Felix Jacoby, On the Development of Greek Historiography and the Plan for a New Collection of the Fragments of the Greek Historians. 3 Tragic elements in the works of the ancient Greek historians have attracted much more scientific attention than comic ones, e.g.
Irony, the Grotesque, the Frightful, the Incongruous
Humorous Deception and Ethnography in Herodotus’, in A. Park, red., Resemblance and Reality in Greek Thought:. Performance, Mass Audience and Text in the Athenian Democracy’, in J. 1973) Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore and London).
INSULTS AND HUMILIATIONS IN FIFTH-CENTURY HISTORIOGRAPHY
AND COMEDY
Introduction
Thucydides and his "sequel" Xenophon provide examples of biting wit that emerge in moments of tense political and military competition.2 All three show elements of an ecology of insult in fifth-century Greece (v. infra). Thoukydides excludes most such material, especially the details of the boastful body, as infra dignitatem historiae.
The Ecology of Insult in Fifth-Century Greece Men jockey for distinction in competitive, face-to-face sub-
Sometimes such actions contributed to formal or governmental social cohesion and regulation, e.g. the verbally, physically and gesturally brutal Spartan education system, later termed 'training' or agôgê.11 Athenian conflicts produced ritualized courtroom dramas of law, public jury verdicts handed down by People's Courts, and fines or executions. A typical ethnocentric Spartan saying goes: 'In Athens, anything goes.' The Spartans naturally busied themselves with preparing for beautiful deaths, dressing and combing their long hair.
Early Greek Historiography: Herodotos, Thoukydides, and Xenophon
This tribe was then called 'Ruwers of the People', while the others were called 'Swine-ites', 'Assites' and 'Pig-ites'. The enraged and insulted socially-climbing Father of the Bride informs the aristocratic Athenian33 at the same time that 'You have danced away your marriage.' so the suitors also heard: 'You have built your marriage.'.
Humorous Insults in Thoukydides’ Ξυγγραφή Thoukydides more narrowly allows insulting words and low
The sexually rejected younger brother of the tyrant Hippias invited this sister to participate as a basket bearer in an Athenian religious procession. 42 The fact of the excursion itself (a serious correction of previous accounts of a distant event), the role of a woman, the presence of (homo-)sexuality in Thoukydides' story – explain its different tone and scope.
Theramenes’ Savage Quips in Xenophon’s Hellenika
- Old Comedy
- Conclusions
Aristophanes denounces any form of Athenian eccentricity and insults all household names – the laughs depend on immediately recognizable persons and types (such as Birds' Decree-Seller). Socrates in the Clouds describes his learning-disabled, super-annual student Strepsiades as an idiot who stinks of the age of Kronos. 1990b) 'Laying the Law: The Control of Men's Sexual Behavior in Classical Athens', in ID., The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York and London) 45–70.
HUMOUR, ETHNOGRAPHY, AND EMBASSY: HERODOTUS, HISTORIES
3.17–25 AND ARISTOPHANES, ACHARNIANS 61–133 *
Herodotus, Histories 3.17–25
The Viseters, a tribe of Egyptians from Elephantine, make their only appearance in the Histories as representatives of Cambyses and the Persians at the court of the Ethiopian king. In his speech, the Ethiopian king makes three emphatic points: (1) the Persian king did not send gifts to win his friendship; (2) the Fish-Eaters lie and are really spies; and (3) the Persian king is not a righteous man (οὔτε ἐκεῖνος ἀνήρ ἐστι δίκαιος, 3.21.2). In addition, there is wine, the only Persian gift that the Ethiopian king praises for its salutary effects.
Aristophanes, Acharnians 61–133
The Fish-Eaters appear as deceitful ambassadors of the Persian king, but are unable to deceive the wise Ethiopian king. Culinary wonders are prominent in this scene, just as they are in the Fish Eaters scene with the Ethiopians' Table of the Sun. While the identities of the Ethiopians and Persians are defined by their diet in the Histories, in this scene the Persians.
Conclusion: Embassy Scenes in Herodotus and Aristophanes
In addition to its humor, Herodotus' embassy scene would also have been particularly attractive to Aristophanes for reworking because of the current historical situation: the fact that both Athens and Sparta sought financial support from the Persian king would have referred to all things Persian. even more endearing. National Stereotypes in Herodotus, Histos Literary Texts and the Greek Historian (London and New York). 2012) The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to Herodotus (New York and Oxford). 1909) The Acharnians of Aristophanes (London).
THE DEATH OF NICIAS
NO LAUGHING MATTER
I Watch Thucydides’: The Power of Language in Thucydides
Interestingly, it was Parry's son, Adam Parry, who explored the tension between tradition and individual talent, between inherited formulas and the authorial independence that his father's work seemed to discourage. He responded to vivid moments in Homer and Thucydides, to exciting formulas, jagged narrative edges, and tiny bits like γε in Iliad 16.61 that disproved assumptions about the author's stupidity. Parry argued that it was language that elevated Achilles' complaints against Agamemnon into a challenge to the entire Homeric value system, and again language that transformed Thucydides' account of the plague from routine Hippocratic symptomatology to.
