Animal Choruses in Comedy

3. ANIMAL CHORUSES IN COMEDY Xavier Riu Universitat de Barcelona There are several different aspects to my title, and I will be looking at two of them in this paper: the choruses, and the animals as members of the comic choruses. I will be doing this in an attempt to put together several interpretative problems rather than to provide a detailed investigation of any one interpretation. The last part focuses on the horses in Aristophanes’ Knights, as an example of the complex ways in which animals are used by Greek comedy. It will be proposed that horses do not even appear in this play. A. Choruses Over the last few years there has been a sudden upsurge in the number of studies with respect to vasepaintings (those found in Corinth in the late-seventh century and soon afterwards in Attica, and later elsewhere) that depict first the so-called padded dancers or komasts and later satyrs as well. From the beginning of this trend the question arose as to whether these figures had anything to do with dramatic performances, but in recent items in the already extensive bibliography this idea is presented as more than a mere possibility and it has forceful advocates. Of course this concept is not exactly a new one. For instance Webster (1962), Sifakis (1971) (which for years was perhaps the most representative study of animal choruses), Trendall and Webster (1971) all more or less advocate the relationship between the vases and dramatic performance. However it must be said that the idea did not meet with general or clear approval.1 As a result, studies on animal choruses in comedy have been few and somewhat limited to the comedic genre, including sometimes an acknowledgment of the general similarity to the vases, but viewed for the most part in relation to the notion of the ‘animal’ and the possible function of animal representation in, for example, a Dionysian world.2 Suddenly, over the last few years, a whole world seems to have opened up. In fact we have thousands of such vases, the first examples of which date back to the late 7th century (c. 630) and with no gaps: almost every decade is represented in the collections. Furthermore, between the years 540 and 530 there seems to be a shift, when padded dancers begin to wane and the appearance of satyrs becomes more frequent,3 and this is roughly the time at which many experts date Arion, the reputed inventor of the dithyramb. This wealth of representation is too tempting for it not to be used in the periodical renewal of interest in the origins of drama, and as a consequence many contributions which attempt to elucidate the relationship between paddeddancers, symposiasts, satyrs, dithyramb, circular choruses, comedy, etc., are seeing the light. As to the depictions of animal choruses themselves, we have some 20 examples dating4 from ca. 510 to ca. 480. Before that, we have only the Berlin knights (540-530),5 and later, the so-called Getty birds, which have been dated at 414,6 440-4307 or 450-440;8 these may represent a chorus, but are in fact two cocks gesturing or dancing on each side of a piper. Green 1985 interpreted this vase as a depiction of Aristophanes’ Birds, but there are no cocks in this play and – if they 1. A quote from Osborne 2008, 398 illustrates this point: «Cook, reviewing the book [Trendall and Webster 1971] in Classical Review referred the reader to Seeberg’s Corinthian Komos Vases, remarking that Seeberg was ‘much more circumspect in interpreting them’ [scil. as pre-dramatic monuments], but Trendall and Webster’s lack of circumspection is actually good to think with». Here one can see, simultaneously, the circumspection with which the idea was originally received, the circumspection that characterised other contemporary work, and the more enthusiastic reception that it encountered later on. 2. This evolution of scholarship is taken up by Rothwell 2007, 183, in the first paragraph of his conclusions: «I began this project with the assumption that animal choruses were rooted in some primitive fertility cult. I had imagined also that these costumed dancers represented a world allied with daemonic powers, embodying the antithesis of humanity or revealing a subversive animal world latent in human beings. On both counts my ultimate findings have been different». Whether we agree or not with his findings (and with such a complex and all-embracing book one may easily find oneself at the same time agreeing and disagreeing in many an issue) this is roughly the development made by scholarship on animal choruses over the last few years. 3. Satyrs are as old as padded dancers, but start becoming more frequent ca. 550; padded dancers disappear ca. 540. In Attica padded dancers appear at least ca. 580; fully equipped satyrs ca. 570. 4. On the dates of these vases, Green 1985. Cf. Osborne 2008, 397 n. 11. 5. This vase depicts not exactly animals, but rather men ostensibly disguised as horses and younger men straddling their shoulders. (ABV 297 no. 17; Para. 128 no. 17, Addenda 78, Green 1985, no. 3, fig. 6, Rothwell 2007, pl. I. Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin F 1697). 6. Green 1985. 7. Steinhart 2004, 22. 8. Krumeich 1999, 42 n. 8. 