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Vaio, John
1997.
Griechisch-römische Komödie und Tragödie II.
p.
23.
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Observations on the Opening Scene of Aristophanes' Wasps
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
The lack of stage directions in surviving Greek comedy which might give a clue to comic ‘business’ not clearly signalled or confirmed in the text is a considerable disadvantage to us, not least in some of the opening tableaux of Aristophanes. One thinks of restless father and snoring son in bed at the opening of Clouds, the jokes involving the incongruous entry of master, slave, donkey and baggage in Frogs, the preparations for launching the dung-beetle into space in Peace – all scenes which demand visual as well as verbal effects in order to engage immediate attention and get the audience into a lively humour for what is to come. In the opening scene of Wasps between the slaves engaged in their nocturnal vigil over Philocleon, there are a number of points implied by the verbal references which seem to me to depend for clarification on their actions, and perhaps also the stage properties involved.
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References
1 Cf. Hsch. κρατηρίχημες∼ μεθύσθημεν (= Sophr. fr. 106). For the equation of Sabazius with Dionysus, see especially Amphitheus FGrHist 431 F 1. In Ar. Lys. 388ff. the tipsiness of women in celebrating Sabazius and Adonis is taken for granted, and J. Henderson ad loc. comments ‘his (Sabazius') worship involved intoxication’. As the choice of divinity in colloquial exclamations is often appropriate to the context (e.g. invoking Dionysus where wine and revelry is involved in Ar. Ach. 195, Vesp. 1046, 1474, Sophil. fr. 6, Xenarch. fr. 9), note how in Theophil. fr. 8, in a reaction to a description of the immense meals of a prize fighter, a second speaker exclaims ‘by Heracles!’ when the food was mentioned (his traditional gluttony, of course), and ‘by Sabazius!’ on hearing of his drinking κράτον δώδεκα κοτύλας.
2 For this, and other references to Corybants in Plato, see Linforth, I. M., Univ. of Calif. Publ. in Class. Phil. 13 (1946), 121–62Google Scholar, who does not, however, in my opinion, deal adequately with the Wasps passage under consideration.
3 ‘Was Philocleon cured?’, Cl. et Med. 41 (1990), 18.Google Scholar
4 So LSJ, s.v. Kορυβαντιάω, ‘of a drowsy person nodding and suddenly starting up’.
5 Note also in Eur. Hipp. 232 the nurse's παράϕρων to describe Phaedra's distracted state, after she has shaken off her head-dress, lets her hair fall over her shoulders, and indulges her fantasy of throwing javelins παρ Χαίταν. At 143–4 the Corybants and Rhea were thought to have been responsible for her condition.
6 See Aldous, Huxley, The Devils of Loudun, Appendix, who describes ‘many sporadic outbreaks of involuntary and uncontrollable jigging, swaying and headwagging’Google Scholar. Years ago, Creuzer, G. F. (Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker besonders der Griechen, Leipzig (1822), p. 272)Google Scholar described the Corybants as Kopfschütteler.
7 There is, of course, the famous example of indulgence in the tarantella as a cure for ‘tarantism’. For another interesting parallel, see Grace, Harris, ‘Possession “Hysteria” in a Kenya Tribe’ (American Anthropologist 59 (1957), 1047–8)Google Scholar, who describes how therapeutic dancing accompanied by singing and drumming induces a trance-like state in those suffering an attack of saka: ‘While the shoulders shake rapidly, the head is moved rhythmically from side to side…the eyes may close and the face becomes expressionless.’
8 In Dai papiri delta Società Italiana: ommagio all’ XI Congresso Interazionale di Papirologia (Florence, 1965), no. 1.Google Scholar
9 B.I.C.S. 16 (1969), 88–101.Google Scholar
10 The phenomenon has been studied by Bremmer, J. N., Greek Maenadism Reconsidered (ZPE 55, 1984, 267–86)Google Scholar, who collects many classical references on pp. 278–9, and also observes how autistic children enter into their own hypnotic dream world by continual wagging of the head.
11 See Poerner, J., De Curetibus et Corybantibus (Halle, 1913).Google Scholar
12 Violent head-tossing in the cult of Cybele has recently been studied in connection with Catullus 63 by Shipton, K. M. W. in CQ 36 (1986), 268–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 The Great King's Eye (Ach. 92, Hdt. 1.114), whole oxen baked in Persian ovens (Ach. 85–7, Hdt. 1.133), luxurious harmamaxai (Ach. 70, Hdt. 7.41, 83), the parody of war beginnings (Ach. 524 ff., Hdt. 1.1–4), and, if my emendation of Ach. 709 is right (B.I.C.S. 17, 1970, 107–10), the reference to the Persian giant Artachaies (Hdt. 7.117).
14 I am reminded of the account in Plut. Ages. 14 of how the Asiatic Greeks admired Agesilaus for his indifference to Persian luxury, and his wearing of a τρίβων λιτός.
15 Cf. A. Pers. 24, Hdt. 1.192, 5.49.7, 8.140b, Xen. An. 1.2.8, Sud. s.v. μέγας βασιλεύς, and Aristophanes himself, Pl 170.
16 Military metaphors of winds are not uncommon – e.g. Pi. P. 6.12 στρατός of a rainstorm, id. P. 4.210 νέμων στίχες, Alciphr. 1.14.2 διαμάχεσθαι of an armed force engaged in battling with winds and waves. The passage from Hdt. 6.44 quoted above associated Boreas also with the earlier Persian naval disaster at Athos in 492, and Tim. Pers. 132 refers to the part played by Boreas in the third, and greatest, Persian rout at Salamis, where Edmonds, not implausibly, conjectured κατακυμοταγεῖς ‘marching in serried ranks over the waves’ for MS. -τακεῖς, rather odd in view of the breezes of freezing Boreas, in a passage with Homeric military overtones, such as διαρραίω, ναρρήγνυμι, found in fighting sequences in the Iliad.
17 Mr J. G. Howie reminds me of yet another ‘Median dream’ in Herodotus – the two significant dreams of Astyages in 1.107–8.
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