50). It is therefore most significant that, for Socrates, Agathon’s words are not only reminiscent of Gorgias (καὶ γάρ με Γοργίου ὁ λόγος ἀνεμίμνῃσκεν, 198c1–2) but are rendered so most strikingly by allusion to Odysseus’ sudden panic in Od. 11.633–5 that Persephone may send up from the house of Hades the Gorgon’s head (Smp. 198c2–5 . . . ὥστε ἀτεχνῶς τὸ τοῦ Ὁμήρου ἐπεπόνθη· ἐφοβούμην μή μοι τελευτῶν ὁ Ἀγάθων Γοργίου κεφαλὴν δεινοῦ λέγειν ἐν τῷ λόγῳ ἐπὶ τὸν ἐμὸν λόγον πέμψας αὐτόν με λίθον τῇ ἀφωνίᾳ ποιήσειεν. Cf. Od. 11.633–5: ἐμὲ δὲ χλωρὸν δέος ᾕρει,∣μή μοι Γοργείην κεφαλὴν δεινοῖο πελώρου∣ἐξ Ἄϊδος πέμψειεν ἀγαυὴ Περσεφόνεια, and the wordplay at Th. 1103–4), which, in parallel to his Aristophanic precursor, implicitly makes this Platonic Agathon, too, an erōs-marshalling counterpart to Persephone. Cf. O’Sullivan (1992) 29–30 on Ar. fr. 341 KA (usually attributed to the lost Th.) as a similar parodic reference to Agathon’s Gorgianic debts, cf. 35 and 126 on Ar.’s possible punning precursor to Plato’s Gorgias/Gorgon wordplay at Ach. 1131, with which cf. Th. 1103–4. Plato’s characterization of Agathon using the allusive frame of Odysseus’ nekyia (an implicit literary foil for the Smp., as for the Prt., throughout) is appropriately multifaceted and shifting, see Planinc (2004) esp. 332–3. But it is surely not

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In fact, read in this way, against Thesmophoriazusae’s use of Parmenides to philosophize the world of the Dionysia as the world of mortal doxa, Plato’s choice in Republic V to turn specifically to Dionysian theatre in order to characterize his own Doxastical mortals as Parmenidean spectators – lovers of sights and sounds who fix their νόος only upon objects that are ‘wandering’ (πλανητόν, 479d7–9) and whose opinions accordingly ‘roll back and forth somewhere between what is not and what really is’ (μεταξύ που κυλινδεῖται τοῦ τε μὴ ὄντος καὶ τοῦ ὄντος εἰλικρινῶς, 479d3–5)73 – not only further testifies to the common philosophical ground claimed by late fifth-century comedy and Platonic philosophy but also arguably recapitulates precisely the same sort of philosophical appropriations from comedy operative at several levels in works like the Symposium. It also, of course, renders entirely sensible the charge Plato lays against the comic poets earlier in Republic V at 452a–d: that what the comedians do wrong is to treat as merely funny ideas of profound philosophical value that should be taken seriously.

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coincidental in light of this congruent portrayal that for many scholars (and for all its ‘sub-Socratic’ resonances) Agathon’s speech emerges as embodying a paradoxical and ‘anti-climactic coincidence of opposites – superabundance and hollowness’ (original emphasis), see Corrigan and Glazov-Corrigan (2004) 93–4, quotation: 94. For a reading of Plato’s treatment of Agathon as a portrayal that redeems the tragic poet from his comic (Doxastical) reception portrayed on-stage in our Th., rehabilitating Agathon from ‘comic character’ into a ‘philosophical interlocutor’ as the poet, thus rendering the Smp. a ‘partial remake of the Thesmophoriazusae’, see Sissa (2012). Further evidence of intertextuality: note Plato’s possible reworking of the Kinsman’s stillness-fracturing joke at 51 (νήνεμος αἰθήρ) as part of his Agathon’s poetic evocation of the stillness effected by Erōs at 197c6 (νηνεμίαν ἀνέμων). Finally, note also the tacit connection with Euripides, and specifically Euripidean deception, that Agathon’s words likewise evoke for Socrates; see Socrates’ quotation of E. Hipp. 612 that follows at 199a5–6. Palmer (1999) 79; Crystal (1996) 357–8, 360. For κυλίνδω and its use in comic idioms for metatheatrical deception/illusion, see Bierl (1990) 384–6; of Ar.’s Clouds (again, objects that roll between being and not-being) and its parallel usages in Plato, see Broackes (2009) 58, and my p. 135 n. 248, p. 56 n. 31. Significantly, Plato’s other use of theatrical illusion to model the world of doxa, in the parable of the cave, sharpens its critique of comedy, drawing upon the illusions created by thaumatopoioi, the vulgar comic shows of Megarian shadow puppeteers that elicit mockery even from Ar. himself (cf. Wasps 55–66), in order not only to make his metaphysical point but also to issue a polemic against the culture of comedy ‘most memorably represented by Aristophanic theater’, see Gocer (1999) esp. 121; cf. Platter (2007) 87–9 for Ar.’s use and abuse of Megarian comedy. Visible here is only Ar. the second-rate magician, not Ar. the dazzling logician; but note that the eristic of the Sophist who deals only in appearances is also tarred by the same brush (235b5–6), see Taylor (2006) 165–6.

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Yet even this damning criticism itself tacitly acknowledges an interest amongst the comic poets in exploring the pragmatic implications of philosophical ideas, a mode of comic reception perhaps best illustrated by the affinities scholars have long noted between Ecclesiazusae and Socrates’ subsequent defence throughout Republic V of numerous ideas also found in that comedy.74 Indeed, other utopian Aristophanic comedies, too – most obviously, Wealth – can be read similarly, as satirical pragmatic explorations of ideas and issues taken up elsewhere as philosophical in nature.75 In the late fifth and early fourth centuries the comic poets were clearly engaged in appropriating, reworking and dramatizing philosophical λόγοι for their own (serio-) comic purposes.76 Certainly, our Thesmophoriazusae exemplifies an Aristophanic response to, and reuse of, early philosophy that is absolutely grounded in its own pragmatic, which is to say, political, concerns (as we shall shortly see).77 Quite contrary to the criticisms of Plato’s Socrates, here, as in Clouds, the project of exposing as ‘ridiculous’ (γέλοιος) goes hand in hand with offering the dēmos serious philosopho-politico advice.78 (Just as is the case for the philosophical audience of Plato’s own brand of satire practised in dialogues like the Euthydemus). Both Clouds and Thesmophoriazusae, in fact, show us an Aristophanes explicitly concerned with the disfigurement of democratic discourse by arguments that appear to be valid but harmfully deceive or result in error, and with answering the threat posed 74

75

76

77 78

Nightingale (1995) 176–8 discusses the intertextuality between Eccl. and R. V. To summarize her survey of scholarship, the two texts are generally configured as each reworking material from a philosophical source from the late fifth or early fourth century (177). But the possibility of a Platonic reworking of Ar. is entirely open (178). Cf. Tordoff (2007). For a full discussion of the way in which late fifth-century comic poets problematize and question the concept of utopia explicitly in response to earlier treatments drawn from the work of the philosophers, see Ruffell (2000). See, for instance, the parody of Empedoclean and Pythagorean ideas in Crates’ utopian comedies Thēria (fr. 19.1–2 KA), and Amphictuones (fr. 2 KA) with Ruffell (2000) 481–2. As Nightingale (1995) 176–8 has argued in the case of Eccl.; cf. N. W. Slater (2002) 237. In this respect, as in a number of others, including its emphasis – albeit, here, implicit – on (the right sort of) κρίσις, our Th. clearly anticipates Frogs. See N. W. Slater (2002) 180 for the relationship of the two plays as comedies that both advise the dēmos under the shadow of immediate political crisis. Cf. Storey (2012); and see Bakola (2010) 67–70 for the explicit poetic κρίσις Ar. dramatizes in Frogs and one reading of the possible implications of its anti-Euripidean outcome against Cratinus’ earlier characterization of Ar. at Cratin. fr. 342 KA.

