SLATER, NIALL W., Aristophanes' Apprenticeship Again , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 30:1 (1989) p.67 Aristophanes' Apprenticeship Again Niall W. Slater T HE TWO passages in Acbarnians where Dicaeopolis sudden­ ly seems to become Aristophanes himself (at lines 377ff and 497ff) have evoked considerable interest recently.1 In both places Dicaeopolis refers to "his" troubles with Cleon in a way that makes it clear that he is speaking not as the character but as the poet: (1)'to<;; 't' EJlau'tov U1tO KAEOlVO<;; a.1ta6ov E1tta'taJlal OUI Tllv 1tEpUallCroJlq>OtClV. daEAlCuaa<;; yap Jl' d<;; 'to ~OUAEU'tTtPLOV 380 OlE~aAAE lCat 'VEUOi\ lCa'tEYAronl~E JlOU lCa1CUlCAO~OPEl lCa.1tAUVEV, roa't' OAt you 1taVU a1troAOJlllV JlOAUV01tpaYJlovOUJlEVO<;;. VUV 01)V JlE 1tpiiYrov 1tptV AEyEtV Eaaa'tE EValCEUaaaa6al Jl' otov a6Aul>'tatov. JlTt JlOl cp60vTta llt ', iiVOPE<;; 01 6EroJlEVOl, d 1t'troxo<;; rov E1tEtt' EV 'A61lvalol<;; AEyEtV IlEAAro 1tEpt tftc; 1tOAEOl<;, tPUyq>OtClV 1tOlroV. 500 'to yap Ol1CaLOV O'iOE Kat tpuycpoia. tyro of: Atsro OEtVa JlEV, OllCala OE. 01> yap 11£ VUV yE OlCl~ClA£i KAtrov on ~Evrov 1tClPOVtOlV tilv 1tOAlV lCCllcroC; u:yro. au'tot yap EaJlEV OU1tt Allvaicp ayrov. 505 KOU1tro SEVOl 1taPEtcJtv' OUtE yap CPOPOl llKoualv OU't' £K trov 1tOAErov 01 SUJlJlaxol. D. F. Sutton, in the context of an analysis of the metatheatrical t They are the focus of Dana Ferrin SlJITON, "Dicaeopolis as Aristophanes, Aristophanes as Dicaeopolis," LCM 13 (1988: hereafter 'Sutton') 105-08, and E. 1. Bowie, ·Who is Dicaeopolis?" ]HS 108 (1988) 183-85; see also H. P. Fo­ ley, "Tragedy and Politics in Aristophanes' Acharnians," ]HS 108 (1988) 33- 47. 67 SLATER, NIALL W., Aristophanes' Apprenticeship Again , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 30:1 (1989) p.67 68 ARISTOPHANES' APPRENTICESHIP AGAIN nature2 of Acharnians and the problem of these lines, has (inde­ pendently) revived the suggestion of Cyril Bailey that the poet himself played Dicaeopolis. 3 Bailey's analysis apparently did not win general endorsement, for it is rarely cited; but at least one of his points deserves to be brought back into the discussion in support of Sutton's argument, which relies on the self-referen­ tial play with the nature and the boundaries of the drama else­ where in Acharnians. The result will add an important dimen­ sion to the picture of Aristophanes' early career that Halliwell has delineated. 4 We should also then have a better view of the conditions of comic production at the time of Acharnians. The two moments when Dicaeopolis speaks as or for the poet are unique in the extant comedies, as Sommerstein notes; nor­ mally, only the chorus in the parabases so represents the views of the poet directly.5 Sutton points out one possible parallel in trimeters in the fragments of Aristophanes (fr.482 Kassel/ Aus­ tin, from the Skenas Katalambanousae): 2 Metatheatre is best defined as theatrically self-conscious drama, plays that display awareness of themselves and their own form as works in the theatre. 3 C. Bailey, "Who Played Dicaeopolis?" in Greek Poetry and Life, ed. Bai­ ley et aL (Oxford 1936) 231-40. Bailey notes similar but undeveloped sugges­ tions in the previous editions of Acharnians by both Murray and Rennie. 4 S. HALLIWELL, '" Aristophanes' Apprenticeship," CQ N.5. 30 (1980: hereafter 'Halliwell') 33-45; roughly the same conclusions were reached independently by G. Mastromarco, "L'esordio 'segreto' di Aristofane," Quad Stor 10 (~979) 153-96. Mastromarco offers a condensed version of this discussion, with more recent references, in Commedie di Aristofane I (Turin 1983) 45-59. D. M. McDowell, .. Aristophanes and Kallistratos," CQ N.S. 32 (1982) 21-26, has at­ tempted to answer Halliwell and Mastromarco but not, I think, convincingly. The basic objection remains this: how could at least three successive plays (including two first-prize winners) written completely by Aristophanes have passed as the work of their producers? The notion that the "'general public neither knew nor cared" (25) who wrote these plays is refuted by the opening of Acharnians itself. MacDowell never squarely answers the qu~stion: did the archon know that Aristophanes was actually the author of the plays Callis­ tratus produced for him, and did it matter if he did? If the archon could know, there is no reason to believe that the city did not know. If this infor­ mation was in fact concealed from him, it is very hard to see how, once Aris­ tophanes had become known as a comic poet, he and Philonides succeeded in pulling the wool over the archon's (and the city's) eyes in 422, with the simul­ taneous production of Proagon and Wasps. 