Abusive Criticism
and the Criticism of Abuse

John Wilkins (1993)

I begin with a scurrilous statement:

John Major became Prime Minster because he had been buggered by Nicholas Ridley on many occasions.

This statement, insulting to both politicians and homosexuals, would be unusual in British culture. In ancient Athens, on the other hand, it was a familiar assertion. Alkibiades was the 'wide-arsed chattering son of Kleinias' (Aristophanes, Archarnians 716); 'they say that the young men most often screwed make the most formidable speakers in the assembly' (Aristophanes, Assembly-Women 112-13). The charge was not limited to politicians: Agathon the tragic poet, for example is hailed, 'you bugger, you are a wide-arse not just in words but in deed too' (Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousai 200-1); an ancient commentator on Kratinos, an older comic poet, notes on the play All-Seers' Aristodemos was foul and excessively given to buggery. For this reason he was called Anus… Aristodemos did unseemly things in the tomb of Kimon' (fr. 160KA) - Aristodemos was not necessarily a politician. In the Life of Aristophanes 3-4 we read:

Aristophanes first brought comedy from its early wanderings to something more useful (chresimoteron) and more solemn (semnoteron): Kratinos and Eupolis had used slander and profanity more bitter and more shameful than was necessary.

If we believe this ancient biographer, then the plays of Kratinos and Eupolis had invective more 'bitter' than this characteristic Aristophanic comment on the politician Kleon, 'he has the stink of a seal, the unwashed balls of Lamia, the anus of a camel' (Wasps 1035 = Peace 758).

I began with a political statement. There is of course no reason why a chapter on humour and history should take history to be political history rather than the history of nutrition, the history of society, the history of ideas, women's history, or any other kind of history. I am considering political history in comedy in order to challenge an interpretation which has much support among Classical scholars.

The period under consideration is 486 BC to 404 BC, 486 being the date at which the Athenian state first officially recognised the comic chorus and provided funding from a form of taxation, and 404 being the year of Athens' defeat after a long war against Sparta and approximately the time when choruses in comedy became more attenuated, possibly through problems of funding. With the reduction in the significance of the chorus, who represented a section of the Athenian citizen body, comedy focused less on the city and its politicians and voters, and changed its character. It is the earlier form of comedy with its rich political resonance which concerns us here. Most of the comedies of this period have been lost. The sole extant survivors are eleven plays by Aristophanes, which can be supplemented with thousands of fragments from lost plays. Poets of lost plays who will be mentioned are Kratinos, Hermippos, Eupolis and Plato the comic poet. Aristophanes' earliest surviving play is Archarnians, his third play, produced in 425.

In this period the democracy evolved under such leaders as Perikles, Kleon and Hyperbolos. Towards the end of the period, after the death of Perikles in 429, the extent of change is disputed. It is necessary to comment briefly on this since political changes and debate were reflected in drama, in tragedy as well as comedy: for example in Aeschylus' Oresteia (458) or Euripides' Suppliant Women (420s) changes in the political system were overtly debated. Comedy was as likely to comment on individuals as on changes in the system. In the comedies of the 480s and the 470s, there were no references as far as we know to the influential politicians Themistokles and Kimon, though there was material available: '[Kimon] had the bad reputation of being disorderly and a drinker and like his grandfather in nature, who, because of his simple-mindedness was called Koalemos the simpleton. … When young he was accused of incest with his sister. They also say Elpinike was disorderly …' (Plutarch Kimon 8). Concerning the politicians of the 460s and 450s contemporary comedy is equally silent. It is only for the later career of Perikles in the 440s that much scurrilous abuse is attested, with similar abuse in the period after Perikles, against the politicians Kleon, Hyperbolos, Peisander, Alkibiades, Kleophon and others. We do not know whether political invective was an element in early comedy in the 480s and earlier, or not, but there is a possibility that there was a political flavour to some of the invective that came into comedy from its ancestors, religious ritualised abuse and personal invective, and a stronger possibility that this political flavour increased with the official integration of comedy into a state festival. The alternative is that political invective was suddenly invented in the 450s or 440s. Whatever its origins, political abuse in comedy appears to have developed between 450 and 404.

