Muthos: Aristotle's Concept of Narrative and the Fragments of Old Comedy [1 ed.] 9783949189050, 9783949189036

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Loren D. Marsh

Muthos

ARISTOTLE'S CONCEPT OF NARRATIVE AND THE FRAGMENTS OF OLD COMEDY

Studia Comica

Studia Comica Herausgegeben von Bernhard Zimmermann

Band 12

Loren D. Marsh

Muthos Aristotle’s Concept of Narrative and the Fragments of Old Comedy

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Dieser Band wurde im Rahmen der gemeinsamen Forschungsförderung von Bund und Ländern im Akademienprogramm mit Mitteln des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung und des Ministeriums für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur des Landes Baden-Württemberg erarbeitet.

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Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über https://dnb.de abrufbar. © 2021, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Umschlagabbildung: Dionysos-Theater und Mosaik einer Komödienmaske, mit freundlicher Genehmigung des Reihenherausgebers Einbandgestaltung disegno visuelle kommunikation, Wuppertal

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISBN 978-3-949189-05-0

Table of Contents Tables and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

I.

Muthos: The Plot Within . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. Beginning After the Start, Finishing Before the End . 2. μέγεθος as Relative Size, μῆκος as Absolute Size . . . 3. Muthos Size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. Muthos Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. What is a Muthos Part? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

II. The Aristophanic Muthos . . . . . . . . 1. The Muthos and Narratology . . . . . Sjuzet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Genette’ s récit . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ricoeur’ s muthos . . . . . . . . . . . Propp’ s functions . . . . . . . . . . . Frye’ s muthoi . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Guidelines for Outlining the Muthos 3. The Muthos in Aristophanes . . . . . 4. Wine-Flask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. Beasts and Fishes . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Spongers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Old Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. Demes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9. Frogments Revisited . . . . . . . . . .

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41 42 42 43 44 46 48 52 55 63 76 82 84 88 90

III. The Muthos in Mythological Old Comedy . . . . . . 1. Mythological Comedy and the Parabasis . . . . . 2. Mythological Comedy and the Agon . . . . . . . 3. Muthos Characteristics of Mythological Comedy 4. The Muthos and Epirrhematic Structures . . . . . 5. Wealth-Gods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. Dionysalexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Nemesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. Odysseus and Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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95 97 106 111 120 123 130 133 138

IV. Muthos and the Definition of Genre . . . . . . . . . . . 1. The Formal Structure of Mythological Old Comedy. 2. The Muthos in Tragedy and the Satyr Play . . . . . . Aeschylus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Persians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seven Against Thebes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suppliants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prometheus Bound. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Agamemnon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Libation bearers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eumenides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sophocles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ajax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Electra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oedipus Tyrannus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Antigone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Women of Trachis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philoctetes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oedipus at Colonus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Euripides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cyclops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alcestis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Children of Heracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hippolytus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andromache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hecuba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Suppliant Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Electra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Heracles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trojan Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Iphigenia in Tauris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Helen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phoenician Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Orestes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bacchae . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Iphigenia at Aulis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rhesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. Comparing the Muthos Across Genres . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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141 142 146 147 147 149 149 150 152 152 153 154 154 155 156 158 159 160 161 162 162 164 165 166 167 168 169 171 172 173 175 176 176 177 179 180 182 183 184 185 199 203 209

Tables and Figures Tables 1 2 3 4

Parabasis placement in Aristophanes Muthos events in Aristophanes Play category correlated with muthos characteristics Muthos placement and events in tragedy, the satyr play and Amphitruo

66 69 249 258

Figures 1 Muthos placement and portion in Aristophanes 2 Muthos placement and portion across genres

68 261

9

Acknowledgements For more reasons than I can list, this book could never have been written without the intellectual guidance and loyal support of Markus Asper. I am also grateful to Bernd Seidensticker for his indispensable feedback and generous encouragement along the way. Bernhard Zimmermann’ s endorsement of my initial approach gave me confidence early on, and his offer to publish the final book was a surprising validation of the results. To my wife Marylise and my daughters Kali and Vera, instead of trying to find some clever way to link this book to our life together, I’ ll just say it straight: I love you, thanks for everything.

11

Introduction Aristotle’ s Poetics is not only the first surviving work of literary theory, it is the first to develop a theory of plot structure. Aristotle’ s concept of plot or “muthos” is central to the Poetics, and he repeatedly emphasizes its fundamental importance to his theory of literature. For example Aristotle states at 1450a38 that plot is the “origin and soul of tragedy,” and at 1451b26 that the tragic poet is primarily a maker of plots, not verses. But Aristotle’ s prescriptive statements about plot in the Poetics are difficult to reconcile with each other, or with the surviving literature from the fifth century BC. In Chapter 13 he claims the best plot ends with a change from good fortune to bad fortune, but then in Chapter 14 indicates that it is best when a change from good to bad fortune is averted. In Chapter 7 he describes a beginning as something that does not follow necessarily from anything else, but most surviving tragedies have beginnings that result directly from previous events in the mythological complex. In the same chapter Aristotle states that the bigger the plot the better, but then later in Chapter 26 faults epic for its greater length. Throughout the treatise, he demands a remarkably high level of plot organization or “unity,” instructing poets (Chapters 8 and 9) to construct plots that are “whole,” imitate a “single action,” consist entirely of events linked by “probability or necessity,” and exclude the “irrational” (Chapter 24). Very few of the plots of extant tragedies appear to meet these remarkably stringent standards. Two explanations for these discrepancies have been discussed.1 The first is that Aristotle had access to far more ancient literature than we do, and the lost literature conforms more closely to his prescriptions than the small sample that has survived. So if we could only read all the tragedies that Aristotle had, then we would better understand how Aristotle’ s statements about plot apply to tragedy in general. The second is that Aristotle’ s prescriptions are theoretical postulates, not empirical conclusions. Aristotle did not intend to develop a theory to be measured against the evidence of existing literature, he was instead concerned with establishing fundamental principles of plot from a philosophical point of view. This book explores a third possibility. Aristotle’ s concept of muthos is not comparable with what we might consider the plot. Instead, the muthos refers to a small number of core events, all contained within the narrative work. As a result, there is a critical difference between how the tragedy begins or ends, for example, and how the muthos begins or ends. The size of the muthos is not equivalent to either the size of the narrative work or the size of the plot. Unity of

1

See Halliwell 1986, 37–41 for a critical summary of the debate with references. On the distinction between the prescriptive and descriptive levels in the Poetics, see Söffing 1981, 26–36.

12

Introduction

muthos does not require unity of plot. Irrational events may appear in the play, as long as they are excluded from the muthos. In sum, all of Aristotle’ s prescriptive statements about plot must be carefully distinguished between those that apply to the muthos, and those that apply to the rest of the events in the plot. Only then can it be determined how close his descriptions of the muthos align with the extant literature. More generally, this means that Aristotle’ s muthos concept presents a different way of understanding the organization of events and its characteristics in the ancient literature he discusses. It is obviously a controversial approach. I cannot hope to convince every reader of this book that Aristotle’ s concept of muthos in the Poetics has this extraordinarily narrow scope, nor is that my intention. Instead my goal is to make a persuasive case that this understanding of the muthos concept is an entirely plausible interpretation of the Greek text of the Poetics, and that as a result examining its consequences is certainly a worthwhile enterprise. Skeptical readers may be somewhat reassured to learn that the basic argument underlying this interpretation has already been validated by a leading scholarly journal (Marsh 2015), and that practically none of the evidence I marshal to support my view is new. In fact for the essential building blocks of the argument, I rely almost entirely on conclusions reached by established scholars that have long been accepted, some since the eighteenth century. I only synthesize these insights in a new way. So I hope that is adequate fair warning. I would add one last common-sense argument for reevaluating Aristotle’ s concept of plot that has often occurred to me as I examined the Poetics more closely in the writing of this book. If muthos refers to something like what we might term plot, then many of Aristotle’ s statements about the plot must be contradictory, inconsistent or at least ambiguous. But if muthos is a narrower concept as I describe, then the inconsistencies or ambiguities are significantly reduced. That alone to me is a strong incentive for carefully considering whether the muthos concept may be far more limited than what we typically mean by plot. Since the muthos concept is so central to almost every aspect of the Poetics, even in a book of this length it is not possible to discuss all the various consequences of redefining this key term. I have therefore chosen to focus primarily on analyzing the formal characteristics of the muthos in all surviving Old Comedy, tragedy and satyr drama. The three key characteristics I have selected are the muthos size within the play, the muthos placement between the beginning and end of the play, and the absolute number of muthos parts where applicable. Although the Poetics is mainly concerned with tragedy, this book first applies the muthos concept to Old Comedy and then moves on to tragedy. There are two reasons for this choice. The first is that as I will show, a key function of the muthos concept is to group similar narratives. Unlike tragedy, the plots of Aristophanes share certain characteristics that make them particularly well suited to this type of group analysis. The second is that a crucial aspect of Aristotle’ s muthos concept is the distinction between the muthos and the rest of the elements of the plot.

Introduction

13

The plays of Aristophanes highlight this contrast to a greater extent than most tragedies, and so can be used more effectively to explain this distinction at the heart of Aristotle’ s theory. Because so few examples of comedy survive from this period and all are by Aristophanes, I also complement the analysis of the muthos in Aristophanes with what I will call muthos deductions for some fragmentary Old Comedies. I use the term “deduction” to explicitly distinguish these hypothetical muthos outlines from plot reconstructions. Besides focusing on the limited set of events in the muthos instead of the plot in general, the deductions differ from reconstructions in that they are based on the assumption that these fragmentary plays shared specific muthoi characteristics with some of the surviving plays analyzed. But since this assumption can never be proven, an analysis based on it can only demonstrate how the muthos might be deduced from the fragments of the lost plays if in fact they did share those muthos characteristics. Chapter 1 analyzes all Aristotle’ s statements about size in the Poetics, demonstrating that the muthos is smaller than the narrative work, always entirely contained within the narrative work and subject to certain rules for size. In Chapter 2, I outline the muthoi of all the surviving plays of Aristophanes using this definition, and then apply the results to develop muthos deductions for a number of fragmentary Old Comedies that may have also used the Aristophanic muthos. In Chapter 3, I argue that the fragments of mythological Old Comedies indicate that the muthos in this category of plays contrasted with the muthos in Aristophanes, and then discuss a number of fragmentary mythological comedies by Cratinus from this point of view. In Chapter 4 I outline the muthoi of all the surviving tragedies and satyr drama, demonstrating that the three key muthos characteristics appear to fall into distinct categories across the three genres that correlate with tone and plot type. I conclude with some brief remarks concerning the possibility that the poets themselves, and perhaps even audiences, may have also been aware of the muthos concept before Aristotle gave it a theoretical formulation in the Poetics.

15

I. Muthos: The Plot Within1 Summary There are two related problems in the Poetics!(YPZ[V[SL»͎ZJVU[YHKPJ[VY`Z[H[LTLU[ZHIV\[ ZPaLHUK(YPZ[V[SL»͎ZJVUM\ZPUN\ZLVM[^V[LYTZMVYZPaLɤʴʺʼʿ˅ˇHUKɤ‫ؾ‬ˁ˅ˇ0HYN\L[OH[ IV[O WYVISLTZ JHU IL ZVS]LK PM ^L \UKLYZ[HUK [OH[ (YPZ[V[SL VUS` \ZLZ ɤʴʺʼʿ˅ˇ [V YLMLY to the size of the muthos PUYLSH[PVU[V[OLZPaLVM[OLSHYNLY^OVSLHUKɤ‫ؾ‬ˁ˅ˇ[VYLMLY[V absolute sizeU\TILYVMSPULZY\U[PTLÄJ[PVUHS[PTLVYU\TILYVMT\[OVZWHY[Z\UYLSH[LK [VHU`SHYNLY^OVSL;OPZTLHUZ[OH[(YPZ[V[SLT\Z[KLÄUL T\[OVZHZHZTHSSNYV\WVML]LU[Z LU[PYLS`JVU[HPULK^P[OPU[OLUHYYH[P]L^VYRHKLÄUP[PVU[OH[JHUUV[ILHSPNULK^P[O^OH[ ^L[`WPJHSS`[OPURVMHZ[OL¸WSV[¹[OH[PUJS\KLZHSS[OLL]LU[ZPUHUHYYH[P]L;OLPKLHVM[OL T\[OVZ HZVUS`HWVY[PVUVM[OLUHYYH[P]L^VYRTH`ZLLTL_V[PJI\[0ZOV^[OH[(YPZ[V[SL»͎Z V^UKLZJYPW[PVUZVM[OLT\[OVP VM^VYRZZ\JOHZ,\YPWPKLZ»Iphigenia in Tauris VY/VTLY»͎Z Odyssey KLTVUZ[YH[L[OH[[OPZPZWYLJPZLS`OPZ]PL^0UHKKP[PVU\UKLYZ[HUKPUN[OLZL[^V [LYTZPU[OPZ^H`ZOV^Z[OH[(YPZ[V[SLSH`ZV\[HU\TILYVMZWLJPÄJY\SLZPU[OLPoetics MVY T\[OVZ ZPaLHUKT\[OVZ JVUZ[Y\J[PVUYLSH[LK[VZPaL

Among the prescriptive statements in the Poetics, those concerning size are perhaps the most difficult to reconcile with each other. Commentators trying to make sense of Aristotle’ s various statements about size in the Poetics have without exception found them contradictory.2 In addition, it is unclear what Aristotle means by “size” when referring to a narrative work in the Poetics. Does he mean the length of the work in terms of lines? Or the time a recitation, reading or performance of the work takes? Or the length of fictional time covered in the story? Or the extent of the plot? Or the amount of plot parts? A related problem is Aristotle’ s choice of terminology. He uses two words for size in the Poetics: μέγεθος or “magnitude” and μῆκος or “length.” When applied to a narrative work, neither word is precise.3 Nor does Aristotle’ s use of the two words in the text reveal an obvious distinction between them. As a result, many scholars have concluded μέγεθος and μῆκος are used “interchangeably”4 in the Poetics.

1 2 3 4

This chapter incorporates revised material from Marsh 2015. For a detailed summary of the contradictions found, see Lucas 1968 on 1449b12–16, 93, Heath 1989, 43–4, and Belfiore 2001, 25–27. For an investigation of the inconsistent use of everyday words as terminology in the Poetics, see Köhnken 1990, 129–149. Unfortunately the terms for size are not discussed. For example, Bignami 1932, 199 note 1, Janko 1987 on 1451a5, 89, and Belfiore 2001, 26.

16

I. Muthos: The Plot Within

These ambiguities are particularly troubling because size is essential to Aristotle’ s aesthetic theory in general.5 In the Politics beauty is said to lie in size and number (VII 4.1326a33), and in the Metaphysics a limitation in terms of size is one of the three forms of beauty (XIII 3.1078a36). In the Poetics, Aristotle cites size as one of only two criteria of beauty (1450b36), tragedy is defined in the Poetics as an imitation of an action that has a certain size (1449b25), and one of the crucial differences between tragedy and epic is size (1449b12). So the open question of how size is defined in the Poetics means we have only an incomplete and at best highly paradoxical understanding of Aristotle’ s views on one of the most important elements of his theory of poetry. Other commentators argue that μέγεθος in some passages also has the sense of “grandeur,” adding a qualitative significance. This view is controversial.6 But even if it is accepted, the scholars who believe μέγεθος can sometimes indicate “grandeur” in the Poetics only argue that the sense is a connotation. This means that even for these scholars μέγεθος still refers to size as well, and if μέγεθος still refers to size then the contradictions in Aristotle’ s statements about size remain. But there is something else that distinguishes Aristotle’s use of the word μέγεθος. When discussing poetry Aristotle only applies μέγεθος to the muthos or its parts, never to the entire work such as the tragedy or epic.7 Scholars have been surprisingly careless with making this distinction when analyzing Aristotle’ s statements about size. The confusion began as far back as Vahlen in the nineteenth century, and has continued virtually unnoticed since then. For example, Vahlen glosses Aristotle’ s statement at 1451a5 concerning the maximum size of the muthos with the words “die Tragödie (oder ihr μῦθος)”8 explicitly confounding poem and muthos. More recently, Else comments on 1451a11–15 that “the length of the action … is the length of the play” and “we can read off the length of the action from the length of the poem: from that point of view they are interchangeable.”9 This casualness with the distinction between the muthos and poem reveals

5 6 7

8 9

See for example Butcher 1902, 276–7, Else 1957, 207 and 289, and Ross 1995, 178. For a good summary of the arguments for and especially against the connotation of “grandeur,” see Belfiore 2001, 26 with note 7. The following is a complete list of all the passages where μέγεθος occurs in the Poetics: 1449a19, 1449b25, 1450b26, 1450b36–37, 1451a4, 1451a11–15, 1456a14, 1456b1, 1459a34, 1459b23, 1462b10. These passages will be discussed in detail below, but the only clear exceptions to the rule that μέγεθος applies exclusively to the muthos or its parts occur in 1450b36–37 and 1451a4 where the subject is bodies or animals, and 1456b1 where the subject is stylistic elevation in diction. Vahlen 1865, 27. Else 1957, 294. Else first correctly identifies the action with the muthos on page 291. See also now Frede 2009, 107 mistakenly referring to Aristotle’ s comparison of the size of the tragedy to the size of an animal in Chapter 4 (discussed in more detail in Section 4 below). In fact, the comparison only refers to the size of the muthos.

1. Beginning After the Start, Finishing Before the End

17

a general assumption among commentators that no part of a play or epic could be without muthos, that the two are commensurate in this respect. Yet there have been critics past and present who disagreed with that assumption. Heath has shown that the dominant view in sixteenth century scholarship drew a distinction between “the structure of the plot and the structure of the text in which that plot is realised. It was not thought that the text ought to be restricted to the realisation of its unified plot; on the contrary, it was thought to be an advantage if a narrative or dramatic text is ‘amplified’ or ‘dilated’ by the insertion of extraneous material.”10 Heath himself has argued that Aristotle thought “a tragedy may be essentially without being solely the exposition of its praxis.”11 This means that Aristotle is not saying that “a play must contain only the dramatisation”12 of the muthos. In addition, as will be discussed in more detail below, it is generally accepted that Aristotle viewed the narrative work as containing both what he calls episodes and the muthos proper, suggesting again that the muthos is not everywhere in the work. But even those critics who recognize that the text may not be commensurate with the muthos have not fully considered whether the muthos may be totally contained within the text. There is still an assumption that Aristotle cannot reasonably have thought that the text contains the entire muthos, even if it is accepted that the part of the muthos in the text could be smaller than the whole text. Here the passages in the Poetics where Aristotle refers to elements outside the play, drama or muthos are presented as proof that the muthos extends beyond the text. But careful examination of those passages below will show that in fact Aristotle never explicitly says any element of the muthos lies outside the text. On the other hand, he does explicitly refer to things in the text that are not part of the muthos. It is therefore possible that Aristotle made an entirely different assumption – that what he calls muthos must be smaller than the narrative work and entirely contained within it. If that were the case, he would need two words to describe size: one word to refer to the size of the muthos in relation to the size of the larger whole, and one word to refer to absolute size unrelated to any larger whole. I will argue here that this is precisely the distinction between μέγεθος and μῆκος in the Poetics.

1. Beginning After the Start, Finishing Before the End If the entire muthos is contained in the text, then it follows that there must be no muthos parts outside the narrative work and that the muthos must either start af-

10 11 12

Heath 2003, 225. Heath 1989, 46. Heath 1987, 52.

18

I. Muthos: The Plot Within

ter the work begins, finish before it ends, or both.13 I will first discuss the evidence in the Poetics that the muthos can start after the beginning and that it can finish before the end. Then I will discuss the passages where Aristotle describes elements outside the narrative work to determine if they must be part of the muthos too, meaning the muthos can start or end before or after the beginning or ending of the narrative work. This idea is not as exotic as it may sound at first. Halliwell has already recognized that the entire muthos as described by Aristotle could be contained in the narrative work: “it is possible to argue that the dramatic framework of beginning-middle-end can be superimposed on the particular sequence of events which falls wholly within the play, even if these have important antecedents.”14 But he rejects this possibility because he believes that there is no way to determine what is in the play or not, and that everything referred to within the play must in some sense be within it.15 But Halliwell presents no evidence that it is true by Aristotle’ s definition of the muthos, except to state efforts to distinguish “his use of the phrase ‘outside the play’ from ‘outside the plot’ are not convincing.” I will return to this point below, but for now it is enough to point out that even Halliwell’ s own argument allows that the Poetics at the very least leaves open the possibility that the entire muthos falls within the play, and is possibly smaller in size. Halliwell also concludes that viewing the muthos as starting at the beginning of the play does not defy logic, or contradict Aristotle’ s earlier definition of a beginning (1450b27–8) as something without a necessary connection to a preceding event: “the definition of a dramatic ‘beginning’ need not in fact rule out a prior set of events, but it stipulates that the opening of a play should not compel us to look backwards in the myth for a proper understanding of it.” Here Halliwell makes the typical slide from muthos to play, apparently ignoring that Aristotle’ s definition of a dramatic beginning applied to the opening of the muthos, not the “opening of the play.” Still the idea of a dramatic beginning with prior events that do not themselves extend the muthos backwards is useful for understanding how Aristotle could place the beginning of the muthos later in the narrative work without violating his own definition. Aristotle’ s descriptions of specific muthos beginnings also give important indications that for him the muthos in the narrative work may start after the narrative work itself, and in some cases even closer to the middle of it. For example at 1455b16–23 Aristotle outlines the λόγος, which is equivalent in size to the 13

14 15

Another possibility is that it starts and ends where the narrative work does, but parts of the narrative work in between lack muthos parts. However, Aristotle does not directly refer to muthoi of this sort, so I omit them here. See however Section 2 of Chapter 4 on tragedies with messenger speeches that result in gaps without muthos parts between the muthos beginning and end. Halliwell 1987, 149. Halliwell 1987, 150–1.

1. Beginning After the Start, Finishing Before the End

19

muthos,16 of the Odyssey, describing it as “not long.” In fact the λόγος appears to cover only a portion of the poem, and “the rest is episodes” (τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα ἐπεισόδια). Else’ s analysis of the passage concludes that “for Aristotle, the action of the Odyssey begins essentially with Book 13.”17 In addition, at 1459b20–22 Aristotle says the length of an epic composition would be the appropriate size if it corresponded to the number of tragedies heard in one sitting, apparently meaning the three commonly performed in one day. Unconvinced Aristotle meant the length of an epic poem should be so short, Gudeman calculated the approximate number of lines covered by Aristotle’ s λόγος of the Odyssey and determined they were about equal to the total number of lines in a trilogy, and therefore that Aristotle must mean the muthos of the epic should be this length.18 As I will discuss further below, Gudeman ignores both the possibility that Aristotle is referring to the length of the muthoi of three tragedies, not the length of the tragedies themselves and, in a more grave oversight, that Aristotle describes this recommended muthos size as smaller than the muthoi found in the older poets (τῶν μὲν ἀρχαίων ἐλάττους), apparently meaning Homer and therefore a poem like the Odyssey. Nevertheless, Gudeman’ s general approach provides a more plausible interpretation of the passage. It also confirms that Aristotle believes the Odyssey’ s muthos starts after the beginning of the epic, and that it is significantly smaller than the entire poem. Another example of a muthos beginning within the narrative work appears in the passage previous to the one just discussed at 1455b2–15, where Aristotle summarizes and discusses the λόγος and what is outside of the muthos (ἔξω τοῦ μύθου) of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris. Aristotle specifically describes Orestes’ madness and his being sent by Apollo as episodes or outside the muthos. This seems to suggest that the muthos of this play begins at around line 466 when Iphigenia first meets Orestes, since before that point in the play there are no other events besides Orestes’ arrival and his fit of madness. This is still closer to the beginning of the play than the middle as with the Odyssey, but it seems to illustrate how for Aristotle the muthos may begin significantly later than the narrative work on stage as well. Turning to endings, in the same passage at 1455b3–15 Aristotle describes how the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris concludes. Surprisingly the ending from the “salvation,” approximately the last third of the play, is described as “episodes”: τὰ ἐπεισόδια, οἷον ἐν τῷ Ὀρέστῃ … ἡ σωτηρία διὰ τῆς καθάρσεως (“The episodes … in the case of Orestes … the escape by means of the purification”).19 If the “episodes” are considered outside the muthos as they were in the Odyssey, this means that the muthos for Aristotle includes the recognition and change of fortune in this play, but ends almost immediately afterwards. As unusual as it may 16 17 18 19

See Vahlen 1865, 34, Gudeman 1934 on 1455a34, 309, and Janko 1987, 118. Else 1957, 513. Gudeman on 1459b21, 402. All English translations of the Poetics are from Heath 1996.

I. Muthos: The Plot Within

20

seem to us that the muthos ends before the actual escape of the main characters from danger, commentators on the passage have repeatedly confirmed that this is Aristotle’ s view. For example, Else writes that “the last third of the play (995–1496) does not belong to the λόγος proper any more than Orestes’ Sendung by Apollo belongs to it.” He goes on that “we must conclude that in Aristotle’ s eyes the play proper is over at about line 1000.”20 Belfiore’ s study of Aristotle’ s account of the play observes that “according to Aristotle, then, most of the entire last section of Euripides’ play (873 to the end) is episode rather than part of the plot.”21 So this passage indicates that Aristotle believes it is normal that the muthos ends before the end of the play, even when the last part of the play contains what we might call important plot material (an intrigue, a salvation, and so on). The same is illustrated by the passage summarizing the Odyssey’ s muthos at 1455b16–23. Here we find that summary does not include the last two books of the epic, ending once Odysseus reclaims his home: ἐσώθη τοὺς δ᾽ ἐχθροὺς διέφθειρε (“He survives and destroys his enemies”). Else again concludes, “for Aristotle the λόγος ends with book 22, the slaying of the suitors.”22 This is less surprising, because after this point in the epic there are few of what we would call major events. But it still indicates that the narrative work continues well after the end of the muthos, here for a full two books. But in the muthos summary of Iphigenia in Tauris at 1455b2–6, Aristotle also includes events that precede the action of the play entirely: τυθείσης τινὸς κόρης καὶ ἀφανισθείσης ἀδήλως τοῖς θύσασιν, ἱδρυνθείσης δὲ εἰς ἄλλην χώραν, ἐν ᾗ νόμος ἦν τοὺς ξένους θύειν τῇ θεῷ, ταύτην ἔσχε τὴν ἱερωσύνην (“A girl has been sacrificed and has disappeared without those who performed the sacrifice being aware of it. Set down in in another country, where it was the custom to sacrifice foreigners to the goddess, she becomes the priestess of this rite”). And in the muthos summary of the Odyssey, at 1455b17–21 he includes circumstances that are not directly narrated in the epic itself: ἀποδημοῦντός τινος ἔτη πολλὰ καὶ παραφυλαττομένου ὑπὸ τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος καὶ μόνου ὄντος, ἔτι δὲ τῶν οἴκοι οὕτως ἐχόντων ὥστε τὰ χρήματα ὑπὸ μνηστήρων ἀναλίσκεσθαι καὶ τὸν υἱὸν ἐπιβουλεύεσθαι, αὐτὸς δὲ ἀφικνεῖται χειμασθείς … (“A man has been away from home for many years; he is kept under close observation by Poseidon, and is alone; at home affairs are in such a state that his property is being squandered by the suitors, and plots are being laid against his son. Despite being shipwrecked he reaches home …”). These are elements that are outside the narrative work, but are they still in the muthos? If so, it means the muthos is not necessarily smaller than the whole narrative work, even if the muthos material within the narrative work starts after the beginning or finishes before the end. In fact, if the muthos

20 21 22

Else 1957, 511. Belfiore 1992, 373. Else 1957, 512–3 note 85.

1. Beginning After the Start, Finishing Before the End

21

includes all the antecedents to the story, there is no real way to talk about the relationship of its size to that of the narrative work. That would mean everything referred to in the play in any way is potentially part of the muthos. Not only would it be hard to judge the size of these elements outside the play, it would be difficult to determine which of them actually belong to the muthos proper. It would be somewhat surprising that Aristotle even discusses the size of the muthos if it is so loosely defined. This is why Halliwell’ s notion of “important antecedents” outside the muthos itself is so attractive. The antecedent elements that Aristotle includes in the play’ s muthos description belong to what I would term its premise. In the case of Iphigenia in Tauris, Aristotle defines the premise as the sacrifice of Iphigenia, her disappearance, her arrival in Tauris, and the details of her priesthood. But the muthos begins only once Orestes meets Iphigenia. In the Odyssey, it includes the circumstances and repercussions of Odysseus’ absence, but the muthos essentially begins with his arrival in Ithaca. It is impossible to summarize these muthoi without describing their premises (as is quite possibly the case for any plot in general). Aristotle therefore has to include them in his summary, but that does not necessarily mean he intends them to be understood as part of the muthos proper. Yet if it is true they are not part of the muthos, we would expect him to somehow indicate what is premise and what is muthos. And in fact his choice of phrasing in both summaries does clearly demarcate the premises from the muthoi. In both cases, the elements I identified as premises are formulated as genitive absolutes or as participles. The parts that I identified as muthos are in the finite part of the sentence. Else has also noted this, commenting that “in each case the ‘prologue’ details are given mainly in genitive absolutes; the finite verbs … are reserved for the action proper.”23 The idea of important antecedents is in fact one that Aristotle himself develops in the Poetics in his discussion of elements that are outside the muthos or narrative work. Antecedents are directly referred to in his description of the complication and resolution of muthoi (1455b24–32): Ἔστι δὲ πάσης τραγῳδίας τὸ μὲν δέσις τὸ δὲ λύσις, τὰ μὲν ἔξωθεν καὶ ἔνια τῶν ἔσωθεν πολλάκις ἡ δέσις, τὸ δὲ λοιπὸν ἡ λύσις· λέγω δὲ δέσιν μὲν εἶναι τὴν ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς μέχρι τούτου τοῦ μέρους ὃ ἔσχατόν ἐστιν ἐξ οὗ μεταβαίνει εἰς εὐτυχίαν ἢ εἰς ἀτυχίαν, λύσιν δὲ τὴν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς τῆς μεταβάσεως μέχρι τέλους· ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ Λυγκεῖ τῷ Θεοδέκτου δέσις μὲν τά τε προπεπραγμένα καὶ ἡ τοῦ παιδίου λῆψις καὶ πάλιν ἡ αὐτῶν 〈λύσις〉 δ᾽ ἡ ἀπὸ τῆς αἰτιάσεως τοῦ θανάτου μέχρι τοῦ τέλους (“Every tragedy consists of a complication and a resolution. What is outside the play, and often some of what is inside, comprises the complication; the resolution is the rest. By complication I mean everything from the beginning up to and including the section which immediately precedes the change to good fortune or bad fortune; by resolution I 23

Else 1957, 513 note 86.

22

I. Muthos: The Plot Within

mean everything from the beginning of the change of fortune to the end. Thus in Theodectes’ Lynceus the complication consists of events before the play, the seizure of the child and the disclosure of the parents; the resolution is everything from the capital charge to the end”). The προπεπραγμένα are the events of the premise that Halliwell calls antecedents, and here Aristotle is simply pointing out that many of them are outside, probably meaning outside the tragedy since it was just referred to.24 Yet these antecedents outside the play as they are described here could still be within the muthos. Then in another instance where he is discussing the types of actions that elicit pity and fear, Aristotle gives a specific example of an antecedent event (1453b29–34): ἔστιν δὲ πρᾶξαι μέν, ἀγνοοῦντας δὲ πρᾶξαι τὸ δεινόν, εἶθ᾽ ὕστερον ἀναγνωρίσαι τὴν φιλίαν, ὥσπερ ὁ Σοφοκλέους Οἰδίπους· τοῦτο μὲν οὖν ἔξω τοῦ δράματος, ἐν δ᾽ αὐτῇ τῇ τραγῳδίᾳ οἷον ὁ Ἀλκμέων ὁ Ἀστυδάμαντος ἢ ὁ Τηλέγονος ὁ ἐν τῷ τραυματίᾳ Ὀδυσσεῖ (“It is also possible for the action to be performed, but for the agents to do the terrible deed in ignorance and only then to recognize the close connection, as in Sophocles’ Oedipus. (This is outside the play: examples in the tragedy itself are Astydamas’ Alcmeon or Telegonus in the Odysseus Wounded)”). The antecedent event referred to here is Oedipus’ murder of his father Laius. But again in this passage, the event is only said to be outside the drama (ἔξω τοῦ δράματος), not outside the muthos, and it is uncertain whether the word for drama refers to the muthos or to the play. The same is true of a second mention of the murder of Laius, in Aristotle’ s discussion of the use of the deus ex machina and the irrational at 1454a37–54b8: Φανερὸν οὖν ὅτι καὶ τὰς λύσεις τῶν μύθων ἐξ αὐτοῦ δεῖ τοῦ μύθου συμβαίνειν, καὶ μὴ ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ Μηδείᾳ ἀπὸ μηχανῆς καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἰλιάδι τὰ περὶ τὸν ἀπόπλουν. Ἀλλὰ μηχανῇ χρηστέον ἐπὶ τὰ ἔξω τοῦ δράματος, ἢ ὅσα πρὸ τοῦ γέγονεν ἃ οὐχ οἷόν τε ἄνθρωπον εἰδέναι, ἢ ὅσα ὕστερον, ἃ δεῖται προαγορεύσεως καὶ ἀγγελίας· ἅπαντα γὰρ ἀποδίδομεν τοῖς θεοῖς ὁρᾶν. Ἄλογον δὲ μηδὲν εἶναι ἐν τοῖς πράγμασιν, εἰ δὲ μή, ἔξω τῆς τραγῳδίας, οἷον τὸ ἐν τῷ Οἰδίποδι τῷ Σοφοκλέους (“Clearly, therefore, the resolutions of plots should also come about from the plot itself, and not by means of a theatrical device, as in the Medea, or the events concerned with the launching of the ships in the lliad. A theatrical device may be used for things outside the play – whether prior events which are beyond human knowledge, or subsequent events which need prediction and narration – since we grant that the gods can see everything. But there should be nothing irrational in the events themselves; or, failing that, it should be outside the play, as for example in Sophocles’ Oedipus”). The deus ex machina should only be employed for things outside the drama (before or after), Aristotle says, adding that in general nothing irrational should be in the events

24

The passage also states that usually some of these antecedents are in the tragedy, but there is still a possibility even these events in the tragedy are not in the muthos if it is accepted that the tragedy is not necessarily all muthos.

1. Beginning After the Start, Finishing Before the End

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unless those events are outside the play (ἔξω τῆς τραγῳδίας), referring to Oedipus’ ignorance of how Laius has died and therefore again to Laius’ murder. This only confirms that the murder of Laius is outside the play, as was indicated by the first passage discussed above concerning the complication and resolution of muthoi, still leaving open its relationship to the muthos proper. But in a last passage about the irrational at 1460a27–32, Aristotle decisively indicates that the murder of Laius is not only outside the play but also outside the muthos: τούς τε λόγους μὴ συνίστασθαι ἐκ μερῶν ἀλόγων, ἀλλὰ μάλιστα μὲν μηδὲν ἔχειν ἄλογον, εἰ δὲ μή, ἔξω τοῦ μυθεύματος, ὥσπερ Οἰδίπους τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι πῶς ὁ Λάιος ἀπέθανεν, ἀλλὰ μὴ ἐν τῷ δράματι, ὥσπερ ἐν Ἠλέκτρᾳ οἱ τὰ Πύθια ἀπαγγέλλοντες ἢ ἐν Μυσοῖς ὁ ἄφωνος ἐκ Τεγέας εἰς τὴν Μυσίαν ἥκων (“Stories should not be constructed from irrational parts; so far as possible they should contain nothing irrational – or, failing that, it should be outside the narration (like Oedipus’ ignorance of the manner of Laius’ death) and not in the play itself (like the report of the Pythian Games in the Electra, or the man who comes from Tegea to Mysia without speaking in the Mysians)”). Here Aristotle first establishes that there should be nothing irrational in the parts of the muthoi (he uses here his term for muthos summaries, λόγους). He continues that it is even better if there is nothing irrational in the play’ s events in general. But if there must be something irrational in the play’ s events, he emphasizes that those events must be outside the muthos (ἔξω τοῦ μυθεύματος)25, and then once again refers to the murder of Laius as one of these events.26 So it seems that Aristotle never explicitly states that anything outside the narrative work is within the muthos. But he does clarify that his favorite example of something outside the drama or tragedy, the murder of Laius, is also outside the muthos. I would argue this is because Aristotle assumes that everything in the muthos must be within the narrative work, and all events that come after it or precede it are outside the muthos. Roberts has also carefully studied all the passages where anything “outside” is referred to in the Poetics and came to almost the same conclusion, with one crucial difference. Roberts believes that virtually all of 25

26

According to Lucas 1968 on 1460a29, 230, this word, which only appears once in the Poetics, is “not to be distinguished from μύθου.” Janko 1987, 144 speculates it may mean “plot-structure” but accepts it may also be “a synonym for plot (muthos).” The last clause referring to such events in the Electra and the lost Mysians raises the interesting possibility that Aristotle here is drawing a distinction between events outside the muthos that are inside the play, and events that are both outside the muthos and outside the play. I cannot explore this question in detail here, but closer examination of this and the other passages discussed above could in fact reveal that Aristotle is always differentiating between these two types of events outside the muthos by alternating his use of the terms for drama and for tragedy. His point may be that there are different rules for events in the muthos, events outside the muthos but in the play, and events outside the muthos that are outside the play.

I. Muthos: The Plot Within

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these passages describe elements outside the play as performed, arguing that “drama” for Aristotle is always equivalent to “tragedy.” This conclusion however relies on the questionable claim that ἔξω τοῦ μυθεύματος also means outside the narrative work as performed. The only exception she finds is the passage summarizing the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris, because there Aristotle “appears to include in the plot Iphigenia’ s past history.”27 Although for Roberts there are no other clear indications in the Poetics that the muthos can include events outside the play, she still concludes from this single passage that “muthos must be then distinct from (and more inclusive than) drama.” But as I pointed out above, Iphigenia’ s past history may be formulated in the genitive absolute because it is part of the premise, not the muthos. So if the Iphigenia in Tauris passage is the only indication that Aristotle believes muthos events can be outside the narrative work, it provides at best debatable evidence that this is his view. In addition, her argument would be severely weakened if, as many commentators agree it could, ἔξω τοῦ μυθεύματος means outside the muthos, because then that passage strongly suggests that the προπεπραγμένα are also not just outside the play as performed, but also outside the muthos. In conclusion, I have found no convincing evidence that Aristotle believes the muthos extends beyond the narrative work. Instead, the evidence suggests his repeated references to important antecedents are always references to events outside the muthos. I therefore believe that Aristotle views all events outside the narrative work as outside the muthos. This view is corroborated by the other references in the text to muthoi beginning after the narrative work opens, and ending before it closes. But of course these are not the only reasons I believe the muthos is always smaller than the narrative work. The primary reason is the topic of this chapter: that Aristotle’ s use of μῆκος and μέγεθος in the Poetics seems to indicate he clearly distinguishes between the size of the narrative work and the size of the muthos entirely contained within it.

2. μέγεθος as Relative Size, μῆκος as Absolute Size Despite the consensus that these two terms are used “interchangeably” in the Poetics, commentators have identified some areas where they can draw a distinction between them. For example, how episodes are described in the Poetics has led scholars to conclude that in those passages, μέγεθος refers to the size of the muthos in relation to the whole. Paraphrasing Aristotle’ s discussion of Homer’ s gift in constructing muthoi at 1459a30–37, Vahlen writes “es muss der Umfang (μέγεθος) des Sujets in dem richtigen Verhältniss zu dem zulässigen Umfang des Gedichtes stehen” (my emphasis), adding Homer dealt with the relatively low 27

Roberts 1992, 136.

2. μέγεθος as Relative Size, μῆκος as Absolute Size

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proportion of muthos to poem in an epic by “expanding” (the apparent meaning of the unusual German word “erbreitet” Vahlen uses here) the episodes.28 On Aristotle’ s statement that a tragedy cannot contain all the material from an epic at 1456a10–15, Else writes that “τὸ πρέπον μέγεθος here (a14) and τὰ ἐπεισόδια σύντομα in 1455b15 both refer to an implied proportion between central action and episodes” (my emphasis again) not the absolute length of an episode or all the episodes.29 So here is additional evidence both that the muthos can be viewed as a portion of the play, and that μέγεθος is the word Aristotle uses to refer to muthos size in these contexts. By carefully examining all of the passages where μέγεθος is used in the Poetics, I will show below that there are no instances where μέγεθος cannot refer to the size of the muthos in relation to the larger whole, and that understanding the word in this way has the advantage of resolving the supposed contradictions among Aristotle’ s statements about μέγεθος. But not all of Aristotle’ s statements about size relate to a larger whole. So Aristotle still needs an alternate term to refer to size in an absolute sense. I will argue here that Aristotle uses μῆκος exclusively for this purpose. Several commentators have also already studied this word’ s use in the Poetics and concluded it refers to the “external length of the poem,”30 what I will call “run-time.” Teichmüller was the first to make this argument, writing μῆκος should be understood as “die Masse der Verse und überhaupt das Quantitative und Körperliche an dem Gedicht.”31 While it seems that Teichmüller was correct in concluding that μῆκος always indicates absolute quantity, the external length definition fails to explain some passages where μῆκος probably must refer to the quantity of fictional time such as the celebrated “one revolution of the sun” passage at 1449b12–14. In addition, there are two key passages discussed below where the term is applied explicitly to the muthos and it does not make good sense to argue μῆκος refers to either run-time or fictional time.32

28 29 30

31 32

Vahlen 1865, 277–8. Else 1957, 543 note 84. Butcher 1902, 289 note 2. See also Überweg 1869, 57: “Anderseits ist … anzunehmen, dass die Länge (das μῆκος) der Umfang der Stücke selbst ist; denn Aristoteles redet von derselben stets nur in diesem Sinne.” Teichmüller 1867, 175. The following is a complete list of all the passages where μῆκος and its cognates occur in the Poetics: 1449b12, 1451a5–6, 1455b16, 1456a14, 1456b32, 1459b17–18, 1462a18, 1462b7. In most passages, there is no difficulty in translating it as run-time or alternatively as absolute length of fictional time. But at 1451a5 (but not a6) and at 1459b17–18 neither definition of μῆκος seems to apply. 1456b32 refers to the length of vocal sounds. Interestingly, even in the context of vocal sound length, the use of μῆκος is not obvious: an alternate reading found in the Riccardianus manuscript at 1456b32 is “μεγέθει μήκει.”

26

I. Muthos: The Plot Within

If μῆκος refers to absolute size there is no reason it cannot also describe quantity of fictional time in the “one revolution of the sun” passage. But for the two passages where neither run-time nor fictional time make sense, it must have another reference. Aristotle frequently discusses the τοῦ μύθου μέρη (for example at 1452b9), the parts of the muthos.33 Muthos parts in Aristotle’ s view seem to be entire sections of the muthos – such as the reversal and recognition or the complication and resolution – or even entire “actions,” rather than specific incidents.34 I will try below to roughly count how many muthos parts Aristotle seems to assume a typical tragedy contains, but regardless of the size of the muthos parts, a muthos viewed as a number of discrete parts has an absolute quantitative size in parts. So besides referring to absolute length in terms of run-time, fictional time or verses, I will argue μῆκος when applied to the muthos can also refer to the absolute quantity of muthos parts. Understood in this way, μῆκος in these two passages points to an entire theory in the Poetics of how many muthos parts a narrative work should have, and why more or less muthos parts are appropriate for different works. These passages also suggest that the concept of muthos parts plays a much more important role in Aristotle’ s guidelines for muthos construction than it may appear at first glance. In addition, the pair μέγεθος/μῆκος occurs in the Rhetoric in passages that closely parallel those found in the Poetics. But in the Rhetoric, there is no question that μέγεθος refers to the size of a portion of the speech (that also obviously cannot extend outside of the speech), and μῆκος to the size of the entire speech. In defining a period, Aristotle writes at Rhetoric III 9.1409a35–37 λέγω δὲ περίοδον λέξιν ἔχουσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ τελευτὴν αὐτὴν καθ᾽ αὑτὴν καὶ μέγεθος εὐσύνοπτον (“By a period I mean a portion of speech that has in itself a beginning and an end, being at the same time not too big to be taken in at a glance”).35 This shows that in a similar context of a performative work, μέγεθος is the term Aristotle uses to refer to the size of a portion of that performance, in this case a period in a speech. The use of ἀρχὴν, τελευτὴν and εὐσύνοπτον are also telling parallels with Aristotle’ s statements in the Poetics about the muthos. But μέγεθος is never used in the Rhetoric to describe the size of the entire speech (ὁ λόγος), while μῆκος is, for example at III 13.1414b4–7: ἀλλ᾽ὁ ἐπίλογος ἔτι οὐδὲ δικανικοῦ παντός, οἷον ἐὰν μικρὸς ὁ λόγος ἢ τὸ πρᾶγμα εὐμνημόνευτον: συμβαίνει γὰρ τοῦ μήκους ἀφαιρεῖσθαι (“Even forensic speeches do not always need epilogues; not, for instance, a short speech, nor one in which the facts are easy to remember, the effect of an epilogue being always a reduction in the apparent length”). If the pair μῆκος/μέγεθος is used to differentiate between absolute size and size in relation to a larger whole, what else does that mean for Aristotle’ s aesthetic 33 34 35

Section 5 below is devoted to investigating what Aristotle means by a muthos part. For reversal and recognition, see 1450a34–5 and 1452b9–10. For complication and resolution, see 1455b26–9. For entire actions, see 1462b8–10. All English translations of the Rhetoric are from Roberts 1954.

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theory in the Poetics? Ricoeur wrote that in the Poetics “la notion d’ amplitude (μέγεθος) suscite le problème de clôture”36 and that Aristotle’ s requirement that an action or the muthos be “whole and complete” (for example, 1450b24) evokes the “aporie de la clôture.”37 He goes on to observe that the problem was concealed in the nineteenth century novel by ending the plot at the same point as the novel itself. The problem Ricoeur refers to, then, is the possibility that the story could go on after the end of the work itself: we can always ask, “and then?” But the understanding of μέγεθος proposed here suggests that Aristotle went one step farther. For him the muthos often ends before the end of the work, effectively figuring closure in the narrative work itself. And it is precisely this doubling of the gesture of ending – once at the end of the muthos, a second time at the end of the work – that is reflected in the doubling of Aristotle’ s terms for size in the Poetics. But on a more concrete level of craft, understanding μῆκος and μέγεθος in this way also reveals an implicit set of guidelines for makers of muthoi, guidelines which until now have gone almost completely unnoticed. These detail how much of the total play should contain muthos parts and the correct composition of the muthos. To illustrate these guidelines, I will go through and comment on all the relevant passages where the two words are used.

3. Muthos Size I will now discuss the specific passages where μέγεθος and μῆκος appear in the Poetics, applying the understanding of the terms I propose. I will first analyze the passages that I argue demonstrate Aristotle’ s requirement that the size of the muthos have a certain relation to the size of the whole, and the rules for muthos size in relation to the whole. I will then show how the remaining passages reveal precise instructions for muthos construction within the narrative work. Aristotle first establishes that the tragic action or muthos must be complete, serious and have a certain size in relation to the larger whole of the poem: ἔστιν οὖν τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ τελείας μέγεθος ἐχούσης (“Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete and possesses magnitude,” 1449b24–25). He makes the same point again in almost exactly the same words a bit farther on, adding the action should also be whole: κεῖται δὴ ἡμῖν τὴν τραγῳδίαν τελείας καὶ ὅλης πράξεως εἶναι μίμησιν ἐχούσης τι μέγεθος (“We have laid down that tragedy is an imitation of a complete, i. e. whole, action, possessing a certain magnitude,” 1450b23–25). But the second passage is followed by a comment on what he means by a μέγεθος that is whole: ἔστιν γὰρ ὅλον καὶ μηδὲν ἔχον μέγεθος. ὅλον δέ ἐστιν τὸ ἔχον ἀρχὴν καὶ μέσον καὶ τελευτήν (“(There is such 36 37

Ricoeur 1992, 314. Ricoeur 1992, 318.

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a thing as a whole which possesses no magnitude.) A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle and an end,” 1450b25–27). In the first sentence here, Aristotle established that in principle something (though not necessarily the muthos) could be whole but still have no μέγεθος. But in the second sentence, he comments a muthos is only whole if it has a beginning, middle and an end. Arbogast Schmitt, who has a particularly good grasp of the importance of muthos parts in the Poetics, comments that this means that “diese Handlung … in ihren Teilen entfaltet ist, d. h. eine angemessene Grösse hat.”38 He continues that the muthos is “immer eine zeitliche Folge von einzelnen (Teil-)Handlungen.” So a muthos with μέγεθος is a muthos with parts, and these parts are at least three: a beginning, middle, and an end. If there could be a muthos with a single, indivisible part, it would still be whole and complete. But wholeness of the muthos is not enough. It must have a certain magnitude in relation to the whole, and that for Aristotle means having at least three muthos parts. Aristotle also establishes what size of the muthos in relation to the larger whole is desirable. In discussing the limit (ὅρος) of the muthos, Aristotle establishes the maximum limit for the size of the muthos: ἀεὶ μὲν ὁ μείζων μέχρι τοῦ σύνδηλος εἶναι καλλίων ἐστὶ κατὰ τὸ μέγεθος (“Invariably the greater the plot is (up to the limit of simultaneous perspicuity) the more beautiful it is with respect to magnitude,” 1451a10–11). To Aristotle it is best that the muthos be as large as possible in terms of its size within the play (κατὰ τὸ μέγεθος), so long as the whole does not escape perception (μέχρι τοῦ σύνδηλος εἶναι). Since σύνδηλος describes what does not overwhelm the mind’ s capacities for memory or perception, it therefore relates to absolute size, not size relative to the whole. But below in the next section on muthos construction I will show that, if μῆκος refers to absolute size, then Aristotle also defines σύνδηλος in terms of a rough number of muthos parts, and that this number of muthos parts is quite low in relation to the whole. Therefore, Aristotle does not even consider the possibility that a muthos that is σύνδηλος could constitute the entire play. For Aristotle, σύνδηλος is an upper absolute limit for muthos size that, even if significantly exceeded, will still result in a muthos size well within the boundaries of the narrative work itself. Aristotle’ s view then is that the relative size of the muthos within the play should only be limited by the requirement that its absolute size not escape perception, and that this relative muthos size within the play should be pushed as close to that absolute upper limit as possible. Besides the requirement that the muthos remain σύνδηλος, there are other maximum limits to how much muthos a work can accommodate: χρὴ δὲ ὅπερ εἴρηται πολλάκις μεμνῆσθαι καὶ μὴ ποιεῖν ἐποποιικὸν σύστημα τραγῳδίαν (ἐποποιικὸν δὲ λέγω τὸ πολύμυθον) οἷον εἴ τις τὸν τῆς Ἰλιάδος ὅλον ποιοῖ μῦθον. ἐκεῖ μὲν γὰρ διὰ τὸ μῆκος λαμβάνει τὰ μέρη τὸ πρέπον μέγεθος, ἐν δὲ τοῖς δράμασι 38

Schmitt 2008, 325.

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πολὺ παρὰ τὴν ὑπόληψιν ἀποβαίνει (“Bearing in mind what I have already said several times, one should not compose a tragedy out of a body of material which would serve for an epic – by which I mean one that contains a multiplicity of stories (for example, if one were to use the whole plot of the Iliad). In epic, because of its length, every part is given the appropriate magnitude; but in plays the result is quite contrary to one’ s expectation,” 1456a10–15). The question here is why the entire muthos of an epic cannot be handled by a single tragedy. If the two terms μῆκος and μέγεθος are equivalent, the meaning of this passage is: “because of the length of epic, the parts of the muthos can have the appropriate length,” which verges on a tautology. But if we translate “because of the length of epic, the parts of the muthos can take up the appropriate size within the poem, but in drama the result is far from what was intended,” the point is altogether different. This means that, by constructing a tragedy from the muthos of the Iliad, the problem is not necessarily that the muthos parts are too short. The problem is that there would be almost nothing but muthos, and so the size of the muthos in relation to the whole would be too high. The epic on the other hand has enough room for a larger muthos and the other elements appropriate to the genre. Aristotle makes the same point again in his guidelines for muthos size in epic: διὸ ὥσπερ εἴπομεν ἤδη καὶ ταύτῃ θεσπέσιος ἂν φανείη Ὅμηρος παρὰ τοὺς ἄλλους, τῷ μηδὲ τὸν πόλεμον καίπερ ἔχοντα ἀρχὴν καὶ τέλος ἐπιχειρῆσαι ποιεῖν ὅλον: λίαν γὰρ ἂν μέγας καὶ οὐκ εὐσύνοπτος ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι ὁ μῦθος, ἢ τῷ μεγέθει μετριάζοντα καταπεπλεγμένον τῇ ποικιλίᾳ (“So (as we have already said) Homer’ s brilliance is evident in this respect as well, in comparison with other poets. He did not even try to treat the war as a whole, although it does have a beginning and an end. Had he done so, the plot would have been excessively large and difficult to take in at one view – or, if it had been moderate in magnitude, it would have been over-complicated in its variety,” 1459a30–34). The words τῷ μεγέθει μετριάζοντα in the concluding phrase of the passage are commonly understood to refer to the length of the epic. For example, Lucas comments “the whole story of the Trojan War told in the compass of the Iliad would have been as excessively compressed as the whole story of the Iliad put into the length of a play (56a13)”39 referring back to the previous passage I just discussed. But a closer look at the passage shows it is not possible that the length of the poem is the subject of the last phrase. Aristotle writes that either the muthos would be too big or it would be too compressed. Lucas interprets the passage as if Aristotle wrote either the poem would be too big or, if the poem was of a moderate length, the muthos too compressed. Yet in the first phrase of the either/or proposition, the muthos is explicitly the subject, not the poem. If the subject of the second phrase were the poem itself, then the either/ or proposition makes no sense: either the muthos is too big (but the poem is the normal length), or the poem is the normal length and the muthos too compressed. 39

Lucas 1968 on 1459a34, 216.

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I. Muthos: The Plot Within

If however we understand the passage to be about the size of the muthos in relation to the size of the entire poem, as we would expect since Aristotle writes μεγέθει, these difficulties disappear. The passage then states that either the muthos is too big, that is that it takes up far too great a portion of the poem, or, if it takes up only a moderate portion of the poem, then it is too compressed. This was the same problem Aristotle found above at 1456a13 with using an entire epic muthos for a tragedy, that its portion of the play would be too high. So Aristotle assumes it is possible to tell the entire story of the Trojan War over the standard length of an epic, but then there would be no room for the other required elements of an epic. Yet epic has an advantage over drama when it comes to packing in as much muthos as possible without squeezing out other elements: ἔχει δὲ πρὸς τὸ ἐπεκτείνεσθαι τὸ μέγεθος πολύ τι ἡ ἐποποιία ἴδιον διὰ τὸ ἐν μὲν τῇ τραγῳδίᾳ μὴ ἐνδέχεσθαι ἅμα πραττόμενα πολλὰ μέρη μιμεῖσθαι ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐπὶ τῆς σκηνῆς καὶ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν μέρος μόνον: ἐν δὲ τῇ ἐποποιίᾳ διὰ τὸ διήγησιν εἶναι ἔστι πολλὰ μέρη ἅμα ποιεῖν περαινόμενα, ὑφ᾽ ὧν οἰκείων ὄντων αὔξεται ὁ τοῦ ποιήματος ὄγκος (“Epic has an important distinctive resource for extending its length. In tragedy it is not possible to imitate many parts of the action being carried on simultaneously, but only the one on stage involving the actors. But in epic, because it is narrative, it is possible to treat many parts being carried on simultaneously; and these (provided that they are germane) make the poem more impressive,” 1459b22–28). This passage has been typically understood to mean epic can “include incidents occurring at one and the same time in other places and in connexion with other personages,” as for example Bywater comments.40 But Bywater’ s reading would mean Aristotle is saying only that epic can narrate different parts, not necessarily more parts. The assumption is apparently that since a greater variety of parts can be narrated, more are narrated. But the other parts of the passage suggest Aristotle is directly emphasizing that epic is capable of narrating not just different parts, but more parts, such as the words ἐπεκτείνεσθαι, πολλὰ μέρη and αὔξεται ὁ τοῦ ποιήματος ὄγκος. Even if μέγεθος does not refer to the size of the muthos within the poem, the connection between size and how the muthos parts are narrated is by this analysis at best indirect. There is another interpretation that, as far as I can see, has never been suggested. Aristotle may mean that διήγησις can use language to refer to aggregate actions in a way that is impossible on stage where every action must be physically played out. To take an example at random from the Iliad, here are the first two lines of Book 3:

40

Bywater 1909, 314. Else 1957 is the exception, making the novel proposal that Aristotle means epic has the advantage of allowing the author to directly narrate “the central action and the ‘episodes’” (Else 1957, 608) as the main action, not different incidents at the same time.

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Now when the men of both sides were set in order by their leaders, the Trojans came on with clamor and shouting, like wildfowl…41 The action of the entire Trojan and Greek armies assembling and the Trojans charging would take many minutes at a minimum on stage (if that were possible) or for example in a film. These actions must actually be shown, there is no way to gloss them over when the actors are physically in front of you. But in an epic that can be passed over in two lines, and the rest is left to the imagination. To the objection that the muthos of a tragedy can contain aggregate actions not performed on stage by having them reported in a messenger speech, for example, I would answer that it is possible Aristotle never views these actions as part of the muthos proper. If the muthos has a more limited scope as I have argued here, then the muthos may also exclude from the muthos anything reported. For example, in the Iphigenia in Tauris muthos summary discussed above, the episodes outside the muthos specifically cited by Aristotle are, as Else has also noted, “both reported by messengers, not represented on stage.”42 Else comes to a similar conclusion about many of the episodes Aristotle mentions in the Odyssey, observing that they are “reported by a character in the poem, not by the poet.”43 It is not possible from the evidence to definitively determine if Aristotle would believe that any part that is indirectly narrated is excluded from the muthos proper. But my interpretation of the passage in question certainly does have the advantage of directly linking size, in this case number of parts, to what Aristotle means by simultaneous action. If simultaneous action is understood in this way, then taking μέγεθος as referring to muthos size within the narrative work results in a different interpretation of the entire passage. Aristotle’ s point here is that epic has a special tool for including more parts in the muthos even while still leaving so much room for the other elements of the poem. The size of the muthos in relation to the whole can sometimes be increased in epic because it can narrate more parts at once, that is more efficiently in terms of parts per line or minute. This therefore allows the epic to partially compensate for its tendency to devote fewer lines to the muthos by narrating more muthos parts in some of those lines. Aristotle’ s use of ὄγκος in this passage then is revealing. Although one meaning of the word is “impressive” and is certainly a correct translation, another more literal meaning is “volume” in the sense of heaviness or concentration.44 This word is then particularly appropriate if Aristotle is talking about how much muthos is filling the vessel of the play or epic.