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to the proper instruction of the dēmos by those who would promulgate them.79 And it is surely significant in this respect that the one Platonic dialogue ‘probably richest in allusions to Aristophanes’, the Euthydemus, is also a satire on sophistic technique explicitly concerned with pointing out and parodying fallacious neo-Eleaticizing arguments.80 It is equally telling that the two comic plays to which it alludes most are Clouds and our Thesmophoriazusae: for Plato, at least, these comedies evidently shared parallel interests in the practice and pragmatic implications of pre-Platonic philosophy and could therefore be used, in vindication of his mentor, to harness Old Comedy’s serio-comic voice of criticism against Socrates’ rivals (the ‘sophists’).81 Lastly, for modern philosophical readers, too, Aristophanes’ use of philosophy may prove equally instructive: certainly, the early lines of our Thesmophoriazusae provide an important example of a late fifth-century popular appropriation and redeployment of Parmenides’ poem (then available in its entirety); and one which has far more at stake in terms of its implicit claim to mastery over philosophical sophia than any modern interpretation of the extant fragments. In this respect, what is most striking about that comic reading, as it has emerged from this analysis, is that it strongly implies that Parmenides does not reject the senses outright.82 That impression may well owe something to the political agenda of Aristophanes’ reading, to which I now turn. Nonetheless, it clearly should prompt us to return to Parmenides’ poem (and to the rest of Aristophanes’ play) with senses more attuned to the κρίσις that both enjoin their audiences to make. 79 80 81

82

See O’Regan (1992) esp. 1–21, 94–105; Papageorgiou (2004); Hesk (2007). Hawtrey (1981) 34. Hawtrey (1981) 34. Plato’s reuse of the comic criticism of these plays in the Euthd. is perhaps most evident in the way in which he has Socrates’ eristic opponents tarred with the brush of the same comic language as Ar. uses in Clouds to castigate Socrates, see Brock (1990) 43–4; affinities of wordplay and sophistic argument between the Euthd. and our Th., see my pp. 28–32, p. 31 n. 11, p. 103 n. 165, p. 108 n. 176, p. 141 n. 259; Smp.’s intertextuality with our Th., see Sissa (2012) and also my pp. 63–6, p. 128 n. 230; Plato’s appropriation of the social criticism of Old Comedy, see Nightingale (1995) 181–5. As Laks (1999) 261–2, Schofield (2003) 62, and Kingsley (2003) 120–2 have argued, see my pp. 117–20; a further implication of Ar.’s concretizing enactment of mortal error might be that Parmenides’ μέλεα (28b16.1 DK) in the late fifth century could indeed be understood as referring to ‘sense organs’, see my pp. 86–7, 117–22.

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Drama, philosophy and the politics of the senses τάλαινα φρήν, παρ’ ἡμέων λαβοῦσα τὰς πίστεις ἡμέας καταβάλλεις; πτῶμά τοι τὸ κατάβλημα.83 καὶ πολλὰ μὲν γελοῖά μ’ εἰπεῖν, πολλὰ δὲ σπουδαῖα . . .84

Yet if, as I have suggested, Euripides’ staging of the philosophical problems of mortal doxa as evoked by Parmenides and theorized by Gorgias provides the comic pretext for our prologue’s parody, it will be clear from the preceding discussion that Aristophanes’ genuine object here lies in redressing the political implications of bringing those ideas to a mass public. By teaching its audience that there exist no stable epistemological grounds on which to assess the truth of anything seen or heard (indeed, that no genuine knowledge is possible per se)85 the synthesis of myth, philosophy and rhetoric presented by Euripides to the dēmos in 412 posed a serious ideological threat to the political processes of Athenian democracy. Here, again, as at Thucydides 3.38, the insidious influence of Gorgias surfaces. In its assertion of the deceptiveness of both sight and λόγος, his Encomium of Helen theorizes an extreme passivity of the viewing subject in a world in which the majority (οἱ πλεῖστοι) are simply prisoners of changeable doxa.86 For Gorgias, here, sight (ὄψις) constitutes a dangerous conduit to the external world, through which the mind itself is helplessly ‘moulded’ (τυποῦται) by what it sees.87 λόγος, too, now always received through the ears passively, has equivalent effect; hence it 83

84

85

86

87

Democr. 68b125 DK, the senses’ reply to the mind: ‘Wretched mind, after taking from us your assurances, do you overthrow us? Our fall will be your defeat!’ The task of the comic chorus as defined by it at Frogs 389–90: ‘May I say many funny things | and many serious things . . .’ See M. E. Wright (2005) 296, who notes that even the Hel.’s ‘Theonoe’s “omniscience” is probably another illusion [. . . she] is said to be omniscient’ (original emphasis); cf. 337 and my p. 167 n. 29. Gorg. 82b11.11, 13 DK. For Gorgias, doxa is simply the ‘ordinary state of human communicable knowledge’ whose inherent instability makes possible the deception (ἀπάτη), and self-deception (i.e. collusion), upon which persuasion (πειθώ) depends, see C. Segal (1962) 111–13 (quotation: p.111). See Gorg. 82b11.15 DK: ἃ γὰρ ὁρῶμεν, ἔχει φύσιν οὐχ ἣν ἡμεῖς θέλομεν, ἀλλ’ ἣν ἕκαστον ἔτυχε· διὰ δὲ τῆς ὄψεως ἡ ψυχὴ κἀν τοῖς πρόποις τυποῦται. See Wardy (1996) 47: ‘the

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has the power to compel.88 According to this model of perception, not only Helen but each one of us is fundamentally at the mercy of what we see and hear. As Goldhill notes, the political implications of this philosophy in an Athenian context are clear: If democracy depends on speech-making [. . .] and on the ability of each citizen to judge, evaluate, scrutinize from the audience in order to make an informed decision, Gorgias threatens the whole logic of democratic subjectivity by asserting that the citizen is the victim, the passive experiencer of words and sights, and not the active regulating citizen of democratic ideology.89

This, as we have seen, is precisely the subtext of the speech against a city of passive Athenian spectators given to Cleon by Thucydides in the year of Gorgias’ visit to Athens some fifteen years earlier.90 As Euripides stages the key elements of Gorgias’ philosophy for his audiences of 412, he thus creates a spectacle, the effects of which are similarly to alienate and confuse with sights and sounds that are profoundly deceptive.91 On one level, Euripides makes quite explicit his exploration of Gorgias’ model of perceptual passivity and its implications.92

88

89 90

91

92

perceptual model evoked is one according to which the visual organs are mere channels permitting the ingress of images which strike the psychē without its reacting rationally or purposefully’. Cf. Pl. Men. 76d–e, with my earlier discussion, pp. 36–42. When coupled with persuasion (πειθώ), it, too, τὴν ψυχὴν ἐτυπώσατο ὅπως ἐβούλετο, 82b11.13 DK; cf. 8, 9–10; with Wardy (1996) 47: ‘“Moulding” both summons up a mechanical rather than rational mode of persuasion and contributes further to the portrayal of the psychê as something entirely passive [. . .] taking the impress of the logoi without any resistance.’ See C. Segal (1962) 142 n. 44. For the power of speech to compel (and for the helplessness of its hearer), see Gorg. 82b11.12.6–7 DK. Goldhill (2000) 173 (also building upon Wardy (1996) 25–51). V. Hunter (1986) has shown that Gorgias’ theories regarding the effects of λόγος and ὄψις on their passive recipients are present also in Thucydides’ History. In this respect, she concludes: ‘The link between Gorgias and Thucydides seems incontrovertible’ (426). For the Athenians of 3.38 as passive recipients of sights and sounds, see my earlier discussion, pp. 160–3. Note also that the pleasure of listening that bests the Athenian powers of judgement (ἀκοῆς ἡδονῇ ἡσσώμενοι, 3.38.7, cf. 40.2) recalls Gorgias’ model of the emotional effects of speech; cf. V. Hunter (1986) 423. See M. E. Wright (2005) 295: ‘Gorgias in the Encomium showed how Helen was overpowered by words (λόγοι) and outward appearance (ὄψις); now we, the audience, [watching Euripides’ Hel.] are being beguiled by the persuasive – why not deceptive? – λόγοι and ὄψις of drama.’ Wright continues to argue that, just like Gorgias, Euripides thus creates a play which has “in-built “self-refutation”’ as ‘a recurring strategy of presentation, whereby our initial expectations are later frustrated’. For an example of perceptual passivity explored on-stage that clearly draws upon the Gorgianic notion that deceptive appearances are a sickness of the eye, see the recognition scene between Menelaus and Helen at E. Hel. 574–8 and cf. Gorg. 82b11.18 DK.

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Here, the failed recognition scene between Teucer and Helen, at Helen 119–22, is typical. (The real) Helen, who is as yet unidentified, questions Teucer, who remains convinced that it is what he sees now that is not to be trusted – despite being taken by the likeness of the woman he addresses to the (εἴδωλον) Helen whom he has just left behind: Ελ. σκόπει δὲ μὴ δόκησιν εἴχετ’ ἐκ θεῶν. Τε. ἄλλου λόγου μέμνησο, μὴ κείνης ἔτι. Ελ. οὕτω δοκεῖτε τὴν δόκησιν ἀσφαλῆ; Τε. αὐτὸς γὰρ ὄσσοις εἰδόμην, καὶ νοῦς ὁρᾷ.