29 TA ZÔIA. L’ESPAI A GRÈCIA II: ELS ANIMALS I L’ESPAI belong to a comedy, and one that we know – they would more likely represent the two logoi of Clouds, as suggested by Taplin 1987, 95-102 (according to Schol. in Nub. 839 the logoi were introduced as fighting cocks, each one in a cage). After ca. 480 such choruses disappear from vase paintings. The fact that 486 is the accepted date for the introduction of comedy into the City Dionysia may not be just a coincidence, but it is difficult to interpret.9 Be it as it may, with the possible exception of Magnes’ comedies, which cannot be dated accurately, we have no information on comedies with animal choruses until ca. 440, and from probably the 430s to the end of the century there seems to be a revival: we have 13 titles of comedies bearing the names of animals in the plural; they then seem to wane again, since there are only three more titles which may be dated to the 4th century. It is clear that a theory is taking shape in academic circles with respect to vase paintings. Of course every scholar is wont to introduce a nuance or reject particular connections of one kind or another, one may go farther than another, but in general there is a wideranging agreement that these vase-paintings display some sort of performance (hence some scholars might place them in the realm of public performances, others in symposia, others in public symposia like syssitiai or the like). Also, many experts would agree that, at least in most cases, they represent some kind of chorus: in the great majority of cases they appear in groups of two or three.10 Apart from this, it may be said that there is agreement on the questions, but not in the answers. The situation, with respect to the main points that concern us here, may be summarized as follows: 1. Some experts would identify such figures (padded dancers, satyrs, etc.) with performances of a comic type, just because they appear rather undignified and grotesque to our eyes. Many experts do not mention this, and I for one am not sure that such a connection is necessary. For instance, one vase11 depicts what seems to be a hunting scene with padded men; Steinhart (2007, 206), for instance, says that since there are komasts «it could hardly have been very serious in tone», but one of the komasts is being eaten by a panther, which is not an obviously comic scene. In general, the presence of symbols of terror, such as panthers, sirens, and sphinxes on vases depicting satyrs has led some scholars to suggest that satyrs were not figures of fun in late-seventh and early sixth-century Greece.12 All this, however, is highly speculative and is based more on our own reaction to such figures than on information regarding Archaic Greece. And our reaction is based in turn on information from other contexts and other periods of history. In fact the categories ‘risible’ and ‘serious’ vary greatly over the course of time and other dichotomies interact with them, such as (and this is well attested in Greece in connection with both the laughable and the serious) ‘high’ or ‘noble’ vs. ‘base’. Animals, like human beings and gods, have a place on both sides of these dichotomies, although with different meanings (or rather different usages). Thus, not all these representations will have the same meaning –which is quite obvious in itself, since there are very different kinds of representations among these vases. For instance, when the komasts are shown together with symposiasts, they are sometimes interpreted as acting in contrast with them, as akletoi entertainers, or as a «negation of the symposion code».13 This may be true in some cases, but certainly not in all. Accordingly, other scholars have interpreted them as symposiasts like the rest14 or as professional entertainers.15 We are in the Archaic, not in the Classical world, but I would like to recall that in Classical Athens it was necessary for the members of the choruses to be citizens, and if these vases show choruses, and allowing for the different ways in which citizenship was defined in different periods, there is no reason to suppose that in the Archaic period the situation in this respect was very different. 2. Some experts tend to identify the padded dancers with satyrs, but many disavow such a connection. The fact that around the middle of the 6th century the padded dancers tend to disappear and that Satyrs become increasingly frequent, calls for some interpretation, but most scholars would not interpret this as simply a substitution. With respect to animal choruses in vase painting (and in fact these depictions are not all animal choruses in a strict sense, but rather choruses of riders on various animals), we do not even know whether they are all to be interpreted as the same kind of chorus. We have (I have omitted two cups which show a lone dolphin-rider on the interior tondo): 9. As noted by Taplin 1993, 8. 10. Cf. Seeberg 1971, 1-2. 11. Corinthian alabastron, c.620-595 BC, Paris, Musée du Louvre S 1104. 12. E.g. Hedreen 1992, 167-70; Green 2007, 101. See also Rusten 2006, 52 and n. 50. 13. Seeberg 1995, 3. Cf. Rothwell 2007, 23 and notes for other bibliography. 