knock-knock

Blackadder the Third (1987)

The 'door-knocking scene' has long been an opportunity for comic business. What I suppose was initially a solution to the problems of entry and exit to  and from the stage quickly became a standard bit in the dramatic comedies of ancient Athens. Door-knocking scenes occur elsewhere in Greek literature: in tragedy, in Plato's dialogues, in Athenian law-court speeches, even in one of Aesop's fables (Perry #246) and yes! in Christian texts. While these incidences may also reflect the simple facts of everyday life - one assumes life ran fairly high in antiquity - the influence of the comic door-knocking scene is never too far away.

Impertinent butler!

Entries and exits are very frequently managed in tragedy by having one character announce the approach of another. These characters then simply enter from one of the parodoi or eisodoi (our stage-left and stage-right). Door-knocking scenes are still required, however, to facilitate interactions between the interior of houses which are 'off-stage' in ancient drama and the stage itself. Aeschylus, despite often being perceived as heavy, old-fashioned, and a little bit "gothic" (for which Aristophanes' Frogs is largely responsible) was quite clearly a big fan of door-knocking scenes and uses them to not only provide tension but also some comic relief. In Libation Bearers, Orestes arrives at the palace of his mother Clytemnestra and her boyfriend Aegisthus, basically with the intention of murdering both of them to avenge his father Agamemnon. Obviously then, since we know what Orestes is planning, his arrival should be a tense scene. His aggressive and impatient knocking on the door is perhaps appropriate if we read it as representing Orestes' nervous energy, but the tension is probably released as we laugh at the porter's response:

Orestes
Boy! Boy! Hear my knocking at the outer door! Who is inside? Boy! Boy! I say again, who is at home? Again for the third time I call for some one to come out of the house, if by Aegisthus' will it offers welcome to strangers.

Servant
Yes, yes, I hear. Of what land is the stranger, and whence?

(Libation Bearers 653-7, trans. H.W. Smyth, full-text available on Perseus) 

Some would argue that there is no real humour intended here, and obviously how the scene is interpreted on-stage will make a big difference, but anyone familiar with Shakespeare's Macbeth knows there's nothing dissonant about having a comic porter in a tragedy. The porter in Aeschylus' play only speaks this line with Orestes' nurse getting the monologue after Clytemnestra admits him unaware of his true identity. The hungover porter of Macbeth perhaps reminds more of the Watchman in the opening scene of Aeschylus' Agamemnon (watch it here). For another, non-door-knocking related example, at a performance of La Traviata recently I was pleasantly surprised by the execution of the comic interlude before Alfredo dishonours Violetta with his winnings from the table. As Fielding has it: 

Before we proceed any farther in this tragedy we shall leave Mr Joseph and Mr Adams to themselves, and imitate the wise conductors of the stage, who in the midst of a grave action entertain you with some excellent piece of satire or humour called a dance... 

(Joseph Andrews Bk. 3 Ch. 10)

Groucho and Chico in Horse Feathers (1932)

Given the importance of door-knocking for drama in general - and not just comedy - we are lucky that monkey business with all sorts of portals has never really gone away. My point here is that modern comedy, since the advent of film, is an extremely underutilized resource for teaching and research when it comes to ancient comedy. It is immensely rewarding to see how a setup can be repeated throughout literary history from Aristophanes and Aeschylus to Shakespeare to Seinfeld or (god forbid) Friends. I am being a tad ironical but I also mean a certain iconoclasm. Comparison need not imply equivalence but why bother teaching Aristophanes if it doesn't also make us reflect on ourselves and our own cultural consumptions. On the other side, if a few scenes from a popular sitcom can get us thinking about physical comedy and stage business then the comparison is worthwhile for stimulating engagement with ancient material. (On this note I should direct the reader to a blog post I wrote last year for my department's blog). Such approaches are vulnerable to criticism about the inappropriateness or invalidity of the comparison. All it takes is one similarity, however, and maybe we can then begin to see the differences in a really productive way. 

The locus classicus for door-knocking scenes in ancient comedy is undoubtedly Dicaeopolis come to Euripides for tragic rags in Aristophanes' Acharnians. It is my personal favourite in any case so I will leave you with this and invite you to think of modern counterparts (so long).

Acharnians 393-404

Top 10 ψυχρά of 2022

or what's hot and what's not in prose style 2023...

What would Aristotle think?