120

H. Watch out, in case it was an illusion from the gods that you saw. T. Change the subject: do not talk about her any longer. H. Do you imagine what you witnessed was real? T. I saw it with my own eyes – and my mind sees.93

As Kannicht noted, the last line here is likely to be an allusion to Epicharmus’ words: νοῦς ὁρῇ καὶ νοῦς ἀκούει· τἄλλα κωφὰ καὶ τυφλά.94 With them, Euripides sets up a devastating critique of all of Teucer’s sensory and intellectual certainties about what is real and what is not; for the effect of Euripides’ allusion is to enact a competition between philosophical positions in which he uses the tacit irony that the audience already knows that what Teucer takes to be real is not real in order to refute the possibility of certain knowledge for his characters on any level of apprehension. Teucer, that is, is implicitly shown to be wrong here on two counts: his eyes cannot be trusted; and neither can the deeper sight plied by his νοῦς. But the problem, as we have seen, is that as the play progresses, the audience’s basis on which to judge such moments of deception (i.e. to separate what-is from what-is-not) in this way is steadily eroded; any irony born earlier of their privileged position as viewers of this tragedy rapidly turns back on itself. Indeed, it soon becomes apparent that in its staging of the misperceptions of its characters, the Helen not only teaches its spectators to distrust their senses explicitly but does so insidiously, in implicit and unexpected 93

94

Text and trans. M. E. Wright (2005) 301, to whom my reading of this passage is indebted (cf. 301–2). Epich. 23b12 DK with Kannicht (1969) ad loc.; against several recent editors, Allan (2008) ad loc. and M. E. Wright (2005) 266–7 follow Kannicht (1969) ad loc. in retaining line 122 as genuine.

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ways, rendering them entirely passive participants in its pessimistic philosophical scenario (as Aristophanes claims, cf. Th. 1–28). Looking for a reality behind the deception, but able to trust neither their eyes nor their ears, ultimately they become just like the mortals of the play and, indeed, of Parmenides’ poem; guided only by ἀμηχανίη, beguiled by their πλακτὸς νόος and thus carried along κωφοὶ ὁμῶς τυφλοί τε, as τεθηπότες, ἄκριτα φῦλα (b6.5–7). As Euripides explores the problems of perception in the Helen, then, the (deliberate) effects of his deceptive philosophizing are, in a political sense, deeply disenfranchising. Not only does the epistemological uncertainty of the escape-tragedies of 412 present an implicit case for non-participation in political decisionmaking;95 the effects it has on its audiences actually work to destroy their capacity to participate (cf. the imagery of Thuc. 3.38). Like true Gorgianic listeners of any λόγος, they essentially become ‘moulded’ by its message. Yet it is only when that message is placed in the volatile political climate prevailing in the spring of 411 that the full extent of the threat posed by its ideas can be appreciated. Between the Lenaea and the Dionysia of that year Athens had suffered a bloodthirsty campaign of political murder orchestrated by those of the city’s hetaireiai rallied to the oligarchic cause by Peisander; the overthrow of democracy was imminent and, indeed, would follow with his return in early June. As Thucydides describes it at 8.66, the situation at around the time of our Thesmophoriazusae was thus little short of desperate – the city, under a reign of terror; its citizens, entirely aporetic. The Assembly still met, but it was now under the strict control of the oligarchic conspirators, whose number and certain identities were not known. Its once-active citizen audience, in turn, was now paralyzed with mutual suspicion and fear; old allegiances were deceptive, appearances could not be trusted, and it was impossible to tell who was and who was not implicated in the conspiracy. Their minds cowed by a pervading sense that conspiracy infected the entire city, and their liberty to judge destroyed by the threat of violence, the dēmos, Thucydides 95

Note the possibility of reading nihilism as the message of the play described in p. 171 n. 42.

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says, had fallen into a fearful silence.96 On the eve of the City Dionysia of 411, the ostensibly comical issue of not being able to distinguish what-is from what-is-not, of being trapped in illusion and aporetically searching for what is real, was thus not only acutely topical philosophically; it was also deadly serious politically.97 Indeed, Thucydides’ own account of the events leading up to the reign of terror, with its emphasis on political fragmentation, deception, the impossibility of discerning falsehood, and paradox, itself testifies to the topicality and political seriousness in 411 of the programmatic themes of our play. As Greenwood observes: ‘The events of Book 8 are characterized by deception (and counterdeception), double-dealing and the persuasive use of speech to obscure underlying realities. Recurring motifs include suspicion (hupopsia), acting in secret (krupha) and lack of trust (apistia). Deception is taking place on so many levels that Thucydides himself expresses uncertainty about what was really going on . . .’98 It is against this incendiary political backdrop that Aristophanic comedy thus subtly answers the mortal ἀμηχανίη and Gorgianic tenets (now disturbingly resonant) authorized a year earlier by Euripidean tragedy, staging a devastating reply in kind. Exposing the fallacies of Euripidean philosophizing and its subversive implications, Aristophanes issues a veiled enjoinder to the Athenians of 411 not to be persuaded by Euripides’ epistemological pessimism, 96 97

98

Thuc. 8.66.2–3. For Th.’s awareness of this political situation, see Austin and Olson (2004) xliii: ‘Although Lys. displays no overt awareness of an immediate threat to Athens’ democracy [. . .] Th. does; and the obvious implication is that the play was staged at a time when the oligarchic conspiracy was more advanced and could no longer simply be ignored’; cf. N. W. Slater (2002) 180–1. Our philosophical reading of the play therefore bolsters recent correctives of the view that our Th. is simply an apolitical comedy. For this position see Lang (1967) 181 and Sommerstein (1977) 120, but esp. (1994) 4: ‘Thesmophoriazusae [. . .] is not a political play and was never designed to be. It is a drama about drama and about gender’. Cf. Silk (2000) 320: ‘[Th.] is a play with no overt political content (apart from the presence of Euripides and Agathon) with very little topical reference of any kind’ and should therefore be placed ‘on the opposite end of the spectrum’ from Knights, ‘a play where issues, political issues [. . .] are unmistakable’ (334). Greenwood (2006) 89–97 (quotation: 90); cf. 85, noting prior characterizations of Book 8 in terms of ‘fragmentation’, ‘division’, ‘disintegration’ by Rood (1998) 253 (who points out the mirroring in the ‘fragmented’ structure of the book of the ‘greater complexity’ of the deterioriating situation it describes), Connor (1984) 215, and others. Cf. Shear (2011) 31 for the passivity of the dēmos in Thucydides’ account.

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but to return to their senses, and actively to κρῖναι λόγῳ, that is, to restore their full attention (νόος) to the judgement of his words.99 In this comic frame, those words will be drawn from a range of Euripidean tragedies and, one by one, each will be revealed to lead nowhere other than to self-deception, deceit, ἀμηχανίη.100 Salvation, both for the individual and for the city, is shown to lie only in transcending the ἐοικός (Doxastically ‘appropriate’, which is to say, ‘subjectively plausible’) philosophical vision of the Helen, and plying eye and ear together, to direct νόος to the reality its illusions would obscure: the reality of its (which is to say, this) audience’s own helplessness in (Euripidean) deception, its own utter surrender of νόος. (The very same insight that is also at the heart of Parmenides’ goddess’s Doxastical deception.)101 99

Note that the conjectured allusion to the oligarchs of 411 in our Th. at 356–67/8 (see, e.g., Dover (1972) 170–1) uses imagery suggestively close to that with which Ar. characterizes Euripides at the beginning of the play: if oligarchs are alluded to here, they too are figures who would threaten the status quo with (amongst other things) their deceptive treatment of opposites; thus the words of the female Chorus at Th. 356–67/8: . . . ὁπόσαι δ’ ἐξαπατῶσιν παραβαίνουσί τε τοὺς ὅρκους τοὺς νενομισμένους κερδῶν οὕνεκ’ ἐπὶ βλάβῃ, ἢ ψηφίσματα καὶ νόμον ζητοῦσ’ ἀντιμεθιστάναι, τἀπόρρητά τε τοῖσιν ἐχθροῖς τοῖς ἡμετέροις λέγουσ’ ἢ Μήδους ἐπάγουσι †τῆς χώρας οὕνεκ’ ἐπὶ βλάβῃ†, ἀσεβοῦσ’ ἀδικοῦσί τε τὴν πόλιν.