14. For instance, in a Corinthian bowl (British Museum 61.4-25.45 [AN496279001]) by the Medallion Painter, ca. 600-575, the padded figures are just dressed differently from the lying symposiast, but their heads, hair and beards are the same. Fehr 1990, 192 sees an evolution from «fat dancers with stumpy proportions, a big head, and often a physical handicap» to «more “normal” men without such signs of a low social standing». This has been noted also by others, in different ways, and the Attic representations of such scenes show an increasing tendency to display nude rather than padded figures, and not particularly undignified. 15. Steinhart 2004, 53-54. 30 ANIMAL CHORUSES IN COMEDY 1. The Berlin knights on the shoulders of men disguised as horses. 2. The Boston Ostrich/Dolphin Riders,16 a vase that shows six ostrich riders facing a small bearded and rather outlandish figure and an aulos-player on one side and on the other side six dolphin riders in rows of three, also facing an aulos-player. 3. The Oltos’ Dolphin Riders.17 Here the riders wear breastplates, Corinthian helmets and greaves, and hold shields and spears; they are hoplites rather than knights. The word επιδελφινοσ (ἐπὶ δελφῖνος) is written in front of each rider, as though the words were coming from their mouths.18 There is no piper. 4. Two Attic lekythoi, one in Athens,19 the other in Palermo.20 They are similar: both show two bearded dolphin-riders and an aulos-player. The riders wear breastplates, helmets with high crests, and cloaks. Each carries two spears. The main difference is that on the Athens vase they are on each side of the aulosplayer, whereas on the vase in Palermo both ride to our left, towards the aulos-player, and the first is looking back at the other. The vase that shows the aulosplayer in the middle might suggest a circular chorus around the player. 5. Paris dolphin-riders.21 Eight bearded dolphinriders wearing helmets and corselets. Each rider is carrying two spears and is raising his left arm. An aulos-player stands in their midst. Either they are moving in rows, rather than in a single line, or their arrangement suggests a circular chorus with the aulos-player in the centre. 6. Bull-headed dancers22 which could be either Minotaurs or river-gods. 7. The London Birds.23 These are two men dressed up entirely as birds, dancing and looking backwards towards an aulos-player. 8. Berlin birds.24 These are men wearing long cloaks and cock masks who are standing behind an aulos-player. 9. The Getty birds.25 10. There are also several depictions of what may be dolphin choruses, but with no aulos-player. In these vases the pattern of figures is circular, but this might be only because they are depicted all around the vase. In some cases they are half-men half-dolphins. They are often taken to represent the story of the pirates in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, but Csapo 2003 shows that this is not necessarily so, and his conclusions hold: dolphins (and Nereids) «are symbolic dancers from their earliest appearance in Greek art, myth and literature». «Dolphins have a particular association with komastic dance, round-dance and cult dance, especially the dithyramb, and for all these reasons they develop a close association with Dionysus». This is correct, although the last sentence presupposes an evolution and a causal connection that in fact we do not know: they have a clear association with Dionysus, but we do not know the reasons or whether there is indeed a development. In this summary it can be seen that the only “animal choruses” in the true sense are the bird choruses, in which the choreutai are men wholly disguised as birds, and perhaps the bull-headed men.26 The Berlin knights could also be similar to Aristophanes’ Knights (however I will refer to this play later). All the other figures are quite different from what we know of comic choruses. As to the kind of performances or the genres with which these paintings might be related, current academic opinion points mainly in two directions: either to some sort of comic performances, or to dithyramb. In my view a comic performance is not a likely scenario in most cases, and I would endorse a comment by Jeffrey Rusten (2006, 52): «The reason these vases had all been connected with Old Comedy was the inherent silliness of an animal-riding chorus. Yet apart from this incongruity, there is nothing else about a chorus of men, often in armor but never costumed or masked, riding animals (often dolphins) to the accompaniment of the pipe, that necessitates Old Comedy». If they have to be identified with some of the known genres, the dithyramb is perhaps the most plausible possibility. The dithyrambic theory with respect to dolphins is particularly strong.27 In general there has 16. Attic black-figure skyphos, ca. 500-490, ABV 617; Green 1985, nr. 17, fig. 20a-b; Rothwell 2007, pl. VI-VII. Boston Museum of Fine Arts 20.18. 17. Attic red-figure psykter, ca. 510, ARV2 1622 no. 7 bis; Para. 259 no. 326; Addenda 163; Green 1985, no. 6, fig. 9; Rothwell 2007, pl. V. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Norbert Schimmel Trust, 1989 (1989.281.69). 18. Sifakis 1967 argued that this could be part of an anapaestic parodos. 19. Kerameikos Inv. 1486, ABV 518; Green 1985, 102 no. 13 fig. 16a-b. 20. Museo Archeologico Regionale, 2816, Trendall and Webster 1971, 23 pl. I.14; Green 1985, 102 no. 14 fig. 17. 21. Attic black-figure cup (ca. 490-480), Louvre, CA1924. ARV2 1622; Para. 259; Addenda2 130; Green 1985, no. 30. 