“I would like to tell you a few things about me and my character.
If everyone were like me, there wouldn’t be any courts at all,
They wouldn’t take each other to prison.
There would be no war and everyone would be happy because they had enough.
Ah, maybe the way things are is more pleasing. Act as you will.
This old cranky grump will be out of your way.”
The Suda has the following anecdote which seems to be taken and altered from Diogenes Laertius or something similar.
“thunderous-mouth-milling”: Eubulides says this “the eristic, asking his horn questions and discombobulating the orators with his falsely-intellectual arguments, taking with him the “thunderous-mouth-milling” of Demosthenes.
ῥομβοστωμυλήθρη (lit. “thunderous-mouth-milling” (?) seems to be a misunderstanding or humorous take on ῥωποπερπερήθρη, usually translated as “braggadocio” but is more like “cheap/petty bragging” From Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 2.10
“The eristic Euboulides, asking questions about horns
And discombobulating the speakers with his falsely-intellectual arguments
Has gone off, taking the petty self regard of Demosthenes with him
For it seems that Demosthenes was a student of Eubulides and was able to stop his problems with the letter ‘r’ because of it. Eubulides was also in conflict with Aristotle and undermined him a lot.
Melancholy here contrasts with “thinking -wrongly” (paraphronein). A scholion to another play by Aristophanes glosses the realms of these types of mental maladies (Schol. ad Plut. 11a ex 20-28)
“He seems to say this because he harmed or helped his master through his own virtue more—and while he disturbed him through prophecy, he made him crazy [melankholan] through medicine and took away his ability to think [phronein] through wisdom, which is the art of thinking. The servant lies. For he does not speak the truth….”
Where melancholy denotes a physical ailment [i.e. biologically caused and treated], paraphrosunê indicates parafunctionality which may be treated without medicine.
μελαγχολάω: to be atrabilious, melancholy-mad.
μελαγχολία: atrabiliousness, melancholy, a disease [atual LSJ definition]
παραφροσύνη, ἡ: wandering of mind, derangment, delirium
παραφρονέω: to be beside oneself, be deranged, or mad.
Lyrica Adespota, fr. 3.9-10
“Lust–that magician–takes me. It descends upon my mind
And makes me crazy!”
“In the same way, ‘truth’ concerning the way things appear has come to some people from their senses. They believe that it is right that truth should be judged neither by the multitude or the scarcity [of those who believe it]; and they believe that the same thing seems sweet to some who taste it and bitter to others with the result that if all men were sick or if they were all insane and two or three were healthy or in their right mind, wouldn’t it seem that these few were sick and crazy and not the rest?”
“Euripides, since he’s a bit of a rascal,
Will probably try to help me get him free.
Sophocles will be well-behaved there since he was well-behaved here.”
There will be time aplenty in the new year to reflect on what Reading Greek Tragedy Online meant to those of us who were engaged with it every week. It suffices to say for the moment that it gave us structure, a sense of community, and a reason to drag ourselves out of bed a few times a week. it also gave us the opportunity to think and talking about performing Greek theater in a sustained way that none of us could have imagined a year ago today.
Back in April, when Paul and I were outlining the rest of the year with Lanah, we thought this play would be a nice way to end the series on something of an absurdist but reflective turn. Aristophanes’ Frogs stands as one of the earliest pieces of literary criticism in the Athenian tradition. Even if it is bawdy and hyperbolic, it provides critical comments and cultural frameworks for the three tragedians we moderns know best. As a comedy, it ranges from sophisticated engagement with literary motifs and styles right back down to fart jokes and the regrettable but by no means atypical repeated play with abusing an enslaved person.
But the Frogs also has a sense of coming near the end of things: it starts with the assertion that all the good poets are dead (in a year following the passing of both Euripides and Sophocles). Not only does it come at the end of an artistic era, but it was also composed and performed near the end of the Peloponnesian War and the high point of Athenian influence. Rarely does any play stand at the intersection of so many charged themes; it is even rarer that such a play is a comedy.
So, to end this, our most recent annus horribilis and this series which has meant so much to us, we turn to a new version of the Frogs. Who’s ready for some koaks koaks?
Aristophanes, Frogs 237-239
“I am developing blisters,
My rectum has been oozing for a while,
And soon it will jump out and say…
Artistic Director: Paul O’Mahony (Out of Chaos Theatre) Associate Director: Liz Fisher Director of Outreach: Amy Pistone (Gonzaga University) Dramaturg: Emma Pauly Executive Producer: Lanah Koelle (Center for Hellenic Studies) Producers: Keith DeStone (Center for Hellenic Studies), Hélène Emeriaud, Janet Ozsolak, and Sarah Scott (Kosmos Society) Poster Artist: John Koelle Poster Designer: Allie Marbry (Center for Hellenic Studies)
“This is the sign of a man
Who has some brains
And has traveled much:
To always move himself
To whichever side is doing well
And not to stand in one place, taking one stance,
Like a painted statue…”
“Come, let me look at this: did I see this in a dream?”
