Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Author(s): K. J. Dover
Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 86 (1966), pp. 41-50
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/628991 .
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phanes' a slip for 'Aristophanes', and Theogony was be discounted (for our present purpose) as the product
excluded from CAF. of diffusion from the Platonic story; cf. D. Daube,
6 Meineke's tentative emendation (FCG i 304) of The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (London,
to KaTa was mistaken; cf. Anon. De Com. ii 16 I956) 72 f., 79, on the bisexual Adam (I owe this
tieTd
s61'iae 6' n p 'T y'
pdpAvyrtdog, and E. Rohde, reference to the Rev. R. A. S. Barbour).
RhM xlii (1887) 475 (= Kleine Schriften [Tiibingen 9 Not all the Aesopic stories known in Classical
and Leipzig, 1901] i times, perhaps not more than a minority, should be
I85).
7 Phronesis x (1965) 2 ff. called 'fables'; cf. K. Meuli, Herkunft und Wesen der
8 Stith
Thomson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, ed. Fabel (Basel, I954) and especially Nojgaard (passim),
2 (Copenhagen, I955), motifs A 1225.I1, 1281.1-2, whose definitions are strict.
130oI, 1310.I, 1313.0.2, 1313.3, 1313.4.I, I3I6.o.I, 10 It is hard to refuse a Classical pedigree to some
1352, 1352.3, and M. Nojgaard, La Fable antique aetiological stories which are attributed to Aesop in
(Copenhagen, 1964-) i 102 f., 402 ff. Vast though much later times, e.g. Photius Ep. 16, Themistius
the Motif-Index is, it can be augmented annually p. 434 (Dindorf); cf. B. E. Perry, TAPA xciii (1962)
from anthropological publications. On the other 294 ff.
hand, some of the examples cited in it should possibly
17
Cf. A. S. F. Gow in Essays and StudiesPresented 19 E.g. (ed.) F. H. Lee, Folk Tales All Nations
of
to Sir WilliamRidgeway(Cambridge, I913) 99 ff., and (London, I931) 679, 'Had I not been so wilful and
G. Fink, PandoraundEpimetheus(Diss. Erlangen, 1958) malicious, I had now been empress!' (Italy) and 909,
65 ff. My own view is that Hesiod meant to say 'O why was I not a better bird when I was young?'
what Hermokrates says more sophistically in Th. vi (Spain); cf. Nojgaard i 395 ff.
78.2: ot3 ydp o0'6vre •pa r~g TeEntOvplag KaG T' g 20 Note up6g T 'ynvopOepda; Aristotle assumes that
tVrg Tdv arbdv duoltwg'aplav yevyiaOat. Man is we know the story (cf. Entretiensde la FondationHardtix
traitag of his own hopes and fears, because he can [1963] 107).
choose to hope and fear, but he cannot choose when 21 In Aesop 8 (Perry) a similar prediction is made
to be sick or well. not as a threat in anger but as a response to some
18 There is an amusing French example in A. de shipwrights who had challenged Aesop to make a joke
Montaiglon and G. Raynaud, Recueil de Fabliaux against them.
(Paris, 1877-) ii no. 32; cf. R. C. Johnston and
D. D. R. Owen, Fabliaux(Oxford, i957) xiii f., xvii f.
(I) Certainly at two points, and possibly at a third, Plato has reminded us of the real
Aristophanes.
(a) When we read (I92a 2-7) 'some say that they' (sc. boys who yield readily to their
lovers) 'are shameless, but that is not true ... for it is their courage and manliness and mascu-
linity that make them act so. .... And this is strongly supported by the fact that boys of this
kind, when they have grown to maturity, are the only men24in political life', we cannot help
recalling the end of the dispute in Clouds(the play of Aristophanes more likely than any other
to have imprinted itself on Plato's memory), where the Honest Argument is forced to admit
( 1088 ff.) that it is from the ranks of the EpV'pwK70-otthat public speakers are drawn. This is,
moreover, a stock joke of Old Comedy; cf. Plato Comicusfr. I86.5 KEKOO 7TEVKa' 70-oyapoOv
drTWpEUEL, Ar. Eq. 878 ff., Ec. 112 ff. Plato has adopted an Aristophanic joke but has
invested it with an irony which is characteristic of his own methods, not of Comedy.