22. Attic black-figure hydria (ca. 520-500), London, British Museum B 308, Green 1985, 101 no. 5 fig. 8. Attic black-figure cup (ca. 510-500), Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1971.903, Green 1985, 101 no. 7 figs. 10a-b. 23. Attic black-figure oinochoe by the Gela painter (ca. 500-490), London, British Museum B 509. AVB 473; Para. 214; Trendall and Webster 1971, pl. I.12; Green 1985, no. 8; Rothwell 2007, pl. II. 24. Attic black-figure amphora (ca. 480), Berlin, Staatlische Museum F 1830. Green 1985, 11; Rothwell 2007, pl. III. 25. Malibu. J. Paul Getty Museum 82.AE.83. Green 1985, figs. 3, 22; Rothwell 2007, pl. IV. 26. Also the dolphins in no. 10, but they are different in that they are not men disguised, but dolphins, in some cases with feet, in some they are half-transformed men. 27. Cf. especially Csapo 2003. 31 TA ZÔIA. L’ESPAI A GRÈCIA II: ELS ANIMALS I L’ESPAI been a marked tendency over the last few years to a dithyrambic (or “dithyramboid”) interpretation of many of these vase paintings, including some of the padded dancers and even the satyrs. Even the old hypothesis by Wilamowitz of a dithyramb sung by a chorus of satyrs has reappeared in some studies in order to explain these paintings – although perhaps ‘dithyramb’ is too precise a word to use in this context, hence the use of the term ‘dithyramboid’.28 There is in fact a dispute as to whether the dithyramb and circular chorus are one and the same or if they are different genres. I will not enter this discussion, but one brief comment at least is needed: dithyrambs and round choruses have been contrasted as ‘ritual’ and ‘theatrical’ respectively.29 Yet this distinction raises two problems: 1) The contrast between ‘ritual’ and ‘theatrical’ in Archaic and, at least partially, in Classical Greece may not be so clear cut. I have never seen a specific argument in support of this distinction and I wonder what notion of ‘ritual’ underlies this differentiation. Something which is performed publicly in honour of a god and which occurs regularly on the same day of the year in the theatre is what? Is it theatrical? Or is it ritual? Is it theatrical entertainment? Or is it ritual tout court? Or is it ritual entertainment? This distinction leans heavily on the presupposition that these genres must be different because the ‘theatrical’ circular chorus is too complex to be ritual. 2) The notion that dithyrambs are a particular kind of circular chorus is highly compelling, but it neither entails nor gives any support to the idea that dithyrambs and circular choruses are two different things. A study by Armand D’Angour (1997) concludes, quite convincingly, that the old dithyramb was processional and acquired its circular shape in the theatre. He gives this innovation not to Arion but to Lasos in the late sixth century. Our sources point to one or several evolutionary processes of the dithyramb, and we know that the Hellenistic scholars had some trouble in classifying dithyrambs, but this is quite different from supposing that dithyrambs ceased to be dithyrambs or that they gave way to something different, which is no longer identifiable with the dithyramb.30 The only support for this theory comes from the fact that dithyrambs are rarely named in inscriptions dealing with choral performances in the theatre. However, this does not necessarily mean that they are not dithyrambs: furthermore, in the few texts men- tioning the events of the Great Dionysia only ‘boys’, or ‘men’ are mentioned (or perhaps kômoi), and neither dithyrambs nor circular choruses are cited, although this does not mean that these choruses were not dithyrambs and, as such, circular choruses. B. The animals in the choruses To study the role of animals in the comic chorus we must turn to the comedies of Aristophanes, because an analysis of the role of animals is not entirely feasible from just a title or a few fragments. Of the Aristophanic plays that are available in their entirety, four bear the name of an animal in plural (in one case implicitly), and they have a chorus in which the animal named or implicit in the title is somehow present. However, their presence is very different in the four plays. 1. In Knights, the chorus is made up of knights, who either go on foot or ride their horses (probably not real horses, but either theatrical props or men disguised as horses, as in the vase in Berlin); in all events, the horses do not speak and are referred to only once. 2. In Wasps, the members of the chorus are not really wasps, but old Athenian jurors who, like wasps, act in swarms and “sting”. 3. In Birds, the chorus is made up of birds. They are humanized and they speak, although they represent birds. 4. In Frogs, the frogs are a secondary chorus which acts only from line 209 to 262. The fact that the play is not named after the real chorus of dead mystic initiates, but after this chorus of frogs is curious, and has been the subject of much debate.31 Be this as it may, their role in the play is limited and may be a way to suggest the marshes of Dionysus en limnais.32 Thus, the only play in which the chorus is composed of “real” animals is Birds. In Wasps the animals are in fact metaphors. In Frogs they appear in just one scene. In Knights they may appear or not, and in all events they do not speak and are only alluded to once, in the parabasis (595) – and perhaps are not even there, as shall been noted below. Quite curiously, ἵππος and other derivative words seldom appear in this play; we find ἱππεύς 4 times (225, 242, 610, 627), once ἵππιος (an epithet of Poseidon, 551), ἱππαγωγοί (599), ἱππαπαί (602), and the two names Hippodamos (327) and Hippias (449) once each; ἵππος it- 28. Csapo has used this word in several of his contributions (e.g. Csapo and Miller 2007, 22). 