In politics there appears to have been a shift from rule by members of aristocratic families to rule by people from other families, and in constitutional terms, a shift from the power of the office of general to the power of non-executive speakers in the assembly. I shall return to this shortly. In comedy there seems to be an increase in attacks on non-aristocratic politicians. Political abuse in comedy tends to be very personal, but so in a sense was Athenian politics, based as it was around individuals and their supporters. Beyond the broad loyalties of democrats supporting the people and old families supporting oligarchs, the ancient equivalent of parties was 'x and his supporters', 'y and his supporters'. Now these political and comic developments may be, and probably are, related. The question I want to address is the extent to which comic poets were politically engaged in favour of a particular policy or political group. G.E.M. de Ste Croix, and Alan Sommerstein¹ have argued that for Aristophanes at least a strong political affiliation can be detected. My purpose is to challenge Ste Croix, though, given the nature of the material, I will not be able to refute him. His case is not universally accepted, but it has proved influential.² Ste Croix' case rests on 'politics' as understood in the modern world, that is, on national leaders and the processes of government. It must be stressed, though, that 'politics' was a more extensive term in Greek culture than in ours, and so Greek drama considered as political drama, that is as drama which is closely related to the religious, social and political organisation of the ancient polis, comprised a wider range of human experience than we might suppose.³

I return to the matter of the increasing number of politicians who did not come from noble families as the century continued. In the 470s there was the aristocratic Kimon, reverently recalled after death (on which see below) in a comic fragment:

And I, Metrobios the registrar, had expectations of spending all my days feasting in my bright old age with that god-like and most hospitable, that very best of all the Greeks, Kimon. But he has died already, and is gone (Kratinos, Arkhilokhoi fr. 1KA).

In the 420s, by contrast, there was Hyperbolos, of whom Thucydides says in his only reference to this man (8.73.3): 'one of the Athenians, a bad man, ostracised [in 417] not for fear of his power or influence but because of his wickedness and the shame he brought on the city'. The extremes of Kimon the aristocrat and Hyperbolos the non-aristocrat should be modified somewhat to take account of politicians from less noble families in the early period (for example Themistokles) and of politicians from noble families later (such as Alkibiades). The general increase of non-aristocrats with time is nevertheless correct. We must at all times bear in mind however that an aristocratic family background is not necessarily to be associated with oligarchic affiliations. Perikles is the great illustration of this: aristocrat, yet pro-democracy.⁴

Beside political changes we may place the development of political comedy, focusing especially on Perikles, and after Perikles on Kleon, Hyperbolos, Peisander and Alkibiades. A fragment of Eupolis appears to endorse the picture of political decline:

there is much I could say but I am unable to do so, so pained am I when I look at our city. We old men didn't run things like this in the old days: first of all, our generals were from the great houses, leaders in wealth and family whom we revered as gods almost, which in fact they were. And all our affairs went smoothly. Now wherever it may be we go on campaign with scapegoats elected as generals (Eupolis, fr. 384).

The fragment illustrates our choice: do we take this statement, so similar to many of Aristophanes', straight, or do we take it as characteristic comic praise of the past in order to revile the present?

Form the 420s, if not before, whole plays were devoted to a single politician, Aristopanes' Knights (424) to Kleon, Eupolis' Marikas to Hyperbolos; then there are Plato's Hyperbolos (before 417?), Peisander and Kleophon (405), each of which is a play devoted to the politician named in the title. Comedy developed for these politicians characteristics which were comic trademarks: the lustful Olympian Perikles, the venal, non-Athenian Kleon, the non-Athenian Hyperbolos and Kleophon, the fat Peisander, the lusful bisexual Alkibiades. Some of these characteristics are known to be invented (the foreign birth of Kleon, Hyperbolos and Kleophon); others may or may not be true (lustful Perikles and Alkibiades); others may well be true (Peisander's obesity). Particular issues were associated with particular figures, lawcourts and imperial revenues with Kleon, fighting with Perikles. Poets may, for personal or other reasons, have specialised, Aristophanes in Kleon, Eupolis if Alkibiades, all in Perikles and Hyperbolos.