100

101

356–9

363–6 367=8

ἀντιμεθιστάναι should be taken as ‘to change into their opposites, turn back to front, put into reverse’, see Sommerstein (1977) 125 and n. 81 (pace Dover (1972) 171); cf. Austin and Olson (2004) ad loc. (Ar.’s) Euripides, of course, is precisely one who would deceive this audience, turn opposites back on themselves, reveal women’s secrets and, as this comedy progresses, commit sacrilege for the sake of gain (by infiltrating a women’s festival); but most importantly, by leaving his audience unable to tell what-is from what-is-not, he is also one who would profoundly wrong the city. Cf. Euripides’ association with the Medes in the Assembly curse at 335–7 (for Austin and Olson (2004) ad 335–9, a standard pairing of enemy with enemy). For ἀμηχανίη as the (only) reward for following this Euripides, see Th. 1008, and my pp. 87–92, 122–44. See Kingsley (2003) 205–11, 255–8, 291–4. The ability to negotiate illusion successfully and remedy our helplessness, in turn, implies turning the very same skills of mētis, by which we effected our self-recognition, and by which the illusions that hold us fast are created (cf. Th. 52–7, 101–29, with my pp. 122–44), back against the deceptions that threaten to entrap us; letting nothing in this world of illusion get ahead of us. It is tempting to compare the Agathonization of the Kinsman that follows our epiphanic

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In this respect, our Thesmophoriazusae clearly develops the critique of tragic and political deception mediated by paratragedy on the comic stage fourteen years earlier in Acharnians, a play similarly concerned with teaching the dēmos to see the deceptions of illusory speech and long suspected of tacitly alluding to the speeches of Gorgias (cf. Ach. 634).102 Indeed, that didactic preoccupation surfaces throughout Aristophanes’ plays.103 In parallel to the emphasis given to deconstructing theatrical illusion in both Acharnians and our Thesmophoriazusae, for instance, the place given to assembling and disassembling persuasive political performances in plays such as Knights and Wasps clearly shows us a comic poet concerned with schooling his spectators to see rhetoric for what it is and to recognize deception.104 Yet the fact that our Thesmophoriazusae styles itself specifically as a paraphilosophical satire of tragedy in this respect gestures significantly toward the increased popular currency both of Gorgianic and of Eleatic ideas in Athens at around 413–411, and to their shifting political resonance against the vicissitudes of its recent history. Certainly, for an revelation of Agathon as para-Doxastical deity in this play, a scene by which the (unwittingly) duped affects to become the duper (see my p. 128 n. 230) . . . and, of course, is eventually rumbled but which also functions as the comic vehicle by which Ar. takes us into his illusory festival and thereby effects our full arousal to self-recognition and self-awareness. How do we negotiate illusion? We embrace its deceptions and learn to use the superior perspicacity and cunning of our (comic) mētis to turn them back on themselves. 102

103 104

φησὶν δ’ εἶναι πολλῶν ἀγαθῶν αἴξιος ὑμῖν ὁ ποιητής, παύσας ὑμᾶς ξενικοῖσι λόγοις μὴ λίαν ἐξαπατᾶσθαι μηδ’ ἥδεσθαι θωπευομένους, μηδ’ εἶναι χαυνοπολίτας.

634

(Text Wilson). For the political claim that comedy equips its audience to see through the deceptions of poetic language implicit here, see N. W. Slater (2002) 60–1; the ancient tradition of an allusion to Gorgias’ ambassadorial displays to the Athenians in 427 at 634: Olson (2002) ad 634–5; see O’Sullivan (1992) 126–9 on Ach. 633–40 for the suggestion that the issue of the impact of Gorgias on Athenian social and political life may have already featured in Ar.’s Babylonians, my pp. 160–3 for Thucydides’ kindred literary response to Gorgias, and my p. 32 n. 12 for Ar.’s subsequent returns to this issue in several comedies. For Ach.’s portrayal of a tragic audience duped by Euripidean (Telephian) deceptions and unable to differentiate between what-is and what-is-not, see p. 117 n. 197; and for the Telephus parody of our Th. as a re-activation of the Telephus parody in Ach., see Hubbard (1991) 187 n. 87; Sidwell (2009) 36–7. In parallel to Ar. here, Plato’s engagement with tragedy also centres upon the ‘false set of values that (he thinks) tragedy promulgates’ and how these relate to the political practices of democracy, see Nightingale (1995) 68, citing Pl. R. 568c. See N. W. Slater (2002) 236–8 and my p. 32 n. 12. See Foley (1988) 43; N. W. Slater (2002) 236–8.

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audience of 412 turning to the tragic stage in the wake of the cataclysmic defeat of the military expedition to Sicily, the scepticism of the Gorgianic epistemology and the philosophical vision of doxa so cannily popularized by Euripides’ plays of that year was undoubtedly powerfully resonant; for in 413 a campaign that the dēmos were thoroughly convinced would be easily won and bring great rewards – a campaign that the Assembly had voted to undertake based precisely upon what its members had heard of what others had seen, and which had inspired such confidence that at first the Athenians even refused to believe that it had failed105 – had ended in the worst defeat Athens had known.106 An Athens of 412, that is, had good reasons to admit a Gorgianic world. By April of 411, by contrast, the epistemology that may once have helped un-self-critical spectators obviate their responsibility for the folly abroad now threatened to bring the dēmos to an even greater crisis at home. In the volatile climate prevailing during the City Dionysia, overt criticism of Athenian political passivity was little short of suicidal;107 the register already set by Euripidean theatre, the agenda already laid out in Acharnians, paraphilosophical critique thus provided a means by which to articulate implicit criticism of the dēmos under the guise of an extended satire on Euripidean tragedy. If politics appears to be ‘studiously avoided’ in 105

106

107

For the disbelief of the Athenians at the defeat of the expedition to Sicily and the desire to obviate their own accountability for the disaster visible in the animosity it inspired toward those persuasive speakers whose words recent events had shown to be deceptive, see Thuc. 8.1. For the resonances of Euripides’ exploration of the Helen story and the Sicilian expedition even in premise (on the basis that both were destructive wars ultimately revealed to have been fought merely for the sake of illusory percepts, phantoms), see Rehm (1994) 126–7. And note, if the story preserved by Plutarch (Plut. Nic. 29.2–3, 542cd) that following their defeat in Sicily Athenian sailors were allowed to win their freedom if they could sing parts from Euripidean tragedies does not itself simply borrow from the model of our Th. (as I suspect is the case), then it is quite possible that the predicament of those Athenians captured in that campaign, as well as those Euripidean spectators that allowed themselves to be taken in by Euripides’ epistemological pessimism a year later, is being satirically mirrored on-stage in our Th. My thanks to Liz Irwin for alerting me to this possibility. On the impact of the political climate of 411 on the comedies staged that year see the comments of Sommerstein (1977) 120 (arguing in favour of dating the Lys. to the Lenaea of 411 and our Th. to the City Dionysia of that year): ‘Aristophanes survived all the political upheavals of the years 411–403; it is very, very hard to credit him with the suicidal recklessness that it would have taken to put on a play like Lys. [i.e. a play with overt political references, the most significant of which (Lys. 489–91) slanders Peisander, the key instigator of the oligarchic coup] at the City Dionysia of 411.’