29. See particularly Csapo and Miller in their Introduction to 2007, p. 8. 30. Csapo and Miller 2007, 33 n. 34 cite Käppel 2000 and D’Alessio (forthcoming) on the distinction between circular choroi and dithyrambs. However, Käppel dates the expression ‘circular chorus’ to designate non-dithyrambic compositions as possibly arising in the 4th century. D’Alessio offers a complex view of the problem of names and disavows explicitely the distinction between cult songs and competition songs at least for the 5th century and probably later (n. 39 in the present form of the text; I am grateful to the author for letting me read this still unpublished work). 31. There has also been much debate as to whether these characters were seen on stage or only heard. For a brief but clear exposition of the question, see Dover 1993, 56-57. Andrisano 2010 proposes new arguments for the visibility of the frog-chorus. Reig 2007, 56, 60-4 offers a compelling view of the relationship between the two choruses. 32. Cf. Riu 1999, 135. 32 ANIMAL CHORUSES IN COMEDY self occurs only 3 times (552, 595, 1266). Of these three passages, two are in songs and one refers to the knights’ horses. This latter passage is the only mention of the knights’ horses in the whole play, but I am not certain that it actually refers to the horses themselves, as the wording of the passage in which it appears suggests an obscene reading.33 Of course we cannot be sure that this reading was intended by Aristophanes and understood by his audience, but the fact is that many words support such an interpretation, and some of them quite clearly point to this reading. The passage is the antepirrhema of the parabasis (Eq. 595-610): Ἃ ξύνισμεν τοῖσιν ἵπποις, βουλόμεσθ’ ἐπαινέσαι. Ἄξιοι δ’ εἴσ’ εὐλογεῖσθαι· πολλὰ γὰρ δὴ πράγματα ξυνδιήνεγκαν μεθ’ ἡμῶν, εἰσβολάς τε καὶ μάχας. Ἀλλὰ τἀν τῇ γῇ μὲν αὐτῶν οὐκ ἄγαν θαυμάζομεν, ὡς ὅτ’ εἰς τὰς ἱππαγωγοὺς εἰσεπήδων ἀνδρικῶς, πριάμενοι κώθωνας, οἱ δὲ καὶ σκόροδα καὶ κρόμμυα· εἶτα τὰς κώπας λαβόντες ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς οἱ βροτοὶ ἐμβαλόντες ἀνεβρύαξαν· «Ἱππαπαῖ, τίς ἐμβαλεῖ; ληπτέον μᾶλλον. Τί δρῶμεν; οὐκ ἐλᾷς, ὦ σαμφόρα;» Ἐξεπήδων τ’ εἰς Κόρινθον· εἶτα δ’ οἱ νεώτατοι ταῖς ὁπλαῖς ὤρυττον εὐνὰς καὶ μετῇσαν στρώματα· ἤσθιον δὲ τοὺς παγούρους ἀντὶ ποίας Μηδικῆς, εἴ τις ἐξέρποι θύραζε κἀκ βυθοῦ θηρώμενοι· ὥστ’ ἔφη Θέωρος εἰπεῖν καρκίνον Κορίνθιον· «δεινά γ’, ὦ πόσειδον, εἰ μηδ’ ἐν βυθῷ δυνήσομαι μήτε γῇ μήτ’ ἐν θαλάττῃ διαφυγεῖν τοὺς ἱππέας.» «We want to praise a secret that we share with our horses. They are worthy of our praises; for, in truth, they have gone through many affairs with us, both incursions and battles! But their exploits on land we do not admire as much as when they manfully leapt into the transport ships, having purchased drinking-cups, some of them also garlic and onions; then they seized their oars just like we men and pushed hard, all swollen up: “Hippapai! Move over! We must take better hold! What are we doing here? Samphoras! Are you rowing or not?” and leapt ashore at Corinth. Then the youngest hollowed out beds with their hooves and went to fetch bed-clothes; instead of Persian grass, they ate pagouroi, if any crept out of doors, even catching them in the deep; so that Theoros declared that a Corinthian crab said, “It is dreadful, Oh Poseidon, if neither in the deep, nor on land, nor in the sea, I shall be able to escape the knights.”» σύνοιδα may have the neutral meaning ‘to know something about somebody’, and this is the usual translation in this passage (whenever it is translated, for quite often it is not). However, its meaning presents other nuances very often, and almost always in Aristophanes. When the complement in dative is a reflexive pronoun it rather means ‘to be aware of something’ or ‘to have something on one’s conscience’ (Eq. 184, Vesp. 999, Thesm. 477). In all the other Aristophanic occurrences it means (according to the LSJ definition) ‘to share the knowledge of something with somebody, to be implicated in or privy to it’, i.e. ‘to know someone’s secret’ (Lys. 841, Thesm. 475, 553, Ran. 960, Eccl. 17, Pl. 214). Hence my translation. Ἵππος may, according to Hesychius (s.v. ἵππον) designate the genitals; in comedy it is used to allude to the penis several times and derivatives of the word are very productive in this sense.34 The words for ‘knight’, ‘horse’, and ‘ride’ furnish many double-entendres in comedy: ἱπποδρομία Pax 899; ἱππεύς Anaxil. 22, 10, Lys. 676f.; ἱππικός Eccl. 846 (with scholia), Lys. 676, Eupolis 293 K-A; the tyranny of Hippias, Vesp. 502, Lys. 619; ἱππόβινος Ran. 429; ἱπποκλείδης fr. 721 K-A; κέλης Lys. 59f., Pax 900, Pl. Com. 188, 18 K-A;35 κελητίζω Thesm. 