φέρ᾿ ἴδω, τοῦτ᾿ ἰδὼν ὄναρ λέγω;
Euripides, Cyclops 63-67
“There’s no Dionysus here, no choruses,
No Bacchic revels, no wand-bearing,
No explosion of drums
By the fresh-flowing springs,
Or young drops of wine.”
Silenos: Hello, stranger. Tell me who you are and your country
Odysseus: Odysseus from Ithaka, lord of the land of the Kephallenians
Silenos: I know that guy, a sharp conman, a descendent of Sisyphus.
Odysseus: I am that man. Don’t mock me.
This week, we arrive at the only surviving full Satyr play from Ancient Athens, Euripides’ Cyclops. During the tragic competition, poets would stage a trilogy followed by a satyr play, some kind of vaudevillian satire on tragedy itself. We don’t know as much about satyr plays as we’d like, but from this surviving example we can see some of the extreme bodily humor of comedy combined with tragedy’s mythical figures and themes.
Of course, comedy is about excess and in this reading of the story of Odysseus’ encounter with Polyphemos we are adding our own excess by adding in words and music from from “Cyclops, a Rock Opera” by J. Landon Marcus, Benjamin Sherman, and Chas LiBretto. The small screen may not hold all this energy, but that won’t stop us from trying.
Euripides, Cyclops 334-338
“I don’t sacrifice to anyone but myself, none of the gods,
And to the greatest divinity, my belly!
To drink and eat all day and have no pain
That is Zeus for wise people.”
Artistic Director: Paul O’Mahony (Out of Chaos Theatre) Associate Director: Liz Fisher Director of Outreach: Amy Pistone (Gonzaga University) Dramaturg: Emma Pauly Executive Producer: Lanah Koelle (Center for Hellenic Studies) Producers: Keith DeStone (Center for Hellenic Studies), Hélène Emeriaud, Janet Ozsolak, and Sarah Scott (Kosmos Society) Poster Artist: John Koelle Poster Designer: Allie Marbry (Center for Hellenic Studies)
[Khairestratos]:
“Daos, boy, I am not well
I am depressed because of these events. By the gods
I am not under my own control. I am almost completely crazy.
That fine brother of mine is forcing me
To such insanity with his vile behavior.
He is about to get married!”
“In this way strength is drawn from natural philosophy against death; so too is determination against the fears of religion and a calmness of mind once the ignorance of all natural mysteries has been removed. So too comes moderation, once the nature and number of desires have been explained. And, finally, as I was just arguing, we can learn how to divine a lie from the truth, since this philosophy provides the Rule or Judgment of knowledge.”
Sic e physicis et fortitudo sumitur contra mortis timorem et constantia contra metum religionis et sedatio animi, omnium rerum occultarum ignoratione sublata, et moderatio, natura cupiditatum generibusque earum explicatis, et, ut modo docui, cognitionis regula et iudicio ab eodem illo constituto veri a falso distinctio traditur.
“Blessed child of Laertes, much-devising Odysseus, You really secured a wife with magnificent virtue! That’s how good the brains are for blameless Penelope, Ikarios’ daughter, how well she remembered Odysseus, Her wedded husband. The fame of her virtue will never perish, And the gods will craft a pleasing song Of mindful Penelope for mortals over the earth. This is not the way for Tyndareos’ daughter. She devised wicked deeds and since she killed Her wedded husband, a hateful song Will be hers among men, she will attract harsh rumor To the race of women, even for those who are good.”
“Then Eurynomê the bed-maid led them As they went to bed, holding a torch in her hands. She left again once she led them into the bed chamber; Then they happily entered the rite of the ancient bed.”
Comments from the Scholia:
ἀσπάσιοι λέκτροιο] “They happily and enthusiastically remembered the ancient practice of intercourse”
Aristophanes and Aristarchus believed that this was the end (peras) of the Odyssey
Aristophanes and Aristarchus claim this as the end (telos) of the Odyssey
In the last hour of our Odyssey ‘Round the World, we bring you a dramatic reading of the epic’s final book. Since the Hellenistic period there have been debates about the 24th book of the Odyssey, since it contains more than a few perplexing moments: a second trip to the underworld, a cruel testing of the elderly Laertes, and the split assembly of the suitors’ families as they contemplate the deaths of their loved ones. To top it all off, the epic ends when Athena declares an eklesis, a forgetting of troubles and the reinstatement of Odysseus as king.
