WISDOM IN INVERTED COMMAS: GREEK COMEDY AND THE QUOTABLE MAXIM

Greek comedy is full of quotable maxims. According to a literal reading, the comedians might be seen as custodians of traditional gnomic wisdom, along with their tragic counterparts. Nevertheless, it is argued here that maxims in comedy are different from maxims in other contexts. Comic maxims typically appear ‘within inverted commas’, not just in a literal sense (because of their inherent ‘quotationality’) but in a figurative sense (because of their pervasive irony and self-consciousness). Examples from Menander, Antiphanes, Diphilus and others are used to demonstrate that the comedians can be seen as playing around with the content and form of traditional wisdom. Sometimes they seem to be poking fun at the maxim as a medium of expression, or at tragic maxims, or at the habit of quotation itself.

Prolog antycznej komedii w oczach Profesora Sylwestra Dworackiego (1937–2020)

The article is an attempt to remember the recently deceased, eminent researcher, Prof. Dr. Sylwester Dworacki, based on his article on prologues in Menander’s ancient Greek comedy.

Our Co(s)mic Origins: Theogonies in Greek Comedy

This article focuses on the four theogonies which are documented in some texts and testimonies of Old and Middle Greek Comedy, namely in Cratinus’ Cheirons (frs. 258 – 259 PCG), in which Pericles and Aspasia are disguised as Zeus and Hera; Aristophanes’ Birds (693 – 703), a celebrated narration of the origins of these animals, presented as older than the gods; Antiphanes’ Anthropogony, on the births of several gods and humankind; and the disagreement between Cronus and Rhea in the fragment of an anonymous play of Middle Comedy (adespota fr. 1062 PCG). In these theogonies several aspects will be analyzed: the gods or characters whose genealogy or birth is mentioned, the means of parody of the traditional literary form of theogony, and the political and social implications present in the first two fragments, in order to offer a complete picture of the theogonies in Greek comedy and their functions according to their context.

Greek New Comic Fragments

The expression “Greek New Comedy” traditionally indicates a specific phase of Attic Comedy dated to the late 4th and 3rd centuries bce, although New Comedies continued to be written well into the Imperial period. New Comedies bring onto the stage fictional characters, domestic situations, and love-stories, and their plots tend to repeat common elements. Ancient sources identify over sixty New Comedy poets and consistently name three dramatists as the main representatives of this genre: Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon. Menander was born in 342/1 and died around 290 bce; the biographies of his two rivals are largely obscure but Philemon was reportedly older than Menander while Diphilus was one of Menander’s contemporaries. Unlike Menander, they were both born outside Athens. Two or three more authors were added to the list of the best New Comedy poets: Philippides, Apollodorus of Carystus, and Posidippus. New Comedy poets were generally more prolific than their 5th-century colleagues, but their plays are largely lost. Menander is the only author whose comedies survive thanks to a series of lucky papyrus findings in the 20th century: we have one complete comedy, Dyskolos, and substantial portions of several more. The dramas written by other New Comedy poets survive only in short fragments preserved by a few papyri and, most often, by ancient authors largely interested in linguistic peculiarities or moralizing excerpts. The standard collection of the fragments (F) of Greek Comedy and the testimonia (T) for Greek comic poets is Kassel and Austin 1983–2001 (Poetae Comici Graeci, cited under Editions and Translations), which is generally abbreviated as “K-A.” While surviving fragments are typically not very informative, an important source for our knowledge of Greek New Comedies is Roman Comedy. Roman poets adapted select plays into Latin, often disclosing the titles, the authors, and other details of their Greek models. Roman comedies give us indirect access to their now lost Greek originals.