Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explain what I believe to have been the nature of the relationship between Aristophanes and the producer of his earliest plays, Kallistratos. My view was indicated in my edition of Wasps without full explanation. It is much the same as the view taken by Rennie in his edition of Akharnians , but I think that it can be given more cogent support than Rennie gave it. Recently the whole matter has been discussed afresh by G. Mastromarco , 153–96)andS. Halliwell ,33–45).1 This has enabled me to make my article briefer; I need not repeat the full bibliographical references to other views which Mastromarco and Halliwell have given, and I can, for the most part, confine my comments to the points on which I disagree with them.2 Everyone accepts the statements of the Hellenistic scholars that the earliest plays of Aristophanes were produced διΚαννιστρτου. Consideration of what this meant may begin from his own justification of the arrangement, given in the parabasis of Knights