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this play, and philosophy (albeit fleetingly) takes centre stage, the reason lies surely in our Thesmophoriazusae’s immediate political resonance.108 Cleon’s speech at Thucydides 3.38.5–6, with which we began, cast the Athenian Assembly as δοῦλοι ὄντες τῶν αἰεὶ ἀτόπων, ὑπερόπται δὲ τῶν εἰωθότων (‘slaves of every unfamiliar paradox and overlookers of what is usual’). That is a charge that could well be levelled against the spectators of the Euripidean tragedies of 412. By contrast, in sensory terms, as is well known, comedy expressly grounds itself in the everyday, in ‘popular epistemology’, as the smells of Peace, or the copious food imagery of Knights and other plays attests;109 but in view of this reading of our Thesmophoriazusae, that, perhaps, too emerges as both a political and a philosophical choice. Knights, in particular, may show us a comic poet using essentially the same tactics to involve his audience as do the demagogue protagonists of that play whom he would repudiate: that is, explicitly playing to the tastes of his audience by casting out various foods to the dēmos in order to win their collective attention. But the tensions here are no greater than those that surround Aristophanes’ own claim to possess precisely those qualities (καινότης, δεξιότης, σοφία) which he shows to be so dangerous when deployed by socially irresponsible sophists or by his equally sophisticated un-sōphrōn rivals like Euripides.110 108

109

110

Pace Lang (1967) 181: ‘[By the time of the City Dionysia of 411 . . .] politics were (had to be?) studiously avoided in favour of literary escapism.’ N. W. Slater (2002) 180 gives a more nuanced position: ‘the crisis of 411 casts its shadow over the Thesmophoriazusae [. . .] Beneath the jokes about Agathon and Euripides lies a very real concern about the freedom of the democracy to hear all advice and all information necessary to make its decisions, a freedom threatened by the mutual hostility of the factions.’ See also Austin and Olson (2004) xliii cited in my p. 189 n. 97. Reckford (1987); Tordoff (2011); Clements (2013); Telò (2013); I am very grateful to Robin Osborne for the phrase ‘popular epistemology’. For καινός of subversive or dangerous (philosophical or sophistic) ideas, see Clouds 480 (of Socrates); 1397, 1399, 1423 (of Pheidippides); 896, 936, 943, 1031 (of the Weaker Argument); Th. 1130 (of Euripides), and my p. 17 n. 10. For δεξίος as a negative term, see Clouds 148, 418, 428, 757, 834, 852 (of the sophists); 1111, 1399 (of Pheidippides). For σοφός and its cognates used in a similarly negative way, Clouds 94, 205, 331, 412, 489, 491, 517, 841 (of Socrates and his school); 517, 764, 773, 1202, 1207, 1309 (of Strepsiades); 1111, 1370 (of Pheidippides); 895, 1057 (of the Weaker Argument); 1378 (of Euripides); Th. 9 (again of Euripides), Frogs 66–71; cf. p. 177 n. 61. For Ar.’s claim to possess all three of these qualities himself, see Clouds 545–8, with Hubbard (1991) 94–106, and Bowie (1993) 132–3. Similarly, for Ar.’s (ideal) audience as δεξιός, see my p. 7 n. 16.

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Certainly, framed against a tacit backdrop of late fifth-century debates about epistemology, Aristophanes’ strategy of mobilizing his own community’s tacit commensal knowledge to evocative ends is no less political for that ambivalence. Against the larger philosophical enterprise of questioning the epistemic authority of the senses, epitomized here by Euripidean tragedy’s reduction of its audience to helplessness, Aristophanic comedy expressly reenfranchises its audience by constantly returning it to its sensory perceptions. This it does most obviously by peddling its own brand of popular epistemology. But in 411, against the political implications of its own audience’s apparent surrender to tragic ἀμηχανίη, it also does so subtly and spectacularly: philosophizing theatre to reawaken its spectators to the truth of their own deception, and liberate them from the aporia of the naïve and tragic search for another reality beyond. If, of the philosophers, it is Democritus (‘the laughing philosopher’), with whose words this final discussion began, who imagines what the senses might say to the hubris of the mind, it is Aristophanes who most publicly voices their reply.

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APPENDICES

Appendix I. Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae 1–28: the comic realization of Parmenides, 28b1, b2, b6, b7, b8.50–61 DK 1–2 and the play’s temporal framing: Open during a journey (to revelation; cf. παρεστώς at Th. 6, 39ff.) unfolding during ὄρθρος (a period associated with revelation and adjudication), through the ‘dark and unknown’ (Th. 1; cf. ἀδαῆ, b1.3; 8.59; ἄφαντος, 9.3, of Night) that began at dawn (Th. 2; cf. Heliades, b1.9–10) and that will culminate at a site at which Night becomes Day (b1.11; Th. 66ff.), that is, at a physical location at which the mortal distinction between ‘Light’ and ‘Night’ is shown to be fallacious (see Appendix II for the structural equivalence of the opposite attributes of ‘Light’ and ‘Night’ and the opposites forged from seeing and hearing as both σήματα of the (para-)Doxa). 1–6: The physical predicament of mortal confusion; ἀλοῶν, backwardturning circlings and an inquiry into route (b6, b7, b1; πυνθάνομαι, Th. 4; b1.28). 6: Pointing out a path impossible to point out: φράζω (b2.6, 2.8; b6.2) 7a: Passage into the thought-world of the Doxa signalled by the deceptive switch of word order (b8.51–2), an adherescent οὐ revealing the beginnings of mortal error (b8.53–4). 7–10: Staging the symptoms of mortal confusion: a ringing ear and an echoing tongue (b7.4–5), and the extrapolation of futurity with the notion of a beginning yet to be (μέλλῃς ὁρᾶν, 7; cf. ὄψει, 6; μέλλει ἔσεσθαι, b8.19–20; cf. ἔσται, b8.5). Euripides’ account of hearing and seeing as enantiomorphic opposites exposed in the trials of a πολύδηρις ἔλεγχος (b8.53–9; b7.4–6). 10: Tragic persuasion and internalizing necessity: δεῖ (5) transformed into χρή (10) (cf. χρή, b6.1; χρήν, b1–32; cf. χρεώ, b1.28; χρεών, b2.5, b8.11, b8.54; χρεóν, b8.45; χρέoς, b8.9) 13–18: Revealing the root of all mortal error. Tracing Euripides’ fallacious separation of hearing and seeing back to the Doxastically ‘appropriate’, ‘likely seeming’ (ἐοικώς) mortal cosmology from which it derives (b8.53–60).

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a p p e nd i c e s 22–4: Full circle: learning Euripidean lessons (a journey from πυνθάνομαι to μανθάνω, cf. Th. 4, 20, 22, 24; πυνθάνομαι b1.28 (of all things); μανθάνω b1.31 (of the beliefs of mortals), b8.52 (of the beliefs of mortals via the goddess’s deceitful ordering of words)) and paying the price of following the path of mortal confusion: deafness and blindness (b6.7; b7.4) and the classic symptoms of ἀμηχανίη (b6.5): seeing but notseeing, hearing but not-hearing (b7.4). 25–8: The surrender of νόος (b7.2) and the comic fate of every Euripidean traveller (b6). A step back into the phenomenal world of para-Doxa, a fork in the road, and an implicit enjoinder to the comic audience: κρῖναι λόγῳ (‘the πολύδηρις ἔλεγχος spoken by me [sc. Ar.]’, b7.5–6), or continue with this Euripides? Which path will you choose on the journey of this play?

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appendix ii

Appendix II. Thesmophoriazusae 1–28: two paths of perception and the para-Doxa

(1) Perception and Para-Doxa, Aristophanes, Th. 1–28

(2) Perception and Doxa, Parmenides, 28b7, b8, b16 DK.

5–6: Accepting Euripides as guide is implicitly to agree to perceive passively, in a manner blindly accepting of what seems to be, to see παρεστώς.

Passive perception, blindly accepting of appearances, determines the mind of mortals (for as there is a much-wandering κρᾶσις of the Doxastical senses, so ‘νόος “stands by” or “is present” to men’, τὼς νóoς ἀνθρώπoισι παρέστηκεν . . .’, b16.2).

11–14: Euripides practises a κρίσις (physical separation) (διακρίνω, 13) and a placing χωρίς (apart) (11, 13; διαχωρίζω, 14) of the eye and the ear, distinguishing two forms (cf. E. fr. 484, fr. 839 (Kannicht)) . . .

Mortals practise a κρίσις (physical separation) (κρίνω, b8.55) and a placing χωρίς (apart) of opposite perceptible forms (μορφαί) . . . (named Light and Night, b9).

7–10: . . . and with them, the σήματα of the eye and the ear (seeing and hearing), made respectively parallel to the σήματα of Light and Night in the mimēsis of Euripides’ cosmology (cf. ‘. . . ἐμηχανήσατο∣ ὀφθαλμὸν ἀντίμιμον ἡλίου τροχῷ’, 16–17, contrived in Aither, 14–16, with Aët. iv 13.9– 10 (= 28a48 DK) for the visual ray of Parmenides’ cosmology; and b10.1–2, ‘εἴσῃ δ’ αἰθερίην τε φύσιν τά τ’ ἐν αἰθέρι πάντα∣σήματα . . .’).

. . . and with them, the σήματα of Light and Night (b8.55–9).

