Frogs

by Aristophanes

  24. Philocles: Nephew of Aeschylus. We know from Aristophanes’ Birds that he wrote a play about Tereus, and also that he won first prize ahead of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. His work is criticized by Aristophanes elsewhere as bitter or harsh.

  25. Xenocles: Son of the tragedian Carcinus. He and his brothers appear, ridiculously costumed, in the finale of Wasps. He defeated Euripides in 415 but is dismissed as inferior to him by Dionysus in Frogs 86.

  26. Theognis: Contemporary tragedian. His work is regularly berated by Aristophanes for being psuchros (‘cold’, ‘insipid’).

  27. A wise man… few words: A two-line quotation from Euripides’ Aeolus (fr. 28). The name ‘Agathon’ replaces the original words ‘my children’. Euripides’ subsequent description of his plight is also tragic in style.

  28. You love your life… his too: A quotation of Euripides’ Alcestis 691. In the original, Admetus, who is told that he must die unless he can find someone to die in his place, asks his father Pheres, who refuses.

  29. Misfortunes… submit oneself to them: Very likely a two-line quotation from one of Agathon’s own plays. There is a pun on tois pathēmasin, which means ‘through suffering’ in its original tragic context, but is given the comic meaning ‘through submissive acts’ when repeated by Mnesilochus in 201.

  30. To the holy altar: In the Greek text Mnesilochus refers to the temple of the ‘Dread Goddesses’ (Semnai Theai), often identified with the Furies (also known as the Eumenides or Erinyes). This sanctuary, which probably lay between the Acropolis and the Areopagus, was seen as an inviolable place of refuge.

  31. shaven recruit: There is a pun on psilos meaning ‘shaven’ and ‘a recruit’. For an Athenian man to be shaven was a serious indignity.

  32. Cleisthenes: Regularly mocked by Aristophanes as being beardless, effeminate and a passive homosexual (see, e.g., Frogs 48–9). He appears later in the play – beardless and dressed in women’s clothing.

  33. wheel me in again: Agathon refers openly to the revolving platform, like Euripides earlier.

  34. I swear by Ether… Zeus: An adapted quotation from Euripides’ Melanippe the Wise (fr. 487). The same phrase is misquoted by Dionysus in Frogs 100. Here Euripides’ oath, though unconventional, makes reference to Zeus; by contrast, in Frogs 892ff., he swears by Ether but omits all mention of traditional deities.

  35. block of flats: The original mentions ‘Hippocrates’ tenement block’. The Hippocrates in question, possibly a nephew of Pericles, was an Athenian general, who may have let rooms to sailors, traders, foreigners or other people of low-repute.

  36. heart that swore… I didn’t force you: Mnesilochus alludes to a famous line from Euripides’ Hippolytus (612) in which Hippolytus reneges on an oath of secrecy claiming that it was elicited under duress and that it was ‘his tongue that swore and not his heart’. Fearing Euripides may do likewise, Mnesilochus stresses that he has sworn of his own accord with both heart and tongue.

  37. MICA: This character is referred to simply as ‘First Woman’ in some editions, but since she is the same character as the woman who appears in later scenes with Mnesilochus, and she is addressed there as Mica, it makes sense to call her by this name throughout.

  38. Thratta: Meaning ‘from Thrace’, a common name for slave-girls.

  39. Fanny…Willy: The name Choirios (‘Fanny’) is a diminutive of choiros, which means ‘piglet’ but also – invariably in comedy – the female pudenda. Posthaliskos (‘Willy’) is a diminutive of posthē (‘penis’).

  40. CHORUS-LEADER: There is disagreement about who speaks the lines given to the Chorus-Leader in this scene. In most texts they are given (as here) to the Chorus-Leader. This section from the opening invocation to the Chorus’s prayer ending ‘In spite of our gender’ comprises the Entry-Song (parodos) of the Chorus. It is modelled loosely on the actual procedure at the start of meetings of the Athenian assembly, comprising a prayer for divine approval of its deliberations and a curse on those who are enemies and betrayers of the community as a whole. Both prayer and curse are followed by a choral ode or song reinforcing the sentiments just expressed. There is humorous adaptation to suit the particular occasion (i.e., the Thesmophoria festival) and the gender of the celebrants. The opening invocation represents the longest unbroken passage of prose in extant Aristophanes (the other significant example, in Birds, is also a prayer, but it contains frequent interruptions).