In Athens, there was the closest connection between humour and political events, as we shall see below in the case of Aristophanes' Knights. To this are added more general themes: attacks on the rich in Aristophanes' Wealth and Eupolis' Flatterers; arguments for peace in Aristophanes' Archarnians, Peace and Lysistrata; attacks on the powerful in Kratinos' Dionysalexandros, Cheirones, Aristophanes' Knights, Eupolis' Bathers, Plato's Peisander, and Hyperbolos; rejection of politicians as allegedly foreign in Aristophanes' Frogs, Knights, Eupolis' Marikas; revelling in the wonderful past in Aristophanes' Frogs, Eupolis' Demes, Kratinos' Ploutoi. All this is presented in a spirit of apparent literary, philosophical and political conservatism. The comic goal is nearly always festive (or nuptial), utopian and retrospective, praising in the distant past the golden age, in the short tem, dead poets and politicians.

It is difficult to confirm of deny political intentions as the plays seem to be hostile to Perkiles or hostile to Kleon; but of course they also favour the dead (only exceptionally are the dead satirised, Kimon in Eupolis, fr. 221KA, or Perikles in Demes fr. 110KA: 'PERIKLES. Is my bastard still alive? PYRONIDES. Yes. And he would have been a man a long time ago if he hadn't been terrified of the jibe "tart's son"'). An ancient scholar tells us: 'Eupolis brought back from the dead Mitiades, Aristeides, Solon and Perikles' (Eupolis, Demes iKA). We need be in no doubt that these great and good among the dead were brought back to the upper world in this play to chastise the corruption of the living politicians.

What then do we conclude when, in Greek comedy, a character says something derogatory about a living person? Especially when the chorus makes a statement in the first or third person as the opinion of the poet himself, having dropped the illusion that they are characters on a stage? (This is a regular feature. In Wasps, the chorus describes their poet Aristophanes as the hero Herakle taking on the filthy monster Kleon; in Frogs the chorus call for a better breed of politician (see below)). In All-Seers, Kratinos described Aristodemos as an anus (compare above); in Clouds, Aristophanes portrayed Sokrates as a disreputable philosopher for hire; in Cheirons, Kratinos portrayed Perikles and his wife as tyrannical and obsessed with sex; in Babylonians, Knights and Wasps, Aristophanes portrayed Kleon embezzling imperial revenues, and manipulating the court system.

These developments are parallel with, and probably mimic, court invective, political invective and iambic poetry. The language of the lampoon and the political attack was personal and insulting. How are these attacks to be interpreted? Henderson argues that comedy and comic abuse were so closely related to the city and the language of the citizens that a political attack in comedy was similar to a political attack in a lawcourt or the assembly, and was not confined to the theatre in its effect.⁵ Ste Croix goes further, and draws up the following profile for Aristophanes: he was not an oligarch but a paternalist like Kimon; he resented the power of the popular demos: 'it was intolerable when ignorant and ill-educated men demanded a share in the delicate art of government'. Aristophanes attacked only non-nobles, and employed the language of the upper classes with approval; he disliked the little man and the poor man, and the juries of Perikles and Kleon which gave power to such people; and he sided with the rich in sympathy with Sparta and in opposition to the war with Sparta.

I do not necessarily disagree with this interpretation of Aristophanes' politics, since they cannot be known. In the wider context of comedy and the other comic poets, however, the relationship between comedy and history looks rather different, and the plays of Aristophanes too may be interpreted differently. The target for comic satire is a powerful individual, in the words of pseudo-Xenophon ['the Old Oligarch'] 2.18 ' the person ridiculed is not of the demos or the masses for the most part, but is a rich, noble or powerful person'. Nobles are attacked (Perikles, Alkibiades), as are the rich (Kallias, Alkibiades, Kleon), the powerful (Perikles, Alkibiades, Kleon, Hyperbolos, etc), and the intellectuals (Euripides, Sokrates). Ste Croix does not differentiate between rich and noble: for him the upper classes are the target. I would say that the prominent are the target, whatever their birth. The humiliation of powerful people and the fulfilment for a day of the fantasies of those without power, such as farmers, ordinary citizens or women, is a fundamental feature of this kind of comedy.

Consider the following attacks on Perikles:

Civil Strife and Time of ancient birth came together in love and bore the greatest tyrant, whom the gods call the 'headgatherer' ⁶ (Kratinos, Cheirones fr. 258KA).

In the comedies, Aspasia was called the new Omphale, and Deianeira and also Hera. Kratinos explicitly calls her a concubine in these lines:

And Buggery bore him a daughter Hera-Aspasia, a concubine with the eyes of a bitch (Kratinos, Cheirones fr. 259KA).