(b) After saying 'if we are on good terms with the god' (sc. Eros) 'we shall meet our own
rrawetKd,which at present few succeed in doing' (I92b 3-6), Aristophanes continues (b 6-c 2)
'and Eryximachos must not treat my speech as a joke25 and take me to be referring to
Pausanias and Agathon-they are perhaps among the successful ones and are both male in
nature....' We recall the brutal portrayal of Agathon's femininity in Th. 130 ff., cf. Ar.
fr. 326, Z Luc. p. 178 (Rabe). Here again Plato has taken a typical Aristophanic motif but
has transformed it by substituting bland cattiness for vilification.
(c) It is not, I think, wholly insignificant that the striking anachronistic reference in
Smp. I93a 2-3 to the dissolution of Mantineia26 is located in the speech of Aristophanes.
Comedies which presented burlesque versions of myths were full of topical allusions, which
must have had an exceptionally amusing effect when uttered by divine or heroic characters
(e.g. Kratinos fr. 240, Theopompos fr. 18, PSI I I75=Philiskos fr. IA [Edmonds]). It is
not impossible that Plato is having a joke with us, as it were, on two levels, outdoing at his
own game the man whom he is portraying and inserting his own most audacious anachronism
into an aetiological story ostensibly recounted by a comic poet many years earlier.
(2) Certain resemblances between the double humans of Aristophanes' story and the
monsters of Empedokles B6I are undeniable; the o1AO0VEZs creatures of B62 may also perhaps
22
Cf. J. Bolte and G. Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den OdPV Adyov, which, out of context, we
26 KwO•0VT6v
Kinder- und Hausmdrchender Briider Grimm (Leipzig, should take to mean 'ridiculing my speech', i.e.
1913-) iv 24 f., 34 ff.; R. M. Dawkins, Modem 'criticising my speech by making jokes against it'.
Greek in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1916) 561, 571. A But passages immediately before and after Aristo-
wish for the happiness of the hearer sometimes implies phanes' speech suggest that Aristophanes here means
that the teller deserves material reward for his efforts, by Kw0/68 eVV something like 'answer mockery with
just as a beggar seasons his importunities with mockery' (cf. elKdaEvl/dVTEtKd'v6t, Meno 8ob 8-c 6):
blessings. ye)aCxronoteig,dAAwovUyew, Kat qJPaKd
18a Toi 1dyov
oi
23 ProfessorN. M. Kontoleon drew my attention to dvayKdsetg yiyveOat Toi meatrro, dv Tt ysAolov eiq7(
this. S. . b 4-5 dAAd U /pE
/in e arTe3... 193d 7-8 (arnep o&tv
24 The expression is not coined for the occasion, but deMiOrivaov, i KWt•WNOa acrdv.
occurs in serious contexts, e.g. X. HG vii 1.24 26 Cf. n. 7.
vT6v AvKo•?j6V Kat'gtdoov iv6pa ?7yo5-VTo.
•inepeq~Aow
III. ETHOS
If we now ask why Plato decided that an Aesopic story, with or without a seasoning of
other elements, was the appropriate contribution for his Aristophanes to make to the
laudation of Eros, we can at least be confident that it was not simply because Aesopic and
other unsophisticated stories are sometimes related, mentioned or utilised in comedy,35
nor even because a cosmogonic passage occurs in Av. 685 ff. (a passage given prominence in
modern times because we know so little about early 'philosophical' doctrines and are anxious
to remedy our ignorance). Comedy uses, adapts and parodies every genre of composition.
from folklore to philosophy, but this does not mean that in its design and conception a
comedy resembles either a folktale or a philosophical treatise. Plato himself, as we have seen,
uses the formulae and framework of the folktale for.Sokrates in Gorgias and the Eleatic in
Politicus; the difference between their stories and Aristophanes' lies in their point and their
level of sophistication.