  41. Divine Maiden: Demeter’s daughter, Persephone.

  42. city was contested by the gods: The reference is to the story that Athena and Poseidon competed for the possession of Attica, Athena emerging victorious on account of her gift of the olive tree.

  43. Persians or Euripides: The Persians are the Medes who, with an empire extending into the Ionian seaboard in Asia Minor, were longstanding enemies of the Greeks. They were the only enemy mentioned by name in the assembly curse; here, the addition of Euripides’ name suggests that the women view him as an inveterate foe.

  44. cabbage-woman’s son: The joke that Euripides’ mother, Cleito, was a seller of greens in the marketplace is found throughout Aristophanes (see, e.g., Frogs 840). The origin of the joke is unclear; there is evidence to suggest that she was in fact well born.

  45. Wherever there’s a stage: Mica means not only Athens but other parts of the Greek world where Athenian tragedy was performed. Aeschylus, for example, produced plays in Sicily, and shortly after the date of Women, Euripides and then Agathon went to the court of King Archelaus of Macedon.

  46. It cannot be… our guest from Corinth: A quotation from Euripides’ Bellerophon (fr. 664). In Euripides’ play, a character describes Stheneboea’s desire for Bellerophon, who was a guest of her husband King Proetus, by saying that whenever she drops something she toasts their ‘guest from Corinth’.

  47. Whence come… thy cheek: The source of this quotation is not known.

  48. An old man… wife: A line from Euripides’ Phoenix (fr. 804).

  49. Molossian dogs: From the northwest of the Greek mainland, noted for their ferocity and size. They were used both as sheep-dogs and guard-dogs.

  50. Laconian ones with triple teeth: Keys made in Laconia (i.e., Sparta) were more elaborate than ordinary keys, making their locks more secure.

  51. sticky end… some other way: There may be an allusion here to Euripidean heroines who use poison. The phrase ‘perhaps by poison’ occurs twice in Euripides in connection with such women. Medea also advocates murder by poison (Medea 384–5).

  52. saying that there aren’t any gods: Euripides was, like Socrates, sometimes accused of atheism. The accusation probably arose partly from his interest in philosophy and partly from the attribution to him of views expressed by some of his characters, such as Bellerophon, who rejects the gods in at least one speech (Bellerophon fr. 286), and Hippolytus, who spurns Aphrodite and goes back on an oath (Hippolytus 113 and 612).

  53. special order of twenty wreaths: This may be a reference to the celebrations after the Dionysia festival, at which such wreaths were worn. The remark suggests that the woman is not as badly off as she claims.

  54. For we’re alone… these things: Quoted from Euripides’ Telephus (see note 11), from the main speech by Telephus in the debate among the Greek leaders, after the case against him has been made. The situation in which Mnesilochus speaks in defence of Euripides is closely comparable, although he shows little of Telephus’ oratorical skills.

  55. He did me… Apollo: The description suggests a small sanctuary of Apollo, or at least an altar with a sacred laurel bush nearby. Needless to say, engaging in a sexual act in such a place would have been seen as sacrilegious.

  56. bit of garlic… this time: A woman meeting her lover would not have eaten garlic because it would have given her bad breath. ‘Wall Duty’ was the overnight guarding of the long fortified walls extending from Athens to its harbour at Piraeus (necessitated by the Spartan presence at nearby Deceleia).

  57. same bend halfway along: Presumably the old woman
knows this because she also nursed the husband as a child.

  58. We suffer nothing worse than we deserve: Also adapted from Euripides’ Telephus (fr. 711), probably from the same speech by Telephus which Mnesilochus quotes earlier.

  59. ancient proverb… ugly head: The proverb in question suggests that a scorpion may lurk under any stone. The line that follows is taken from Euripides’ Melanippe in Chains, except for the final remark (‘except… womankind’), in which the Chorus-Leader briefly steps out of character.

  60. he never writes a play about a virtuous woman like Penelope: As it happens, the respective heroines of the two Euripidean tragedies parodied extensively in the second half of the play are presented as virtuous.

  61. we give the meat… Apaturia: The Apaturia festival involved men organized into groups called phratries (based on common ancestry) attending several meat-based feasts. Much of this meat was provided by the participants (hence the opportunity for their womenfolk to steal some).