153, Vesp. 501, Pax 900. Here the horses set sail, and the idea of ‘embarking’, ‘navigate’ and others are highly useful in producing obscene meanings in comedy;36 no obscene usage is attested for εἰσπηδάω, but we have πηδάλιον (cf. Henderson 1991, 123). Let’s examine what the “horses” do once they have embarked. First they hold the oars “like we mortal men”;37 we know that ‘oar’ (ἐρετμόν) designates the phallus in Pl. Com. 3, 4 K-A (cf. Hesych. s.v. and also ἐρέσσειν in A.P. 5, 54, 4; 5, 204, 2) and Pax 142 (πηδάλιον, cf. Thgn. 458 and Theophil. 6.3, who probably imitates him). We do not know of any occurrence of κώπη in this double meaning (unless C. Ruck [1975, 51 n. 97] is correct in interpreting the scene with Charon in Ran. 180-270 as anal intercourse). Be it as it may, we have δικωπεῖν in Eccl. 1091. As for λαμβάνειν, it is a very general word and it may easily take on the meaning required by the context. In comedy we find it several times with a complement denoting a sexual organ: Ach. 274; Vesp. 1342; Lys. 1115, 1121; Eccl. 1020. Immediately the “horses” ἐμβαλόντες ἀνεβρύαξαν, which I have translated as “pushed hard, all swollen up”. The latter word was corrected into ἀνεφρυάξανϑ’ by Walsh and van Herwerden, but the manuscripts are unanimous. Compounds with -βάλλειν are (according to Henderson 1991, 170) preferred by 33. I made this interpretation in Riu 1985. The following section is for the most part a translation of this paper with some additions. This type of reading was briefly suggested by Ruck 1975, 57 n. 23, in a comment on the presence of crabs in this passage. 34. Cf. Henderson 1991, 126, 127, 136, 148, 165, 169, 177. I have borrowed most of the parallels from this extremely useful book. 35. Cf. Eust. in Od. p. 1539, 34. 36. See the numerous examples of “Nautical Terminology” in Henderson 1991, 161-166. 37. This may produce a supplementary joke: βροτός is used of mortals as opposed to gods, so here the chorus members are referring to their “horses” as immortal deities. 33 TA ZÔIA. L’ESPAI A GRÈCIA II: ELS ANIMALS I L’ESPAI Aristophanes and, as far as we can tell, by comedy in general; thus we find καταβάλλειν38 in Pax 896, Ach. 275; προσβαλεῖν in Ach. 994; ἐμβάλλειν is in Pherecr. 155, 14 K-A;39 ἔμβολον in Ar. fr. 334 KA, Birds 1256, Eub. 75.10ff K-A. Ἀναβρυάζω occurs here only, and a scholium on 602 and the Suda (s.v.) gloss it by ἀνεθορύβησαν, ἀνέκραγον. However, βρυάζω has nothing to do with sound; it rather means ‘to swell’, ‘be full of sap’, ‘overflow’, also ‘to enjoy’, also ‘to be pregnant’. Βρυάκτης is ‘the jolly god’ in Orpheus, ap. Stob. 1, 1, 30;40 βρυασμός means ‘voluptuousness’ in Epicurus (ap. Plut. Mor. 1107a). By joining the meaning of βρυάζω with the prefix ἀνά the image is clear enough. We then re-encounter the verbs ἐμβάλλειν, λαμβάνειν, and immediately οὐκ ἐλᾷς, ὦ σαμφόρα;. Ἐλαύνω is synonymous with βινεῖν in Eccl. 37ff., Pl. Com. 3, 4 K-A, Ach. 995; in compounds, κατελαύνειν in Pax 711, Eccl. 1082; ἐξελαύνειν Antiph. 300 K-A. They go to Corinth, a city famous for its dissolute life. In comedy: Pl. 149, Thesm. 404, 648, fr. 928 K-A, Cratin. 299, 4 K-A; Steph. Byz. s.v. glosses κορινθιάζομαι as τὸ ἑταιρεῖν, ἀπὸ τῶν ἐν Κορίνθῳ ἑταιρῶν, ἢ τὸ μαστροπεύειν and he refers this to Aristophanes’ Cocalos. It may be worthwhile recalling Poliochos’ title Κορινθιαστής, which probably means ‘whoremonger’, and Ar. Lys. 91ff., which according to Willems 1919, 2.420-21 may refer to χαυνοπρωκτία and which should be compared to Ar. Pl. 149-52.41 Once in Corinth, the youngest ταῖς ὁπλαῖς ὤρυττον εὐνὰς. Ὀρύττω and its compounds also mean ‘to fuck’: Pax 898, Av. 442, Nub. 714,42 Pherecr. 155, 19 K-A (κατορύττειν). Here it appears together with εὐνή, which is not an obscene word, rather the opposite, and which is found with some frequency in epic, lyrical and tragic works. It also appears, however, in erotic contexts.43 In comedy we must cite in this respect Eccl. 959, 967 (cf. ξυνευνή in v. 954) and Thesm. 1122. The same young horses that dig out their beds go fetching βρώματα according to ms. R, or στρώματα, according to the rest of manuscripts. In the first case this is, one supposes, the food mentioned later on; in the second it is probably the bedcovers for the beds they have just dug out.44 These horses eat παγούροι instead of ποία Μηδική. Ἐσθίω, both alone and in compounds, often has an obscene double sense in comedy, and in general the correspondence between the terms for eating and sex is commonplace.45 The πάγουρος is a kind of crab, and this may be surprising, since horses are herbivores. Even supposing that καρκίνος was a derogative term used for the Corinthians, this is not the word used in this verse. Comedy often plays with the literal meaning of words, and here we could have one of these plays on words: πάγουρος literally means ‘strong tail’, and οὐρά, as well as other terms indicating more or less the same, like κέρκος and ὄρρος, is a well-known euphemism for ‘penis’; a relationship which is not exclusive to the Greek language.46 The ποία Μηδική is not out of place in this passage, since this was the name of the grass on which most usually horses fed.47 However, in our present context this expression raises some peculiar connotations that point us in two directions. In the first place, ποία (or ποίη, in the epic form) is found several times in erotic contexts: in Iliad xiv 347 it is the grass that grows during the sacred intercourse between Zeus and Hera; in Theogony 194 it is the grass that sprouts around Aphrodite’s feet the first time she sets them on the ground in Cyprus; in 576 Athena places garlands of ποίη around Pandora’s neck, Pandora being the prototype of all women. In Archilochus 196a, 23 W the ποητρόφους (or ποηφόρους) κήπους may well designate female pubic hair; in Pindar Pyth. ix 37 this word is used to denote the defloration of Cyrene by Apollo. In Sappho (31 V), on the other hand, it is used to compare the paleness of a girl in love. Moreover, we know that comedy often uses names of grass, or the land it covers, to designate female pubic hair.48 38. ‘Ejaculate’ in technical prose: Men., Georg. 