Terminology
- komoidia: a komos song
- komos: 1) a ritual carnival where normal patterns of
behavior are set aside (Not unlike Mardi Gras). It involves partying, singing,
dancing, drunkenness, masks and costumes (including that of leather phalluses and
animals), as well as ritual aischrologia. 2) the exit scene of the comedy
which leads to general feasting afterwards.
- prologus: opening section of the comedy that
conceives of the initial idea
- parodos: the entrance of the chorus.
- agon: the debate over the merits of the main idea,
usually between two opposing actors.
- parabasis: "the coming forward." a
scolding of the audience by the playwright, usually a separate speech little related to
the overall idea of the comedy.
- aischrologia: verbal and physical abuse of
individuals, often slapstick in nature.
- dinos: the view (held by Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and
Democritus) that the central organizing power of the universe is a whirling vortex.
[Our translation refers to this concept as "The Vortex".]
Aristophanes' Conservatism
- Aristophanes is typically associated with political, religious, and
moral conservatism.
- He tends to hold up Athens of the Persian war period, distrusting the
Athenian empire's involvement with other Greek city-states.
- He disapproves of mob-rule.
- He upholds the worship of the traditional Greek gods.
- He decries the new learning as empty.
- He tends to stress feeling and piety over logical reason.
Portrait of Socrates
- He is presented as a Sophist concerned with false rhetoric and
material success.
- He is presented as an atheist and a believer in dinos.
- He practices some aspects of mystery cult initiations (cf.
Strepsiades' entry into the school.)
- He holds that thinking is somehow associated with air (a view held by
Diogenes of Apollonia).
- He stresses the need for a study of poetic meter and grammar -- a
stress of the New Education.
Question: How much did Aristophanes know about the
real Socrates? Is his portrait intended to be accurate and/or farcical?
The New Education/ The Greek Enlightenment
The New Science: The philosophical beliefs of
several; presocratic philosophers who held the world to be essentially governed by
mechanistic forces (cf. dinos). For example, Empedocles held that the
universe was driven by four opposing forces: "[W]hen Strife reaches the lowest depth
of the whirlpool, and when Love comes to be in the middle of the whirl, in it (i.e. the
whirl) all these things come together so as to be one — not all at once, but
willingly combining from different directions."
The views of some, such as Democritus, naturally influenced the
Sophists: "The sweet exists by convention, the bitter by convention, the hot
by convention, the cold by convention, color by convention; in actuality there exist only
atoms and the void. [. . .] In actuality we perceive/understand nothing certain, but
rather that which shifts according to the disposition of our body and of the things that
enter it and press against it."
The New Rhetoric: The Sophists were not a unified
group of teachers and educators, but they nonetheless held similar notions about truth and
language. They stressed the systematic study of poetry, grammar, and public
speaking. Most of them came to the position that ethics and mores were specific to
local cultures and that no universal mores could be found across cultures. This lead
to a stress on political change through public speaking. Protagoras is famous for
believing that "[o]f all things the measure is man, of the things that exist, that
they exist, and of the things that do not exist, that they do not exist." They
were also often associated with a general skepticism about the reality of the Greek gods.
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