41 42 43 44

Translation from Lattimore 1951. Else 1957, 511. Else 1957, 513. Else 1957, 612 note 56, even goes so far as to say regarding ὄγκος “it is clear here at least it means only ‘weight, massiveness,’ and not necessarily ‘grandeur.’” See also Gudeman 1934, 404 for the meaning of the word in other contexts.

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This passage also shows that Aristotle calculates relative size by counting parts. If the relative size of the muthos to the whole can be increased in epic by narrating more parts in less lines or minutes, then muthos size is not necessarily measured in time or lines. Golden and Hardison comment the magnitude of the muthos is “determined by the number of incidents, not the number of words in the text. Aristotle’ s idea of size cannot, therefore, be separated from the idea of complexity.”45 This does not mean that any amount of parts can be crammed into an epic of normal length, or that there is no correlation between parts and run-time. It only means that relative size is defined by counting the numbers of parts for the muthos and for the rest of the poem, which in turn indirectly also effects the amount of time or number of lines required for the muthos and the rest as well. As with tragedy, Aristotle also offers some pointers for the minimum size of the muthos within the epic. He begins by criticizing epic for achieving its effect over a longer run-time or larger number of lines: ἔτι τῷ ἐν ἐλάττονι μήκει τὸ τέλος τῆς μιμήσεως εἶναι (τὸ γὰρ ἀθροώτερον ἥδιον ἢ πολλῷ κεκραμένον τῷ χρόνῳ, λέγω δ᾽ οἷον εἴ τις τὸν Οἰδίπουν θείη τὸν Σοφοκλέους ἐν ἔπεσιν ὅσοις ἡ Ἰλιάς) (“Also, the end of imitation is attained in shorter length; what is more concentrated is more pleasant than what is watered down by being extended in time (I mean, for example, if one were to turn Sophocles’ Oedipus into as many lines as the Iliad has),” 1462a18–62b3). In the beginning of the passage, μῆκος clearly means runtime. Aristotle explicitly tells us that by referring to the number of lines (ἐν ἔπεσιν ὅσοις) and directly to time (χρόνῳ). He then describes the problem for those poets who try to achieve more unity in an epic: ἐὰν μὲν ἕνα μῦθον ποιῶσιν, ἢ βραχέως δεικνύμενον μύουρον φαίνεσθαι, ἢ ἀκολουθοῦντα τῷ τοῦ μέτρου μήκει ὑδαρῆ: λέγω δὲ οἷον ἐὰν ἐκ πλειόνων πράξεων ᾖ συγκειμένη, ὥσπερ ἡ Ἰλιὰς ἔχει πολλὰ τοιαῦτα μέρη καὶ ἡ Ὀδύσσεια 〈ἃ〉 καὶ καθ᾽ ἑαυτὰ ἔχει μέγεθος (“So if they treat a unified plot, either the exposition is brief and appears curtailed, or else it adheres to the length of that verse-form and is diluted. (I mean, for example, if it comprises a number of actions. The Iliad and Odyssey have many parts of this kind, which possess magnitude in their own right)),” 1462b5–62b10). The reason an epic with a unified muthos would be diluted or too short is a question of relative size: apparently a unified muthos has too few muthos parts in relation to the whole. In an epic the result is that either the relative size of the muthos is correct and the epic too short (μύουρον φαίνεσθαι), or the epic is the correct length (ἀκολουθοῦντα τῷ τοῦ μέτρου μήκει) and the relative size of the muthos too small, meaning it is too diluted (ὑδαρῆ). Again μῆκος is used to show that Aristotle is discussing how long the entire poem is, and how that relates to a smaller muthos within it. The use of the word ὑδαρῆ (literally “watery,” a metaphor derived from the Greek custom of mixing wine with water in certain proportions) is strikingly similar to the use of the word for volume (ὄγκος) above, in that it clearly shows proportion in the most 45

Golden and Hardison 1981, 143.

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literal sense is Aristotle’ s concern. The conclusion of the passage simply establishes that an epic can achieve the correct relative muthos size by adding muthos sections, each of some smaller size still constituting a meaningful portion of the whole (καθ᾽ ἑαυτὰ ἔχει μέγεθος). These correspond to the “(Teil-)Handlungen” described by Schmitt. Finally, understanding μέγεθος as referring to relative muthos size offers a new perspective on a controversial passage about the origins of tragedy: ἔτι δὲ τὸ μέγεθος: ἐκ μικρῶν μύθων καὶ λέξεως γελοίας διὰ τὸ ἐκ σατυρικοῦ μεταβαλεῖν ὀψὲ ἀπεσεμνύνθη, τό τε μέτρον ἐκ τετραμέτρου ἰαμβεῖον ἐγένετο (“In addition, the magnitude increased from short plots; and in place of comic diction, as a consequence of a change from the satyric style, tragedy acquired dignity at a late stage, and the iambic verse-form was adopted instead of the trochaic tetrameter,” 1449a19–21). Some have translated μέγεθος as “grandeur” here, because the sentence continues to compare tragedy with the “comic” early “satyric” play, which could also be early satyr plays. Other commentators such as Schmitt conclude that, since we know the satyr play had a “durchgeführte Handlungskomposition,” Aristotle must mean “die Vorformen des Dramas,”46 and interpret μικρῶν μύθων to mean muthoi that are so small that they are not fully developed. Schmitt also speculates Aristotle must then be referring to dithyramb or phallic songs. But since Aristotle introduces his thought on this subject with a reference to τὸ μέγεθος, it could also mean that these early satyric plays had muthoi that were smaller in size relative to the whole regardless of their seriousness or absolute size.47 This also means he could still be referring to early satyr plays, since there is no reason to assume he means that these early plays did not have developed muthoi. Part of the reason this passage can be interpreted in various ways is because μικρῶν μύθων and λέξεως γελοίας both depend on a single ἐκ, even though as Tarán observes “one would have expected at the very least that the preposition ἐκ be repeated before λέξεως γελοίας.”48 This means that the sentence as it stands seems to suggest some kind of connection between the term μέγεθος and the idea of “comic diction.” So the argument that μέγεθος could mean “grandeur” is at least plausible with this reading. But the Syro-Arabic translation of this same passage indicates that after “μύθων καὶ” there was a word like ἡ followed by another word that cannot be positively determined, and then a second ἐκ before λέξεως γελοίας. In fact, Gutas argues that based on the evidence of the Arabic translation “the 46 47

48

Schmitt 2008, 299. I do not want to suggest, however, that the interpretation of μέγεθος here as having a connotation of “grandeur” or importance is without merit. The parallel contrast of μέγεθος καὶ μικρότητας at 1456b1–2 is almost certainly a reference to the degree of importance. I would only point out that at 1456b1–2 the topic is not the muthos but “thought,” something that cannot really have a magnitude, and for that reason the reference in the passage under discussion may differ. Tarán and Gutas 2012, 243.

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article and the preposition (ἡ … ἐκ) are assured … together with an intervening word.”49 As a result, in his edition of the Greek text integrating the Syro-Arabic tradition Tarán prints the following conjecture and punctuation: ἔτι δὲ τὸ μέγεθος ἐκ μικρῶν μύθων, καὶ 〈ἡ λέξις ἐκ〉 λέξεως γελοίας διὰ τὸ ἐκ σατυρικοῦ… This new reading explicitly separates off μέγεθος from the second part of the sentence so that it now refers exclusively to the muthoi, and not to λέξις. Furthermore, the addition of 〈ἡ λέξις ἐκ〉 to the text shows that the sentence separately lists two different characteristics of early tragedy, first the μέγεθος, then the λέξις. So based on this new text, the idea that μέγεθος can have a connotation of “grandeur” seems far less plausible. Now it seems much more likely that μέγεθος describes only the size of the muthoi, lending additional support to my interpretation of the passage above.

4. Muthos Composition I argued above (on 1450b26–7) that Aristotle’ s minimum requirement for the size of the muthos is that it have at least three parts: a beginning, middle and an end. This is then also one of his initial guidelines for muthos composition. After his comment about the recommended maximum size of the muthos in relation to the whole (1451a10–1), he establishes another rule for muthos composition: ἐν ὅσῳ μεγέθει κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἢ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον ἐφεξῆς γιγνομένων συμβαίνει εἰς εὐτυχίαν ἐκ δυστυχίας ἢ ἐξ εὐτυχίας εἰς δυστυχίαν μεταβάλλειν, ἱκανὸς ὅρος ἐστὶν τοῦ μεγέθους (“The magnitude in which a series of events occurring sequentially in accordance with probability or necessity gives rise to a change from good to bad fortune, or from bad fortune to good fortune, is an adequate definition of magnitude,” 1451a12–15). If μέγεθος refers to the size of the muthos in relation to the whole, the passage means the minimum muthos size (ὅρος … τοῦ μεγέθους) must also narrate a change in fortune in accordance with probability or necessity. If there is not a change in fortune, the size of the muthos in relation to the whole is not large enough. Aristotle mentions only a change of fortune here, but this must add to the minimum of beginning, middle and end described above: the beginning and the end must also provide a contrast in fortunes. Aristotle also provides guidelines for the composition of muthoi at the maximum limit of size. I argued that at 1451a10–11 Aristotle stated the bigger the size of the muthos in relation to the whole the better, provided the entire muthoi can be kept in mind at once. If μῆκος is defined as number of muthos parts in the passage that precedes this one (1450b34–51a6), then it can be shown that Aristotle also believes the entire muthos can be kept in mind at once only if it does not have too many parts. This is then the main rule of composition for muthoi at the upper end of the scale. Aristotle begins the earlier passage with a comparison of 49

Tarán and Gutas 2012, 333.

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the parts (τινῶν) of muthoi to the parts of animals: ἔτι δ᾽ ἐπεὶ τὸ καλὸν καὶ ζῷον καὶ ἅπαν πρᾶγμα ὃ συνέστηκεν ἐκ τινῶν οὐ μόνον ταῦτα τεταγμένα δεῖ ἔχειν ἀλλὰ καὶ μέγεθος ὑπάρχειν μὴ τὸ τυχόν: τὸ γὰρ καλὸν ἐν μεγέθει καὶ τάξει ἐστίν, διὸ οὔτε πάμμικρον ἄν τι γένοιτο καλὸν ζῷον (συγχεῖται γὰρ ἡ θεωρία ἐγγὺς τοῦ ἀναισθήτου χρόνου γινομένη) οὔτε παμμέγεθες (οὐ γὰρ ἅμα ἡ θεωρία γίνεται ἀλλ᾽ οἴχεται τοῖς θεωροῦσι τὸ ἓν καὶ τὸ ὅλον ἐκ τῆς θεωρίας) οἷον εἰ μυρίων σταδίων εἴη ζῷον (Any beautiful object, whether a living organism or any other entity composed of parts, must not only possess those parts in proper order, but its magnitude also should not be arbitrary; beauty consists in magnitude as well as order. For this reason no organism could be beautiful if it is excessively small (since observation becomes confused as it comes close to having no perceptible duration in time) or excessively large (since the observation is then not simultaneous, and the observers find that the sense of unity and wholeness is lost from their observation, e. g. if there were an animal a thousand miles long),” 1450b34–51a3). In these instances, μέγεθος is referring to the size of anything made of parts, and then specifically to animals. Here the word cannot refer to a size in relation to a whole, it must mean magnitude in the colloquial sense familiar from everyday speech. Then Aristotle turns to the size of muthoi: ὥστε δεῖ καθάπερ ἐπὶ τῶν σωμάτων καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ζῴων ἔχειν μὲν μέγεθος, τοῦτο δὲ εὐσύνοπτον εἶναι, οὕτω καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν μύθων ἔχειν μὲν μῆκος, τοῦτο δὲ εὐμνημόνευτον εἶναι (“So just as in the case of physical objects and living organisms, they should possess a certain magnitude, and this should be such as can readily be taken in at one view, so in the case of plots: they should have a certain length, and this should be such as can readily held in memory,” 1451a3–6). Aristotle here makes a direct comparison between the μέγεθος of animals and the μῆκος of muthoi, suggesting that each is the key factor in determining whether these objects can be perceived all at once by the mind. This is one of the instances in the text where Aristotle applies the word μῆκος to muthoi (ἐπὶ τῶν μύθων), so it cannot possibly refer to the narrative work as a whole. But as I suggested above, μῆκος here could refer to the total number of parts in the muthos. The number of parts in the muthos is an absolute quantity, and therefore Aristotle would use μῆκος to refer to its size in this context. If we understand μῆκος here to refer to the absolute number of muthos parts, then the passage states that for animals overall size is the issue, and for muthoi the number of muthos parts is the issue. This would mean that determining whether a muthos is εὐμνημόνευτον or σύνδηλος has little relation to its size in relation to the whole (though I will show below that Aristotle assumes such a muthos would in any case be much smaller than the whole), to the run-time of the play, or to the fictional time the muthos covers. It is determined by how many parts it has. If it has too many parts, it becomes impossible to keep them all in mind at once. If this reading is correct, then a later passage can also be interpreted to show exactly how many muthos parts Aristotle believes can be kept in mind at once. Aristotle begins this passage by drawing a distinction of size between epic and tragedy: διαφέρει δὲ κατά τε τῆς συστάσεως τὸ μῆκος ἡ ἐποποιία καὶ τὸ μέτρον.

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I. Muthos: The Plot Within

τοῦ μὲν οὖν μήκους ὅρος ἱκανὸς ὁ εἰρημένος: δύνασθαι γὰρ δεῖ συνορᾶσθαι τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ τὸ τέλος (“Epic is differentiated in the length of its plot-structure and in its verse-form. The stated definition of length is adequate; one must be able to take in the beginning and the end in one view,” 1459b17–20). The word σύστασις is frequently modified by τῶν πραγμάτων in the Poetics, meaning the construction of the actions, i. e. the muthos. So in the first sentence we can conclude the topic is the muthos, not the length of the poem, as has often been assumed by commentators. In addition, Aristotle refers back to the μήκους ὅρος defined above in 1451a6 (not to be confused with the ὅρος of the μέγεθος mentioned shortly after at 1451a15), where I argued μῆκος refers to the total number of muthos parts. Therefore, this is the second instance where μῆκος would be referring to the total number of muthos parts, and Aristotle is simply establishing that epic has more muthos parts than tragedy, but that as with tragedy the maximum acceptable number of muthos parts from beginning to end is determined by how many can be kept in mind at once. Aristotle goes on to define a rough general maximum for muthos parts: εἴη δ᾽ ἂν τοῦτο, εἰ τῶν μὲν ἀρχαίων ἐλάττους αἱ συστάσεις εἶεν, πρὸς δὲ τὸ πλῆθος τραγῳδιῶν τῶν εἰς μίαν ἀκρόασιν τιθεμένων παρήκοιεν (“This would be the case if the structures were shorter than those of the ancient epics, and matched the number of tragedies presented at one sitting,” 1459b20–22). Here again Aristotle writes συστάσεις, so it is clear he is referring to muthoi, not entire poems. He states that the maximum amount of muthos parts would be less than those in the old epics (apparently referring to Homer), and approximately the quantity (τὸ πλῆθος) of parts that are contained in the number of tragedies viewed in one sitting (εἰς μίαν ἀκρόασιν), presumably meaning the three tragedies usually performed in one day. So if it were possible to take an average of the number of muthos parts in a typical tragedy and multiply that number by three, then that would very closely approximate the number of muthos parts Aristotle believes can be kept in mind at once. Instead, τὸ πλῆθος is commonly interpreted to refer to the actual run-time or number of lines of three tragedies, as we saw Gudeman did in his comparison of the λόγος of the Odyssey with the length of three tragedies. But in fact the passage would make less sense if it referred to either of these. That would mean Aristotle is directly measuring muthos size by number of lines or run-time, something he never does elsewhere. It would also mean that any epic muthos that had a run-time or number of lines about equal to the length of three tragedies would be within the limit for the muthos. But just after this at 1459b22–28 I have shown that Aristotle measures muthos length by muthos parts, not number of lines. In addition, Aristotle has already clearly stated at 1451a6–8 that run-time is not a decisive factor in correct muthos length: τοῦ δὲ μήκους ὅρος 〈ὁ〉 μὲν πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας καὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν οὐ τῆς τέχνης ἐστίν: εἰ γὰρ ἔδει ἑκατὸν τραγῳδίας ἀγωνίζεσθαι, πρὸς κλεψύδρας ἂν ἠγωνίζοντο (“The definition of length which is determined by theatrical performances and perception is not relevant to the art

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of poetry; if it were necessary to perform a hundred tragedies they would time the performances by the clock, as they say used to be done on other occasions”). Aristotle is reminding the reader here that run-time limits (μήκους ὅρος)50 dictated by contests (πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας) or the audience’ s patience do not change the demands on the writer’ s craft (τῆς τέχνης), which is first and foremost concerned with muthos construction. His comment that plays could even be timed by a water clock (πρὸς κλεψύδρας) emphasizes he is contrasting his previous statements about the muthos parts with a reminder about the limited relevance of run-time specifically. His point is then that run-times can vary widely, but the limits for the number of muthos parts and the size of the muthos in relation to the whole remain the same. They are determined by the craft of storytelling, not external conditions.

5. What is a Muthos Part? If the concept of the muthos part is so central in Aristotle’ s narrative theory, what exactly is one? As I have shown, it makes little sense to define a muthos part in terms of lines, words or sections in the text. Any part of the text that includes muthos, no matter how small, would also necessarily include other dramatic elements such as character, diction, thought, etc. As Vahlen remarks, “die μέρη der Tragödie liegen nicht aus- und nebeneinander, sondern in einander.”51 In addition, I have argued above that the number of muthos parts is necessarily governed by the idea of complexity, that is by how much is narrated per line or even per word. So isolating a muthos part may very well be impossible. Yet it would still be useful to try to identify in a general way what a muthos part looks like and the approximate number of muthos parts Aristotle believes a tragedy or epic contains. As Gudeman has shown, Aristotle’s comparison between epic muthoi and the length of three tragedies provides a starting point. Gudeman’ s observation that the number of lines of three tragedies is approximately equal to the number of lines covered by the λόγος of the Odyssey was an attempt to determine the actual length of a muthos that does not escape perception. But Gudeman compared an epic muthos length in lines with the total length in lines of three tragedies, which I have argued is inconsistent. Would it be possible to compare the muthos length of an epic with the muthos length of three tragedies? Clearly we would have to approximate the number of muthos parts in either a tragedy or an 50

51

If it seems confusing Aristotle mentions a “μήκους ὅρος” here that refers to run-time and not absolute number of plot parts as I have argued virtually the same phrase does at 1459b18, that is because his purpose now seems to be to distinguish between the two. He has just described the limit of the number of plot parts in the directly preceding passage concerning the size of animals. Now he explicitly reminds the reader that limits of run-time defined by the external conditions of the contest are not a factor there. Vahlen 1865, 215.

38

I. Muthos: The Plot Within

epic to have a quantitative basis to work with, since line numbers alone are not a guide to muthos parts. And we would need a line count for the λόγος of a tragedy for the purposes of comparison. Aristotle often refers to Iphigenia in Tauris, so I will take that play as an example. If it is accepted that the muthos starts when Iphigenia meets Orestes, then the muthos parts begin on line 467. From line 467 to 642 and then from 725 to 826, Orestes and Iphigenia discuss their pasts and the letter Iphigenia wants brought back to Argos, leading to the recognition. This means that the total number of lines where muthos parts may be contained is 361 out of a total of 1489 lines, almost exactly a quarter. The total number of lines containing muthos parts in a typical trilogy then would be about 1100 lines. These 1100 lines are not equivalent to muthos parts, since some or even most of these lines may contain no muthos parts. Yet we might argue there is a certain average number of muthos parts per line, and that this average is higher for tragedy than for epic, as Aristotle tells us at 1462b1 and following. So if we assume that the epic narrates, for example, half as many muthos parts per line on average, the number of lines in an epic that should contain muthos parts according to Aristotle’ s limit would be roughly 2,200. Gudeman estimated that the number of lines covered by Aristotle’ s λόγος of the Odyssey at 4,000, but he neglected to take into account that Aristotle also states that the older poets such as Homer made muthoi that were too large. So we should expect the muthos of the Odyssey to exceed this limit by a certain amount, and that is exactly what these rough calculations indicate: the number of lines of the Homeric muthos exceeds the limit by about 1,800 lines. This estimate is based however on an assumption about the average number of muthos parts per line in tragedy versus epic. To test this assumption, I would like to take two 100-line sections of Iphigenia in Tauris and of the Odyssey and show in which lines I believe muthos parts are to be found, and then count those lines. The section from Iphigenia in Tauris I have selected is from 467 to 567, Orestes and Iphigenia’ s first meeting. The section from the Odyssey I have selected are the first hundred lines of Book 14, Odysseus’ meeting with the swineherd Eumaeus. I have chosen these particular sections because they have certain things in common: both are at the beginning of the muthos as Aristotle describes it, both narrate a first meeting, and both are preludes to a recognition. In Iphigenia in Tauris, I would locate the muthos parts in lines 467 to 471, where Iphigenia orders preparations be made for the sacrifice of Orestes and Pylades (since Aristotle’ s description at 1455b9 of the muthos apparently includes that Orestes is about to be sacrificed, θύεσθαι μέλλων); 508 to 510, where Orestes tells Iphigenia that he is from Argos; and line 541, where Iphigenia tells Orestes she is also from there. The total number of lines containing muthos parts is therefore 7. In the first 100 lines of Book 14 of the Odyssey, I would argue there can only be muthos parts in the first three lines and perhaps in line 6, where it is established Odysseus leaves the harbor and meets Eumaeus, and so a total of 4 lines. In both these cases, the rest of the lines either give background information or serve to heighten the

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emotional effect of the scenes in general, but do not contribute to moving forward the muthos as Aristotle describes it. So at least in these two 100-line sections, as I estimated above there are nearly twice as many lines that contain muthos parts in the tragedy as in the epic.52 I would also note here how low the proportion of lines that contain muthos parts is to those that do not in these two passages. This demonstrates why I argued above regarding Aristotle’ s instructions for the upper limit for muthos size that he does not even consider the possibility that a muthos could be spread over the entire play. If my calculations are basically correct, the amount of lines that contain muthos parts in the Odyssey is approximately 4 lines for every 100 lines across the epic’ s 4,000 lines of muthos, or about 160 lines with muthos parts. The muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris, on the other hand, would have about 7 lines per 100 across the play’ s 361 lines of muthos, or about 25 lines with muthos parts. A muthos with parts distributed across all of the lines of an average tragedy of 1500 lines would therefore be some 60 times the size of the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris, and over nine times the size of the muthos of the Odyssey. It is no surprise then that Aristotle does not see any need to first establish that a σύνδηλος muthos would be smaller than the narrative work itself when using σύνδηλος as the criterion for the maximum absolute size limit of the muthos. These conclusions also suggest that there are a very large amount of lines, words and sections in the text that include no muthos parts at all according to Aristotle. Just as the muthos can never be the only element present in the text at any point, the muthos is also not spread indifferently throughout the text. This means that there is a limited, discrete number of muthos parts unevenly distributed in the text in a certain proportion overall to other elements. So what is the smallest unit that may qualify as a discrete muthos part? Aristotle consistently describes what appear to be the smallest units of the muthos as the πράγματα, for example when he defines muthos: λέγω γὰρ μῦθον τοῦτον τὴν σύνθεσιν τῶν πραγμάτων (“By ‘plot’ [muthos] here I mean the organization of events,” 1450a4–5). We can roughly translate πράγματα here as “occurrences.” But even if it is accepted that an occurrence is the smallest muthos unit, this still cannot be defined as a muthos part. An occurrence must first undergo the organizing (σύνθεσιν) operation of being integrated into the muthos before becoming a muthos part. Ricoeur focuses on this aspect as well, viewing the muthos “as mediating between events and a narrated story. As a consequence, an event must be more than just a singular occurrence. It is qualified as an event by

52

This analysis also assumes that in the passage I selected, epic is not using its unique capacity to pack in more muthos parts per line than a tragedy can as described by Aristotle at 1459b22–28. This seems plausible since here the action is very simple and could be played out on stage: one character leaves one location (the harbor) and walks to another to meet a second character (the swineherd).

I. Muthos: The Plot Within

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its contribution to the progression of the plot.”53 This definition of an event (which I would consider equivalent to a muthos part) still leaves much room for debate. It remains a matter of opinion what contributes to the progress of the muthos, for example. But if the definition is accepted, it means every incident can at least be carefully examined for its role in moving the muthos forward and whether “it contributes to its beginning and its end”54 before determining if it qualifies as an event in the muthos, or as a plot part that has not been integrated into the muthos. Ricoeur’ s definition has another feature that may be useful: muthos parts are contrasted to “singular occurrences.” This was not meant by Ricoeur to refer to two different sets of incidents in the narrative work as a whole. Instead, he seems to view all the occurrences in the narrative work as transformed through the mediating function of the plot into story events. But the concept of a muthos smaller than the narrative work in the Poetics would suggest that for Aristotle some of Ricoeur’ s singular occurrences that are not mediated by the muthos are also found within the narrative work itself. Indeed these singular occurrences permitted by Aristotle appear to even significantly exceed in number the muthos events that actually contribute to closure in the work. Clearly then any plot analysis guided by Aristotle’ s muthos concept must first distinguish the events in the muthos from the events in the rest of the plot. Once these muthos parts have been isolated, the number of lines in the work that contain muthos parts can be calculated as well as the resulting relative muthos size. In some cases, it may also be useful to estimate the absolute number of muthos parts spread over these lines. Then by examining where the muthos starts and ends within the narrative work, its placement within the work can be determined. To assess how Aristotle’ s muthos concept applies to ancient dramatic plots, in the following chapters I will use this procedure to determine these key muthos characteristics for a wide range of plays mainly from the fifth century.

53 54

Ricoeur 1990, 65. Ricoeur 1991, 426.

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II. The Aristophanic Muthos Summary (YPZ[V[SL»͎ZT\[OVZJVUJLW[PU[OLPoeticsKPɈLYZZVZ\IZ[HU[PHSS`MYVTJVU]LU[PVUHSUV[PVUZ VMWSV[[OH[P[WYVIHIS`JHUUV[ILJVUZPKLYLKHJVUJLW[VMWSV[9H[OLYT\[OVZZOV\SKIL \UKLYZ[VVK HZ HU HS[LYUH[P]L HWWYVHJO [V PU[LYWYL[PUN [OL Z[Y\J[\YL VM L]LU[Z IHZLK VU ]LY`KPɈLYLU[JYP[LYPHHUKHZZ\TW[PVUZ0[PZHSZV\ZLKI`(YPZ[V[SLHZH[VVSMVYJH[LNVYPaPUN NYV\WZVMWSH`Z^P[OKPɈLYLU[WSV[ZI\[[OLZHTLT\[OVZ(WWS`PUN[OPZT\[OVZJVUJLW[ [V[OLZ\Y]P]PUNWSH`ZVM(YPZ[VWOHULZ0ZOV^[OH[KLZWP[L[OL]HYPL[`PU[OLPYWSV[Z[OL` HSSOH]L[OLZHTLT\[OVZ;OPZT\[OVZOHZ[^VKLÄUPUNJOHYHJ[LYPZ[PJZ;OLÄYZ[PZ[OH[ [OL T\[OVZ PZ LU[PYLS` JVU[HPULK PU YV\NOS` [OL ÄYZ[ OHSM VM [OL WSH` LUKPUN ILMVYL [OL WHYHIHZPZ^OLYLP[L_PZ[Z;OLZLJVUKPZ[OH[[OLT\[OVZHS^H`ZILNPUZ^P[OHJVTWSHPU[ JVU[PU\LZ^P[OHWSHUHUKLUKZ^P[OP[ZHKLX\H[LPTWSLTLU[H[PVU:PUJLHSS[OLJVTLKPLZ VM(YPZ[VWOHULZ[OH[Z\Y]P]LOH]L[OPZT\[OVZP[TH`ILWVZZPISL[OH[V[OLY6SK*VTLKPLZ \ZLK[OLZHTLT\[OVZ0WYLZLU[ZP_T\[OVPKLK\J[PVUZMVYMYHNTLU[HY`WSH`ZIHZLKVU[OL HZZ\TW[PVU[OH[[OL`\ZLK[OPZT\[OVZHZ^LSS

A crucial aspect of Aristotle’ s muthos concept in the Poetics outlined in the previous chapter is its horos, or limit. The muthos is limited to an absolute number of parts, but there is also a limit to the relative size of the muthos in relation to the narrative work as a whole. Both of these limits depend on a general limit of where the muthos is found: Aristotle assumes that the muthos and all of its parts are always entirely contained within the limits of the narrative work itself. This is partly because if antecedent events, for example, were counted as part of the muthos, then the absolute size of the muthos would be difficult to measure, and its relative size to the narrative work as a whole nearly impossible to determine. Only by this last restriction, then, can the parts of the muthos be practically counted, or its relative size calculated. In addition, since the muthos is always smaller than the narrative work, besides the events outside the narrative work that are outside the muthos, there are also typically events within the narrative work that are outside the muthos. Moreover, Aristotle’ s outlines of the muthoi of Iphigenia in Tauris and the Odyssey show that these events outside the muthos but within the narrative work can even greatly outnumber the events in the muthos. So the Aristotelian muthos is actually a comparatively small narrative core composed of only a very select number of events tightly linked by causality that are all contained within the narrative work. The rest of what is usually included in the “plot” or “narrative” is actually what Aristotle calls “episodes,” not muthos. Although Aristotle explicitly requires the muthos to have a beginning, middle and an end, the end of the muthos is typically not located where we would locate

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the end of the narrative action. For example as discussed in the last chapter, at Poetics 1455b14–15 Aristotle describes how the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris concludes. Surprisingly the ending from the “salvation,” approximately the last third of the play, is described as “episodes” and therefore outside of the muthos. Since it is still uncertain whether Iphigenia and Orestes will escape, the “episodes” at the end of Iphigenia in Tauris are highly suspenseful. In fact, it could be reasonably argued that these events are more “action-packed” than the Aristotelian action climaxing with the recognition and change of fortune. The recognition and change of fortune are static dialogue scenes, but the ending involves multiple deceptions, action in two different locations, a physical conflict on the beach and a last-minute escape. This highlights how different Aristotle’ s view of “action” and an “end” may be from ours when applied to the muthos. All taken together, this means that Aristotle’ s muthos cannot be easily aligned with any modern concept of story, plot or narrative. In fact as I will show in the next section, there is virtually no equivalent concept in narratological theory with such a radically limited scope. Not only that, the criteria of absolute size, relative size and placement applied to the structure of events are, it seems, unique to Aristotle’ s muthos concept. The apparent paradox that a significant number of events within the narrative work could still be outside the muthos decisively distinguishes the muthos concept from any modern narrative theory. The muthos should therefore not be understood as a concept that applies to the narrative as a whole, and least of all as equivalent to something as wide-ranging as plot. Instead, it should be understood as an alternative approach to interpreting the structure of events based on other criteria, and designed for other purposes than any modern idea of story, plot or narrative. To determine what these purposes may be, after comparing the muthos to different narratological concepts I will examine the muthos in the plays of Aristophanes. I will show that although the plays of Aristophanes have very different plots, they all appear to have the same muthos. I will then present muthoi deductions for a number of fragmentary Old Comedies based on the assumption that they used the same muthos as the plays of Aristophanes.

1. The Muthos and Narratology Sjuzet Of all concepts in narratology, the muthos is most closely associated with the Russian formalist concept of sjuzet.1 As Schmid notes, Shklovsky himself trans1

Since my purpose here is not to explain or reinterpret narratological concepts, the following discussion assumes a basic understanding of common narratological concepts

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lated muthos in the Poetics as sjuzet in Russian,2 and in Prince’ s Dictionary of Narratology “plot” is simply defined as “the arrangement of incidents; MYTHOS, SJUZET.”3 In current scholarship, therefore, it is not hard to find statements such as Walsh’ s that “everyone agrees that sjuzet corresponds to Aristotle’ s muthos.”4 These terms are so closely related because both are thought to refer to how the events in the story are narrated (as opposed to all the events in the story in their chronological order, or the fabula). But in contrast to the muthos, the sjuzet clearly includes all antecedent events in the fabula. For example, de Jong writes that Oedipus Tyrannus “concentrates on one day,” but the “totality of events represented is much larger”5 and “include the past and future.” Since the sjuzet is composed of these events but only in the “form and order they appear in the play,” this means that the sjuzet includes the killing of Laius, for example, even if the play begins and ends on the same day. But as I argued in Chapter 1, the killing of Laius is explicitly outside the muthos by Aristotle’ s definition. Therefore sjuzet is a far broader concept that includes many more events than the muthos.

Genette’ s récit The same can be said of Genette’ s concept of récit, which is essentially equivalent to sjuzet, and paired with his equivalent of fabula, histoire. This equivalency is clear from Genette’ s initial definition of the two terms, where he writes that he uses “the word story (histoire) for the signified or narrative content” and “the word narrative (récit) for the signifier, statement, discourse or narrative text itself.”6 Genette then calls the reordering of the events of the histoire in the récit “anachronies.” An example of an anachrony is an analepsis or flashback, the “insertion of an account of previous events in the reporting of subsequent ones.”7 One of Genette’ s favorite examples of an analepsis is the story of Odysseus’ wound recounted in the Odyssey.8 In discussing this example, he describes the analepsis as “a narrative that is temporally second” but “grafted” onto what he calls the “first narrative,” which here would be the scene between Odysseus and

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

and terms as they would be defined in any general introduction. For an introduction intended for classicists, see de Jong 2014. See Schmid 2009, 6. For more examples of critics who equate the two terms, see note 17 on the same page. Prince 2003, 73. Walsh 2001, 592. De Jong 2007, 276. Genette 1980, 27. Fludernik 2006, 150. For example, Genette 1980, 48–9.

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Eurycleia. From this description, then, it is obvious that the analepsis is integrated into the narrative or récit in Genette’ s definition by this grafting process. The scene between Odysseus and Eurycleia is also certainly part of Aristotle’ s muthos of the Odyssey summarized at 1455b17–23. But as I argued in Section 1 of Chapter 1, Aristotle excludes all events that preceded Odysseus’ arrival in Ithaca from the muthos, and therefore of course also the story of how Odysseus got the wound. So in this case as well, the récit is a much broader concept than the muthos as I have understood it and includes many more events. Formulated in Genette’ s terms, the muthos is always entirely contained within, and significantly smaller than, the “first narrative.” In the case of the Odyssey, the muthos is in fact only a small number of events within this “first narrative.”

Ricoeur’ s muthos Building on Aristotle’ s concept, Ricoeur uses the same term “muthos” to indicate what he calls emplotment (mise en intrigue). For Ricoeur, “two kinds of time are found in every story told: on the one hand, a discrete, open, and theoretically undefined succession of incidents (one can always ask: and then? and then?); on the other hand, the story told presents another temporal aspect characterized by the integration, the culmination, and the ending in virtue of which a story gains an outline.”9 Ricoeur’ s muthos or emplotment interweaves these two kinds of time just as it mediates between events and the story told. This means that unmediated time characterized by succession always lies outside the work but is theoretically implied by the story, for example after the narrative work ends, since it is always possible to ask “and then?” In other words, Ricoeur seems to believe that the first kind of time characterized by succession is not actually figured on its own within the narrative work itself, because anything within the narrative work is part of the “story told” and therefore subject to emplotment. But as I have argued above, Aristotle’ s definition of muthos indicates that this kind of open, undefined time is both woven into the plot and included within the narrative work itself as “episodes.” Interestingly, Ricoeur’ s concept of muthos is so close to Aristotle’ s that he himself seems to have noticed that some of Aristotle’ s statements contradict his concept of the muthos as everywhere in the narrative work. For example, he writes that “the episodes, controlled by the plot, are what give amplitude to the work and thus a ‘magnitude,’”10 with the word magnitude here indicating Aristotle’ s term μέγεθος in the Poetics. Since Ricoeur believes the amplitude of the muthos including the “episodes” gives “the work” its μέγεθος, he also clearly believes that the μέγεθος of the muthos is basically the same as the 9 10

Ricoeur 1991, 427. Ricoeur 1990, 42.

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μέγεθος of the narrative work. This shows that for Ricoeur as for many others, the muthos and so its μέγεθος extends over the entire narrative work and is equivalent in extent to the narrative work. But by adding that the “episodes” are also “controlled by the plot,” he indicates some uncertainty about whether the “episodes” are actually part of the muthos or not. The idea that the plot controls the “episodes” suggests that they are somehow separate or outside the plot or muthos, similar to how the brain controls parts of the body. I believe this slightly paradoxical notion is actually a trace in Ricoeur’ s thought of Aristotle’ s original concept of the muthos as smaller than the narrative work as a whole. Similarly, Ricoeur comments in a footnote on one of Aristotle’ s references to events outside the muthos that I discussed in the previous chapter, writing “it will have been noted that I have not discussed the distinction between ‘complication’ (desis) and ‘denouement’ (lusis) in Chapter 13. The fact that Aristotle includes the complication among the events ‘outside’ the plot makes me think we ought not to place this distinction on the same plane as the other features of the complex plot, all of whose criteria are ‘inside’ it.”11 In this fascinating aside, Ricoeur seems to all but admit that Aristotle explicitly states that some events within the narrative work or referred to in it (and therefore for Ricoeur and others part of the plot or muthos) are actually outside the muthos. But at the same time he dismisses this possibility out of hand, since for him the very idea of events outside the muthos indicates that the distinction is not “on the same plane.” Again, this seems to be a slightly paradoxical explanation, since it is hard to see on what plane Ricoeur could accept that there are antecedent events referred to or included in the narrative work (such as the “complication”) that somehow still elude the operation of emplotment. Turning to the “denouement” or resolution, Ricoeur goes on to argue that “this is why a critique of the concept of narrative closure whose argument draws on the aporias of this analysis, only touches a peripheral and heterogeneous category and perhaps one added later by Aristotle, not the core of his concept of plot.” Ricoeur’ s understanding of Aristotle’ s concept of muthos cannot permit that it ends without “narrative closure.” As a result, he writes that Aristotle’ s statements indicating that the muthos ends before the narrative work must have been “added later,” or only refer to the concept of plot in a “peripheral” way. To me this is an additional indication that Ricoeur himself was keenly aware of the possibility that Aristotle’ s muthos was always smaller than the narrative work, but chose instead to believe this possibility existed only as a result of confusions in Aristotle’ s own thinking, or problems with the transmission of the text. Elsewhere, Ricoeur went even further to suggest that these discrepancies indicate a larger problem in Aristotle’ s philosophical thinking as a whole. Discussing the aspect of time in Aristotle’ s concept of muthos in the Poetics, he writes “on 11

Ricoeur 1990, 241, note 34.

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cherche vainement une transition entre son traitement du problème du temps dans la Physique et les implications temporelles de son concept de muthos: commencement, milieu, fin, totalité.”12 If Aristotle’ s definition of muthos implies both “open” time and “integrated” time within the narrative work itself as I am suggesting, then the concept of a muthos smaller than the narrative work may be precisely the “transition” in Aristotle’ s thought about time Ricoeur was looking for. But since Ricoeur’ s concept of muthos does not limit the scope of events as I believe Aristotle’s does, despite their close resemblance the two concepts remain fundamentally different.

Propp’ s functions Other narratological concepts attempt to abstract structures above the level of the event, and therefore like the muthos do not include all the events in the narrative. One of the first of these concepts was Propp’ s functions. Propp identified a sequence of 31 different actions or functions in folktales. Not all of the actions occur in every folktale, but the sequence of the functions is always the same. Since there are only 31 functions, clearly there are many more events than functions in a folktale and the function includes only a select group of events. Still, many or even most of the functions may be outside the narrative work. For example, Propp identifies the Sphinx’ s riddle as a function in the Oedipus myth.13 This riddle is repeatedly referred to in Sophocles’ version of the myth, and so would certainly be included by Propp among the functions in that specific version. But for Aristotle, the riddle would be in the same category as the murder of Laius, an important antecedent event that is both outside the narrative work and outside the muthos. So despite limiting the scope of events considerably, Propp’ s functions are not nearly as limited in scope as the muthos.

Barthes’ nuclei In his description of narrative units, Barthes retains the concept of functions but divides them between “cardinal functions” or nuclei that can materially move the narrative forward, and “catalyses” that depend on a cardinal function. Since these cardinal functions or “nuclei” are relatively small in number, they could reduce the functions to the limited scope of the muthos in Aristotle. In addition, Barthes describes these cardinal functions in terms strikingly similar to Aristotle’ s: “to sum up, one cannot delete a nucleus without altering the story, but then again 12 13

Ricoeur 1992, 314. For the complete analysis, see Propp, 1983.

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one cannot delete a catalysis without altering the discourse.”14 This passage seems to be an oblique reference to Poetics 1451a32–4 (discussed in further detail in the following section) specifying that no part of the muthos can be altered or deleted without changing the muthos as a whole. But a closer look at examples of cardinal functions demonstrates that they still include far more events than the muthos. For instance, Chatman’ s widely accepted definition of the cardinal event cites an example from the Iliad: “Achilles can give up the girl or refuse.”15 It may be true that eliminating this event towards the beginning of the Iliad would change the “histoire,” but it clearly could be removed without changing the muthos. There could be many reasons for withdrawing from the war, so whether it is because of Briseis or not (or even for no reason at all) is outside the muthos. That is because this event in the Iliad is basically equivalent to Orestes’ madness at the beginning of Iphigenia in Tauris, which at Poetics 1455b2–15 Aristotle establishes is an “episode” outside the muthos. Since there could be different reasons for Orestes’ arrest, Aristotle sees the event as outside the muthos. In contrast, there is no event that could replace Orestes’ arrest itself, for example. If Orestes is not arrested, Iphigenia would not be tasked with sacrificing him, and the muthos would be fundamentally changed. Therefore the arrest is in the muthos, but not the reasons for it. Similarly, Achilles’ withdrawal from the war might be in the muthos, but not his reasons for it. Others interpret Barthes concept even more loosely. For example, McQuillan defines a cardinal function as “that which is logically essential to the narrative action (e. g. Cinderella’ s poverty).”16 Cinderella’ s poverty is a condition, not an event, and would certainly be excluded from the Aristotelian muthos. A parallel case here would be 1455b18–9, where Aristotle describes Odysseus as being alone and watched by Poseidon. As I argued in Chapter 1, these are antecedent conditions that Aristotle excludes from the muthos itself. In fact any antecedent condition would probably fall outside the muthos for Aristotle, because a condition does not qualify as an action or event. These examples clearly show that the cardinal functions are far broader in scope than the parts of the muthos.17 14 15 16 17

Barthes 1975, 249. Chatman 1978, 53. McQuillan 2000, 315. Similarly, Warning 1976 argues that the plot of a comedy can be divided into a “komische Handlung” and an “anderweitige Komödienhandlung.” The latter provides an “un-comic” story framework to support the former’ s less organized “comic” events. This may at first seem to resemble the distinction between the events in the muthos and the “episode” events that rely on the muthos yet are outside of it. But like Barthes’ nuclei, it seems the “anderweitige Komödienhandlung” includes far more events than the muthos as I have defined it. Although Warning is unfortunately extremely vague about what criteria distinguish story framework events from “comic” events, Warning compares the “anderweitige Komödienhandlung” to the “Fabel” and describes it as

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Frye’ s muthoi Finally, Frye also appropriated Aristotle’ s term muthos to categorize all narratives in four muthoi or archetypes. His four muthoi correspond to the four genres comedy, romance, tragedy and irony or satire. Each of these in turn is associated with a generically typical action or narrative structure. In the case of tragedy, the structure is outlined as follows. “The tragic hero is typically on top of the wheel of fortune, half-way between human society on the ground and the something greater in the sky.… The hero provokes enmity, or inherits a situation of enmity, and the return of the avenger constitutes the catastrophe.”18 This description in some ways closely resembles the Aristotelian muthos. In particular, the outline seems to exclude antecedent events and situations, and all of the events in this description certainly would be contained within the limits of the narrative work. Frye’ s description of the archetypical narrative structure of comedy is similarly limited in scope. “What normally happens is that a young man wants a young woman, that his desire is resisted by some opposition, usually paternal, and that near the end of the play some twist in the plot enables the hero to have his will.”19 Specifically describing Old Comedy, Frye writes that its archetypical narrative follows “a central figure who constructs his (or her) own society in the teeth of strong opposition, driving off one after another all the people who come to prevent or exploit him, and eventually achieving a heroic triumph.”20 In both cases, no previous events or conditions are mentioned, and all the events can be expected to occur within the narrative work. But Frye’ s outlines are far more general than Aristotle’ s muthos outlines. For example, it is essential to Aristotle’ s muthos outline of Iphigenia in Tauris that Orestes is Iphigenia’ s brother. Not only does Aristotle elsewhere (1453b19–23) indicate that characters related by friendship or kin suit a tragic action better, in the muthos outline he simply refers to Orestes as “the brother,” as if this is his most important characteristic for the muthos. It seems therefore that, in contrast to all the other narratological concepts examined so far, Frye’ s concept of muthos is actually too limited in scope when compared to the Aristotelian muthos. Frye is obligated to exclude even the most basic details to produce archetypes that he believes could apply to many thousands of different narratives in a genre. Aristotle’ s muthos seems designed instead to apply to a smaller set of narratives. This may

18 19 20

“umfassend” (see for example on 285). This indicates that even if the “anderweitige Komödienhandlung” excludes some “comic” events, it still appears to include most of the events in the narrative, including for example antecedent events. The muthos includes only a far smaller group of events tightly linked by probability or necessity within the narrative work. Frye 1957, 207–9. Frye 1957, 163. Frye 1957, 43.

1. The Muthos and Narratology

49

be an important clue that one purpose of the muthos is to group narratives, but to limit the size of narrative categories so that they do not become too general. Belfiore21 and Fusillo22 have also compared the muthos to modern narratological concepts. But in both cases, the scholars assume that the muthos is either essentially commensurate with the narrative work or that it extends far outside the narrative work. As a result, the comparisons are in general not useful for my purposes here. This is particularly striking in the case of Belfiore, because as I noted above she is one of the critics who herself pointed out that Aristotle’ s outline of the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris ends well before the end of the play.23 Instead of focusing on this important feature of Aristotle’ s muthos, she argues instead that modern narratologists view narrative differently than Aristotle. For example, quoting the critic Jonathan Culler’ s outline of the narrative in Sophocles’ play,24 she comments that “this outline leaves out events that are, in Aristotle’ s view, essential to the plot because they best arouse pity and fear: Oidipous’ murder of Laius in ignorance that this man is his father and his discovery that he is Jocasta’ s son.”25 But it is not actually true that Culler’ s outline leaves out any events included by Aristotle. Culler’ s account does include the murder of Laius as well as Oedipus’ discovery of his own guilt of the murder. It just does not mention that Oedipus realizes that Laius was his father and Jocasta is his mother. So strictly speaking, no events have been omitted from the outline. Instead, the problem with the outline from an Aristotelian point of view is that the names have already been added. If the outline had called Oedipus “the son,” Laius “the father” and Jocasta “the mother,” then most likely Belfiore would be satisfied that it includes or implies everything Aristotle believes is essential to the muthos. But Belfiore does not comment on the events in the play included by Culler that Aristotle would most likely have omitted from his outline, such as that Oedipus “leaves his country.” Since she agrees with me that Aristotle excludes the escape of Iphigenia and Orestes from the muthos in Euripides’ play, she would also probably agree that Oedipus’ departure falls into the same category, and is therefore outside the muthos. Unfortunately she has overlooked this discrepancy between the modern outline of this play and Aristotle’ s approach in her comparison. In contrast, Fusillo focuses on the importance of limits for Aristotle’ s concept of muthos. But for Fusillo, the significance of the limit is that it adds a qualitative dimension to the structure of events which is generally excluded by narratolog21 22 23 24

25

Belfiore 2000. Fusillo 1986. Belfiore 1992, 373. The full plot outline in Culler is as follows: “Oedipus is abandoned on Mt Cithaeron; he is rescued by a shepherd; he grows up in Corinth; he kills Laius at the cross-roads; he answers the Sphinx’ s riddle; he marries Jocasta; he seeks the murderer of Laius; he discovers his own guilt; he blinds himself and leaves his country.” Culler 1981, 172. Belfiore 2000, 38.

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50

ical approaches. Fusillo argues that “questi concetti di limite (horos), di totalità (holos), e di unitarietà rappresentano al massimo grado la concezione aristotelica dell’ ordine razionale” which is also a “valorizzazione della chiusura nell’ organismo poetico.”26 I agree that rational order and closure are corollaries in the Poetics of the limits imposed by Aristotle on the muthos. And as I noted above, Ricoeur similarly argued that the concept of the limit or size in the Poetics brings with it the problem of closure. But both of these critics assume that the limit of the muthos is essentially the same as the limit of the narrative work. This means that the problem of closure they refer to is the same problem of closure that modern narratology typically considers, i. e. how the narrative work ends. But I have argued that there are actually two problems of closure implied by Aristotle’ s definition of the muthos: the end of the muthos placed before the end of the narrative work, and then the end of the narrative work. So although Fusillo points out an important qualitative difference between narratological approaches and the Aristotelian muthos, even this difference is in effect a product of the difference in scope I have emphasized, and therefore secondary to it. To summarize, modern narratological concepts generally attempt to embrace all the events in the narrative, and therefore have a much wider scope than Aristotle’ s muthos. They either in principal include each and every event in the narrative (sjuzet, Genette’ s récit, Ricoeur’ s muthos), or include events that lie outside the narrative work in their selection of events (Propp’ s functions, Barthes’ nuclei). The sole exception is Frye’ s muthoi, where the scope of events is actually smaller than the scope of Aristotle’ s muthos, and the events themselves are described in far more general terms. This is because Fry’ s concept is intended to embrace thousands of narratives at once. Therefore an important difference that has emerged from this comparison between Aristotle’ s muthos and all the other concepts of narrative is how many narratives can be seen as equivalent using those concepts. It can be assumed that each narrative has a different sjuzet, récit, or muthos in Ricoeur’ s sense, since no two instances of a narrative could ever be exactly identical. Barthes’ nuclei are similar, since a nucleus for him is still very idiosyncratic to the particular narrative, and it seems unlikely that any two narratives would have exactly the same nuclei. In Propp’ s case, with 31 functions the possibilities are still quite large, and since there is also a number of subcategories, the possible number of combinations is actually enormous. Only Frye’ s concept and Aristotle’ s muthos reduce the number of equivalent narratives to a manageable number. This then may be one of the primary purposes of the muthos, to sort similar narratives into smaller groups so that they can be effectively compared from a structural point of view. That may be confirmed by how Aristotle describes his approach to comparing tragedies in the Poetics. At 1456a7–9, he writes that δίκαιον δὲ καὶ τραγῳδίαν 26

Fusillo 1986, 389.

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51

ἄλλην καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν λέγειν οὐδενὶ ὡς τῷ μύθῳ· τοῦτο δέ, ὧν ἡ αὐτὴ πλοκὴ καὶ λύσις (“The proper basis for contrasting and comparing tragedies is principally in virtue of the plot [muthos], i. e. whether the complication and resolution are the same”). This statement again clearly demonstrates that Aristotle views the muthos as tightly limited in scope. I cannot see otherwise how any two tragedies could be compared using these criteria. If all the events of the complication and resolution are included in the concept of muthos, then as with sjuzet and récit every single tragedy would almost by definition have a different muthos and could not be compared. But if only certain events from the complication and resolution within the narrative work are included in the muthos, then a small number of tragedies could all have the same muthos and be compared. As Lucas in his commentary on the passage suggests, the “skeletons” or muthoi of Helen and Iphigenia in Tauris among others may have enough in common to be equivalent by this definition.27 This is then another important indication that the muthos was in part designed as a tool for classifying narrative works for structural comparison. To test this use of the muthos, I will apply it to the surviving plays of Aristophanes. These plays have obviously very different plots when understood as sjuzet or récit. But the plots also have remarkable similarities. For example, some critics believe that all the plots are built around “a complaint, a fantastic idea, [and] its implementation”28 by the hero about halfway through the play. Calling this “great idea” plot scheme “the functional structure in Aristophanic comedy,” Sommerstein argues that “it undergoes very little alteration from the beginning to the end of the poet’ s career.”29 It has also been suggested that the second parts of the plays (typically defined as after the parabasis where it exists) contain what is variously described as either no plot material, very little plot material or very different plot material.30 Henderson for example describes the second half of these comedies as typically consisting of “revue-like scenes which do not advance the plot, which is often effectively concluded before the parabasis.”31 But these generalizations about the plots of Aristophanes’ plays only imperfectly match the actual evidence. For example, in some plays the “great idea” is not fully implemented until the end of the play, if at all (e. g. Clouds, Lysistrata). In others, the “hero” who comes up with the “great idea” is not the main character of the play (Knights), or is replaced by another main character as the plot progresses (Wasps). On closer examination, Aristophanes’ plots seem to defy categorization. They arguably cannot be reduced to any formula.32 27 28 29 30 31 32

Lucas 1968, 190. He goes on there to list a number of lost plays that probably had the same muthos. Henderson 2000, 2. Sommerstein 1980, 13. See also for example Whittaker 1935, 181 and Zimmermann 2006, 42–3. Henderson 1998, 25. For a more detailed critique of the “great idea” approach, see Silk 2000, 261–7.

52

II. The Aristophanic Muthos

But it is not directly relevant to my discussion here whether or not the “great idea” scheme and related approaches can adequately explain the plots of all the plays. My intention is not to revive, defend or even thoroughly review these approaches to generalizing about the plots of the plays. Instead, I will examine the plays’ muthoi to determine if they meet the requirements set by Aristotle to allow the plays’ comparison. Then I will demonstrate that all the plays have basically the same muthos structure. The analysis will show that the “great idea” plot scheme cannot be equated with the muthos. But it will also show that the identical muthos has sometimes resulted in very similar plots. This means that it could be an identical muthos that attracted scholars to developing a formula for their plots.

2. Guidelines for Outlining the Muthos To survey the muthoi in Aristophanes or other surviving plays from this period, precise guidelines for outlining the Aristotelian muthos are required. Fortunately, besides the examples of Aristotle’ s own muthos outlines in the Poetics 1455b2–23 his additional statements about the features of the muthos provide fairly clear instructions on how to outline the muthos in other plays. But since Aristotle only outlines the muthoi of one tragedy and one epic, all of the muthos outlines offered here and in following chapters are necessarily speculative. There is no way to definitively determine the muthos of any work, and just like any plot summary or analysis, a muthos outline is always a form of interpretation. Yet I believe carefully defining and applying Aristotle’ s general guidelines in the Poetics can result in at least plausibly accurate muthoi outlines. The first task in outlining the muthos is determining its placement within the play. This requires identifying the beginning and end of the muthos. Aristotle defines the beginning, middle and end of the muthos in the following terms: ἀρχὴ δέ ἐστιν ὃ αὐτὸ μὲν μὴ ἐξ ἀνάγκης μετ᾽ ἄλλο ἐστίν, μετ᾽ ἐκεῖνο δ᾽ ἕτερον πέφυκεν εἶναι ἢ γίνεσθαι: τελευτὴ δὲ τοὐναντίον ὃ αὐτὸ μὲν μετ᾽ ἄλλο πέφυκεν εἶναι ἢ ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἢ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ, μετὰ δὲ τοῦτο ἄλλο οὐδέν: μέσον δὲ ὃ καὶ αὐτὸ μετ᾽ ἄλλο καὶ μετ᾽ ἐκεῖνο ἕτερον. δεῖ ἄρα τοὺς συνεστῶτας εὖ μύθους μήθ᾽ ὁπόθεν ἔτυχεν ἄρχεσθαι μήθ᾽ ὅπου ἔτυχε τελευτᾶν, ἀλλὰ κεχρῆσθαι ταῖς εἰρημέναις ἰδέαις. 1450b26–34 (“A beginning is that which itself does not follow necessarily from anything else, but some second thing naturally exists or occurs after it. Conversely, an end is that which does itself naturally follow from something else, either necessarily or in general, but there is nothing else after it. A middle is that which itself comes after something else, and some other thing comes after it. Well-constructed plots should therefore not begin or end at any arbitrary point, but should employ the stated forms.”)

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The first event in the muthos is an event not preceded by another event by necessity, but one that is by necessity followed by another event. The opposite is true of the event that ends the muthos. This event must by necessity be preceded by another event, but not necessarily followed by any other event. In his definition of a “middle” in this passage, Aristotle does not specify whether the events in this part of the muthos follow by probability or necessity from each other. But in a later passage describing the size of the muthos, Aristotle indicates that necessity or probability link all the events contained in the muthos: ἐν ὅσῳ μεγέθει κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἢ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον ἐφεξῆς γιγνομένων συμβαίνει εἰς εὐτυχίαν ἐκ δυστυχίας ἢ ἐξ εὐτυχίας εἰς δυστυχίαν μεταβάλλειν, ἱκανὸς ὅρος ἐστὶν τοῦ μεγέθους. 1451a12–15 (“The magnitude in which a series of events occurring sequentially in accordance with probability or necessity gives rise to a change from good to bad fortune, or from bad fortune to good fortune’, is an adequate definition of magnitude.”) Since here Aristotle is defining the magnitude of the muthos within the narrative work, the “series of events” must be all the events contained in the muthos. This means that according to this definition, events can only contribute or add to the magnitude of the muthos if they occur “sequentially and in accordance with probability or necessity.” There may be other events between the beginning and the end that are outside of this chain of events linked by probability or necessity, but these events will not contribute to the magnitude of the muthos and are therefore outside of it. As a result, all the events in the middle of the muthos must also follow from each other by probability or necessity. This passage also indicates that the muthos must end with a change of fortune. Although Aristotle does not explicitly state here that the muthos cannot continue after the change of fortune, his muthos outlines indicate this is probably the case. As I discussed in greater detail in Chapter 1, at 1455b2–23 Aristotle places the end of the muthos in Iphigenia in Tauris at the recognition of Orestes. Since this is also the moment that Orestes’ life is saved, clearly in this play the muthos ends at the moment of the change of fortune, and the rest of the events are outside the muthos or “episodes.” Similarly in the Odyssey, Aristotle describes the end of the muthos as Odysseus’ victory over the suitors. Again, this is obviously the moment when Odysseus has experienced a change of fortune, and the last two books of the epic are outside the muthos or “episodes.” So it seems reasonable to assume that Aristotle defines the size of the muthos as large enough to include a change of fortune in the passage at 1451a12–15 because the change of fortune is by definition the end of the muthos. In what follows, I will therefore always end my muthos outlines with the event in the play that causes the change of fortune.