If this sudden dea ex machina is not enough, we know from Teiresias’ prophecy that Odysseus’ story is far from over: he is destined to travel again after the end of this poem. Far from being a good reason to dismiss this book, however, these are challenges to the audience to reconsider the tale they have received and any preconceptions about what it was meant to teach them.
Eustathius, Commentary on the Odyssey, II.308
“We should note that according to the very old accounts, Aristarchus and Aristophanes, the best of the ancient commentators, made this line (23.296) the end of the Odyssey, because they were suspicious of what remained to the end of the book. But these scholars are cutting off many critical things, which they claim to oppose, for example the immediately following rhetorical recapitulation of that has happened and then, in a way, a summary of the whole Odyssey and then, in the next book, the recognition scene between Odysseus and Laertes, and the many marvelous things that happen there.”
“So she spoke, and his longing for mourning swelled within him— He wept holding the wife fit to his heart, a woman who knew careful thoughts.
As when the land appears welcome to men as the swim Whose well-made ship Poseidon has dashed apart on the sea, As it is driven by the wind and a striking wave. Then few men flee from the grey sea to the shore As they swim and the bodies are covered with brine on their skin, They happily climb on the shore, escaping evil.
So welcome a sight was her husband to her as she looked upon him And she would not pull her white arms away from his neck.”
Carlos Bellato Danai Epithymiadi Tabatha Gayle Bettina Joy de Guzman Evelyn Miller Rhys Rusbatch Nektarios Theodorou Sara Valentine Argyris Xafis
Special Guests: Leonard Muellner, Gregory Nagy, Sheila Murnaghan, Suzanne Lye
Homer, Odyssey 21.407-409
“Just as a man who knows both lyre and song easily stretches a string on a new peg as he attaches the twisted sheep-gut to both sides just so, without haste, Odysseus strung the great bow”
Artistic Director: Paul O’Mahony (Out of Chaos Theatre) Director of Outreach: Amy Pistone (Gonzaga University) Dramaturg: Emma Pauly Executive Producer: Lanah Koelle (Center for Hellenic Studies); help from Madeleine Cahn
Producers: Keith DeStone (Center for Hellenic Studies), Hélène Emeriaud, Janet Ozsolak, and Sarah Scott (Kosmos Society) Poster Artist: John Koelle Poster Designer: Allie Marbry (Center for Hellenic Studies)
Odyssey 24.478–486
“Do whatever you want—but I will say what is fitting.
Since Odysseus has paid back the suitors,
let him be king again for good and take sacred others.
Let us force a forgetting of that slaughter of children and relatives.
Let all the people be friendly towards each other
as before. Let there be abundant wealth and peace.”
I will speak to you an obvious sign [sêma] and it will not escape you. Whenever some other traveler meets you and asks Why you have a winnowing fan on your fine shoulder, At that very point drive the well-shaped oar into the ground
Students often complain about the lack of verisimilitude in the heroic diet–even though the Odyssey mentions that Odysseus’ companions fish and hunt birds before they kill the cattle in Thrinacia, students find something odd about a diet of meat, bread and wine.
Apparently ancient comic poets did too–and they were concerned about the reality of heroic sexual habits as well. Obviously, as the beginning of book 1 of the Iliad makes clear, eligible ladies were not in excess supply.
[Warning: this next passage is a little, well, explicit] Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 1.46
“Sarpedon makes it clear that they ate fish when he says that being captured is similar to hunting with a fishing net. In the comic charm, Eubolos also says jokingly:
Where dies Homer say that any of the Achaeans Ate fish? They only ever roast meat—he never has Anyone of them boil it at all! And not a one of them sees a single prostitute— They were stroking themselves for ten years! They knew a bitter expedition, those men who After taking a single city went back home With assholes much wider than the city they captured.
The heroes also didn’t allow freedom to the birds in the air, but they set snares and nets for thrushes and doves. They practices for bird hunting when they tied the dove to the mast of the ship and shot arrows at it, as is clear from the Funeral Games. But Homer leaves out their consumption of vegetables, fish and birds because of gluttony and because cooking is inappropriate, he judged it inferior to heroic and godly deeds.”
“He was like someone speaking many lies similar to the truth.”
ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα·
Homer, Odyssey 15.398–401
“Let us take pleasure in calling to mind each other’s terrible pains while we drink and dine in my home. For someone may even find pleasure among pains when they have suffered many and gone through much.”