Aspasia was charged with impiety by Hermippos the comic poet who also alleged that she received free women at home for sex with Perikles:

And Diopeithes brought a decree that it was a state offence not to believe in the gods and to teach about the heavens (Plutarch Perikles 32).⁷

King of the satyrs, why don't you want to take up the spear but rather offer up terrible words of war and all the bravery of Telles? When the dagger is sharpened on the hard whetstone, you gnash your teeth, bitten by glinting Kleon (Hermippos, Fates fr. 47 KA).

Ancient scholars tell us that Eupolis' Bathers was an attack on Alkibiades: 'Alkibiades, a victim of the comedy of Eupolis, threw him into the sea when they were on the expedition in Sicily, saying 'you dipped me at the Dionysiac altar. I will now kill you with a dip in the really bitter waters of the sea' (fr. iiiKA).⁸ We are also told that Eupolis' Flatterers was an attack on the rich profligate Kallias: 'Kallias the son of Hipponikos appears to have spent his ancestral wealth on depravity. Eupolis gave him the comic treatment in Flatterers' (fr. iiiKA). The targets of comedy then were the rich. Noble and powerful, the Kalliases, Perikleses and Kleons of Athens, not, as Ste Croix would have it, only the Kleons. In order further to humiliate the powerful figure, unflattering comparisons were made with the dead as we have seen in the case of Eupolis' Demes.

As for Ste Croix' other points, attacks on the Athenian people, the poor and the little man are trivial compared with Aristophanes' words on the powerful individuals, and many play are sympathetic to the trials of the little man (Archarnians, Wasps, Wealth). The poor may be manipulated by bad men, but such bad men are the powerful, as described by pseudo-Xenophon. I can find no serious support in Aristophanes for Sparta; rather, a general desire for peace, because of comedy's close association with agricultural festivals that are disrupted by war. The use of terms favouring the upper classes is ambiguous. A good example is Frogs 727-33:

The citizens we know to be sensible and men of noble birth, just and aristocratic men, trained in the gymnasia and choruses and the musical arts - these men we trample in, and we make use all the time of tawdry men, foreigners, red-headed rascals descended from rascals, the latest dregs to arrive, the kind the city would even have had trouble using as scapegoats in the old days.

This could be a plea to return to aristocratic government, or it could be a familiar denigration of the present through praise of the past: in other plays the aristocratic education is associated with the old days. The current politicians here censured are Athenians of Athenian stock: their foreign origin (indicated by red hair) is not to be taken literally. It is debatable whether we take literally the praise of the nobles. It is entirely predictable that Aristophanes urges the foolish Athenians to choose better leaders: that is what comedy always urges. To go further and interpret these words as support for the oligarchic coup of 411⁹ or as reflecting Aristophanes' own beliefs (so Ste Croix) is in my view to go too far.¹⁰ Ste Croix has something of a case if Aristophanes is considered in strict isolation from genre and fellow poets. If put into context, the case is severely weakened, though an argument for a particular aristocratic bias in Aristophanes remains a theoretical (though I think unlikely) possibility. An unfortunate aspect of Ste Croix' case is that Aristophanes appears to endorse Thucydides' perception that politicians became worse (that is of lower birth) after the death of Perikles. That is a coincidence of date (Perikles dies in 429; Aristophanes first performed in 427) which the wider context would not endorse: comedy lampooned the aristocratic Perikles in the 440s and 430s, and then lampooned the non-noble Kleon in the 420s.

I shall now consider 'history' under the following headings - contemporary political events, political events viewed over a period of time, and a historian's account of those events - and attempt to relate these three interpretations to comedy in the period under discussion.

Contemporary political events.

We return to the matter of the way in which the real world is represented in comedy. Henderson and Ober and Strauss make a strong case for a close relationship between the language of the political world and of the comic stage.¹¹ The context in which the words were spoken, however, is crucial. The courts, the assembly and the theatre may thrash out the same issue in a broadly similar, personalised, adversarial mode in front of an audience of hundreds of jurors, thousands of citizens and some 15 000 spectators respectively. The court process and assembly determine the fate of individuals and the state; comedy ritually humiliates those in power, and thereby honours the god of the festival, Dionysos.

Political events viewed over a period of time.