In no particular order and with my tongue very much in my cheek:

1a. Using a substantivised adjective + genitive over the traditional adjective + noun pairing, 1b. pluralising things that don't need be, 1c. distressing use of the definite article (or 1d. indefinite article). For example, instead of saying 'I'm interested in economic theory and the Roman economy' you can say 'I'm interested in theories of the economic and in the economies of the Romans'. This trifecta is trendy with those using theories of the queer, the critical, and the affected (see further 8 below). Most recent sighting: 

They further demonstrate how the analytical frameworks developed by queer theorists in the last thirty years deeply resonate with the ways in which Euripides' plays twist poetic form in order to challenge well-established modes of the social.

2. 'Whilst'

Just use 'while' or 'although' - you're not a 19th century novelist and you're not from Central England either.

3. Using γάρ in English. 

For it makes me laugh for to use 'for' for a conjunction. Popular in American English where I think it is idiomatic rather than fancy.

4. 'In this connexion' 

One I confess I was too fond of as an undergrad. 'In this connection' is the coward's choice. If you're going to do it, at least stick your neck out with the archaic spelling but I'd suggest it's better to avoid getting into connections altogether.

5. 'In terms of' 

Another personal failing and one which looks worse for its South Dublin parochiality. Hilariously abused by Irish rugby players. Leinster and Ireland back-rower Caelan Doris recently managed an incredible three 'in terms ofs' in one interview - bless. But that's fine for Doris in terms of he's a star rugby player and I'm a tyro academic...

6. 'As such'

Another guilty pleasure. A seemingly helpful way to connect two sentences together when one really wants 'accordingly' or 'therefore' etc. I would actually disagree with the 'as such' then 'as what?' test:

A: The antecedent of 'as such' can be the previous sentence itself. As such, the... B: as what? 

A: As the antecedent of 'as such' can be the previous sentence itself it, that is, the antecedent of 'as such', can be the previous sentence itself. B: As such, just avoid as such.

7. Em, too many em-dashes

Em-dashes are great, but when I find myself using them merely to save me from comma splices then it's time to stop Dickinsoning around and write shorter sentences! Sometimes it's better to leave them to their namesake, who once said:

Because I could not stop using Em-dashes...

The Em-dashes kindly stoppped working for me

8. Translationese Foucauldian Tricolon Crescens

It's not the noughties anymore, you sound like your man in Seinfeld: it's outrageous, egregious, preposterous!

9. 'The fact that'

Just say what you mean! This phrase makes sense in everyday speech. Like many maligned filler phrases and words it is an important way of securing your chance to speak in a group. We could even describe it as asseverative (μήν is a bit more succint). What is annoying about it is that it is perhaps more affected than commoner particles which are just discourse markers like 'like'. In any case, it has no place in good academic prose. A similar junk phrase, which is commoner in academic publications, is 'what it is is'. What it is is yikes! Just 'that' will usually serve for 'the fact that'. Cut that officious fat.

10. 'Often'

Ma bête noire.

Dishonourable mention here for using too much French, Latin, German etc. (#11) - a sure sign of insecurity and one I know only too well, but it can be witty if done right. In any case (#12?), 'often' is often a total copout. It often generalises and hedges far too much. If I say 'Aristophanes often parodies tragedy', that is unlikely to cause much consternation. Yet the question often remains, how often is often? Often, it is perfectly fine to use often for something that is relatively (#13, relative to what?) frequent but it often lets an author make broad totalising statements without good evidence of something occurring often. The real problem is often when 'often' begins to mean 'more than once' and often therefore 'all the time' but in such a way that it often becomes difficult to pin an author down and argue against their claims.

Happy belated new year.

Sorry, belated happy new year!

Feel like Thucydides circa 429 BC

Antiphanes, Antigone, and The Meaning of Life

Antiphanes was one of the great playwrights of Middle Comedy. He really deserves an edition & commentary to go with Hunter's Eubulus (1983) and Arnott's Alexis (1996). The Suda gives us a classic biographical trope, saying that he was the son of slaves... yadda yadda... good for him if true... The Suda also tells us that he won 13 victories, 8 apparently at the Lenaia (from the victor's list inscriptions) - the other 5 presumably at the City Dionysia. He produced plays from 385 BCE onwards (Anon. De. Com). Based on the number of titles we have (approx. 140) he must have had a fairly long and productive career. 

One of my favourite fragments of Antiphanes (fr. 228 KA, play unknown) is preserved in the epitome of Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae, how lucky we are! It also crops up in Eustathius' commentary on the Odyssey - surprise, surprise. We're in Book 1 and amongst the characteristic chaos of miscellany we get a few thoughts on drinking, specifically in the context of the Dogstar's reputed tendency to dry things out - including people's organs! The solution, of course, is to keep one's innards moist with wine, which brings us to a great piece of advice from Antiphanes.

Here's the text from Kaibel's edition of the Deipnosophistae. Neither Olson's Loeb Bk. 1 p. 127 nor the Kassel-Austin fragment differ from it too significantly. I have, with Olson, deleted the interpolated line which Kaibel and Kassel-Austin print in brackets.

