The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy 019924068X, 9780199240685

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The Boastful Chef The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy ':

JOHN WILKINS 'j., \ .. )

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OXFORD UNIVERSITY

PRESS ;'""'.-.

OXFORD

CONTENTS

UNIVl!ll.SITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 60p Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford

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e John

Wilkins 2000

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing

in Publication

Data

Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication )

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ISBN O-I9-924068-X I

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Wilkins, John, 1954The boastful chef: the discourse of food in ancient Greek comedy / John Wilkins. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. I. Greek drama (Comedy)-History and criticism. a. Dinners and dining-Greece-History. 3. Food habits-Greece-History. 4. Dinners and dining in literature. s. Cookery+-Greece-e-History. 6. Food habits in literature. 7. Cookery in literature. 8. Cooks in literature. I. Title. PA3t66 .WS5 2000 882'.01093SS-dc21 00-035643

3 S 7 9 10 8 6 4

2

Typeset in Imprint by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India Printed in Great Britain . - on acid-free paper by BiddIes Ltd., Guildford and King's Lynn

Acknowledgements

Vlll

A bbreuia tions

IX

Introduction

Xl

Comedy and the Material World I. I. The Scope of This Chapter 1.2. Approaches to the Material World 1.3. The Raw Materials 1+ The Body, Animal, Human, and Divine 1.5. The Human Body: Eating and Body -size 1.6. Excreta 1.7. The Process of Growing and Cooking Food 1.8. Pots and Pans and Wine-Cups 1.9. Food and Sex I. 10. The Material of Athenaeus I. I I. The Material of the Comic Text

I.

Food in the Comic Social Order Scope of This Chapter 4 2.2. Eating in the Comic Polis 2.3. Eating in the Community 2.4. The Solitary Eater 2.5. Gluttons __:,. 2.6. Parasites __;;, 2.7. The Cook 2.8. The Bomolochus _~ 2·9· Heracles 2.10. The Comic Construction of Boeotian and Other Greek Diets 2. I I. Comic Eating

I 1

4 12

2.

2.1.

3. Comedy on Agriculture

and the Blessings of Peace 3. I. Comedy on the Countryside and Agriculture 3.2. The Agricultural Gods of Old Comedy 3.3. Food in Abundance in the Age Before Agriculture

97 99 103 103 107 110

VI

Contents

Contents 3+ Comic Utopias and Comic Agriculture 3.5. Agriculture and Agricultural Gods 3.6. Old Comedy on Festivity

4. The Comic Agora 4. I. Dionysus Naukleros 4.2. Athens/Peiraeus as a Major Port 4.3. The Comic Market-place 4.4. Dining in the Agora and the Prytaneion 4.5. Aristophanes, Knights

=>

5. Dionysus and His 'Wine in Comedy 5. I. Approaches to the Comic Symposium 5.2. Sympotic Discourse in Comedy 5.3. Athenaeus on Comic Symposia and Syrnpotic Discourse 5+ Dionysus on the Comic Stage 5.5. Sympotic Elements in Comedy 5.6. The Poets Compose When Drunk: Wine and Wisdom 6. Luxurious Eating in Comedy 6. I. Approaches to Luxurious Eating 6.2. Terminology 6.3. Comedy on Luxury in Athens and Beyond 6+ Luxurious and Non-luxurious Diners in Attic Comedy 6.5. Luxurious Food in Comedy: (i) Fish 6.6, Luxurious Food in Comedy: (ii) Cakes 7. The Culinary Literature of Sicily 7. I" Putting the Fish Back into Poetry 7.2. Drama in Sicily 7.3. The Role of Food in the Plays of Epicharmus 7+ The Phlyax Vases and Fish-plates 7.5. Attic Comedy and the Cookery Book 7.6. The Deipnon of Phil oxen us 7.7. Parody in Hexameters 7.8. The Impact of Parody on Attic Comedy 8. The Comic Cook 8.1. The GreekMageiros 8.2. From Mageiros-protagonist

to Stock Character

8.3. 8 048.5. 8.6. 8.7. 8.8.