Consider the cases of Sokrates and Perikles. Sokrates was ridiculed in Clouds I and II (423 and 417 BC). In 399, according to Plato, this caricature was used against him at his trial. This is the famous example of the effect of humour on history. Sokrates was said not to believe in the gods. Now Plato was not personally opposed to Aristophanes: he leads us to think in his Symposium that Aristophanes and Sokrates were dining companions. I would say that there was in Athens a fruitful exchange between the popular view of Sokrates and Aristophanes' inventiveness which makes him into a stage character with contemporary bite. If people later believed aspects of the stage character to be true, or brought them into political debate (Sokrates after all was in a political trial), that was because politics and comedy worked in the same area with the same language. This tells us nothing of Aristophanes' own beliefs about philosophy. If we put together all we know, we could say Aristophanes, Sokrates and Plato were friends, who may have had anti-democratic interests. Aristophanes attacked Sokrates in Clouds. The attack was similar to those on other philosophical targets, on Anaxagoras, for example, in the political world (see Plutarch Perikles 32 above, and note 7), and in comedy, on Protagoras who was a character in Eupolis' Flatterers (fr. iiKA), and on a chorus of 'thinkers' in Ameipsias' Konnos. Comedy was part of the debate and could be used politically.

Perikles in Eupolis' Demes, which was probably produced in 412 (seventeen years after his death) was one of the great dead. But there was still a reference to themes related to his sex-life, the 'bastardy' of his son and the 'prostitution' of his wife, that had featured in comedy in his lifetime (fr. 110KA, quoted above).

In a more general way, we may note that over a ten - or twenty - year period, Kleisthenes in comedy was always effeminate, Pauson poor, Perikles lustful, Kleon corrupt and leathery. There is a clear formulaic element.

An Historian's Account.

Plutarch in his Life of Perikles remains close to Thucydides in his high estimate of Perikles, and in his dismissing of Kleon. His use of comedy as a source is impressive and well illustrates comedy's exploitation of graphic political detail. Many of the comic fragments from lost plays we owe to Plutarch: passages on the shape of his head are quoted from the poets Kratinos, Telekleides and Eupolis; there are fragments on the 'immoral' Aspasia, and on Perikles and Aspasia portrayed as Olympian gods; and there are fragments on Perikles' building programme and military policy. Plutarch is sometimes wary, sometimes straightforward in his quotation of comedy. He is an author who disliked the scurrility of this type of Athenian comedy (Moralia 853-4), but who recognised its political resonance. What he preserves for us is a range of glimpses at the way Perikles was put into comedy in the 430s, and above all an impression of his powerful position and the ways in which that power could be insulted.

The historical record inherited by us and by Plutarch is based on comedy and Thucydides where they agree. Ste Croix finds that persuasive. I would argue that comedy always has its Dionysiac slant, and is not to be taken at face value on either Perikles or Kleon: the fact that the are attacked indicates first and foremost that they were prominent at the time.

What is the effect of comedy on history? It was widely believed that Perikles was lustful, partly because of the way he was depicted in comedy; but it was also believed that Kimon was lustful, without this message being conveyed in comedy. The wickedness of Kleon and Hyperbolos was believed through both comedy and Thucydides. Comedy is working as an influence, a mirror, a defamer.

For the interrelation between comedy and the courts and politics consider Kleon and the plays of Aristophanes. In 426, Aristophanes attacked Kleon in Babylonians over aspects of Athens' imperial administration. Kleon brought a prosecution against Aristophanes before the Council for slandering the city in Babylonians in the presence of foreigners.¹² Aristophanes gave his version in Archarnians in 425, and claimed to have spoken for truth and justice. Kleon became general at Pylos and won a great victory over the Spartans in 424, on the strength of which he was accorded state honours, including, we are told, the right to eat at the state hearth in the prytaneion. In 424, Aristophanes attacked Kleon in Knights, denouncing his corruption at home and abroad. A few months later, Kleon was re-elected general, an office to which he was again elected until his death on campaign in 421, the year in which Aristophanes mentioned him in Peace as a warrior and one who was now 'eating shit' in the underworld. In this battle between playwright and politician we may observe the following: it was possible to bring a form of prosecution against a comic poet who had slandered the state (there are not many known cases); the audience of Knights voted it first prize and voted for Kleon - the distinction between theatre and poll booth was clearly felt.¹³ Kleon is presented as a vulgar demagogue, but he was, towards the end of his life at least, repeatedly elected to the office of general in the traditional way, like Perikles, and unlike later 'demagogues', who , as mentioned above, were orators rather than office holders. This detail has not been passed on to later history either by comedy or by Thucydides.