So those that drink go with the flow and live a long and beautiful life. Those that don't, sensible sticks in the mud, are destroyed by the current. What wonderful imagery, where did Antiphanes get it? 

Sophocle's Antigone, where else? Creon's son Haemon, Antigone's betrothed, is the font of this piece of wisdom. Haemon is desperate to persuade the despicable Creon (complaints to oudenmoimelei@nugastheatri.com) to forgive Antigone and spare her from execution. The example of the unbending tree which is uprooted is followed by a nice ship of state simile. Haemon's point is that Creon must be ready to make concessions when it is advantageous to everyone. To resist means destruction. I still remember reading Haemon's speech very early in the morning (in a haze of Drum) before my Greek tragedy class during my undergrad - those were the days! Here's the original version then with a plain translation (compare Jebb's):

The irony, or better the profundity of Haemon's advice is that it could also be applied to Antigone. What happens when one Sophoclean hero comes up against another? Unstoppable forces and immovable objects. Neither yield and both are destroyed... 

So drink! But not like a Sophoclean hero who doesn't know when to stop. Admit it when you're wrong, but don't always go with the flow... 

Fragments of Greek Comedy (after A.E. Housman)

Aristocrates fr. 69 Kock = Bollux ix.21

[And looking for a wool-tufted stopper for my asshole]

A grater, a frying-pan, and drinking instead from 

a wooden cup, for Thrassa fell on the goblets 

and smashed them. Just the other day she scorched

the new pot Philocerce had from Corinth

She should give thanks that I do not sell her

to the Dogfox

***

Menodyoboulon fr. 2 Meineke = Athenaeus 17.896f

A: When I was your age, you could give your 

slave boy six obols and send him to the fishmarket

and he would bring back a hemiektos of gorgon-headed sprats,

a basket of well-hung Copaic eels, two swift coming tunnyfish steaks,

†wrestling schools† and carrying it all himself

he would still have one obol in his mouth

and another clenched tightly between his cheeks

B: Not throwing a dinner party for Dinarchus

were you?

A:        No by Zeus, but for Hypereides!

***

Philander fr. 332 = Poxy 1341.2 

A: What are you saying? I don't believe you

This can't be true, oh what shall I do?

You mean to say that my son, my clever

Xylinous has fallen in love with that girl Laikastridia?

B: That's the truth master, why would I lie to you?

A: So it seems all mortals must suffer

We try and act as best we can but fate has other plans

How can my son be in love with a woman?

B: Try and calm down master, it is only natural after all.

Weren't you the same when you were a young man?

A: Well when you put it like that, I have had a complete 

change of heart, I can't even remember what it is

I was so angry about, to think I was going to turn them

both out of house, no, no not at all. 

We must have a wedding at once! There must be torches,

garlands, flute players. Quick, go down to the market 

at once and hire out a whole army of cooks!

***

A.E. Housman

'An indeterminate little man with a scraggy moustache'

Read the original here

Behind You! Tzetzes on Lycophron

 John Tzetzes or  Ἰωάννης Τζέτζης was a Byzantine scholar and poet who lived and worked in Constantinople in the 12th century AD.  While modern scholars occasionally have harsh words for the pedant and poetaster Tzetzes, his activity as a grammarian and poet has preserved valuable fragments of ancient poetry, even if he has often been accused of inaccuracy in his quotations. One author for whom Tzetzes is particularly important is Hipponax. Tzetzes seems to have had access to some portion of Hipponax's poetry (his first book of iambics whatever that means), and he clearly knew more of Hipponax than he did of Archilochus (whom he very rarely quotes). He quotes Hipponax frequently in various works, but especially in his commentary on (Pseudo)-Lycophron's Alexandra with which his brother Isaac apparently assisted him.  

In the Alexandra, Cassandra prophesies Menelaus coming among the Iapyges in a journey which mirrors the itinerary of the Argonauts. The geography is muddled and the Tzetzes brothers are not particularly helpful, we could be anywhere from Sicily, to Calabria, to Apulia. We are in the bootheel of Italy for sure anyway. There he will dedicate a mixing bowl from Tamassus, a wild bull hide shield, and a pair of Helen's shoes to Athena Skuletria or Athena Despoiler. Helen's shoes are ἀσκέρας εὐμαρίδας (v. 855) or fur-lined Persian slippers. Alone ἀσκέρα and εὔμαρις refer to two different kinds of shoe: a winter boot with fur or felt and a shoe or slipper of deerskin worn by barbarians (sc. Persians). Lycophron is obviously showing off his knowledge of shoe terminology, no trifling matter. But the pedantic Brothers Tzetzes were not about to let Lycophron away with this one!