115 124

130 . 156 156 r60

164

r75 179 202

4

20

211 213

223 229 243

257 259 272

275 290 293 304 312

312 318 320 331

341 350 354 363 369 369 371

".f .:! .

The Heat of the Kitchen A Sicilian Influence? The Boastful Cook oflVIiddle and New Comedy Athenaeus on the Mageiros The Samothracians of Athenion The Dyscolus of Menander

Vll

382 384 387 408

410 412

9. Conclusion

415

Bibliography Index

.423

437

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

I wish to thank my Exeter colleagues for their encouragement and support, in particular David Braund, Richard Seaford, Emma Gee, and Christopher Gill for reading parts of the book. I also thank the Press Readers and Geoffrey Arnott for helpful advice. The greatest encouragement and inspiration has come from my wife, Heather Chadwick, to whom this book is dedicated.

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American Journal of Archaeology American fournal of Philology J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families (Oxford 197I) Bulletin de Correspondence Hellenique Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Proceedings of the Britisli School at Rome The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 52, ed. D. !VI. Lewis, J. Boardman, J. K. Davies, and !VI. Ostwald (Cambridge 1992); vol. 62, ed. D. lVI. Lewis, J. Boardman, S. Hornblower, and lVI. Ostwald (Cambridge 1994). Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta in Papyris Reperta, ed. C. Austin (Berlin 1973) Classical Journal Classical Quarterly Classical Review Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, ed. F. Jacoby (Berlin, 1923- ) Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, ed. C. Muller (Paris, r841-70) , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Inscriptiones Graecae Journal of Hellenic Studies Journal of Roman Studies Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich 198r- ) Lois sacrees des cites grecques (Paris, 1969) A Greek-English Lexicon', ed. H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. J. Jones (Oxford) Lois sacrees des cites grecques. Supplement (Paris) Oxford Classical Dictionary", ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (Oxford 1996) Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society Poetae Melici Graeci, ed. D. Page (Oxford, 1962) The Oxyrhynchus Papyri , Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica

x

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Abbreviations Pauly's Real-Encyclopiidie der klassischen Altertumsioissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1894- ) Supplementum Hellenisticum, ed. H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons (Berlin and New York, 1983) Sylioge Inscriptionum Graecarum, ed. W. Dittenberger (Leipzig, 1915-24) Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 4, ed. S. Radt' (Gottingen, 1977) Zeitschriftfiir Papyrologie und Epigraphik

INTRODUCTION

.,,~,:,

Foods, the ways in which they are processed and cooked 'and the f social context in which they are consumed, contribute to the selfdefinition of a culture and distinguish it from its neighbours. Greek culture was no exception. The Greeks farmed the animals and plants which grow in the Mediterranean area, they caught fish, birds, and other wild animals from the natural environment, and they supplemented this diet to a limited extent with foods imported from elsewhere.' They consumed these products as foods (with some regional variation) throughout the Greekspeaking world according to religious and social rules which reflected both their relations with their gods and networks between friends, kinsmen, and fellow-citizens. Religious and social practice distinguished them from Persians, Scythians, or Egyptians. There was an additional factor which particularly distinguished the Greeks from their neighbours, namely the '\ extent to which they represented these forms of eating in poetry / and literature from Homer through to late antiquity. In two different cities, Syracuse and Athens, they developed the dramatic form of comedy in whose discourse food was a major element. From the earliest times Greek poetry incorporated food and eating into its verse. In the Iliad heroes sacrificed cattle, cut them up as prescribed by ritual, offered the thigh-bones to the gods in the smoke of sacrifice, and divided the remainder among the human participants in equal portions. These rituals were performed partly to sustain the human body-they ate until they had satisfied the desire for food and drink, in Homer's formulaic phrase. The sacrifice of cattle also constituted the human contribution to the reciprocal relationship between the heroes and their gods, while the accompanying commensality or its failure ~ indicated good or bad relations- at the human level. In the Odyssey foods consumed by those whom Odysseus and his men t Grimm (1996), 1-13, provides the basic data from modern psychology and medical biology for the nutritional requirements of the human body.