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It should be noted here as well that the muthos must only include a change of fortune, not a recognition. Although Aristotle acknowledges that recognitions are often part of the muthos, the minimum requirements of the muthos do not include a recognition. So although for Aristotle it is desirable that the change of fortune occur together with a recognition (see1452a37–1452b1), he also accepts that this is certainly not always the case. In fact, at 1452a14–16 Aristotle defines an entire category of muthos that is “without recognition,” the “simple” muthos. This illustrates that although recognitions may be part of the muthos, recognitions may also be events within the play but outside the muthos for example, or omitted altogether. There is a further characteristic of the events in the muthos that may be helpful in outlining the muthos of the surviving plays. In discussing how to construct a muthos, Aristotle indicates that both the events in the muthos as well as their order are fixed. τὰ μέρη συνεστάναι τῶν πραγμάτων οὕτως ὥστε μετατιθεμένου τινὸς μέρους ἢ ἀφαιρουμένου διαφέρεσθαι καὶ κινεῖσθαι τὸ ὅλον· ὃ γὰρ προσὸν ἢ μὴ προσὸν μηδὲν ποιεῖ ἐπίδηλον, οὐδὲν μόριον τοῦ ὅλου ἐστίν. 1451a32–35 (“So the structure of the various sections of the events must be such that the transposition or removal of any one section dislocates and changes the whole. If the presence or absence of something has no discernible effect, it is not a part of the whole.”) No event in the muthos can be eliminated, replaced or moved without changing the muthos as a whole. This means that although all or most events in a narrative may be connected by some degree of causality with the other events, only the events in muthos are so tightly linked by necessity or probability that they cannot be shifted or eliminated without altering the muthos itself. As a result, this rule amounts to a litmus test for determining if events are part of the muthos or not. If an event can be moved to another part of the narrative without changing the muthos, then it is not part of the muthos. Similarly, if it can be replaced with another event of the same kind, for example, or left out altogether, it is not part of the muthos. This rule is then particularly useful for isolating the events belonging to the muthos within the often large number of events in an entire narrative. Finally, it can now be seen from these rules that the simplest approach to determining the events in the muthos may often be to retrospectively work backwards from the change of fortune. Since the change of fortune must be the final event in sequence of events tightly linked by probability or necessity, it is often possible to start with this final event and determine what caused the event that led to it, and then the event that led to that event, and so on to the first event in the muthos.

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3. The Muthos in Aristophanes To outline the muthoi of the plays of Aristophanes, I will first briefly examine all the events in each play. I will then show that Aristotle would probably only consider the events that occur in roughly the first half of these plays (before the parabasis where it exists) as part of the muthos. Since these events turn out to be equivalent across all the plays, I will argue that all the plays would also be considered by Aristotle to have the same muthos. But given that the narrative often continues and even significantly changes direction after the muthos has ended, as in the case of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris the end of the muthos in no way indicates that the narrative itself has ended. The limited scope of the muthos therefore permits such a diverse group of plays to still all have the same muthos. This muthos then bears some resemblance to the “great idea” plot scheme, but fundamentally differs from it in terms of its focus, scope and use as a tool for understanding the plots of these plays. For these muthos outlines, I will rely on the plot outlines in Sifakis’ article applying Propp’ s functions to Aristophanes.33 Since this is one of the attempts referred to above to find a pattern in all the events in each play, beyond the plot outlines the results of the analysis are of limited relevance here. This is despite the fact that Sifakis’ intention is to use Aristotle’ s approach in these outlines. In a section called “Genre Narrative Structure and ‘Universal Logos’” Sifakis writes that following Aristotle’ s example he “tried to ‘simplify and reduce to a universal form’ the story line of each Aristophanic comedy,” citing Aristotle’ s outlines of the muthoi of Iphigenia in Tauris and the Odyssey mentioned above. But since Sifakis does not believe that Aristotle’ s outlines omit significant events from these works, he includes all the events in the plays in his simplified “story lines.” Here I will select only the events from his outlines that I believe would be included by Aristotle in the muthos. Sifakis divides the events of the plays into eight functions that do not appear in all plays but always follow the same order when they do appear: (1) villainy, lack, or misfortune; (2) decision and plan to counteract misfortune; (3) service or help of a supernatural or quasi-magical agent or helper obtained; (4) transference; (5) opposition or obstacles to be overcome; (6) persuasion exercised in debate; (7) liquidation of villainy or misfortune; (8) triumph of hero. In each play, function 1 is a complaint about a specific condition or person (e. g. war, debts, a manipulative slave) and function 2 the plan to remedy the situation.34 Both functions 5 and 6 33 34

Sifakis 1992. Wealth is an exception because Sifakis believes the events of function 2 in this play are those that precede the play’ s action entirely (the visit to the oracle, etc.). Instead, the event we would expect to find in function 2 (the plan to cure Wealth of his blindness) in his scheme appears in function 4. Similarly in Peace, Sifakis describes the events of function 6 as Hermes being persuaded to cooperate with the men who want peace. But

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require the character or characters with the plan to implement that plan by overcoming obstacles, the only difference being that function 6 specifies the obstacles are overcome in a debate. Therefore either function 5 alone or both functions 5 and 6 may be the implementation of the plan. Among these functions, it seems that either function 5 alone, or in some plays functions 5 and 6 together are the events that result in a change of fortune. In the cases where the plan is implemented by overcoming obstacles in a debate (function 6), the character with the plan has won the debate and therefore clearly experienced a change of fortune. In the plays where the obstacles are successfully overcome in function 5 without a debate, the character has achieved a similar victory leading to a change of fortune, only not through debate. Since the sufficient implementation of the plan results in the change of fortune in these plays, function 1, the complaint, is required by the muthos because without it there could be no plan that is then executed. As a corollary, this complaint is never a background condition or antecedent event. The complaint may be about an antecedent event or background condition, but the complaint itself is always an actual event within the narrative work that leads by sufficient necessity or probability to the plan and its implementation. Function 2 is the plan itself, and so also required by this muthos. Apart from these functions 1, 2, 5 or 6 then, all the other functions would probably be considered by Aristotle to be outside the limited scope of the muthos. Functions 3 and 4 could in each case be changed or omitted without changing the muthos.35 Whether the character with the plan is helped by outside forces or transferred during the action does not change the implementation of the plan, and therefore does not change the muthos. Functions 7 and 8 are outside the muthos because they occur after the plan has been implemented resulting in the change of fortune which ends the muthos. These last functions are basically equivalent to the events specifically excluded by Aristotle from the muthos in Iphigenia in Tauris that occur after the recognition, when Iphigenia and Orestes plan to escape. This means that whether Orestes and Iphigenia succeed, fail to escape or conceive a different plan entirely does not affect the structure of the muthos according to Aristotle. Similarly, in Aristophanes it seems that whether or not the villainy is liquidated or the hero triumphs (to use Sifakis’ terms), the muthos structure would remain the same, and therefore does not include these events. If only functions 1, 2, 5 and 6 are part of the muthos, then Sifakis’ plot summaries show that in the plays that have a parabasis all the functions in the muthos always appear before the parabasis. In general, this means the muthos also ends

35

actually in the play Hermes hardly needs convincing, and the main challenge the heroes face is freeing Peace. Therefore I have changed the event of function 5 to the freeing of Peace and omitted function 6. The exception here is Clouds, where function 3 is the teaching of Socrates. This is because in this play gaining this assistance is actually the implementation of the plan, not a form of assistance in executing the plan.

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about the middle of the play. Table 1 shows precisely where the parabasis begins in these eight plays along with their total lengths. Table 1 Parabasis placement in Aristophanes Parabasis at line

Total length in lines

Acharnians

626

1235

Knights

507

1408

Clouds

518

1511

Wasps

1015

1537

Peace

729

1359

Birds

685

1765

Women at the Thesmophoria

785

1231

Frogs

686

1533

In these plays with a parabasis, functions 1 and 2 of course occur well before the parabasis. Function 5 also always occurs before the parabasis, and is without exception included in every play. But in some of the plays it is followed by function 6 still before the parabasis, while in others function 6 comes after the parabasis or is missing. Since both functions 5 and 6 establish the implementation of the plan, this simply means that in these plays the muthos always ends before the parabasis with the implementation of the plan, but only sometimes through a debate. In those plays where the debate comes later (Knights, Clouds and Frogs), it is not the event that results in the implementation of the plan and therefore the change of fortune. In the other three plays without a parabasis, the muthos also ends towards the middle of the play with the sufficient implementation of the plan. In Lysistrata this event would be when the magistrate is sent away by Lysistrata and the women can remain in the acropolis at line 610 of a 1320-line play. In Assemblywomen, the event would be when the assembly votes to hand over the government of the state to the women at line 478 of a 1184-line play. In Wealth the event would be when Wealth leaves to be cured of his blindness at line 626 of a 1209-line play. In each case these events directly precede choral interludes (either a song or, in the case of Wealth, an indication of a choral dance) that perhaps performed the same transitional function as the parabasis in the other plays. So in all the plays, the muthos always starts almost immediately after the play begins and ends towards the middle before the parabasis or a transitional interlude. To illustrate the placement of the muthos and the relative portion containing

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II. The Aristophanic Muthos

muthos in these plays, Figure 1 shows the parts containing the muthos and the parts containing only “episodes” in each play by percentage. The dark grey bars are labeled with the number of lines before the parabasis starts or the muthos ends, and the light grey bars are labeled with the number of lines from the start of the parabasis or the end of the muthos to the end of the play. Figure 1 Muthos placement and portion in Aristophanes

The muthos placement in these plays is therefore quite different from the placement in the narratives Aristotle discusses. In Aristotle’ s summary of the Odyssey, the muthos begins almost exactly at the middle of the epic and goes to the end, and in his summary of Iphigenia in Tauris the muthos starts about a third of the way into the play and ends just about halfway through. Here the muthos basically opens the play. On the other hand, the portion of the plays containing muthos seems to be in about the same range as in these works: a quarter in the tragedy and a half in the epic. Using Sifakis’ summaries, then, I can now outline the muthos of all eleven plays. In each case the three key events of the muthos are the complaint, the plan and the adequate implementation of the plan. In addition, in all cases the same character (or characters) is the agent of all three events. Table 2 describes these three events in the muthos of each play. I have also noted if the third event occurs in function 5 or in function 6 (through a debate) in Sifakis’ scheme.

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3. The Muthos in Aristophanes Table 2 Muthos events in Aristophanes Complaint

Plan

Implementation

Acharnians

War

Private peace

Other farmers are persuaded to allow a private peace (function 6)

Knights

Knave slave

Get a rogue to defeat the knave

Rogue defeats knave (function 5)

Clouds

Son’s debts

Learn sophistry (to escape debts)

Father enters sophistry school (function 3)

Wasps

Father’s jury addiction

Confine father at home (so he cannot go to court)

Father is persuaded to give up jury duty (function 6)

Peace

War

Demand peace from heaven

Peace is freed (function 5)

Birds

Litigious society

Find another society

Birds are persuaded to allow the bird-state (function 6)

Lysistrata

War

Sexual strike and occupy The women can remain in the acropolis (to force the acropolis (function 5) men to end war)

Women at the Trial by womThesmophoria en of a man

Disguise a man as a woman to defend the man at the trial (and avoid conviction)

The man disguised as a woman defends the accused man (function 5)

Frogs

There are no good poets left in Athens

Go to Hades (to bring Euripides back)

Entry into Hades (function 5)

Assemblywomen

Bad government

Take over government from men (to achieve better government)

Women take over government (function 5)

Wealth

Bad distribution of wealth

Cure Wealth of blindness Wealth and Poverty are persuaded Wealth should not be blind (function 5)

It is important to emphasize that the Aristophanic muthos as I have understood it does not require the plan to succeed. It only requires that the plan be adequately implemented after overcoming the obstacles opposed to it, resulting in a change of fortune for the character with the plan. So just as in Iphigenia in Tauris Orestes and Iphigenia’ s recognition in no way guarantees their fortunes will not fall again

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during their escape, the implementation of the plan in Aristophanes does not guarantee that the character with the plan will immediately benefit as they expect from its implementation, or even see the plan succeed by the end of the play. For this reason, the endings of these muthoi as I have outlined them may not conform to a conventional understanding of what an ending is. Once the muthos ends, the plan in Aristophanes may be maintained, abruptly modified, reversed, forgotten or lead to apparently unrelated events. As surprising as these developments may be, they are entirely consistent with Aristotle’ s definition of the “episodes” that fall outside the muthos. According to Aristotle, the events in the muthos must be connected by probability or necessity.36 By contrast, episodes need not be “probable or necessary, but only plausible” as Belfiore observes.37 Since they should also be “appropriate” (οἰκεῖα, 1455b13–14) to the muthos, this suggests that episodes are elements closely related to it but held to a lower standard of causality. To apply this to Aristophanes, the muthos’ three key elements can be reasonably said to follow from one another by probability or necessity (no matter how improbable the muthos’ comic premises may be). On the other hand, even on the absurd comic terms of the muthos, the material after the muthos ends in these plays often defies all logic of probability and necessity. This contrast between the muthos and “episodes” is particularly prominent in two plays, Frogs and Clouds. In Frogs there seems to be no probable or necessary reason why the preceding events would result in Dionysus becoming the judge of a competition between two dead poets after entering Hades. But Dionysus is of course an appropriate choice as a judge of a literary contest, and it could plausibly occur that a poetic competition is underway in Hades between the recently deceased Euripides and Aeschylus at the moment he arrives. Since the muthos concludes when Dionysus arrived in Hades, these developments would therefore be perfectly acceptable to Aristotle as “episodes,” but not as part of the muthos. In Clouds, the plan to learn sophistry has a range of unexpected consequences that the character who implements the plan, Strepsiades, did not predict. In this case then, the “episodes” that follow the end of the muthos defy the expectations raised by the successful implementation of the plan. Again, there is nothing implausible or inappropriate about these “episodes,” but they show that the end of the muthos is not indicative of how the plan will turn out for the character who implements it. For the same reasons, as I suggested above the implementation of the plan in some of these plays may be a means to some other end, but the successful implementation of the plan does not at all guarantee the attainment of this “end.” This

36 37

See Poetics 1451a12, for example, discussed in the previous section. For a full list of the relevant passages in the Poetics, see Belfiore 1992, 376 note 29. Belfiore 1992, 365.

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is because the implementation of the plan results in a change of fortune, and the “end” is therefore part of the “episodes.” Just as the muthos does not require the plan to even remain a focus of the plot after the muthos ends, it does not require the plan to achieve its “ends.” To make this clear, I have added the “ends” of the plans in parentheses in the table for these two plays and others where applicable. Applying this to Frogs and Clouds, Dionysus’ plan in Frogs is to get to Hades, apparently with the purpose of bringing Euripides back up. But the start of the play indicates that getting to Hades is the plan, and bringing up Euripides only one possible successful outcome of that plan. For example, at line 71 Dionysus says that he wants to bring back a “talented poet,” not necessarily Euripides, and at line 78 he leaves open the possibility of bringing Sophocles up instead. But he would not even be talking to Heracles if he did not certainly plan to go to Hades. Then once Dionysus has succeeded in entering Hades, the “end” of bringing Euripides back from the dead is suddenly replaced by a contest to determine who is the best dead poet. This is certainly a startling direction for the plot to take, but it does not change the muthos since Dionysus has already entered Hades, overcoming the obstacles to his plan and experiencing a change of fortune. Similarly in Clouds, Strepsiades’ plan is to gain access to Socrates’ school with the end of escaping the debts his son has taken on. First he tries to convince his son to enter the school and when that fails, he must try to be admitted himself. After adequately impressing Socrates, he succeeds in entering the school, implementing his plan. Yet he gains little from his acceptance, because he immediately flunks out of the school. Then when he finally convinces his son to go in his place and escapes his debts, his plan backfires and results in even worse troubles with his son. But all of these negative consequences of his plan fall outside the muthos, since he has already experienced a positive change of fortune when he initially gained entry to the school. This is emphasized in the play by the portrayal of his acceptance to the school as a kind of initiation (see for example lines 143, 252–74). So Strepsiades successfully implements the plan of the muthos and even later escapes his debts, but that does not mean he will achieve his larger goal of solving the problems his son is causing him. These two plays also demonstrate that in the surviving plays of Aristophanes, what is not muthos can be as interesting as – or even more interesting – than the muthos itself. The events in the second part of Frogs are certainly more complex and surprising than the muthos about descending successfully to Hades. The consequences of attending Socrates’ school in Clouds are at least more sensational than the events leading up to him entering the school. The role of the chorus and the characters driving the plan should be noted as well. The chorus may support the character’ s plan, oppose it or remain somewhat neutral as in Clouds. But the chorus never suggests the plan or implements it in these plays. The character with the plan is therefore always the active driver of the muthos from the moment of its appearance until its implementation. But at the same time, there is no guarantee that the character driving the muthos can be

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reasonably considered the “hero” of the play.38 After the plan is sufficiently implemented, this character may be fundamentally transformed (for example Dionysus in Frogs), disappear entirely (for example Praxagora in Assemblywomen) or take on a more limited role (for example in Lysistrata, or the slaves in Knights). In addition, the driver of the muthos may be two characters at once (again in Knights). This is also basically consistent with how character fits into Aristotle’ s description of the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris. Even though the play is named after Iphigenia and many modern commentators might identify Iphigenia as the hero or main character of the drama, Aristotle focuses almost exclusively on Orestes and his actions in his summary, making him the protagonist of the muthos. So for Aristotle, identifying the main character of the muthos and the main character of the play may apparently be two separate questions. In sum, the muthos is not a reliable indicator of whether the plan in Aristophanes will succeed, how the plot will develop later in the play or even who the hero of the plot or play may turn out to be. Instead, applying the muthos concept here shows that these plays with very different plots appear to share the same structure of muthos events. In addition, this muthos structure seems to be associated with a quite specific muthos placement (starting right at the beginning of the play and ending around the middle) and magnitude (spread over an average of about half the play). I hope this discussion has clarified why outlining an identical muthos in these plays is a very different project from arguing that their plots conform to the “great idea” formula referred to at the end of Section 1 of this chapter. It may be true that in some cases the muthos events can be superimposed on the “great idea” scheme that ends in a triumph for the hero, and the “episode” events equated with the “revue-like” scenes that in that scheme always follow. But since the muthos only requires sufficient implementation of the plan resulting in a (possibly temporary) change of fortune, quite often in Aristophanes the second parts of the plays include important events outside the muthos that are hard to view as outside the plot. In addition, the “hero” of the plot is not always the driver of the muthos. This means that the “great idea” plot only resembles the muthos in the few cases that the “hero” is driver of the muthos, and the plot effectively ends together at the same point as the muthos in the middle of the play.

38

For a good recent overview and discussion of the debate concerning the “comic hero” in Aristophanes, see Rosen 2014.

4. Wine-Flask

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4. Wine-Flask39 Although it seems likely that other Old Comedies also may have featured the Aristophanic muthos of a complaint, a plan, and its sufficient implementation somewhere near the middle of the play, because only fragments remain this assumption can never be proven. In fact the fragmentary evidence rarely provides any assurance at all of what elements the plot included, and it may be that plot elements suggested by the fragments are details or asides with little bearing on the action. Nevertheless, where sufficient fragmentary evidence remains suggesting that these three muthos elements possibly featured in the plot, it is still possible to speculatively deduct a muthos structure from those elements. This is the approach I will take to deducing muthoi for several fragmentary plays where such evidence remains. These then are only muthoi deductions based on unreliable indications of plot elements found in the fragments, not actual plot reconstructions. But I would just point out that regardless of the extant of the evidence, most attempts to partially reconstruct the plots of fragmentary Old Comedies depend implicitly or explicitly on a general interpretation of the plot structure in the surviving plays of Aristophanes such as the “great idea” scheme. Here instead of relying on a general interpretation of plot structure, I rely on a specific interpretation of the muthos structure. As I tried to show in the previous section, the muthos structure is determined by clear, objective criteria that are far more precise and limited than any interpretation of plot structure. This means that although these deductions should not be considered reconstructions, they still could possibly provide a useful guide to reconstructing the plots of these plays. I will return to this question in the last section of this chapter. In addition, as the example of Frogs demonstrates, the sufficient implementation of the plan towards the middle of the play is not decisive in determining the course of events in the rest of the play. Yet this limited implementation of the plan must at least allow the plot of the play to continue somehow for an extended period afterwards, whether by illustrating the consequences of the plan’ s success, its failure or related events. So the implementation of the plan that ends the muthos in these deductions should ideally also give some idea of how it was then linked to the “episodes” that filled out the rest of the play, and to some extent how those “episodes” were structured.

39

All title translations and fragment citations in Greek except for Aristophanes are from Storey 2011a, 2011b and 2011c (in cases where Storey’ s titles are somewhat obscure translations of the Greek, I have included the transliteration of the Greek in parentheses). All fragment citations in Greek and translations from Aristophanes are from Henderson 2007. Translations of the titles of lost plays by Aristophanes are from the biographical index in Harvey and Wilkins 2000.

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Intense scholarly interest in Cratinus’ lost play Wine-Flask (or Pytine, the original Greek title) has produced numerous plot reconstructions. This self-reflexive play appears to be about a character named Cratinus whose drinking has driven his wife Comedy – possibly the personification of the genre – to sue for divorce. The current consensus among scholars on the outline of the plot has been conveniently and accurately summed up most recently by Biles. But in light of my analysis of the plays of Aristophanes above, I will show that if this play did use the Aristophanic muthos then the structure of events would not have followed what Biles calls the “modern plot reconstruction.”40 Then after examining the fragments for evidence of a complaint, plan and its implementation, I will produce a muthos deduction for the play. I will conclude my discussion of the play with a close reading of each relevant fragment to provide as much detail as possible about this speculative muthos deduction and the “episodes” it may have led to. Reconstructing the plot of Wine-Flask by modeling it on Wasps, Biles presents these side-by-side plot outlines of the two plays reproduced here. a. Domestic altercation arising from the incorrigible behavior of a member of the household; Cratinus’ drunkenness (Σ Eq. 400; frr. 193, 194, 195, 196).

a. Philocleon’s philheliasticism leading to the conflict of father and son.

b. Initial attempt to remedy situation (fails); Comedy’ s threat of divorce (Σ Eq. 400; fr. 194).

b. Philocleon’s imprisonment by Bdelycleon (136–229).

c. Choral parodos brings allies to the beleaguered hero; Cratinus’ friends prevail upon Comedy to refrain from legal divorce (Σ Eq. 400).

c. Philocleon’s friends and fellow jurors try to free Philocleon and then attack his jailers (esp. 317- 462).

d. Antagonist wins ensuing agon; Comedy presumably wins and enlists the support of Cratinus’ friends (Σ Eq. 400; fr. 199).

d. Bdelycleon wins and enlists the support of the jurors (esp. 725–35).

e. Hero repents in the face of opposition: Cratinus in fr. 200.

e. Philocleon tacitly repents in 743–97.

f. The domestic trial scene (798–1008). f. Second attempt to reform hero with emphasis on hero’s malady through props; entails at least in part demolishing Cratinus’ drinking paraphernalia (fr. 199; cf. fr. 202).

40

Biles 2011, 157.

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g. Reeducation of hero by his reformer; Comedy assists Cratinus in comic composition (frr. 208, 209).

g. Bdelycleon trains Philocleon in manners of sophisticated society (1122–264).

h. Play culminates ironically in hero’s rebellion against his reformer and reaffirmation of his original nature; Cratinus returns to poetic composition through alcoholic inspiration.

h. Philocleon emerges as even more difficult to control, turning his natural demeanor to a new context (esp. 1450–61).

Neither outline clearly established the main character or hero. In the case of Wasps, the outline simply mentions a “conflict of father and son” suggesting both are main characters. Biles however elsewhere writes that “the theme of rehabilitating the hero is central to both Pytine and Wasps,” so it seems for him the father Philocleon is actually the hero of the play. But in the Aristophanic muthos, the main character of the muthos is always the character who has the complaint and takes action on it. Since in Wasps Bdelycleon has the complaint against his father Philocleon’ s jury addiction and takes the action to confine him at home, even though he may not be the main character of the play, Bdelycleon is certainly the main character of the muthos. In his reconstruction of Wine-Flask, Biles aligns the conflict between Cratinus and his wife, Comedy, with the conflict between Philocleon and Bdelycleon. That leads to the parallel at (e.) between the plot events “hero [i. e. Cratinus] repents in the face of opposition” and “Philocleon tacitly repents.” This only works if it is accepted that like Philocleon, Cratinus is not the main character of the muthos in Wine-Flask. Biles assumes that Cratinus is the protagonist of this play, but gives the complaint and plan of action (apparently sue for divorce) to Comedy. But since Comedy is an allegorical figure, it is unlikely that she could be the main character of an Aristophanic muthos in this play. At least in Aristophanes, the main characters of the muthos are always concrete characters, not personifications. Therefore I would argue that if the Aristophanic muthos was used in Wine-Flask, and Comedy seems to be the only other plausible option as the driver of the muthos, then the character of Cratinus was likely the main character of the muthos, not Comedy. Furthermore, the plot outline here of Wine-Flask does not really demonstrate that there was a plan in the play, or that it was implemented. In the outline of Wasps, (b.) is clearly the plan: imprison the father. Then this plan is successfully implemented at (d.). But in the outline of Wine-Flask, the event at (b.) is “Comedy’s threat of divorce.” Even if it is accepted that Comedy as an allegorical character could be the character driving the muthos, her idea to divorce her husband apparently could not be the plan in a muthos on the Aristophanic model. That is because there is no surviving play of Aristophanes where a main character of the muthos threatens to pursue a plan, but then drops the plan entirely without plausibly implementing it. But clearly she does not divorce Cratinus in Biles’ reconstruction,

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because in (c.) she is persuaded to drop her threat by Cratinus’ friends, and the rest of the outline is concerned with the “reeducation” of her husband instead. Therefore it seems Comedy’ s plan to divorce Cratinus cannot be used as the plan in a muthos deduction. All of this taken together demonstrates that a muthos deduction for WineFlask on the Aristophanic model must 1) make Cratinus the active main character of the muthos, 2) define his complaint, and 3) identify the plan implemented by Cratinus as the main character of the muthos that would allow the muthos to end but the play to continue. It is unlikely that Cratinus’ own drinking is his complaint, since it seems Cratinus’ character in the play loves drinking above all. But Cratinus could possibly complain that he is being harassed for drinking by his wife Comedy, and she is threatening to divorce him – i. e. that the complaint here is about hearing too many complaints. Among the surviving plays of Aristophanes, the closest structural parallel then would be Birds. In that play the main characters of the muthos are annoyed by bickering at the law courts and are looking for a peaceful refuge from it all (for example, lines 40–45), yet do not want to live alone in the wilderness. The parallel in Wine-Flask would be that Cratinus wants to keep drinking and is fed up with his wife Comedy’s complaining, yet he still wants to stay with his wife and not live alone. Therefore, Cratinus would begin the play by complaining that his wife will not let him continue drinking and is threatening to leave him. This is not at all to suggest that Biles and other scholars are incorrect in arguing for a close connection between Wine-Flask and Wasps. Again, these two plays may be intimately linked in terms of theme, characterizations, mutual influence or competitive one-upmanship. My argument is only that if it is accepted that Cratinus would be the main character of an Aristophanic muthos in Wine-Flask, then it is unlikely that the muthos of Wine-Flask could parallel the muthos of Wasps. Given Cratinus’ complaint is that his wife refuses to accept his drinking, what plan could Cratinus come up with to solve his problem? The “end” of Cratinus’ plan would most likely be to continue drinking alcohol in excess while also continuing to write comedies, i. e. remain with Comedy. If as some scholars argue drunkenness or various wines were personified in the play, then on an allegorical level this would also mean that Cratinus’ plan would allow him to have intimate relations with one or all of these other alcoholic personifications while remaining married to Comedy. One solution then to Cratinus’ predicament would be to convince his wife to allow his relationship with Drunkenness or another wine to coexist with their marriage. This could be the topic of fragment 195: νῦν δ᾿ ἢν ἴδῃ Μενδαῖον ἡβῶντ᾿ ἀρτίως οἰνίσκον, ἕπεται κἀκολουθεῖ καὶ λέγει, ‘οἴμ᾿ ὡς ἁπαλὸς καὶ λευκός. ἆρ᾿ οἴσει τρία;’ (“But now if he sees a little bit of Mendaean wine just come to adolescence, he follows after it and says ‘Oh my, how soft and fair! Will it handle the three?’”) It is not certain that this fragment comes from Wine-Flask, but “will it handle the three” seems to be a play on words that can refer to adding

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three parts of water to wine, the male genitalia, sex with three people41 or a love triangle, for example. If a love triangle is meant, then the fragment could indicate that Cratinus is attempting to reconcile his marriage with his drinking by looking for attractive wines willing to accept an ongoing three-way relationship with his wife so that he would not have to leave her. Since this fragment seems to be spoken by his wife Comedy, it could also show that she has rejected this arrangement and has made it part of her complaint against Cratinus.42 A portion of the muthos after the complaint has been established could have detailed these attempts of Cratinus to convince his wife to accept his relationship with a personified wine or methe as a normal part of their marriage. Yet whether or not the idea of opening his marriage to a specific wine or Drunkenness (methe) in general actually appeared in this play (and this is not at all certain from this fragment, only possibly suggested), it seems that the plan must have featured the goal or “end” of somehow reconciling Cratinus’ wife with his drinking, i. e. with methe as a mental state or as a personification. In addition, the implementation of the plan must have given Cratinus at least a plausible chance of achieving that end. So what could this implementation have been? An answer to this question could be found behind the play’ s mysterious title. A pytine or wine-flask was some kind of vessel for holding wine made with pitch (fragment 210). Wine-Flask is one of the only Old Comedies on record named after a single discrete object (plural objects such as Clouds are of course common). Notable exceptions include a play called The Sling by Ameipsias and Donkey’ s Shadow by Archippus. But in the first case, Storey43 has speculated the title is the name of a prostitute, and in the second the title is probably a reference to a proverb (see Wasps 191). Since titles in the singular normally refer to an important character in the play (for example Aristophanes’ Wealth or Eupolis’ demagogue comedy Maricas) the pytine here may have actually been a character in the play and not simply an object. Given that Wine-Flask may have included several personifications (of comedy, wines, etc.), this may not be so implausible. In addition, other Old Comedies offer evidence that objects could appear on stage as characters. Besides the obvious case of Clouds, further evidence of speaking objects on stage can be found in the remaining fragments of a strange play 41 42

43

Sex with three people is suggested by Storey 2011a, 369 note 1. If Cratinus’ plan actually involved moving Drunkenness or another wine into his house, this may make sense from a legal point of view as well, since it seems that bringing other women into the home was justifiable grounds for divorce. See pseudo-Andocides, Against Alcibiades, 4.14: … ἐπεισάγων εἰς τὴν αὐτὴν οἰκίαν ἑταίρας, καὶ δούλας καὶ ἐλευθέρας, ὥστ᾿ ἠνάγκασε τὴν γυναῖκα σωφρονεστάτην οὖσαν ἀπολιπεῖν, ἐλθοῦσαν πρὸς τὸν ἄρχοντα κατὰ τὸν νόμον (“bringing both slave and free mistresses into the same house, so that he drove his wife, a very decent woman, to leave him, having gone to the Archon, as allowed by law.”) Storey 2011a, 75

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by Callias the Athenian called Tragedy of Letters. This play apparently featured a “chorus of women who represented the letters of the Greek alphabet, and at one point danced and sang out a humorous lesson in elementary syllabic formation.”44 Whatever the plot of this unusual play was, the fragments clearly demonstrate that objects (in this case more precisely symbols of sounds, but nevertheless still objects in the general sense) could be speaking characters in an Old Comedy. There is also the passage at Wasps 937 where kitchen utensils come on stage as witnesses. In his commentary MacDowell argues that these were played by mute actors, pointing out that since “in this play and in other plays Aristophanes used human performers for dogs, birds, clouds, and so on, there is no reason why he should not have used human performers for kitchen utensils.”45 Other scholars have also suggested the flask may have been a personification. Storey argues that the pytine was a “symbol of the action of the play.” He adds that it could have been a personification, an “actor on stage dressed like a wine flask, like Peace in that comedy or Diallage in Lysistrata or the kitchen utensils in Wasps.”46 Similarly, Bakola argued that the pytine was a female personification, adding that Cratinus’ character “must have corrected his wife’s misunderstanding, transforming methe from a house-wrecking mistress to an essential presence in his life.”47 So it seems reasonable to assume that an object could be a character in an Old Comedy, and specifically in this play. If true, then as I will show the fragments can be interpreted to show that it was Cratinus himself that was transformed during the play into a pytine that consumed wine and spouted poetry. In this speculative muthos deduction, Cratinus’ transformation would then be the implementation of his plan that occurred somewhere near the middle of the play. At least part of what followed could have demonstrated how Cratinus as a pytine could both spend all his time with methe and stay true to his wife Comedy, i. e. write comic poetry.48 While not excluding the possibility, there is obviously no positive evidence in the fragments that Cratinus was transformed into a wine-flask. The only vague hint that this may have actually occurred in the play is one part of the surviving summary provided by the scholiast at Knights 400a. The summary states that Cratinus wrote a play called “τὴν Πυτίνην, εἰς αὑτόν τε καὶ τὴν μέθην, οἰκονομίᾳ τε κεχρημένον τοιαύτῃ. τὴν Κωμῳδίαν ὁ Κρατĩνος ἐπλάσατο αὑτοῦ εἶναι γυναĩκα 44 45 46 47 48

Rosen 1999, 147. MacDowell 1971, 255. For an excellent, exhaustive list of all personifications in Aristophanes, see Komornicka 1964, 183–195. Storey 2011a, 363–4. Bakola 2010, 284. In addition, if the complaint in the muthos of Wine-Flask was basically the same as the complaint in Birds, then the implementation of the plan was similar as well: both involved transformations, the main characters of Birds into birds, and the main character of Wine-Flask into a pytine.

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καὶ ἀφίστασθαι τοῦ συνοικεσίου τοῦ σὺν αὐτῷ θέλειν, καὶ κακώσεως αὐτῷ δίκην λαγχάνειν, φίλους δὲ παρατυχόντας τοῦ Κρατίνου δεῖσθαι μηδὲν προπετὲς ποιῆσαι καὶ τῆς ἔχθρας ἀνερωτᾶν τὴν αἰτίαν, τὴν δὲ μέμφεσθαι αὐτῷ ὅτι μὴ κωμῳδοίη μηκέτι, σχολάζοι δὲ τῇ μέθῃ.” (“Wine-Flask, about himself and Drunkenness, employing the following plotline: Cratinus made Comedy his wife, wanting to stop living with him and to lodge a complaint of abuse; his friends appear and ask her not to do anything rash and to find out the reason for her enmity; Comedy complains that he no longer lives with her [lit. “writes comedy”], but spends all his time with Drunkenness.”) (Wine-Flask test. ii PCG) When the scholiast describes the play as “τὴν Πυτίνην, εἰς αὑτόν τε καὶ τὴν μέθην,” the words “εἰς αὑτόν” of course mean “about himself,” i. e. about a character named “Cratinus.” But it may in addition refer back to the previous word “Πυτίνην,” meaning about a character named “Cratinus” as a pytine. This reading is perhaps more plausible if it is accepted that “μέθην” refers as well to a personification. Then the sentence states that the play is autobiographical but also featured two personifications, one of a pytine named “Cratinus” and one of Drunkenness. The muthos deduction of Pytine I have outlined so far, then, would begin with Cratinus’ complaint against his wife’ s harassment. Once his complaint has been established, Cratinus would introduce his plan: persuade his wife to accept Drunkenness as a part of their marriage. One possibility could be that Cratinus literally brings methe on stage as a personification and proposes the idea to Comedy, resulting in Comedy’ s threat of divorce. But regardless of the precise details and whether methe was personified, by my hypothesis Cratinus’ plan must have involved an attempt to change Comedy’ s attitude towards his drinking, and that attempt most likely resulted in her threat of divorce. This last point is important, because typically it is assumed that Comedy’ s complaint was the background or initial event of the play. But as I have argued above, this would make Comedy the main character of an Aristophanic muthos, which seems unlikely since she is a personification. It seems much more likely instead that Comedy’ s threat of divorce is a new crisis caused by Cratinus’ actions, or more specifically by his attempt to implement his plan either soon after the play has started, or shortly before the action of the play begins (an in medias res beginning such as in Wasps or Peace where the plan is already in action from the start). This would also explain why the chorus of Cratinus’ friends arrives just at this moment, as described by the scholiast – Comedy is now threatening to sue for divorce as a reaction to Cratinus’ plan, and the friends need to stop her and reform Cratinus before it’ s too late. At this point in the play, Comedy would have the opportunity to voice her complaints about her marriage and explain to the chorus why she is suing for divorce. This is where the two fragments almost certainly spoken by Comedy would then occur. The text of the first fragment is doubtful, but the general meaning is fairly clear.

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Fragment 193: ἀλλ † ἐπαναστρέψαι βούλομαι εἰς † τὸν λόγον· πρότερον ἐκεĩνος πρὸς ἑτέραν γυναĩκ ἔχων τὸν νοῦν¸ † κακὰς εἴποι πρὸς ἑτέραν¸ ἀλλ ἅμα μὲν τὸ γῆρας¸ ἅμα δέ μοι δοκεĩ k l † οὐδέποτ αὐτοῦ πρότερον (“I want now to return to the story. Before when he turned his attentions to another woman, he wouldn’ t say anything good about that other woman, but now partly his old age, and partly … he appears to me … nothing like before.”) The reference to “τὸν λόγον” strongly indicates that this fragment appeared somewhere towards the beginning of the play, where a character, most likely Comedy, was summarizing background information for the chorus and the audience that would provide the basis for the rest of the comedy. The second is fragment 194: γυνὴ δ᾿ ἐκείνου πρότερον ἦ, νῦν δ᾿ οὐκέτι. (“I used to be his wife, but now no longer.”) Since it seems unlikely that Comedy actually divorced Cratinus during the play, this fragment is also probably a part of Comedy’ s complaint establishing her role in the muthos and why she intends to divorce Cratinus. In addition, Biles writes that “several fragments suggest that the debate in the agon took the form of a domestic trial in place of the formal legal proceedings Comedy initially threatened.”49 If this was the case, then the following three fragments probably belonged to the part of the play where Comedy and Cratinus faced off in their domestic “court”: Fragment 197: τὴν μὲν παρασκευὴν ἴσως γιγνώσκετε. (“Perhaps you realize their preparation.”) Fragment 207: ἀπὸ ποτέρου τὸν καῦνον ἀριθμήσεις; (“From which one will you count up the lots?”) Fragment 206: τοὺς μὲν ἐκ προχοιδίου, τοὺς δ᾿ ἐκ καδίσκου. (“Some from the wine jug, others from a decanter.”) However, it is unclear whether these fragments would directly follow the part of the play where Comedy established her complaint or occurred later in the play. If there was a domestic trial in the play and the play used the muthos I have outlined, then there would be a major difference if the trial occurred earlier in the play or after the parabasis as in Wasps. If Cratinus was turned into a pytine around the 49

Biles 2011, 160.

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middle of the play, in a trial after that point he may also have participated as a pytine. Given that the domestic trial scene in Wasps features objects brought on stage as witnesses, this may be less unlikely than it at first seems. It can also be reasonably assumed that Cratinus responded to Comedy’ s complaints, perhaps beginning with fragment 197 above if the trial occurred in the earlier part of the play.50 But Cratinus’ defense seems to have also failed, because as mentioned above one of his friends apparently took the desperate measure of threatening to destroy all his drinking vessels to prevent him from consuming alcohol: Fragment 199: πῶς τις αὐτόν, πῶς τις ἂν ἀπὸ τοῦ πότου παύσειε, τοῦ λίαν πότου; ἐγᾦδα. συντρίψω γὰρ αὐτοῦ τοὺς χόας, καὶ τοὺς καδίσκους συγκεραυνώσω σποδῶν, καὶ τἄλλα πάντ᾿ ἀγγεῖα τὰ περὶ τὸν πότον, κοὐδ᾿ ὀξύβαφον οἰνηρὸν ἔτι κεκτήσεται. (“How then, how could someone put an end to his drinking, his drinking to excess? I know. I will smash his pitchers and crush and blast his decanters and all the other drinking vessels that he has, and he won’ t have even a vinegar saucer left for his wine.”) If Biles is correct that the pytine provided an indestructible defense against these threats to his drinking paraphernalia, then the following fragment must have followed soon after: Fragment 201: ὄψει γὰρ αὐτὴν ἐντὸς οὐ πολλοῦ χρόνου παρὰ τοῖσι δεσμώταισι καταπιττουμένην. (“You will see it not long from now coated with pitch by the prison guards.”) Instead of a pytine for Cratinus’ use as some commentators assume,51 in this muthos deduction Cratinus himself appears on stage here as the indestructible pytine. By purposefully building anticipation for the pytine’s entrance, this fragment seems to support the idea that there was something extraordinary or unexpected about the pytine itself. It could suggest that Cratinus’ appearance as a pytine may

50 51

See Biles 2011, 161 note 106, who identifies it as a “rhetorical tropos” used by the defense. He however overlooks that it typically began a speech by the defense. See for example Biles 2011, 149.

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have been a surprise to the characters in the play as well as to the audience. Just when it seemed all was lost, with this event it could be that Cratinus unexpectedly succeeded in implementing his plan to integrate Drunkenness into his marriage with Comedy. As mentioned above, Bakola has also discussed the possibility that the pytine was a character in the play, but assumed that it was a “female entity”52 as methe may have been. It is true that in Aristophanes, personifications of feminine nouns are often female (for example εἰρήνη, διαλλαγή, etc.). But that is not always the case. In the passage cited above from Wasps, for example, a cheese grater is called as a witness in a trial. Although the cheese grater is feminine in Greek (τυρόκνηστις), there is no suggestion that the object on stage is feminine. In addition, in Birds some of the bird names have a feminine ending, but those birds do not seem to be portrayed as female.53 So although the gender of a noun can define its gender on stage, it is not decisive, and there is no reason that a man, Cratinus, could not be transformed into an object with a feminine gender but retain masculine characteristics.54 If Cratinus’ transformation into a pytine was the implementation of his plan, then the parabasis (see fragment 210 and especially fragment 211) would have followed soon after, ending the muthos. Some fragments may then be interpreted to show that the “episodes” continued by exploring the direct consequences of the implementation of the plan, just as occurs in several plays of Aristophanes. A large group of the fragments that survive could possibly come from this section of the play. As I will show, almost every one of these fragments is at least consistent with the idea that Cratinus has been turned into a pytine. In a famous fragment that takes up the river metaphor applied to Cratinus at Knights 526–8, Cratinus is described as a raging flood: Fragment 198: ἄναξ Ἄπολλον, τῶν ἐπῶν τῶν ῥευμάτων. καναχοῦσι πηγαί· δωδεκάκρουνον 〈τὸ〉 στόμα, Ἰλισὸς ἐν τῇ φάρυγι· τί ἂν εἴποιμ᾿ 〈ἔτι〉; εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἐπιβύσει τις αὐτοῦ τὸ στόμα, ἅπαντα ταῦτα κατακλύσει ποιήμασιν. (“Lord Apollo, the flood of his words, springs splashing, twelve spouts to his mouth, an Ilissus in his throat. What can I say? If somebody doesn’ t put a plug in his mouth, he will inundate everything here with his poetry.”) 52 53 54

Bakola 2010, 283. See Dunbar 1995, 242–3. Intriguingly, an alternative reading recorded in PCG of the beginning of fragment 201 is “ὄψει γὰρ αὐτόν” instead of “ὄψει γὰρ αὐτὴν.” Could the source of this error be the conflict of Cratinus’ male gender with the female gender of the word pytine?

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Despite the attention devoted to this fragment because of its intertextual relationship to Knights, it has been largely ignored that the metaphor here differs notably from the one in Aristophanes. In Knights the metaphor applies to Cratinus and his poetry generally, but here the focus is more specifically on Cratinus’ voice, mouth and throat. Of course it could be that Cratinus is on stage declaiming his poetry. But this emphasis would make perhaps even more sense if Cratinus is now a pytine who spouts poetry. This would also explain why putting “a plug in his mouth” would stop his poetry – if he were not a pytine, he could certainly at least keep writing poetry with his mouth plugged. So this fragment can be interpreted to show that Cratinus in Wine-Flask was not only turned into a wine flask, but that the wine flask spouted or poured poetry from its mouth in liquid form. Since there are also references to writing in the fragments, Cratinus may even have written with his “mouth” by using what came out as ink. In fragment 208, it seems that Cratinus is being coached on what to write, perhaps because he is still getting used to daily life as a pytine: ληρεῖς ἔχων· γράφ᾿ αὐτὸν ἐν ἐπεισοδίῳ. γελοῖος ἔσται Κλεισθένης κυβεύων † ἐν τῇ κάλλους ἀκμῇ. (“You are talking nonsense. Write him in a scene. Cleisthenes will look really ridiculous, playing dice at the height of his beauty.”) Then in fragment 209 the idea of writing and the metaphor of poetry as a flowing liquid are combined: Ὑπέρβολον δ᾿ ἀποσβέσας ἐν τοῖς λύχνοισι γράψον. (“Write in Hyperbolus among his lamps, and extinguish him.”) The idea of extinguishing Hyperbolus with his poetry makes more sense (and is perhaps funnier) if we imagine Cratinus here literally spouting poetry on the page mocking Hyberbolus. A further possibility is that in both fragments, Cratinus is “working with” a partner because as a pytine, he has no arms or hands and needs assistance with the mechanics of writing. At another point in the play, it could be that Cratinus as a pytine is nearly empty and needs more wine to continue writing. Fragment 202 reads 〈ἆρ᾿〉 ἀραχνίων μεστὴν ἔχεις τὴν γαστέρα; (“Do you have a stomach full of spiderwebs?”) This could certainly be Cratinus addressing the pytine or another drinking vessel as others have argued,55 but it may also be that this is the same speaker as in fragments 208 and 209. This speaker would then be now disappointed with Cratinus’ poetic output, and is asking if he’ s run out of “inspiration,” i. e. wine, and needs a refill. Similarly, fragment 203 could indicate that Cratinus is running on empty and desperate for wine: ὕδωρ δὲ πίνων οὐδὲν ἂν τέκοι σοφόν. (“By drinking water you would never create anything great.”) Although it seems a pytine was normally meant to hold only unmixed wine, it could be that since the Greeks usually drank wine mixed with water, Cratinus as a pytine also held wine mixed with water. In that case the fragment may indicate that he has tried to stretch out his wine with water too far, to the point where he is holding almost nothing but water. Here it is

55

See for example Ruffell 2002, 157.

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controversial whether Cratinus is speaking or not,56 but I would suggest that this may again be the speaker who advised Cratinus in fragments 208 and 209. Now this speaker would be reminding Cratinus that if he fills up on too much water his “writing” as a pytine will suffer, perhaps because then what comes out would also be too diluted and weak. But it may also be that Cratinus could go too far in the other direction, and not add enough water. In fragment 196, there is another reference to mixture ratios: τὸν δ᾿ ἴσον ἴσῳ φέροντ᾿· ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἐκτήκομαι. (“Which can handle a mix of one to one. But I am perishing.”) The consensus among scholars is that this fragment is probably spoken by Cratinus. But in addition to meaning “I am perishing,” the word ἐκτήκομαι can also have the literal sense of “I am melting.” Since we know from fragment 201 that the pytine was sealed with pitch, the comic situation alluded to here could be that the pure wine in question is so strong it melts the pitch sealing Cratinus as a pytine. This would of course also offer opportunities for visual comedy on stage if Cratinus as a pytine starts to leak, partially collapse and so on. To sum up, then, the following is my speculative muthos deduction for this play:

Wine-Flask

Complaint

Plan

Implementation

Marriage incompatible with alcohol

Integrate alcohol into marriage (to keep writing comic poetry)

Husband is transformed into a flask for alcohol

If the play in fact used the Aristophanic muthos, then I would argue that the fragments strongly indicate that Cratinus was the main character of the muthos, his complaint was drinking conflicted with his marriage to his wife, and his plan was to convince his wife to somehow accept his drinking. That the implementation of this plan involved him turning into a drinking vessel is of course highly speculative. But this possibility is both indirectly suggested and left intriguingly open in the fragments that remain. What happened later in the play, whether Cratinus remained a pytine, for example, or if the play took an entirely different direction involving additional unexpected plot elements – none of that can be determined from the fragments by deducing a muthos. This means that a possibly key moment such as fragment 200, ἀτὰρ ἐννοοῦμαι δῆτα τῆς μοχθηρίας τῆς † ἠλιθιότητος τῆς ἐμῆς (“But I realise the depths of my foolish behavior”), cannot be located or even confidently attributed to a particular speaker based on this muthos. Most commentators cite this fragment as evidence that Cratinus at some point recognized his drinking was 56

See Biles 2011, 141 with note 30.

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a problem. If so, given my outline of the muthos it is unlikely to have occurred before the parabasis. But these words could just as easily have been spoken by Comedy, realizing that her complaints about Cratinus’ drinking and threats of divorce were misled.57 Both would be possible in the muthos I outlined, because the Aristophanic muthos does not decisively determine further developments in the later parts of the play after the muthos has ended – and least of all how the play itself ended. One final problem with the plot of this play that has perhaps been overlooked by commentators remains. There is a contradiction in the scholiast’ s description of the role of the chorus that in some ways is harder to explain than it may at first appear: the chorus is explicitly said to be “friends” of Cratinus, but at the same time apparently opposed to him and his drinking. The usual assumption is that drinking is ruining Cratinus’ life, so of course friends could be expected to oppose it. But wouldn’ t “friends” in an Old Comedy typically support a character even in his worst addiction, such as the chorus in Wasps? Are these “friends” fellow drinkers, and if so why don’ t they work to force Comedy to accept Cratinus’ heavy drinking instead of Cratinus to accept abstinence or moderation? And if they’ re not fellow drinkers, then what is the basis of Cratinus’ friendship with them? At the same time, as discussed above, the play seems to have featured a good deal of concrete writing activity and instruction – as if Cratinus is in the company of other experts in his craft. A solution to the problem of the chorus’ attitude to the hero, therefore, could be that Cratinus’ “friends” were actually fellow writers of Old Comedy. Their friendship with Cratinus would be based on work, and since Cratinus’ drinking is disturbing his work, this would explain their opposition. Storey has already hypothesized that Aristophanes was a character in the play: “I wonder if Cratinus brought not only himself into his own play but also a rival poet, and who better than Aristophanes? A rival would be the ideal person to threaten his drinking paraphernalia (F 199) and perhaps speak (F 198), the reaction to something Cratinus has just said.”58 If this were true, a chorus of poets would also be a logical group to support Aristophanes as an opponent to Cratinus’ plans. Unfortunately, no amount of speculation here will get us closer to the truth. But I believe the problem of the chorus’ attitude to Cratinus should at least be added to the list of challenges facing scholars attempting to reconstruct this important play. I will now turn to several other Old Comedies where much less evidence remains. In these cases, I will limit myself to brief demonstrations of how examining the fragments for clues of a complaint and a plan can be used to deduce a muthos.

57 58

As suggested for example by Rosen 2000, 32. Storey 2011a, 363.

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5. Beasts and Fishes These two plays with animal choruses both seem to have involved deals made between humans and the choruses. Scholars have focused on the “wild” nature of the chorus in Beasts by Crates I. The assumption is that they posed a threat to the humans in the play59 or defined a realm outside human society, concluding that “the opposition between civilized and non-civilized life was central”60 such as in Birds. I will show here that another possibility suggested by the fragments is that the beasts’ most important trait was that, unlike domesticated animals, they have no masters. It could therefore be that the main opposition in the muthos of this play was not human versus wild, but servile versus free. This direction has already been explored in a short essay about the play by Konstan, who argued that the plot involved “the creation of a society in which slavery had been abolished,”61 and that the chorus were “figures who defend the abolition of slavery … implicitly … on their own behalf.”62 This means that for Konstan, the members of the animal chorus “implicitly” view themselves as being used as “living tools” just as slaves are. But this approach fails to explain why the chorus is composed of wild animals (theria) as the scholars referred to above have emphasized, and not for example domesticated animals who are more directly “enslaved.” Wild animals may be hunted and eaten and therefore used as tools like domesticated animals, but they also live free, making them less convincing as “slaves who are being given a voice.” Wild animals could, however, still be convincing as advocates of freedom acting out of solidarity with their fellow animals held in slavery, including humans. If this were the case, then the play would combine the idea of an animal chorus representing the “wild” and Konstan’ s idea of an animal chorus defending the abolition of slavery – human and animal. Assuming that the muthos of the play did in fact turn on the opposition of servile versus free, clearly the complaint in the play would have been against servility. This idea is supported by two fragments quoted by Athenaeus, who writes that they present opposing arguments (Athenaeus 267e–68a). As Konstan has shown, the first fragment seems to directly refer to a plan to abolish slavery: Fragment 16 (A.) ἔπειτα δοῦλον οὐδὲ εἷς κεκτήσετ᾿ οὐδὲ δούλην, ἀλλ᾿ αὐτὸς αὑτῷ δῆτ᾿ ἀνὴρ γέρων διακονήσει; (B.) οὐ δῆθ᾿· ὁδοιποροῦντα γὰρ τὰ πάντ᾿ ἐγὼ ποιήσω. (Α.) τί δῆτα τοῦτ᾿ αὐτοῖς πλέον; (B.) πρόσεισιν αὔθ᾿ ἕκαστον

59 60 61 62

See for example Wilkins 2000, 341. See Ceccarelli 2000, 453. Konstan 2012, 13. Konstan 2012, 16.

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τῶν σκευαρίων, ὅταν καλῇ τις “παρατίθου, τράπεζα. αὐτὴ παρασκεύαζε σαυτόν. μάττε θυλακίσκε. ἔγχει κύαθε. ποῦ ᾿σθ᾿ ἡ κύλιξ; διάνιζ᾿ ἰοῦσα σαυτήν. ἀνάβαινε μᾶζα. τὴν χύτραν χρῆν ἐξερᾶν τὰ τεῦτλα. ἰχθύ βάδιζ᾿.” “ἀλλ᾿ οὐδέπω ᾿πὶ θάτερ᾿ ὀπτός εἰμι.” “οὔκουν μεταστρέψας σεαυτὸν ἁλὶ πάσεις ἀλείφων;” (“(A.) So no one will have a slave boy or slave girl, and every old man will have to work on his own for himself? (B.) Not at all, for I shall make everything self-mobile. (A.) What advantage will they get from that? (B.) Why, every utensil will appear when someone calls. ‘Table, put yourself in place here, and set all the places on your own. Grain sack, start kneading. Pitcher, start pouring. Where is that cup? Come and rinse yourself out. Barley loaf, up on the table. The cook pot should be ladling out the beets by now. Fish, get a move on.’ ‘But I’ m not done yet on the other side.’ ‘Well, flip yourself over and baste yourself in salt and oil.’”) Besides describing a society without slavery, the fragment suggests that this will be a society without work in general. An old man will not have to do things for himself, but also it seems no one will have to do this kind of work anymore. As has often been observed,63 in this kind of utopia it is in fact the absence of work that makes slavery unnecessary. So the plan presented probably imagined the abolition of labor in general, not just slavery. Yet what has attracted less attention is how modest this life without work seems to be. The scene describes a simple meal of grain, wine, barley loaf, beets and fish64 – everyday products within the budgets of most Athenians. Therefore it is possible that the society described here is one that presents a tradeoff: there is no work, but there are also no luxuries. This then would be in direct contrast, as Athenaeus suggests, to the other plan presented: Fragment 17 ἑξῆς δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα ὁ τὸν ἐναντίον τούτῳ παραλαμβάνων λόγον φησίν· ἀλλ᾿ ἀντίθες τοι· ‘γὼ γὰρ αὖ τραπέμπαλιν τὰ θερμὰ λουτρὰ πρῶτον ἄξω τοῖς ἐμοῖς ἐπὶ κιόνων, ὥσπερ διὰ τοῦ Παιωνίου ἀπὸ τῆς θαλάττης ὥσθ᾿ ἑκάστῳ ῥεύσεται εἰς τὴν πύελον. ἐρεῖ δὲ θὔδωρ “ἀνέχετε.”

63 64

Konstan 2012, 13. Fish was not necessarily a luxury product. See Fisher 2000, 368 discussing “a joke on the standard topos that the right of ordinary people to buy fish was a democratic principle.”