5 A. H. SOMMERSTEIN, Aristophanes, Acharnians (Warminster 1980 [hereafter 'Sommerstein']) ad 377. SLATER, NIALL W., Aristophanes' Apprenticeship Again , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 30:1 (1989) p.67 NIALL W. SLATER 69 XpOOJ.Hlt yap au'tou o'toJ.la'toe; 'tro O'tPOyyUAOO, ~. . 'toue; voue; 0' eXyopaio'Ue; l)'t'tov 11 'Kdvoe; 1tOt&. We know from the scholium to Plato' Apology, in which this is preserved, that the speaker here is talking about Euripides, and the scholiast interprets the passage as though Aristophanes were speaking in his own person. Kaibel thought this was a tragic poet portrayed as a character speaking about Euripides, since "suo enim nomine non loquitur comicus trimetris USUS."6 But this is only an assumption based on the practice of the sur­ viving plays. It is worth noting that the other fragments of the Skenas Kata­ lambanousae display a notable degree of self-referentiality. We cannot be sure just what sort of performance the women have staked out places to see, but it is clear that they are spectators. Thus, while we cannot be sure that we have a play-within-the­ play (the essential characteristic of metatheatre), we certainly have some situation of performance and audience represented within the fiction of the play. Fr.487 K.I A. discusses the little comforts one brings along to a performance (ouvS£u'tptav): ATtKUSOV 'tllv E1t'taKo'tuAoV, 'tllv xu'tp£uv, 'tllv clYKUATlV, llv £Vt 7tOAEJlOV TtP Jlcl ~i' Otae' ot, (lu'to~ £P'Yv a1t£A'\)(J' aO£l1tVov. It is a reasonable further inference that this lost play did not win first prize and that Aristophanes (not just his choristers) felt badly treated by Antima­ chus' choregia. One curious question is why Aristophanes chose to change pro­ ducers; he had had two plays produced by Callistratus already. Clearly, though, despite Cleon's attack, the lesson of Babylonians, possibly reinforced by a failure at the Lenaea of 426, was that political comedy brought success. SLATER, NIALL W., Aristophanes' Apprenticeship Again , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 30:1 (1989) p.67 NIALL W. SLATER 79 tion at the time of Acharnians by our contention that Aristopha­ nes played Dicaeopolis. Sutton's claim (107) that "it was normal for playwrights to act in their own plays» needs to be qualified. The evidence suggests a development away from this norm over time. 20 While Aeschylus certainly did act in his own plays, the Life of Sophocles reports that he gave up acting because of his weak voice. Whether or not we accept the specific reason given there, it seems highly likely that tragic acting became sufficiently specialized during Sophocles' career and important enough for the success of the piece that tragic poets ceased to act in their own plays. No reliable evidence suggests that Euripi­ des ever appeared in one of his own plays. The situation for comedy is different. It is worth remember­ ing that Aristophanes was a member of only the second genera­ tion of Athenian comic poets who wrote plays with what we would recognize as plots. 21 Magnes was part of the first genera­ tion, and it seems highly likely that he acted in his own plays; it has been suggested, on the basis of Knights 518-25, that he was famous in his day for his animal imitations.22 A scholium on Knights 537 suggests that Crates began his career by acting in the plays of Cratinus: ot>'to<; K(OJlq>oia<; 7tOtTl'tl}<;, 0<; 7tpiihov \}7tE­ Kpiva'to ('ta) Kpa'tivo1), Kat au'to<; 7tOtTl't1l<; UO"'tEPOV f:yEVE'tO. This tradition is on its face quite reasonable: the poets of comedy will most likely have required more experience with and understanding of the practicalities of the theatre than did the tragedians. The audiences of Old Comedy, as Aristophanes hastens to point out to us, demanded constant innovation, and not merely in plot; the playwright of comedy was required as much to be an impresario as a poet in our modern sense. The demands placed upon the chorus in terms of dance and move­ ment are far greater than those typical in tragedy (especially the 20 I summarize here a longer discussion that will appear in my "The Idea of the Actor," in Nothing to Do with Dionysos: Athenian Drama in Its Social Context, edd. F. Zeitlin and J. Winkler (Princeton, forthcoming). 21 Equally to be remembered is the fact that Aristophanes was part of a new generation of writers of comedy. Gelzer (supra n.7: 1407) argues that Aristoph­ anes' Babylonians won the first prize at the City Dionysia of 426; he thereby became the first new poet to do so since Hermippus in 435. Indeed since 458, a group of about twelve poets had dominated the festival. 