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I ntroduction

met identified their difference from Greek eaters, who did not consume human flesh or lotus plants; in the later books, the _ behaviour of the suitors of Penelope at table and their treatment of men begging for food in the house of Odysseus indicated their • moral failings. Later writers such as Plato, the comic poet Eubulus, and Athenaeus commented on the special codes which the Homeric poems appeared to follow for the consumption of foods: unusually for Greeks, the heroes ate plenty of cattle but no fish. What did this signify? Odysseus visited the Phaeacians who " Lived in a semi-paradise with self-generating plants. Did this indicat~ luxury? Circe demolished the boundaries between man and pig with her magical skills. What were the implications of her magic? Hesiod, in Works and Days and the Theogony, gave a mythical aetiology for sacrifice, and in Works and Days set out a literary farmer's calendar which, somewhat selectively, advised when to plant and harvest certain crops. Later authors incorporated feasting and eating into their texts. Elegiac and lyric poetry had a particular interest in sympotic themes which were probably linked to the circumstances of performance, while elegiac and especially iambic poetry developed representations of the lower levels of social life and more humble forms of eating, often com- , bined with the poetry of insult and invective. By the fifth and fourth centuries, Greek writers could thus look back to various X representations of eating composed in a number of different .'•. ' cities. This was a culture which gave a prominent placein its literature to food and eating, even though in many parts, particularly in mainland Greece, food supplies were unpredictable and difficult to manage. Small farmers did not know from one year to the next whether the barley harvest would be adequate; fishermen did not know whether the expected shoals of fish would in fact arrive. Such practical difficulties were of no concern to the heroes and demigods of the Homeric poems, who only considered sources of supply such as fish and game when in the direst straits, but they were a concern to anyone with an eye to the daily sustenance of the people in town and country. The literary genre , \ which most closely addressed these concerns was comic drama." 1 Micha-Lampaki (1984) has studied food in comedy but from the perspec- .; tive of diet ratherthanliterary discourse .

Introduction

Xlll

In 486 Be Athens first included comedy in the dramatic competition at the festival of the City Dionysia. From this date, if not before, comedy was played to a large audience. Comedy was " probably an ancient form, with links to iambic invective and pos- ' i sibly to komoi or songs and dances in honour of Dionysus. 3 Comedy in Syracuse may have pre-dated its Athenian counterpartcertainly comedy was later thought to have originated inDoricspeaking states. Too little is known of the predecessors of Epicharmus-the greatest comic poet in Syracuse-and the circumstances of production in that city. Further, the plays of Epicharmus are difficult to date. Most comedies in both traditions were written in the period 500 Be to 250 Be. Any account we give for this phenomenon cannot rest on local and political considerations alone, for these cities spoke different dialects of Greek and, in the early period of comedy at least, Syracuse was ruled by tyrants and Athens was a democracy which recognized comedy as suitable drama for official production at festivals of Dionysus organized by the city state. The two comic traditions appear to have been very different. Attic comedy was based on festivals of Dionysus, with choruses, great metrical variety, political invective, and obscenity, while Syracusan comedy appears to have rested on mythological burlesque and narrative, with no clear use of either choruses or invective. This study centres on Attic comedy, since the remains of Epicharmus are meagre and less still is known of his successors, let alone of comedies that were never committed to texts. By 350 Be, however, after more than a century of development, some of it influenced from outside, Attic comedy appears to have become more like its Syracusan equivalent, with plots, characters, and the use of burlesque becoming more prominent. I

J It is possible, even probable, that scenes of feasting in Attic comedy derive from parts of a sacrifice to Dionysus and the following komos, but too little is known of the origins of comedy to make such speculation worthwhile. The attempt of Cornford (1914) to construct a hypothesis for the ritual origin of Attic comedy based on the death, resurrection, and marriage of a Vegetation ?pirit has not found favour, largely because the supposed vestiges of that ritual In the plays of Aristophanes cannot be shown to support the theory, In the \ ab~ence of su~h ~ theory fo~ t~e origins of comedy, I simply point out the ubi- \ .quiry of feasting 10 the surviving plays of Aristophanes and Menander and the I assimilation of feasting to themes of marriage and festival in the polis, j