  62. killed her husband… sent him mad: These examples may refer to contemporary cases but there are, nonetheless, similarities with certain well-known tragic situations. The woman killing her husband with an axe resembles Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon. The woman giving her husband a dangerous drug with unintended, catastrophic results is similar to Deianeira’s accidental poisoning of Heracles, as presented in Sophocles’ Women of Trachis; she was tricked by the centaur Nessus, whom Heracles had mortally wounded, into thinking the poison was a love-potion. The third example, which follows directly, has no mythological paradigm.

  63. I’ll make you… eat: He implies that she has been eating on the sly; the women were meant to fast during part of the festival.

  64. breathless with excitement: Cleisthenes’ role in the comedy corresponds to that of Odysseus in Euripides’ Telephus, who comes in with urgent news about the presence of an intruder in a meeting of the Greek leaders. His first line is mock-tragic. His last sentence and the Chorus’s subsequent reply are tragic in style, as are most of the lines subsequently uttered by the Chorus in this scene.

  65. Cleonymus: Politician frequently abused by Aristophanes, especially in his early plays. He was an ardent supporter of Cleon and was regularly taunted for having dropped his shield in battle; see Wasps 19–20 and note.

  66. Cothocidae: Deme near Eleusis. It is unclear why Mnesilochus gives this answer.

  67. shuttle service across the Isthmus: A reference to the grooved track built across the Isthmus of Corinth (c. 600 BC) for transporting goods, and later ships, between the Saronic and Corinthian gulfs.

  68. snatches MICA’sbaby: The following scene is based on a scene, or possibly an offstage event, from Euripides’ Telephus, in which the hero Telephus saves himself by taking Agamemnon’s baby son Orestes hostage (the same scene is also parodied in Acharnians, where the ‘baby’ is not a baby but a coal-basket). The entire scene is full of elevated language and the Chorus’s diction is tragic throughout. Following Barrett’s translation, the first few lines of the lyric section have not been put in rhyming verse.

  69. I shall engrave… bleeding veins: Mnesilochus’ words are tragic, possibly taken from Telephus or another Euripidean play.

  70. Cretan clothes… Persian booties: Part of an attempt to disguise the wineskin as a child.

  71. getting on for… four festival years: Mnesilochus is suggesting not only that the wineskin is too big to be a ‘baby’ but also that it has been taken to a number of festivals.

  72. slay the victim: Mnesilochus’ motive may be simply to have a drink himself.

  73. Palamedes: One of the Greek leaders at Troy and famed for his ingenuity and for the invention of writing. His cleverness earned him the enmity of Odysseus, who contrived to have him killed. Euripides’ Palamedes is the second play in a trilogy about the Trojan War (the first play of which is the surviving Trojan Women) produced in 415 BC. It dealt with the execution of Palamedes through false accusation (by Odysseus) and an unfair trial. Prior to his execution the condemned Palamedes manages to send news of his plight to his brother Oeax by writing on oar-blades which he threw into the sea; one of these washed up on the shores of his homeland and brought news of his fate to his father, who later brought about the wreck of much of the Greek fleet as it returned home, by way of revenge. The play may be used here partly to poke fun at the excessive cleverness of Euripidean plot devices.

  74. O hands … hopeless plight: The ode is probably not based on a specific passage from Palamedes but an imitation of Euripidean tragic lyric in general.

  75. as they are mentioned: What follows is a series of jokes about various well-known figures that employ mostly made-up female names whose meanings mock the men’s respective shortcomings. Charminus was a general in 412–411, who had recently been defeated by a Spartan fleet off Syme, north of Rhodes, and lost six ships in the process. Cleophon, who was a general in 428, was a regular target of comic poets (see, e.g., Frogs 1504,1532). Here he is simply described as more unsavoury than Salabaccho, a well-known prostitute.

  76. Hyperbolus’ mother: Hyperbolus was a demagogue who came to prominence after the death of Cleon. He was a favourite target of comic playwrights and appears as a central figure in three plays by contemporaries of Aristophanes. His mother is also a major target in at least two of the three plays mentioned above, and is described variously as old, drunken and sluttish.