Single Words, Double Valences
Similar interpretive doublings occur elsewhere in the text, both in speeches, where speakers deploy it as a rhetorical device, and in narrative texts. See especially Flashar Flashar, although Flashar seems to shift from initially rejecting Nietzsche to accepting what Nietzsche proposes: that the passage celebrates “the proud imperial character of the conquering power.” The fruitful ambiguity of ἀσφαλεῖς accommodates, or inspires, two divergent interpretations, and ἄρα in ὧν ἄρα ὁ λόγος τοῦ ἔργου ἐκράτει emphasizes two long-standing truths. ignored: in the λόγος of the Corinthians, Sparta's reputation is an illusion or λόγος (of 'safety') that endangers not only the Allies but also Sparta itself.11.
Nicias and ‘Prudence’ at Athens
He ignores it', however, lacks a crucial inconsistency, perhaps because σώφροσι, prosaic and colorless, flew under the critics' radar.
Using and Avoiding Fortune
With σώφροσι, lexical prudence collides with disagreement at the level of action: the word emphasizes that Thucydides is not 'ignoring' Nicias' position. Nicias mentions that he has always been lucky before (οὔτ' . εὐτυχίᾳ δοκῶν που ὕστερός του εἶναι, 7.77.2), but hopes that the enemy's string of luck has reached its limit (ἱκανὰ γὰρ τοῖς τε πολεμίοις η7.77.2). . No other Thucydidean character has such a long streak of luck, but no other dwells so anxiously on the perils of fate, a single Greek word that covers both "mere chance" and "good fortune."
Voluntary Withdrawals
Then his final speech, though certainly brave in the face of disaster, opens a cornucopia of argumentative platitudes about suffering: the failure of "happiness," the futility of good works, the probability of divine φθόνος (see §X below). Merit (cf. ἀξιῶ in the concluding sentence) is a constant concern of Nicias, ironically repeated in the necrology at 7.86 (ἥκιστα δὴ ἄξιος ὢν … ἐς τοῦτο δυστυχίας). The fact that no other Athenian commander in the entire history of the Athenian democracy (508–323 BC) ever attempted to withdraw from command indicates the exceptionalism of Nicias.
Rhetoric and Character (7.48)
Knox notes that the name ἀρετή is rare in Sophocles. decision-making, but the tension between the individual and society is magnified here, as Nicia's decision, unlike that of Ajax and Antigone, helps destroy an entire army. Nicias's 'heroic' commitment is short-lived: within sixty-five lines he refuses, allowing a retreat (7.50.3) - only to change his mind again after an eclipse (7.50.4). I have discussed Nicias' direct speeches elsewhere and will not comment further on these at this point.25 Three additional passages require comment: Nicias' indirect speech before the battle in the harbor, 7.69; Hermocrates.
Nicias at 7.69
To Hornblower and Roode, Nicias acts "like a man" and speaks "like most men". Without broader analysis, they reject efforts such as Lateiner's to connect Nicias's speech with his earlier statements. Amazed at what happened, when he understood the nature and imminence of the danger at the moment of the launch, thinking, like men in great battles, that all they had done was too little, and that they had not yet said enough, he began to call again each, with his father's, his own, and the name of his tribe, and to demand that no one should betray his personal quality for which he had any fame, or the inherited virtues, if his ancestors were famous, and to remind them of their most freely all native lands and of her absolute freedom of daily life for all, and to say those things which people at such a crisis point might say, indifferent to the thought of speaking too old clichés - and in the name of all similar things relating to women, children and household deities – but they actually cry out, seeing them as useful in the present astonishment.32 Readers who wonder whether Nicias 'speaks as most men speak' might compare Pericles' indirect speech (2.13) .
Approaching Thucydides with Comedy in Mind At whom did ancient Greeks—at whom does anyone—
Στην πιο σκοτεινή ώρα του Νικία, ωστόσο, οι ενέργειές του —η πολυλογία του, η στροφή του στα κλισέ, η εξάρτησή του από τη θρησκευτική παράδοση—. Όμως το «καδράρισμα» του Νικία του Θουκυδίδη - κενές παραλλαγές, πλεονάζουσες τρίδυμες (patrothen, αὐτοὺς, φυλεν· γιναῖκας, παῖδας, θεος), επαναλήψεις (-ὀνομα- και τετραπλό πατρ-), κενή συνωνυμία του ἐνδεᾶ. Αναλογιζόμενοι τις πηγές του ελληνικού γέλιου, μπορούμε να νιώσουμε ότι ο Νικίας απέχει μόνο ένα ή δύο βήματα από την άγρια κοροϊδία. 36.
Hermocrates πονηρός
Even if not explicit, these lurk in the work's deep structure, affecting actors and readers alike, especially when Nicias threatens to become nothing but pathetic in 7.69. Repartee ['quick-witted' is perhaps more appropriate] consists of the defense meeting aggression, in 'turning the tables on someone' or 'paying someone back with their own coin'...40. Of all the misfortunes that Athens encounters in Sicily, this turn to cunning is one of the most striking.