l.._

XIV

1-

Introduction

Introduction

This book uses the conventional division of Greek comedy into four parts: Syracusan Comedy, Attic Old Comedy (486 BC to the late fifth century), Attic Middle Comedy (early fourth century to the time of Menandet+-his first play was put on in 322/1),+ and New Comedy. The divisions between phases of Attic comedy are not rigidly dateable, since some elements of Middle Comedy appeared in Old even before the last two surviving plays of Aristophanes. It is not possible to chart the exact distinctions between Middle and New, since no Middle plays survive and of New only a few plays of Menander survive. It would be accurate to say that Old Comedy modulated into New over a long period, some of which we term Middle. Few comedies survive intact, only eleven of Aristophanes' from Attic Old Comedy and one of Menander's, along with substantial fragments of half-a-doz~n more of his plays. Apart from these, all that remains of the hundreds of comedies composed are thousands of fragments preserved in quotations and on torn pieces of papyrus texts. These fragments are currently being edited in the splendid edition of R. Kassel and C. Austin," which provides the text used in this bo-ok (with the exception of the fragments of the Sicilian poets (I use Kaibel) and the larger fragments of Menander (1 use Sandbach and (where available) Arnott)." In the earliest comedies to have survived, albeit in fragmentary form (namely those of Epicharmus in Syracuse and Ecphantides and Magnes in Athens), it is clear that foods and the way they were eaten were part of the genre. Too little of Sicilian comedies survives to allow us to form a full picture of the role of food there, though I offer some suggestions in Chapter 7. In Athens, on the other hand, the role of food in comedy can be studied with much more confidence. Four aspects immediately distinguished it from its literary predecessors. First, its range is enormous, over social groups, institutions, classes of foods, and all the pots and pans linked with the preparation of food. Second, the consumption offood in comedy is at least as prominent as the drinking of wine. In this respect comedy diverges from sympotic • See Schroder (1996),35-48. S - Poetae Comici Graeci (PC G) (Berlin and New York, 1983- ). ------ 6 .. The book fragments of Menander have been published in Kassel-Austin - (1998), vol. VI/2.Vol. VI/l with the longer papyrus fragments is awaited.

xv

literature. Third, its audience was enormous and gathered together on one occasion. Comedy was also a self-conscious genre which readily commented on its reception by the audience. Few other genres were so closely in contact with a mass audience. While nearly all of Old Comedy was played to the democratic polis, New Comedy was played to an Athenian audience under a variety of administrations, running from democracy to military governors imposed by Macedon. For this study I have assumed that, whatever the political affiliations of the playwright (about which in most cases we know nothing), the comedy was played to \ a large audience, a considerable proportion of the population of either Athens or Syracuse when compared with genres that were not performed at public festivals. Comedy, then, was forced, at least in Athens under the democracy, to take account of a large number of citizens. In this sense it was probably more represen_. : ' tative of the wider polis than, say, sympotic poetry. Comedy con- .,' C' v. t, structs a 'comic polis' parallel to the historical polis; in this ,;0(:~ construction food and feasting playa key role, and the powerful, identified by comedy as leading politicians, poets, and philosophers, are often excluded from the feast and replaced by comically acceptable diners, notably the chorus and the audience. As Davidson (1997) has noted, in comedy there is a very loose def- . inition of 'us', the Athenian people included in the comic feast; broadly, 'we' are everyone but the very prominent, who are set apart in humiliating exclusion.' One other genre, tragedy, produced alongside comedy to large audiences at civic festivals in Athens, occupies an extraordinary place in the literature of food. In tragedy, in comparison with \ most other Greek poetry, almost no food is eaten or wine drunk. [ Comparison with Homer, which in other respects influenced tragedy strongly, makes this clear. There is little feasting and little drinking; this is partly explained by the disruption of sacrifice in tragedy and its perversion either by ritual act or metaphor into murder and kin-killing. Many tragedies present the collapse of relations between humans and gods and between humans themselves in sacrificial terms. Since sacrificial killing in tragedy is

-

7 Powerful people may have been delighted to have been considered of sufficierit note to be ridiculed in comedy. Nevertheless, the comedies take the part of the majority.