Plato's decision in the case of Aristophanes' speech rests, I suggest, on the values shared
by comedy and folklore,36 and these become apparent when we examine the most important
contrasts between Aristophanes and the other speakers in Smp. Every other speaker argues
to some degree in abstract terms, even if the argument disguises itself, in traditional form,
as an exposition of the attributes of a supernatural being. Only Aristophanes commits
himself whole-heartedly to the particular and the perishable; he takes it for granted that for
an individual reunion with his unique, individual 'other half' is an end in itself. This is the
issue between him and Diotima.
The extent to which Plato wishes us to regard every speaker in Smp. as making at least
one positive contribution, one step forward towards the Platonic doctrine of Eros, is not a
matter of general agreement,37 and this is hardly surprising. Sexual love is, after all, a real
phenomenon with which we are all acquainted. Plato's doctrine, however other-worldly
the form it assumes when he has developed it, takes some aspects of our actual experience as
its starting-point. From these two facts it follows that it would have been very difficult for
Plato to compose for the characters in his Symposium,intelligent and amiable Athenians, five
34 Cf. Frutiger 181 n. 2, andJ. Tate, CQxxiii (1929) 36 Cf. Q. Cataudella, Dioniso ix (1942) 6 ff.
I42 ff., xxiv (1930) I ff. 37 Cf. Frutiger 196 f. (I do not know why Frutiger
35 Aelian NA vi 5I tells an aetiological story says 'le veritable but de cette fable . . ce n'est pas
(anchored to a quarrel between Zeus and Prometheus) d' clairer le lecteur sur la cause ou l'origine de
about the ass, the snake and old age, and ends: l'amour, mais sur sa nature et ses modalites');
'Aristeas' (not otherwise known as the name of a Sykutris 121*; Robin lx; W. Gilbert, Ph lxviii (i909)
comic poet) 'and Apollophanes, poets of comedy, sing 69 f.; J. Stenzel, Platon der Erzieher (Leipzig, 1928)
this story' (cf. Meuli 24 f.). But that a comic poet 203 f.; R. A. Markus, The Downside Review lxxiii
made the story the plot of a comedy is hardly con- (1956) 220.
ceivable; we should think rather of something like
Ar. Lys. 781 ff. Cf. Nojgaard i 225, 459.
38 Cf.
Rep. 61id has done, to the relational aspect of love; but, of
I-2.
39 This is not the only occasion on which Diotima's course, to Aristophanes the purpose of a given indi-
views are re-stated by the Athenian; cf. Lg. 721 b 6-- vidual is not to acquire and express a certain dis-
c 8 Smp. 207C 9-209e 4 (Phronesisx [1965]16 ff.). position towards potential objects in general, nor to
,
40 Cf. Sykutris 123*; Stenzel 203 f.; H. Koller, promote the well-being of a particular object without
Die Komposition des platonischen Symposion (Diss. creating an erotic relationship to it, but to create that
Ziurich, 1948) 47. relationship to a particular object.
41 Cf.
Sykutris Io8*, 121*. I am concerned here 42 Cf. T. F. Gould, Platonic Love
(London, I963) 33,
not with what the words 60eds dydcvijarvi, meant to 170 ff.
the writer, but with their influence (whether acknow- 43 The distinction drawn here between three
ledged or not) on attitudes to Plato in the twentieth different experiences is not intended to carry any
century. Markus 222 emphasises that Aristophanes implication for their causation or biological inter-
draws our attention, as none of the preceding speeches relation.
44 L. Edelstein, TAPA lxxvi (i945) 95 f., seems to 45 Singular because the evidence required for the
me to overrate both the significance of Eryximachos's explanation of an individual case is vast and largely
speech and Plato's respect for doctors; I find it hard inaccessible, not because the principles involved in
not to see an element of unkind parody in I88d 9- such an explanation conflict in any way with our
e 2. Markus's appraisal (221) is, in my view, ordinary experience.
closer to Plato's, and cf. G. J. De Vries, Spel bi"
Plato (Amsterdam, 1949) 266.