Aristophanes frogs lecture: TT1 2023

Athenian drama and comedy are unique combinations of visual material unlike any

Parabasis is unique to comedy:

- It is in the heart of the play structurally
- The characters all exit mid play and leave only the chorus and the orchestra
- Parabasis is a ‘step forward’
- The chorus speak directly for the poet to the audience
- The chorus steps forth and speaks to the audience again
- ‘agon’ or contest
- Agon is spoken in iambic tripmeters

Mirroring of structures with in the play

- Varities of metres used
- Bacchae uses iambic tripmeters throughout the drama
- Frogs uses iambic dimeters

The question of whether the frogs appeared off stage or on stage is a unanswered question

Knights, wasps, frogs all begin with a dialogue between two slaves before the parabasis; it is
as if a new play is beginning.
Before the parabasis
Chrisis paradadsis episodes which are within the play

The doorman’s inability to decide which of xanthius and the doorman was divine mirrors
Dionysus’ inability to decide which of the poets was better.

Pluto was a silent presence on stage, but he gets to speak at the 600th line. Until Pluto speaks
it is not sure whether Aristophanes has decided to use 3 or 4 actors in the play

In Pluto’s intervention, κρινω is translated differently all 3 times (judgement or choice)

Dionysus enjoys one play and thinks the other play is really good

Comic theme of then vs now; authors from different generations of poets are being
compared in the second half of the epic compared to first when they are contemporaries.

INTERTEXTS TO LOOK AT:

Dionysusalexandros
Taxiarchoi
Dionysus asketes

Katabasis is not clear in demes; did they actually go down into the underworld?