_ ~,' '

1

! a

often ambiguous and problematic, there is little place for the consumption of food that should follow. A great feast in Euripides' Ion (at which murder is planned) shows what tragedy could have done with feasts, had the poets so wished. s The hospitable offering of cheese and wine by Electra to her disguised brother in Euripides' Electra is a notable exception to this rule-in a play characterized in other respects as deviant from the canons of tragic composition. Tragic poets appear to have deflected themes on eating and drinking into their fourth, burlesque or satyr play, of which Euripides' Cyclops is a good example. Sacrifice in comedy proceeds without difficulty, with much of the ritual either enacted on stage or reported. Comic sacrifice is, ~ however, rarely of Homeric proportions. Animals are often small or skinny," they are usually killed singly, and in comic references to civic festivals there are no descriptions of the hundreds of animals that were frequently sacrificed. Rather, plays refer only to parts of single animals or to single sacrifice within the period of the festival. This is curious, since comedies reflect other aspects of the festivals of Athens, in two of which they were themselves staged. The explanation appears to lie in the genre's commit(" ment to the domestic and small-scale level of the individual citizen. Both tragedy and comedy explored major ethical and political issues at the level of the oikos or household. Tragedy presents the royal household that rules the city, normally the household of a mythical king. The household is either destroyed or threatened with destruction, often from ...ithin. Comedy also often focuses on the household, sometimes reducing the major institutions of the city to a domestic level, as in Aristophanes' Knights and Wasps. 10 Comic eating is very often presented on the See Schmitt-Pantel (1992). See Dunbar (1995), on Birds 901-2 and Gemme and Sandbach (1973) on Menander, Samia 399-402. These small sacrifices resemble those often made by individuals and by the demes: see Gomme and Sandbach on lYIenander, The Sicyonian 18+. . 10 Although many comedies on mythological themes were written (in Attic comedy mainly from the fifth century until about 350 BC), none survive to a sufficient extent to demonstrate how comic eating: in myth was presented. Some burlesque comedies parodied tragedy, others presented very unusual feasts, such as the banquet offish enjoyed by the gods in the~\1u.ses or Marriage of Hebe of Epicharmus. On burlesque arid-its decline inthe iourth century see Webster (1953), 82-"1...~ t::~discourse of desire in the orators, philosophers, and historians. ThC$C =-.rnlike comedy-~re not concerned with the many different species of ~ cr .:rr:erem sauces or different kinds of courtesan. recording "JW:f-?iroi hired for cult 25 Berthiaume (1982) lists inscriptions purposes. These again are scarcely heralds of new f.as::i~=:"''1cookery. --2~ This figure is disputed. See Pickard-Carnbricge £;:q8S). 263, and Green (1994),10, with n. 24.

XXVll

of ingredients, and the problematizing of pleasure. Further, commentary on other literary genres had long been a major preoccupation of comedy. All of these could be harnessed in Attic comedy at the end of the fifth century, at the very time that comedy was turning from its early civic form (with protagonist and chorus) into a comedy based on the household and the characters within it. The shift from the protagonist who cooks to the stock character of the cook is enormous. For comedy, cooking (as distinct from eating) was no longer an activity of central importance to the plot. The amount of space given to it may not have changed, but the occasion has become important, the wedding or funeral, while the cooking itself has become both more complicated and more satirized-because given to the comic cook. I do not aim to present definitive interpretations of passages of complete plays, let alone of fragments torn from their context. IVIyaim is to' convey the general character and main types of comic discourse on food. The discourse reflects intense interest in certain areas of eating and certain pressures. Thus, if we consider, for example Hermippus fro63 on foods and sympotic goods imported into Athens;" we might stress the presence of Dionysus and urge that this is. a celebration of Athenian strength in trade approved by the god, or we might concentrate on the varied provenances of the goods, from Carthage, the Hellespont, and Phoenicia, and conclude that the main focus is the import of 'luxuries' into Athens. Both explanations, indeed, may be possible. Such passages often balance various aspects of the discourse, as do the scenes of Dicaeopolis' celebrations at the end of Acharnians which have been interpreted in many different ways. It may be, also, that in my consideration of the ritual control in Athens represented by public dining at the prytaneion (in Chapter 4) I have underestimated the levels of 'luxury' allowed in such public buildings. I consider there some evidence for elaborate dining in a public building in the agora found recently by archaeologists. Further, an ancient scholar on Lucian " suggests that women at the Haloa festival in Athens dined on all the foods of earth and sea (with a few exceptions), some of which might come within the discourse of luxury.