37; Epicur., Nat. 908; Sor. 1.33. Cf. also βαλλίον, ‘phallus’ in Herod. 6, 69. Cf. Henderson 1991, 170. 39. στρόβιλον ἐμβαλών τινα (on στρόβιλον cf. Pl. Com. 285 K-A). 40. Detienne 1986, 96 translates his name as «l’Exubérant»; pp. 96-97 is a good description of the meaning and some connotations of βρυάζω. 41. Cf. Henderson 1991, 211 n. 10. 42. Here διορύττουσιν does not mean “to copulate” directly, but notice again the conjunction of Corinthians and this verb. In this case ‘Corinthians’ is a pun for κόρεις or ‘bugs’, and they are the active party who penetrate Strepsiades’ πρωκτóν and pull his balls. 43. E.g. Mimn. 7, 3 Gent-Pr; Semon. 7, 53 W; Soph., Tr. 109; Eur., Med. 1027, Bacch. 223; its usage as ‘wife’ in Eur., I.A. 1355 must be recalled, as well as εὔνημα ‘union, hymen’ in Ion 304. 44. One may also wonder why they have to go and fetch them, as soldiers were supposed to carry all they needed with them (cf. e.g. Schol. Ach. 1097). However this is no reason to prefer the other reading: both are equally possible. 45. Some examples of the use of the verb in comedy: Ach. 797, 799; Pax 449, 852, 1353, 1359, and esp. 1167; probably Av. 76, Pl. 255, and fr. 600 K-A (= Poll. 2, 189, which must be compared to 7, 180 = Pl. Com. 75 K-A). 46. Cf. Henderson 1991, 27, 128. Some examples: Soph. fr. 1078; Antiph. fr. 129, 4 K-A; in compounds, CA 1352 (ἀπο)μυζουρίς, CA 1367 νώθουρoς and Hesych. μυλουρίς. 47. Strab. xii 525, cited by Herodian in Gramm. Graeci III, vol. 2, p. 316. 48. Cf. Henderson 1991, 20, 46, 135-6. 34 ANIMAL CHORUSES IN COMEDY This is not, however, what these “horses” “eat”, but rather “strong-tailed” animals. The other direction is suggested by the word Μηδική and the parallelism between epirrheme and antepirrheme. The two epirrhemata are strictly parallel: both praise the warlike courage and the manly strength displayed in war. The epirrheme (565-580) sings of the courage of the knights’ forefathers and of their triumphs, and in comedy the fathers are those who fought in the Persian Wars, at Marathon and Salamina. The antepirrheme sings of the manly courage of the knights in an expedition to Corinth.49 However, at the end of the epirrheme a contrast is already suggested, when the knights of the chorus demand to be permitted κομᾶν and ἀποστλεγγίζειν once the war is over. Κομάω, besides its primary meaning ‘to let the hair grow long’, means ‘to revel’ in the genre of comedy and quite often ‘to be a homosexual or degenerate’, in connection with εὐρυπρώκτος or the like, or, in relation to this, ‘laconize’ (Nub. 348, 1101; Vesp. 466, 1317; Av. 1282; Pl. 170). Pederasty was, after all, an aristocratic practice, and a good deal of the Aristophanic humour on the subject is based on this fact. As for the baths,50 they are usually mentioned by Aristophanes with respect to an easy life, in contexts of feast and richness, either before a banquet or before making love (Eq. 50; Pax 868, 1139; Av. 132, 140; Lys. 1066; Pl. 615; frs. 109, 110.3). It must be recalled that the baths are also frequented by the young debauchees represented by the Wrong Argument (Nub. 991, 1044-54). The contrast, suggested here, between the knights and their forefathers51 is developed in the antepirrheme, in which almost every significant word admits an obscene interpretation. Thus, the adventures of the present-day knights do not match the military prowess of their forefathers who expelled the Persians (they do not eat Persian grass, but ‘strong-tailed’ crabs),52 and they seek sex rather than battle in Corinth.53 This reading is also the best way to explain the fact that, although these praiseworthy actions are credited to the horses, as though the knights had no intervention in them, it is quite clear that they have been performed by the knights themselves.54 At the end a Corinthian crab complains that he cannot escape the knights (not the horses): it is they who have been praised all along, or more exactly a specific part of their anatomy. If this reading is correct, then the knights’ horses are never mentioned in this comedy, which could mean that they were not present on stage and were substituted by (perhaps extremely ostentatious) phalluses. Of course it is possible that there were (theatrical) horses and that they were metaphorised as penises in the antepirrheme. Indeed we have three possibilities: 1) either there were no horses on stage, only the choreuts’ phalluses; 2) or there were horses present and in these verses they are metaphorised into penises; 3) or else my reading of these verses is