The Death of Nicias
In Thucydides' hands, the adjective cannot fail to remind us of Nicias' conflicting, ultimately pathetic, conceptions of the role of 'merit' in shaping events. I believe that Hornblower and Rood (among others) correctly connect them with ἐπιτήδευσιν: 'Because his intense concern was directed to virtue'.45 This reminds us that Nicias' very personal 'competitiveness' proved,. Nicias's Doric and conservative policy of avoiding danger and fortune was evident from the beginning of his career.
Conclusion
Non-comic narratives use comic incongruity more than we might expect: in Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, a boy's senseless death borders on laughable: 'broken limbs falling like rain' and the boy's severed head in the air' fashion' e] slowly emerged like the last star of a pyrotechnic display'.52 Tuberculosis deaths carry Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, but he was able to call it a work of. Dover (1970) A Historical Commentary on Thucydides: Volume IV (Oxford). 2001) Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides. Hallett, ed., Kinesis: The Ancient Description of Gesture, Movement, and Emotion: Essays on Donald Lateiner (Ann Arbor Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, Mass.).
ARISTOPHANES’ CLEON AND POST- PELOPONNESIAN WAR ATHENIANS
DENUNCIATIONS IN THUCYDIDES
The Knights
Most of the play is taken up by a game of bribery, seduction and deceit in which the Sausage Seller outwits the Paphlagonian and keeps offering Demos more of whatever the Paphlagonian has to offer. In the end Demos sends the Paphlagonian to the gates to sell sausage; meanwhile, the Sausage Seller, now entrenched in the Paphlagonian's place, encourages Demos to make peace with the Spartans. In the end, the Sausage Seller gains the upper hand by stealing a rabbit from the Paphlagonian before he can offer it to Demos.
Cleon and Denunciation in Thucydides Thucydides’ resuscitation of Aristophanes’ characterisation
Cleon's response to the Spartan speech exposes his weaknesses and creates concrete benefits for Athens. 31 Connor argues that the scene is 'delicious' because of Cleon's violent character in the Mytilene debate. I regret that further connections with the Mytilene debate, not to mention Thucydides' description of Cleon's later campaigns, cannot be discussed here.
Conclusion
Thucydides thus revived Aristophanes' political analysis of Cleon and the Assembly, and historians after Thucydides continued to use the comedy as a source for historiographical evidence and analysis. 41 Henderson Aristophanes is careful never to portray the demos as intrinsically unfit for sovereignty, but places all the blame on its demagogic, i.e. misleading, leaders: all would be well (again) if the demos once again turned to the "best" as its advisers , like in the good old days. 2012) "My Children for Sale": The Megarian Scene in Aristophanes' Acharnians (729–835) and the Megarian Comedy', Λογεῖον/Logeion 2 (http://www. logeion.upatras.gr/index.php/component/ content/article ID .
MEMORY AND THE RHETORIC OF ΣΩΤΗΡΙΑ IN ARISTOPHANES’
ASSEMBLY WOMEN *
Andokides’ Speech On the Peace, Athenian History, and Fear of Oligarchy
Salamis at the command of the Thirty, and Epikhares, who had served in the oligarchic council.28. 34 For a full discussion of the memory of the oligarchy and democracy's response to it, see now Shear (2011). My argument enables a new analysis of the political symbolism of gender on the Aristophanic stage, which I discuss in a forthcoming paper.
The Poetics of Memory in Assembly Women Aristophanes’ fifth-century works are highly topical political
More likely, however, her words will have prompted various members of the audience to recall their experiences during the period. Ultimately, audience members will have understood Praxagoras' words differently, depending on their age and memories of their wartime experiences. In the second half of the play, there are two sets of references to historical events and people from the late fifth century.
Assembly Women and Σωτηρία in Aristophanes The abstract noun σωτηρία is not uncommon in classical
Given the extremely elevated use of rescue and safety language in Lysistrata, Frogs and. Euripides' plays from around the time of the Sicilian expedition and in the years that followed also show an increased lexical and thematic focus on sôtêria.63. Based on a possible allusion to 1347, it has been dated to the time of the Sicilian campaign, but stylistic analysis is increasingly common.
Thucydides and Σωτηρία in 411
The Assembly approved all the measures without voting in opposition, and the Four Hundred took control of the Town Hall that same day. Thucydides does not report the sôtêria language in the assembly at Kolonos, but then he does not give a detailed account of the proceedings. There can be little doubt that the sôtêria's rhetoric was at the center of the political and ideological struggle in 411.85.
Σωτηρία and the Rhetoric of Revolution of 411 Strabo describes the temple of Zeus Soter that served the
In Gomme, Andrewes, and Dover's Historical Commentary on Thucydides, the meaning of sôtêria is discussed only once, in the context of the Melian dialogue (5.88). The difficulties in understanding the meaning of sôtêria can be traced to its mention in LSJ, where the description of the semantic dimensions of the word is incomplete. No mention is made of the important meaning of 'soundness' or 'good condition' in classical Greek, derived from the meaning of the adjective σῶς in the sense that Chantraine rightly translates as 'en bon état'.100 It seems that this lacuna created serious consequences for the way the word was understood by Thucydides and in the history of the fifth and fourth centuries.