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εἶθ᾿ ἁλάβαστος εὐθέως ἥξει μύρου αὐτόματος ὁ σπόγγος τε καὶ τὰ σάνδαλα. (“Then right after this the person taking up the counterargument says: But just consider the other side. I shall do the exact opposite and provide hot baths for my people, straight from the sea on columns, just like at the House of Healing, so that it will flow into everyone’ s bathtubs. The water will say, ‘Turn me off now, people,’ and immediately will arrive on its own a jar full of scented oil, a sponge, and sandals.”) Some scholars see an opposition here between the “kitchen and the bathroom” as Storey65 has argued, but I would agree with scholars such as Ruffell66 that the more important contrast is between everyday products or activities and luxury goods or services. Hot baths with indoor plumbing as well as scented oils were reserved for the privileged few in Athens. Here, however, it seems they have been automated and therefore made available to everyone. Yet the fragment is conspicuously silent on the topic of work. This could be because the second plan also contrasted to the first by retaining slavery and therefore work. This would make sense if the primary opposition in the play was between servile and free as I have suggested above. So the second plan may have promised a kind of “technological development”67 where advances created by work allow luxuries to become more accessible to everyone – but only if work is still a central human activity. If this is true, then the first plan would be a sort of socialistic way to end servility in society by offering a modest life to everyone, the second plan a more capitalistic way to make servility acceptable by offering certain luxuries to everyone. It is not possible to definitively determine which, if either, of these plans won the argument. But I believe there are some hints that the first plan was perhaps implemented in the play. One fragment remains that was almost certainly spoken by a member of the animal chorus: Fragment 19 (A.) καὶ τῶν ῥαφάνων ἕψειν χρὴ ἰχθῦς τ᾿ ὀπτᾶν τούς τε ταρίχους, ἡμῶν δ᾿ ἄπο χεῖρας ἔχεσθαι. (Β.) οὐκ ἄρ᾿ ἔτ᾿ οὐδὲν κρέας, ὡς ὑμεῖς λέγετ᾿, οὐδ᾿ ὁτιοῦν ἐδόμεσθα, οὐδ᾿ ἐξ ἀγορᾶς, οὐδὲ τάκωνας ποιησόμεθ᾿ οὐδ᾿ ἀλλᾶντας;

65 66 67

Storey 2011a, 215. Ruffell 2000, 481. Meineke 1839, 237 also proposed this idea. Konstan 2012, 15.

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(“(A.) Also you may boil cabbages and roast fresh and salted fish, but keep your hands away from us. (B.) So, as you [pl.] say, we won’ t be eating meat any more, no tripe any more, no meat pies, no sausages?”)68 As noted above, Konstan believes that this fragment demonstrates that the chorus supported the end of slavery on its own behalf, and therefore shared the complaint against servility. But if the animals are speaking instead as advocates of freedom as I have suggested, then it would be more likely that someone with a complaint against servility has approached the animals for help in abolishing slavery. In that case, the complaint would be made by a human character seeking help from the chorus, which could then choose to support it or reject it. This conforms much more closely to the structure of the Aristophanic muthos outlined above, where it is always the main character of the muthos who has the complaint, and the chorus who either supports or rejects that complaint. My speculation then would be that if this play featured an Aristophanic muthos, the complaint driving the muthos might be servility. This complaint could be voiced by an actual slave, but that is not required by this muthos deduction, only that the main character of the muthos voiced the complaint, not the chorus. Since the wild animals in the play represented freedom, the person with the complaint against servitude approached the wild animals for help in abolishing slavery. This would parallel the muthos of Birds, but differently than is usually suggested. In Birds, the chorus certainly does represent a non-human realm that needs to be approached by humans with caution. But beyond that, the birds in that play offer a potential alternative power structure effective against existing human and divine power structures. This is the reason the characters with the complaint in Birds approach the birds, and the way the characters finally implement their plan of finding a new society. Similarly, in Beasts my suggestion would be that the plan of the character opposing slavery is to appeal to the wild animals for help in ending slavery. The second plan offering luxury as the reward of work or slavery could have been the obstacle the hero of the muthos had to overcome. The implementation of the plan could then have occurred when the wild animals used their powers to abolish servitude for humans, given they accepted a more modest lifestyle – and stopped eating meat. Here then is my speculative deduction of an Aristophanic muthos in this play:

Beasts

68

Complaint

Plan

Implementation

Servility

Get free beasts to help abolish work

Beasts are convinced to abolish work

Storey here translates Kock’ s reading οὐδ᾿ ἔτι χορδὰς instead of οὐδ᾿ ἐξ ἀγορᾶς.

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Turning to Archippus’ Fishes, the “deal” made there between humans and animals is explicitly described by Athenaeus (329b) as a treaty or contract. As in Beasts, it seems likely that if this play featured an Aristophanic muthos then the deal was the implementation of the plan. But the fragment describing the deal gives very little indication of what humans would gain from the agreement, and therefore what the complaint or plan was: Fragment 27 κατὰ τὰς συγγραφὰς γὰρ τῶν ἰχθύων καὶ Ἀθηναίων ταυτὶ πεποίηκεν· ἀποδοῦναι δ᾿ ὅσα ἔχομεν ἀλλήλων, ἡμᾶς μὲν τὰς Θρᾴττας καὶ Ἀθερίνην τὴν αὐλητρίδα καὶ Σηπίαν τὴν Θύρσου καὶ τοὺς Τριγλίας καὶ Εὐκλείδην τὸν ἄρξαντα καὶ Ἀναγυρουντόθεν τοὺς Κορακίωνας καὶ Κωβιοῦ τοῦ Σαλαμινίου τόκον καὶ Βάτραχον τὸν πάρεδρον τὸν ἐξ Ὠρεοῦ. (“In accordance with the treaty made between the fishes and the Athenians he [Archippus] has written this: to give back what we have of each other’ s: in our case [the fishes] the Thracian women and Atherine the aulos-girl and Sepia the wife of Thyrsus and the Red Mullets and Euclides the former archon and the Tilapians from Anagyrus and the son of Goby from Salamis and Batrachus the inspector from Oreos.”) Most of the other fragments that remain are clever plays on words typical of Archippus revealing almost nothing about the plot. There is however one fragment that indicates a complaint, apparently about political life: Fragment 14 αἱρουμένους τε πραγμάτων ἐπιστάτας ἀποδοκιμάζειν, 〈εἶτα δοκιμάζειν〉 πάλιν. ἢν οὖν ποιῶμεν ταῦτα, κίνδυνος λαθεῖν ἁπαξάπαντας γενομένους παλιναιρέτους. (“When electing our political leaders to reject them first, 〈then approve〉 them afterwards. So if we keep on doing this, there is a real danger that without realizing it they all become ‘second catch.’”) The word παλιναιρέτους specifically referred to politicians who were disqualified for office a first time, but then reelected later.69 But the word could also refer to fish 69

This is confirmed by fragment 98 of Eupolis’ Dyers from a citation in Harpocration (p. 231.7 Dindorf): ὅτι γὰρ τοὺς τοιούτους ἐκάλουν παλιναιρέτους, καὶ τοὺς ἀποχειρο-

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that were caught once, thrown back in the water because they weren’ t a good catch, and then caught again at another time. So at first glance this fragment seems to be simply another example of a play on words applying to both fish and humans. But apparently the speaker here is also trying to explain the political situation in Athens to an outsider. Otherwise it would seem more logical for the speaker simply to use the word παλιναιρέτους without first explicitly stating its definition. The most obvious possibility, then, would be that this is an Athenian describing the city’ s politics to the fish. The reason the speaker uses the word παλιναιρέτους in that case would be (besides to make a clever play on words) to put the complaint that Athenian politicians are not first choice in terms fish would understand. If that was the complaint driving the muthos in this play, then it indicates that the hero with the complaint may have approached the fish for help as in Birds and perhaps Beasts. Additional evidence for this idea is found in fragment 30: ἄνδρες ἰχθύες (“men of the fishes”). As Wilkins has observed, this could be from “a stage in the play where the chorus is being won round.”70 That would make sense if the driver of the muthos with the complaint formally addressed a kind of “jury” or deciding body of fish to plead his or her case, and again used terms that would be most appropriate or best understood by the fish. One other fragment may hint at the political significance of the deal between the Athenians and the fish, and so perhaps the plan. Fragment 28 describes a scene where the tragic poet Melanthius – a famous lover of fish according to Athenaeus – was himself offered as food to the fish. Although almost certainly an act of revenge on the part of the fish, this scene may also indicate that the fish played a role in ridding Athens of fish gluttons in the play. As Davidson71 has shown, excessive consumption of fish was associated in Athens with political corruption or even despotism. The play could have relied on this prejudice to portray all people with anti-democratic tendencies at Athens as natural enemies of the fish as well, meaning the interests of the speaker of fragment 14 would be aligned with the interests of the fish. So if a character who is dissatisfied with politics at Athens like the speaker of fragment 14 was the main character of the muthos, and this scene with Melanthius is representative of others like it (which is unfortunately impossible to determine given the evidence), then the plan may have been to recruit the fish to help eradicate citizens who ate too much fish, and therefore those responsible for the poor state of political affairs in the city. But the evidence is so slight here that this can be only considered no more than an interesting possibility.

70 71

τονηθέντας τὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ πάλιν χειροτονηθέντας, Εὔπολίς τε ἐν Βάπταις δηλοῖ καὶ Ἄρχιππος ἐν τοῖς Ἰχθύσι. (“That they called men whose election had been overturned and subsequently reversed ‘second catch’ is revealed by Eupolis in Dyers and Archippus in Fishes.”) Wilkins 2000, 346. Davidson 1993.

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In this muthos deduction, then, the complaint would be the one familiar from a number of Aristophanes’ plays: bad government. The plan cannot be determined, but there is some hint it may have been to remove citizens like Melanthius who were seen as a negative influence on politics in the city. The implementation seems to have been the agreement or treaty between the fish and the people of Athens that stipulated handing over fish gluttons to the fish. This then would be a possible outline of the muthos of this play:

Fishes

Complaint

Plan

Implementation

Bad government

(Eliminate anti-democratic influences?)

Treaty with fish to hand over fish gluttons

6. Spongers Some of the basic elements of the plot of this play by Eupolis are already clear from the testimonia and fragments: Callias, a wealthy Athenian who squandered his inheritance on parties, was an important character; Protagoras as well as Alcibiades were referred to in the play; and the chorus was composed of spongers who probably took advantage of Callias. But past plot reconstructions are still not much more than “fantasies pasted over an elaborate framework,” as Olson complains.72 If however it is assumed that the play featured an Aristophanic muthos, then it is at least possible to deduce the likelihood of some speculative muthos scenarios as opposed to others. For example, the parallels between Clouds and this play have led Storey to suggest that since “the debts incurred by Pheidippides are the starting point” of that play, we could speculate that Spongers opens with Callias “extravagantly committing all his property to finance his great party.” But in Clouds, debts themselves are not the starting point of the muthos. Strepsiades’ complaint about the debts is the starting point. If Callias himself is incurring the debts and not complaining about them, who would be complaining about his behavior? Not his father, since his father’ s death is precisely what has made Callias rich by inheritance. The complaint would also probably not come from the chorus of spongers, or Protagoras (who is portrayed in fragment 157 as a kind of sponger himself), or Alcibiades. Furthermore, if debts were the complaint in this play, it is difficult to understand how the constellation of spongers and a lavish party at Callias’ house could even vaguely involve a plan to erase those debts as in Clouds. In fact, from both the testimonia (see Spongers test. iv and v PCG) as well as the fragments (see fragments 160, 165 and 157), it seems that the expensive dinner was an aspect of the play, suggesting that encouraging Callias to overspend or go into debt was somehow 72

Olson 2016, 38.

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83

connected to the plan. So if the play featured an Aristophanic muthos, from the evidence available it seems unlikely that Callias’ debts were the complaint. On the other hand, Storey also compares fragment 158, πίνειν γὰρ αὐτὸν Πρωταγόρας ἐκέλευ᾿, ἵνα πρὸ τοῦ κυνὸς τὸν πνεύμον᾿ ἔκπλυτον φορῇ (“Protagoras ordered him to drink so that he have his lungs well soaked before the rising of the Dog Star”), to “a scene like that at Clouds 133–221, the student explaining to Strepsiades the ways of Socrates.”73 If this comparison is correct, then it would suggest that Protagoras’ activities serve the plan of the main character of the muthos just as Socrates’ activities are meant to in Clouds. This would in turn indicate that the hero’ s complaint was against Callias, since clearly Protagoras and the spongers are “more concerned with exploiting their target than with expressing sophistic ideas.”74 The spongers could then be a chorus that sides with the main character of the muthos and shares his or her interests of ruining Callias.75 This would also fit with Storey’ s conclusion that we should see the “comedy as more like the latter half of Wasps than like Clouds, as a mild satire on the character and behavior of Kallias.”76 If this were the case, then fragment 173, most likely from the parabasis, may be more than just a generic boast: φημὶ δὲ βροτοῖσι πολὺ πλεῖστα παρέχειν ἐγὼ καὶ πολὺ μέγιστ᾿ ἀγαθά. ταῦτα δ᾿ ἀποδείξομεν (“I say that we provide for mortals by far the greatest and most numerous benefits, and we shall prove this.”) It could be that the spongers also literally “proved this” in the play by ruining Callias, explaining their claim to provide benefits not just to rich people, but to “mortals” in general. So the speculation here is that the muthos involved a complaint against Callias, a plan to ruin him with the help of the spongers and perhaps Protagoras, and the implementation of the plan that may have included a lavish party that filled out the “episodes” following the muthos. From the point of view of the muthos, the closest parallel in Aristophanes would then be Knights: characters with a complaint against a particular individual (the Paphlagonian) plan to ruin that individual with the support of the chorus. But who was this main character of the muthos with a complaint against Callias, and what exactly were the specifics of the complaint? Since Callias seems to be his own worst enemy and essentially self-destructive, it is hard to see what 73 74 75

76

Storey 2003, 188. Storey 2003, 193. An additional logical possibility in this case would be that the hero is actually a sponger as well. This sponger could, for example, share the complaint voiced in fragment 172 from the parabasis, that “the sponger must come out with many witty things immediately or be chucked out the door,” and want to ruin Callias in order to in some way appropriate his wealth directly. But this would require a hero who is entirely a villain, someone whose goals could not be reasonably shared by the audience. Since Aristophanes’ plots never give the plan to what I would describe as a completely unsympathetic character like this, I have omitted this option from the discussion. Storey 2003, 193.

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others would have to complain about him. But apparently there was one aspect of Callias’ decadent entertainments that harmed other citizens: his womanizing. In fragment 81 of Cratinus’ Thracian Women, Cratinus is said to have mocked Callias ὡς Φώκου γυναῖκα μοιχεύσαντα καὶ τρία τάλαντα δόντα εἰς τὸ μὴ κριθῆναι (“for having had sex with the wife of Phocus and for paying three talents to avoid going to court.”) Callias was also associated with the adulteries of Alcibiades, and fragment 171 of Spongers may, as Storey points out, be a reference to Alcibiades’ habit of seducing other men’ s wives.77 Given these accusations, it could be that fragment 168, κατ᾿ ἀντιβολίαν δέκα τάλαντ᾿ ἀπετεισάμην (“On appeal I came away with ten talents”) was spoken by a man who was a victim of adultery and then extorted (the comically inflated) sum of ten talents from Callias to drop the charges. This would actually make more sense than attributing the line to Alcibiades as some have considered, because although Alcibiades did apparently “on appeal” receive a second dowry of ten talents from Callias for marrying his sister, Spongers was produced five years before that second dowry.78 There is some very slight evidence, therefore, of a complaint against Callias and his entourage for adultery and endangering the wives of other men – but this is highly speculative. A muthos deduction for this play could then be outlined as follows:

Spongers

Complaint

Plan

Implementation

Wealthy man (and his adulteries?)

Convince wealthy man to host a dinner (to bankrupt him)

Wealthy man agrees to host a disastrously expensive dinner

7. Old Age Scholars agree that this play by Aristophanes featured “a chorus of old men who are rejuvenated and begin to behave like licentious youngsters.”79 This is supported by Athenaeus’ description that introduces fragment 129: κριβανίτην· τούτου μνημονεύει Ἀριστοφάνης ἐν Γήρᾳ. ποιεῖ δὲ λέγουσαν ἀρτόπωλιν διηπρασμένων αὐτῆς τῶν ἄρτων ὑπὸ τῶν τὸ γῆρας ἀποβαλλόντων· (A.) τουτὶ τί ἦν τὸ πρᾶγμα; (Β.) θερμούς, ὦ τέκνον. 77 78 79

For a full discussion of both points, see Storey 2003, 194–5. See Storey 2003, 195–196. Beta 2014, 217. See also note 63 on the same page for a list of references. For a good summary of where the rejuvenation theme appears in the rest of Aristophanes and Greek literature in general, see Crichton 1993, 67–68 with note 88.

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85

(Α.) ἀλλ᾿ ἦ παραφρονεῖς; (Β.) κριβανίτας, ὦ τέκνον, (A.) τί; κριβανίτας; (Β.) πάνυ δὲ λευκούς, ὦ τέκνον (“Oven-baked loaf: mentioned in Aristophanes’ Old Age. He has a bread-woman speak after her loaves have been seized by those who had cast off their old age: (A) What’ s the meaning of this? (B) Give me hot ones, kiddo! (A) Are you crazy? (B) Oven-baked ones, kiddo! (A) What? Ovenbaked ones? (B) And real white, kiddo!“) In addition, Süvern80 conjectured a complaint preceded the rejuvenation: “ehe es zu der Verjüngung gedeihn konnte musste allerdings … die Darstellung der Altersbeschwerden an den Greisen, und des Conflictes, dem sie dadurch ausgesetzt waren, die Hauptsache ausmachen.” Direct evidence of this complaint is found in fragment 132, apparently spoken by an old man whose eyes are failing him: ὀφθαλμιάσας πέρυσιν εἶτ᾿ ἔσχον κακῶς, κἄπειθ᾿ ὑπαλειφόμενος παρ᾿ ἰατρῷ (“Last year I was badly off with eye-disease, then I got something to rub into them at the doctor’ s”) Indirect evidence of a complaint about old age can also be found in fragment 148. Here a character asks an old man about his interest in women: ὦ πρεσβῦτα, πότερα φιλεῖς τὰς δρυπεπεῖς ἑταίρας ἢ σὺ τὰς ὑποπαρθένους, ἁλμάδας ὡς ἐλάας στιφράς; (“Old man, do you fancy the girlfriends who are ripe, or the fresh ones, firm as salted olives?”) This may simply be a question about the old man’ s sexual preferences, but the speaker could also be asking the old man what he misses most about youth. In that case, the context would probably be a discussion about what he will be able to enjoy again after shedding his old age. This would suggest that he is too old for “girlfriends”, in turn implying a complaint about sexual decline in old age. So despite the extremely limited evidence for this play, there are some indications of an Aristophanic muthos: the complaint could be old age, the plan to 80

Süvern 1827, 6–7.

86

II. The Aristophanic Muthos

become young again, and the implementation rejuvenation. Logically the main character of the muthos would be an old man, but that cannot be established from the evidence. From Athenaeus’ comment and perhaps from fragment 144 describing what could be preparations for a wedding, it also seems likely that after the plan was implemented, the play demonstrated the benefits of rejuvenation until a triumphant end (the marriage) in the “episodes.” In this part of the play, the old men perhaps also encountered and dismissed others such as the outraged speaker B in fragment 129. But there is one important question about this play that has perhaps been ignored. Scholars seem to assume that the title “Old Age” simply refers to the abstract concept of old age as the theme of the play. Yet if that were true, this play would be an exception among the surviving plays of Aristophanes, and perhaps among Old Comedies in general. When a surviving play by Aristophanes is named after an abstract concept such as peace or wealth, that abstract concept is personified in the play. In the case of Wealth, the personification even plays an active, speaking role. In addition, old age is personified elsewhere in Aristophanes. At Birds 607, Old Age is referred to as a god on Olympus who allows mortals to lead long lives. So it could as well be that Old Age appeared on stage personified as a god. Support for this idea may also be found in some interesting parallels between this play and another fragmentary play by Aristophanes, Amphiaraus. Scholars since as far back as Bergk81 have speculated that like Old Age, the plot of Amphiaraus revolved around the rejuvenation of an old man. In addition, both fragment 29 of Amphiaraus and fragment 147 of Old Age refer to the wagtail bird, with both fragments possibly from rejuvenation scenes. And last, fragment 33 of Amphiaraus refers to the slough of a snake, stating that it is also called the snake’ s old age (γῆρας),82 suggesting that the title of Old Age may also be a play on this second meaning of the word. Since all of these commonalities are linked to the rejuvenation theme, it could be then that the plots in these two plays also shared certain important elements related to rejuvenation. For example, in Amphiaraus it is almost certain that the old man was rejuvenated by going to the shrine of Amphiaraus and appealing to Amphiaraus as a divine power. If the plots were similar, then in Old Age the god Old Age could have been the divine power who rejuvenated the old men, and therefore probably appeared on stage as a character. This may also explain why the wagtail bird is mentioned in both plays. Commentators have concluded that this bird or dancing like this bird was linked with erotic incantations.83 In Amphiaraus it seems very likely therefore that the wagtail bird reference was part of the appeal to Amphiaraus. This could in turn suggest that in Old Age, the reference appeared 81 82 83

See Bergk in Meineke 1840, 951: “in integrum sane … restituitur ille senex et iuvenile robur recipit.” See also Aristotle, History of Animals V 17.549b26. See Faraone 1992.

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as well in the context of an appeal to the god Old Age, which would be an additional indication that Old Age appeared on stage as a character. Similarly, in Old Age the second meaning of the word γῆρας raises the possibility that the old men may have literally shed their old age in the play like a slough. Athenaeus’ choice of the word ἀποβαλλόντων (“cast off ”) in fragment 129 also has the literal sense of “shed,” but fragment 33 of Amphiaraus may lend support to this theory as well. It seems at least probable that rejuvenation is being compared to shedding in this fragment, and possible that in Amphiaraus as well the old man literally shed his old age. How this could actually be staged is suggested by the scene in Lysistrata where the chorus of old men attempts to rejuvenate itself (ἀνηβῆσαι, line 669). First they take off their shirts in line 662, and then encourage each other at line 670 to ἀποσείσασθαι τὸ γῆρας τόδε (“shed their old skin” or “shake off their old age,” depending on how the word γῆρας is understood). Compton-Engle argues that the old men could not have actually removed any further articles of costume in this scene. But they may have evoked the image of “shedding old age as a snake sheds its skin” by indicating “explicitly with a gesture to the somation or mask at τόδε.”84 So in a very similar context, the actors removed one part of the costume when “rejuvenating,” and then at least threatened to remove their somation or mask to complete the process. A possibility therefore could be that in Old Age the actors did in fact remove either the mask or the somation. Since there was never actual nudity on stage, this would then mean that they wore another younger-looking somation or mask underneath. Intriguingly, fragment 130 of Old Age refers to Mormo-goblin masks. In the fragment the speaker asks τίς ἂς φράσειε ποῦ ᾿στι τὸ Διονύσιον ὅπου τὰ μορμολυκεῖα προσκρεμάννυται (“Who can tell me where Dionysus’ precinct is, where the Mormo-Goblins are hung on display?”) Could it be that a newly rejuvenated old man is looking for an appropriate place to hang up the old-man mask he just took off? That would not at all conflict with the Biles’ suggestion85 that this fragment is part of a demand for victory for the play, since Dionysus’ precinct is where masks from the winning plays were kept. The joke would perhaps work even better if the play required a mask to be hung up, as if victory was assured. In addition, Green has argued that “the underlying motive for the dedication of the masks in the earliest days of the theatre was a more serious one, to leave behind with the god in his sanctuary the ‘otherness’ created in his honour, and not to take it out into normal society.”86 If this is true, then the play could have made comic use of this serious dimension by having a character leave behind his old “self ” to go out into normal society with a younger one within the context of the play. It is

84 85 86

Compton-Engle 2015, 54. Biles 2011, 87 note 126. Green 1994, 79.

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of course equally possible that all references to shedding in both plays were only metaphorical and not literal. To summarize, then, the outline of the muthos deduction for Old Age would be similar to muthoi in Aristophanes such as Acharnians or Wealth:

Old Age

Complaint

Plan

Implementation

Old age

Appeal to Old Age (?) for help (to regain youth)

Rejuvenation (by shedding their old age?)

8. Demes This play by Eupolis is a rare instance of a fragmentary Old Comedy where scholars are confident about certain aspects of the plot. As Storey declares, “the plot is clear: four dead leaders of Athens (Solon, Miltiades, Aristides, Pericles) returned from the dead to Athens, and presumably put things right in that city.” He also argues that Pyronides, the hero, brought the four back from the dead in the first part of the comedy, commenting “this would be the ‘great idea’ at the heart of Eupolis’ play.”87 So in this unusual case where evidence of the plot of an Old Comedy remains, that evidence also indicates that the play featured the Aristophanic muthos, suggesting that this was a muthos used by other plays in the genre. The precise plot of the play still cannot be confidently reconstructed, but here I would like to focus on one controversial aspect of what we know of the play’ s structure that would significantly affect the muthos. Although there is debate about whether the plan in the play involved descending to Hades as in Frogs or raising the four from the dead without descending to the underworld,88 in either case the arrival of the four dead men is thought to be part of the implementation of the plan. However, at lines 45–47 and 60–68 of fragment 99 the chorus seems to be meeting the four dead leaders for the first time. In addition, this fragment is parabatic in structure, suggesting that it belongs somewhere in the middle of the play.89 The problem therefore is to explain why the chorus seems to have been absent when the four were raised from the dead. Three explanations have been proposed.90 The first is that there were two choruses, one of dead demes in the first part and one of living demes in the second part. The 87 88 89 90

Storey 2011b, 94–95. For an overview see now Olson 2017, 296–299. See Storey 2003, 116 for a brief metrical analysis. The first two options are summarized with full bibliography, and the last option proposed in Storey 2003, 127–131. Olson 2017, 298 introduces the interesting objection that a necromancy is less likely because the “insubstantial, temporary apparitions” that result differ from people actually brought up from Hades. These apparitions he believes

8. Demes

89

second is that the first part of the play was “a scene of necromancy or summoning” that allowed the chorus of demes to “watch what went on, sing a song between the  … raising scenes … and generally lend their assistance.” The third is that fragment 99 is actually the end of “a parabasis-like feature within the parodos.” This would mean that the play opened with a short first scene or prologue in which the four were brought back in some way from the dead, and the chorus entered afterwards. By this hypothesis, the rest of the first part of the play was an agon concerning whether to hand over the state to the four dead leaders with the chorus acting as judges. The parabasis was then followed by scenes showing the beneficial consequences of handing the state over to the four. The first option has been rejected by many modern scholars as unnecessary and implausible. If fragment 99 is thought to be from the parabasis, then the second option does not necessarily solve the problem of why the chorus is meeting the four for the first time. The third option solves both problems, but with a fundamental difference: it actually implies an entirely different plan than the other two. In the second explanation, the plan remains as in the first to raise the four from the dead – the only difference is the method. But in the third option, the plan changes to handing over the state to the four, since Pyronides raises them from the dead at the opening of the play without facing serious obstacles. In support of this third option, Storey draws a parallel with the structure of Lysistrata and Assemblywomen.91 But in those plays, no miraculous interventions are required to launch the rest of the muthos, and I think this is a crucial difference. A closer parallel would be Peace, where Trygaeus flies to heaven on a dung beetle before the chorus arrives. But this miraculous event is then followed by even more sensational and miraculous sequences in heaven, meaning the muthos itself is more cosmic (freeing Peace) in some ways than the flight to heaven that launches it. Similarly in Acharnians, Dicaeopolis enacts his private peace by drinking the libations before the chorus arrives, but this brief action is not in any way more sensational or fantastic than the conflict with the chorus that follows. So although it is certainly possible for the “episodes” in a play by Aristophanes to be more exciting than the muthos, there is no play of Aristophanes where the opening scene presents an inciting event so extraordinary that it could be said to eclipse the plan itself as Storey suggests. I would add another possibility, a modification of the second option described above. A successful necromancy could be the implementation of the plan, and handing over the state to the four the “end” of that plan. This would require Pyronides to face some obstacle or obstacles to be overcome when performing the necromancy in the first part of the play. Once these obstacles to the necromancy

91

could not for example ask for food or wander the city as the four apparently do in this play. Storey 2003, 130.

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were out of the way, the actual raising could have occurred off-stage during the parabasis. This would explain why the chorus is present in the first part of the play but nevertheless meets the four for the first time after the parabasis. In this fourth option, an additional logical possibility would be that none of the four were named before they appeared on stage. So who appeared after Pyronides successfully brought the men back from the dead would be a surprise, perhaps also explaining why the actual raising of the four occurred off-stage. Lastly, this would still allow the play to continue once the muthos has ended with an agon concerning whether to hand over the state to the four dead leaders with the chorus acting as judges. As we know from the opening of Odyssey 11, summoning the dead was a fairly complex procedure. It was also apparently hard to summon a particular individual – the dead come up randomly, and Odysseus has to wait for Teiresias to arrive while preventing the other shades from drinking the sacrificial blood. All of these elements would lend themselves well to comedy and could easily be the subject of the entire first part of the play, as Dionysus’ descent to Hades is in Frogs. And as in Frogs, it may not have been entirely clear which of the dead with the proper qualifications would be brought back to life. So although we cannot know what obstacles stood in Pyronides way, it seems at least plausible that Pyronides would have to work fairly hard to perform the necromancy, instead of just confidently launching the process immediately. In addition, it is not unusual in Aristophanes for a culminating action to occur off-stage during the parabasis. For example, in Clouds Pheidippides is transformed by his education during the second parabasis, meaning that his entire education occurs during the parabasis. Similarly, in Knights Demos is rejuvenated off-stage during the parabasis. It could be objected that new important characters do not appear on the stage for the first time after the parabasis in either of these cases. But that is precisely what occurs in Frogs, where Euripides and Aeschylus appear after the parabasis and dominate for the rest of the play. The following then is a muthos deduction for this fourth option:

Demes

Complaint

Plan

Implementation

Bad government

Raise former statesmen from the dead (to bring back good government)

Pyronides is able to perform necromancy

9. Frogments Revisited Although these are all only muthos deductions, there is still a possibility that they could be helpful as guides for reconstructing the plots of these plays. But that would only be the case if the Aristophanic muthos was fairly precisely copied in these other plays, and that is far from certain. So except in the few cases where a

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plot summary survives, Olson’ s warning that the “reconstruction of the plots of lost comedies is almost inevitably doomed to failure”92 is no less valid for muthos deductions. But as an experiment to determine if the approach I have illustrated here might yield fairly accurate outlines of the Aristophanic muthos if that muthos was actually used in the fragmentary play, I would like to return to Dover’ s challenge in his foreword to The Rivals of Aristophanes called Frogments. As a cautionary lesson to scholars of fragmentary Old Comedies, Dover asked the reader to imagine that “no text of Aristophanes’ Frogs had survived, and … that for our knowledge of Frogs we were wholly dependent on citations.”93 He then selected fifteen citations at random, and demonstrated what scholars would conclude about the play based on this evidence. First, it could be determined that Dionysus, Aeschylus and Euripides were characters in the play. Second, there was apparently a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, so it could also be safely concluded that, third, Dionysus was the arbiter of the contest. But since the evidence led to an incorrect dating in Dover’ s experiment, Euripides is thought still to be alive at the time of the play. This means that, fourth, Aeschylus must have been raised from the dead by Dionysus to debate Euripides. And because there is a chorus of frogs, scholars conclude that, fifth, the contest took place “not in the underworld itself, but at its boundary, and in the ghost of Aeschylus there are echoes of the ghost of Teiresias in the Odyssey.” Obviously, many of these conclusions are highly inaccurate. But since Dover’ s point is that this kind of inaccuracy is inevitable with fragments, the test of the approach used above would be to determine whether even with partially incorrect information, the Aristophanic muthos in a play can still be outlined with any accuracy. To begin with then, the conclusion that Dionysus raised Aeschylus from the dead and was the arbiter of a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides strongly suggests that Dionysus is the main character of the muthos. If he is the main character, then by my understanding of the Aristophanic muthos Dionysus must also have the complaint that drives the muthos. And if it is correct that Dionysus has retrieved Aeschylus from the underworld and Euripides is his adversary in a contest, it is also logical to conclude that literary skill is the subject of Dionysus’ complaint. This in turn indicates that Dionysus’ complaint was either about the current quality of tragedy or about current tragic poets in Athens, as opposed to poets of the past such as Aeschylus. As a result, Dionysus’ plan was apparently to go to the underworld to find Aeschylus. Whether the “end” of this plan is to bring Aeschylus back to earth or whether the contest with Euripides was intended to somehow improve the literary scene in Athens on its own cannot be determined. All that can be said is that the plan required a trip to the boundary 92 93

Olson 2015, 35. Dover 2000, xvii.

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of the underworld and possibly to the underworld itself. As I argued with Demes above, it seems unlikely here that Dionysus could descend to the underworld or raise Aeschylus from the dead in a short sequence that would leave room for the contest in the first part of the play. Therefore, I would conclude that either descending to the underworld or raising Aeschylus from the dead was the main action of the first part of the play containing the muthos, and the contest occurred in the second part of the play as in many of the surviving works of Aristophanes. By this reconstruction then, the muthos of Frogments could be outlined as follows:

Frogments

Complaint

Plan

Implementation

Poor state of tragedy

Go to Hades (to bring Aeschylus back?)

Dionysus succeeds in reaching Hades (or succeeds in raising Aeschylus to the border of Hades?)

Comparing this outline with that of the real Frogs below reveals clear and significant differences: Frogs

There are no good poets left in Athens

Go to Hades (to bring Euripides back)

Entry into Hades

However, the first two elements of the Aristophanic muthos are basically the same: the complaint is about literary quality of tragedies and the plan is to descend to Hades. The “ends” of the two plans are quite different, but I have argued that these “ends” are not part of the muthos and so cannot be reconstructed using the muthos concept. The two implementations differ as well somewhat, although in both cases they deal with accessing Hades for the purposes of the plan. This is because the evidence for Frogments leaves it entirely unclear what obstacles Dionysus’ plan encounters, which in turn means the implementation cannot be more precisely defined. In addition, the complaint in Frogments is much more vague than the complaint in Frogs. Again, this is only to be expected when there is so little evidence remaining of the play. Perhaps more surprisingly, it makes no difference using this approach whether the frogs are assumed to be the chorus throughout the play or not. The identity of the chorus has no bearing on the muthos here, and so does not affect the accuracy of the reconstruction of the muthos. Dover conducts his experiment in reconstruction by following the conventional approach of making educated guesses, citing Meineke and Kaibel as models. The result is the following reconstruction: “Dionysus, sickened by Euripides, has persuaded uncle Pluto and step-sister Persephone to let him bring the ghost of Aeschylus back to earth in order to put Attic tragedy back on the rails.” But before he can bring Aeschylus back to Athens, Dionysus is the arbiter of “a contest

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between the two tragic poets [that] takes place not in the underworld itself, but at its boundary.” To begin with, Dover’ s reconstruction posits Euripides in particular as the subject of Dionysus’ complaint. The fragments certainly suggest a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, and as a result that literary quality is the complaint. But just because Euripides is Aeschylus’ opponent in the contest does not necessarily mean that Dionysus’ complaint is against Euripides. It shows only that Dionysus’ complaint is probably against the current state of tragedy at Athens. Similarly, there is no mention of Pluto or Persephone in the fragments Dover has selected, so this cannot be substantiated by the evidence. And although it seems true that Dionysus’ plan involves raising the dead Aeschylus in some way, there is no way to determine if it is in order to bring him “back to earth” as Dover writes, or if it is only to bring him to the edge of Hades. Finally, Dover’ s reconstruction includes the contest between the two poets as the culmination of the play. Since it seems reasonable to conclude that Dover believes Dionysus’ descent to Hades and his persuasion of Pluto or Persephone would take up at least the first half of the play, this suggests that the contest would occupy the entire second half of the play. Again, this cannot be determined from the evidence of a contest Dover has presented. Here, however, Dover’ s speculation turns out to be correct – that is exactly how the contest plays out in the real Frogs. So Dover’ s approach is highly unpredictable. Sometimes his educated and judicious guesses are basically correct, sometimes they miss the mark entirely, and sometimes they are surprisingly accurate. On the other hand, applying the criteria defined by the Aristophanic muthos is more reliable for reconstructing the events in the first part of the play. But it is also highly limited in scope, and can contribute only so much to the reconstruction of the play as a whole or its plot. This suggests that educated guesses can be important and useful for reconstructing many elements of the play, but are less reliable for reconstructing the events of the muthos. The most effective approach to the fragments of Old Comedy may be to combine the use of some muthos criteria with the more general approach for reconstructing other elements of the plot. This is the approach I will take in the next chapter to analyzing fragmentary plays from another category of Old Comedy that is completely lost, mythological comedy.

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III. The Muthos in Mythological Old Comedy Summary 6SK*VTLKPLZIHZLKVUT`[OVSVNPJHSZ[VYPLZHYL[OV\NO[[VKPɈLYMYVTV[OLY6SK*VTLKPLZ Z\JOHZ[OVZLVM(YPZ[VWOHULZWYPTHYPS`I`[OLPYT`[OVSVNPJHSWSV[TH[LYPHSHUKUV[I`[OLPY Z[Y\J[\YHSMLH[\YLZ0ZOV^[OH[[OLL]PKLUJLTH`PUZ[LHKPUKPJH[L[OH[[OLZL6SK*VTLKPLZ UL]LYVYYHYLS`PUJS\KLKHWHYHIHZPZVYHUHNVU0[OLUHYN\L[OH[[OPZTH`ILILJH\ZL[OL T\[OVZPUT`[OVSVNPJHSJVTLKPLZM\UKHTLU[HSS`KPɈLYLKPUZPaLWSHJLTLU[HUK[`WLMYVT [OLT\[OVZPU(YPZ[VWOHULZ;OPZTLHUZ[OH[T`[OVSVNPJHS6SK*VTLK`JV\SKILHKPZ[PUJ[ JH[LNVY`VM6SK*VTLK`^P[OKPɈLYLU[Y\SLZHUKJVU]LU[PVUZ(WWS`PUN[OPZTVKLS0KPZJ\ZZ PUKL[HPS[OLZ[Y\J[\YLVML]LU[ZPUMV\YMYHNTLU[HY`T`[OVSVNPJHSJVTLKPLZI`*YH[PU\Z

Although most of Old Comedy is lost, the evidence indicates that there were two major categories of Old Comedy plots. One category used invented plots such the surviving plays of Aristophanes, the other plots based on myth.1 Mythological elements frequently appear in invented-plot plays, but this use of mythology is clearly distinguished by scholars from what are termed “mythological comedies” that derive their plots from mythological stories. The identifying characteristics of this category of comedy changed over time, but scholars agree that across all periods mythological comedy was fundamentally defined by its use of plots based on myth. For example, Handley states “the pre-existing stories and characters” from myth were the “basis for plot-construction … in mythological comedy.”2 Casolari writes that “Mythentravestie … mit Hilfe der Verzerrung bekannter mythischer Geschichten komische Wirkung anstrebt,”3 indicating that the plays narrated these “Geschichten.” Konstantakos defines the “sub-genre” as “consisting of full-scale burlesque of traditional stories about gods or heroes.”4 Scholars who have collected or counted these plays to provide an overview of the category of “mythological comedy” specifically in the Old Comedy period have also applied this same definition. In his seminal study for example, Mössner introduced a list of mythological Old Comedies by commenting: “ja, dass mythologische Stoffe in derselben [i. e. Old Comedy] sogar sehr häufig behandelt wurden, sehen wir noch heute aus den erhaltenen Titeln, von denen ein beträchtlicher Teil mythologische Namen enthält.”5 Mössner assumes that the mythological stories 1 2 3 4 5

The introduction as well as Sections 1 and 2 of this chapter incorporate revised material from Marsh 2020. Handley 1989, 413. Casolari 2003, 10 note 29. Konstantakos 2014, 161. Mössner 1907, 49.

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or “Stoffe” suggested by the titles in the list were treated in these plays “in ganzen Stücken.”6 More recently, introducing his discussion of the popularity or frequency of mythological comedy in different periods including the Old Comedy period, Nesselrath defines “Mythenparodie” as a play in which a poet “einen bestimmten Mythos … nachschuf.”7 So by the definition accepted by most scholars, a “mythological comedy” in the Old Comedy period is a play that narrates the mythological story it treats, altering the original only as much as will allow it to “nachschaffen” or reproduce that specific story from myth. Obviously then this category does not contain a play such as Frogs, for example, where mythological characters appear in an invented plot not directly based on any specific mythological story. In mythological comedy, a previously existing story was directly adapted or repeated, while in Frogs an entirely new plot was introduced by the play. But at the same time, mythological comedy seems to have been free to alter fundamental aspects of the myth as long the story remained recognizably the same. For example, Cratinus’ Dionysalexander substitutes Dionysus for Paris in the myth of the judgment. The surviving hypothesis of the play shows that the structure of events in the comedy still sufficiently paralleled the story of the myth to qualify as having “reproduced” that story, and therefore used the myth as a basis for its plot structure. So it makes no difference from a story point of view whether a mythological comedy treated “in a comic fashion a mythological tale without using a particular model,” or if it was “a parody of a particular tragic or epic version of the myth,” or if it used the story “for purposes of political satire,” to borrow Bowie’ s8 words. In all three of these cases, if the play recognizably narrated the story as I describe, then the plot of the play was still based on the myth. Yet despite the clear differences between the two categories of plots, scholars generally assume that mythological Old Comedies featured the same formal structures as Old Comedies with invented plots, for example a parabasis and an agon.9 No argument for this view has ever been put forward as far as I can see, apparently because it is considered self-evident. But as I will demonstrate below, close examination of all the evidence available indicates the precise opposite: that mythological Old Comedies may have practically never featured a parabasis or an agon. This would mean that mythological Old Comedy should be viewed as a distinct category of Old Comedy with different rules and conventions. Since all the evidence here is fragmentary, there is of course no way to conclusively prove anything concerning the structure of mythological comedy. But as I will show, the striking lack of evidence for these structures in mythological 6 7 8 9

Mössner 1907, 8. Nesselrath 1990, 188. Bowie 2000, 322. Examples of three plot reconstructions of specific plays assuming these structures discussed in more detail below are Kaibel 1895, 81, Bakola 2010, 101, and Henderson 2012, 7.

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comedy has so far escaped most scholars’ notice, and is hard to plausibly explain as simply an accident of chance. For this reason, the possibility that these plays lacked a parabasis and agon is worth considering. I follow an examination of the evidence with some speculations on the question of why mythological comedies may have lacked these structures.

1. Mythological Comedy and the Parabasis Since the only surviving Old Comedies are by Aristophanes, it is unclear to what extent they are typical of the genre. But by studying the fragments of lost Old Comedies, scholars have unanimously concluded that epirrhematic structures are not unique to Aristophanes, but common across the genre including mythological comedies. This view was already established in the nineteenth century, when Kaibel attributed a parabasis to Cratinus’ Odysseus and Company.10 Whittaker’ s close examination of the fragments11 and Gelzer’ s definitive study of the agon12 further confirmed this view on a more systematic basis. It is now often included in overviews of Old Comedy. For example, in his history of Greek comedy Landfester writes: “Bauformen wie Parabase und Agon mit ihrer je eigenen Metrik waren nicht weniger konventionell als dramatische Situationen wie Gelage und Feste.”13 More recently, Revermann states that “epirrhematic structures (agon, parabasis) can safely be considered as not confined to Aristophanes but genre-typical.”14 As will be discussed below, the recent reconstructions of Dionysalexander offered by Bakola and Nemesis by Henderson, for example, both assume epirrhematic structures were likely or probable elements of mythological comedies without any further discussion. But these surveys of the genre do not distinguish mythological comedy fragments from invented-plot comedy fragments. This is in part due to a more general tendency to discuss the genre of Old Comedy as if it was defined exclusively by comedies like the surviving plays of Aristophanes. Aristotle himself also sometimes refers to comedy in this way. In the Poetics at 1453a35–9, he clearly refers to a mythological comedy as an example of the genre: “οὐχ αὕτη ἀπὸ τραγῳδίας ἡδονὴ ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τῆς κωμῳδίας οἰκεία: ἐκεῖ γὰρ οἳ ἂν ἔχθιστοι ὦσιν ἐν τῷ μύθῳ, οἷον Ὀρέστης καὶ Αἴγισθος, φίλοι γενόμενοι ἐπὶ τελευτῆς ἐξέρχονται, καὶ ἀποθνῄσκει οὐδεὶς ὑπ᾽ οὐδενός” (“But this is not the pleasure which comes from tragedy; it is more characteristic of comedy. In comedy even people who are the bitterest enemies in the story, like Orestes and Aegisthus, go off reconciled in the end and 10 11 12 13 14

Kaibel 1895, 81. Whittaker 1935. Gelzer 1960. Landfester 1977, 267. Revermann 2006, 105.

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no one gets killed by anybody”). But previously at 1451b11–14, he writes: “ἐπὶ μὲν οὖν τῆς κωμῳδίας ἤδη τοῦτο δῆλον γέγονεν: συστήσαντες γὰρ τὸν μῦθον διὰ τῶν εἰκότων οὕτω τὰ τυχόντα ὀνόματα ὑποτιθέασιν” (“In the case of comedy this is in fact clear. The poets construct the plot on the basis of probabilities, and then supply names of their choosing”), as if all authors of comedy themselves determine the names of their characters, i. e. do not write mythological comedies.15 Since frequently modern scholars are concerned with discussing only this sort of play where we have the most evidence, as a shorthand they generally refer to comedy using invented plots simply as “Old Comedy.” This can result in a certain inconsistency even within the same scholarly text. For example, Seidensticker in an overview of Old Comedy first reminds the reader in a footnote that “since we unfortunately do not have any of the many parodies of myths which are attested for Old Comedy, we cannot determine whether and to what extent they differed from the surviving plays of Aristophanes.”16 But then later on, he writes that “while tragedy draws its subject matter from the rich reservoir of Greek myth and only rarely and in its early period dramatized current historical events … comedy invents its own stories,”17 obviously referring exclusively to invented-plot comedies, not Old Comedy as whole. Such generalizations seem to have had the unintended effect of encouraging scholars to basically ignore mythological comedy when assessing the genre as a whole. So while the surveys of the fragments referred to above certainly show that epirrhematic structures were common in the genre, they do not demonstrate that they were typical of the genre. If they were typical of the genre, then audiences would expect to see them, or not be surprised to see them, in each and every Old Comedy performed. But if they were only common in the genre, then audiences may have expected to see them only in some kinds of Old Comedies, but would have been surprised to see them in other kinds of Old Comedies – for example in mythological comedies. To determine if epirrhematic structures were typical of the genre, then, I will use this procedure. First, I will count the number of known lost plays and calculate 15

16 17

In both of these cases Aristotle may be thinking of the theater of his time, i. e. late “Middle Comedy,” not Old Comedy. But the point remains the same. In the first passage he explicitly includes the mythological comedy he cites in the genre of “comedy,” just as he cites Aristophanes at 1448a25–8 as a paradigmatic example of comedy. This means he understands mythological comedy in general to belong to the genre “comedy” across all periods. Then in the second passage even if he is thinking only of later comedy and not Aristophanes, he still seems to entirely overlook that later comedy as well included quite a number of mythological comedies. See Konstantakos 2003/4, 24–5 on Antiphanes’ Poetry fr. 189, who points out that mythological comedies were still produced even as late as the New Comedy period. Seidensticker 2005, 53 note 1. Seidensticker 2005, 40.

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the fraction of those plays thought to be mythological comedies, i. e. the percentage of known lost Old Comedies that were probably mythological comedies. Next I will determine the number of fragmentary mythological comedies that include parabasis or agon fragments. If these structures were typical of the genre, then it would be reasonable to expect parabasis or agon fragments to survive for an approximately equal portion of mythological comedies as they do for invented-plot comedies. In other words, if there is fragmentary evidence that, say, one out of four lost invented-plot comedies featured a parabasis or agon, then there should also be fragmentary evidence that roughly one in four mythological comedies featured a parabasis or agon. This approach assumes that the chances of survival for a parabasis or agon fragment are roughly the same for invented-plot comedies and mythological comedies. I see no reason why this would not be the case. The parabasis or agon of a mythological comedy would probably refer just as often to food or drink, for example, as in invented-plot comedies, and therefore be cited just as often by Athenaeus, or include just as many words that might interest lexicographers, another major source of fragments. In fact, the agon and parabasis must remain at least recognizably similar in terms of form and content (e. g. metatheatrical material, an argument) in all instances if they are to be identified at all. As a result, it seems reasonable to assume that they would also be cited at a consistent rate by the sources of the fragments, regardless of whether they appeared in invented-plot comedies or mythological comedies. Since I am dealing here with many tens of fragments, except in a few isolated instances I cannot review the arguments that have led scholars to identify them as parabasis or agon fragments. Instead, I will rely on the general consensus among scholars about these fragments to study them as a group. In particular, I will not reexamine all the fragments attributed to the parabasis from invented-plot plays. This is because there is a fairly large number of invented-plot comedy fragments attributed to the parabasis, and (unlike with the mythological comedy fragments) there is virtually no debate about their attribution.18 In the case of the agon, I will attempt to generally assess how secure the attributions are for all the fragments in this category. Detailed information about individual fragments and why scholars have attributed them to the parabasis or agon is available in the standard works on the fragments referenced here and more exhaustively in PCG.

18

See Whittaker 1935, 188: “The Comic Fragments offer so many examples from the Parabasis.…” A typical example is Eupolis’ Dyers, fragment 89: † κἀκεῖνος † τοὺς Ἱππέας συνεποίησα τῷ φαλακρῷ 〈l k〉 κἀδωρησάμην. (And as for the Knights I collaborated with the bald one on them and made him a present of them.) The meter is Eupolideans as is typical in the parabasis, and the content is metatheatrical, about a rival poet Aristophanes.

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Without producing a specific number, Bowie has already attempted to estimate the number of fragmentary Old Comedies that are mythological comedies. He concluded that they amounted to “about one third of the titles”19 remaining. Since he first estimates the number of Old Comedy titles at 385 including Aristophanes, this amounts to about 128 Old Comedies were mythological comedies. Yet it seems that both these numbers are slightly too high. In the biographical index of Harvey and Wilkins where Bowie’ s essay appears, the number of Old Comedy titles is 354 including Aristophanes’ fragmentary comedies, not 385. Then for the number of mythological comedies, Bowie cites Mössner20 as his source. But the number of titles in Mössner’ s list is only 95. In addition, among these 95 titles, there are several that should probably be eliminated. Aristomenes’ Dionysus in Training is almost certainly not a mythological comedy by the accepted definition, but an invented-plot play that puts the character of Dionysus through military training. The same is probably true of Nicochares’ Heracles the Producer, if in that play Heracles was made to produce a play. In addition, three titles included by Mössner do not appear in PCG: Crates’ Dionysus, Hegemon’ s Gigantomachy and Polyzelus’ Birth of Ares. But one author listed by Mössner seems to have been overlooked entirely in Harvey and Wilkins, Aristonymus, and two titles are attributed to this author including one mythological title, Theseus. So in total, Mössner’s count of mythological Old Comedy titles should probably be revised down to 90, and the one in Harvey and Wilkins revised up to 356. This means that there are 90 mythological comedies among the 356 Old Comedies we know of, or almost exactly one quarter. Of course none of these numbers can ever be exact given the uncertainties involved when guessing the contents of a play based on a title, but they can be considered accurate enough as rough approximations. Besides Whittaker, Sifakis in his study of animal choruses also lists all the fragments that he suspects are from the parabasis.21 In both of these cases, the parabasis fragments were identified on the basis of the meter and the content. Since scholars generally agree that the fragments cited in Whittaker and Sifakis

19

20 21

Bowie 2000, 318. Of course, these numbers must always remain only estimations because they are often based solely on a title or a few fragments. On the other hand, it seems far more likely that comedies with mythological titles might be actually non-mythological than that plays with non-mythological titles could actually be mythological comedies. An example would be Aristophanes’ Amphiaraus, which from the fragments seems to be about a visit to the shrine of the hero, not a mythological comedy about the hero. This means that there would actually be more parabasis or agon fragments thought to be from mythological comedies than there actually are, not less. But as I show here, despite this potential for overestimating the number of mythological comedies, there are still almost no parabasis or agon fragments from plays thought to be mythological comedies. Mössner 1907, 58–81. Sifakis 1971, 48–51.

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are from the parabases of lost comedies, these two sources combined provide a complete list of currently accepted surviving parabasis fragments. Of the 356 known Old Comedies then, 39 include fragments suspected to be from a parabasis by Whittaker and Sifakis based on the meter and content. The following is a complete list of the authors, titles and parabasis fragments found: Crates I, Games F28; Cratinus, Archilochuses F11, Thracian Women F76, Delian Maidens F26, Dramatic Rehearsals F38, Poofters (Malthakoi) F105, Odysseus and Company F153, Trophonius F237, Chirons F255; Eupolis, Nanny-Goats F13, Draft-dodgers F42, Dyers F89, Demes F99, 132, Spongers F172, Cities F219, 220, 239, Golden Race F316; Lysippus, Bacchae F4; Metagenes, Sacrifice-lover F15; Pherecrates, Slave-Trainer F52, Kitchen or Pannychis F70, Corianno F84, Tiddlers (Krapataloi) F102, Ant-Men F127, Persians F128, Tyranny F152; Philonides, Buskins F5; Plato, Wool-carders or Cercopes, F 96, The Little Kid F99, Hyperbolus F184, The One in Great Pain F117; Teleclides, Amphictyons F2, 4; Theopompus, The Mede F31; Aristophanes, Amphiaraus F30, 31, Anagyrus F58, 59, Danaids F264, 265, Farmers F112, 113, Heroes F319, 320, Thesmoriazusae II F347, 348, Merchant Ships F424. Additionally, the hypothesis of Cratinus’ Dionysalexander starts with the chorus addressing the audience. Some scholars believe this indicates a parabasis at this point in the play, but Storey and others have argued that this is parabatic material inserted into the parodos on the model of Frogs 354–371.22 Therefore scholars are divided on the question of whether this play had a parabasis, and the hypothesis cannot be considered as evidence of a mythological play with a parabasis. Of these 39 plays then, four are thought to be mythological comedies, Cratinus’ Odysseus and Company, Pherecrates’ Ant-Men, Plato’ s Wool-carders or Cercopes and Aristophanes’ Danaids.23 This is already a fairly low number. But in fact the number is far lower. This is because the list includes three fragments from mythological comedies which were thought to be from the parabasis by Sifakis and Whittaker but are no longer accepted by scholars as parabasis fragments. First, 22

23

Storey 2006, 110–113, where he also reviews the critics who believe this passage refers to a parabasis. Revermann 2006, 100 for example takes a similar approach to the passage as Storey. See also the detailed discussion of the text of the hypothesis in Bakola 2010, 297–304 arguing that it refers to a parabasis, and my discussion in Section 6 of this chapter below. Cratinus’ Run-aways seems to have featured Theseus, but it is less likely that it directly parodied a myth than that there were scenes in the in underworld such as in Frogs (see in particular fragment 57, where Theseus may be talking about his previous life). Similarly Chirons seems to have had a chorus of Centaurs, but since Solon is also featured, it is unlikely to have directly parodied a myth. Probably for these reasons they are excluded by Mössner 1907 from his list. In the case of Lysippus’ Bacchae, the title could be a mythological comedy on the model of Euripides’ tragedy, but it could equally be a comedy with a chorus of Dionysus’ female followers and starring Dionysus, for example. As a result, it is also not classified by scholars as a mythological comedy. For Aristophanes’ Amphiaraus, see note 19.

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Whittaker24 cites fragment 127 of Pherecrates’ Ant-Men, apparently a mythological comedy: ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς κύτας οἱ ἐν ἐμοῖν ἀποβανθ᾿ ἃ μέλλομεν ἀριστήσιν. (“But in my chests (?) . . . on which we are going to dine.”) The text is very uncertain here, so some editors have emended the line so as to produce a Eupolidean, a verse typical for the parabasis, with basically the same meaning. For example, Kock25 prints: ἀλλὰ καὶ κίσταις ἐν ἐμαῖσιν ἀπόκειθ᾿ ἃ μέλλομεν / ἀριστήσειν. This is the reading that Whittaker is referring to, and on the basis of this reading she attributes the fragment to the parabasis. But this is not the accepted text today, nor the one printed in Storey 2011b which is first quoted above. In addition, the content is not explicitly parabatic. Critics are only speculating that the author was metaphorically referring to his poetry as a feast. So in this case the text is too corrupt to state with any confidence that it comes from the parabasis based on the meter, and the content is not decisive. Second, in his table Sifakis includes fragment 153 of Cratinus’ Odysseus and Company: οὐκ εἰδυῖα τάδ᾿ οὐκετ᾿ ὄνθ᾿ οἷα τἀπὶ Χαριξένης. (“She doesn’ t realise that things are no longer what they were in the time of Charixena.”) The text above printed in Storey 2011a is in glyconics. But it was previously emended so that it became a Cratinean, a meter typical of the parabasis, as in Kock26: οὐκ ἰδίᾳ τάδ᾿ οὐκετὸν θοι τἀπὶ Χαριξένης. This must be the reading that Sifakis is referring to. So the fragment from Ant-Men above, this fragment was also attributed to the parabasis because of an emendation that resulted in a parabatic meter. The content is again not explicitly parabatic. That means this fragment can only be attributed to the parabasis on the basis of its meter, and only if a particular reading of the text is accepted which is not the reading printed in Storey 2011a. This is confirmed by Quaglia,27 who in his detailed study of the fragments of Cratinus finds no parabasis fragments from Odysseus and Company. In fact, he

24 25 26 27

Whittaker 1935, 188. Kock 1880, 180. Kock 1880, 59. Quaglia 1998.

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finds no parabasis fragments from any of the poet’ s mythological plays at all, just as in my assessment above.28 Finally, both Sifakis and Whittaker include a fragment from Plato’ s Woolcarders or Cercopes, fragment 96. But closer examination of this fragment indicates that it as well does not belong in the category of parabasis fragments. The fragment is cited by Hephaestion as an example of the platonicum meter: χαῖρε παλαιογόνων ἀνδρῶν θεατῶν ξύλλογε παντοσόφων. (“Greetings, gathering of ancient-born spectators, clever in every way.”) Whittaker concludes that “the platonicum [was] permissible in the haploun, for the greeting to the audience shows that it is parabatic.”29 This means that Whittaker believes this fragment is from the parabasis on the basis of the content alone, and that this fragment is the only piece of evidence indicating that the platonicum was permissible as a meter in the parabasis. It therefore cannot be securely attributed to the parabasis based on both meter and content, as is the case with most other fragments attributed to the parabasis. This is confirmed by Pirrotta, who warns: “Ich rate davon ab, dieses sog. ‘Platonicum’ nur anhand eines einzigen fragmentarischen Beispieles den parabatischen Versmassen zuzuordnen, zumal der einzige Anhaltspunkt für diese Interpretation der Inhalt ist.”30 In addition, Wilamowitz-Moellendorff31 previously noted that this meter occurs as well in the parodos of Wasps at lines 275–78. As I will discuss in further detail below, there is evidence that parabatic material may have frequently appeared in the parodos of mythological comedies. If so, this makes it at least equally plausible that this fragment is actually from the parodos, not the parabasis.32 This leaves only the parabasis fragments from Aristophanes’ Danaids, fragments 264 and 265:

28 29 30 31 32

See also Platonios’ comments on the choral parts in this play discussed below. Whittaker 1935, 190. Pirrotta 2009, 210 note 188. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1921, 438. For other audience addresses in the parodos, see Frogs 354–371. Other possible audience addresses in the parodos among the fragments include Cratinus Pylaea fragment 182, Cratinus Wealth-Gods fragment 171, Cratinus Cow-Herders fragment 20 together with fragment 17, Eupolis Demes fragment 99, Eupolis Maricas fragment 205, and as mentioned above the hypothesis of Cratinus Dionysalexandros. Another less certain possibility is TrGF II 646a. The addresses from the two mythological comedies WealthGods and Dionysalexandros as well as from Cow-Herders are discussed in more detail in the second half of this chapter.