We may supplement consideration of Kleon with a passage from Knights in which his adversary the Black-pudding seller discusses his political training with Demosthenes (an Athenian general):

BLACK-PUDDING SELLER: I had a lot of other tricks when I was young. I used to catch out the butchers with this sort of thing: 'Hey, lads, look. The new season's here: there's a swallow.' They would look up and, as they did so, I would steal some meat.

DEMOSTHENES: You're a really smart piece of meat, and planned that cleverly. You did your stealing, like people eating their nettles, before the swallows came.

BLACK-PUDDING SELLER: And they never noticed what I was doing. But if one of them ever did see, I would stuff it up my crotch and swear in the gods' name that I was innocent. In fact one of the orators saw me doing this and said, 'there's no way this lad won't become a steward of the people'.

DEMOSTHENES: A good inference. But it's clear how he worked it out. You perjured yourself after committing a robbery and you had a man' meat¹⁴ up your arse (Knights 417-28).

The fictional politician is a liar, a thief of public funds and a passive homosexual. This is the general area of conduct into which real politicians will be set, as appropriate. The comic poet will be attempting to assimilate this dissolute template with something recognisable in real life, and to work the whole into the theme of his play, which in the illustration above is a parallelism between the meat trade and political life.

I will illustrate my interpretation of political comedy with a musical image. Comedy is like a violin with four different strings, the poet's own background and political preconceptions, the comic tradition, the events of the day, and the language of the polis in the streets, courts and assembly. When he draws his bow over he instrument, he may play all these strings, or just one, two or three of them. He may vary the notes by shortening the strings. The main aims are to play a striking tune, and preferably a memorable one. We are rarely in a position to say precisely which strings are being played. But we can say that the vibrating string(s) combined with the resonance of the woodwork are different from the strings resting before the instrument is played. Ste Croix has only heard one string.

The conclusions to be drawn are these. Comedy reflected what was of particular interest in the city at the moment. It imitated, reproduced and distorted, with various nuances of perfect and imperfect imitations. The personal element was clearly significant. The poets may have had a special victim, Perikles, Hyperbolos, Kleon, Alkibiades, Euripides,¹⁵ selected for their eminence or some other reason. The genre in general was conservative since it conventionally held that the past was better: the mythical golden age, the Persian Wars earlier in the century, long-dead politicians. But at the same time of course the past was also dead and of no interest. Politicans were put through the comic process in a special, Dionysiac form which may in many ways have overlapped with their real lives, but differed in an essential respect. In the assembly, politics was based on groupings, on supporters (philoi), on loyalties and so on. In the courts, litigants wished to win a case against an adversary. On stage, there was a contest or agon, over the issue in question in a special form in front of the image of the god.

Was comedy accurate or not? I conclude with two ancient views:

They say that when Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse wanted to learn about the Athenian state, Plato sent him the poetry of Aristophanes and advised him to study the plays (Life of Aristophanes 42-5).

Not like a poet of comedy, but like one of the aristocracy, Aristophanes bore witness purely and without spite to the greatness of Perikles' rhetoric (Eupolis, Demes fr. 102KA).

How can one link these observations with the comic tradition in Britain? Comparisons are not easy between an ancient drama festival organised by a state and the modern theatre (which is largely independent of the state) and the very disparate modern 'media'. In Britain, comic references to the sexuality of politicians relate either to confessed sexual encounters (Harvey Proctor, David Mellor) or to speculate about male and female colleagues (Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams or John Major and Virginia Bottomley). It is also clear that modern comic treatment of political topics - Ben Elton as a stand-up comic, Richard Ingrams in Private Eye - may be wide-ranging over a number of targets even where the political affiliation of the comedian is known. The modern analogy may help us to accept that what Aristophanes and others say in plays may or may not reflect a political commitment in the poet, and that comic references to sex may or may not be based on actual encounters.