The phenomenal world of this play comes to uncritical spectators (ἄκριτα φῦλα, βροτοὶ εἰδότες οὐδέν) through what, following Euripides’ account of seeing and hearing, they take to be a physical

The phenomenal world is brought into being through a physical mixture, μíξις, of the elemental opposites of the Doxa, Light and Night (b9, b12), and mortal thought is simply the sum of this

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(cont.) (1) Perception and Para-Doxa, Aristophanes, Th. 1–28

(2) Perception and Doxa, Parmenides, 28b7, b8, b16 DK.

mixture (a κρᾶσις or μíξις?) of the eye and the ear.

μíξις perceived through a κρᾶσις of the senses (b16).

25–8: Allowing νόος to rely solely on this mixture of the senses as Euripides describes them, invariably means rendering oneself deaf and blind, i.e. helpless. Such a spectator is now fated to wander on Euripides’ backward-turning path for the remainder of the play.

Passively relying upon this κρᾶσις of the senses however, is to allow νόος to be led astray by ‘muchwandering limbs’ (μέλεα πολύπλαγκτα, b16.1).

By contrast, distinguishing oneself from such ἄκριτα φῦλα, transcending this ordinary mortal state of passive perception, means heeding the call to κρῖναι λόγῳ (a call unwittingly issued by Euripides himself at 25–8 with the formalities of Assembly-order: ἄκουε, σίγα, πρόσεχε τὸν νοῦν, δεῦρ’ ὅρα), and to νοεῖν correctly, i.e. to reattune oneself to the reality of tragic deception by actively spectating, looking-and-listening.

Distinguishing onself from the ἄκριτα φῦλα entrapped in this predicament means learning to κρῖναι λόγῳ (b7) and to νοεῖν correctly (thereby understanding or recognizing what is, or things as they are).

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appendix iii

Appendix III. Thesmophoriazusae 29–172: journey’s end and the full revelation of ‘things as they are’: the ‘Agathon scene’ and the epiphany of Aristophanes’ divinity of para-Doxa (28b12–13 DK) 29–51: A new inquiry into nature and ritual preparations. 52–7: Theatrical poiēsis and the metaphysics of illusion. 101–45: Divine revelation: Agathon as Doxastical divinity (b12–13), quasi-divine counterpart to Persephone and to Dionysus (and implicitly mirror image of Ar.), and theatre as para-Doxa; the collapse of mortal opposites in the generation of illusory worlds of the sort in which we are all now immersed; philosophical epiphany means transcending the κρίσις of mortals to reveal the Doxastical nature of theatre in the κρίσις of the Alētheia. 148–72: Agathonian poiēsis and mimēsis and, in the absence of any reality behind the illusion, the revelation that it is only the illusion that is real; the recognition of our own entrapment in deception (cf. 101–4) as the means by which we are set free.

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220

INDEX OF PRINCIPAL PASSAGES DISCUSSED

Aeschines Against Timarchus 196: 120 Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 447–48: 90n120 Aristophanes Acharnians 395–6: 55n30, 170n38 395–400: 175n53 396: 135 408–9: 135 440–4: 116–17, 117n197, 170n38 442–4: 157 479: 135 633–5: 191n102 634: 32n12, 191 635: 157 Peace 43–8: 7n16, 172n47 Thesmophoriazusae 1–5: 52–67 5–10: 67–9 5–24: 12–27 7–10: 70–5 11–13: 75–7 13–18: 77–84 19–24: 84–7 25–8: 87–113 29–35: 122–3 36–51: 123–8 52–7: 128–34 76–80: 135 95–100: 135–6 101–4: 149 101–29: 136, 142–4 102–3: 142–4

130–45: 136–40 148–56: 140–1 157–67: 141–2 171–2: 142 266–7: 147 356–67/8: 190n99 850–924: 154n298 855–924: 177n64 1010–1127: 154n298 1128–32: 151–3 1160–9: 150–1 1172–5: 151–3 1222a–6: 153n297 Wealth 1097–9: 111n183 Cratinus fr. 315 KA: 115n191 fr. 342 KA: 1n3, 172n47, 172, 178, 183n78 Empedocles a49: 24n27, 25n29 a86: 20n18 b2.1: 86n112 b3: 36n6 b3.9–13: 86n112 b17.22: 134n245 b20: 134n245 b33: 134n245 b54: 25n29 b61: 180n71 b62: 180n71 b73: 134n245 b75: 134n245 b84: 24n28, 25n29 b84.9: 24–25, 25n29, 85n111

221

i n d e x o f p r i n c i p a l p a s s ag e s d i s c u s s e d Empedocles (cont.) b86: 24n28, 25n29 b87: 24n28, 25n29, 134n245 b95: 134n245 b96: 130n231, 134n245 b96.1: 134n245 b100.3: 25n29 Epicharmus b12: 187 Euripides Helen 1–21: 167–9 13–14: 167n29 72–7: 165n23 116–23: 165n23 119–22: 186–7 285–6: 166 401: 165n22 523–4: 165n22 532–3: 165n22, 165 555–639: 177n64 563–4: 165n23 569: 165 574–8: 186n92 575: 165 774: 165n22 776: 165 865–72: 166n28 998–1031: 167n29 1020–1: 167n29 1134: 165 1137–43: 169n35 1196f.: 165n23 1676: 165n22, 165 Gorgias Encomium of Helen (b11 DK) 3: 169 11: 128n230, 170, 171n40, 185n86 12.6–7: 185–6 13: 128n230, 185–6 15: 185–6 18: 186n92 Hesiod Theogony 27–8: 125 154ff.: 24n27, 83n107

222

498–500: 99n154 748–57: 114n188 807–10: 114n188 Works and Days 564–70: 59–60 fr. 176 MW: 167n31 Homer Odyssey 10.82–6: 114n189 11.597–8: 56n31 11.601: 56n31 11.633–5: 181n72, 181 Homerica Homeric Hymn to Hermes 91–2: 90n120 Menander Dyskolos 689–90: 102 Parmenides b1: 49–50 b1.1: 49, 52 b1.2: 49 b1.3: 49, 52, 66n59, 66, 93, 94, 101, 131, 144n270, 158 b1.4: 49 b1.5–10: 49–50, b1.6: 111n183, 126n224 b1.8–11: 52, 66 b1.9–21: 113–15 b1.11: 114n189 b1.11–20: 111n183, 114n189 b1.19: 111n183, 126n224 b1.22: 131 b1.27: 157 b1.28: 66, 78n92 b1.28–9: 52 b1.30: 82 b1.30–1: 66 b1.31: 78n92, 78 b1.31–2: 101 b1.32–3: 169n35 b2: 50–1 b2.6: 90 b2.7: 91 b6: 48–9, 51 b6.4: 72, 91 b6.5: 51, 55–6, 70, 75

i nd e x o f p r i nc i p al p a s s a ge s d i s c u s s e d b6.5–6: 88 b6.5–7: 119 b6.5–9: 88 b6.6: 72, 91 b6.7: 72, 79, 86, 91, 101 b6.9: 51, 55–6, 80, 82 b6.8–9: 75–6 b7: 51, 68–9, 88–9, 120 b7.1–2: 44 b7.2: 88, 89n117 b7.3: 89n117 b7.3–5: 100 b7.3–6: 121 b7.4: 91 b7.4–5: 72, 91 b7.5–6: 53, 155–6 b8.1–3: 52 b8.1–49: 52 b8.3: 70 b8.4: 70, 156 b8.6: 70 b8.15–16: 88–92 b8.16: 79, 140, 155–6 b8.17: 90 b8.19–20: 72–3 b8.43: 180n71 b8.50–61: 51, 77–83, 93–5 b8.51: 78 b8.51–2: 70–1, 78n92 b8.53: 93–5 b8.53–4: 71 b8.53–9: 132 b8.54: 77 b8.56: 114 b8.60: 78 b8.61: 88 b9.1–2: 131–2 b10: 98n149 b10.1: 76 b10.1–2: 76, 82n101 b10.5: 76 b12: 130–3, 141n259

b12.4: 137n251 b13: 132 b16: 117–22, 143n264 b16.1: 86n112, 86, 118, 137n251, 156 b16.3: 76 b17: 140n257 Plato Euthydemus 283d: 45 283e7–286b6: 44 300b1–c5: 103–8 300c5–d5: 108n176 Meno 76c4–76e4: 36–42 Protagoras 315b5–9: 56n31 Sophist 236d10–237a9: 44 239c9–241d9: 45 Symposium 174d4–7: 65 175b1–2: 65–6 198b–201b10: 180 198c1–2: 181n72 198c2–5: 181n72 200a–201c: 180 202d: 180 205d10–e1: 180 212c4–6: 180–1 220c3–d5: 63–6 Pseudo-Aristotle ([Arist.]) De Melisso Xenophane Gorgia (MXG) 980a20–b8: 33–6 980b14–17: 36n5 Telecleides fr. 41 KA: 8n17 Thucydides History 3.38: 160–3 3.38.4: 120 3.38.7: 120