  77. Helen: Euripides’ play, performed the previous year (412) along with Andromeda, which is used later in this play. Both plays would therefore still be fairly fresh in the minds of the audience. Helen involves a familiar variant on the Trojan myth, by the poet Stesichorus, in which Helen was never in Troy – Hera sent a phantom Helen there instead – but transported to Egypt under the protection of King Proteus. The play is set seven years after the end of the Trojan War, when Proteus is dead and his tyrannical son Theoclymenus means to marry Helen by force. The shipwrecked Menelaus arrives and, after he and Helen recognize one another, the couple plan their escape with the help of Theoclymenus’ prophetic sister. The extensive parody and adaptation of Helen which follows draws primarily on three scenes: the prologue (a monologue by Helen); a scene between Menelaus and the palace door-keeper (already somewhat comic in the tragedy); and the recognition scene between Menelaus and Helen. Much of the exchange between Euripides and Mnesilochus comprises lines borrowed directly from these scenes (sometimes adapted), but even lines that are not taken from Helen are largely tragic in style. For precise details about which lines from Helen are used through this scene see the table in Sommerstein’s edition of the play (1994), p. 212, which also gives the speaker (and, in some cases, the addressee) in the tragedy and the extent to which lines are adapted.

  78. between Hell an’ high water: The original contains a pun on the mention of the name Helen.

  79. Egypt’s dark-clogged citizens: Adapted from Helen’s opening monologue (Helen 1–3). Aristophanes uses a variant on the epithet ‘dark-clothed’ meaning ‘fond of dark emetics’, suggesting that the Egyptians were constipated (according to Herodotus, they were very fond of emetics and enemas). Mnesilochus’ borrowings up to 868 are from the same monologue.

  80. Hecate: Goddess associated with magic and the underworld.

  81. Phrynondas: A name proverbial for roguery.

  82. Scamander’s banks: Scamander was a river near Troy often mentioned by Homer in the Iliad.

  83. What lord … resides: Quoted from Helen 68 (spoken in the tragedy by Teucer rather than Menelaus). Mnesilochus’ reply is adapted from Helen 460, where it is spoken by a female janitor (in a scene that is largely humorous anyway).

  84. Proteas: Critylla, who fails to recognize the parody of Helen, supposes that Mnesilochus is falsely claiming to be in the house of Proteas. A man of this name was a general in the 430s, and it is likely that this is the Proteas to whom she is referring; nothing else is known of him.

  85. Theonoë: Daughter of King Proteus and a prophetess. In Euripides’ play, she assists Me
nelaus and Helen in their escape.

  86. let me see your face: The following exchange imitates the recognition scene between Menelaus and Helen. The language mixes snippets from various parts of Helen with general tragic phraseology.

  87. from your rags I see: The Greek text for this is uncertain; it is unclear whether the joke about Menelaus’ appearance refers to his rags or the presence of greenery. For jokes about Euripides’ fondness for presenting heroes in rags, see Acharnians 412–39, Frogs 842, 1063–6. For jokes about his mother being a seller of greens, see Women 387, Frogs 840. Menelaus in Helen regularly refers to his ragged clothing but makes no mention of seaweed. Still, Aristophanes may have added seaweed to the costume of Euripides-playing-Menelaus to facilitate a joke about his mother; the fact that Mnesilochus is a friend and relative of Euripides does not prevent him making jokes at the latter’s expense.

  88. tie him to the plank: Mnesilochus’ fate suddenly becomes grievous. Being fixed to a plank by means of an iron collar and clamps for the wrists and ankles was a means of execution known as apotumpanismos, in which the victim would be tied fast but without being pierced so as to take an agonizingly long time to die.

  89. O saffron dress…rescue any more: Mnesilochus’ expression of despair contains tragic language. His address to an inanimate object at a moment of despair is also characteristic of tragedy.

  90. Pauson: Painter who specialized in caricature; he is mentioned by Aristotle (Poetics 1448a). The joke supposes he was so poor that he routinely fasted.

  91. to the audience: The lyrics accompanying dancing sometimes involved the lampooning of well-known citizens (see, e.g., Frogs 42 off.).

  92. Far-Shooter, Lord of the Lyre: Both epithets of Apollo.

  93. Cithaeron’s fountains: Cithaeron, a mountain close to Thebes, was where the infant Oedipus was exposed on his parents’ orders, although the shepherd to whom the task was entrusted subsequently rescued him. Dionysus was also closely associated with Mount Cithaeron. His mother, Semele, was the daughter of Cadmus, a king of Thebes.