27

Quoted at the beginning

of Chap. 4.

28

279.24 Rabe.

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Introduction

One of my Exeter colleagues once remarked how boring he found the series of passages from Old Comedy on comic utopias blessed with automatic provision of food and drink.i? These are seven variations on an alimentary theme written by six poets in serious competition with each other. In the Athenian comic theatre there appears to have been a constant demand for long speeches, sometimes serious and sometimes parodic, listing the elements of feasts and modes of preparation. Such speeches are often interrupted with complaints of their length or inappropriate content-we shall see this in the long speeches of the boastful cook in Chapter 8. But the poets did not cease to write such speeches. The speaker was designed to be engagingly boring, but the content was not. Comedy was the cultural form which dwelt on culinary detail since food was a subject-for discourse, a subject for both anxiety and for celebration, but above all a subject of quite extraordinary importance for the Athenian theatre. 30

I

Comedy and the Material World

1.1.

,I

Athenaeus 7.267e-27oa, quoted in Chap. 3· Peter Garnsey's excellent Food and Society in Classical Antiquity (1999) arrived too late for consideration in this book. Garnsey surveys the production and distribution of food in antiquity and problems of approaching ancient sources. 19

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SCOPE

OF THIS

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Comedy is a particularly materialist form of drama; if the subject is lawcourts, voting funnels and the bar of the court will come into play, if peace, hoes and mattocks will be wielded by farmers' in the context of eating, the verses of comedy are filled with foods, with the pots and pans in which food was prepared and served and with the cups and bowls .in which liquids were contained. In this chapter I consider first the things, the inanimate physical objects of the polis.' And secondly, the nature and structure of bodies, with which comedy is greatly concerned: both the fish and animals that were consumed by humans and the human body itse.lf, the mouth which took the food into the body, the belly which benefited from the nourishment, and the rectum from which waste matter was extruded. For this chapter, the hu~an (and even the divine) body is considered as a physical entity. Comedy manipulates these 'things': it puts their nature under the spotlight-the material fabric of a clay pot, the texture of a fish-head-and explores their places in the social and religious world: a barley cake may be part of a poor man's meal, or of a rich man's meal in another social context, or of an offering to a god in another. Ties between objects and their social or religious places are a particular concern, since comedy challenges these ties and often confuses or transgresses them. As for bodies, in comedy the body of the animal or fish is dissected, while the human body is presented with an emphasis on its apertures rather than the surface whole of the 'person', and even the divine body (in human form) is rendered susceptible to beating and the need to be fed. In this sense the comic body challenges through assimilation the

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On things, see esp. Appadurai