223

GENERAL INDEX

Agathon Antheus, 122n216, 139n256 Ilioupersis, 142 and Gorgias, 181n72 and ‘new music’, 125n221, 126n223, 136n250, 136, 138n252, 139n256 effeminacy of in comedy, 130n232, 139n256, 139, 142n261 in our Thesmophoriazusae, 1, 4, 5, 9n18, 10n22, 48, 63n52, 66, 146n273, 152, 157, 189n97, 190n101, 193n108 ‘Agathon scene’ and Aeschylus’ Edonians, 61n48, 139n254 and mimēsis, μίμησις, and poiēsis, ποίησις, 140–2 likely Platonic allusion to, 31n11, 103n165, 141n259 as tragōidopoios, τραγῳδοποιός, and exemplar of the tragic art, 122–44 epiphany of, as quasi-divine counterpart to Persephone, 125–8; and as god(dess) of para-Doxa, 130–42 Platonic characterization of and Thesmophoriazusae, 179–81 alētheiē, ἀληθείη, 50, 67, 76, 80, 90, 144 aloaō, ἀλοάω and threshing, 53–5 as a comic concretization of the backward-turning path of Parmenides’ b6, 55–6 amēchaniē, ἀμηχανίη, 48, 88, 90n120, 90, 96n144, 119, 122, 133, 144n270, 146, 147, 149n281,

224

149, 153n297, 169n35, 169, 170, 176, 188, 189, 190n100, 190, 194 amphiboly/amphilogy in Plato’s Euthydemus, 103–8; see also eristic; sigaō of mortal speech as a sign of mortal confusion and Euripides’ Helen, 167 in Parmenides, 93–5 in Thesmophoriazusae, 95–103, 109–13 anankē, ἀνάγκη, 141n259 Anaxagoras, 7n16, 20n18, 24n27, 25n29, 45n9, 47n11, 178n67 antilogia, ἀντιλογία and the eristics, 28–32, 36n6, 44n5 Aristophanes Acharnians, 7n16, 32n12, 54n27, 57n32, 116–17, 117n197, 135n248, 135, 157n307, 157, 175n53, 175, 176n56, 191n102, 191, 192 Babylonians, 32n12, 191n102 Birds, 52n24, 175n53, 175, 176n56, 180n71 Clouds I, 3n8, 3, 7n16, 30n8, 31n10, 46n10, 174 Clouds II, 3n9, 3–4, 7n16, 10, 13, 31n10, 31n11, 62n51, 66n58, 85n110, 103n165, 113n186, 127n229, 161n9, 173–9, 182n73, 183–4, 184n81, 193n110 Ecclesiazusae, 17n10, 57n32, 61n48, 62n51, 117n197, 183; see also Plato, Republic V

ge n er a l in d ex Frogs, 17n10, 31, 52n24, 54n27, 66n58, 67n63, 87n113, 96n142, 102n161, 127n227, 127n229, 134n245, 135n248, 139n256, 143n264, 175n53, 175, 176n56, 183n78, 185n84, 193n110 Knights, 7n16, 102n161, 162n13, 189n97, 191, 193 Lost Thesmophoriazusae, 30–1, 139n256, 181n72 Lysistrata, 28n2, 58n37, 58, 96n142, 189n97, 192n107 Peace, 7n16, 87n113, 172n47, 176n56, 177n63, 193 Thesmophoriazusae and Euripidean tragedy of 412 bc, 163–72 and para-Doxa, 144–58 political context and politics of perception of, 120–2, 142–4; see also and Gorgias; Thucydides recognition and self-recognition in, 144–58 temporal framing, see chelidōn; dawns; orthros Thesmophoria of as didactic deception and purpose of paratragedy in, 147–9, 149n283 Wasps, 7n16, 23n22, 32n12, 54n27, 62n51, 127n227, 175n53, 175, 182n73, 191 Wealth, 110n178, 111n183, 183 and Gorgias, 32n12, 32, 33–6, 43–7, 191n102, 191–2; see also Thesmophoriazusae, and Euripidean tragedy of 412 b c ; political context and politics of perception of and philosophy, 1–4, 173–84 and popular epistemology, 193–4 Athenian spectatorship as active adjudication and contrasted with perceptual and political passivity, 115–22; see also Aristophanes; Thesmophoriazusae; political context and politics of perception of; paristamai; Thucydides

chelidōn, χελιδών, 57–62; see also orthros chrē, χρή, 13, 18–19, 74–5, 75n82, 75n83, 79 chreōn, χρεών, 71, 93 Crates, 183n76 Cratinus, 1n3, 3n8, 115n191, 121, 143n264, 172n47, 178, 183n78 dawns, Thesmophoriazusae’s two, 57–63; see also chelidōn; orthros deception in Parmenides, see Parmenides; Alētheia goddess of; Parmenides; Doxa theatrical, see Aristophanes; Thesmophoriazusae; Euripidean tragedy; kulindō dei, δεῖ, 12–19, 71, 72, 73–5 diakosmos, διάκοσμος, see eoikōs; Euripides; comic caricature of; Parmenides; Doxa divine revelation Aristophanic, 52–3, 66, 67–9, 83–4, 144–58, 190n101; see also Agathon in Plato’s Euthydemus, 108n176 Parmenidean, 48, 49–52, 83n108, 113–15, 126, 140n257, 143n264, 144n270–145n272, 144–5, 155n301, 157–8, 171 see also orthros dolos, δόλος, 142, 170 doxa, δόξα, see Gorgias; Parmenides; Protagoras Eleaticism, 33n1, 36n6, 44–7; see also eristic; Melissus; Zeno elenchos, ἔλεγχος in Parmenides, 51–2, 69, 73, 89n117, 89, 91n122, 92n129, 119, 146, 155–6 of Thesmophoriazusae’s prologue, 67–86, 88–91, 97, 110–11, 115, 140, 144n270, 147, 154–8 Socratic, 64, 65n57 Empedocles and Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, 180n71

225

g e n er a l in d ex Empedocles (cont.) and Gorgias’ On What Is Not, 35n4, 36–42, 44n5 and Parmenides, 20n18, 45n9, 47n11, 86n112 and Thesmophoriazusae’s Euripidean cosmology, 23–5, 47n11, 47, 85n111 metaphysical processes of, 130n231, 134n245, 137n251 on the senses, 20n18, 23–5, 85n111, 86n112 public performances of, 42n22, 178n67 eoikos, ἐοικός, 96, 100–10, 190 eoikōs, ἐοικώς Aristophanes’ para-Doxa as, 83–4, 92; see also eoikos positive and negative meanings of, 78n91, 81n99, 92n129 world-ordering (diakosmos) of Parmenides’ Doxa as, 78, 81, 83, 130, 134, 140n257 epideixis, ἐπίδειξις, sophistic and Gorgias’ On What Is Not, 34, 35n4, 36n6, 41, 43, 46 and Thucydides 3.38, 160–3 atmosphere and public audience of, 42n22, 178n67, 178 in Aristophanes’ Frogs, 31 in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, 23, 28–32, 84 in Plato’s Euthydemus, 28–32, 31n11, 106 eristic argument strategies of in Plato’s Euthydemus and Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, 28–32, 46, 47, 103–8, 141n259 in Plato’s Euthydemus and Sophist as tendentious appropriators and redeployers of Parmenidean stricture, 33n1, 43–5, 44n5, 45n9, 64, 182n73; see also Melissus; Parmenides; widespread dissemination of ideas during the fifth century; Plato; Zeno topoi of and use of amphiboly in the Euthydemus, 103–8 in Plato’s Meno, 37