When considering the reaction of politicians to political attack, Mrs Thatcher's alleged admiration for Yes Minister on BBC Television is a useful area for consideration. Did she like the programme because its attack on the civil service and political establishment coincided with her own views? Or because it was a welcome relief from comic comment on politicians? Here was an anodyne programme produced by the state-controlled channel which could be praised for its comic outspokenness at a time of unprecedented political control of the BBC. Perhaps, from the point of view of political psychology, it was to her advantage to make clear that she had a sense of humour.

Closer to ancient comedy is the attack on Mrs Thatcher's spouse in John Wells' Anyone for Dennis? at the Whitehall Theatre. Although the theatre was privately owned, and the audience participated as people who had chosen to pay rather than as citizens celebrating a festival, the ancient practice of humiliating the consort of the chief minister is clearly at work. This brings us to the main point of our argument. Comedy was in antiquity, and in some respects still is, a ritualised attack on the powerful. The comedy may or may not attack the political programme of its victim and is likely to bring into play personal elements. The politician will always attempt, as it were, to write history favourable to him - or - herself. Comic abuse may tarnish that history. Our general conclusion is that the function of comedy is more often to be abusive in this way rather than corrective of social ills.

Notes:

1     Ste Croix (1972) Appendix 29; Sommerstein (1980).

2     An aspect of comedy which Ste Croix fails to address in comedy as drama which is ritualistic, festive, carnivalesque. Comedy in many ways is apart from political life: it is a form of ritualised abuse, related to other rituals in Greek cults, in particular cults of Dionysos and Demeter. Ideas of utopia, the land of cockaigne and the associations of the Dionysiac festival are central to ancient comedy, and have been studied by Carrière (1979).

3    This has been well brought out in a collection of American scholarship from the 1980s - Winkler / Zeitlin (1990). The essays by Jeffrey Henderson, Josiah Ober and Barry Strauss, James Redfield and John Winkler are of great importance for the history of drama, and certainly for understanding the context of Greek comedy.

4    The best account of political changes in Athens is to be foun in Connor (1971).

5   Henderson (1990).

6   'Headgatherer': the Homeric epithet for Zeus the weather-god, 'cloudgatherer', is adapted for Perikles, the new Zeus, whose head was of an unusual shape.

7   Aspasia, the wife of Perikles, and the philosopher Anaxagoras were intellectuals from the city of Miletos who were in the entourage of Perikles and were attacked by the enemies of Perikles, apparently in the courts, the assembly and in comedy (where the allegation about Aspasia the procurer was presumably made). This passage supports Henderson's case for courts, assembly and comedy working closely together.

8   The stage is meant by the phrase 'Dionysiac altar'. We should not believe literally that Alkibiades drowned Eupolis: his angry response is parallel to Kleon's response to Aristophanes' Babylonians (on which see below).

9   See Arnott (1991) 18-22.

10   The influential ancient scholar Dikaiarchos tells us that this passage of the Frogs so amazed the audience that it was put on a second time, which was virtually unprecedented. This popularity may derive from the moderation or the oligarchic flavour of the passage (depending on how we interpret it); at all events it is evidence for the impact of comedy beyond the actual day of production.

11   Henderson (1990) and Ober / Strauss (1990).

12   There is an interesting implication that if the play had been produced not at the Dionysia festival, but at the Lenaia festival, which only Athenians attended, then the play would have been part of the debate about policy, behind closed doors as it were. This may support Henderson's argument that debate in comedy and debate in the assembly were closely related. I suspect that for Kleon the supposed defamation of the state was subsidiary to the personal humiliation. Furthermore if Babylonians did defame Athens more than individual politicians the play would be quite unlike any surviving play. Note that the insulting of individuals by name in comedy was perfectly legal, except possibly for two short periods around 438 and 415: see further Halliwell (1991).

13   Henderson (1990: 299) wonders whether the citizens were displaying 'characteristic' Athenian fickleness in the matter. I do not find this a convincing explanation.

14   For 'meat' in the sense of 'penis' see Fiddes (1991) Chapter 10, 'The Joy of Sex'.

15   It is sometimes said that Aristophanes disliked the plays of Euripides, but Kratinos (fr. 342KA) identifies the two poets as closely related in their work. This confirms the suspicion that Euripides' prominence in Aristophanes is a testimony to his importance, and may also indicate Aristophanes' admiration for his work.