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ὁ χορὸς δ᾿ ὠρχεῖτ᾿ ἂν ἐναψάμενος δάπιδας καὶ στρωματόδεσμα διαμασχαλίσας αὑτὸν σχελίσιν καὶ φύσκαις καὶ ῥαφανῖσιν (“the chorus used to dance dressed in rugs and sheets, having tucked sides of beef and sausages and radishes under their arms”) οὕτως αὐτοῖς ἀταλαιπώρως ἡ ποίησις διέκειτο (“so carefree for them was the making of poetry”) So actually there are parabasis fragments attributed to only a single play that is considered a mythological comedy. Obviously, this is far lower than the number attributed to invented-plot comedies. If 36 out of 266 invented-plot comedies include parabasis fragments, then a parabasis fragment survives for about 14 out of every 100 invented-plot plays.33 But here parabasis fragments survive from only one of 90 mythological comedies, i. e. somewhat less than one out of every 100 mythological comedies. Such a strikingly small percentage clearly indicates that the chance of finding a parabasis fragment for mythological comedies is much lower. This in turn may suggest that the parabasis was very rare in mythological comedy in general. Given the evidence presented above, I believe there are three possibilities to explain the isolated case of Danaids. One is that Danaids was not actually a mythological comedy, but an invented-plot play that featured or referred to mythological figures. This is unlikely, because fragment 272 of Danaids (from the scholiast on line 210 of Aristophanes’ Wealth) reports that in Danaids, Aristophanes seems to have “contradicted history” (δοκεῖ παρ᾿ ἱστορίαν λέγειν). This indicates that Aristophanes at least offered a version of “history” or the myth in his play, meaning the plot structure was based on the mythological story. A second possibility is that the parabasis was as common in mythological comedies as in invented-plot comedies, and by random chance only two parabasis fragments from a mythological comedy survives. This is of course possible, but as I have shown above it is highly unlikely. Scholars who argue for a parabasis in mythological comedy seem to have overlooked this anomaly. For example, Schmid appears to be aware of the problem, but still repeats that mythological comedies regularly featured a parabasis. He writes that the parabasis seemed “auch in Stücken der alten Komödie mit Mythentravestie vorgekommen zu sein,” 33

Despite the generally quite secure attribution of parabasis fragments based on meter and content, there is always the chance some of the fragments attributed to the parabasis from invented-plot comedies may still be “false positives.” But the much larger number of parabasis fragments attributed to invented-plot comedies means that even if a few may turn out not to be from a parabasis, enough would still remain to show the parabasis was certainly a fairly regular feature of these plays.

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but in a footnote only refers to these same two fragments from Danaids and the fragment from Plato’ s Wool-carders or Cercopes.34 Even if the fragment from Plato can be attributed to the parabasis solely on the basis of its content, Schmid still seems to have missed the striking fact that only two examples of a parabasis from mythological comedies could be found. Similarly, Hubbard in his study of the parabasis observes that no fragment before Cratinus can be securely attributed to the parabasis. He then goes on to argue that “though the number of fragments we possess from Magnes, Crates, Ecphantides, and other early poets is not large, it is large enough to make the absence of possible parabatic fragments striking.”35 As a result, he concludes that the parabasis was probably not a feature of these earlier plays. But it is of course much more striking that given the relatively large number of fragments remaining from mythological Old Comedies from all periods of Old Comedy, only two parabasis fragments from a single play survive from any of them.36 Simply on the grounds of the numbers, I would therefore reject this second possibility that the Danaids fragments are adequate proof that the parabasis was common in mythological comedies. The third possibility is that this play was an exception, a mythological comedy that surprised the audience with a parabasis. This could in part explain Platonios’ controversial claim that certain Old Comedies did not include choral parts: τοιοῦτος οὖν ἐστιν ὁ τῆς μέσης κωμῳδίας τύπος οἷός ἐστιν ὁ Αἰολοσίκων Ἀριστοφάνους καὶ οἱ Ὀδυσσεῖς Κρατίνου καὶ πλεῖστα τῶν παλαιῶν δραμάτων οὔτε χορικὰ οὔτε παραβάσεις ἔχοντα. (PCG 4, 192) (“This is the sort of thing Middle Comedy does, such as Aristophanes Aeolosicon and Cratinus’ Odysseus and Company and most of the plays of Old Comedy that do not have choral songs or parabases.”) Since it is obvious from the fragments that Odysseus and Company had a chorus and therefore “choral songs” of some sort, clearly the comment about choral songs is untrue, and in general his statements on this topic may be confused.37 But the assertion that these two plays had no parabases may still be based on some accurate information. Since both Aeolosicon and Odysseus and Company were mythological comedies, his reference to some Old Comedies without a parabasis may rely on 34 35 36

37

Schmid 1946, 44 with note 15. Hubbard 1991, 24. The lack of parabasis fragments from mythological comedies is also not the result of more mythological comedy fragments coming from the latter part of the Old Comedy period when the parabasis started to disappear in all types of comedy. In Mössner for example, about half of the poets cited in his list are classified as fifth century authors (marked “V”) in PCG, and half as fifth/fourth century (marked “V/IV”). For a full discussion with references, see Sommerstein 2009, 272–88.

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a valid statement from an earlier scholarly source about the lack of a parabasis in mythological comedy in particular. In that case, this testimony could confirm the evidence indicating that mythological Old Comedies still had a chorus, but almost never a parabasis. If true, the inclusion of a parabasis in Danaids may have been one way this comedy offered something new and unexpected to please the audience, i. e. a structural aprosdoketon.38 Since the two other possibilities above seem highly unlikely, I would argue that this must be the case. The evidence would then suggest that there was no hard and fast rule against including a parabasis in a mythological comedy, but that it was a very uncommon practice that was generally avoided.

2. Mythological Comedy and the Agon Like the parabasis, agon fragments can be identified by meter and content. Gelzer has conveniently collected all the fragments that can be plausibly attributed to the agon using these criteria. His list includes all the fragments included by Whittaker and many more. As a result, I will use Gelzer’ s list as the most complete basis for counting fragments generally accepted by scholars as coming from an agon. As with the parabasis, if the agon was just as common in mythological comedies as it was in invented-plot comedies, then it is reasonable to expect fragments of the agon to survive in equal proportions for both types of Old Comedies. Gelzer finds 43 fragmentary Old Comedies where there is evidence of an agon.39 Of these, nine are mythological comedies: Cratinus’ Odysseus and Company and Men of Seriphos, Pherecrates’ Ant-Men, Hermippus’ Birth of Athena, Aristophanes’ Daedalus, Danaids and Aeolosicon, Polyzelus’ Demos-Tyndareus, and Strattis’ Philoctetes. These initial numbers do not suggest that the agon was less common in mythological comedies. Since almost exactly one quarter of known Old Comedies are mythological comedies, with evidence that 36 invented-plot plays had an agon, it is reasonable to expect evidence of the agon for approximately nine mythological plays. 38 39

Zimmermann 2011, 706. The following is a complete list of the titles where Gelzer 1960 found agon fragments (In this case I have retained the titles Gelzer used for easy reference and comparison): Cratinus: Archilochoi, Bukoloi, Drapetides, Odysses, Seriphier, Cheirones, Horen, Deliades, Nomoi, Pytine, Crates, Theria, Tolmai; Pherecrates: Automoloi, Krapataloi, Myrmekanthropoi, Perser; Teleclides: Amphiktionen; Hermippus: Stratiotai, Geburt der Athene; Aristophanes: Daitales, Horen, Anagyros, Amphiaros, Telemesser, Daidalos, Plutos (1), Danaiden, Aiolosikon; Eupolis: Chryson Genos, Astrateutoi, Kolakes, Marikas, Autolykus, Demen; Polyzelos: Demotyndarus; Plato: Skeuai, Presbeis; Metagenes: Aurai; Ameipsias: Sphendone; Strattis: Philoktetes, Phrynichos, Musen; Theopompus: Stratiotides.

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But in reality this number may be far lower. This is because unlike with the parabasis, some meters used in the agon regularly appear in other parts of the play as well. As a result, depending on their content, some of these fragments found by Gelzer are actually much less likely to come from an agon. This means that it must also be determined if the fragments from mythological comedies indicating an agon are qualitatively equivalent in terms of their content to those from invented-plot comedies. My approach here will be to group the suspected agon fragments based on how explicitly they refer to an agon. The most likely agon fragments would then be those which seem to contain an actual debate or contest. A good example from this category is fragments 16 and 17 from Crates’ Beasts, where two opposing visions of the future are presented. Including Beasts, there are five invented-plot plays in this first category: Pherecrates’ Persians, Teleclides’ Amphictyons, Eupolis’ Autolycus and Phrynichos’ Muses. There are no mythological comedies in this category. The second most likely category contains those fragments that explicitly refer to the speech of another character, or an ongoing debate. An example from this category would be Fragment 6 from Cratinus’ Archilochuses, which refers to a speech just given by another character (perhaps Homer): εἶδες τὴν Θασίαν ἅλμην οἷ᾿ ἄττα βαΰζει; ὡς εὖ καὶ ταχέως ἀπετείσατο καὶ παραχρῆμα. οὐ μέντοι παρὰ κωφὸν ὁ τυφλὸς ἔοικε λαλῆσαι. (“Did you notice what the Thasian pickle brine was barking? He well and quickly and immediately got his own back. It’ s not, however, a blind man talking to a deaf one.”) There are eleven invented-plot plays including Archilochuses in this second category: Cratinus’ Cow-Herders, Seasons and Wine-Flask, Pherecrates’ Deserters and Tiddlers (Krapataloi), Aristophanes’ Banqueters, Eupolis’ Draft-Dodgers, Spongers and Maricas, and Metagenes’ Breezes. But there is a single fragment in this category from a mythological comedy, Pherecrates’ Ant-Men, to which I will return below. The least likely category are those fragments that are not part of a debate and do not refer to a debate, but are suspected by Gelzer on other grounds to come from an agon. The most plausible agon fragments within this category resemble the last example cited by Gelzer, fragments 56 and 57 from Theopompus’ She-Soldiers: καίτοι τίς οὐκ ἂν οἶκος εὖ πράττοι τετρωβολίζων, εἰ νῦν γε διώβολον φέρων ἀνὴρ τρέφει γυναῖκα; ἡ Θρασυμάχου 〈δ᾿〉 ὑμῶν γυνὴ καλῶς ἐπιστατήσει. (“And furthermore what household would not fare well on four obols a day, if a man now keeps a wife while making two obols? The wife of Thrasymachus will command you well.”)

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These fragments are from a character’ s argument for a female army, but they do not positively indicate that this argument was part of an agon. Still, the fact that the speaker is clearly trying to convince another character of an argument is reasonable enough grounds for including it in a list of fragments suspected of being from the agon. Gelzer writes that these fragments possibly come from a “Darlegungsagon” as in Lysistrata, “wo es um die Einrichtung einer Weiberarmee geht.”40 Similarly, Whittaker believes “it is possible, on Aristophanic analogy, that the whole Agon was one of exposition”41 as in Lysistrata. The rest of the comedies cited by Gelzer belong in this category, a total of 25. All of the mythological comedies are in this category, except Pherecrates’ Ant-Men as mentioned above. But unlike the fragments from She-Soldiers just cited, practically all of the mythological comedy fragments in this last category do not clearly refer in any way to an argument.42 Taking them in the order listed at the beginning of this section, Gelzer apparently takes fragments 143, 144 and 145 from Cratinus’ Odysseus and Company as all part of a debate with Polyphemus. But fragment 143 contains a description of a storm at sea, fragment 144 either sailing directions or perhaps a command to a sailor, and fragment 145 instructions to Polyphemus. None include any argumentation or debate. In addition, fragment 143 has often been attributed to the parodos.43 Similarly, fragment 220 from Cratinus’ Men of Seriphos is description of a strait that Gelzer apparently suspects metaphorically refers to someone’ s speech: οὕτω σταθερῶς τοῖς λωποδύταις ὁ πόρος πεινῶσι παφλάζει. (“The strait boils so constantly with starving muggers.”) The verb παφλάζει is also the root of Cleon’ s name “Paphlagon” in Knights, but this is the only indication this fragment refers to a way of speaking, or comes from an argument. Fragment 4 (in Kock’ s numbering) from Hermippus’ Birth of Athena is no longer attributed to the play in PCG and listed among his unassigned fragments instead (fragment 73). Fragment 5 is a description of robes: καιροσπάθητον ἀνθέων ὕφασμα καινὸν Ὡρῶν. λεπτοὺς διαψαίρουσα πέπλους ἀνθέων γέμοντας. 40 41 42

43

Gelzer 1960, 280. Whittaker 1935, 185. Since agon fragments are so difficult to identify, it could also be possible that Gelzer’ s list omits some fragments of an agon from a mythological comedy. But if the agon was as common in mythological comedy as in invented-plot comedy, then it would still be surprising that the proportion of obviously identifiable agon fragments is so much lower for mythological comedies than for invented-plot comedies. See for example Whittaker 1935, 182.

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(“A close-woven new robe with flowers 〈woven by〉 the Seasons. Gently caressing delicate robes laden with flowers.”) This fragment does not seem to indicate an argument in any way, but Gelzer cites it because there are some parallels in Aristophanes of mythological examples used in an argument. Fragment 257 of Aristophanes’ Danaids is described by Gelzer as a “Hinweis auf eine Auseinandersetzung”44 meaning that it refers to an upcoming argument, so it is in fact not suspected of coming from the agon at all: ἀλλ᾿ εἴσιθ᾿, ὡς τὸ πρᾶγμ᾿ ἐλέγξαι βούλομαι τουτί· προσόζειν γὰρ κακοῦ τού μοι δοκεῖ (“Well, go inside; I mean to probe this matter, for I seem to get a whiff of something bad”) Even assuming the fragment does announce a contest as Gelzer believes, that does not guarantee that the contest then actually occurred in the play. Fragment 8 from Aristophanes’ Aeolosicon only refers to seeing, not speaking or argumentation: καὶ διαστίλβονθ᾿ ὁρῶμεν, ὡσπερ ἐν καινῷ λυχνούχῳ πάντα τῆς ἐξωμίδος (“and we see everything, as in a new lantern, shining through the cloak”) From Polyzelus’ Demos-Tyndareus, fragment 3 is a description of several options and then a warning: τριῶν κακῶν γοῦν ἦν ἑλέσθ᾿ αὐτῷ τι πᾶσ᾿ ἀνάγκη, ἢ ξύλον ἐφέλκειν, ἢ πιεῖν κώνειον, ἢ προδόντα τὴν ναῦν ὅπως τάχιστα τῶν κακῶν ἀπαλλαγῆναι. ταῦτ᾿ ἔστι τρία Θηραμένους, ἅ σοι φυλακτέ᾿ ἐστί. (“At any rate his only possibility was to choose from three unpleasant options: (1) to drag a wooden beam about, (2) to drink hemlock, and (3) to give up the ship and get away from all his troubles as quickly as possible. These are the ‘three alternatives of Theramenes,’ which you must watch out for.”)

44

Gelzer 1960, 279.

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This could be part of an argument, but it could just as easily be part of a dialogue scene since no argument is referred to or explicitly indicated. Similarly, fragment 4 is either commands or instructions: † λεκανίῳ γὰρ πρῶτον μὲν ἐναπονίψεις, ἐνεξεμεῖς, ἐνεκπλυνεῖς, ἐναποβάσεις κυανία. † (“First you will wash in a basin, be sick in a basin, clean up in a basin, dye (?) 〈clothes〉 blue in a basin.”) Finally, from Strattis’ Philoctetes, fragment 45 is a description of people buying fish: κᾆτ᾿ εἰς ἀγορὰν ἐλθόντες ἁδροὺς ὀψωνοῦσιν μεγάλους τε φάγρους καὶ Κωπᾴδων ἁπαλῶν τεμάχη στρογγυλοπλεύρων. (“And then they come into the marketplace and buy large juicy sea bream and slices of tender round-sided Copaic eels.”) So all these fragments from mythological plays here are exceptional outliers in terms of their plausibility as agon fragments. In this last category there is virtually no direct evidence of even an ongoing argument in a mythological comedy. This leaves fragment 199 from Aristophanes’ Daedalus with a statement that a certain war is unjustified from the third category, and fragment 125 from Pherecrates’ Ant-Men from the second category. But the fragment from Ant-Men is actually an exception in that group, because the form of speech used is a request, in this case regarding fish: μηδέποτ᾿ ἰχθύν, ὦ Δευκαλίων, μηδ᾿ ἢν αἰτῶ παραθῇς μοι. (“Do not ever serve me any fish, Deucalion, not even if I ask for some.”) It is possible that this fragment could come from an argument about the benefits of fish, since the play apparently told the story of Deucalion and the flood. But because the fragment does not directly refer to an argument, it is still far less certain to come from an agon than those fragments that either directly indicate an ongoing argument or are clearly from an argument. So there is only one example of a fragment from a mythological comedy that certainly refers to an argument, debate or conflict of any sort, and that is the Daedalus fragment. As in the case of the parabasis fragments from Danaids discussed above, this may indicate that Daedalus did have an agon, and therefore may

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have been an exception among mythological comedies. But even this fragment is not certainly from a debate, and therefore cannot be securely attributed to the agon. So regardless of which part of the play this single remaining fragment came from, clearly the evidence for an agon in mythological comedies is many times weaker than for invented-plot comedies. As with the parabasis fragments, it also seems unlikely that so few likely agon fragments would remain from mythological comedies simply by random chance. In conclusion, I have found extremely limited evidence for the parabasis and the agon in mythological comedies. It seems possible that mythological comedies could accommodate these structures, but apparently only in exceptional cases. With invented-plot comedies on the other hand, the evidence strongly indicates the opposite: that the parabasis and agon were quite common. Although these structures do not always appear in the surviving plays of Aristophanes, all the plays include at least one of them in some form.45 This suggests that in invented-plot plays, a complete absence of epirrhematic structures was the exception. If this is accurate, then epirrhematic structures were a hallmark of a specific genre, Old Comedy, just as scholars have frequently assumed. But within the Old Comedy genre, they were only a hallmark of those plays that used invented plots. Old Comedies using plots based on myth appear to have been structured quite differently. But before returning to some of the consequences of this difference as well as the question of why the parabasis and agon may have been generally incompatible with mythological comedy, I will examine three central characteristics of the muthos of mythological comedies in comparison with invented-plot comedies.

3. Muthos Characteristics of Mythological Comedy I argued in Chapter 1 that in the Poetics Aristotle assumes that the muthos always begins after the narrative work begins, and ends before the narrative work ends. There are three consequences of this assumption. The first is that the muthos has a certain size in proportion to the larger size of the narrative work as a whole. The second is that the muthos is present in some areas of the narrative work, and entirely absent in others. The third is that the muthos has an absolute size that can be measured and compared to the absolute size of other muthoi. This last requires a unit of measure, for which Aristotle uses what he calls muthos parts. These then are three central features of the Aristotelian muthos: its proportional size, its placement and its absolute size in number of muthos parts. I then showed in Chapter 2 how Aristotle’ s definition of muthos could be applied to the plays of Aristophanes. But Aristotle himself also seems to have applied his definition of muthos to Old Comedy, and not just to tragedy and epic as 45

See Lowe 2008, 57 for a useful overview.

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discussed in detail in the Poetics. Although Aristotle’ s treatment of comedy in the Poetics has of course been lost, Aristotle’ s statements about comic muthoi in the surviving text support this view. For example, in both the passages at 1451b11–14 and 1453a35–9 cited at the beginning of Section 1 to show that Aristotle sometimes neglects mythological comedy when referring to Old Comedy as a whole, Aristotle uses the term muthos without in any way indicating that the definition of muthos for comedy differs from the definition of muthos for tragedy or epic. This suggests that Aristotle’ s assumptions about muthos size in the Poetics also applied to Old Comedy muthoi, i. e. that the muthos is smaller than the play, that it is contained entirely within the play, and that it can be measured by counting muthos parts. It also means that applying Aristotle’ s definition of muthos to Old Comedy as a whole entails including an analysis of muthos size, proportion and placement. As I will show here, such an analysis indicates there may have been fundamental differences between the muthoi of Aristophanic-type and mythological Old Comedies. I only generally discussed these three characteristics in Aristophanes’ plays in the Chapter 2. For a more detailed analysis, I will use Acharnians and Wealth as examples. I have deliberately chosen these two plays because in many ways they are complete opposites. For example, Acharnians is one of the poet’ s earliest plays and Wealth one of his last. In Acharnians the chorus has a robust role, while in Wealth the chorus hardly contributes to the play. But despite these contrasts, I will show that the muthos size, portion and placement in these two plays are almost mathematically identical. As I argued in Chapter 2, muthos portion and placement vary little across all the plays, and so may be typically linked with the Aristophanic muthos. Since the plays of Aristophanes are notably diverse in terms of content, formal structure and theme, this may also suggest that these particular muthos characteristics were a general feature of other Old Comedies that may have used this Aristophanic muthos, and not just of the works of Aristophanes. In these two plays, determining the proportional muthos size and muthos placement appears fairly straightforward. In Acharnians, at the start Dicaeopolis complains about the war, and at line 626 he convinces the Acharnians to accept his private peace. In Wealth, at the start Chremylus complains he is unfairly poor, and at line 611 he wins the debate against poverty. In both plays, the muthos ends after the plan of the main character has sufficiently prevailed, and in these two cases the rest of the comedy is devoted to demonstrating its consequences. This means that the muthos is distributed across 626 of a total of 1235 lines in Acharnians, and across 611 lines of a total of 1209 lines in Wealth, i. e. the muthos is distributed across almost exactly 50 percent of the play in both cases. In addition, in both plays the placement of the muthos begins very close to the start of the play, and the ends just before the middle of the play. In these two plays proportional muthos size and muthos placement are virtually the same. It is especially striking how close the count is for the sections containing muthos. It seems highly unlikely that the muthos section of Wealth is coinci-

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dentally only 15 lines shorter than that of Acharnians. But it is equally unlikely Aristophanes counted the lines containing muthos. Instead, this must have been a natural result of the structure he used when composing a play. Since a comedy was typically a certain number of lines long, and the muthos in Aristophanes typically occupied a certain portion of the play, then the number of lines where the muthos appeared ended up approximately the same even in very different plays. But the similar muthos placement is just as striking, showing a clear tendency to start the muthos as soon as possible after the play begins, and to end it early enough so the “episodes” can dominate for about half of the play. It would have been possible for Aristophanes to retain this specific muthos proportion, for example, but start the muthos in the middle of the play and finish it at the end. Instead, both a certain portion containing muthos and a specific muthos placement in the first half of the play is predictably maintained in all the plays. Determining absolute muthos size is more of a challenge, since the number of muthos parts is independent from the number of lines that may contain muthos. This is because not all or even most of the lines over which the muthos is distributed must actually contain muthos parts. In addition, some lines may contain more or less muthos than others, meaning muthos parts cannot necessarily be measured in lines. But as I demonstrated in Chapter 1, it can still be argued that there are a certain average number of muthos parts per line containing muthos, and that therefore the relative number of muthos parts between plays can be determined by counting the number of lines containing muthos in similar 100-line sections of each play. Since the muthos placement and proportional muthos size are identical in these two plays, it should be possible to apply this approach to the exact same 100 lines in each play. I have chosen lines 300 to 400 for this purpose since they occur about midway in the lines containing muthos. In lines 300 to 400 of the Acharnians, the Acharnians have already arrived and announced their opposition to the main character’ s plan. Then at line 337–340, the Acharnians agree to listen. After this point there are only preparations for the main character’ s speech, so the muthos does not move forward. Therefore there are three out of 100 lines that contain muthos parts. In lines 300 to 400 of Wealth, the main character has already brought Wealth back to his house and the chorus has entered. Blepsidemus arrives and the characters then discuss the situation, but Blepsidemus does not play any role in the muthos. It therefore seems that only lines 326–7 where the chorus agrees to help guard Wealth could even possibly be said to contain muthos parts. But even these lines could be argued to be outside the muthos, since the chorus is not particularly involved or helpful when the main character’ s plan is threatened by Poverty. In this 100-line section of Wealth then, there are between zero and two lines that may contain muthos parts. Whether these two lines are considered to contain muthos or not, it seems probable that Wealth has a lower number of total muthos parts than Acharnians. Therefore it can be concluded that in Aristophanes, the number of lines that contain muthos per 100 lines containing muthos is three lines or less.

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Since no mythological Old Comedies survive, muthos size, portion and placement in these plays cannot be directly determined using this method. But one mythological comedy does survive in Latin, Plautus’ Amphitruo. Sommerstein has argued that this play is “our most extensive single item of evidence for mythical travesty in ancient comedy,”46 and I will also assume here that the muthos in this play is also evidence of the muthos in mythological Old Comedies, and use this play’ s muthos dimensions and placement for comparison. There is unfortunately no way to determine if the muthos of this play is actually representative of similar muthoi in Old Comedy. But I believe Amphitruo at the very least provides a compelling example of how the myth of Amphitruo and Alcumena could have been treated in a mythological Old Comedy. Since the muthos that results contrasts markedly with the muthos found in the plays of Aristophanes, this suggests there was far greater flexibility with mythological muthoi. To determine the muthos dimensions and placement in Amphitruo, first it must be established which mythological story the play treats. It may seem self-evident that a play titled Amphitruo handles the myth of Amphitruo and Alcumena, but recently that has been disputed. There are currently two basic approaches to understanding this play. The first is Lefèvre’ s traditional analytical approach that assumes a Greek original or several originals behind the play (in this case, tragedies handling the Amphitruo and Alcumena myth), and then attempts to separate what is Greek and what is Plautine.47 The second is Slater’ s performance-based analysis that also finds a tragedy behind the play, but determines that the tragedy in question is actually Euripides’ Bacchae.48 With Lefèvre’ s approach, there is no question that the plot structure of the play is based on the myth of Amphitruo and Alcumena. This is because as I have argued above, in mythological comedy basic elements of the plot structure would remain essentially the same as in a tragic treatment. But Slater’ s analysis seems to suggest that the plot structure of the play may actually be based on the myth treated in the Bacchae. Closer examination of Slater’ s discussion, however, shows that he is not actually arguing for an alternative plot structure basis, and still agrees the plot is based on the myth of Amphitruo and Alcumena. In a note, Slater states that a problem with Lefèvre’ s approach is “it’ s assumption that, once everything Roman has been pared away, the residue will necessarily have a unity – that of the Greek source, which for Lefèvre is a tragedy about Alcumena. It is possible in this process to lose the unity of the Roman play itself, which I here endeavor to outline.”49 Here Slater is basically equating the unity of 46

47 48 49

Sommerstein 2005, 41. Unfortunately, Casolari in her book completely overlooks Amphitruo. She also entirely ignores questions of plot structure, so her book is not cited further here. Lefèvre 1982. Slater 1990. Slater 1990, 103 note 6.

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the play with the unity of the source that was adapted for the play. So for Slater, the unity of the “Roman play” indicates that Bacchae was the source. But for Lefèvre, “the residue” after paring – which as I will show below is actually equivalent to the muthos of the Amphitruo and Alcumena myth – is the unity that indicates the source. But Slater seems to ignore the possibility that the play and the myth may have different unities, i. e. different sources. It may be that the play as a whole together with its techniques, themes and concerns is a parody of Bacchae, but that the myth or story it parodies is still that of Amphitruo and Alcumena. Later in the article, however, Slater appears to accept this possibility. Returning to his critique of Lefèvre’ s approach, Slater argues that “if we recreate a hypothetical tragedy of the Amphitruo myth, Plautus’ work is just a farcical accretion on a serious narrative.”50 This indicates that Slater accepts that the play is such an “accretion,” but this is an inadequate understanding of the work as a whole, since it is not “just” that. So Slater in fact agrees that the play is also a treatment of this “serious narrative” (i. e. the Amphitruo-Alcumena myth). On a plot level at least, Slater is not arguing that this play does not contain the Amphitruo-Alcumena myth, or that somehow a play titled Amphitruo featuring Amphitruo and Alcumena as lead characters does not in fact sufficiently narrate this mythical story (which is of course theoretically possible). Instead, he argues that this myth and everything else within the play has actually been appropriated for other thematic purposes by the author, and that is why the play is more closely linked to the Bacchae than any tragedy based on the Alcumena story. This may be entirely accurate, but it clearly indicates that for Slater as well, there is no doubt that the plot of this play is based on the Amphitruo-Alcumena myth. Turning then to Lefèvre’ s approach, he argues that Plautus only parodied the “Kernszene der Tragödie” which was the “Auseinandersetzung zwischen Amphitruo und Alcumena in II 2,”51 and the final scene, “die Erklärung von Zeus’ Erscheinen in der letzten Nacht.”52 These events seem to correspond exactly to what I would argue Aristotle would identify as the muthos of the mythical story: a husband comes home, learns from his wife that she has been with another man claiming to be him the previous night, and then has a dispute with her that is resolved by divine explanation. So what Slater at one point calls Lefèvre’ s “serious narrative” is essentially equivalent to the muthos. Anything outside of these events occurring in a tragedy would probably have been classified by Aristotle as “episodes.” As a corollary, Lefèvre’ s conclusions indicate that Plautus made up entirely new “episodes” for his comedy. If the parts Lefèvre argues have been taken from tragic sources are accepted to constitute the muthos, then in Plautus’ play the muthos begins at lines 633 and

50 51 52

Slater 1990, 123. Lefèvre 1982, 26. Lefèvre 1982, 29.

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ends at line 1143, three lines before the end of the play. This would amount to 510 lines containing muthos. But there is an entire section missing from our text after line 1034. If this section is conservatively estimated to be 300 lines long,53 then there would be 810 lines containing muthos out of a play 1446 lines long, which is equivalent to 55 percent of the play. This is already a significantly larger portion of the play than was found in Aristophanes. But perhaps even more significant is the apparent absolute muthos size. To determine the muthos size I will follow the same procedure as above, and select a 100-line section as a sample. The 100-line section of the muthos of Amphitruo approximately equivalent to the section chosen from the Aristophanes plays above comes at lines 800 to 900, in the “Kernszene” identified by Lefèvre. This is because in the Aristophanes plays, the 100-line section I chose comes after the plan has been announced, and during the main character’ s attempts to implement it. These attempts will then continue for the rest of the muthos until he finally sufficiently implements the plan. In about the previous hundred lines of Plautus’ play, Amphitruo has come home and discovered that Alcumena believes he arrived the day before. Now in lines 800 to 900, Amphitruo learns that Alcumena has slept with a man claiming to be him who arrived the day before. This results in the dispute between Amphitruo and Alcumena that will continue for the rest of the muthos until it is finally resolved by Jupiter. So in both the Aristophanes plays and this play, the 100 lines I have chosen occur at about the start of the middle of the muthos. In lines 800 to 900 of Amphitruo, I would argue that there are muthos parts in only the first ten lines. These lines contain Amphitruo’ s interrogation of Alcumena, and end with his discovery that she slept with the other man. The rest of the section shows the couple arguing without any change in the basic situation. Amphitruo’ s plan to bring Naucrates as a witness would clearly be classified as an “episode” by Aristotle, for example, because it could be just as easily replaced by any other plan to substantiate Amphitruo’ s version of events, or left out altogether without changing the muthos. Then Act III begins with a scene featuring Jupiter, which serves only to sustain the conflict already established between man and wife. Still with ten lines containing muthos in 100, there seem to be at least between three or four times as many muthos parts in this play than in a play by Aristophanes, where three or less lines with muthos are found in 100 lines. But the number of total muthos parts would in fact be even higher, since the muthos in Amphitruo is distributed over a significantly larger portion of the play, and the play is somewhat longer. So instead of an average of three lines per 100 over about 500 lines containing muthos as in Aristophanes, in the Plautus play there would be an average of 10 lines per 100 over about 800 lines containing muthos. In 53

This estimate is taken from the apparatus criticus in the Oxford Classical Text at line 1034.

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total, this amounts to 15 lines containing muthos in Aristophanes compared to 80 lines in Amphitruo. The absolute size of the muthos in this mythological comedy seems to be well over five times the size of the muthos in Aristophanes. This is an enormous relative difference, especially when compared with the minutely modulated differences in muthos size found between the two Aristophanes plays examined above. Interestingly, this absolute size is also more than three times the absolute muthos size that I estimated in Chapter 1 for Iphigenia in Tauris, which was 25 lines. There are passages found in Aristophanes that can be interpreted to show that he may have been aware of this difference in muthos size. An example is Wasps lines 54–66, where the character Xanthias introduces the story of the play, advising the audience “μηδὲν παρ᾽ ἡμῶν προσδοκᾶν λίαν μέγα” (“not to expect anything big from us”) and calling it a “λογίδιον γνώμην ἔχον” (“little story with a purpose”). Both of these statements are typically understood to mean the story in the play is not grand or pretentious. But the use of the diminutive in the second quote (λογίδιον) and the very literal word for size in the first (μέγα) mean that the passage can just as well be interpreted to show Aristophanes is boasting that his muthos is small but still substantial (γνώμην ἔχον). This could be in favorable contrast to the larger, more complex muthoi in mythological plays, serious or comic. The muthos placement is strikingly different as well. In Aristophanes, the muthos began very soon after the opening of the play and ended towards the middle. In Amphitruo, the muthos placement is the opposite. The muthos starts almost exactly at the middle at line 633 of an 1146-line play, and then ends three lines before the close of the play. As a result, there is practically no overlap between where the muthos appears in the plays of Aristophanes, and where it appears in this mythological comedy. These differences in muthos proportion, absolute muthos size and muthos placement in Aristophanic comedy and Amphitruo demonstrate how little the muthoi of mythological comedy may have resembled invented-plot comedy muthoi. It could even be the case that the muthos is being used here as a device to purposefully contrast the two types of comedy. The most obvious contrast is the muthos placement, where it almost appears that Plautus has gone out of his way to avoid the area reserved for muthos in Aristophanes. But it could instead be that the authors of invented-plot comedies avoided placing the muthos where it typically appeared in mythological tragedy, and muthos placement in Amphitruo simply to some extent reflected muthos placement in those tragedies. In other words, it may be that invented-plot comedy featured a muthos that intentionally contrasted with the muthos in mythological tragedy, but that mythological comedy adopted typical features of the muthos of tragedy together with the mythological stories. As a result, the muthos placement in Plautus’ play by extension contrasted with the muthos placement in Aristophanes. If this is true, then Plautus may have been only following normal procedure for mythological plots both serious and comic by beginning his muthos near the middle. For example, according to Aristotle the muthos of Euripides’ Iphigenia

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in Tauris begins around line 466 when Iphigenia first meets Orestes.54 Since Euripides’ play is 1499 lines long, this places the beginning of the muthos a third of the way into the play. Although not at the halfway mark, this still much more closely approximates Plautus’ muthos placement than Aristophanes’ very close to the beginning. Unfortunately, the evidence considered here is insufficient to conclusively determine whether the muthos typically began towards the middle in a mythological comedy, for example, or if it otherwise resembled the muthos in tragedy. But it seems certain from this analysis that mythological comedy could employ a very different muthos than the one consistently found in Aristophanes. I would also argue that the evidence of Amphitruo indicates that it is at least probable that mythological comedy shared some essential basic muthos attributes with tragedy. These questions will be taken up in more detail in Chapter 4. In addition, if Amphitruo is based on tragic treatments, then Plautus actually had two choices regarding the original muthos. He could have used only the muthos from the tragic treatments, or he could have used the muthos as well as some or all of the “episodes” as Aristotle calls the narrative material outside the muthos (which in modern terminology might also include parts of the plot). As I argued above, Lefèvre’ s analysis suggests that only the muthos was used in Amphitruo, and Plautus ignored the “episodes” in the tragic sources. Since Amphitruo still appears to present itself as a retelling of the Amphitruo-Alcumena myth,55 based on this example it seems reasonable to define an adequate narration of the myth as one that narrates at a minimum the Aristotelian muthos of that myth. Aristotle’ s comments about adaptations of myth in the Poetics may also confirm that narrating only the muthos of a myth but altering the transmitted “episodes” still qualified for him as a retelling of the myth. For example, at 1451b19–25 Aristotle generally encourages poets to be creative with their handling of the traditional myths and limit what they repeat in the retelling. Then in the passage at 1453a35–9 cited in the beginning of Section 1, Aristotle specifically states that a mythological comedy about Orestes and Aegisthus ends without Orestes killing Aegisthus (nor Clytemnestra it seems, as “no one gets killed”). Since for Aristotle the muthos typically ends significantly before the end of a tragedy with the change of fortune, this does not necessarily mean that in this unspecified mythological comedy the muthos differed from the muthos of the myth we know. Instead, what it may mean is that the Aegisthus’ encounter with Orestes and the consequent change of fortune led to a different ending of the play than we find for example in Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers, where of course Orestes then kills both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Aristotle’ s wording supports this interpretation. He writes that Orestes and Aegisthus are enemies in the muthos (ἐν τῷ μύθῳ), but friends at

54 55

For a detailed analysis, see the discussion of plot parts in Chapter 1. See Amphitruo lines 50–63, where the prologue claims the play is a tragedy turned into a comedy. For a full discussion, see Seidensticker 1982, 20–22.

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the end (ἐπὶ τελευτῆς) when they go off (ἐξέρχονται). Since the word ἐξέρχονται shows that Aristotle is clearly referring to the very end of the play where the characters exit, I would suggest this means that the play ends with them as friends, but the events in the muthos still require them to be enemies.56 The change of fortune for Orestes in the comic version did not lead to murder, but to friendship. The “episodes” until the end of the play seem to have shown the comical aspects of such a friendship, not the tragic consequences of murder and revenge. So this could be an important piece of evidence that mythological comedies could draw exclusively from the muthos sections of non-comic mythological sources, and still for Aristotle adequately retell a myth. They were then free to invent entirely new, more humorous “episodes” to fill out the rest of the play, and even end the play in an entirely different manner than in a tragic treatment, for example. But soon after at 1453b22–26 Aristotle seems to place an even more restrictive limit on how far traditional myths can be modified and still remain adequate retellings of those myths: τοὺς μὲν οὖν παρειλημμένους μύθους λύειν οὐκ ἔστιν, λέγω δὲ οἷον τὴν Κλυταιμήστραν ἀποθανοῦσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὀρέστου καὶ τὴν Ἐριφύλην ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀλκμέωνος, αὐτὸν δὲ εὑρίσκειν δεῖ καὶ τοῖς παραδεδομένοις χρῆσθαι καλῶς. (“Now, one cannot undo traditional stories (I mean, for example, Clytemnestra’ s death at Orestes’ hands, or Eriphyle’ s at Alcmeon’ s); but one has to discover for oneself how to use even the traditional stories well.”) I argued above that the death of Clytemnestra is not part of the muthos of a play like The Libation Bearers, and the muthos seems to end with Aegisthus’ recognition of Orestes. So either the scope of the muthos actually does include Clytemnestra’ s murder and the comedy referred to above did “undo” the muthos (which seems unlikely since Aristotle refers to the muthos of the comedy without indicating it is somehow broken), or Aristotle is not referring to how a poet should handle a particular muthos in a particular play. Instead, Aristotle may be referring to destroying the continuity of linked muthoi, and that by using the plural here Aristotle is emphasizing that he is talking about groups of muthoi. Instead of suggesting that “Clytemnestra’ s death at Orestes’ hands” is part of the muthos in a play like Libation Bearers, and that excluding that event would “break” its muthos, Aristotle means that if Clytemnestra does not die, then the muthos of a play like Eumenides that depends on that particular event no longer makes any sense, and the traditional story spanning the two plays is “undone.” It may also then be significant that both examples he cites refer to matricides where the killer is afterwards pursued by vengeful spirits as a consequence. These subsequent muthoi featuring vengeful spirits would make little sense without the matricides, even if the matricides themselves are not in the muthoi of the plays referred to. 56

This interpretation assumes that the term muthos is used here in the same way that it is usually used by Aristotle, i. e. to refer to the muthos of an individual tragedy. For an alternative interpretation assuming that muthos means myth in general here, see Lucas 1968, 149 and Else 1957, 406 who claims this use of muthos is “un-Aristotelian.”

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This suggests that what has been called the narrative or semantic “Kern” of the myth is not at all equivalent to the muthos of a particular play, and that the “zentrale Elemente bzw. Konstellationen eines Mythos”57 that cannot be changed in order to maintain the mythical complex has many more events than the smaller group of events in the muthos of a particular mythical story. So by this definition retelling a particular mythical story seems in no way to guarantee cohesion of the entire mythical complex, and it is precisely this possibility that Aristotle here is warning poets of tragedy against. For poets of comedy, however, this option apparently remained open, as the example at 1453a35–9 shows. A corollary of this definition is that it is not possible for a mythological comedy to incompletely narrate the muthos of the mythical story it is based on, or to materially change the events in that muthos. If the comedy changes the muthos or inadequately narrates it in this way, then the play would no longer qualify as a mythological comedy, and instead fall into the category of a play that uses mythical figures or events as part of an invented plot.

4. The Muthos and Epirrhematic Structures To summarize what has been determined so far, mythological comedy may have been obligated to narrate the muthos of the original myth, but free to make up entirely new “episodes.” The muthos could have been significantly larger in proportional size than in the plays of Aristophanes, and the absolute muthos size possibly many times larger. The muthos was not necessarily placed in the first half of the play as in Aristophanes, and it could be that typically there was no parabasis or agon. In general, the overall structure of mythological comedy may have contrasted with the structure in Aristophanes, not conformed to it. This difference between mythological comedy and invented-plot comedy could also be partly the result of how Old Comedy developed in Athens. Epicharmus previously wrote mythological comedies in Sicily that may have influenced the development of Old Comedy, and as Willi58 argues, even tragedy. Since Epicharmean comedy seems to have lacked epirrhematic structures and may have even lacked a chorus59 (see also below on his play Logos and Logina), its influence could be an additional reason why epirrhematic structures were excluded from this type of play. This may also explain why in Aristophanes, mythological parody is incompatible with epirrhematic structures. As Gelzer has shown, if mythological parody in the form of tragic parody “in den ersten Teil eindringt, verdrängt sie die anges-

57 58 59

See the discussion of what is required to repeat a mythical “Fabel” in Seidensticker 2005a, 3–5. Willi 2015, 136–145 For a recent discussion of this question, see Shaw 2014, 68.

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tammten Formen und weitgehend die typische Struktur der Diallagehandlung,”60 citing Acharnians and Women at the Thesmophoria as examples.61 That may be because tragedy did not include epirrhematic structures, and so tragic parody would not either. But it may also be an indication that even in invented-plot comedy, epirrhematic structures such as the agon were considered mutually exclusive with mythological comedy. But even in the unlikely case that mythological Old Comedy was derived directly from Doric comedy, this would still not satisfactorily explain why mythological Old Comedy did not include epirrhematic structures. If Doric comedy lacked a chorus, then these structures may have been excluded in these plays by definition. But mythological Old Comedy obviously did have a chorus, so it could have just as easily adapted the parabasis and agon for its own purposes. Why then were these structures apparently excluded? Besides the possibility mentioned above that these structures may have partially served to distinguish invented plots from mythological plots in this period, another explanation could be internal differences between the muthoi of these two types of comedy. In the case of the parabasis, I argued in Chapter 2 that in Aristophanes it always comes (where it exists) right after the main character has sufficiently implemented the plan of the muthos. Since this is also where I determined the muthos ends, the parabasis signals the end of the muthos in these plays. The parabasis also then functions as a transition, introducing what Lowe describes as “a protracted break in the action that effectively splits the play into two distinct movements.”62 But if Amphitruo is any guide, the muthos in mythological comedy ended much later in the play, and was much larger in absolute size than the muthos in Aristophanes. As a result, there would have been no need to signal the end of the muthos in the middle of a mythological comedy, or provide a transition to a “second movement” as Lowe calls it, since there was no natural break in the action. This could be another reason why mythological comedy did not regularly feature a parabasis. But the parabasis serves many other functions63 besides providing a “break in the action” as discussed above. As a result, it seems likely that writers of mythological Old Comedy would still want to integrate parabatic content into their plays. Here there is some evidence that the poets could sometimes use the parodos to introduce parabatic meters and material, creating what Revermann has called a “fusion of parodos and parabatic content.”64 This occurs for example in Aristophanes at Frogs 354–71 as well as possibly some other fragmentary

60 61 62 63 64

Gelzer 1960, 218. Gelzer 1960, 235 note 2. Lowe 2008, 55. For a summary of the functions of the parabasis, see for example Rosen 2014, 235 with the references in notes 31 and 32. Revermann 2006, 100.

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non-mythological plays,65 but there is also evidence as I will discuss in more detail below that Cratinus used this approach quite frequently in mythological comedies. In addition as I suggested above, a parabasis placed in its typical position in Aristophanes towards the middle of the play would probably interrupt the muthos of a mythological comedy, not end it. Integrating parabatic content into the parodos would then also have the advantage of allowing “a ‘smoother’, more continuous flow”66 of a larger mythological muthos spread across more of the play. In the case of the agon, by definition it is only appropriate where there are two diametrically opposite views argued by two strongly antithetical characters. This is practically intrinsic to the Aristophanic muthos, where the main character of the muthos is required to overcome opposition to the plan. That means that there is “an organic interdependence between form and content”67 in the agon that ideally suits the Aristophanic muthos. But such a binary opposition of views is not at all intrinsic to mythological muthoi. Mythical content is instead characterized by its wide variety, complex relationships and life-or-death situations. As a result, the agon would not necessarily be able to integrate form and content in these plays, and may not have been viewed as generally appropriate for this type of comedy. This is not to say that an agonistic encounter would be out of place in some mythological comedies. There is evidence that even explicitly agonistic material could be handled by mythological comedy without epirrhematic structures. In the plays of Aristophanes that do not have agons, agonistic conflicts are additionally presented in scenes that do not use epirrhematic structures.68 In addition, there is a Doric comedy by Epicharmus with the title Logos and Logina. The title strongly suggests that the play resembled in some way the encounter between the two Logoi in Clouds, but since it seems possible that Epicharmus’ plays rarely if ever featured a chorus, the play may not have included an epirrhematic agon. Körte conjectures instead that the play must have included a “Redestreit” but continues: “zu dessen formaler Durchführung im Schema des späteren attischen Agons fehlt aber ein Hauptfaktor, der Chor.”69 If true, this would indicate that mythological Old Comedy could still have staged classically agonistic scenes without employing the formal agon structure if it was unconventional in these plays. This means that although there are unquestionably similarities between Aristophanic Old Comedy and mythological Old Comedy, there could also have been fundamental differences. The evidence suggests that in form and structure at least, these plays may possibly have had little in common with Aristophanic comedy. It could be that they rarely if ever included a parabasis and agon, that the 65 66 67 68 69

These include Cratinus Pylaea fragment 182, and two plays by Eupolis. See again Revermann 2006, 100. Revermann 2006, 100. Sifakis 1971, 54. See Gelzer 1960, 166–178. Körte 1921, 1224.

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muthos was much larger, and that the muthos may have started later in the play but dominated for a larger portion of the play. All taken together, this would indicate that mythological Old Comedy might better be viewed as a distinct category of Old Comedy with different rules and conventions, and that reconstructions of fragmentary mythological Old Comedies should rely only very selectively on an Aristophanic model. Instead the assumption from the outset would be that the muthos of a mythological comedy was in an entirely different category, and that the structure of the play would have reflected this difference as I have described. To explore the consequences of these hypothetical conclusions for individual mythological Old Comedies, the most useful approach would be to analyze plays in this category by several different poets. Unfortunately, sufficient evidence for the structure and muthos only remains for several mythological comedies by Cratinus. As a result, I will limit my discussion to these several plays. It unfortunately cannot be determined if they are representative of mythological Old Comedies by other poets.

5. Wealth-Gods As I have shown, it may be misleading to assess Old Comedy as a genre without distinguishing mythological comedies from invented-plot comedies such as the surviving plays of Aristophanes. Since these two categories of Old Comedy may have differed in structure, evidence of structures in one category should not be necessarily viewed as evidence that these structures were common in the other. By the same logic, the opposite is true for individual fragmentary mythological Old Comedies. Evidence of a structure in individual mythological comedies unparalleled in Aristophanes should not necessarily be viewed as evidence that this structure was idiosyncratic to these plays or their author. If the evidence of this unusual feature comes only from mythological comedies, then it could instead indicate that this was a regular structural feature of mythological comedies. This is precisely the case with the special features of the parodos in Cratinus. As already mentioned, there is evidence that Old Comedy in some instances used the parodos to introduce parabatic material. But as I suggested above, parabatic material in the parodos may have been a more regular feature of mythological comedies than invented-plot comedies because they typically lacked a parabasis. The parabatic material in the parodos of the plays of Cratinus may then confirm this hypothesis, since the two best attested instances, Wealth-Gods and CowHerders, both may have been mythological comedies. Very little evidence of CowHerders remains, with no direct indication of the plot. But it seems clear from the testimony that the play opened with a dithyramb in the place of the parodos. This dithyramb may have included parabatic content about the archon (see fragment 20 together with fragment 17 describing the dithyramb opening the play). Some scholars have further argued that the cow-herders of the title are a chorus of wor-

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shippers of Dionysus, and that the dithyramb that opened the play introduced a story about Dionysus.70 Since dithyrambs often narrated an episode in the life of Dionysus, i. e. a myth, there therefore is at least a possibility here that Cow-Herders was actually a mythological comedy (though it of course could also be an invented plot featuring Dionysus and his worshippers, such as Frogs). So despite the lack of certainty about the details of the plot, the evidence does not exclude the possibility of a mythological plot, and even may point in that direction. In the case of WealthGods, fragment 171 in anapaestic dimeters typical of the parodos treats “parabatic themes but without parabatic structure.”71 But Wealth-Gods seems to have also had certain similarities with Aeschylus’ fragmentary Prometheus Unbound, and as I will argue in more detail below, Cratinus’ play may not only have alluded to this tragedy or parodied it at certain points, but in fact adequately narrated the same muthos as Prometheus Unbound. If this is true, then Wealth-Gods would also be a mythological comedy. The third possible instance (also discussed in a following section) is Dionysalexander, which is certainly a mythological comedy. If the hypothesis of Dionysalexander starts at the beginning of the play, then it also indicates that the play began with a parabasis-like section where the chorus directly addressed the audience, possibly in the parodos. This means that the evidence of these three plays may not indicate that Cratinus was particularly fond of inserting parabatic material in the parodos, but instead that this is where parabatic material commonly appeared in mythological comedies that usually lacked a parabasis. There is also evidence that in some of Cratinus’ plays, the parodos was placed earlier in the play than in Aristophanes. But it may be that this feature is attested only for the mythological plays of Cratinus. There are indications of early choral entry in three plays of Cratinus: in addition to Cow-Herders which apparently opened with a dithyramb as parodos, there is Odysseus and Company with fragments 143 and 151 apparently showing that the chorus opened the play by introducing the story, and again Wealth-Gods where fragment 171 seems to come from an opening scene. Odysseus and Company is clearly a mythological comedy, and as I have just suggested the other two plays could be mythological comedies as well. So in each of the three cases of early chorus entry in Cratinus, the plays either are or could plausibly be mythological comedies. This may mean that early parodos placement was not necessarily a form of “paratragedy,”72 but instead a regular feature of mythological plays whose structure in this regard may have more closely resembled tragedy, where the parodos was typically placed earlier in the play. Early placement of the parodos in an invented-plot play could then 70

71 72

Starting with Crusius 1889, 35: “Atque a Bacchico fabulae argumento dithyrambus pendet parodi fortasse loco positus.” (“And the dithyramb is derived from the Bacchic subject of the plot, perhaps replacing the parodos.”) Hubbard 1991, 27. Bakola 2010, 134: “The mere fact that the chorus entered the stage so early might also have signalled paratragic play.”

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still be a form of paratragedy, but not in mythological comedies where it would be generally expected. If this last feature of the parodos was actually typical of mythological comedies, it seems reasonable to ask if the role of the chorus generally in mythological comedy could fundamentally differ from its role in the plays of Aristophanes. As with muthos size and placement in Amphitruo, it may be that in some instances the role of the chorus in mythological comedy more closely resembled the role of the chorus in tragedy. More specifically, as I pointed out in Chapter 2, in the surviving comedies of Aristophanes the chorus is never the active driver of the muthos. But in mythological stories, this may not always have been the case. There are certain mythological stories treated by tragedy where the chorus can be the active driver of the muthos, such as in Suppliants where the chorus of Danaids is the protagonist. If a mythological comedy adequately narrated a muthos of this sort, most likely it would also have to give the chorus a more active role as well. By demonstrating that the chorus seems to be the driver of the muthos of WealthGods, I will show that this is a second indication (in addition to the chorus’ early entry) that the play may have been a mythological comedy that not only parodied the play by Aeschylus, but also adequately narrated the muthos of Prometheus Unbound. I will then briefly compare the chorus’ role in Wealth-Gods with its role in Chirons to show that despite the similarities between the two plays, Chirons seems less likely to have been a mythological comedy. No plot reconstructions of Wealth-Gods have been proposed because so little evidence remains. But scholars agree on some key aspects of the story. In fragment 171 lines 24 to 28, the chorus of wealth-gods appears to announce that they have “rushed here seeking” an aged brother as well as for another purpose, which seems to be specified in lines 45 to 46 as dealing with “those unjustly wealthy here.” So it appears the chorus announced a plan of action at the opening of the play. Then in lines 57 to 76, a speaker prepares to give an important speech and the prosecution of the unjustly wealthy Hagnon begins. Since the chorus previously announced that their plan was to deal with the unjustly wealthy, some scholars have concluded that the character preparing to give a speech is in fact the chorus, and the chorus acted as the prosecutor in the trial.73 This suggests that it was the chorus who executed the plan of action they announced earlier. These scraps of evidence may therefore indicate a very rough structure of events. The chorus arrived and then announced a plan to release a relative as well as correct the distribution of wealth. Afterwards the chorus began to prosecute the unjustly wealthy. Whether the relative was released before, during or after the trial is unclear. It could also be that the relative was never released, though this seems less likely. This hypothetical structure of events has two unusual features. The first is that it seems the chorus is driving the muthos of the play. The chorus arrives with 73

Starting with Mazon 1934, 608.

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a plan of action and then apparently executes it. There may be other important characters in the play, but it seems the chorus is indispensable to the muthos (if in fact this plan was central to the action of the play) and cannot be replaced or eliminated without changing the muthos. As I have already pointed out, there is no surviving play by Aristophanes where the chorus is so integral to the muthos. This is a major structural difference. The second is that apparently the muthos only begins somewhat later in the play. Fragment 171 suggests that the chorus appeared on stage, made some parabatic comments (lines 1 to 8), identified themselves (lines 11 to 15) and then explained why they had come and their plan (lines 21 to 55). Since the chorus seems to be “seeking” their relative still and have not found him yet, it may even be that they did not find him until somewhat later in the play. But even if they “found” him in the course of the parodos, the beginning of the muthos must have been placed somewhat later when the chorus acted to implement its plan. This is because the chorus’ announcement of their plan is not the beginning of the muthos, as it is for example in Aristophanes. Clearly the chorus’ decision to pursue this plan has been made significantly before the play begins, and is therefore an antecedent event outside the muthos. It is basically equivalent to the reasons why Orestes has been sent to Tauris as discussed above, which Aristotle specifically says are outside the muthos. This means that the muthos started more towards the middle of the play than in Aristophanes, and closer to where it is begins in a tragedy like Iphigenia in Tauris. So the apparent structure of events in this play seems to contrast fairly obviously with the structure of events in the plays of Aristophanes. Scholarly discussion of the play has however largely ignored this contrast. On a structural level, scholars have instead focused on the trial scene in lines 57 to 76 to determine if it could belong to a formal agon, in particular the metrical features.74 Since I have argued that this play was probably a mythological comedy and that mythological comedies rarely if ever had a formal agon, I would agree with the consensus that these lines probably do not come from an agon. But whether these lines can be attributed to an agon or not, it is striking that scholars believe consistent features of the agon in Aristophanes are at least a rough guide to how the agon would look in other plays, but that consistent features of the structure of events in Aristophanes are not at all applicable to other plays thought to have a similar structure. So even if in no play of Aristophanes – and in no fragmentary invented-plot play as far as I know – the chorus has the plan and then executes it, it is still considered a plausible suggestion by Bakola that in this play “the ‘revolutionary idea’, which is usually the launching point of an old comedy”75 was the chorus’ idea to deal with the unjustly wealthy. This implies that despite these enormous differences in the

74 75

See Bakola 2010, 210–11 who argues that these lines are from an agon, with full bibliography in note 60. Bakola 2010, 211–12.