226

Euripides Andromeda, 5n12, 62n49, 116n194, 148n278, 150–1, 152n291, 154n298, 159n3, 166n27 Bacchae, 139n254 Chrysippus, 25n29, 83n107 Helen, 5n12, 116n194, 148n278, 150–1, 152n291, 154n298 as exploration of Gorgianic ideas and Parmenidean mortal confusion, 163–72; Thesmophoriazusae as response to the political implications of, 177–8, 185–94 Iphigeneia in Tauris, 148n278, 150–8, 159n3, 166n27 Melanippe the Wise, 25n29, 83n107 Palamedes, 116n194, 148n278, 150n285 Telephus and Aristophanes’ Acharnians, 117n197, 135n248, 170n38, 191n102 and Thesmophoriazusae, 116n194, 146, 148n278, 154n299, 155n301, 157 comic caricature of as associate of Socrates in the comic tradition, 8n17, 66n58, 176n59 as paradoxical conflator of what-is and what-is-not in Acharnians, 55n30, 135, 157n307, 170n38, 175n53 as tacit foil for Plato’s Socrates in the Symposium, 63–6 in Thesmophoriazusae, as mortal fabricator of (‘likely seeming’) cosmologies, 23–6, 77–87; see also Chrysippus, Melanippe the Wise Euripidean tragedy alleged harmful effects of, 117n197, 163–72, 176–8, 185–94 and necessary collusion of tragic audience in deception, 150, 154n298 Euthydemus and Dionysodorus historicity and Platonic characterization of 28–30; see also Plato, Euthydemus, and Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae

ge n er a l in d ex Gorgias Encomium of Helen epistemology of, 185–6 primacy and nature of doxa in, 170–1, 185 On What is Not as a response to Eleaticism, 33–6, 44n5 and Empedocles, 35n4, 36–42 and Euripides’ Helen, 163–72, 185–94 and Thucydides, 160–3, 186n90 and Xeniades, 163n16 see also Aristophanes; and Gorgias illusion, see deception intertextual allusion, see Aristophanes; Thesmophoriazusae; recognition and self-recognition in; spectatorial competencies krasis, κρᾶσις, 116n193, 117–18, 121, 130, 137n251, 137, 138, 143n264, 143, 156; see also mixis krinai de logōi, κρῖναι δὲ λόγῳ as crucial Parmenidean enjoinder of b7, 68n65, 68–9, 97n145, 119–22 as tacit comic imperative and means through which the reality of mortal confusion is revealed, 69, 97, 100, 110–13, 116n193, 119–22, 190 Athenian capacity to do so destroyed in Thucydides, 160–3 krisis, κρίσις and adjudication, 120n208 of Thesmophoriazusae’s women, 135 as logical distinction in Parmenides’ Alētheia and essential test of Doxa (and of para-Doxa), 79, 81n100, 88–92, 97n146, 97, 139–40, 143, 155–6, 178 as physical separation in Parmenides’ Doxa and in Thesmophoriazusae’s para-Doxa, 78, 80, 81n100, 85, 111, 118n201, 132n240, 138n252, 138n253, 139–40, 143 in Aristophanes’ Frogs, 183n78 kulindō, κυλίνδω and tragic deception, 135n248

of phenomena that roll between what-is and what-is-not, 56n31, 182n73 melea poluplankta, μέλεα πολύπλαγκτα, see Parmenides; Doxa; untutored senses and sensory experience in Melissus as eristic and representative of Eleaticism, 36n6, 43–5, 44n5, 45n9 mellō, μέλλω, 72–5 mimēsis, μίμησις, and poiēsis, ποίησις, in Thesmophoriazusae, see Agathon; in our Thesmophoriazusae mixis, μίξις, 118n201, 131, 137n251, 137 see also krasis mortal error, 48, 70, 71–84, 83n106, 88n114, 88, 98n150, 98, 99, 113, 115–16, 121, 122, 132n240, 147, 172n44, 184n82; see also Parmenides; Doxa; opposites of as fallacious mystic initiation, imagery of, in Parmenides, 49–50, 144n270, 144–58 in Plato’s Euthydemus, 108n176 in Thesmophoriazusae, 67–9, 125–8 see divine revelation necessity, see anankē; chrē; dei negation ‘adherescent’ οὐ in Parmenides, 71 in Thesmophoriazusae 13–15, 14n6, 71 ambiguities of in Aristophanes, 13–17, 14n6, 18n15, 18–21 mortal confusion and, 51–2, 88–9; see mortal error strictures against in Parmenides, 44, 50–1, 72–5 noos, νόος judicious use of in Parmenides and para-Doxa, 51–2, 99–100, 189–90; see also krinai de logōi wandering of, and Doxastical perceptions, 117–22, 137–40, 143n264 and Euripides’ Helen, 167–70, 188

227

g e n er a l in d ex noos, νόος (cont.) and mortal failure to control in Parmenides, 48, 70, 85–7, 96, 100, 111 in Aristophanes’ Knights, 162n13 orthros, ὄρθρος and divine revelation and adjudication, 61n48, 61, 66; see also chelidōn; dawns; Thesmophoriazusae’s two paristamai, παρίσταμαι, 116–18 Parmenides Alētheia as the only legitimate route of inquiry, 50–2, 88–9 as the true account of reality, 70; see also sēmata goddess of, 49–50; as authoress of didactic deceptions, 146, 147n277, 147–9, 148n280 strictures against negation in, see negation; sophistic appropriation of; see eristic see also elenchos Doxa as a discursive construction of mortals, 80–3 as a ‘likely seeming’ world-ordering (diakosmos), see eoikōs as comical, third, and backwardturning, mortal ‘route’, 48–9, 51–2, 55–6 and the further archetypal symptoms of mortal confusion, 48–9, 72, 79, 86, 90n120; see also noos goddess of mixture at centre of, 130–3 mixture in, see krasis; mixis mortal naming in, 71, 72n75, 100n157; see also amphiboly/ amphilogy; sēmata opposites of as fallacious, 77–83 separation in, see krisis untutored senses and sensory experience in, 86n112, 117–20; see also krasis, see also amēchaniē; amphiboly/ amphilogy; eoikōs; mortal error; sēmata

228

proem destination of as site where all mortal opposites collapse, 113–15 journey of, 144n270, 157–8; and sensory negation as precondition for, 126; see also silence widespread dissemination of ideas during the fifth century, 43–5, 45n9, 178n67 Persephone, see Agathon; Parmenides; Alētheia; goddess of ‘-in the Underworld roles’ in Thesmophoriazusae, 128n230 physis, φύσις in Parmenides’ Doxa, 76 and ‘Agathonian’ mimēsis, μίμησις, and poiēsis, ποίησις, 140–3 Plato Euthydemus allusions to Aristophanes’ Clouds and redeployment of comic criticism, 31n11, 103n165, 184n81 and Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, 28–32, 44–5, 103n165, 103–8, 128n230, 141n259, 178n67, 179; see also Agathon; in our Thesmophoriazusae see also eristic Meno, 36–42 Protagoras, 23n22, 23n25, 26n32, 52n24, 56n31 Republic V and Ecclesiazusae, 183 and Thesmophoriazusae, 182 Sophist, 44n5, 44–8, 178n67, 182n73 Symposium and Thesmophoriazusae, 52n24, 56n31, 63–6, 128n230, 141n259, 179–82; see also Agathon; in our Thesmophoriazusae; Euripides; comic caricature of poiēsis, ποίησις, and mimēsis, μίμησις, see Agathon; in our Thesmophoriazusae Protagoras as respondent to Parmenides, 45

ge n er a l in d ex Reality (what-is), see alētheiē sēmata, σήματα as aspects of mortal discourse in Parmenides’ Doxa 52n23, 80, 81n100, 81–3, 83n106, 97–103, 138n252, 147n277; and in Aristophanes’ para-Doxa, 48, 81–3, 92–103, 115, 137–40, 138n252 as ‘signs/signposts’ or ‘proofs’ of what-is in Parmenides’Alētheia, 51–2, 52n23, 70, 78, 88n115, 89n117, 147n277 sigaō, σιγάω in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, 97–103, 109–113 in Plato’s Euthydemus, 103–8 silence sound of in Parmenides, 126; see also sigaō; siōpaō siōpaō, σιωπάω, 97–103, 109–113 sophia, σοφία competition in philosophical and poetic, and Aristophanic claims to, 3n8, 172–3, 176n59, 177–81, 184

of the comic Euripides lampooned, 20, 24–5, 47n11, 85n111 spectatorial competencies, 148n278, 154, 169n35; see also Aristophanes; Thesmophoriazusae; recognition and self-recognition in and the ‘fallacy of audience limitation’, 2–4, 178n67, 178 Telecleides, 8n17, 66n58 Thucydides and Gorgias, 162–3, 186n90 on Athenian political passivity, 120, 160–1, 188–9, 193 on the months preceding the oligarchic coup of 411 bc, 188–9 Troy as quintessential site of deception, 142–4; see also Agathon; Ilioupersis; dolos Zeno, as eristic and representative of Eleaticism, 36n6, 43–5, 44n5, 45n9 and written doctrines of, 178n67 Xeniades, 45n9, 45, 163n16

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