wholly invalid. This is of course possible, but the concentration of words pointing to an obscene meaning, and particularly the παγούροι and the verb ἀναβρυάζω, the two words that are most out of context here, need some interpretation. If there were no horses on stage, then, we are left only with Birds, and the passing frogs, as animal choruses in the extant comedies of Aristophanes. I would like to reach a simple, brief conclusion: we have animal choruses on the vases, but they may not represent comedies. In some cases this seems to be quite likely: the dolphins are more likely to represent dithyrambs or round choruses, since the hoplites do not appear to be wearing any form of comic costume. Some 50 years after the production of the last vases we have several comedies which have plural animal names in their titles, and as such these plays would probably include animal choruses. Four of these are extant, and they are all very different: the animals are in one case, perhaps two, metaphors (wasps, horses); in another a passing chorus which sings just one song before the parodos, and only in Birds is the chorus composed of birds. Of course they are also metaphors, but animals in Greek literature are somehow always metaphors, a fact which does not prevent them from being animals at the same time: at least the birds are birds, and not jurors or penises. The great variation in the use of animals in just four comedies of Aristophanes tells us that we should be very careful in guessing what the animal choruses – or choruses with animals – might mean in the archaic depictions. Besides, there is a gap of some fifty years between the last depictions and the first animal choruses in comedies, a gap filled by only three titles attributed to Magnes. This also means that animal 49. This may refer to the expedition of 425, the summer previous to the performance of Knights (cf. Thuc. iii 42, 45). 50. ἀπεστλεγγισμένοι means ‘scraped clean, fresh from the bath’ (LSJ). 51. Only suggested, but quite explicitly, since the verb κομάω and derivatives, when referred to hair and men, is regularly presented as negative in Aristophanes, in the same way as, conversely, the warriors of the old generations are presented positively. 52. Some ancient commentator probably saw a reference to the Persian Wars in the word Μηδική, since one scholiast to v. 606 writes: ἐπεὶ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις ἔθος ἦν Μήδων κρατεῖν. 53. In ancient Greek, as now in several languages, words that designate sexual aggression serve to describe any kind of violent attack. Thus the whole section could simply mean something akin to “they fucked them up”. However, if we must extract any narrative sense from all those obscene suggestions, the words designating sexual attack are not directed solely at the Corinthians, but are also used among the knights themselves during their trip. 54. This has been noted since the scholia to 545. 35 TA ZÔIA. L’ESPAI A GRÈCIA II: ELS ANIMALS I L’ESPAI choruses are not exactly a tradition in comedy. They could have been part of a revival,55 but they could also have been a novelty, and even if they were a revival, the function of animals in them could have very easily changed. Bibliography ABV: Beazley, J. D. 1956: Attic Black-Figure VasePainting, Oxford. ARV 2: Beazley, J. D. 1963: Attic Red-Figure VasePainters, 2nd ed., Oxford. Addenda: Burn, L.; Glynn, R. 1982: Beazley Addenda, Oxford. Addenda2: Carpenter, T. H.; Mannack, T.; Mendonça, M. 1989: Beazley Addenda, 2nd ed., Oxford. Andrisano, A. M. 2010: «Il coro delle rane (Aristoph. Ran. 209-268): non solo musica!», in: Petrone, G.; Bianco, M. M. [ed.], Comicum Choragium. Effetti di scena nella commedia antica, Flaccovio, Palermo, 9-31. Csapo, E. 2003: «The Dolphins of Dionysus», in: Csapo, E.; Miller, M. C. [ed.], Poetry, Theory, Praxis. The Social Life of Myth, Word, and Image in Ancient Greece. Essays in Honour of William J. Slater, Oxford, 69-98. Csapo, E.; Miller, M. C. [ed.] 2007: The Origins of Theatre in Ancient Greece and Beyond: From Ritual to Drama, Cambridge. D’Alessio, G. B.: «The name of the Dithyramb: Diachronic and Diatopic Variations», in: Kowalzig, B.; Wilson, P. 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Riu, X. 1985: «Els epirremata a la paràbasi dels Cavallers», Ítaca 1, 177-183. – 1999: Dionysism and Comedy, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham MD. – «La storia del teatro secondo Aristotele e la questione del coro in Epicarmo», in: Andrisano, A. M. [ed.], Ritmo, parola, immagine. Il teatro classico e la sua tradizione, La Biblioteca di DeM I, Ferrara. [Forthcoming.] Rothwell, K. S.: Nature, Culture and the Origins of Greek Comedy. A Study of Animal Choruses, Cambridge. [Forthcoming] Ruck, C. 1975: «Euripides’ Mother: Vegetables and the Phallos in Aristophanes», Arion n.s. 2, 13-57. Rusten, J. 2006: «Who ‘invented’ Comedy? The Ancient Candidates for the Origins of Comedy and the Visual Evidence», AJP 127, 37-66. Seeberg, A. 1971: Corinthian Komos Vases. BICS Supplement no. 27, London. – 1995: «From Padded Dancers to Comedy», in: Griffiths, A. [ed.], Stage Directions: Essays in Ancient Drama in Honour of E. W. Handle, BICS Supplement 66, London, 1-12. Sifakis, G. 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