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structure of events with “no parallel” in Aristophanes, the play could have used a “revolutionary idea” as a “launching point” just as in Aristophanes. It is of course true that nothing can be excluded for certain about the structure of events with fragmentary evidence. But that applies equally to the metrical features of the agon. It seems to me therefore inconsistent to weight the consistent features of the agon, for example, in Aristophanes so heavily when determining if a fragmentary play had an agon, but then to dismiss the consistent features of the structure of events in Aristophanes when determining if it had an Aristophanic plot. Similarly, Bakola has suggested that since the chorus of wealth-gods seems to act as prosecutors in a trial of the unjustly wealthy, then their role in the play alludes to the Furies’ role in Eumenides.76 But from a structural point of view at least, the wealth-gods’ role is quite different. In Eumenides, the Furies are the antagonists, not the protagonists. They are attempting to prosecute the protagonist, Orestes, for murder. If the wealth-gods were the antagonists in Cratinus’ play, then the protagonist would either be an unjustly wealthy person or someone supporting that cause. This is of course theoretically possible, but would turn upside down the current consensus starting with Kaibel that the play was one of the earliest to base its plot on a utopic “aurei saeculi beata vita”77 with the chorus representing an idyllic past. In addition, if the protagonist is supporting the unjustly wealthy, then the action would probably involve efforts to prevent a fairer distribution of wealth, just as the action in Eumenides involved efforts to prevent Orestes from being hounded for the murder of his mother, which again seems unlikely. Moreover, in Eumenides the Furies actually fail in their mission to avenge the murder, and accept instead a new system of justice. If this is true in Wealth-Gods, then the chorus would fail to redistribute wealth and accept some less radical solution, which seems hardly utopic. Therefore even if in both plays the chorus participates in a trial, there are only limited parallels between the actual role of the chorus of wealth-gods and the role of the Furies in the structure of events. Undoubtedly there are important thematic connections between these two choruses, and it still seems plausible that the trial by chorus itself is an allusion to Eumenides. But it is important to keep in mind that the choruses actually perform opposite functions in the action. This means that the wealth-gods’ active role in the trial itself may not necessarily be an allusion to a tragedy, but again simply a function of the fact that in mythological comedies as in tragedy the role of the chorus was more flexible. So the fragmentary evidence of this play may indicate that it was a mythological comedy rather than an invented-plot comedy similar to the extant plays of Aristophanes. From a structural point of view, this is primarily because the muthos started later in the play, and the chorus was an active driver of the muthos. The early entry of the chorus as well as the parabatic material in the parodos may 76 77

Bakola 2010, 135–38. PCG IV, 204.

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also indicate that it was a mythological comedy. In terms of content, the fragments clearly demonstrate that the play had a large mythological dimension, and a mythological model has already been identified, namely Prometheus Unbound. A corollary then is that the trial scene is less likely to be a formal agon on the Aristophanic model, since the evidence may suggest that formal agons were rare or perhaps even entirely excluded in mythological comedies. Because the muthos of Prometheus Unbound is not known, it is not possible to reconstruct the muthos of this comedy on the basis of the tragedy. But it seems likely that if the plot was based on this mythological story, then the muthos began after the chorus’ arrival looking for a relative, and ended with the chorus either causing or witnessing his release as in the tragedy. I would further speculate that the trial of the unjustly wealthy with the chorus acting as prosecutor was part of the “episodes,” and outside the muthos. This is because there is no suggestion that Prometheus Unbound featured anything similar to trial scenes that could be parodied. It could be then that the comedy adequately narrated the muthos of a tragedy, but invented new “episodes” as in Amphitruo. In addition, if it is true that the trial by chorus in this play also alludes to the Eumenides, then it may be that the trial preceded the relative’ s release. This is because in the tragedy, the trial occupies the second half of the play. Although here those on trial will apparently not be released as Orestes is at the end of the tragedy, it still could be that the release of the relative is somehow linked to the outcome of the trial as in the tragedy. Therefore it could also be that paralleling the structure of the tragedy, the trial in the comedy occupied the second half of the play and preceded the relative’ s release. If this were the case, then the muthos would begin at some point after the parodos and finish close to the end of the play when the relative was released after the trial. This muthos placement would then again resemble the muthos placement in Amphitruo. But this must remain speculation given the state of the evidence. There is one last feature of the role of the chorus in this play that may be worth considering. In all three plays by Cratinus mentioned above where there is evidence of early choral entry, the chorus not only entered earlier than it does typically in Aristophanic comedy, the parodos actually seems to have opened the play. Interestingly, one of the two surviving examples of a play that opens with the parodos is Suppliants. As already noted, this is also the only surviving tragedy where the chorus is the protagonist. The other surviving tragedy that opens with the parodos is Persians, where some have argued that the chorus has a particularly central role as well.78 Since Wealth-Gods also opened with the parodos and the chorus also seems to have had an active role in the muthos, this pattern could tentatively suggest some sort of link between the chorus opening the play and the chorus taking an active role in the muthos. In addition, since the muthos of Wealth-Gods may be taken from Prometheus Unbound and that play opened with 78

See for example Hopman 2013, 67–8.

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the parodos as well,79 this in turn may suggest that the chorus had a particularly active role in the tragedy, and perhaps was somehow instrumental in releasing Prometheus, for example. But the evidence is unfortunately too sketchy to confidently establish a firm link between these two features. Finally, there are many similarities between Wealth-Gods and another play by Cratinus, Chirons. But closer examination of the evidence shows that unlike Wealth-Gods, Chirons was probably an invented-plot play. Both feature a mythological chorus, both involved a contrast between a better time past and the present (see fragments 249, 256, 257 and 260), and in both the chorus arrived, identified themselves and explained their purpose (fragment 253). But there are two major differences. First, it seems Solon was a character in Chirons, and was brought back to life (fragment 246). However this occurred in the play, it seems likely that such a major event was part of the muthos, not the “episodes,” especially since so many of the fragments suggest an opposition between the good old days (perhaps represented by Solon) and the present. The muthos may then be similar to that of Eupolis’ Demes, where three great statesmen were raised from the dead, which was certainly an invented-plot comedy. Second, the apparent role of the chorus is fundamentally different. Judging at least from fragment 253, the reason the Chirons have come has only to do with “precepts” (ὑποθήκας), probably meaning to give advice or instructions. It seems at least from this fragment that the chorus is not announcing a plan, the chorus is offering to guide someone else in their actions. This is the role that the chorus often plays in the invented plots of Aristophanic comedy. So from these scattered hints, a structure of events seems to emerge that contrasts significantly from that of Wealth-Gods. It appears that a character or characters other than the chorus yearning for the good old days arranged for Solon’ s return, and that this is central to the muthos. The chorus of Chirons gives instructions or counsel, but is probably not driving the muthos. No mythological story is obviously suggested by these elements, or even alluded to in the fragments. All of these features point to an invented-plot play, not a mythological comedy. As a result, it should not be casually included in a list of “mythological tales”80 without further proof. I will now discuss three mythological comedies by Cratinus where much more evidence of the plot remains, Dionysalexander, Nemesis and Odysseus and Company. In these three cases, I will first hypothesize what Aristotle would have defined as the muthos, and then briefly discuss the features of the muthos. The goal is to determine if these muthoi share features that may also have typically applied with other mythological comedies.

79 80

See Griffith 1983, 287–8 on fragment 190. Bakola 2010, 252.

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6. Dionysalexander Although the hypothesis of Dionysalexander (P. Oxy. 663) is missing a section in the beginning, it contains extensive information about the plot. After Hermes departs the stage at the end of an unknown scene, Dionysus replaces Paris in the judgment of the goddesses, sails to Sparta, leaves with Helen, returns to Ida, is seized by the real Paris, loses Helen to Paris, and then surrenders to the Greeks. The hypothesis therefore clearly indicates that the play adequately narrated a mythological muthos based on the story of the judgment. Nevertheless, in the most extensive recent plot reconstruction of the play, Bakola argues that several important events that began the play are missing from the hypothesis.81 These lost events described by Bakola precisely parallel an Aristophanic muthos as described in Chapter 2. In Bakola’ s reconstruction, Dionysus complains he wants his satyrs back, comes up with a fantastic plan to replace Paris in the judgment, and then convinces Hermes in an agon to allow him to replace Paris. This is followed by a parabasis. Bakola views the actual judgment and all following events as “episodes” demonstrating the consequences of the Dionysus’ success implementing his Aristophanic plan to replace Paris. This means that in Bakola’ s reconstruction, an Aristophanic muthos in the first part of the play before the parabasis was followed by “episodes” that also adequately narrated the entire judgment myth. Bakola’ s argument rests on the premise that mythological comedies were structured like invented-plot comedies such as the surviving plays of Aristophanes. For example, she states that “as far as the hypothesis indicates, we have a parabasis, followed by episodic ‘possenhaft’ scenes. This is typical of the structure of old comedy.”82 If this assumption about the “typical structure” of the genre of Old Comedy as a whole is false when mythological Old Comedy is included, then her reconstruction also appears far less plausible. More specifically, her reconstruction necessarily requires that the parabatic material described in the hypothesis is from a parabasis in the middle of the play as in Aristophanes. To prove that this is the case, she follows other scholars in comparing the wording of the hypothesis with the wording in similar hypotheses describing the parabasis in the plays by Aristophanes. Demonstrating that the wording is basically equivalent, she concludes that Dionysalexander had a parabasis. But this ignores the possibility that Aristophanic hypotheses may only prove how the parabasis is described in an invented-plot play. It remains an open question how extensive parabatic material in the parodos of a mythological comedy would be described. It could then be that the exact same formulation was typically used to describe this material in the parodos of a mythological comedy. Therefore,

81 82

Bakola 2010, 97–102. Bakola 2010, 101.

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these hypotheses cannot be used to prove Dionysalexander had a parabasis in the middle of the play. In addition, there are several fundamental problems with the reconstruction itself. The first is that Bakola does not attempt to explain how replacing Paris in the judgment could be a plausible plan to reunite Dionysus with the satyrs. There is no reason suggested by the myth or by the fragments why these two events should be causally linked. The second is that the hypothesis already includes a large amount of events, and it seems unlikely that all of them could have been narrated in only the second half of the play.83 The third is that since this play in every way appears to be a mythological comedy that adequately narrated the muthos of the judgment story, as I have argued above it is unlikely to have had a parabasis or an agon. For these reasons, I will assume that the parabatic material at the start of the hypothesis is not from a parabasis. This parabatic material then must have been integrated into the parodos, which as suggested above may be the normal placement of parabatic material in a mythological comedy. I will also assume that this play primarily narrated Dionysus’ adventures replacing Paris in the story of the judgment, and that no Aristophanic muthos opened the play as Bakola suggests. If the synopsis includes most of the events in the play, then the plot closely follows the story of the judgment, but with certain important modifications. To determine if despite these modifications the play can still be said to adequately narrate the same muthos as the mythological story it is based on, the muthos of this story first must be defined. I believe that Aristotle would outline the muthos of the story of the judgment as follows: a man is asked to judge the beauty of three goddesses, chooses the one who promises him the most beautiful woman in the world, takes this woman from her husband, and then brings her home. As with the reasons why Orestes has been sent to Tauris, the reasons why this man is asked to judge the goddesses or who asks him (in this case Hermes) are events outside the muthos. Similarly, the events that occur after he has the woman in his possession are also probably “episodes.” This is because once he has the woman, he has experienced a change of fortune. This means that whether the husband becomes the man’ s mortal enemy as in the myth, or whether alternatively the man becomes quite good friends with the husband by the end as Orestes does with his enemy Aegisthus in the comedy referred to by Aristotle at Poetics 1453a35–9 – none of this would change the muthos. Comparing this muthos then to the events reported in the hypothesis, despite significant changes to the story it seems the muthos has remained the same. The only difference is that instead of a man, a god posing as a man is asked to judge the goddesses and receives the woman. But this does not change the muthos, because for the span of the muthos Dionysus is apparently believed to be and treated 83

As also argued by Storey 2006, 111.

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exactly like a man instead of a god by others in the play. From the beginning of the judgment until he returns to Ida with Helen, there is no reference to his powers as a god or any indication that he is recognized as a god. Interestingly, in the other parts of the play where Dionysus’ identity as a god is referred to, the humor in the story seems most explicit. This is when he is preparing to impersonate Paris (which was apparently narrated in the missing part of the hypothesis at the beginning), and when his project to impersonate Paris begins to backfire. In other words, the events of the story that can probably only be humorous and are irreconcilable with the myth are precisely the same events that highlight the replacement of a mortal with a god and are outside the muthos. This again seems to suggest that it was common practice when writing a mythological comedy to adequately narrate the muthos of the mythical story and make up new “episodes.” But in this case, the “episodes” are not entirely different. Instead, they are comic versions of the “episodes” familiar from the myth of the Trojan War. Unlike in the myth, for example, Paris himself comes looking for Dionysus and Helen at the same time as the Greeks. But like in the myth, the husband together with the Greeks pursues the man who took Helen. In addition, Cratinus has constructed the plot so that the ending still conforms to the traditional myth. Paris is portrayed here as essentially an ally of Menelaus in the hunt for Dionysus, so the play could have ended with Helen returned to Menelaus, avoiding the Trojan War. Instead, Cratinus deftly twists the plot at the end so that Paris “takes pity” on Helen who does not want to go home, returning the story essentially to the point where it leaves off in the traditional myth when the Greeks have arrived to take Helen back. So in this comic version Dionysus is actually the cause of the Trojan War, and Paris more a victim of circumstance. But still by the end the stage is set for the Trojan War. The absolute muthos size is of course impossible to estimate without the actual text. The muthos size and placement is also difficult to determine from the synopsis, but two very different alternatives can be identified. The first is that Dionysus’ trip to Sparta is directly narrated by the play, and there were changes of location to Sparta and then back to Ida. The second is that Dionysus simply left the stage at this point in the story, perhaps during a choral interlude, and then returned with Helen, meaning the entire play was probably set on Ida. As I demonstrated in Chapter 1, at least in the examples given in the Poetics, all the events in the muthos are always part of the action on stage, never reported or indirectly narrated. Since Dionysus’ trip to Sparta is in the muthos of this play as I have defined it, this would mean that the play directly presented these events. As a result, I would speculate that there was a change of location to Sparta and one or more scenes set there showing how Dionysus met Helen and left with her. If this is the case, then the muthos would span from line 12 to line 23 of the hypothesis, or 11 lines. Since the play ends in the hypothesis at line 44, this indicates that there are also about 11 lines from the end of the muthos to the end of the play, and somewhat more than 12 lines from the start of the play to where the muthos began. Regardless of how

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many lines are missing from the beginning of the hypothesis, if the hypothesis is any guide to the proportional construction of the play, then the muthos seems to have started at least one third of the way into the play, and possibly even towards the middle of the play as in Amphitruo. So if the hypothesis opens with the parodos as I have argued, then it seems that this play’ s structure fairly closely resembled the structure of Amphitruo. The muthos started later in the play than in Aristophanes, possibly about a third of the way in or even halfway in. The muthos also continued until later in the play, occupying much of the second half possibly including the scenes in Sparta. In terms of content, the play seems to have directly appropriated the muthos of the story of the judgment, but adapted or repurposed the “episodes” to tell a somewhat different story featuring Dionysus as well as Paris. Finally, the play still maintained the larger mythical complex by ending the play with the same state of affairs as required to continue the mythical story.

7. Nemesis As in Amphitruo, in Nemesis Zeus deceives a woman in order to seduce her. But in Amphitruo, Zeus has already achieved his goal by impersonating Amphitruo before the play starts. The focus is therefore on the consequences of his success once Amphitruo returns. In Nemesis by contrast, scholars84 have argued that during the action of the play itself Zeus turned himself into a swan to seduce Nemesis in Rhamnous, who had herself turned into a swan to escape him. This is because fragment 114 seems to be from a scene where someone prompted Zeus to become a swan, suggesting the play must have started with Zeus in his anthropomorphic form: ὄρνιθα τοίνυν δεῖ σε γίγνεσθαι μέγαν (“Therefore you must become a large bird”). The play therefore would have opened before Zeus had conceived and executed his plan, and that these events were directly narrated by the play. But the play also apparently narrated the consequences of his success, because the action continued with Nemesis laying an egg that is given to Leda in Sparta for safekeeping until Helen hatches from it (see fragments 115 and 117). From this outline of events, Henderson concludes that the play had a “diptych” structure “featuring metamorphosis and seduction in Rhamnous and then the incubation and hatching of the egg in Sparta.”85 He further speculates that the action shifted from Attica to Sparta “most likely over the parabasis,” comparing this change in “character and personnel” of the play to the turn in the plot after the parabasis in Frogs.

84 85

See now Henderson 2012, 4. Henderson also provides a thorough overview of the mythological background. Henderson 2012, 7.

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On closer examination, this structure proposed by Henderson in fact precisely parallels the Aristophanic structure of a complaint, a plan and its implementation around the middle of the play. First, Henderson suggests that Zeus’ previous failure before the play begins was reported in “an opening conversation with Hermes.”86 This opening conversation must have then contained a complaint: Zeus is frustrated he cannot seduce Nemesis. Second, Henderson argues that this complaint “would have motivated the plotting of the ruse” to transform into a swan, i. e. to the formation of a plan. Third, Henderson indicates that the parabasis occurred either just after Zeus seduced Nemesis, or just after the egg was laid. But in either case, it seems the parabasis then came shortly after Zeus implemented his plan to seduce Nemesis. And fourth, Henderson argues that the parabasis may have divided the play in a “diptych” structure, meaning the parabasis was located towards the middle of the play, or if there was no parabasis, that the “ruse” plot took up the first half of the play, and the Sparta plot the second. So without always explicitly referring to the Aristophanic structure, Henderson’ s outline implies all the structural features of an invented-plot play by Aristophanes. The reconstruction therefore indicates that the play had an Aristophanic muthos that can be outlined as follows: frustrated in his desire to sleep with a goddess who has turned into a swan, a god turns into a swan, flies to her and implements his plan by seducing her. The rest of the plot about the egg and all the scenes in Sparta would be “episodes.” But unlike the Aristophanic reconstruction of Dionysalexander discussed above, this reconstruction is highly plausible. If fragment 114 is spoken to Zeus, then the play almost certainly narrated a complaint, a plan and its implementation, and the apparently significant amount of material here set in Sparta showing the consequences of this plan would work well as “episodes” occupying the entire second half of the play as Henderson suggests. But there is also an alternative version of the myth where Aphrodite is ordered by Zeus to turn into an eagle and chase him as a swan into Nemesis’ lap. As a result, Marx speculated that fragment 114 was actually spoken by Zeus to Aphrodite instead.87 Since Henderson has already examined the first alternative in detail, here I would like to explore the hypothetical consequences of the second alternative for the overall structure of the play. By this interpretation, a likely possibility is that Zeus has already turned into a swan when he orders Aphrodite in fragment 114 to turn into a large bird to chase him. But even if Zeus has not yet turned into a swan in this scene, his order to Aphrodite suggests that his plan is already well under way and he has decided to turn into a swan. This means that no scene where this plan is determined as in Henderson’ s version is necessarily required. A possibility in this version then is 86 87

Henderson 2012, 6. Marx 1928, 157.

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that the plan was developed before the play opens, and that this scene between Zeus and Aphrodite occurred early in the play. This in contrast to Henderson’ s version, which necessarily requires at least one scene early in the play that focuses on the formation of the plan. This distinction also then immediately disqualifies this reconstruction from paralleling an Aristophanic muthos, because in Aristophanes the muthos always includes the formation of the plan. Aphrodite then chased Zeus to Nemesis, and the seduction began. After the seduction, Nemesis laid the egg and the rest of the reconstruction would be the same as in Henderson’ s version. So in this version, the muthos would be quite different from the one that Henderson suggests. Here the muthos seems to center around the god’ s plan to deliver the egg instead of his plan to seduce Nemesis. This alternative muthos could then be outlined as follows: with a god wanting to deliver an egg that he has fathered, he seduces a goddess in the form a bird, waits for her to lay an egg, and then has it delivered to Sparta. The reasons the god wants an egg he has fathered delivered to Sparta, how or if he turns into a swan, and in what manner he encounters the goddess (i. e. pursued by another bird or not) would be the “episodes” outside the muthos. The muthos would begin when the god seduces the goddess in the form of a bird, and end once the god has achieved his goal of delivering the egg. This means that as in Aristotle’ s outline of the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris, the muthos would begin when the two main characters meet. But unlike in that play, the muthos would not end until the god has achieved the goal of his initial plan. This is because in the tragedy Orestes is about to be murdered by his sister when he meets her, meaning his recognition by her changes his fortune, not succeeding in his initial plan to retrieve the statue of Artemis. In Nemesis however, the god’ s fortune would probably remain tied to his plan to deliver an egg, and so the muthos would not end until that plan is accomplished. Like the escape of Orestes and Iphigenia, what happens once the egg has been delivered to Sparta would then be “episodes.” Despite the plausibility of Henderson’ s reconstruction, this alternative reconstruction has certain advantages. For example, Henderson argues that Zeus is told to turn into a big bird most likely by Hermes, whom he writes here is playing the role of a “sidekick” to Zeus as he does in Amphitruo. But as the word “sidekick” suggests, in Amphitruo Hermes is not the character driving the plan, he is following Zeus’ orders. In Nemesis by contrast, if Hermes or someone else is instructing Zeus how to succeed in his seduction as Henderson suggests, then this character has at least a more active role in driving the plan than a “sidekick” typically does. This is not impossible, but an advantage of the alternative reconstruction is that it casts Zeus in a more active role. Here Zeus has conceived a plan and is giving orders, just as in Amphitruo. In addition, although again not impossible, it seems at least less likely that all the events involving the egg in the second part would not be “demonstrably or necessarily” connected to the seduction in the first part as Henderson argues in his comparison of the play to Frogs. This is because an audience familiar with the

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Nemesis myth would certainly have expected to see the story of the egg narrated in a play entitled Nemesis, whereas in Frogs the literary contest defies the narrative expectations developed in the first part of the play focused on bringing Euripides back from the dead. So because Nemesis has a mythical basis, it seems more likely that this play would focus on the “grand scheme of Zeus” in Henderson’ s words than on the lesser scheme of seduction in the first half as he argues. Another major difference between the two versions is the apparent muthos placement. In Henderson’ s reconstruction, the muthos starts close to the beginning of the play with Zeus’ complaint he cannot seduce Nemesis, and ends close to the middle of the play when he succeeds in seducing her. But in the alternate version, if the muthos begins when Zeus as a bird encounters Nemesis, then the evidence suggests that several events in the play preceded this event, some of which may have been narrated directly in the play. Zeus must necessarily have come up with his plan, ordered Aphrodite to assist him, and flown to Nemesis before he encounters her. Similarly, if the muthos ends when Zeus delivers the egg, then there is at least one indication that several scenes followed this event in the play. This is fragment 115, where someone is instructing Leda to take care of the egg: Λήδα, σὸν ἔργον· δεῖ σ᾿ ὅπως εὐσχήμονως ἀλεκτρυόνος μηδὲν διοίσεις τοὺς τρόπους, ἐπὶ τῷδ᾿ ἐπῴζουσ᾿, ὡς ἂν ἐκλέψῃς καλὸν ἡμῖν τι καὶ θαυμαστὸν ἐκ τοῦδ᾿ ὄρνεον. (“Here is your task, Leda. You must behave just like a proper hen and brood over this egg, from which you may hatch for us a beautiful and wonderful chick.”) This could suggest just a single scene where the egg is delivered by a character like Hermes, but interestingly the speaker asks Leda to take care of the egg “for us.” Henderson speculates that Hermes may be here “in disguise, impersonating Tyndareus,”88 i. e. Leda’ s husband. It could also be Tyndareus himself, though then his motivation is unclear. But regardless of what the exact explanation, this “for us” seems to suggest a certain level of complexity in the plot at this point that would require more scenes in Sparta. It was somehow established why this speaker could plausibly request Leda to care for the egg, whether using some disguise or motivated by some other cause. In addition, it seems that the egg did actually hatch before the end of the play, implying another event in this section.89 The hatching would also prove the person who spoke fragment 115 wrong about it producing a

88 89

Henderson 2012, 7. For the evidence see Bakola 2010, 239.

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chick, probably then resulting in at least one scene where Leda and perhaps other characters dealt with this unexpected outcome. All of this suggests a significant number of scenes after the ending of the muthos when the egg is delivered. So instead of a “diptych” structure, in this version the play seems to have a tripartite structure with some events preceding the muthos, then the muthos itself, and then some events following the muthos. This structure would therefore again more closely resemble the structure of Iphigenia in Tauris, Amphitruo and Dionysalexander than an Aristophanic structure. This is because in all of these plays, the muthos both started and ended later than in Aristophanes play, meaning the muthos is sandwiched between a number of scenes beginning and ending the play. So another advantage of this alternative reconstruction may be that the play’ s structure would then apparently resemble more closely the structure of the other two mythological comedies where some evidence of the structure remains. Given the state of the evidence, there is no way to determine which reconstruction is more plausible. But Henderson’s approach does show how the Aristophanic model may implicitly slip into the analysis of a mythological comedy. I find it particularly remarkable that Henderson describes the plot he outlines as having a “diptych” structure, as if it is an unusual feature perhaps shared only by Frogs. For Henderson, the change of focus from seduction in the first part of the play to birth in the second part suggests, as in Frogs, “disorderliness”90 in the plot that was either original or unusual. So Henderson refers to Frogs here only to show that this kind of disjointedness may have been characteristic of the “comic plot,” and therefore that his reconstruction is still plausible. This implies that the plays of Aristophanes where the plot does not significantly change in the second half do not have a “diptych” structure. This may be entirely true about the plots of some of these plays, but as I argued in Chapter 2, the muthos always ends in Aristophanes at about the middle of the play, so from that point of view the plays always have a “diptych” structure. This means that even if the plot of Nemesis proposed by Henderson is disorderly and therefore unusual, the muthos he implies is absolutely standard and predictable in the plays of Aristophanes. But since Henderson’ s analysis focuses only on the plot, it obscures how closely his reconstruction parallels the Aristophanic muthos. So here at least, applying the concept of muthos reveals the Aristophanic assumptions imposed (correctly or not) on a fragmentary play that a plot analysis may somewhat conceal.

90

Henderson 2012, 7.

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8. Odysseus and Company For Nemesis, the evidence of both the play and the mythical story is inadequate to determine if Cratinus significantly changed the mythical story he adapted, created his own new version of the story, or repeated a standard version of the story. But it is generally accepted that the evidence of Odysseus and Company indicates that in this play, Cratinus basically repeated the familiar story without significant alteration. Like Euripides’ satyr play Cyclops that inserted satyrs but left this story fundamentally the same, scholars agree that Cratinus seems to have followed the version in Odyssey 9 but used it for his own comic purposes. For example, Kock writes “argumentum fabulae fuisse Cyclopeam docent fragmenta, quod argumentum postea praeter Euripidem multi alii tractaverunt.”91 More recently, Heath writes that the play “was a straightforward burlesque of the Polyphemus episode in the Odyssey.”92 This means that the assumption here is that in Aristotelian terms, Cratinus used both the muthos of the cyclops story as well as the “episodes” from Homer in this play. But as with Kaibel’ s assumption cited above that this play included a parabasis, there is in fact no evidence that the play repeated the story found in Homer. Specifically, the fragments offer no hint that the Cyclops was blinded. The fragments instead indicate that many details before this point were adapted by Cratinus from Homer, but none after. So it seems that Odysseus and his crew arrived by boat (fragments 143, 144), gorged themselves on cheese and milk (fragment 149), and then encountered a Cyclops with one eye (fragment 156) who threatened to eat them as punishment (fragment 150). Odysseus’ crew hid from the Cyclops (fragment 148), but Odysseus got him to drink wine (fragments 145, 146) while at the same time concealing his identity (fragments 145 and perhaps 147). But what happened afterwards is entirely unclear. One possibility then is that the muthos of this play could be outlined as follows: a man is taken captive together with his companions by a monster who threatens to eat them, but then the man tricks the monster into getting drunk, leading to their escape. The muthos begins when the man and his companions meet the monster, and ends when his plan to trick the monster into getting drunk is implemented. But why the man and companions have come to the monster’ s land, how they meet the monster, or what happens after the monster gets drunk could all then be “episodes” outside the muthos. If this is the case, then this would be slightly different from the muthos of Euripides’ satyr play Cyclops, where Odysseus’ plan is to blind the Cyclops. In Euripides’ treatment getting the monster drunk is an “episode” that could be replaced by some other method of disabling the monster, and the muthos ends with the blinding. This muthos outline of Cratinus’ comedy 91 92

Kock 1880, 55. Heath 1990, 147.

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based on the fragments alone therefore suggests that there is no reason to assume that the monster was blinded, although that is of course still a plausible assumption. If the blinding was instead handled here as an “episode” and mythological comedies were free to make up new “episodes” when adapting a mythological story, it could just as well be that Odysseus and the Cyclops became friends after he got drunk, and neither of them came to harm in the end. In terms of the muthos size and placement, given how many events are indicated by the fragments it can be reasonably assumed that the last event in the muthos when the Cyclops is persuaded to get drunk occurred somewhere in the second half of the play, and probably at least two thirds of the way to the end. This assumption is supported by the example of the satyr play Cyclops, where Polyphemus is persuaded to lie down and get drunk at line 545 almost exactly three quarters through the 709-line play. Since there is evidence of a scene at sea before they reach land and a scene where the companions ate milk and cheese on land before encountering the Cyclops, this first event in the muthos seems to have occurred somewhat later in Cratinus’ play. If this event occurred about a third of the way into the play as it does in Cyclops (line 203), then again the muthos placement here would resemble that of Iphigenia in Tauris, Amphitruo and Dionysalexander where it occupies a middle portion of the play starting about a third after the beginning, and finishing about a third from the end of the play. So the example of Odysseus and Company illustrates that when the mythological model behind a mythological comedy is obvious, the events in that comedy still cannot be assumed to follow the mythological model. Even with the most familiar stories such as that of the Cyclops, it should still be kept in mind that the author of a comedy could choose to retain only some events from the source and invent entirely new events to fill out the rest of the play. This is because as long as the core of the narrative or muthos remained recognizably the same, a mythological comedy based on that muthos could have what in modern terms would probably be called an entirely different plot. * The analysis above is an attempt to bring the structure of mythological Old Comedy into some kind of focus. Many uncertainties remain since the analysis is based solely on fragments, and most of the conclusions here are speculative. But at the same time, the speculative picture that has emerged fundamentally challenges typical assumptions about this type of play. If even some portion of these speculations is accurate, then it would seem that mythological comedy and Aristophanic or invented-plot comedy are far less similar than most scholars have argued. Besides the potential lack of epirrhematic structures, the evidence also may suggest that the structure of events and Aristotelian muthos contrasted with the typical Aristophanic structure of events. This contrast then may have been intentional, a tool used to clearly distinguish mythological plots from invented plots.

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So from a structural point of view, mythological comedy by this hypothesis would clearly be in a different category than Aristophanic comedy. But the analysis of specific mythological plays suggests that the structure of mythological comedies would not be entirely unfamiliar to us. Instead, there could be indications of a striking and surprising resemblance between the structure of mythological comedy and the structure of tragedy. In particular, comparisons with Aristotle’ s outline of the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris indicate that the muthos of a number of mythological Old Comedies resembles the muthos of this tragedy. This is because where there is evidence of muthos placement in a mythological Old Comedy, it seems to start later and end later in the play than in Aristophanes, and so is more centrally positioned as in Iphigenia in Tauris. In addition, the muthos often seems to be sandwiched between “episodes” before and after the muthos as in Iphigenia in Tauris. This may suggest that mythological Old Comedies not only burlesqued mythological stories, they also resembled more closely the structure of the genre that typically dramatized mythological stories, tragedy. If this speculation is accurate, then very little of what is understood about the structure of Aristophanes’ plays should be directly applied to mythological Old Comedy.93 Instead, understanding the structure of mythological Old Comedy would probably require an entirely new approach combining our understanding of the structure of Aristophanic Old Comedy and the structure of tragedy. In the next chapter, I will outline the muthoi of all the surviving tragedies and satyr plays in order to determine how structure, genre and plot type may overlap or interact in this way.

93

This would also mean that any apparent “contrast in structure” between the tragedy and comedy genres as suggested by Taplin 1986, 172 would have to be thoroughly reconsidered.

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IV. Muthos and the Definition of Genre Summary 6SK *VTLK` [YHNLK` HUK [OL ZH[`Y WSH` HYL [OV\NO[ [V IL JVTWSLTLU[HY` NLUYLZ ^P[O KPZ[PUJ[Z[Y\J[\YHSJOHYHJ[LYPZ[PJZ0HYN\L[OH[[OL\ZLVMJOVYHSWHY[ZPLMVYTHSZ[Y\J[\YL PU T`[OVSVNPJHS 6SK *VTLK` TH` OH]L ILLU JSVZLY [V [YHNLK` [OHU [V (YPZ[VWOHUPJ 6SK *VTLK`HUKWVZZPIS`HSTVZ[PKLU[PJHS[V[OLZH[`YWSH`0UHKKP[PVU[OL(YPZ[V[LSPHUT\[OVZ VMT`[OVSVNPJHS6SK*VTLK`ZLLTZ[VZOHYLRL`JOHYHJ[LYPZ[PJZ^P[O[OLT\[OVZVMIV[O [YHNLK`HUK[OLZH[`YWSH`)`PUKP]PK\HSS`HUHS`aPUN[OLZ[Y\J[\YLVML]LU[ZPUHSSZ\Y]P]PUN [YHNLKPLZHUKZH[`YWSH`Z0ÄYZ[ZOV^[OH[[OLT\[OVZPU[OLZH[`YWSH`ZLLTZ[VILHSTVZ[ PKLU[PJHS^P[O[OLT\[OVZPUT`[OVSVNPJHSJVTLK`0[OLUZOV^[OH[[OLZPaLHUKWSHJLTLU[ VM[OLT\[OVZPUT`[OVSVNPJHS[YHNLKPLZPZHS^H`ZWYHJ[PJHSS`[OLZHTLHUKZLLTZ[VZOHYL RL`MLH[\YLZ^P[O[OLT\[OVZPUT`[OVSVNPJHSJVTLK`-PUHSS`0ZOV^[OH[[OLT\[OVZVM[OL ZPUNSL Z\Y]P]PUN UVUT`[OVSVNPJHS [YHNLK` Persians ZLLTZ [V YLZLTISL [OL (YPZ[VWOHUPJ T\[OVZ;OLZLYLZ\S[ZPUKPJH[L[OH[PU[OPZWLYPVKULP[OLYMVYTHSZ[Y\J[\YLUVY[OLZ[Y\J[\YL VML]LU[Z^HZKL[LYTPULKI`NLUYLI\[I`[OLZWLJPÄJJVTIPUH[PVUVM[VULO\TVYV\ZVY ZLYPV\ZHUKWSV[[`WLPU]LU[LKVYT`[OIHZLK;OPZTLHUZ[OH[[OLJH[LNVY`VMNLUYLP[ZLSM TH`ILSLZZOLSWM\SMVYJSHZZPM`PUN[OLZLWSH`Z[OHUPZ[`WPJHSS`HZZ\TLK

The three Greek theatrical genres in the fifth century – tragedy, Old Comedy and the satyr play – may at first appear to be particularly compliant with Derrida’ s “law of genre.”1 The theater festivals with their separate genre competitions for comedy and tragedy seem designed to enforce this law that “genres are not to be mixed.” In addition, these festival contexts guaranteed that a play literally “cannot belong to no genre, it cannot be without or less a genre.”2 The first three plays in the tragedy competition fall by definition into the genre of tragedy. Plays in the comedy competition fall into the genre of comedy. Plays with a satyr chorus performed after tragedies in the tragedy competition fall into the genre of the satyr play. Yet recent scholarship has demonstrated that plays in this period also conform to Derrida’ s paradoxical “law of the law of genre,” which is the “principle of contamination, a law of impurity, a parasitical economy.”3 Tragedy regularly included comic elements, sometimes using them to tragic effect.4 Old Comedy as well as the satyr play alluded to or parodied tragedy for comic effect.5 The satyr play is both “tragedy at play” as well as more generally a form of humorous theater. 1 2 3 4 5

Derrida 1980. Derrida 1980, 65. Derrida 1980, 59. See in particular Seidensticker 1982. For a recent discussion, see Nelson 2016.

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Finally, Old Comedy included plays with satyr choruses that probably in some ways borrowed from the satyr play.6 This means that as clearly and concretely separated as the three genres were in their festival contexts, the crossovers between these genres were just as pronounced. So in some ways this genre system seems to be the perfect expression of Derrida’ s paradoxical genre laws. The three genres remain discrete genres in spite of – or perhaps in Derrida’ s view, precisely by means of – the contamination between them. But all of the crossovers listed above are on the level of content. The forms of the three genres are still thought by scholars to be consistently distinct. Old Comedy featured unique epirrhematic structures, the parabasis and the agon, that set it apart from the other two genres. Fragmentary evidence of the satyr play indicates that it typically had a looser structure than tragedy emphasizing the spontaneity of the satyr chorus. The surviving tragedies have a relatively simple structure with choral songs dividing the play into sections. But as I showed in Chapter 3, it seems likely that mythological Old Comedies did not conventionally feature a parabasis and agon. I also showed that the Aristotelian muthos in these mythological Old Comedies seems to have been quite different from the muthos found in the surviving work of Aristophanes, and may have more closely resembled the muthos in tragedy. These results suggest that beyond crossovers on the level of content, there may have also been extensive crossovers on the level of structure. To identify where these crossovers in structure occurred among the three genres and under what circumstances, I will first attempt to define more precisely the formal structure of mythological comedy in comparison to tragedy and the satyr play. I will then examine the structure of events across all three genres by applying Aristotle’ s criteria from the Poetics to outline the muthoi of the surviving tragedies and satyr plays. Next I will compare the features of these muthoi to determine if certain muthos characteristics were specific to particular genres, or were shared across genres. Finally, I will synthesize these results to assess the usefulness and relevance of the category of “genre” itself for classifying plays in this period. As I will show, it could be that the violations of Derrida’ s “law of genre” are so extensive that it is difficult to align the categorization of these plays with any conventional concept of genre at all.

1. The Formal Structure of Mythological Old Comedy7 From the fragmentary evidence the structure of mythological comedy seems to have consisted of a parodos, an exodos, and dialogue alternating with sung choral parts. In tragedy, choral parts are typically used to separate dialogue episodes, 6 7

For the satyr play’ s relationship to comedy, see now Shaw 2014. This section incorporates revised material from Marsh 2020.

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dividing the play into a number of larger parts or “acts.” In invented-plot Old Comedy, epirrhematic structures give the chorus and choral songs a greater and more complex role in the play. So if mythological Old Comedy lacked epirrhematic structures, one possibility is that choral parts played a more limited structural role as in tragedy. But since these plays were performed alongside invented-plot Old Comedies, it seems unlikely that they precisely copied the structure of tragedy. Another possibility is that choral parts in mythological Old Comedy resembled those in the satyr play. Taplin has commented that “in the fragments of Aeschylus and Sophocles, choral lyrics, which are astrophic or in divided strophic pairs, are not related with any consistency to entrances and exits, and conversely the movements of actors are not grouped round the songs. Compared with tragedy satyr play has a loose and undefined structure that makes for a rambling continuity which does not really fall into parts.”8 Discussing basically the same pattern of astrophic lyrics or strophic pairs divided by spoken lines, Seaford argues that “in these respects, the fragments resemble Old Comedy.”9 These two statements taken together suggest that the conventional structure of the satyr play could be described as basically equivalent to invented-plot Old Comedy but without the parabasis and agon. If mythological Old Comedy also lacked these epirrhematic structures but retained the other formal features of invented-plot Old Comedy, then it may have had a very similar structure. In addition, some mythological Old Comedies had satyr choruses.10 It seems plausible that at least those mythological Old Comedies could have shared this looser structure with the satyr play, and that potentially mythological Old Comedy in general used this looser structure. But closer examination of the satyr play fragments shows that they resemble invented-plot Old Comedy somewhat less closely than Seaford suggests. In Sophocles’ Ichneutae for example, there are pairs of strophic songs at 243–50=290– 97 and 329–37=371–79 interrupting a long, continuous dialogue between the chorus and Cyllene. These songs are fewer than 10 lines long, but with 30 to 40 lines of dialogue between them. It may be significant that this pattern of short strophic choral songs sandwiching brief passages of a continuous dialogue is not found in Aristophanes as far as I can see. There are some parallels, but the interruptions are far more structured. For example, in Acharnians there are strophic songs at 284–301=335–46 and at 358–65=385–92 with spoken verses in between. But at 284–301and 335–46 Dicaeopolis sings the strophic songs together with the chorus, and at 347–357 as well as 366–384 only Dicaeopolis speaks between the songs. So despite the number of short interruptions by the chorus, in this passage of Acharnians the choral songs still apparently partially function to introduce or

8 9 10

Taplin 1977, 58. Seaford 1984, 46. See Storey 2005.

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separate different forms of delivery. In the Sophocles fragment on the other hand, the choral songs are directly integrated into a single ongoing dialogue sequence. Seaford suggests that these constant interruptions are fitting for a chorus of satyrs “at any moment ready to burst into vigorous action expressed in dance and song.”11 It could then be that the excitability of the satyr chorus resulted in the satyr play’ s particularly loose structure. This may have also been reflected in the structure of mythological Old Comedies with satyr choruses. But for the other mythological Old Comedies, I would argue that a somewhat tighter structure more closely resembling invented-plot Old Comedy without epirrhematic structures seems more plausible. So my speculation is that the conventional structure of mythological Old Comedy resembled the structure of the satyr play, but with a somewhat more defined or controlled use of the chorus to separate forms of delivery as in the sequence from Acharnians discussed above. If this is accurate, then the structural similarities between the satyr play and mythological Old Comedy would be extensive enough to significantly blur any formal distinction between them. This is not to say that the two genres would not be clearly distinguished in performance. All of the characteristics specific to Old Comedy such as grotesque costume, sexually explicit references, colloquial language, metrical flexibility, metatheatrical references, absurd plot twists and in particular political satire would have featured in mythological Old Comedies as well, even those using a chorus of satyrs.12 In addition, Old Comedy probably treated mythological material quite differently than the satyr play.13 But the similarities here would still seriously undercut the satyr play’ s status as a separate genre. The obvious contrasts in subject matter, structure and tone between tragedy and invented-plot Old Comedy clearly justify a generic boundary. Similarly, tragedy and the satyr play are easily distinguished by both tone and conventional structure. If mythological Old Comedy did not feature a parabasis and agon, then it too would be easily distinguishable from invented-plot Old Comedy by both its mythological plot material and simpler structure. But between mythological Old Comedy and the satyr play, the differences would be somewhat subtler. Since even a satyr chorus did not necessarily indicate a satyr play, besides the performance venue (tragedy or comedy competition) only the specific Old Comedy characteristics listed above would decisively distinguish a satyr play from a mythological Old Comedy. Unlike between the other types of plays, the differences here would then only be in execution (costume, style, content), and not in tone, structure or subject matter. Could then the satyr play have been viewed as a specific type of humorous mythological drama distinguished by certain identifying characteristics more

11 12 13

Seaford 1984, 17. On the use of the satyr chorus in Old Comedy see Shaw 2014, 91. See Nesselrath 1990, 237–41.

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closely associated with tragedy? This would explain why neither Plato in the Republic nor Aristotle in the Poetics identifies the satyr play as a separate genre in addition to tragedy and comedy.14 If the term “comedy” contained two genres, these two humorous genres would then be humorous invented-plot and humorous mythological drama, not comedy and satyr play. Besides the apparently contrasting muthos characteristics identified in Chapter 3, this could also be another reason why mythological Old Comedies lacked epirrhematic structures. If these comedies belonged to a different genre than invented-plot Old Comedy, that genre may have had significantly different structural conventions and traditions. But this hypothesis would require accepting that genre in this period was defined primarily by structural features, which seems implausible. The separate contexts where the satyr play and mythological comedy were performed (i. e. tragedy competition and comedy competition) still seem to demand some basic genre distinction between the two kinds of plays. But there is another possibility that could explain how mythological comedy could be in the same genre as Aristophanic comedy yet lack epirrhematic structures. It could be that formal structure was not a marker of genre as is often assumed. Formal structure may have been determined partly by plot type as well as genre. This would mean that the reason mythological comedy lacked epirrhematic structures was not because it was in a different genre from Aristophanic comedy, but because they were not conventional for humorous dramas that used plots based on myth. A corollary would be that Aristophanic comedy featured epirrhematic structures because they were conventional for comedies with invented plots, not because they were conventional in the genre Old Comedy. Similarly, the reason the structure of the satyr play may have resembled the structure of mythological comedy is not because it is a particular species of mythological comedy, but because they are both forms of humorous drama that used plots based on myth. This suggests that crossovers in formal structure between mythological Old Comedy, Aristophanic Old Comedy and the satyr play may be less instances of contamination or “intergeneric play” than evidence of a system of formal structures that only partially relied on the category of genre. To determine if other structural features could systematically cross genres, I will now outline the structure of events or Aristotelian muthos in all surviving tragedies and satyr plays. I will then compare them to the muthos in Aristophanic comedy and mythological comedy. As I will show, the results indicate that the structure of events was also determined by both plot type and tone, not by genre alone.

14

For a detailed discussion see Nesselrath 1990, 112: “offenbar sah [Aristotle] die saturoi nicht als eigenständige Gattung.”

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2. The Muthos in Tragedy and the Satyr Play In the previous chapters, I argued that the muthos is always smaller than the play and entirely contained in the play. I then applied this definition to an analysis of the muthos in the plays of Aristophanes and other Old Comedy poets, focusing on where they began and ended within the play to determine size and placement. Since in the case of Aristophanes I argued that the muthos is the same in all the surviving plays, the beginning, middle and end of this muthos was easily identifiable across all the plays. In the case of the other plays I analyzed, besides Amphitruo all of them survive only in fragments so the options for identifying the beginning, middle and end of the muthos were generally quite limited. But in the case of the surviving tragedies and satyr plays, there is little muthos repetition and most of the plays contain a large number of events, only some of which belong to the muthos. This means that outlining the muthoi of these plays requires identifying the events included in the muthos as well as determining where Aristotle would say the muthos begins and ends for each individual play. As I hope to show, one result of this analysis is that tragedies with less coherent plot structures may still have adequately unified muthoi. As I argued in the analysis of the muthos in Aristophanes in Chapter 2, even plays thought to have exceptionally chaotic, inconsistent or episodic plots can have a tightly unified muthos that conforms to all of Aristotle’ s guidelines. This crucial distinction between the muthos and the plot (and secondarily between the muthos and the play) must always be kept in mind then when outlining the muthos of a particular tragedy or satyr play. The plot is typically thought to include all the events in the narrative work, as well as often many the events outside the narrative work.15 The plot may then include an enormous number of events, many of which can only be casually linked by probability or necessity. Similarly, there are many events within the narrative work that are nevertheless outside the muthos. The most striking example given by Aristotle is the escape at the end of Iphigenia in Tauris, which I argued Aristotle specifically defines as an “episode” outside the muthos. It is hard to imagine any definition of plot that would not include the escape and final salvation of the main characters of this play, Iphigenia and Orestes. But for Aristotle, the muthos ends with the change of fortune, not at the end of the play. As a result, the muthos includes far less events than the play itself. As the example of Amphitruo discussed in Chapter 3 also shows, this explains how the same muthos can be used in a tragedy and a mythological comedy. Since the muthos is only a small collection of events within the play, these events do not necessarily define the tone of the play overall. To return to the example mentioned by Aristotle, the muthos of the Orestes-Aegisthus story does not necessarily in15

As I argued in Chapter 1, Aristotle’ s favorite example of this kind of event within the plot but outside the muthos is the murder of Laius in the Oedipus myth.

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clude the tragic event of Orestes’ murder of Aegisthus. If the change of fortune for Orestes occurs when Aegisthus recognizes Orestes, for example, the murder would be defined by Aristotle as an “episode.” This means that as Aristotle himself points out at 1453a35–9, Orestes may end up befriending Aegisthus instead of murdering him at the end of a comic version of this story. As I will show below, the comedy would then have a similar muthos to a tragic treatment of the myth such as Sophocles’ Electra, but the outcome of the plot would be comic instead of tragic. I will discuss the surviving tragedies and satyr plays chronologically by author. For easy reference, I take the plays from each author in the order they appear in the Loeb series. Since my goal is to determine the muthoi of these plays, I will refer only in exceptional cases to the often extensive scholarly discussions of their plots if they are relevant to identifying the muthos. To establish the events in the play, I will rely on the plot summaries in Storey and Allan,16 editing them down to lists of events. After analyzing the structure of events and explaining my decisions concerning where the muthos starts and ends in each of these plays, as I did with the plays of Aristophanes I will then present the results in graph form to allow easy comparison of muthos placement and muthos portion within the plays.

Aeschylus Persians Persians is the only surviving tragedy with an invented plot. But as Aristotle points out at 1451b19–22, tragedy was not strictly limited to plots based on mythological stories. Aristotle writes that some tragedies used only a couple of characters from myth and others none at all, citing Agathon’ s Antheus. This means that invented-plot tragedy may have been a distinct type of tragedy familiar to ancient audiences. If true, then for modern scholars our view of tragedy may be something like the mirror image of our view of Old Comedy. The surviving fifth century tragedies are all mythological with the single exception of Persians, while the surviving comedies are all invented-plot plays without exception. If mythological Old Comedy was structured differently from the surviving plays of Aristophanes as I argued above, then invented-plot tragedy may also have been conventionally structured differently from the surviving mythological tragedies. As in the case of mythological Old Comedy, these structural differences may simply be hidden from view because only one invented-plot tragedy survives. In fact my analysis will show that important formal characteristics of Persians are strikingly similar to those of the surviving plays of Aristophanes. It could then be that in case of

16

Storey and Allan 2005, 243–76.

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tragedy as well, plot type was a decisive factor is determining the formal structure in addition to genre. Turning to the muthos of Persians, this play contains very few events in total. The summary of the plot is as follows: The chorus wonder how the Persian army has fared. A messenger reports the army been decisively defeated. In grief the chorus and the queen call upon the ghost of the late king Darius. The queen and Darius discuss the defeat. Xerxes enters lamenting the defeat. The only change of fortune occurs when the messenger reports the defeat (in the scene ending at line 515). Afterwards Darius discusses the defeat, and Xerxes laments it. But neither of these characters changes the course of events, i. e. the fortune of themselves or others in the play. If the muthos ends during the messenger’ s report, then it must begin when the chorus expresses their expectation of this news from the messenger (line 8). Since the play has 1077 lines, the muthos in this play then spans only just under a half of its entire length and is placed right at the beginning of the play from line 8 to 515. It’ s worth noting that the messenger’ s report in Persians plays a fundamentally different role than messenger speeches in other tragedies. As I will show in the muthos outlines that follow, typically a messenger speech’ s role in tragedy is to report crucial events that have occurred off-stage, but that are the result of some events that have previously occurred onstage. In this play, I would argue that the messenger’ s report is the crucial event itself. Here the only event that precedes this onstage event is the chorus’ announcement that they are waiting for the messenger to arrive. Nothing about the Persians’ defeat or the war they are engaged in is part of any previous action onstage. So it seems that the muthos must revolve around the messenger’ s arrival, and what the messenger will say. The messenger can either arrive with good news leading to a change to good fortune, or bad news leading to a change to bad fortune. Obviously in this case, there is a change to bad fortune because the messenger’ s report details a military defeat and national disaster. As I previously noted in Chapter 3, this also means that the chorus seems to have the central role in this play. The chorus first establishes that they are waiting for the messenger, and the messenger’ s report that ends the muthos certainly changes the fortune of the chorus. In addition, the entry of the chorus opens the play, perhaps suggesting from the start it is the main character. Muthos outline: with a war being waged abroad, a group of elders wait for news of the result, and then find out their army has been destroyed.

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Seven Against Thebes This play again tells the story of a war and its outcome, but here the war starts after the play begins and ends before the play finishes. The events in the play are as follows: The Argive army, led by Polynices, is at the gates of Thebes. Eteocles assigns an appropriate defender to each gate, finding that he has left for himself the seventh gate and his own brother, Polynices. The messenger brings news that both brothers have killed one another. The bodies are brought back. Clearly the change of fortune occurs when Eteocles is killed. This means that the muthos probably starts when Eteocles decides to fight in the war himself at line 286. The bodies of Eteocles and his brother are displayed at line 845. The messenger reports their deaths at line 805, so here the report of a death and the display of the bodies are almost simultaneous. The messenger speech does not significantly delay the end of the muthos. Since there are 1070 lines in the play, the muthos here is placed in the middle, with roughly a third of the lines occurring before and after. Muthos outline: with his city under attack by his brother, a man decides to join the fight, and the man and his brother kill each other in the war.

Suppliants As the title indicates, this play’ s plot centers around an appeal for sanctuary. The reasons for the appeal precede the beginning of the play. The play begins with the arrival of the chorus together with Danaus in Argos where they will claim sanctuary. The events in the plot can then be described as follows. Danaus has refused to allow the marriage between his daughters and their cousins, sons of his brother Aegyptus. Fleeing their home in Egypt, they arrive at Argos and claim sanctuary as suppliants. King Pelasgos decides he will not make this decision to accept the suppliants without consulting and gaining the approval of his people. Danaus reports that Pelasgos has in fact persuaded his people to protect these suppliants and refugees. A threatening herald from the Egyptians arrives and attempts to coerce the maidens into€ leaving with him. King Pelasgos intervenes to repulse this threat and take the Danaids into the protection of the city of Argos.

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The reasons Danaus has brought his daughters to Argos are antecedent events and outside the muthos. The change of fortune occurs when the suppliants are accepted at line 600. The chorus receives this information as a report from Danaus, but I would argue that this is in a different category than events reported by a messenger. Although the decision has been made off-stage, Danaus is a key character in the play. This means that when Danaus states that they have received sanctuary, the report is an action performed by a major character in the play onstage. This distinguishes this report as an event, unlike when a messenger with little other significance to the action of the play reports events that have occurred off-stage. So even if an event is reported but it is relayed by an important character in the play onstage, I believe from Aristotle’ s point of view that would be an event itself that becomes part of the muthos. Since the change of fortune occurs when sanctuary is granted, logically the muthos begins when Danaus and the chorus claim sanctuary at line 324. With 1073 lines in the play, this means that the muthos of this play again begins about a third of the way into the play. But here the muthos ends significantly earlier, slightly after the half-way mark, and so occupies a much smaller portion of the play. The events with the threatening herald at the end are obviously “episodes” that have no impact on the muthos. These events even resemble some of the “episodes” in the plays of Aristophanes discussed in Chapter 2, where a new character often enters later in the play, challenges the hero’ s fantastic idea, and then is quickly repulsed or neutralized. Like in Persians and as discussed in Chapter 3, the chorus also seems to be the main character of this play. Although Danaus is certainly an important character, the fate of the chorus drives the muthos. And as in Persians, the entry of the chorus opens this play as well. So in two cases where the protagonist of a play by Aeschylus is the chorus, the entry of the chorus opens the play. As I pointed out in Chapter 3, this may in turn indicate that the chorus is also the protagonist of Cratinus’ Wealth-Gods, since in that play the parodos opens the play. Muthos outline: with a group of fleeing women arriving in a foreign land, they ask for sanctuary and, after deliberations, are granted sanctuary.

Prometheus Bound The action of this play is entirely static. This is because the main character, the Titan Prometheus, is chained to a rock from close to the beginning until the end. But after being chained to the rock he is visited by various characters with whom he discusses his punishment and his punisher, Zeus. So although there is little action, the play still seems to have the outlines of a plot. The plot centers on Prometheus’ punishment and his plan to end it. Here are the main events from this point of view.

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When Prometheus learned that Zeus was intending to destroy the human race, he gave men fire and saved them from extinction. As punishment Zeus has Prometheus chained to and impaled upon a rock in the Caucasus Mountains. He is visited by Oceanus, to whom he justifies what he has done and whose help in appeasing Zeus he rejects. He is visited by Io, and predicts her future: her descendant will release Prometheus from his rock. He then tells the chorus his secret: by whom Zeus can be overthrown. Hermes, official emissary of the Olympians, arrives to wring this secret from Prometheus. Prometheus refuses, and is catapulted into Tartarus by a violent tempest. Clearly, the reasons for his punishment are antecedent events outside the muthos. I would argue that even the implementation of the punishment at the opening of the play is also not part of the muthos, since the punishment was handed down before the play begins. But it is extremely difficult to see where the change of fortune occurs in this plot, because Prometheus remains subject to this punishment from the beginning till the end. Still, there is at least the hint of a change of fortune at line 950 when Hermes reveals Zeus needs Prometheus’ secret that Prometheus believes will set him free. Until then it is unclear how or if Prometheus will escape his punishment without appeasing Zeus, which he refuses to do. So the revelation that Prometheus has a secret that Zeus needs seems to put him in a new position of power, thereby changing his fortune. If this is accepted, it would mean that the muthos of the play centers on Prometheus’ plan for release. Since Prometheus first rejects the plan to appease Zeus in order to secure his release earlier in the play at line 330, it seems reasonable to place the beginning of the muthos at this event. In addition, this event passes the test described above for a muthos part, because it cannot be moved or changed without changing this muthos as a whole. It would make less dramatic sense for Prometheus to reject a plan to appease Zeus after he has implemented a plan to force Zeus to release him, for example, and additionally such a change would result in an entirely different muthos about the plan’ s failure or success. As the play has a total of 1093 lines, this would place the start of the muthos almost exactly a third of the way into the play. But the muthos ends quite late, at about 85 % through the play. The events of muthos are exceptionally loosely linked, meaning that Aristotle would probably call it “episodic” (see 1451b34–5). Muthos outline: with a Titan having betrayed the king of the gods and been chained to a rock as punishment, the Titan rejects a plan to appease the king but then implements a plan to force the king to release him.

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Agamemnon This elegant and simple plot has just a few impactful events: A watchman on the roof of the palace at Argos sees the beacon announcing that Troy has fallen to the Greeks. Agamemnon enters with his captive mistress, Cassandra. Clytemnestra persuades him to enter the house. We hear the death cry of Agamemnon. The doors open to reveal Clytemnestra standing over the bodies of her victims, claiming vengeance for the murder of her daughter. Agamemnon’ s death is his change of fortune, and as in Aristotle’ s muthos outline of the Odyssey discussed above, the muthos begins with the hero’ s return home from war. The reasons for his absence from home and his murder are antecedent events outside the muthos. We hear Agamemnon’ s death cry, but the muthos ends immediately after when the bodies are displayed. So in a play of 1673 lines, the muthos begins when Agamemnon returns at line 774 close to halfway through the play, and ends at line 1372 when Agamemnon is killed just about three quarters of the way through. This means the muthos spans just over a quarter of the play and is placed after the middle. Muthos outline: with a man having been away for years at war and having sacrificed his daughter to win the war, he returns home and is murdered by his wife.

