The Rivals of Aristophanes

The work of the 'other' comic poets of classical Athens, those who competed with, and in some cases defeated, their (eventually) better-known fellow comedian, Aristophanes, has almost eluded the historical record. The poetry of Cratinus, Phrynichos, Eupolis and the rest has survived only in tantalising, often tiny, fragments and citations. Modern studies in this field have themselves often been difficult of access. Here an exceptional cast of scholars, including most of the leading international authorities, provides a set of 28 interpretative essays to cover every one of these 'other' poets of Athenian Old Comedy for whom significant evidence survives. The work includes a comprehensive bibliography, and is a landmark in the study of Old Comedy.



David Harvey has co-edited Crux: Studies presented to G.E.M. de Ste Croix, and together with his wife Hazel has translated Karl Rheinhardt's Sophocles and Richard Heinze's Virgil's Epic Technique. John Wilkins is the author of the Oxford commentary on Euripides' Heraclidae; Archestratus: The Life of Luxury, and The Boastful Chef: The Discourse of Food in Ancient Greek Comedy. He is co-editor of Athenaeus and his World. David Harvey and John Wilkins are also joint editors of Food in Antiquity.



List of illustrations Acknowledgements Epigraph Jonathan Swift Introduction - John Wilkins Foreword: Frogments - Kenneth Dover I. MANUSCRIPTS 1. On editing fragments from literary and lexicographic sources - W. Geoffrey Arnott II. POETS 2. The rivalry between Aristophanes and Kratinos - Wolfgang Luppe 3. Cratinus' Pytine and the construction of the comic self - Ralph M. Rosen 4. Gnesippus paigniagraphos: the comic poets and the erotic mime - James Davidson 5. We didn't know whether to laugh or cry: the case of Karkinos - S. Douglas Olson 6. Hermippus and his catalogue of goods (fr. 63) - Dwora Gilula 7. Phrynichos and his Muses - David Harvey 8. Pherekrates and the women of Old Comedy - Jeffrey Henderson 9. Strattis' Kallippides: the pompous actor from Scythia? - David Braund 10. A portrait of Eupolis: preliminary report - Giorgos Kavvadias 11. POxy. 4301: a new fragment of Eupolis? - Wolfgang Luppe and Ian C. Storey 12. Some problems in Eupolis' Demoi - Ian C. Storey 13. The choice of dead politicians in Eupolis' Demoi: Themistocles' exile, hero-cult and delayed rehabilitation Pericles and the origins of the Peloponnesian War - Thomas Braun III. OLD COMEDY TO MIDDLE COMEDY 14. Eupolis and the periodization of Athenian comedy - Heinz-Gunther Nesselrath 15. From Old to Middle to New? Aristotle's Poetics and the history of Athenian comedy - Keith Sidwell IV. LITERARY THEMES 16. Comic plots and the invention of fiction - N.J. Lowe 17. Lyric in the fragments of Old Comedy - Bernhard Zimmermann with a response by David Harvey 18. The language of non-Athenians in Old Comedy - Stephen Colvin 19. Aristophanes versus the rest: comic poetry in Old Comedy - Michael Silk V. SOCIAL THEMES 20. Myth and ritual in the rivals of Aristophanes - Angus Bowie 21. Edible choruses - John Wilkins with an aegological note by Oliver Rackham 22. Symposiasts, fish-eaters and flatterers: social mobility and moral concerns - Nick Fisher 23. Topikos Oinos: the named wines of Old Comedy - Andrew Dalby 24. Female figures and metapoetry in Old Comedy - Edith Hall 25. Old Comedy and the sophists - Christopher Carey 26. Platon, Eupolis and the 'demagogue-comedy' - Alan H. Sommerstein 27. Life among the savages and escape from the city in Old Comedy - Paola Ceccarelli 28. The World Turned Upside Down: utopia and utopianism in the fragments of Old Comedy - Ian Ruffell Biographical appendix General bibliography Glossary Index locorum General index