22 E. S. Spyropoulos, Helienika 28 (1975) 247-74, cited in Sommerstein. SLATER, NIALL W., Aristophanes' Apprenticeship Again , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 30:1 (1989) p.67 80 ARISTOPHANES' APPRENTICESHIP AGAIN tragedy contemporary with Aristophanes}.23 Experience as an actor must have been valuable preparation for writing comedies and especially putting them into production. It is no wonder then that Aristophanes at the beginning of his career sought the help of someone experienced in production. 24 It might then be a mistake to view the notion of comic play­ wrights appearing in their own work as an carchaie or somehow cprimitive' element in the late fifth-century comic theatre. While it is indeed extremely unlikely that any tragic poet in 425 played in his own work, the distinction between the poet of and the participant in the comic komoi may not have been sharply drawn (and Sutton indeed offers some evidence of comic play­ wright/actors in the next century).25 We nonetheless have rea- 23 The reasons behind the different institutional developments of tragedy and comedy in the fifth century are of course enormously complex. It seems worth remarking, however, that the simple physical demands upon the chorus of comedy would likely have prevented any development towards longer or more complex forms such as the trilogy was for tragedy. The same chorus cer­ tainly danced all three plays of a tragic trilogy (and probably the satyr playas well), but a comic chorus probably had about as much work within a single play. 24 Anachronistic analogies are always dangerous. Nonetheless, one suspects that creating an Old Comedy was more like staging The Golddiggers of 1932 or The Coconuts than writing a Feydeau farce. A certain amount of plot was required, but if one could bring on a specialty act to grab the audience's atten­ tion (be it the dancing of Carcinus and his sons in Wasps or Harpo perform­ ing on his harp), considerations of plot line need not get in the way. The komoi that the new plotted (or partially plotted) comedies began to replace about 450 may have resembled variety performances-which also required skillful management to sustain. It has often been noted that we have no rea­ son to believe that Callistratus was himself a poet (but see the testimonia S.'l). in PCG IV). Yet clearly he had some skill that made him valuable to Aris­ tophanes. He may have been an impresario surviving from the previous gen­ eration, with no interest in writing himself but with precisely those skills a young poet and/or actor needed to turn songs and sketches into winning per­ formances. 25 The prosopography of the Attic theatre is a most complex subject. Es­ sential sources here are: J. B. O'Connor, Chapters in the History of Actors and Acting in Ancient Greece (Chicago 1908); C. Austin, '"Catalogus Comico­ rum Graecorum, JJ ZPE 14 (1974) 201-25; P. Ghiron-Bistagne, Recherches sur les acteurs dans La Grece antique (Paris 1976); H. J. Mette, Urkunden drama­ tischer Auffuhrungen in GriechenLand (Berlin/New York 1977); and the on­ going volumes of PCG. D. F. Sutton, '"The Theatrical Families of Athens, JJ AJP 108 (1987) 9-26, suggests that two playwrights after the fifth century were also actors: Diodorus II (=No. 141 O'Connor, No. 92 Austin, p.320 Ghiron­ Bistagne, p.23 Sutton) and Callipus (No. 60a Austin, based on the only SLATER, NIALL W., Aristophanes' Apprenticeship Again , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 30:1 (1989) p.67 NIALL W. SLATER 81 son to believe that the situation was rapidly changing by the last quarter of the century. The agent of that change was in all likelihood the development of actors' contests, the importance of which after the middle of the fifth century cannot be overemphasized. Sutton (108) men­ tions the existence of the contests as proof that the audience would know who the actors were, and this is certainly true. More important, however, is the fact that the establishment of the contests shows that acting has become a separate entity, in­ dependent of the whole of the dramatic performance. One might say that actors did not exist at the beginning of the fifth century; conceptually they were an undifferentiated part of the class "performers at the Dionysia." By the time the city estab­ lishes contests for actors apart from the overall play compe­ titions, actors do exist as a separate category. The process began in tragedy. A contest for tragic actors was probably established at the City Dionysia in 449, at the Lenaea in 442. The competitions for comic actors seem to have fol­ lowed. Pickard-Cambridge suggests 442 for the institution of a comic actors' competition at the Lenaea. 