Libation bearers This is the only mythological story told in three surviving tragedies. These plays then present a unique opportunity to compare how different muthoi can be built from what is basically the same plot. In this version by Aeschylus, the focus is on Orestes’ plan to avenge his father’ s murder. As I will show below, the other two versions by Sophocles and Euripides each shift the focus to a different aspect of the plot, and as a result have different muthoi. The events in this play are as follows: Orestes has come home to Argos from exile with his friend Pylades. Orestes reveals himself and is recognized by his sister Electra. Orestes and Pylades plan to gain access to the palace by announcing the “death” of Orestes. Aegisthus is killed by Orestes. After the off-stage murder of Clytemnestra, Orestes sees in his mind the Furies and in madness rushes off the scene.

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The change of fortune occurs as expected with the murder of Aegisthus. The muthos then begins with Orestes’ plan to murder Aegisthus by faking his own death. It may at first appear that the muthos could also start with Orestes’ return home as in the Odyssey. But here the return occurs before the play begins, and so cannot be part of the muthos. Therefore the muthos must begin with the plan that sets in motion the events that end the muthos. But this means that the reasons Orestes intends to murder Aegisthus, as well as the murder of Clytemnestra after Aegisthus are both outside the muthos. It should also be noted that Electra’ s recognition of Orestes is outside this muthos as well. This demonstrates a point made above, that a recognition can be included in a play but still fall outside the muthos. In fact, this muthos does not require a sister character at all. It is simply about a son’ s plan to kill the man who killed his father and now lives with his mother. As a result a mother character is required, but her murder is not. Orestes plans his disguise at line 554 and the body of Aegisthus is displayed at line 973. But the audience hears Aegisthus crying out in pain off-stage earlier at line 869. Since the play is quite short at 1074 lines, this delay is significant proportionally. The muthos starts just over halfway through the play but would end almost exactly 90 % of the way through if the display of the body is the last event. Aegisthus cry is however heard at about 80 % of the way through. If this is taken as the end of the muthos, then the muthos placement is almost exactly the same as in Agamemnon, the previous play in the trilogy. Muthos outline: with a son whose father has been killed by his mother’ s lover having returned home, the son plans to kill the lover and then kills him.

Eumenides This plot of this play centers on Orestes’ trial for the murder of Aegisthus. The events are as follows: Apollo sends Orestes to Athens to seek judgment there and then drives the Furies out of his shrine. Orestes reaches Athens and takes refuge at the statue of Athena, followed by the Furies who surround him with a song of binding. Athena submits Orestes’ case to a jury of twelve Athenian men. The vote is evenly split, and Athena breaks the tie in Orestes’ favor. Orestes leaves swearing eternal friendship between Argos and Athens. The Furies become Eumenides and a court of law (the Areopagos Council) replaces blood justice. The change of fortune occurs when Orestes is acquitted. This means that the muthos begins with the start of Orestes’ trial, which coincides with Athena’ s entrance. The reasons Orestes is on trial, how the trial is set up, and what happens

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after the verdict are then all outside the muthos. With Athena entering at line 397 and the Orestes’ acquittal occurring at line 752 of this 1047-line play, the muthos placement is again similar to the other two plays in the trilogy but starts and ends slightly earlier in the play. Since this is the only surviving trilogy of tragedies, it cannot be determined whether similar muthos placement and size was a feature of other trilogies. But it raises the interesting possibility that muthos size and placement was a feature that could bind the three plays of a trilogy together. This muthos outline also shows that perhaps the most sensational aspect of the play, the Furies, does not participate in the muthos, and only contributes to the episodes. This recalls the example of Iphigenia in Tauris, where perhaps the most exciting parts from a plot point of view – the escape and salvation – fall outside the muthos. I would also suggest that the muthos does not even require Orestes to be an avenging son. The focus is on a crime of murder and whether the main character will be acquitted of it or not. But since his identity as a son is certainly part of the antecedent events, the muthos description should probably still call him “son” and describe the particulars of the murder. Muthos outline: with a son having killed his father’ s murderer and his mother, he is put on trial and acquitted.

Sophocles Ajax This play is about a suicide, so Ajax’ s fortune is irreversibly changed by his own hand during the play. The play starts just after the shameful event that motivates his suicide and then includes his plan to commit suicide, the actual suicide, and the aftermath. Here are the events in summary. In a fit of mad anger Ajax attacks the leaders of the Greeks, but Athene tricks him by substituting cattle and sheep, which he slaughters thinking they are his enemies. When he realizes the truth, he is greatly ashamed and plans to commit suicide. He falls on his sword. His body is found by Tecmessa and the chorus. The second half of the play deals with the burial of the hero. After noting in this summary that “the second half of the play” deals with the burial, Storey and Allan go on to comment that “some see the structure of the play as a pair of disjointed halves, with title character dead by the mid-point.” In fact, Ajax kills himself at line 865 in a play totaling 1420 lines, which is closer to two-

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thirds of the way through the play than halfway.17 In Suppliants by comparison sanctuary is granted close to the actual halfway mark, ending the muthos, but for other reasons this play does not give the impression of breaking into two disjointed halves. That is because further plot events such as the arrival of the threatening herald sustain the tension, reducing the impression of an end within the play at the halfway point. This again shows how from Aristotle’ s point of view, a muthos can be unified and conventionally placed even when the episodes that depend on it may result in a “disjointed” and disorderly plot. The problem with this play for these critics then is not that the muthos ends two-thirds of the way through the play, the problem is that the plot basically ends there as well. Since the play is 1420 lines long, Ajax decides to kill himself at line 480 and then commits suicide at line 865, the muthos begins at almost exactly a third of the way into the play and ends just before two-thirds of the way through. Muthos outline: with a hero having shamefully attacked the leaders of the Greeks, he plans to commit suicide and then commits suicide.

Electra This is the second of the plays based on the same myth as Libation Bearers. But as the title suggests, now Electra is the main character of the muthos, not Orestes. Still the plot is similar, with Orestes again faking his own death. Orestes returns home to Mycenae with the faithful tutor (paidagogos), to whom his sister Electra entrusted him after their father’ s murder. The tutor tells Clytemnestra and Electra the (false) tale that Orestes has been killed at Delphi. A stricken Electra vows to take revenge herself. Orestes enters with an (empty) urn supposedly containing his ashes. Electra recognizes Orestes. Orestes and Pylades enter the palace and kill Clytemnestra. Aegisthus appears and is killed. In this version then, the focus is on Electra’ s suffering and anger living with her father’ s murderers. She is waiting for Orestes to return and help her avenge the murder. As a result, her fortune changes when she finally recognizes Orestes. Since her suffering and Orestes’ arrival are antecedent events that occur before the play opens, I would argue the muthos begins when she hears that Orestes is dead from

17

Storey and Allan 2005, 251. The plot of the play would probably seem even more “disjointed” to some commentators if it really ended at the midpoint as Storey and Allan claim.

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the tutor. This is the event that leads eventually to the recognition and the change of fortune. By contrast, her plan to take revenge herself does not lead to any further events in the play, and is probably then outside the muthos. So like Iphigenia in Tauris, here the muthos is concluded by a recognition. Since again Orestes fakes his own death, the key difference in the plot of this play compared with the Aeschylus version lies in precisely when Electra discovers the plan. To ensure Orestes remains the focus, in the Aeschylus version Electra is aware of the plan virtually from the start. This puts her in the same position from a plot point of view as Pylades, who is also aware of the plan from the beginning and helps it succeed. To make Electra’ s suffering the focus of this version, Sophocles has left her out of the plan until later in the play after the muthos has ended. That has the effect of focusing the plot of the play on Electra, resulting in a completely different muthos. This then demonstrates how similar plots based on the same mythological story can be used to produce plays with very different muthoi. In addition, it should be noted that this muthos contains no murders. Focusing on Electra’ s pain means that the actual repercussions of Orestes’ return become “episodes.” So a comic version of this same story such as the one described by Aristotle at Poetics 1453a35–9 may well have used a similar muthos, or one that ended with Aegisthus’ recognition of Orestes, for example. Since the play has 1510 lines and Electra learns Orestes is dead at line 673 but then recognizes him at line 1222, the muthos in this play starts just before the halfway point and ends just after three-quarters of the way through. The muthos placement is therefore almost identical to the muthos of Agamemnon. Muthos outline: with a girl’ s father having been murdered by her mother and her lover, and with her waiting for her brother’ s return to avenge the murder, the girl hears her brother is dead and then recognizes her brother who is actually alive.

Oedipus Tyrannus As I have shown in Chapter 1, Aristotle’ s repeated references to the murder of Laius in the plot of this play prove that events outside the play are outside the muthos. But Aristotle also comments twice in the Poetics about the muthos proper of this play. At 1453b2–6, he indicates that just hearing the muthos of this play told would elicit terror and pity in the listener. This means that even without the murder of Laius and other events outside the muthos, the muthos outline I present here should still pass this test. In addition, Aristotle states at 1452a32–3 that the best reversals are coincident with a recognition, citing this play as an example, and indicating that the reversal occurs when Oedipus recognizes his true identity. Since just previously at 1452a15–6 Aristotle describes a reversal as accompanying a change of fortune, this passage apparently establishes the end of the muthos for Aristotle. Here are the plot events in outline.

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A plague on fertility has struck Thebes. An oracle states that the murderer of Laius, the former king of Thebes, must be discovered and driven out. Teiresias tells Oedipus, king of Thebes, that he himself is the guilty party. Jocasta leads Oedipus to suspect that he may indeed have killed Laius in self-defence. A messenger from Corinth arrives to announce the death of Oedipus’ “father” and that Oedipus was not the son of Polybus and Merope of Corinth. A herdsman reveals that Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta. Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus blinds himself. If the change of fortune occurs when Oedipus recognizes that he is the murderer of his father Laius and therefore his mother’ s husband, then the muthos begins when Oedipus is accused of the murder and denies it. This means that the reasons Oedipus is accused of the murder, why he murdered Laius, how he was orphaned and how he came to marry his mother are all outside the muthos. Muthos outline: with a son having been abandoned by his parents at birth and then having killed a king and married the queen, the son is accused of murder and then recognizes that the man he killed was his father and that his wife is his mother. This outline shows that one strength of the plot of this play is that it almost seamlessly combines two stories in one. On the one hand, it is the story of a man who has usurped a king by murdering him and taking his wife. This story could be told in several ways. He may have been unaware he had killed the king as here, for example, or he may know he is the murderer but denies it to remain in power. On the other hand, it is the story of a son who is accused of murder and then admits he has murdered his father and married his mother. Again, he may have been unaware that he killed his father and married his mother, or if he were unusually depraved he could have done both intentionally. But as far as the muthos itself is concerned, the outline above specifically requires him to be unaware that he has killed his father and married his mother so he can recognize that fact, not just admit it. He could very well have purposefully killed the king in order to usurp his throne and queen, and the muthos would remain the same as long as he did not somehow find out this king was his father until later. Only the antecedent events outside the muthos would change. Since no event in the muthos can be changed or removed without changing the muthos as a whole, this demonstrates that the events in the Sophocles version that require Laius to be a king and Oedipus to replace him on the throne are not actually features of the muthos. It would be entirely possible to tell the Oedipus story without making either the father or the son a king. As long they are father and son, and the son unknowingly marries the mother after killing the father, the muthos would remain the same. But this muthos is still a tragic story, and one that would certainly elicit terror and pity in

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listeners even if they did not see the play, just as Aristotle requires. So the muthos here does meet Aristotle’ s requirements even though it lacks many prominent features of the plot. The play is 1530 lines long. At line 379 Teiresias tells Oedipus he killed Laius and at line 1182 Oedipus recognizes he is the killer of Laius. This means the muthos starts about a quarter of the way into the play and finishes about a quarter of a way before the end, using a structure similar to Seven against Thebes above. Although there is a long messenger scene from lines 924 to 1072, in this play the messenger operates as a character and enters into an extensive dialogue with the main characters instead of simply delivering news in a monologue. As a result, this messenger scene is part of the muthos.

Antigone In this play, the plot can be described as a story of crime and punishment. Creon has established a law forbidding the burial of Polynices. Antigone commits the crime of burying her brother Polynices, and is then sentenced to death as punishment. But many other events precede and follow the crime and punishment in this plot, as can be seen in the outline of events. Oedipus’ two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, have killed each other, and the new king, Creon, their uncle, has decreed that Eteocles, who died defending his city, shall be buried with full honors, while the traitor Polynices is to be left for the dogs and birds to devour. Antigone fails to persuade her sister Ismene to defy the edict, and leaves to bury her brother’ s body herself. Antigone is caught giving funeral rites to the body. Haimon, Creon’ s son, enters to plead for Antigone, to whom he is betrothed, but Creon pronounces her death sentence. The blind prophet, Teiresias, enters to proclaim Thebes is polluted by the unburied corpse. Creon departs to bury the body and to release Antigone, but finds Antigone dead by hanging in the arms of Haimon, who then kills himself. On hearing the news, Creon’ s wife Eurydice hangs herself. I would argue that almost none of these events are part of the muthos. Here the muthos begins when Antigone is caught burying her brother, and ends with her sentenced to death. Why the burial is forbidden, how her brother has died, and how she is caught committing the crime of burying him are all antecedent events outside the muthos. Perhaps even more striking, all the tragic events that result from her punishment by the king including her death and the death of two other supporting characters in the play are outside the muthos. So the muthos here

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consists of essentially two events, the arrest for the crime and the punishment. But the play is structured so that these two central events of the muthos split the play almost precisely into thirds, with Antigone confessing the crime at line 443 of a 1353-line play, and sentenced at line 935.This means that despite the limited scope of the muthos in terms of events, its placement still generally conforms to the pattern observed in the other tragedies studied so far. Muthos outline: with a sister having buried her brother against the king’ s orders, she is arrested for burying him and then is sentenced to death by the king.

Women of Trachis The plot of this play centers around a plan gone horribly wrong. Deianira, Heracles’ wife, learns that he loves another woman and implements a plan to win him back, but ends up killing him instead. Here are the events: Deianira and her children are exiles in Trachis because of an act of violence by Heracles. Alone now for over a year, she wonders what has become of Heracles and sends her son Hyllus to find out. Deianira learns from a herald that Heracles has sacked a city because he wanted the king’ s daughter. In jealous despair, she sends Heracles a robe anointed with what turns out not be the love charm she thought but an incurable poison. Hyllos brings news of what the robe has done to Heracles. Deianira kills herself with a sword. Heracles is brought on stage in great pain. In this plot, a large amount of the scenes serve solely to convey information. The play opens with Deianira explaining the history of her marriage and complaining she is alone, and then continues with various reports of her husband’ s activities. Not much later in the play, she hears a report of her plan’ s failure and then herself is reported dead. Once Heracles appears on stage, he only expresses his will to die and his body is never displayed, meaning none of the deaths in this play can be part of the muthos. But even if Heracles’ actions and experiences are all reported until after Deianira’ s plan has gone wrong and must therefore be outside the muthos, that Deianira learns about these events results in both her plan to win him back and her recognition that the plan will cause his death. Since Deianira is the main character of the muthos, the moments she hears these reports are then crucial events in the play that occur onstage. Deianira’ s change of fortune clearly comes when she recognizes her plan has failed at line 741. I would argue that the muthos then begins when she learns that her husband loves another woman at line 375. With the play totaling 1278 lines,

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this places the muthos in about the same location as in Iphigenia in Tauris. It may appear that the initiation of the plan might also be the beginning of the muthos for Aristotle. This is possible, but seems far less likely because in fact Deianira herself reports that she has initiated the plan starting at around line 530. So the planning appears to be outside the muthos, and probably cannot be its beginning. The implementation of the plan on the other hand occurs onstage when she sends off her ill-fated gift to Heracles, and so is in the muthos. Muthos outline: with a wife left alone at home and wondering what has happened to her husband, she learns he loves another woman and then recognizes her attempt to win him back will kill him. Since her husband’ s actual death is outside the muthos, Heracles could somehow survive by a miracle, for example, or the intervention of another god, and the muthos would remain the same. This muthos only requires that the wife learn her plan to win her husband back will kill him instead.

Philoctetes The plot of this play also centers on the implementation of a plan that does not succeed. But unlike in Women of Trachis the implementation is acted out on stage, while crucial information about the purpose, formation, background and final success of the plan are only reported or predicted. As a result, this muthos focuses on the implementation of the plan instead of its purpose, formation and failure as in Women of Trachis. As I will show, another difference is that the main character of the muthos is the victim of the plot, not the plotter. Here is an outline of the plot events: Neoptolemus and Odysseus are sent to fetch Philoctetes and the bow of Heracles. Neoptolemus meets Philoctetes and tells a false tale that he is fleeing Troy, convincing him to leave with him. A merchant enters with a lying story that Odysseus is on his way to Lemnos to fetch Philoctetes. Philoctetes has a paralyzing attack of pain, and before he passes out, gives the bow to the youth, who promises to keep it until the hero wakes. Neoptolemus keeps his promise, and when Philoctetes revives, tells him the entire truth. Odysseus enters and escorts the youth (with the bow) away, but Neoptolemus returns, hands the bow back, and asks Philoctetes formally to come to Troy. Philoctetes refuses. Heracles appears, promising healing for Philoctetes and success for the Greeks.

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As the play begins, Neoptolemus and Odysseus have already arrived on the island and Odysseus immediately sets out implementing his plan of deception to get Philoctetes to leave the island. The rest of the play covers the implementation of this plan. Philoctetes experiences a change of fortune when he learns from Neoptolemus he has been tricked to leave the island at line 915. So the muthos begins when the plan is successfully implemented at line 468 and Philoctetes is persuaded to leave. Whether he is finally convinced to leave or not, how exactly he was convinced to leave in the first place, and how he finds out he was tricked are all outside the muthos. Interestingly, the summary in Storey and Allan does not even mention the first event in the muthos when Philoctetes is convinced to leave the island (I have added it to the summary of events above). The original plot summary instead focuses on Neoptolemus’ struggle with deception and truth, noting only that Neoptolemus “tells a false tale” at this point. This is because their summary actually casts Neoptolemus as the main character, and his struggle implementing the plan as the primary conflict of the play. This may apply to the plot or theme of the play, but I would argue that the victim of the plot, Philoctetes, must be the main character of the muthos since it is only his change of fortune that could end the muthos. If Neoptolemus was the main character of the muthos, then the muthos would focus on whether he fully deceives Philoctetes or not. But it is hard to understand how his final decision not to deceive Philoctetes somehow changes his own fortune. For Philoctetes on the other hand, discovering the deception certainly changes his fortune. From this perspective then, there could be other reasons why the plan to deceive Philoctetes fails at the end of the muthos aside from Neoptolemus’ hesitation. If Philoctetes had found out about the deception in some other way than because of Neoptolemus’ doubts, this muthos would remain the same. As a result, Neoptolemus’ struggle with truth and deception is outside the muthos and instead a key feature of the “episodes” Sophocles chose to fill out the plot of his play. The key events of this muthos are therefore the implementation of the plan at line 468 and its failure at line 915. Since the play is 1471 lines long, this again places the muthos almost precisely in the middle third of the play. Muthos outline: with a hero refusing to leave an island to fight, he is tricked into leaving and then recognizes he has been tricked.

Oedipus at Colonus Like Suppliants, the plot of this play hinges on a search for sanctuary. But unlike the Aeschylus play, here the initial appeal is easily granted and then must be defended against attack for a large portion of the drama. So while the muthos of the Suppliants ended when sanctuary is granted and devoted only a short coda of “episodes” to defending the main characters’ safety, the muthos of this play be-

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gins when sanctuary is granted and ends when sanctuary is successfully defended against the attack. The plot includes these events: After many years of wandering, Oedipus and his daughter Antigone arrive at Kolonos, near Athens. Ismene reports that Creon has been sent to bring Oedipus back to Thebes. Theseus arrives and grants Oedipus refuge in his kingdom. Creon has already taken Ismene prisoner and carries off Antigone, leaving Oedipus alone. Theseus rescues Oedipus ‘daughters. Polynices asks his father to help him regain his rightful rule in Thebes, but a furious Oedipus rejects him and curses both his sons. Oedipus at last comes to his rest. In this play of 1779 lines, at line 637 Theseus allows Oedipus to stay and at line 1042 Creon fails to force Oedipus to leave. This means that like Suppliants, the muthos here is relatively short and placed almost exactly in the middle of the play. Why Oedipus requires sanctuary, how he came to Colonus, and his death at the end are all elements outside the muthos. Muthos outline: with a man seeking sanctuary from a king, he is granted sanctuary by the king and then successfully protected against attack by the king.

Euripides Cyclops This is the only surviving satyr play, presenting a unique opportunity to study the similarities or differences between the muthos of this genre and the others. But since it is only a single example, there is no way to determine if its muthos features are typical or exceptional. Still, studying the muthos of this play can at least provide some indications of how the muthos of this genre may have looked. Here are the events of this familiar story also told (without satyrs of course) in the Odyssey: Silenus recounts how he and the satyrs in search of Dionysus were shipwrecked and forced to serve as shepherds for the Cyclops. Odysseus and his sailors arrive, seeking food and drink which Silenos offers to sell them from the Cyclops’ larder. They are interrupted by the return of Polyphemos, who threatens to eat the humans. The Cyclops takes Odysseus and his men inside the cave. Odysseus returns to describe the murder of two of his men and to report that he has gotten the Cyclops (who has never encountered wine) drunk.

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He asks the satyrs’ help in blinding the Cyclops and effecting their escape. The blinding takes place off-stage, and Odysseus flees with his men and the satyrs. When Odysseus’ true name is revealed, the Cyclops realizes that an ancient oracle has come true. If Odysseus is the main character of the muthos, then the blinding at line 663 results in his change of fortune. This would mean that the muthos begins when the Cyclops threatens to eat Odysseus and his men at line 241, since this is the event that leads by probability or necessity to his blinding. Alternatively, it can be considered whether the Cyclops may be the main character of the muthos. But even if the Cyclops is the main character, the muthos would still begin with the monster’ s threat to eat Odysseus and his painful change of fortune with the blinding. So this story is apparently so simple (a murderous threat and its result) that the events in the play could permit either the victim or the perpetrator to be the main character of the muthos. But since the story follows closely to the version in Homer where Odysseus is obviously the main character of the muthos, and in addition does not even bring the monster onstage until about line 200 of a short 709-line play, I would argue that Odysseus is also the main character of the muthos in this version of the story. Muthos outline: with a man having stumbled on the lair of a monster, he is threatened by the monster with death and then blinds the monster. Unlike in the Cratinus version of this story discussed in Chapter 3, here the plan is clearly to blind the monster, not to get him drunk. In fact, Odysseus reports he has already gotten the monster drunk when he announces his plan to blind him around line 440. This means that this event is reported and outside the muthos. The blinding on the other hand is graphically displayed at the end of the play, similar to the display of a corpse in tragedy. This means that the blinding itself certainly can qualify as an event in the muthos. The placement of this muthos contrasts strikingly with the muthos placement in the tragedies I have examined so far. Although it begins at what appears to be a conventional point in the play about a third of the way in, it finishes less than fifty lines before the end of the play. This means that the muthos here seems to be purposefully extended so that it finishes at the very last moment of the drama. Interestingly, as I showed in Chapter 3 the mythological comedy Amphitruo seems to follow the same pattern, with the muthos ending only three lines before the play finishes. A result of this similarity is that in both plays, the total muthos portion is quite high in comparison with most of the tragedies examined above, stretching over about 60 percent of the play’ s lines in both cases.

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Alcestis This is not a satyr play, but it was produced in the fourth position in the tragedy competition and includes some comic features. It therefore seems to be a particularly explicit (or perhaps consciously constructed) example of the “law of the law of genre” discussed at the beginning of this chapter, which is the law of contamination. Here Euripides created a hybrid, a mix of dramatic and comic elements that in some ways resembles the satyr play, in others not. But as I will show, at least from the point of view of the muthos this play appears to quite closely resemble the satyr play just examined, Cyclops, whose muthos was in turn shown to bear close similarities with the mythological comedy Amphitruo. These similarities will be discussed in more detail in the next section. Here are the events of the story told here: Apollo has arranged that Admetos can avoid his death, if he can persuade someone else to die in his place, but only his wife, Alcestis, is agreeable. The dying Alcestis requests a favor of her husband: that he not marry again. He promises not only not to marry but to banish all entertainment and joy from his palace. After her death his friend Heracles arrives, and Admetos welcomes him, keeping secret the death of his wife. Heracles learns the truth from a servant. Admetos realizes that Alcestis in death is happier than he in life. Heracles returns leading Alcestis, rescued by Heracles by wrestling with Death for her life. Since this is a story of death and resurrection, it seems fairly obvious that the muthos begins with Alcestis’ death at line 392, and ends with her resurrection at line 1121. Admetos, not Alcestis, is also clearly the main character of the muthos. This is because Alcestis is absent for most of the play, and the plot focuses on Admetos’ fortune when he loses his wife and then regains her. If Alcestis’ resurrection ends the muthos, then in this play of 1163 lines the muthos finishes just 42 lines before the end of the play. Again this not only means the muthos ends unusually late, it also means the muthos portion is quite large, over 60 percent of the play. Muthos outline: with a man having arranged for someone else to die in his place, his wife dies for him and then is brought back to life by a miracle. The parallels with the muthoi of Cyclops and Amphitruo have already been pointed out, but it should also be noted here that these similarities are independent of the actual play length. Cyclops is a very short play, approximately half the length of Amphitruo and some 400 lines shorter than Alcestis. But the plot portion and placement is quite similar. As a result, these muthoi are a particularly explicit demonstration of how muthos features rely on proportional size and relative placement, not absolute length or number of lines.

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Medea The most sensational aspect of this play is Medea’ s revenge plan to murder her rival and her children. But the muthos actually centers on Medea’ s banishment and then her change of fortune when she is granted sanctuary at Athens. So despite their dominance in the plot, the murders in the play do not change Medea’ s fortune in any way. That could explain why other versions of the myth either omit the murders entirely or, in the case of the children, make the deaths unintentional.18 If retelling a myth only required only retelling the muthos, these violent “episodes” could be changed, included or omitted depending on the author’ s preference. Even in the plot summary below, her murder plan is only first mentioned after she is granted sanctuary in Athens after the halfway point: Medea’ s husband Jason has decided to marry the king’ s (Creon) daughter. Medea is furious with him and with Creon. To forestall her anger Creon banishes her and her two children by Jason. She pleads with Creon and gains one day to arrange her affairs. She has a violent scene with Jason. She meets Aegeus (king of Athens) and manages to arrange sanctuary with him. She plans to send a poisoned robe to Jason’ s new bride, and then to kill her children. A messenger announces not the death of Jason’ s bride but also that of Creon as well. Medea goes inside to kill her children, whose murder is heard off-stage. Jason enters to take his vengeance, but encounters Medea above the skene in the chariot of the Sun, with the bodies of her children. With Medea exiled by Creon at line 450 and at line 765 granted sanctuary by Aegeus in a play 1419 lines long, the muthos placement and relative size are almost identical to the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris. Since the plays almost have similar absolute lengths in terms of lines, in this case the length of the muthos in lines is basically the same as well. Muthos outline: with a woman having been abandoned by her husband for the daughter of the king, the woman is banished by the king and then given sanctuary by another king.

18

See Page 1938, xxi-xxvi.

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Children of Heracles This is the first of several plays by Euripides where the end of the muthos is significantly delayed by a relatively long messenger speech. In these cases, by Aristotle’ s criteria there is an extended stretch of the play that includes no muthos parts at all. That is because as I argued in Chapter 1, all reported events are outside the muthos. This means that the muthos may appear to be distributed across a larger portion of the play than in other tragedies, but in fact the muthos is mostly concentrated in the middle with a single event – the last event – placed closer to the end of the play. Here are the events in the plot: The children of Heracles take refuge at the altar of Zeus at Marathon from Eurystheus, king of Mycenae. A threatening herald is driven off by Demophon, son of Theseus, now king of Athens. A battle is inevitable, and one of Heracles’ daughters offers her life as a sacrifice for victory. In the battle the forces of Theseus triumph with ease. Eurystheus is captured after the battle, and his life is spared by Demophon. But Heracles’ aged mother, Alcmene, orders his execution. Eurystheus goes nobly to his death. The fortune of the children of Heracles changes when Eurystheus is captured in the battle. So the muthos begins with Demophon’ s decision to risk the war by driving off the herald. Why the children are seeking refuge and what happens to their persecutor after he is defeated are antecedent events or “episodes” outside the muthos. The play is very short, only 1055 lines. Since Eurystheus is captured at line 928, the muthos finishes close to 90 percent of the way through, with the muthos starting in a fairly typical position at line 285 about 30 percent through when the herald exits. But the last event in the muthos in this play, Eurystheus’ capture, is preceded by a relatively long messenger speech that begins about 150 lines earlier at line 784 reporting his capture. Only then is he brought onstage under guard at line 928. If line 784 is considered the end of the muthos, then the muthos finishes almost precisely three-quarters of the way through and is placed almost exactly in the middle. So although the muthos does end late in this play, it is not true that the muthos is distributed over a greater portion of the play than in other plays where the muthos ends earlier. The events in the muthos are all contained between lines 285 and 784 except the very last event, which is placed after a span of about 150 lines containing no muthos parts. Muthos outline: with family of orphaned children seeking refuge with a king, the king decides to fight the children’ s persecutor and then defeats him.

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Hippolytus This play is about the exile and death of Hippolytus. But I would argue his exile marks the change of the fortune, and his death is an “episode” that may or may not result from this change of fortune. Since Hipploytus’ death is caused by an accident resulting from divine intervention, it has only a loose connection to the previous events and could easily be altered or omitted without changing the rest of the muthos. Here is a summary of all the events in the plot: Hippolytus, son of Theseus, devotes his life to the service of Artemis, goddess of chastity. Aphrodite, goddess of sex, has made his stepmother (Phaedra) fall in love with him. Phaedra reveals she is in love with her stepson to her nurse. The nurse informs Hippolytus of Phaedra’ s love for him. Horrified, the youth launches into a tirade against women. Phaedra takes her own life, leaving a note accusing the youth of attempted seduction. Theseus reads the note and curses his son with death or exile. Hippolytus maintains his innocence, but does not reveal Phaedra’ s love for him. Hippolytus leaves into exile. A messenger announces that Hippolytus’ horses dragged him to his impending demise. The dying Hippolytus is brought on stage. Father and son exchange forgiveness. If the muthos ends with his exile, then the muthos begins either when Hippolytus finds out that his stepmother Phaedra is in love with him or when he decides to reject her love. Since Euripides has purposefully started this scene after the nurse has told Hipploytus this secret, the actual moment Hippolytus hears the secret is not enacted onstage. Instead, the onstage scene focuses on his reaction to the information, which is to condemn Phaedra. Therefore I would suggest that his rejection of Phaedra’ s love is the event that starts the muthos (in the plot summary below described as “the youth launches into a tirade against women”). Hippolytus’ attitude towards sex, why Phaedra has fallen in love with him, and how he finds out about her feelings for him are then all antecedent events or “episodes.” Since there are 1466 lines in the play and at line 614 Hippolytus rejects Phaedra, and at line 973 Theseus exiles Hippolytus, the muthos is again spread over almost precisely a third of the play and placed exactly in the middle of the play. Muthos outline: with a man’ s stepmother having fallen in love with him, the man rejects her, is accused of rape by her, and then exiled by his father.

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Andromache This play is about a plan to kill Andromache and its failure. The muthos therefore ends when the plan fails, and begins when the plan is implemented. But the plot outline shows that there are a large number of other events and characters in the play: Andromache has been given as a victory-prize to Neoptolemus. She has borne him a son, while his actual wife, Hermione, remains childless. While Neoptolemus is away in Delphi, Hermione and her father Menelaus plot to kill Andromache and her child. Andromache is enticed from sanctuary at the altar of Thetis. She is about to be slain by Menelaus, but Peleus intervenes in the nick of time. Now it is Hermione’ s turn to be threatened, as her husband is still absent and her father has deserted her. She too is rescued by Orestes and they flee together. Peleus hears that his grandson, Neoptolemus, has been murdered at Delphi by Orestes. Thetis, his goddess wife, foretells the destiny of Andromache and her son. I would argue that these other plot events only serve to elaborate on this simple muthos structure. Why precisely Hermione wants to kill Andromache, for example, or who helps Hermione implement her murder plan are “episodes” outside the muthos. Hermione here has not been able to have a child and is therefore jealous of Andromache, but this could be changed to another reason without altering the muthos about her attempted murder. In addition, Menelaus helps her implement the plan, but she could have implemented a different plan on her own without his help to murder Andromache, or found another helper without changing the muthos structure. Similarly, what happens to Hermione or her helper afterwards is irrelevant to the murderous plan and its failure, and therefore outside the muthos. Even the intervention of Andromache’ s defender Peleus could be easily replaced with another reason for the plan’ s failure, and the muthos would remain the same. Finally, Hermione’ s planning is outside the muthos because it occurs before the play opens, meaning only the implementation of the plan (when Andromache leaves the sanctuary) can mark the start of the muthos, not the launch of the plan itself. So this play is an example of a very simple and clear muthos contained within a highly complex (and as a result, perhaps confusing) plot. At line 410 Andromache is seized by Menelaus and at line 746 she is released. Since the play is 1288 lines long, the muthos is relatively short and placed almost in the same location as the muthos of Iphigenia in Tauris. Muthos outline: with a woman having been given as a slave to a husband, the husband’ s wife implements a plan to kill her and then fails to kill her.

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Hecuba The first part of this play focuses almost exclusively on the death of Hecuba’ s daughter Polyxena. Then the focus suddenly shifts to the death of her son Polydoros and her plan to avenge his murder. As a result, like Ajax this play has often been described as falling into two almost independent parts that lack unity.19 But there are crucial differences between the structure of Ajax and this play. In Ajax, as discussed above what critics have described as the halfway point of the play is actually significantly later, about two-thirds of the way to the end. In Hecuba by contrast, the focus on Polyxena ends at line 658 when the corpse of Polydorus is brought onstage, almost exactly halfway through this 1295-line play. More importantly, in Ajax the final event of the muthos, the death of Ajax, basically terminates the plot leaving the rest of the play almost without events. In this play I will argue that the last event of the muthos, the discovery of the murder of Polydoros, is also the first event in an entirely new plot outside the muthos. So instead of an apparent lack of plot in the second part as in Ajax, in Hecuba the unusual feature is that a second plot begins in the second part. Here are all the events in this fairly complex plot: The chorus inform Hecuba that the Greeks are considering whether to sacrifice her daughter Polyxena as an offering to the dead Achilles. Odysseus and Hecuba debate the fate of her daughter Polyxena. Talthybios, the herald of the Greeks, describes how she died nobly. Hecuba asks that she be allowed to give Polyxena a proper burial. A servant woman brings in the body of Polydoros. Hecuba asks Agamemnon to allow her to take revenge on Polymestor. Polymestor and his two sons are enticed into the women’ s tent, where he is blinded and his sons murdered. Agamemnon judges a final debate between Polymestor and Hecuba and finds for Hecuba. Polymestor predicts the imminent demise of Hecuba as Odysseus’ ship returns to Greece. Since the initial scenes only report past or present events, Hecuba’ s failed attempt to convince Odysseus to save Polyxena is the first event in the play that could potentially be part of the muthos. But the death of Polyxena is only described by the herald and her body never displayed. This means that her death itself is a reported event that cannot be part of the muthos. On the other hand, Polydoros’ body is brought on stage at line 658. So it seems that even though he is not part of what occurs before in the play, Hecuba’ s fortune changes unexpectedly when Polydoros’ 19

For a full overview and discussion, see Heath 2003.

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body is displayed in the middle of the play, apparently ending the muthos. But if Polydoros’ death is the change of fortune that ends the muthos, where does the muthos begin among the preceding events where he is not even mentioned? And how could the muthos end with the death of Hecuba’ s son but start with events exclusively concerning her daughter? The answer I believe is that the change of fortune reveals that the muthos is in fact not about a mother who loses her daughter, as would be expected from the previous events. Instead the muthos is about a mother who plans to protect her daughter and son from death, and then fails on both counts. If true, this means that the muthos would still begin at line 229 when Hecuba tries to convince Odysseus to protect Polyxena from sacrifice. Since the plan to protect both children has been formed before the play opens and the plan to protect the son already implemented, the muthos would then begin when the plan to protect her daughter is implemented. But her failure to convince Odysseus to protect her daughter is shown to lead by probability or necessity to the recognition of the second failure, her son’ s murder. As a result, her discovery of her son’ s murder is the event that ends the muthos. The revenge plot against Polymestor and the judging of Hecuba are then all “episodes” outside the muthos. This strikingly unexpected structure of events also could have been used to surprise the audience together with Hecuba at the end of the muthos. But by explicitly informing the audience of the murder in an “episode” opening the play featuring the ghost of Polydoros, Euripides intentionally eliminates the element of surprise. The ghost of Polydoros even specifically indicates at line 51 that his body will be found by his mother during the play, so – unlike Hecuba – the audience expects at some point in the play to see the corpse of Polydoros. This means that the muthos maximizes the surprise of the main character, Hecuba, when she finds out about her son’ s murder by finding his corpse, but the “episodes” minimize that same surprise for the audience. The audience may certainly still be surprised together with Hecuba to see it as the last event in the muthos about Polyxena. But the audience’ s previous knowledge of the murder and the ghost’ s prediction that she will find his body make her discovery of it at this particular point easier to accept as a plausible outcome of the death of Polyxena. This may be the reason Euripides minimizes the audience’ s surprise in this way, to ensure greater plausibility for the timing of this extraordinary event. Somewhat like a play such as Women of Trachis then, the muthos here ends with the recognition of a fact combined with a reversal. The recognition of Polydoros’ murder is also the event that changes Hecuba’ s fortune from a woman hoping to protect her two children to a woman who has lost her two children. As a result, despite the sudden shift in focus from the sacrifice of Polyxena to the murder of Polydoros, the muthos still has unity by Aristotle’ s criteria since the former leads by probability or necessity to the recognition of the latter. The plot as a whole on the other hand does seem to fall into two quite loosely connected parts. So

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like Ajax, this play demonstrates how a plot that lacks unity can still contain an adequately unified muthos. With the play running a total of 1295 lines, the muthos starts early in the play and ends almost exactly at the halfway point. This means that the muthos ends in a similar place as in the invented-plot plays of Aristophanes or in Persians, but starts significantly later than in those plays. The muthos portion is not particularly small in comparison to the other tragedies examined so far, it is simply placed somewhat earlier to make room for the revenge plot in the second part of the play. Muthos outline: with a mother who has been taken captive by the enemy having planned to protect her son and daughter, she fails to protect her daughter from sacrifice and then recognizes her son has been murdered.

Suppliant Women Although the title may suggest a play about a plea for sanctuary, the plot is actually focused on a plan to recover the bodies of the fallen from the enemy after a war. The suppliants in this case are not in danger or exile as in Oedipus at Colonus or Aeschylus’ Suppliants, and so do not need sanctuary. Instead, the suppliants led by Adrastos come with this specific but urgent request. Here are the events in the plot: Not just the body of Polynices, but those of the Argive invaders lie unburied on the field before Thebes. The mothers of the dead are led by Adrastos, king of Argos, to ask Theseus to aid them in recovering the bodies for burial. Theseus is persuaded by his mother, who has taken pity on her fellowwomen in distress. A herald arrives from Thebes, warning Theseus not to intervene. Theseus leads the Athenian army off to Thebes. A messenger recounts the Athenian victory and the recovery of the bodies. The bodies of five of the Seven are brought back. Euadne, the wife of one of these, cannot live without her husband and leaps upon his funeral pyre. The play ends with Adrastos thanking Theseus and promising Argive friendship with Athens. Adrastos is the main character of the muthos, and the change of fortune occurs at line 795 when Theseus succeeds in bringing the dead bodies back to him. Since the dead bodies are then displayed on stage, this event certainly can be included in the muthos. This means that the muthos begins at line 346 when Theseus agrees to his request to bring back the bodies. The previous events explaining why Adrastos could not claim the bodies as well as the events afterwards such as Euadne’ s suicide are “episodes” outside the muthos. Since the play is 1234 lines long, as in many of

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the tragedies already examined this simple muthos is placed almost exactly in the middle of the play and distributed over somewhat more than a third of the play. Muthos outline: with a king begging another king to help him recover the bodies of his men killed in battle, the second king agrees to fight for the bodies and then brings the bodies back.

Electra This is the third version of the story told in Sophocles’ Electra and Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers. As I will show, this play basically combines the two muthoi of the others into a new muthos. Here are the plot events in this version: After the death of her father, Electra has been “married” to a farmer. Pretending to be a messenger from her brother, Orestes is welcomed by Electra and the farmer. An old man who knew Orestes as a boy recognizes Orestes. The old man and Electra plot how to get Aegisthus and Clytemnestra out of the palace and accomplish their murders. A messenger reports how Orestes and Pylades killed Aegisthus. Orestes returns with the body of Aegisthus. Clytemnestra enters the cottage, where she is killed by Orestes and Electra. Brother and sister emerge, stricken with guilt and remorse. The Dioscouroi announce the future fate of the participants. As the title suggests, the main character of the muthos is again Electra. But unlike in the Sophocles play, Electra’ s recognition of Orestes begins the muthos here instead of ending it. Then the change of fortune ending the muthos occurs with the death of Aegisthus as in Libation Bearers. The result is that this version has essentially the same plot as Libation Bearers where the recognition of Orestes by Electra occurs before the plan to kill Aegisthus is implemented. But Euripides includes the recognition in the muthos by integrating Electra into the planning and implementation of the murder that ends it. This contrasts with the Aeschylus muthos where Electra was not part of the plan, and so not part of the muthos. As a result, this version retains Electra as the main character, but switches the focus from her suffering as in the Sophocles play to the murder plan as in the Aeschylus version. Here are again the other two muthoi for comparison: Aeschylus: with a son whose father has been killed by his mother’ s lover having returned home, the son plans to kill the lover and then kills him. Sophocles: with a girl’ s father having been murdered by her mother and her lover, and with her waiting for her brother’ s return to avenge the murder, the girl hears her brother is dead and then recognizes her brother who is actually alive. The Euripides muthos can now be summarized as follows.

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Muthos outline: with a girl’ s father having been murdered by her mother and her lover, and with her waiting for her brother’ s return to avenge the murder, the girl recognizes her brother and together with him kills the lover. This means that in this version and the Aeschylus version, the murder plan and the murder of Aegisthus are in the muthos. But in the Sophocles version, the murder plan and murders are outside the muthos. It should also be noted that in all three versions, the murder of Clytemnestra is outside the muthos. At line 577 Electra recognizes Orestes, and at line 880 Aegisthus’ body is displayed. But his death is previously announced in a messenger scene starting at line 761, so the muthos end is slightly delayed. Since the play has a total of 1359 lines, this very small muthos is distributed over less than 15 % the play and placed almost exactly in the middle of the play. The small muthos can be explained by the play’s focus on lengthy episodes detailing Electra’ s suffering and decision to kill her mother after the first murder. It may be significant that precisely in this play about a mythological story retold so many times on stage, Euripides has chosen to use the smallest muthos of all the plays that survive. It seems that Euripides has decided that the muthos itself of the murder plan and its execution are now the least interesting aspects of the story, and that the “episodes” concerning Electra’ s experiences before and after should be the focus.

Heracles This plot of this play is about Heracles’ return home and his failure to save his family. Similar to the plot of the Odyssey, here the hero’ s absence has placed his family in danger and he returns in time to prevent disaster. But in this case, Heracles loses the battle against his enemies at home, resulting in his family’ s death. Here are the events in the play: A usurper, Lykus, has seized power in Thebes and is preparing to kill Heracles’ wife Megara and her children in his absence. Megara asks for time to prepare herself and her children. Heracles returns, having completed the last of his Labors. When Lykus returns to take Megara in to her death, he is murdered by Heracles. Lyssa attacks Heracles. A messenger describes how Heracles has gone mad and killed his family. We see a tableau of Heracles amid the bodies of his wife and sons. Heracles returns to sanity and the ghastly realization of what he has done. His friend Theseus arrives to take the stricken hero to Athens. Like the muthos of the Odyssey, the muthos here begins when the hero arrives home at line 523. Heracles’ change of fortune occurs when the bodies of Heracles’

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family are displayed. At line 922 a messenger reports how Heracles killed his family, but since the bodies are displayed at line 1041, the end of the muthos is only slightly delayed by the speech. With the play running 1428 lines, this means the muthos is again spread across about a third of the play and centrally placed. But like Ajax and Hecuba, the plot of this play has been criticized for falling into two distinct and somewhat unrelated parts.20 The first part up to line 814 focuses on Heracles’ suppliant family and their rescue. The second part focuses on Heracles’ madness and murders. If the muthos includes both Lykus’ murder and the murder of Heracles’ family, then it appears that the muthos of the play would have a similar problem. Since the audience hears Lykus’ death cries at lines 750 and 754, it may seem that his murder is part of the muthos. But significantly, this is the only case in extant tragedy where the audience hears a character’ s murder off-stage but the body is never displayed.21 I would argue that therefore the murder cannot be an event in the muthos. Since the body is never displayed, only the murder attempt and not the murder could potentially be part of the muthos. This of course applies to the plot as well in some cases. For example, in Orestes Helen cries out she is being murdered at lines 1296–1310, but then at the end is shown to have actually have been saved from death by Apollo. So a character crying murder off-stage does not necessarily indicate that even the plot includes the character’ s murder, and certainly cannot justify including the murder in the muthos. As a result, the event causing the most disruption in the plot, Lykus’ murder, is outside the muthos. I would further suggest that even the murder attempt belongs to the “episodes,” and is outside the muthos. This is because it does not lead by probability or necessity to Heracles’ madness or the murder of his family (which is precisely why critics argue the plot lacks unity). In fact, it appears that all the events in the play connected to the threat against the lives of Heracles’ family could be eliminated without changing the event that causes the change of fortune and ends the muthos, Heracles’ murder of his family. So unlike in the Odyssey, here the muthos is not about a man coming home to save his family. Instead the muthos is about a man who comes home and accidentally kills his family. This muthos omitting the Lykus plot can be summarized as follows. Muthos outline: with a man away from home, he returns home and kills his family in a fit of madness. If this is accurate, then why he was away from home, why he returns, and in what condition he finds his family before he goes mad are all “episodes” outside the muthos. This may explain why Lykus is not mentioned in any of the sources of this myth.22 It seems that the Lykus plot in the play is part of the “episodes” invented 20 21 22

For a summary with references, see Barlow 1982, 115–16. For a full list of off-stage cries including murder cries, see Markantonatos 2002, 12 note 31 See Bond 1981, xxviii.

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by Euripides to complement the muthos of the traditional story. These “episodes” have only a loose causal connection to the muthos, but clearly the small group of events in the muthos itself still conforms to Aristotle’ s standards of causality.

Trojan Women The plot of this play has been repeatedly criticized for lacking unity and having an “episodic” structure.23 As Kovacs observes, “the Trojan women are miserable at the play’ s beginning and scarcely more so at the end: only the death of Astyanax makes any real change in their situation.”24 If this is true, then it seems only the death of Astyanax could be the event that ends the muthos. Here are the events in the plot: Troy has fallen after a ten-year war. Hecuba and the chorus now lament their fate, and wonder what will befall them. Talthybius, the herald from the Greeks, announces that they have been allotted each to separate masters, the virgin Cassandra to Agamemnon and Hecuba to Odysseus. Cassandra in the grip of prophetic madness is taken forcibly to her master. Hector’ s despairing widow, Andromache, enters with her young son (Astyanax). Hecuba persuades her to live for her son, who may one day rebuild Troy. Talthybios reenters to announce that the boy must die. Menelaus appears to take vengeance on his wife Helen for starting the whole war. Hecuba and Helen debate the Helen’ s responsibility. The body of the young Astyanax is brought in for what burial they can provide. Hecuba and the women leave as the walls of Troy are brought down in flames. Astyanax’ s body is displayed at line 1118. If this is the end of the muthos, then the muthos starts at line 705 when Hecuba announces her plan to rebuild Troy by protecting Astyanax. Since the play is 1332 lines long, the muthos is then spread over just under a third of the play as in many of the other tragedies examined so far. But here the muthos starts significantly later than in most other tragedies, at just over the halfway mark. Only Libation Bearers has a similar muthos structure. 23 24

For a summary of the criticisms with references, see Rabinowitz 2017, 200–1. Kovacs 1999, 7.

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In that play as well, the muthos begins after the halfway mark and is spread over a similar portion of the play. But the difference is that Libation Bearers is a short play with only 1074 lines, so in absolute line numbers the muthos still starts only at line 554. In addition, the antecedent events in Libation Bearers are more complex (an arrival home, a recognition), justifying a proportionally longer section before the muthos starts. But as critics have often pointed out, in Trojan Women very little happens before the plan to rebuild Troy is announced that could justify such a long delay before the muthos starts. This means that although the muthos of this play still conforms to Aristotle’ s standards of unity, it is unconventionally placed, loosely constructed and exceptionally tangential to the “episodes” around it. Therefore, Aristotle would still probably call this muthos “episodic.” Muthos outline: with a queen having lost her city in a war, she plans to rebuild the city by saving one of its princes and then fails to save him.

Iphigenia in Tauris I analyze Aristotle’ s statements about the muthos of this tragedy and his muthos outline of the play in Chapters 1 and 2. Muthos outline: with a girl having been made a priestess in a foreign country where strangers are sacrificed, her brother arrives in that country and then is recognized by his sister just before she kills him.

Ion Like in Iphigenia in Tauris, in this play a character is prevented from murdering a close relative at the last moment by a recognition scene. But in Ion, the recognition occurs as the result of an elaborate murder plot, delaying the end of the muthos considerably. The events in this relatively complex plot are: Creusa, daughter of the king of Athens, was raped by Apollo and had a child by him. She exposed the infant, which was rescued by Hermes and taken to Delphi, where the boy has grown up as the temple servant of Apollo. Creusa is married to a foreigner (Xuthus), but they are childless. They journey to Delphi to consult the god, and the first person she meets is the boy, her son by Apollo, but neither is aware of the other’ s identity. Xuthus, arrives, consults the oracle, and is told that the first person he meets “going out” (Greek – ion) of the temple is his son. This, of course, is the boy, who is now named “Ion.” Creusa finds out from an old man that her husband has been given a son by Apollo.

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With the old man she plots to kill Ion. A messenger announces that Ion escaped the poison meant for him, that the old man was captured, and that Ion is on his way to take vengeance on Creusa. She takes refuge at the altar of Apollo, and is rescued by the priestess of Apollo (the Pythia), who shows Ion the clothes and jewelry found with him as an infant. Creusa recognizes these as her own, and realizes that Ion must be her son. Since Ion’ s change of fortune occurs when he is recognized by his mother Creusa at line 1399, the muthos begins when Xuthus mistakenly claims Ion as his son at line 531. But in between these two events, his mother plans to kill him and fails. I would argue that these events are “episodes” outside the muthos. Xuthus’ mistake could lead to Creusa’ s recognition of Ion in other ways besides a murder plan without changing the muthos. In addition, key events in the murder plan occur off-stage such as its implementation and failure. This means that between the moment when Creusa plans to kill Ion at line 980 and 1399 when he recognizes him are over 400 lines without muthos parts. With the play running a total of 1623 lines, this has the effect of significantly delaying the end of the muthos by almost a quarter of the play’ s length. In Iphigenia in Tauris by contrast, the complex escape plan begins after the recognition and does not delay the end of the muthos. As a result, the muthos in Ion is spread over more than half the play and ends somewhat later than usual. Muthos outline: with a man having been abandoned by his parents at birth, he is claimed by a man to be his son and then recognizes the man’ s wife is actually his mother.

Helen Like the last two plays by Euripides discussed above, the plot of Helen also features a recognition between close relatives who have been long separated, and as in Iphigenia in Tauris in this play the recognition is followed by an escape. But in Helen, the recognition occurs relatively early, and the escape dominates for a much larger portion of the play as a result. Here is a summary of the events: Helen did not in fact go to Troy. A phantom was substituted in her place, while the real Helen was spirited off to Egypt, where a lustful king (Theoclymenus) has been eyeing her. The War is over, Troy has fallen. Menelaus arrives, shipwrecked along with “Helen” on the coast of Egypt, and sees this woman “who looks just like Helen.”

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Eventually he is convinced of her story, and husband and wife are joyfully reunited. But how to flee Egypt? Helen and Menelaus beg the king’ s wise sister (Theonoe) for aid, and with her assistance a plan is devised. Helen tells the king that she has just learned that her husband (Menelaus) has died in the shipwreck, and requests a ship to scatter his remains at sea. Menelaus and his sailors seize the ship and sail off into the sunset, while Helen’ s brothers (The Dioscouroi) forbid the Egyptian king to interfere. Menelaus recognizes Helen at line 622, just under a third of the way through the play. But unlike in Iphigenia in Tauris where the recognition prevents a murder, just being recognized by Menelaus does not change Helen’ s fortune. Her fortune does not seem to change until she implements a plan of escape. In addition, the couple cannot implement their escape plan until they convince Theonoe to help them at line 1017. So it seems the muthos begins with the recognition, continues with the plan to escape, and then ends with its implementation after Theonoe agrees to help them. This means the muthos is placed in almost exactly same place as in Iphigenia in Tauris, and spread over a similar portion of this 1692-line play. Yet despite these similarities the structure of the muthos is highly unusual for a tragedy, and in fact in two ways more closely resembles the Aristophanic muthos outlined in Chapter 2. First, this is the only tragedy examined so far where the muthos ends with the implementation of a plan. In other tragedies the muthos may end with the launch of a plan (Iphigenia in Tauris), its failure (Women of Trachis) or its success (Libation Bearers). But the muthos never ends with its plausible implementation. Second, the implementation of the plan follows the persuasion of another character to support the plan in an agon-like scene. Both of these features are typical elements of the plays of Aristophanes, where the muthos always ends with the plausible implementation of a plan, and often after a debate or contest. For a range of other reasons, this play has often been identified as one of Euripides’ most “comic” tragedies.25 The structure of the muthos seems to bring the play closer to comedy as well. Muthos outline: with a woman having been separated from her husband and held by a king in a foreign land, and with her husband having arrived there by chance, she is recognized by her husband, plans with him to escape and then implements the escape plan. As in Iphigenia in Tauris, how the couple was separated, why her husband has arrived there and whether their escape plan actually succeeds are “episodes” outside the muthos.

25

For discussion of the play’ s place in the tragedy genre and a discussion with references of its “comic” features, see Allan 2008, 66–72.

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Phoenician Women This play is based on the same myth as Seven Against Thebes. But the plot of this play deviates significantly from the Aeschylus version: Eteocles has failed to yield power to his brother Polynices after a year’ s rule, as they had agreed, and the latter has arrived to besiege his own city at the head of a vast army from Argos. Jocasta attempts to reconcile her two sons but fails. Creon and Eteocles plot the defense of Thebes. Creon and his son Menoikeus encounter Teiresias, who tells Creon that only the sacrifice of Menoikeus to the War-god will save Thebes. Creon immediately plans to send his son away, but Menoeceus goes off to leap willingly from the walls of Thebes to save his city. News comes of the encounters at the seven gates and the destruction of the enemy leaders and that the brothers will decide the issue in single combat. A later messenger tells not only of the brothers’ mutual doom but of Jocasta’ s suicide over their bodies. Finally the aged and blind Oedipus appears and is sent into exile by the new ruler, Creon. Unlike the three versions of the Electra story discussed above, in adapting the story of the two brothers’ struggle for power in Thebes Euripides has not chosen to construct a different muthos from the Aeschylus version. Instead, he has retained this muthos and added surprising “episodes” featuring Jocasta, Oedipus, Menoeceus and Creon. As a result, despite the additional plot elements the structure of the muthos in the two plays is identical. This play is then further evidence that authors were free to make extensive changes in their retelling of a myth as long as they retained the muthos. The muthos begins at line 622 when Eteocles says he will defend the city, and ends at line 1480 when the bodies of the Eteocles and his brother are displayed. The play is a total of 1766 lines long. This means that the muthos here starts at a typical position about a third of the way through, and ends somewhat late in the play. But this is one of the plays where the display of the bodies is significantly delayed by a messenger speech starting on line 1335. In addition, there is another very long messenger scene describing the progress of the war from 1067 to about 1260. So although the muthos in the play ends somewhat later than in many tragedies, large parts of the play before the muthos ends appear to that lack muthos parts. This suggests that the absolute muthos size is not significantly larger than in a typical tragedy where the muthos is spread over a third of the play. The muthos outline is identical to Seven Against Thebes. Muthos outline: with his city under attack by his brother, a man decides to join the fight, and the man and his brother kill each other in the war.

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Orestes Next to Trojan Women, this is the Euripides play perhaps most often criticized for having an “episodic” or disorganized plot.26 In fact the events in the two plays are similar in some ways. In both the characters begin the play facing disaster, are briefly given hope, and then have their misery confirmed soon after. But in Orestes, a complex plot is launched after their misery in confirmed: The Argives are threatening to put Orestes and Electra to death for killing their mother. Their one hope is that Menelaus (who has just arrived with Helen) will intervene on their behalf. Electra has been caring for her brother, driven mad by his murder of his mother, but he awakes and suffers an attack of the Furies. Menelaus enters and is aghast at his nephew’ s condition and promises help, but Tyndareus (Orestes’ grandfather) appears and, furious with Orestes, promises to speak for his execution. Menelaus decides not to intervene, leaving Orestes without hope. Pylades returns to Argos and rouses Orestes to make a defense to the assembly. A messenger reports to Electra that the assembly has decreed that they must die. Orestes, Electra, and Pylades plan to die but also to take Helen with them. They then decide to take Menelaus’ daughter Hermione hostage – and thus may be able to escape. Orestes and Pylades go into the palace, Hermione is lured inside. A Phrygian eunuch announces that Orestes and Pylades have tried to kill Helen, but that her fate is unknown. Menelaus arrives to find Orestes and Hermione on the palace roof, with Electra and Pylades holding torches to burn the palace down. Apollo appears on the mechane and announces that Helen has been taken to dwell among the gods, that Menelaus is to rule Sparta, and that Orestes and Hermione will marry and live happily ever after. The muthos seems to end when Orestes confirms to Electra that they have been sentenced to death at 1035. The various plans to kill others or to escape that they pursue afterwards are all reactions to this change of Orestes’ fortune. If this is accurate, then the muthos begins at line 356 when “their one hope” Menelaus arrives. With the play running a long 1693 lines, this muthos about a supplication and its failure is spread as usual over about a third of the play. But it is placed rela26

For a historical overview of the play’ s reception, see Porter 1994, 1–44.