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2

Comedy and the Material

World

Comedy and the Material

accepted hierarchy of animal, human, and divine-fish are compared with women and gods with pigs. Furthermore, ani and inanimate are assimilated: the cooked body of a fish (outside comedy no longer a creature but a 'food') promotes its own cook- .' ing! and is able to dance;' the statue of a goddess bends down and whispers," and even utensils form a religious processions and give' evidence in court." In the following pages comic foregrounding of the material ',' world will be evident in many areas of cultural life. Two in particular may be highlighted here. In religious ritual such objects .s as a robe, a knife hidden in a basket of cereal grains, and a pot of boiled pulses carried enormous significance: the object may have a practical purpose, it may be a gift to the god, it may be supp by a myth which 'explains' its presence at the ritual. However used, the object is indispensable. At Peace 922-38 Aristophanes' characters argue over the range of possible offerings to Peace and, once a sheep is selected, rehearse the dismemberment of the animal into its parts. In all sacrifice the parts of the animal carry particular meanings and are destined for particular participants, human and divine, but comedy will emphasize parts because of its special interest in the material body. At the same time, materialist comedy addresses itself to abstract, thought. The abstract was increasingly important in Athens of the late fifth century as theory and philosophy developed. edy confronts this in its relentless promotion of the materi Clouds, for example, the cosmos of the school of Socrates is trated with the analogy of the domed bread-oven or pnigeus. heavens are represented by the clay dome, while we humans the charcoal with which itis heated (94-7).7 Physicists had rowed images from the known material world as analogies for cosmos." comedy takes this further and forces the philosophical speaker to move from the language of physics to comedy's own world of the kitchen. Philosophy was familiar only to a few, ki tchen to all. Promotion of the material thus sometimes allowed comedy to oppose abstraction to the world of the common p Crates fro 16. 3 In e.g. Diphilus fro64.4 (cited below). Peace 661-7. l Ecclesiazusae 730-45. 6 Wasps 936-66. 7 See O'Regan (1992),28-30. 8 Dover (1968), on L 96, discusses the possibility that Hippon and compared the sky with a pnigeus,

World

3

and so to give an ideological component to material concerns. A simila~ phe?omenon is ~vident in comic citation of tragedy. Nlatenal objects play an Important role in tragedy, but comedy presents foods as Its own and allows foods incongruously to invade the. t~agic disco.urse: in his list of requests to Euripides, Dicaeopolls 10 Acharmans asks for one last thing, 'give me some chervil that you've got from your mother' (478). The joke rests on the supposed trade in vegetables (lachana) which his mother plied.: .m~rket tradin.g in a humble product is, it is implied, a humllIatlO.g occupation for the mother of a tragic poet whose genre (unlike comedy) excl uded the iterns of such a trade. Just as comedy inhabits the material world to a strong degree, so foods ther:nselves have a robust materiality. Wealth 189-93 makes the POlOt: CHREMYLUS: You CARlO: Loaves,

can have a surfeit of all other things, sex ...

Culture, Nibbles, CHREMYLUS: Honour, CARlO: Flat-cakes, CHREMYLUS: Courage, CARIO: Dried figs, CHREMYLUS: Competitiveness, CARlO: Barley cake, CHREMYLUS: Campaigning, CARIO: Lentil SOUp.9 GHREMYLUS:

C.'\RIO:

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Chremylus the master lists abstract terms, while his slave Carion confines himself to foods. To a large extent the focus on foods reA~cts the lower cultural level inhabited by the low-status slave. ThIS ex_ample shows t~at comic poets always had the option of present10g the material world in clear distinction from the ab~tract within its own discourse-without any need to refer to phdosophy or tragedy. Often, however, such distinctions within XP.: TWV IL€V yap tiA"WII

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aTpCl""''Y{Cl~ KA.: ;c---=,: ._,' an emphasis on the body, in particular with the ape:rt'.:~::1..~ :'ody rather than its generalized surface, and with the -1...... ~~.l:.Lml', that is the anus and generative 10 214-32: 'PR'I ..\:.\G..'l;:';;::::Ti:U i=onstrate how women are better than us in their conduct. To s= ~~ ~ ,iye their wool with hot water, according to ancient custom .. -\ll ;:.:...~, --o=?Du won't see them introducing any changes either. By contrast; 1:~'':::::-- ;i .. ~~ns has any institution that is doing fine, it does not look after it. :.;!':~_=::ew light on itcan be devised. The women sit down to roast their ba.-i:-'- :=3 ::re:- used to. They carry things on their head, just as they used to.. ~ ~.::::rr..,:akesjust as they used to. They worry their husbands to death. _i~- ~:;_~ to. They have lovers in the house, just as they used to. They @;:::.~~ zear, just as they used to. They enjoy sexual intercourse, just as ~~"=i:::::!.. -:-'.:rerefore,gentlemen, let's not drone on about handing the city over "'..;.......:.m.::~~·snot bother to enquire what it is they pro .. pose but simply le .,:e!'!'=:'-im: ..... _.. . 11 718-37.