Commenting on this line, Tzetzes (I think it is John's voice!) makes clear that askerai are felt boots or artaria (not that that's that helpful!). He proceeds to apostrophize Lycophron and accuses him of stealing words from Aeschylus and Hipponax, and even worse he's stolen them all wrong!

Now the next bit, I have no idea if it's meant to be funny or Tzetzes Bros. are deadly serious here, but I think it's hilarious:

ἀλλ’ ἀναμνήσω τοῦτον ἐγὼ τὸν σοφὸν ποιητήν. οὐκ οἶσθα, ὦ Λύκοφρον, ὅτι, ὅτε σὺ τὴν Ἱππώνακτος κατεῖχες βίβλον, κατόπιν σου ἑστηκὼς ἐγὼ ἑώρων σε τὰς αὐτοῦ λέξεις ἀναλεγόμενον καὶ τὸ ἀσκέρας δὲ ἐκεῖσε εὕρηκας καὶ οὕτω τέθεικας μὴ προσχὼν μηδ’ εἰς νοῦν ἔχων τὰ ῥήματα.

But I will remind the clever poet of this. You did not know, Lycophron, that, when you were holding the book of Hipponax, I was stood behind you watching when you read his words and you found the ἀσκέρας there and so you wrote it down neither paying attention nor keeping in mind the meaning. 

Libro de Los Juegos, 1283. Alfonso X de León y Castilla

There is something funny about the idea of Tzetzes creeping up on Lycophron and watching him at work, I like to imagine the scene which Tzetzes crafts here happening in a mediaeval scriptorium. But it is Tzetzes who is presenting himself as a sort of time-traveller, someone with a unique and personal insight into the workings of poets from the classical past. It's a pity that John ruins the image a little by really belabouring the point in the lines that follow, it is a very long scholion. But it is nonetheless a very vivid and amusing digression and it breaks up what can be quite heavy bedtime reading. For all Tzetzes' self-aggrandizing and schoolmasterly pedantry - I caught out the great and learned Lycophron (did he really?) - the vignette captures the ability which scholarship has to collapse the distance of a thousand years, from Tzetzes back to Lycophron and from us looking back on Tzetzes. Wouldn't we much rather stand behind the giants (not so big after all) than on their shoulders? 

Time to write some gotcha-articles on the solecisms of Homer!

Panyassis was a pain in the ass-is

 

 No one ever wished it longer than it is

Samuel Johnson on Milton's Paradise Lost  

I was tracking down a hapax in Panyassis the other day and stumbled across a hilarious gem in the testimonia. Testimonia are ancient sources which mention or comment on the poet or his works but do not quote from them. They are usually included at the start of a modern edition of an ancient author, especially in editions of fragments. Panyassis of Halicarnassus, apparently a relative of Herodotus, was an epic poet active in the 5th century BC. He is said to have written a Heraclea in 14 Books narrating the deeds of Heracles, as the title suggests.

Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Included in the testimonia is an inscription, apparently made on the back of a bust which is now identified as Panyassis himself.  

The inscription reads: Πανύασσις ὁ ποιητὴς λυπηρότατός ἐστι or 'Panyassis the poet is the most painful'. The bust was found in Herculaneum and now resides in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. I will be going to verify the inscription when all this is over!

It has been supposed, rightly I think, that the perpetrator of this graffito was a bored and frustrated student. To think, Donald Sutherland as the professor in Animal House couldn't even grab his students' attentions by admitting that he also finds Milton boring. 

For someone who spends so much time reading bits and pieces of ancient comedy and digging for humour in other texts, it's a rare pleasure to get some inkling of the everyday banter and student satire of the ancient world. I think it's clear enough that λυπηρότατός means that Panyassis is the most pain-inducing because of his dry and dusty poetry. At any rate a fragment of Cratinus gives us ἄνθρωπος λυπησίλογος 'a man who causes pain by talking'. 

Unlike Milton, and unfortunately for Panyassis too little of his poetry survives for us to know how well-founded the graffiti critic's judgement was. Certainly other ancient sources do not necessarily take a dim view of him, though recommendation by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Quintilian might point exactly to why students might have been sick of him. 

There's something tragicomic about poor Panyassis now being remembered like this because of one disgruntled pupil of rhetoric. They could at least change the picture on his Wikipedia article... But there's also a lesson to be learned here about literary history and how easy it is to construct narratives or to reduce a poet's whole work to a joke or a pithy quote. I only hope the graffiti I used to read in cubicles won't survive for the literary historians of the future.

 Anyway, I'm off to scratch some biting comments about Milton into the local statuary!