26 Certainly by the time of the performance of Acharnians at the Lenaea in 425 a comic actors' contest existed there. The existence of the comic actors' contests will have put some pressure on those wri ters of comedy who chose to per­ form as well. The anecdote about Crates indicates clearly the known citation, Ath. 15.688 c; p.24 Sutton). Kassel/Austin give the testimonia for Diodorus inPCG V but conclude that one cannot be certain if poet and ac­ tor are the same person. From the fourth to the third centuries B.C. there were three comic actors named Callipus, presumably in a direct line of descent (see Sutton), and it is tempting but by no means certain to identify the poet with one of them. A much stronger case can be made for Nausicrates (==No. 355 O'Connor, p. 344 Ghiron-Bistagne), who is known from I G IF 2325 frr. x and mn (see Mette 175, 179), as both a comic poet and actor of ca 350. Other possibilities are Pherecrates (=No. 473 O'Connor, p.359 Ghiron-Bistagne), Phrynichus (p. 363 Ghiron-Bistagne), and Nicomachus (p.346 Ghiron-Bistag­ ne). It is thus not impossible to believe that some comic poets acted well into the fourth century. 26 A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens 2 (Oxford 1968) 93f. Against the present communis opinio (which holds that this did not occur until the fourth century), I argue for the establishment of a comic actors' competition, though perhaps in some sense "unofficial," about this time at the City Dionysia as well; see my "Problems in the Hypotheses to Aristophanes' Peace," ZPE 74 (1988) 43-57. SLATER, NIALL W., Aristophanes' Apprenticeship Again , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 30:1 (1989) p.67 82 ARISTOPHANES' APPRENTICESHIP AGAIN hierarchy that we would naturally assume: the move from actor to poet is a move up. Winning the traditional contest for poets clearly carried more prestige than winning the actors' contest. The poet who chose also to act ran a considerable risk: he then needed to win both contests for his victory to be complete. 27 And in the atmosphere of jealousy that prevailed in democratic Athens it may be have seemed increasingly self-aggrandizing for a poet/actor to try to win two first prizes. On the other hand, an established playwright could probably get away with it. Aristophanes' set-to with Cratinus may be instructive. In Knights Aristophanes made the mistake of referring to Cratinus as an old drunk who had lost his creative powers. Cratinus se­ cured his revenge the next year with an openly autobiographical play called Winef/ask, in which he included himself and his mis­ tress of the title as characters. I suspect that on this occasion Cratinus played himself as well, which will only have increased his audience's sympathy for himself and for his piece. The third place earned by Clouds may have a more complex explanation than that the audience did not know what to make of an attack on Socrates and sophistry. Aristophanes probably did not continue to perform as an ac­ tor throughout his career. McLeish suggests that the demands made upon the actor playing Dicaeopolis and the Sausage-seller in Knights (considerable oratorical skills on the one hand, but limited physical business on the other) are so similar that the same actor probably played both parts. 28 Sutton takes this actor to be Aristophanes himself, a suggestion I would certainly en­ dorse. It is impossible to say, given the reworking of Clouds, whether the part of Strepsiades, for example, was originally de­ signed with the same talents and limitations in mind. It does seem likely however, that after the failure of Clouds Aristopha­ nes continued to compete only as a playwright.29 UNIVERSITAT KONSTANZ / UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA May, 1989 27 We know that victory of play and protagonist did not always go to­ gether. In 418 the famous actor Callipides won the tragic actors' contest, al­ though the play in which he appeared lost. See IG IP 2319. 28 K. McLeish, Aristophanic Comedy (London 1980) 122f. 29 The above was written while enjoying the remarkable hospitality of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the University of Konstanz. I am also grateful to Bernhard Zimmermann and an anonymous referee for their most helpful comments.