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tively early in the play. The muthos placement here is almost the same in Hecuba, and for similar reasons. In both cases, a complex new plot is launched after the muthos ends. But in the case of Hecuba, this plot is a surprise. In Orestes, the plot is a relatively predictable revenge or escape plan with an exceptionally elaborate development and execution. Since these extensive “episodes” require more space in the play, the muthos has been moved back to accommodate them. In addition, the muthos of this play has some similarities to the muthos of another play about Orestes on trial, Eumenides. The differences are that the focus of the muthos is now on a helper, Menelaus, and that the trial ends in his conviction instead of his acquittal. But as in Eumenides, the Furies do not participate in the muthos of this play, only the “episodes.” Muthos outline: with a son having killed his father’ s murderer and his mother, he plans to escape punishment with his uncle’ s help and then is punished. Since the murder and escape plot that follows Orestes’ conviction is quite different from the supplication plot that precedes it, like Ajax, Hecuba and Heracles this play has been described as “falling into two halves”27 that are difficult to reconcile. But the second “half ” is actually the part of the play that follows the end of the muthos. It seems that as with Hecuba, critics believe the play’ s structure lacks unity because a new, complex and quite different plot is launched in the “episodes” that follow the muthos. But as in all three other cases, the events in the muthos are still adequately linked by probability or necessity to meet Aristotle’ s requirements, and do not lack unity. This play is then another demonstration of how an “episodic” plot can still contain a unified muthos. Aristotle did however find fault with this muthos for another reason. At 1454a28–29 and 1461b19–21, Aristotle criticized the character of Menelaus for being more wicked than is necessary. Commentators have found this criticism confusing, since Menelaus’ betrayal certainly seems necessary for the revenge and escape plot that follows Orestes’ conviction. Willink for example wonders “how Aristotle could be so lacking in perception.”28 But these events are outside the muthos, so it could be that Aristotle is referring to what is necessary for the muthos, not the plot. Since all the muthos requires is that Orestes be convicted, Menelaus’ betrayal could be replaced with a different event. Menelaus could have spoken out in Orestes’ trial for example, but still failed to prevent the conviction.29 This shows that Menelaus’ betrayal is required to justify the revenge plot in the 27 28 29

Wright 2008, 32. In fact this is another case where the second “half ” actually starts closer to two thirds of the way through the play around line 1100. Willink 1986, xlvii. Else 1957, 466–7 explains Aristotle’ s criticism by arguing that the revenge and escape plot is a disorganized “patchwork” of events that cannot be seen as part of the “action” of the play, just as I argue they are not part of the muthos. Similarly, he points out that it is not Menelaus’ betrayal but Orestes’ conviction that changes Orestes’ fortune, so his wickedness is unnecessary from that point of view. By a different logic then, Else

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“episodes,” but not the events in the muthos. That means that it is an event in the muthos that could be replaced without changing the muthos as a whole, violating one of Aristotle’ s rules for the events in the muthos. This may then explain Aristotle’ s criticism of Menelaus’ actions in the muthos.

Bacchae This play is about the king who refuses to permit the worship of a newly arrived god, Dionysus, and is punished by the god as a result. The events in the plot are a relatively linear: For not believing in Dionysos, the women of Thebes have been driven from the city to the mountain, while Dionysos, disguised as a human priest, awaits the appearance of the king, his cousin Pentheus. The seer Teiresias and Pentheus’ aged grandfather (Cadmos) have donned the apparel of the new god and prepare to join his revels, but are rebuked by Pentheus. The disguised Dionysos is brought before Pentheus and then imprisoned in the stables, from which he escapes with consummate ease, as lightning and fire destroy the stables. A messenger brings Pentheus news of the women on the mountain, who exist in harmony with nature until the men attempt to capture them, at which point they run riot over the hillsides and surrounding farms. Pentheus prepares to lead out his army, but falls under the spell of the god. In the next scene Dionysos leads him entranced and dressed as a female worshiper off to the mountain. A messenger reports how Pentheus was discovered by the women and was torn apart by his own female relatives. Agave, Pentheus’ mother, arrives carrying what she thinks is the head of a young lion, in reality the head of her son. Cadmos brings her back to reality and the horror of what she has done. The muthos ends when Pentheus’ head is displayed at line 1165 and begins when he orders Dionysus’ arrest at line 357, about a quarter of the way into the play. But the play is only 1392 lines long, so the muthos ends quite late. That is because this is another play where the display of a body is significantly delayed by a messenger scene starting at line 1024. Although Pentheus is killed by his own female relatives, that is outside the muthos and part of the “episodes.” He could also be killed by

supports my claim that Aristotle’ s criticism makes sense when applied only to the group of events I have defined as the muthos.

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female worshippers who were not his relatives or in another way, and the muthos would remain the same. But I would argue his identity as a king is part of the muthos, because the muthos requires that he be in a position to arrest the god to prevent his worship. Muthos outline: with a god having arrived in a new land where the king forbids his worship, the king arrests the god and is punished by the god with death.

Iphigenia at Aulis This play is about the sacrifice of Iphigenia by the Greeks during the Trojan War, but the plot is centered on how her father Agamemnon struggles with the decision to allow the sacrifice: To get the winds to take his ships to Troy, Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia to Artemis. He has written to his wife to bring Iphigeneia from Argos on the pretext that she will marry the young hero Achilles, but now sends the old man with another letter, telling Clytemnestra not to come. The old man is intercepted by Menelaus, and a furious argument results between the brothers. Agamemnon realizes that the army will insist on the expedition and that his daughter is doomed in either event. Clytemnestra and Iphigeneia are greeted by Agamemnon, and then encounter Achilles who knows nothing of the proposed marriage. The old man reveals all to them, and Clytemnestra begs Achilles to save her daughter. Husband and wife debate the matter bitterly, and Agamemnon decides to allow his daughter’ s sacrifice. The army demands the sacrifice, and even Achilles is powerless to stop them. Iphigeneia changes her mind and is now willing to die for her country so that the Greeks may conquer Troy. Despite the title of the play, as with Iphigenia in Tauris the main character of the muthos is not Iphigenia. Instead, the main character of the muthos is her father Agamemnon. It seems that Agamemnon’ s fortune changes ending the muthos when he makes the final decision to allow the sacrifice of his daughter at line 1275. Since most of the events in the plot concern his difficulties with making this decision, it may appear that the muthos should start when he first refuses or hesitates to sacrifice his daughter. But Agamemnon has already first decided not to sacrifice his daughter by sending the old man with the second letter before the play starts, so that is an antecedent event outside both the play and the muthos. In fact, for the entire duration of the play up until line 1275 Agamemnon can be said

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to be undecided or constantly wavering in his decision. Even at line 1275, he does not decide to sacrifice his daughter, he only accepts he cannot stop her sacrifice. This suggests that unlike the plot, the muthos cannot be about Agamemnon’ s decision to sacrifice his daughter. Instead, the muthos is about the failure of his plan to protect her. If this is correct, then the muthos must begin when Iphigenia arrives in Aulis, since that is the first onstage event in the play that leads by probability or necessity to Agamemnon’ s failure to prevent her sacrifice. This could be viewed as the inverse of the muthos of Orestes, where the characters are already in jeopardy and Menelaus’ arrival was their last hope. Here Agamemnon has already taken steps to avoid disaster, but Iphigenia’ s arrival effectively dooms his chances of succeeding. This muthos covers between a third and half of the play, but it begins somewhat late in the play because of the relative complexity of the antecedent events concerning the old man and the letters. In addition, Achilles’ role and the fake marriage plan are all part of the “episodes” that could be replaced by another device to lure Iphigenia to the camp, or eliminated entirely. Muthos outline: with a king planning to prevent his daughter from being sacrificed to win a war, his daughter arrives at the army camp and the king allows her sacrifice. Aristotle also comments on this play in the Poetics. At 1454a31–2 just after his criticism of the unnecessary wickedness of Menelaus’ character in Orestes, he cites Iphigenia’ s character as an example of “inconsistency” because of her willingness to die at the end of the play. Since this event is not in the muthos as I have outlined it here, this statement shows that Aristotle believes that a character should be consistent across both the muthos and the “episodes.” But as I argued the example of Menelaus in Orestes showed, Aristotle’ s concern is that the character conform to the requirements of the muthos, and not the “episodes.” As a result, I would argue that it is unlikely that Aristotle could be suggesting here that Iphigenia should be more courageous and resolute in the muthos so that her actions at the end of the play are justified. Since her suppliant character is required by the muthos, Aristotle must be saying that to be consistent, she should remain a suppliant through the “episodes” at the end.

Rhesus The play is probably not by Euripides, but the tragedy was almost certainly written in about the same period or not long after in the fourth century.30 As a result, its muthos may still reflect features of the structure of events in this period. The simple plot follows the events leading up to the death of Rhesus:

30

For a recent discussion of the date, see Liapis 2012, lxxi-lxxii.

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The chorus wake Hector to inform him that there is activity in the Greek camp. Dolon volunteers to spy on the Greeks in return for the horses of Achilles as spoil of battle. A messenger announces the coming of Rhesus at the head of a powerful army. This invincible warrior has come to help the Trojans. Rhesus and Hector plan an attack for the morning which will be fatal for the Greeks. Hector sends Rhesus and his men to a camping-place. Enter Odysseus and Diomedes, who have captured Dolon and are seeking to kill the Trojan leaders. Athene directs them to slay Rhesus and take his splendid horses as plunder. Paris arrives, looking for Hector, but is deceived by Athene who adopts the guise of Aphrodite, Paris’ protecting deity. A wounded Thracian charioteer crawls in, announcing the death of Rhesus and the theft of his horses. Rhesus’ mother (a Muse), enters with the body of her son. Rhesus’ body is displayed at line 885, ending the muthos. But the display of the body is substantially delayed by a messenger scene starting at line 728. Since the play runs only 996 lines, this delays the ending of the muthos by about a sixth of the play’ s entire length. The muthos starts when the hero Rhesus arrives at line 380, just after the one-third mark. So although the muthos seems to end unusually late in this play, the lengthy postponement of the display of the body means that the vast majority of the muthos is spread of a third of the play’ s length and placed about in the middle as is usual. Muthos outline: with a king planning to defend a foreign city at war, he arrives at the city and is killed by an enemy spy in his sleep.

3. Comparing the Muthos Across Genres If these muthoi outlines are accepted as generally accurate, then together with the Aristophanic muthoi outlined in Chapter 2 they can now be used to gain an overview of muthos patterns across all the genres. Table 4 at the end of this chapter summarizes the muthos outlines for each of the plays in the order they appear in the previous section. I have also included the muthos outline of Amphitruo developed in Chapter 3 at the end of the list in the table. The first column in the table indicates the title of the play, and the second the total length of the play in lines. The third column cites the line number where the muthos begins together with a brief description of the first event in the muthos. The fourth column cites the line number where the muthos ends together with a brief description of the

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last event in the muthos. The fifth column indicates if the muthos ends in a change from good to bad fortune (-) or a change from bad to good fortune (+). For easy comparison of these results, Figure 2 at the end of this chapter shows all the muthoi listed in the table side-by-side in bar graph form. The graph conveniently illustrates the proportional relationship between the area of each play that contains muthos parts, to the areas of the play that do not contain any muthos parts. The graph also facilitates the comparison of muthos placement across all the plays. In each bar graph, the part of the play containing muthos parts is in medium gray. The number of lines after the play begins but before the muthos starts is in darker gray, and the number of lines after the muthos ends but before the play finishes is in lighter gray. In the six plays where I argued that the very last event of the muthos is separated from the rest of the muthos parts by a significant portion of the play containing no muthos parts at all, this section of lines preceding the very last event in the muthos is also in lighter gray, but with white hatch marks. At first glance, perhaps the most striking aspect of the bar graph is the obvious similarity between the muthoi of Cyclops, Alcestis and Amphitruo. In each of these three plays the muthos is spread over about 60 % of the play, starts before the middle of play, and ends just before the play closes. The extremely late end of the muthos is particularly unusual when compared to the rest of the plays, most of which have a muthos ending around 60 or 70 %. In addition, the large muthos portion in these three plays stands out. The only plays with muthoi this proportionally large are two plays by Aristophanes analyzed in Chapter 3, Wasps and Women at the Thesmophoria. But in the Aristophanes plays the muthos placement is almost the exact opposite, starting right at the beginning of the play and ending after the middle. So it seems that the muthoi of these three plays share two exceptional characteristics, a muthos portion covering well over half the play, and a muthos placement that ends just a few lines before the end of the play. These plays are then dominated by the muthos, and in these plays the muthos is most closely integrated with important elements of the plot including the final events in the play. It can be extrapolated from this that audiences of these plays would have to focus more attention on the especially large muthos, and accept that closure of the muthos would be deferred to practically the last possible moment in the play. But in terms of genre, the three plays have little in common. Cyclops clearly falls in the genre of the satyr play because it was performed in the fourth place in a tragedy competition and has a chorus of satyrs, among other generic identifiers. Although Amphitruo cannot be considered to directly represent any genre in this period, it is still at least generically related to mythological Old Comedy, and in broad terms can be classified as a mythological comedy. Alcestis appeared in the fourth place in a tragedy competition, but it has no satyr chorus and seems to be a generic hybrid combining features of drama as well as comedy. These genre differences aside however, the content of these three plays share two important similarities. They all use mythological plots, and they all are humorous in tone (in the case of Alcestis at least to a significant extent). That may indicate then

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that regardless of genre, this particular combination of tone and plot type was associated with a relatively large muthos spread over the greater part of the play and placed so that it ends just before the play. This conclusion also raises the intriguing possibility that Alcestis is not an exception or experiment. Instead, this play’s appearance in the place of a satyr play may suggest that the fourth position in the tragedy competition was not typically reserved for the specific genre of the satyr play, but instead for a specific category of plays combining a mythological plot with a humorous tone linked with specific muthos characteristics. Of course plays in this category would probably also share other generic characteristics with the satyr play such as costuming, language and meter, but there still may have been no strict genre expectation for the fourth position. If this is true, then the satyr play may only have been a particularly popular genre choice within that larger category. Other choices in this category could have included hybrids such as Alcestis, or even more uniformly humorous treatments of mythological plots with a non-satyric chorus. But since so few plays from the fourth position survive and it is not known how common plays without satyrs were in this position in the competition,31 there is no way to determine if this was actually the case. The bar graph also highlights the unusual muthos placement in Persians compared to all other tragedies. The muthos starts almost immediately after the play opens and ends just before the middle. This means that the muthos size and placement very closely resemble that of the plays of Aristophanes outlined in Chapter 2. Since Persians also has an invented plot, this striking similarity may be an indication that plot type determines key features of the muthos regardless of genre. Unfortunately only this one invented-plot tragedy remains, so there is no way to determine if the muthos in Persians is an exception, or part of a larger pattern. But in the case that this muthos placement and size was common in invented-plot tragedies, it would show that plot type is a more important factor than tone in determining muthos placement in particular. As just discussed, from the evidence of the three humorous mythological-plot plays analyzed here, it seems that the muthos placement in humorous mythological-plot plays differs radically from the muthos placement in humorous invented-plot plays. In fact, the placement is so different that there is little overlap in the muthos placement except right in the middle of the play. But the muthos placement in humorous mythological-plot plays differs less from the muthos placement in serious mythological-plot plays. In both of these two categories of mythological plays, the muthos starts much later in the play and ends later as well, with the distinguishing characteristic being that 31

See Krumeich et al. 1999, 400: “Es ist weder bekannt, ob Euripides der erste, noch ob er der einzige Tragiker war, der ein solches Experiment wagte.” My point is this leaves open the possibility that this practice was actually more common than is thought, meaning a play like Alcestis would not be an “Experiment” at all but an accepted alternative to the satyr play.

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in mythological-plot plays the muthos apparently always ends significantly later just before the close of play. So mythological muthoi that are serious or humorous have more in common than serious muthoi that are mythological or invented, while invented muthoi that are serious or humorous have more in common than humorous muthoi that are mythological or invented. Besides the structure of events, Persians has a range of other exceptional formal characteristics.32 These characteristics are typically attributed to the play’ s early date. But since Persians is not only an early play but also an invented-plot play, it could be that at least some of these exceptional characteristics were specific to invented-plot tragedies regardless of date. Particularly interesting in this regard is the extensive use of trochaic tetrameters in Persians, which is partially paralleled in invented-plot Old Comedy. The meter is often mixed with the more common iambic trimeter. Michelini argues that the “distinction that separates tetrameter from trimeter in this play is apparently one of function.” She concludes that the tetrameter “leads up to or frames long trimeter speeches, creating a layered effect.”33 It may be significant that what Michelini terms “layering” in some ways resembles the sandwich structures found in the satyr play discussed above. Although in the satyr play choral songs are used to frame the dialogue, in both cases changes in the type of delivery with little relation to exits and entrances are used to frame certain sections of a scene. Since the epirrhematic structures in invented-plot Old Comedy are also symmetrical changes in delivery without relation to exits and entrances, they could be viewed as highly complex framing devices as well. This means that such framing devices may be structural features associated to varying degrees with different types of plays: most pronounced and complex in invented-plot comedies; prominent in the satyr play (and possibly mythological comedy); evident in invented-plot tragedies; and absent in mythological tragedies. The result is a scale or spectrum of layering, with mythological tragedy at one end and invented-plot comedy at the other. Layering would then be another example of a formal feature determined by the combination of plot type and genre, not by the genre alone. If this is true, then the lack of epirrhematic structures in mythological comedy observed in Chapter 3 could in fact be part of a larger pattern of varying degrees of layering structures across all types of plays in this period, and not just in comedy. Turning to the mythological tragedies, the muthoi show some variety but conform to several important guidelines. There seems to be virtually no minimum muthos size, with Euripides’ Electra using the smallest muthos spread over less than 15 % of the play and muthoi spread over roughly 25 % of the tragedy being quite common. But in contrast to the proportionally larger muthoi used in the three humorous mythological plays examined, few tragedies use a muthos spread over more 32 33

See Michelini 1982, 3–64. Michelini 1982, 42.

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than about 50 % of the play. The exceptions are Prometheus Bound with a muthos spread over more than 55 % of the play, Oedipus Tyrannus with a muthos spread over about 52 % of the play, and Seven Against Thebes with a muthos spread over an almost identical portion of the play. The important difference between the two latter plays and Prometheus Bound is that in Prometheus Bound the large muthos portion combined with the relatively late muthos ending at over 85% through the play brings it closer to the muthoi of the three humorous mythological plays. As discussed above, the extremely static plot may have resulted in a somewhat atypical structure of events in this play, making it an exception among the tragedies. Since the muthos begins earlier in Oedipus Tyrannus and Seven Against Thebes, the muthos placement still closely resembles the placement in the other tragedies. The somewhat unusual muthos placement in Prometheus Bound also illustrates that muthos placement in the other tragedies is even more consistent than muthos size. Typically the muthos is centrally placed, beginning at around 30 % and ending between 70 and 80 %. This is quite unlike in the invented-plot comedies of Aristophanes, where the muthos never ends after 65% of the play and typically ends between 40 and 50 % of the way through. But there are several notable exceptions to this general rule for mythological tragedy. Aside from the case of Prometheus Bound just discussed, the muthoi of Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Sophocles’ Electra, Trojan Women and Iphigenia at Aulis all end just over 80 % of the way through the play. Yet in each of these cases, the muthos starts quite late as well, so the muthoi in no way resemble those of the three humorous mythological plays. By contrast, very early muthos starts are quite rare, and only Hecuba’ s muthos starts before the 20 % mark. As discussed above, the plot of Hecuba is unique among all the surviving tragedies, because the end of the muthos marks the beginning of entirely new plot that runs until the end of the play. Since this second plot in the “episodes” requires more room, it seems to have pushed the muthos farther forward in the play. As a result, it is the only play where the muthos is almost entirely contained in the first half of the play. This also applies to the early start of the muthos at just over 20 % of the way in to the play in Orestes. Here it was also pointed out in the previous section that a complex plot related to the muthos is launched in the “episodes” after the muthos ends, requiring that the muthos be placed closer to the beginning of this play. So in general, the pattern of muthos placement in the mythological tragedies suggests that late muthos starts and ends were more common than early muthos starts and ends. In addition, an extremely early muthos start such as in Persians and the plays of Aristophanes is entirely absent in mythological tragedy. Taking all of these observations together, I can now lay out the muthos patterns associated with four different categories of plays in Table 3. It should be emphasized that these four categories are not genres, since they may cross genres or cover only some portion of a genre. Instead they represent the four possible combinations of two characteristics, tone and plot type. I use Michelini’ s term “layering” to describe the various bracketing devices discussed above.

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Table 3 Play category correlated with muthos characteristics Tone/plot type combination

Muthos portion Muthos start

Humorous invented

35 to 65 % (Average: 48 %)

Serious invented About 50 %

Muthos end

Degree of layering

At close to 0 % At 35 to 65 % Extreme layering At close to 0 % At 50 %

Light layering Moderate layering

Humorous mythological

About 60 %

At 35 to 45 %

At close to 100 %

Serious mythological

20 to 50 % (Average: 34 %)

At 25 to 50 %

At 70 to 80 % No layering

The table shows that muthos placement appears to be strongly correlated with plot type, and muthos portion significantly correlated with tone. Invented muthoi start near the beginning of the play and end earlier. Mythological muthoi all have a later start, but since humorous mythological muthoi are on average spread over a larger portion of the play than serious mythological muthoi, they also end late in the play. From the limited evidence available of invented-plot tragedy, it seems that humorous invented muthoi could be about the same size proportionally as serious mythological muthoi. Still, on average humorous invented muthoi are larger than the muthos of the serious invented muthos of Persians, and it could be Persians has a muthos size at the upper end of the scale. Finally, humorous mythological muthoi are certainly larger than serious mythological muthoi. Layering is the only characteristic that appears to be entirely a function of both plot type and tone together. If these muthoi patterns exist, there is probably a reason why. But since Aristotle does not comment on these patterns or even confirm that muthoi characteristics fall into patterns, I can only offer speculations in answer to this crucial question. One possibility is that the patterns are to an extent accidental, the result of the historical development of the various types of plays. But if tragedy as a genre had a specific historical development, it seems unlikely that invented-plot tragedy would have a different development resulting in different muthos characteristics. On the other hand, our information about invented-plot tragedy is based on Persians alone, which is quite early in date. So it could be that historically, both mythological and invented-plot tragedies had these muthos characteristics similar to invented-plot comedy, and only later did the muthos characteristics linked with the surviving mythological tragedies take over. In this case, Persians would be something like a holdover from a previous period. Similarly, it could be that mythological Old Comedy and invented-plot Old Comedy had separate historical developments resulting in different muthos characteristics. This would

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also explain why mythological comedy seems to have lacked the epirrhematic structures characteristic of invented-plot Old Comedy. Another possibility is that the muthoi patterns result from the different requirements of the plots used in the plays. I noted in Chapter 2 that the parabasis seems to always mark the end of the muthos in Aristophanes. This indicated a connection between the muthos structure and the overall structure of the plot. In the case of Aristophanes, it appears that this specific formal structure was used to bridge the transition between the end of the muthos and the beginning of the “episodes” that would complete the plot of the play. Such a bridge may have been particularly useful in these plays because the “episodes” did not always seamlessly take up where the muthos left off, or even relate directly to it. But for the same reason, it appears to make less sense to have such loosely connected “episodes” precede the muthos. The kind of “episodes” typically found in the plots of this category of play could then be another reason why the muthos always starts right at the beginning in Aristophanes. For different reasons, it could be that an invented plot in any form was better suited to an early muthos start. Unlike with mythological plots, the audience did not know the characters and story of an invented plot in advance. The muthos sequence of events tightly connected by necessity or probability leading to a change of fortune may have been viewed as the best way to introduce an unfamiliar invented plot and its characters. In the case of Aristophanes, this would again be crucial to avoid confusion since the “episodes” were often only tenuously connected to the muthos. But even in the case of Persians, it could be that ancient audiences were far less accustomed to invented plots than modern audiences, and for that reason needed to be led more explicitly into invented plots with events tightly linked by causality leading to a change of fortune. If so, then the early muthos start in Aristophanes and in Persians could in some way be a response to ancient audiences’ particular sensibilities as large consumers of mythological narratives. For mythological plots on the other hand, the opposite would be true. Since the author could assume the audience was familiar with the mythological story in general, there may instead have been a need to precisely locate where the play is entering the mythological complex before the muthos begins. As I showed above in my discussion of the three plays about Orestes’ return home to take revenge, even with basically the same plot, different “episodes” preceding the muthos were required to define the focus of a particular version. Since the “episodes” in mythological plays are typically more tightly connected by causality to the muthos than in invented-plot comedy, they are also well suited to performing this function. But at the very least, it seems any mythological plot requires something equivalent to the montage opening of a television series episode that brings the viewer up to speed on where they are in the plot (often with a voiceover such as “previously, on … ” and then the name of the series). So by their very nature, mythological plots appear to require some explanation at the beginning of the play before the

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muthos begins (such as a prologue). This requirement could be another explanation for a convention that placed the muthos later in the play. With humorous muthoi, the pattern observed could be linked to the particular changes of fortune that end them. The humorous muthoi outlined here and in Chapter 2 all end with a change from bad to good fortune. Again, it is worth repeating here that this does not necessarily mean the play or plot always ends happily for the main character of the muthos, or other characters. It only means that the muthos ends with a change from bad to good fortune for the main character or characters of the muthos. Since in humorous mythological plays the play basically ends together with the muthos, the result is that both the play and the muthos end with a change from bad to good fortune. This may hint at one reason why the muthos is so large and placed so late in mythological comedy. In Section 5 of Chapter 3, I argued that the agon was less suited to the content of mythological stories centered on complex relationships and life-or-death situations. Similarly, it could be that “episodes” after such changes of fortune were seen as less suited to humorous treatment. In all the humorous mythological plays examined, the humor comes primarily from satirizing the profoundly bad fortune of the main character. Odysseus’ life-or-death predicament becomes an opportunity to satirize the Cyclops’ appetites, Alcestis’ death becomes an opportunity to make a spectacle of Heracles’ inappropriate joviality, and Amphitruo’ s jealousy and anger becomes an opportunity for domestic comedy. But none of the plays explore the humorous consequences of the change to good fortune. In Cyclops, for example, after blinding the monster he could face a second obstacle in his escape leading to further humorous “episodes.” Similarly, in both Alcestis and Amphitruo humorous “episodes” showing the couples’ inability to get along after the events of the muthos have disrupted their relationship would be a possibility. If “episodes” following the resolution of the kind of serious problem typically found in myth were not thought to be ripe for comic treatment, then obviously a humorous mythological play would have to end quickly after the end of the muthos. In the case of Aristophanes, his invented muthoi never place his characters in serious jeopardy or make them face a life-or-death problem. In fact, the characters often encounter more serious problems in the “episodes” after their plan is implemented, when it may face challenges or go off the rails. So it may be that “episodes” following a profound change to good fortune were viewed as less humorous, and as a result humorous mythological muthoi end just before the play. For the same reason, humorous mythological muthoi may be proportionally larger because the muthos must be stretched out over many more lines to replace the “episodes” after the muthos ends in serious mythological plays. This also highlights a striking pattern in the muthoi endings across the genres. All humorous muthoi end with a change from bad to good fortune, as might be expected. But serious muthoi are almost evenly split between muthoi that end in good fortune and muthoi that end in bad fortune. This is even true across the three authors of tragedy, with each having written almost precisely equal numbers of

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muthoi in each of the two categories. Yet this pattern does not apply to the play endings. The invented humorous plays of Aristophanes may often end in bad fortune for the main character of the muthos after the muthos has ended well for that character. By contrast, it is extremely rare for a serious play to include “episodes” that reverse the change of fortune at the end of the muthos. This means that although changes of fortune in either direction were thought suitable for serious muthoi, the character or characters typically remained in that condition through the “episodes” until the end of the play. The only exceptions to this rule are Hecuba and Orestes by Euripides, where a change to bad fortune at the end of the muthos is reversed by the end of the play. (In these two cases, I have added a “+” in parentheses in Table 4 to indicate the shift back to good fortune at the end of play.) It is probably no coincidence that these are also the two plays in which completely new plots are launched after the end of the muthos in the “episodes.” These plots are so complex and so weakly connected to the muthos, that by the end of the play audiences may have largely forgotten the change of fortune that ended the muthos. So this pattern may suggest that a second change of fortune in the “episodes” after the muthos was viewed as a humorous plot twist, and excluded in serious plays except in particularly complex plots that adequately distracted the audience from the first change of fortune by the end of the play. These results then show that the patterns in the structure of events as well as the pattern of “layering” often cross over genre boundaries or apply only to specific categories within the genres. Taken to its logical conclusion, this emphasis on categories could result in a view of the two larger genres of Old Comedy and tragedy as something more like two awards categories instead: “best serious play” and “best humorous play.” Just as the category of “best drama” at a movie awards ceremony might include films from very different genres such as a science fiction action film or an adaptation of a nineteenth century Russian novel among the nominations, so the tragedy competition could include both serious invented-plot plays and serious mythological plays. And just as the category of “best comedy” could include a slapstick comedy or a parody film, so the comedy competition could include both Aristophanic-type comedies and mythological comedies. In the case of the satyr play, it could be that it was simply the most popular type of humorous mythological play with enough in common with serious mythological plays (in terms of costume, diction, and so on) to appear alongside them. Against this background, viewing tragedy and Old Comedy as genres amounts to privileging tone over plot type. The assumption is that key features of the plays including the form are largely determined by tone. But the four categories of plays outlined here seem less like different types of plays within two genres than four modular combinations of two variables, tone and plot type, with plot type dominating instead of tone. If invented-plot tragedy has a similar structure of events to invented-plot Old Comedy, and mythological tragedy a similar structure to mythological Old Comedy, then it would appear that plot type is more important for determining structure than tone. In both cases the humorous muthoi seem

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IV. Muthos and the Definition of Genre

to be a bit larger, but in general tone only adjusts the structure slightly instead of determining it. The sole exception is invented-plot comedy with its pronounced layering structures specific only to this category. At the same time, tone is still clearly a key criterion for categorizing the experience of seeing these plays, from how they were produced to how the audience probably reacted. Therefore the results present a difficult choice. The two genres of “tragedy” and “comedy” could now be divided into two sub-genres depending on if they use invented or mythological plots (resulting in four sub-genres in total, i. e. invented-plot tragedy, mythological tragedy, invented-plot Old Comedy, mythological Old Comedy), with satyr play remaining as a fifth genre. But the disadvantage of this option is that it completely obscures the apparent similarities among the sub-genres, such as those between the satyr play and mythological Old Comedy or between Persians and Aristophanic Old Comedy. In addition, the structural similarities between the special case of Alcestis and both mythological Old Comedy and the satyr play would not be accounted for in this genre categorization. The other alternative is to dispense with the category of “genre” itself, and divide the plays among the four categories based on tone and plot type, with Alcestis and the satyr play falling into the humorous mythological category. This has the advantage of accurately grouping the plays by their structural characteristics, but completely ignores their performative context and a range of other genre markers such as costume or diction. Still, I myself prefer the latter choice. Like the modern concept of “plot” which I have argued cannot be aligned with Aristotle’ s concept of “muthos,” it may be that the concept of “genre” as it is currently understood is less useful when applied to the drama of this period than is generally thought. Given the evidence, I see no reason to impose any concept of “genre” onto the plays of this period, or to assume that the separate competitions insist on such a concept. Instead, I would prefer to let the features of the plays themselves determine their categorization, even if that means accepting the somewhat counterintuitive idea that the structure of events in a play about a sex strike in Athens is a good guide for understanding the structure of events in a play about an eastern empire mourning a cataclysmic military defeat. This brings me to a last crucial question about the Aristotelian muthos that I have so far not addressed. Especially in the plays of Euripides, there seems to be certain indications that the author himself was aware of norms for the muthos, and was even at times playing with muthos expectations. For example, in Hecuba the poet appears to have purposefully manipulated the audience’ s expectations of how the muthos would end in order to surprise them with an unexpected final event in the muthos. In Electra, he may have intentionally reduced the size of the muthos to the absolute minimum in order to maximize the size of the “episodes.” In Heracles, he has inserted a fully developed plot in the “episodes” before the muthos begins, perhaps to tempt the audience into believing this is the muthos of the play before turning to the expected muthos of Heracles’ madness. And in Helen, he may have consciously chosen a muthos familiar from Aristophanes to

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complement the somewhat “comic” tone of the tragedy. This raises the possibility that the muthos was not only an analytic tool developed by Aristotle to study or categorize narratives, it may also have informed audience expectations and structured how authors built their plots before Aristotle formulated it as a theoretical concept in the Poetics. In summarizing my conclusions, I offer just a glimpse of some of the ramifications of this intriguing possibility. Table 4 Muthos placement and events in tragedy, the satyr play and Amphitruo 1077 lines 8 Chorus announces that they are waiting for news

515 Messenger announces Persian defeat

1070 lines 286 Eteocles says he will defend the city

845 Bodies of the Eteocles and his brother are displayed

–

Suppliants

1073 lines 324 Suppliants ask for sanctuary

600 Danaus announces sanctuary granted

+

Prometheus Bound

1093 lines 330 Prometheus refuses 950 Hermes reveals to appease Zeus Zeus needs Prometheus’ secret

+

Agamemnon

1673 lines 774 Agamemnon returns

1372 Agamemnon is killed

–

1074 lines 554 Orestes plans his disguise

973 Aegisthus body is displayed (869 Aegsithus death cry is heard)

+

Eumenides

1047 lines 397 Athena enters, trial begins

752 Orestes is acquitted

Ajax

1420 lines 480 Ajax decides to kill himself

865 Ajax kills himself

Electra

1510 lines 673 Electra learns Orestes is dead

1222 Electra recognizes Orestes

Oedipus Tyrannus

1530 lines 379 Teiresias tells 1182 Oedipus recognizes Oedipus he killed Laius he is the killer of Laius

–

Antigone

1353 lines 443 Antigone admits she buried Polynices

935 Creon orders Antigone to be killed

–

Women of Trachis

1278 lines 375 Deianira learns Heracles loves another woman

741 Deianira recognizes she has killed Heracles

Persians Seven Against Thebes

Libation Bearers

–

+ – +

–

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IV. Muthos and the Definition of Genre

Philoctetes

1471 lines 468 Philoctetes is persuaded to leave

915 Philoctetes learns he has been tricked

+

Oedipus at Colonus

1779 lines 637 Theseus allows Oedipus to stay

1042 Creon fails to force Oedipus to leave

+

709 lines

663 Cyclops blinded

Cyclops

241 Cyclops decides to eat Odysseus and his men

+

1163 lines 392 Alcestis dies

1121 Heracles saves Alcestis from death

+

Medea

1419 lines 450 Medea is exiled by Creon

765 Medea is granted sanctuary by Aegeus

+

Children of Heracles

1055 lines 285 Demophon decides 928 Eurystheus is capto fight a war for the tured children (784 messenger speech begins)

+

Hippolytus

1466 lines 614 Hippolytus rejects Phaedra

973 Theseus exiles Hippolytus

–

Andromache

1288 lines 410 Andromache is seized by Menelaus

746 Andromache is released by Menelaus

+

Hecuba

1295 lines 401 Polyxena is condemned to death

658 Polydoros‘ body is displayed

– (+)

Suppliant Women

1234 lines 346 Theseus is persuad- 795 The dead bodies are ed to fight Creon for recovered the dead bodies

Alcestis

+

1359 lines 577 Electra recognizes Orestes

880 Aegisthus‘ body is displayed (761 messenger speech begins)

+

1428 lines 523 Heracles arrives to save his family

1041 The bodies of Heracles‘ family are displayed

–

Trojan Women

1332 lines 705 Hecuba plans revenge through Astyanax

1118 The body of Astyanax is displayed

–

Iphigenia in Tauris

1499 lines 466 Orestes is brought to Iphigenia for sacrifice

827 Iphigenia recognizes Orestes

+

1623 lines 531 Xuthus claims Ion as his son

1399 Creusa recognizes Ion is her son (980 Creusa‘s murder plot begins)

Electra

Heracles

Ion

+

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3. Comparing the Muthos Across Genres

Helen

Phoenician Women

Orestes

Bacchae Iphigenia at Aulis Rhesus

Amphitruo

1692 lines 622 Helen is recognized 1017 Theonoe agrees to by Menelaus help Helen 1766 lines 622 Eteocles says he will defend the city

1693 lines 356 Menelaus arrives

1480 Bodies of the Eteocles and his brother are displayed (1335 messenger speech begins) 1035 Orestes is condemned to death

1392 lines 357 Pentheus orders 1165 Pentheus body is Dionysus to be arrested displayed (1024 messenger speech begins)

+

–

– (+)

–

1531 lines 610 Iphigenia arrives

1275 Agamemnon allows Iphigenia‘s sacrifice

–

996 lines

885 Rhesus body is displayed (728 messenger speech begins)

–

380 Rhesus arrives

1446 lines 633 Amphitruo accuses 1143 Zeus reveals he (including Alcumena of infidelity slept with Alcumena est. 300 line lacuna)

+

Persians Seven Against Thebes Suppliants Prometheus Bound Agamemnon Libation Bearers Eumenides Ajax Electra Oedipus Tyrannus Antigone Women of Trachis Philoctetes Oedipus at Colonus Cyclops Alcestis Medea Children of Heracles Hipploytus Andromache Hecuba Suppliant Women Electra Heracles Trojan Women Iphigenia in Tauris Ion Helen Phoenician Women Orestes Bacchae Iphigenia at Aulis Rhesus Amphitruo

198 IV. Muthos and the Definition of Genre

Figure 2 Muthos placement and portion across genres

199

Conclusion In this book, I have argued that Aristotle’ s concept of muthos in the Poetics has no equivalent among modern narratological concepts, and in particular has little in common with what is typically called the “plot.”34 Since Aristotle applies this muthos concept to all three dramatic genres as well to epic, it is also reasonable to assume that the muthos concept would apply to all types of narrative works. Described in other terms then, it seems that Aristotle’ s “horizon of expectation”35 for the organization of events in any narrative included a muthos with certain characteristics, and this muthos expectation is unique to him in the history of literary theory. This interpretation of the Poetics also requires that Aristotle’ s listeners or readers were previously familiar with the muthos concept. Otherwise, Aristotle would have been obligated to provide an explicit definition and explanation of the concept, and there would be no necessity to deduce this definition from his statements about the muthos as I have done. The term “muthos” may then have been part of an already existing technical vocabulary of literary criticism developed by Aristotle, or even other critics.36 But what about the fifth century poets and audiences referred to in the Poetics? Did they also either explicitly or intuitively understand the muthos concept, just as modern writers and audiences understand the concept of plot structure? In other words, was Aristotle’ s horizon of expectation common among poets and audiences before Aristotle theoretically formulated it in the Poetics? I suggested in the Introduction that Aristotle’ s apparently contradictory or inaccurate prescriptive statements could be an indication that his concept of plot in the treatise differs from any conventional concept of plot. But these statements could also suggest that Aristotle assumed that poets were aware of the muthos concept. If such prescriptive statements were actually aimed at practicing poets, then it would make little sense to instruct them on how to construct the muthos if they had yet to learn about it. But it is far more probable that these statements were not intended for any such group of non-philosophers, and are simply theoretical formulations phrased in more didactic language.37 So they cannot be considered evidence that contemporary poets or audiences were aware of the muthos concept, not to mention those of the fifth century. This means that the only indication of any awareness of the muthos concept on the part of audiences or the poets themselves in the fifth century is the handful 34 35 36 37

See Section 1 of Chapter 2 for a detailed comparison with modern concepts. See Jauss 1982. See Bywater 1902, Bywater 1909 xiv–xv, Halliwell 1986, 35 and Gudeman 1934, 19 (with note 17). See Halliwell 1986, 38–9.

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of exceptionally structured plays by Euripides outlined in Chapter 4. These plays seem to cleverly manipulate muthoi patterns either to raise certain expectations, or defy them. The reception of these plays in this period therefore may have partially relied on certain expectations for the muthos. Clearly this evidence is far too sketchy to be in any way decisive. But if we assume for the moment poets and audiences were aware of the muthos concept just as modern audiences are of the idea of “plot,” how would that awareness have affected both the production and reception of narratives in this period? One of the most important differences would be in expectations for unity. To take the surviving Old Comedies as an example, there is fierce debate among modern critics about whether many of the plays of Aristophanes meet the requirements of Aristotelian unity. On one extreme, there are critics like Heath38 who believe that Aristotelian unity is there if you only look hard enough. On the other, there are critics like Silk39 who defend a lack of Aristotelian unity as one of the plays’ essential features. In the middle are supporters of the “great idea” scheme who argue that unity is only to be found in the first parts of the play. The muthos concept essentially introduces an alternative model of unity. Some parts of the plays are unified according to specific criteria, and some are held to a lower standard of causality and organization. The unified parts ending in a change of fortune are what Aristotle calls the muthos, which as I argued in Chapter 2 in Aristophanes always begins right after the play opens and ends around the middle. The other parts are what Aristotle would call “episodes,” which fill out the narrative work with related events plausibly or appropriately linked to the muthos. In these parts, the author has a creative choice. The “episode” events can sustain the unity of the muthos parts on its particular terms, use it as a launching point for other events with some unity on other terms, or dispense with unity entirely. This explains why in Aristophanes, the second parts of the plays exhibit the full range of these options. Part of the audience’ s expectation would then probably be surprise or pleasure in how the author chooses or refuses to integrate unity into these parts. But it is not just that the muthos concept permits some events in the play to lack unity. This second category of events is equally as important as the first. It is integral to Aristotle’ s definition of the muthos that the muthos not span the entire narrative work. Otherwise, Aristotle would not have carefully outlined rules for properly balancing the two types of events. So just as Aristotle’ s horizon of expectation requires a muthos with unity, there also seems to have been an expectation that such unity would not necessarily dominate for the entire play. If fifth century audiences shared the muthos concept, then they would not be bothered at all by “episodes” with even the most tangential relationship to the muthos. Comedies 38 39

For example, in the appendix of Heath 1987. See for example Silk 2000, 257: “just as Aristotle’ s requirements for dramatic organization belong with his kind of literature, so Aristophanes’ organizational and structural priorities and alignments belong with his.”

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with quite disjointed plots that contain an adequate muthos such as Frogs would still meet an ancient audience’ s expectations for unity. But they would probably miss the “episodes” and find the work lopsided or unsatisfying if every event was tightly linked by causality. A seamless plot from beginning to end (as perhaps found in some modern popular narratives) would be the last thing that they would expect. A second important difference would be in expectations for closure. By limiting the scope of the muthos to these events tightly linked by causality, the muthos concept also designates an end to these events within the narrative work. Since the final event in the muthos always results in a change of fortune, any narrative that includes a muthos also always offers an ending that could be also viewed as providing closure. Yet for precisely the same reasons this ending explicitly offers no closure in the sense of ending the story. The story typically continues in the “episodes” until the end of the narrative work, and often for quite a large portion of the total work. So just as there is an expectation for both more unified events and less unified events within the larger plot, there is also the expectation for a muthos ending that offers causal closure, and an ending to the “episodes” that closes the narrative work. When these endings coincide as appears to be the case in humorous mythological plays, for example, this may have also produced a specific effect. A consequence of this doubling of the gesture of ending could mean that lower expectations are placed on the second ending at the close of the narrative work. Since a certain kind of closure has already been provided, audiences may be more comfortable with being confronted with the problem of closure in an abrupt or untidy ending. In addition, this second ending terminates “episodes” held to lower standard of causality. As a result, it could be viewed as less problematic if the ending does not attempt to stage a definitive causal closure. An ending such as the deus ex machina would then have been more acceptable to an ancient audience than it may be to a modern audience.40 But the uncomfortable truth about endings is that they never provide closure, because an audience can always ask “and then?”41 The problem of closure formulated in this way can be handled in a range of ways, from designing an ending that gives a satisfying sense of closure to defying expectations by intentionally leaving it open-ended. The muthos concept then offers a different strategy for satisfying expectations for closure. It effectively solves the problem by refusing to conceal it. The ending of the muthos before the ending of the narrative work explicitly 40

41

Dunn 1996 argues that Euripides provides closure of different types and in various degrees at the end of his plays. As I suggested in the final paragraph of the last chapter, Euripides also appears to play with the audience’ s expectations for closure at the end of the muthos in certain tragedies. This raises the question if there is a relationship between the quality of closure at the end of the play and the quality of closure at the end of the muthos in his works. See the end of Section 2 of Chapter 1.

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stages closure for the audience within a narrative or performance that has not ended. And since this first ending must only result in a change of fortune, audience expectations for closure can much more easily be met. In fact, it could be argued that legitimate wholeness or closure in a sequence of events can only be achieved by strategically limiting the scope of these events as the muthos concept requires. So for an audience familiar with the muthos concept, the “episodes” held to a lower standard of causality function within the narrative work as a kind of screen on which the muthos events characterized by causality, integration and culmination are projected. This approach to unity and closure could then be described as a more honest form of storytelling. Instead of trying to trick us into believing a story could have the satisfying wholeness of a discrete beginning and end by beginning and ending the narrative work at the same time as the plot, Aristotle’ s narrative model acknowledges the almost unavoidable presence of more contingent events in the narrative work. These then become the background of the events presented in the muthos – just as the narrative work itself has a discrete beginning and end that in practice are set against the background of the contingent events in the readers’ or spectators’ lives.

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Indices Index of Passages Antiphanes Poetry fr. 189: 98n15 Archippus Fishes fr. 14: 81, 80; fr. 27: 80; fr. 28: 81; fr. 30: 81 Aristophanes Aeolosicon fr. 8: 109 Amphiaraus fr. 29: 86–87; fr. 30: 101; fr. 31: 101; fr. 33: 87 Anagyrus fr. 58: 101; fr. 59: 101 Birds 40–45: 66; 607: 86 Daedalus fr. 199: 110 Danaids fr. 257: 109; fr. 264: 101, 103–6; fr. 265: 101, 103–6; fr. 272: 104 Farmers fr. 112: 101; fr. 113: 101 Frogs 354–371: 101, 103n32, 121 Heroes fr. 319: 101; fr. 320: 101 Knights 526–8: 72–3 Lysistrata 662–70: 87 Merchant Ships fr. 424: 101 Old Age fr. 129: 84–7; fr. 130: 87; fr. 132: 85; fr. 144: 86; fr. 147: 86; fr. 148: 85 Thesmoriazusae II fr. 347: 101; fr. 348: 101 Wasps 191: 67; 937: 68; 275–78: 103 Wealth scholium ad 210: 104 Aristotle History of Animals V 17.549b26: 86n82 Metaphysics XIII 3.1078a36: 16 Poetics 1448a25–28: 98n15; 1449a19– 21: 33; 1449a19: 16n7; 1449b12–14: 25; 1449b12–16: 15n2; 1449b12: 16, 25n32; 1449b24–25: 27; 1449b25: 16; 1449b25: 16n7; 1450a4–5: 39; 1450a34–35: 26n34; 1450a38: 11; 1450b23–25: 27; 1450b24: 27; 1450b25–27: 28; 1450b26–27: 34; 1450b26–34: 52; 1450b26: 16n7; 1450b27–28: 18; 1450b34–51a3: 35; 1450b34–51a6: 34; 1450b36–37: 16n7; 1450b36: 16; 1451a3–6: 35; 1451a4: 16n7; 1451a5–6: 25n32;

[Aristotle, Poetics cont.] 1451a5: 16, 15n4; 1451a6–8: 36; 1451a6: 36; 1451a10–11: 28, 34.4831461; 1451a11–15: 16, 16n7; 1451a12–15: 34, 53; 1451a12: 60n36; 1451a15: 36; 1451a32–34: 47; 1451a32–35: 54; 1451b11–14: 98, 112; 1451b19–22: 147; 1451b19–25: 118; 1451b26: 11; 1451b34–35: 151; 1452a14–16: 54; 1452a15–16: 156; 1452a32–33: 156; 1452a37–1452b1: 54; 1452b9–10: 26n34; 1452b9: 26; 1453a35–39: 97, 112, 118, 120, 131, 147, 156; 1453b2–6: 156; 1453b19–23: 48; 1453b22–26: 119; 1453b29–34: 22; 1454a28–29: 181; 1454a31–32: 184; 1454a37–54b8: 22; 1455a34: 19n16; 1455b2–23: 52, 54; 1455b2– 15: 19, 47; 1455b2–6: 20; 1455b13–14: 60; 1455b14–15: 42; 1455b15: 25; 1455b16–23: 18, 20; 1455b16: 25n32; 1455b17–21: 20; 1455b18–19: 47; 1455b24–32: 21; 1455b26–29: 26n34; 1456a7–9: 50; 1456a10–15: 25, 29; 1456a13: 30; 1456a14: 16n7, 25n32; 1456b1–2: 33n47; 1456b1: 16n7; 1456b32: 25n32; 1459a30–37: 24; 1459a30–34: 29; 1459a34: 16n7, 29n39; 1459b17–20: 36; 1459b17–18: 25n32; 1459b18: 37n50; 1459b20–22: 19, 36; 1459b21: 19n18; 1459b22–28: 30, 36, 39n52; 1459b23: 16n7; 1460a27–32: 23; 1460a29: 23n25; 1461b19–21: 181; 1462a18–62b3: 32; 1462a18: 25n32; 1462b1: 38; 1462b5–62b10: 32; 1462b7: 25n32; 1462b8–10: 26n34 1462b10: 16n7 Politics VII 4.1326a33: 16 Rhetoric III 13.1414b4–7: 26; III 9.1409a35–37: 26 Athenaeus Deipnosophistae 267e–68a: 76; 329b: 80

210

Indices

Crates I Beasts fr. 16: 76, 107; fr. 17: 77, 107; fr. 19: 78 Games fr. 28: 101 Cratinus Archilochuses fr. 6: 107; fr. 11: 101 Chirons fr. 246: 129; fr. 249: 129; fr. 253: 129; fr. 255: 101; fr. 256: 129; fr. 257: 129; fr. 260: 129 Cow-Herders fr. 17: 103n32, 123; fr. 20: 130n32; 123 Delian Maidens fr. 26: 101 Dionysalexandros test. i (P.Oxy. 663): 130, 132 Dramatic Rehearsals fr. 38: 101 Men of Seriphos fr. 220: 108 Nemesis fr. 114: 133–4; fr. 115: 133, 136; fr. 117: 133 Odysseus and Company fr. 143: 108, 124, 138; fr. 144: 108, 138; fr. 145: 108, 138; fr. 146: 138; fr. 147: 138; fr. 148: 138; fr. 149: 138; fr. 150: 138; fr. 151: 124; fr. 153: 101, 102; fr. 156: 138; fr. 171: 124 Poofters (Malthakoi) fr. 105: 101 Pylaea fr. 182: 103n32 Run-aways fr. 57: 101n23 Thracian Women fr. 76: 101; fr. 81: 84 Trophonius fr. 237: 101 Wealth-Gods fr. 171: 103n32, 126 Wine-Flask test. ii: 69; fr. 193: 70; fr. 194: 70; fr. 195: 66; fr. 196: 74; fr. 197: 70; fr. 198: 72, 75; fr. 199: 71, 75; fr. 200: 74; fr. 201: 71, 72n54; fr. 201: 74; fr. 202: 73; fr. 203: 73; fr. 206: 70; fr. 207: 70; fr. 208: 73; fr. 209: 73; fr. 210: 67, 72; fr. 211: 72 Eupolis Cities fr. 219: 101; fr. 220: 101; fr. 239: 101 Demes fr. 99: 88–9, 101, 103n32; fr. 132: 101 Draft-dodgers fr. 42: 101 Dyers fr. 89: 99n18, 101; fr. 98: 80n69 Golden Race fr. 316: 101 Maricas fr. 205: 103n32

[Eupolis cont.] Nanny-Goats fr. 13: 101 Spongers test. iv and v: 82; fr. 157: 82; fr. 158: 83; fr. 160: 82; fr. 165: 82; fr. 168: 84; fr. 171: 84; fr. 172: 83n75, 101; fr. 173: 83 Hermippus Birth of Athena fr. 5: 108 Unassigned fr. 73: 108 Lysippus Bacchae fr. 4: 101 Metagenes Sacrifice-lover fr. 15: 101 Pherecrates Ant-Men fr. 125: 110; fr. 127: 101, 102–3 Corianno fr. 84: 101 Kitchen or Pannychis fr. 70: 101 Persians fr. 128: 101 Slave-Trainer fr. 52: 101 Tiddlers (Krapataloi) fr. 102: 101 Tyranny fr. 152: 101 Philonides Buskins fr. 5: 101 Plato Comicus Hyperbolus fr. 184: 101 The Little Kid fr. 99: 101 The One in Great Pain fr. 117: 101 Wool-carders or Cercopes fr. 96: 101, 102–3, 105 Polyzelus Demos-Tyndareus fr. 3: 109; fr. 4: 110 pseudo-Andocides Against Alcibiades 4.14: 67n42 Strattis Philoctetes fr. 45: 110 Teleclides Amphictyons fr. 2: 101; fr. 4: 101 Theopompus The Mede fr. 31: 101 She-Soldiers fr. 56: 107–8; fr. 57: 107 TrGF II 646a: 103n32

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211

General Index This index excludes longer subject discussions named in the Table of Contents. Aeschylus Agamemnon 189 Eumenides 119, 127–8, 181 Libation Bearers 118–9, 172, 175–6, 178, 189 Persians 128, 141, 150, 171, 187–91, 194 Prometheus Bound 189 Prometheus Unbound 124–5, 128 Seven against Thebes 158, 179, 189 Suppliants 125, 128, 155, 161–2, 171 Agathon Antheus 147 Alcibiades 82–5 Ameipsias The Sling 67 Archippus Donkey’s Shadow 67 Aristides, 88 Aristomenes Dionysus in Training 100 Aristonymus Theseus 100 Aristophanes Aeolosicon 105–6, 109 Amphiaraus 86–7, 100n19, 101n23 Banqueters 107 Clouds 67, 82–3, 90, 122 Daedalus 106 Danaids 101, 104–6 Wasps 186 Women at the Thesmophoria 186 Aristotle, Poetics, Syro-Arabic translation 33 Callias the Athenian Tragedy of Letters 68 Callias, 82–4 Character and muthos, 181–2, 184 Chorus central role in the plot 148, 150 in Aristophanes 61 opens the play 124–5, 128, 148, 150 role in mythological Old Comedy 125–29

[Chorus cont.] structure of parts in mythological Old Comedy 143–4 Cinderella, 47 Closure, 27, 45, 50, and muthos ending in Aristophanes 60–2, 186, 201–2, 201n4 Comic hero in Aristophanes, 51, 61–2, 62n38 Complication, 21–2, 23, 26, 26n34, 45, 51 Cratinus Chirons 101n23, 125, 129 Cow-Herders 107, 123–4 Dionysalexander 96–7, 101, 103n32, 124, 134, 137, 139 Men of Seriphos 106 Nemesis 97 Odysseus and Company 97, 101, 105–6, 163 Pylaea 122n65 Runaways 101n23 Seasons 107 Wealth-Gods 150 Wine-Flask 107 Derrida, Jacques 141–2, 164 Deus ex machina, 22, 201 Epicharmus Logos and Logina 120, 122 Eupolis, 122n65 Autolycus 107 Bacchae 114–5 Demes 129 Draft-Dodgers 107 Maricas 67, 107 Spongers 107 Euripides Alcestis 186–7, 187n31, 192, 194 Cyclops 138–9, 164, 186, 192 Electra 188, 194 Hecuba 174, 181, 189, 193–4 Helen 51, 194 Heracles 181, 194 Iphigenia in Tauris 15, 19–21, 24, 31, 38–39, 41–2, 47–49, 51, 53, 55–6,

212

Indices

[Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris cont.] 58–9, 62, 117, 126, 135, 137, 139–40, 146, 154, 156, 160, 165, 168, 176–8, 183 Iphigenia at Aulis 189 Trojan Women 176, 180, 189 Genre and formal structure, 145 “Great idea” plot scheme, 51–2, 51n32, 55, 62–3, 88, 200 Hagnon, 125 Hegemon Gigantomachy 100 Hephaestion, 103 Hermippus Birth of Athena 106, 108 Homer Iliad 29–30, 47 Odyssey 15, 19–21, 31–2, 36–9, 41, 43–4, 53, 55, 58, 90, 138, 152–3, 162, 173–4 Horizon of expectation, 199–200 Hyberbolus, 73 Irrational, 11–12, 22–3 Layering, definition 188–9, 190, 193–4 Lysippus Bacchae 101n23 Melanthius, 81–2 Messenger scene, 18n13, 31, 149–150, 158, 166, 173–4, 179, 182, 185 Metagenes Breezes 107 Miltiades, 88 Mormo-goblin masks, 87 Muthos deduction, definition 13, 63 Muthos expectations, 194, 199 Nicochares Heracles the Producer 100 Objects as on-stage characters in Old Comedy, 67–8 Parodos containing parabatic material, 101, 103, 103n32, 121–2, 122n65, 123–4, 131 Pericles, 88

Pherecrates Ant-Men 101, 106–8 Deserters 107 Muses 107 Persians 107 Tiddlers (Krapataloi) 107 Plato Republic 145 Plato Comicus Wool-carders or Cercopes 101 Platonios, 103n28, 105 Plautus Amphitruo 114–18, 121, 125, 128, 133, 135, 137, 139, 146, 163, 164, 185–6, 192 Polyzelus Birth of Ares 100 Demos-Tyndareus 106 Protagoras, 82–3 Recognition, 19, 26, 26n34, 38, 42, 53, not required in muthos 54, 56, 59, 119, 135, 153, 156, 159, 170, 172, 176–8 Resolution, 21–3, 26, 26n34, 45, 51 Reversal, 26, 26n34, 156, 170 Ricoeur, Paul, 27, 39, 40, 50 Satyr play, 33, 141–4, not considered a genre 145 Solon, 88, 101n23, 129 Sophocles Ajax 169, 171, 174, 181 Electra 147, 189 Oedipus at Colonus 171 Oedipus Rex 22–3, 43, 46, 49, 189 Orestes 184, 189, 193 Women of Trachis 160, 170, 178 Strattis Philoctetes 106 Teleclides Amphictyons 107 Unity, 11–12, 32, 114–5, 146, 155, 169, 170–1, 174–6, 181, 196–9, 200–2 Utopia, 76–9, 127