In Knights, Aristophanes represents the dangers of parrhēsia run amuck with the near-destruction of an elderly man’s Athenian household by Paphlagon. In this setting, Paphlagon’s invocations of his own parrhēsia and goodwill become a destructive form of flattery, causing chaos in the household and threatening its viability. This article begins with a discussion of the problem of parrhēsia in democratic Athens and the ways in which Cleon exemplified those problems. Moving to an examination of Aristophanes’ Knights, the author tracks the (...) playwright’s exploration and response. Aristophanes uses the figure of the elderly Demos as a metaphor for the decline of the city, allowing him to both critique the demos and to align himself with it. Moreover, even as he must win the audience over in order to achieve the theatrical success he craves, Aristophanes removes himself from the perverse logic of dēmophilia-turned-pandering by claiming to be motivated not by goodwill for the audience, but by his hatred of Cleon, an enemy shared by both the playwright and the city. (shrink)

Summary The article examines unofficial imperial nicknames, sobriquets and appellatives, from Octavian Augustus to Julian the Apostate, in the light of traditions of Roman political humour, and argues that in the political field during the Principate there were two co-existing competing modes of emperors’ naming: along with an official one, politically loyal, formalised and institutionally legitimised, there existed another – unofficial, sometimes oppositional and even hostile towards individual emperors, frequently licentious, humorously coloured and, in this regard, deeply rooted in Roman (...) Republican traditions of political humour. Many of the known imperial nicknames and appellatives belong to a specific kind of folklore and express popular public opinion. They survived for us because of ancient authors’ interest in using such material for their literary and ideological intentions, particularly to express better the individual characteristics of the historical personages. But, for the very same purposes, Greek and Roman writers could invent some names and sobriquets, following special rhetorical and moralising principles, or mere love of ridicule. All in all, most imperial nicknames, both authentic and made-up, reveal a rather good quality of humour and mockery constructed by expressive linguistic devices and various rhetorical tropes. An apt derisive nickname marked anti-values, mocked the ruler’s badness and could vilify his reputation to the extreme, stigmatise his personality, or else become a widely-used quasi-cognomen. Many nicknames and appellatives were of ephemeral, ad hoc nature, their sense and effect largely dependent on the particular context; but, taken as a whole, they demonstrate the possible scope of and common trends in naming practice. The political system of the Principate and its very atmosphere of hypocrisy did promote double meaning and double thinking reflected in the double system of the rulers’ nomenclature. Imperial nicknames were a counter-hegemonic transcript and a weapon in the struggle for symbolic capital. All the efforts which many emperors took to control their nomina were ultimately powerless against the strength of the inevitable humorous counter-naming by the ruled. (shrink)

This article has two objectives. First, and in particular, it seeks to reinterpret the ostracism procedure of early democratic Athens. Since Aristotle, this has been understood as a rational, political weapon of collective defense, intended to expel from Athens a disproportionately powerful individual. In this article, by putting emphasis on themateriality, gestures, and location of ostraka-casting, I propose instead that the institution can more fruitfully be understood as a ritual enactment of civic unity. Second, and more generally, I hope to (...) explore the frames within which early Athenian democracy is placed: while Greek kingship and tyranny have been very successfully explored through anthropological and cross-cultural comparison, Greek democracy for the most part has remained in the domains of the institutional historian and political theorist. Taking a phenomenological and comparative approach, this article asks how the citizens of early democratic Athens experienced and comprehended their new sovereignty and the invented procedures of mass decision-making through which it was expressed. (shrink)

In his speech On the Crown , the orator Demosthenes twice refers to his opponent Aeschines as a kinados , both times in the context of accusing him of flattery and slandering in the service of Philip of Macedon . Although a number of scholars have studied the use of invective in the speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines, very little attention has been paid to the significance of this peculiar epithet. In this note, I investigate why Demosthenes calls Aeschines a (...) kinados, suggesting that, in addition to painting Aeschines as devious, the word may also have served as a pun. (shrink)

The return of Hephaistos to Olympos, as a myth, concerns the establishment of a balance of power among the Olympian gods. Many visual representations of the myth in Archaic and Classical Greek art give visible form to the same theme, but they do so in a manner entirely distinct from the manner in which it is expressed in literary narratives of the tale. In this paper, I argue that vase-painters incorporated elements of Dionysiac processional ritual into representations of the return (...) of Hephaistos in order to articulate visually the principal theme of the myth. The vase-painters structured the myth along the lines of epiphanic processions in which Dionysos was escorted into the city of Athens. Like Dionysiac epiphanic processions, the procession of Hephaistos, Dionysos and the wine-god's followers is distinguished visually by drunkenness, ostentatious display of the phallus and obscene or insulting behaviour. To judge from the aetiological myths associated with them, the epiphanic processions symbolized the triumph of Dionysos over, and his belated acceptance by, those who denied his status as a god. By structuring the visual representations of the return of Hephaistos along the lines of such Dionysiac processions, artists conveyed visually the idea that the myth al so concerned the triumph of a god over those who rejected him, and his acceptance among the Olympians. It is not necessary to assume that the vase-painters relied on a detailed poetic account of the myth to create their representations of it, because they employed elements of religious spectacle, an inherently visual phenomenon, to convey the essence of the story. (shrink)

Abstract: In the Philebus, Socrates constructs a dialectical argument in which he purports to explain to Protarchus why the pleasure that spectators feel when watching comedy is a mixture of pleasure and pain. To do this he brings in phthonos (malice or envy) as his prime example (47d-50e). I examine the argument and claim that Socrates implicitly challenges Protarchus’ beliefs about himself as moderate and self-knowing. I discuss two reasons to think that more is at stake in the argument than (...) the mixed pleasure and pain of comic malice. (shrink)

Dans l’Apologiede Platon, Socrate affirme quephthonosetdiabolēont conduit Aristophane à devenir l’un de ses accusateurs. Soit Socrate commet une grossière exagération, car clairement Aristophane ne faisait que plaisanter, soit nous avons tort de penser que l’humour d’Aristophane n’est rien d’autre que de la plaisanterie. Dans cet article, je défends la seconde position. Je soutiens qu’Aristophane est un type spécifique de conservateur social et que Socrate était le genre de social-libéral qui dérangeait Aristophane. Je conclus queLes Nuéesn’est pas un texte innocent, mais (...) est, comme Socrate le prétendait, motivé parphthonosetdiabolē. (shrink)

Las comedias de Aristófanes del periodo cleoniano, que se centran en polémicas políticas, emplean una misma técnica de apertura: el primer personaje protagónico que sale a escena en el prólogo representa la posición política defendida en la pieza y actúa como su principal portavoz. La prioridad en el orden de aparición genera en el público una empatía por los personajes que inauguran la obra porque estos acceden a un contacto inicial, cómplice, con el público y pueden asentar su postura antes (...) que los antagonistas, que siempre ocupan la escena con posterioridad. Además, gracias al carácter convencional del recurso, el espectador ya podría anticipar con seguridad, desde la apertura misma de la pieza, cuál sería la postura defendida en la obra. Este recurso contribuye, por lo tanto, a limitar las ambigüedades propias de toda ficción literaria, favorece la estrategia persuasiva de la pieza y genera efectos argumentativos sobre los espectadores. (shrink)