World

5

organs; and with an emphasis on death and the underworld. Bakhtin (1968) has used this approach particularly well in his study of the grotesque in Rabelais. While the grotesque in Greece in the fifth century Be had not developed many of the characteristics seen in the Middle Ages;'? comedy employs a number ofrelated features and shares the perspective of festivity and the voice of the people. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Knights, a play in which two politicians of Athens are declared to be uneducated, to be craftsmen in the two malodorous trades of tanning and black-pudding-making. They process the hides and guts of animals into commodities which they sell as market traders with dishonest sales techniques. The traders dismember animals and process both the hides and the inner parts; but they also make reference to the apertures of their own bodies the shouting mouth and the defecating and farting anus which might also be an avenue for buggery. The politician-traders have suffered loss of status and are slaves, while the most humiliated CleonjPaphlagon, is subjected to the ritual violence of expulsion as the scapegoat, possibly at the Thargelia festival. These elements are studied further in Chapter 4- Knights is not unique: similar treatments of the body of the politician and other prominent citizens are to be found, for example, in Acharnians and in fro99 of the Demes of Eupolis. Two passages will suffice here. Early in Acharnians ambassadors, notorious purveyors of the trappings of power in pompous language, report to the Athenian assembly their sufferings during an embassy to the king of Persia (65-87): You sent us to the great king on expenses of two drachmas a day while Euthymenes was archon. nrCAEOPOLIS: Alas for the drachmas! AMBASSADOR: Then we were exhausted with our travels under awnings AMBASSADOR:

I~ See Carriere (1979),29-32. The grotesque in Greece is exemplified in the Funes of Aeschylus' Eumenides, who are repulsive creatures of the nether regions. Nothing comparable is known in comedy apart possibly from Aristophanes' description of Cleon at Wasps 1032-5 Peace 755-8: 'the most dread gle~ms shone from the eyes of Cynna; a hundred heads of groaning flatterers encircled h.is head with licking tongues; he had the voice of a torrent giving birth to destruction, the smell of a seal, the unwashed testicles of Lamia, and the anus of a camel.' Plays with the title Lamia were written by Euripides and Crates. The farting of Lamia is the subject of Philocleon's attempt at an after-dinner story at Wasps 1177. ... .. . ....

=

Comedy and the Material

6

World

over the plains of the Cayster, reclining softly on special wagons .. almost ruined us. DICAEOPOLIS: I was trying to keep myself going lying among the de by the parapet [of the long walls]. .. AMBASSADOR: We were entertained and under duress drank unmixed wine from cups of crystal and gold. DICAEOPOLIS: 0 city of Cranaus, don't you realize how you are mlDclced by the ambassadors? AMBASSADOR: The barbarians believe real men to be only those able eat and drink the most. DICAEOPOLIS: With us it's the buggers and the bum boys. AMBASSADOR: In the fourth year we arrived at the king's court. But .. was away with an army in the bog and was shitting for eight ... on the golden hills. DICAEOPOL1S: For how long did he keep his arse shut? AMBASSADOR: For the full moon. Then he went home. Then. he en rained us and served us with whole oven-roast oxen .. DICAEOPOLIS: And who ever saw oven-roast oxen? What imposturel Later in the same play Dicaeopolis, who seems to be identi with Aristophanes himself," describes how he was attacked the politician Cleon. The images of insult are those of a to rather than bodily fluids of vomit, urine, and excrement, but orifices of the politician are implied (377-82): '1 myself what 1 suffered at Cleon's hands over last year's comedy. D ging me into the council chamber, he slandered and tongued against me. He rushed like the stream of Cyc1oborus and me so thoroughly that I almost died from his filthy dealings.' The ambassador to Persia reported in 'popular-festive' mo both the bowel movements of the Great King and the ma objects of the banquet, expensive cups, whole animals roaste and mobile couches.v' These indicated the exclusiveness as as the excess and foreignness of the hospitality. A popu approach is particularly suited to the study of Old Comedy; New Comedy obscene and bodily elements are much red but even here material objects are linked with characters of

13

Dicaeopolis

has a complex

identity:

see Foley (1988)