Now that we have finished all of the extant Greek tragedies, we are turning to a truly epic day: 24 hours of performances of the Odyssey around the world. We will start at 4 pm EST (9 PM UK) today (December 8th) with book 1 and each book will be performed by a different group around the world, culminating in a dramatic reading of book 24 at our usual time, 3 pm EST on Wednesday. December 9th. Check out the list of participants.
We know less about the performance of Homeric epic than we’d like to. The evidence of singers in the poems and references in works like Plato’s Ion imply that episodes of each epic were performed independently. Similar evidence supports the idea of competitive, monumental performances of the Iliad and the Odyssey at festivals like the Panathenaia. While good evidence supports a performance of the poems in a festival contest with rhapsodes working in sequence, many have also argued for a three-part performance of the Iliad, with breaks happening at thematically significant moments.
Whatever the context and length, the most salient thing of Homeric epic in performance was the presence of the audience, of people enjoying these narratives together. We can’t gather for a symposium or crowd into an amphitheater for a festival, but even remotely we can share the same words at the same time. So, for one day we invite you to escape your isolation into a worldwide community, taking the Odyssey on a global tour.
Homer, Odyssey 6.205-210
“We live at a great distance from others amid the much-sounding sea, Far away, and no other mortals visit us. But this man who has wandered here, who is so ill-starred, It is right to care for him now. For all are from Zeus, The strangers and the beggars, and our gift is small but dear to them. Come, handmaidens, give the stranger food and drink; Bathe him in the river, where there is shelter from the wind.”
“So she spoke, and his longing for mourning swelled within him— He wept holding the wife fit to his heart, a woman who knew careful thoughts.
As when the land appears welcome to men as the swim Whose well-made ship Poseidon has dashed apart on the sea, As it is driven by the wind and a striking wave. Then few men flee from the grey sea to the shore As they swim and the bodies are covered with brine on their skin, They happily climb on the shore, escaping evil.
So welcome a sight was her husband to her as she looked upon him And she would not pull her white arms away from his neck.”
“Just as a man who knows both lyre and song easily stretches a string on a new peg as he attaches the twisted sheep-gut to both sides just so, without haste, Odysseus strung the great bow”
Artistic Director: Paul O’Mahony (Out of Chaos Theatre) Director of Outreach: Amy Pistone (Gonzaga University) Dramaturg: Emma Pauly Executive Producer: Lanah Koelle (Center for Hellenic Studies); help from Madeleine Cahn
Producers: Keith DeStone (Center for Hellenic Studies), Hélène Emeriaud, Janet Ozsolak, and Sarah Scott (Kosmos Society) Poster Artist: John Koelle Poster Designer: Allie Marbry (Center for Hellenic Studies)
Odyssey 5.488-493
“Just as when someone hides a firebrand in black ash On the farthest edge of the wilderness where there are no neighbors And saves the seed of fire when there is no other way to kindle it, Just so Odysseus covered himself in leaves. Then Athena Poured sleep over his eyes so he might immediately rest From his exhausting toil, once she closed his dear lashes.”
December 9 Performing Epic: The Odyssey with Suzanne Lye (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Leonard Muellner (Brandeis University), Sheila Murnaghan (University of Pennsylvania), and Greg Nagy (Harvard University); translation by Stanley Lombardo, courtesy of Hackett Publishing Company
December 16 Cyclops, Euripides with Carl Shaw (New College of Florida)
I will speak to you an obvious sign [sêma] and it will not escape you. Whenever some other traveler meets you and asks Why you have a winnowing fan on your fine shoulder, At that very point drive the well-shaped oar into the ground
[Khairestratos]:
“Daos, boy, I am not well
I am depressed because of these events. By the gods
I am not under my own control. I am almost completely crazy.
That fine brother of mine is forcing me
To such insanity with his vile behavior.
He is about to get married!”
“In this way strength is drawn from natural philosophy against death; so too is determination against the fears of religion and a calmness of mind once the ignorance of all natural mysteries has been removed. So too comes moderation, once the nature and number of desires have been explained. And, finally, as I was just arguing, we can learn how to divine a lie from the truth, since this philosophy provides the Rule or Judgment of knowledge.”
Sic e physicis et fortitudo sumitur contra mortis timorem et constantia contra metum religionis et sedatio animi, omnium rerum occultarum ignoratione sublata, et moderatio, natura cupiditatum generibusque earum explicatis, et, ut modo docui, cognitionis regula et iudicio ab eodem illo constituto veri a falso distinctio traditur.
