Plato's youth and old Attic comedy

Departmental Papers, 1995

Introduction Andrea Capra Part I: Comedy in the Elenctic Dialogues i. Comedy and Laughter in Plato’s Early Dialogues Edith Hall ii. The Cook, the Relish-Maker, and the Philosopher Kathryn Morgan iii. Flatterers and Philosophers: On the ‘Pleasure Principle’ of the Protagoras William Strigel iv. The Mask of ‘Socrates’: Metatheatrical Comedy and Self-Knowledge in Hippias Major Sonja Tanner v. Platonicomic Business: Comedy and Platonic Theatre In Theages Sarah Miles Part II: Comedy in the Transitional Dialogues vi. Comedy in the Shadow of Death: Plato’s Menexenus Andrea Capra vii. The Deadly Play of Plato’s Euthydemus Gwenda-Lin Grewal viii. Plato and the Philosophical Art of Mockery Pierre Destrée Part III: Comedy in the ‘Middle’ Dialogues ix. Plato’s Use of Parody Franco V. Trivigno x. The Comic Worldview: Plato’s Symposium 189c ff. Anthony Hooper xi. Plato and the Discourse of Humour in Republic 10 Richard Hunter xii. Aristophanic Utopia s and Plato’s Kallipolis Michele Corradi xiii. The Last Laugh: Plato and the Comedy of Death Gabriele Cornelli

2024

This is my doctoral thesis - at last finished. It aims, as I put it, to 'lift the weight' of Aristophanes by redirecting our attentions to the 'other' comic poets, primarily through a thorough analysis of the Protagoras' reliance on Eupolis' Kolakes (or 'Flatterers'). The title would have been better written as 'an analysis of the Protagoras *through* Eupolis' Kolakes'. The thesis is in many ways the culmination of my previous work but far exceeds it in detail and in major components: the third chapter, for example, sees in the Kolakes a 'competition in wisdom' characteristic of poets and sophists, the likes of which we see in Aristophanes' Frogs. I argue Plato appropriated or alluded to that competition in the Protagoras when showing Socrates and Protagoras locked in combat. I also argue, in the fourth chapter, that the Gorgias and the Protagoras are *metaphysically* linked just in respect of Plato's understanding of flattery as a fundamental feature of sophistry (at a certain point in his career, to be clear). There is of course much to be done on it yet, but I especially look forward to developing the conclusion--Plato's response to himself on the Middle Comic stage in the 'Digression' of the Theaetetus (unfortunately I had to rely on Farmer's - albeit excellent - translations of Middle Comic passages re: Plato due to haste; also I'm still perfecting my written 'British English' over my natural Americanisms; something also happened with the Word document after uploading here in terms of formatting; some infelicities, etc). In any case, a close analysis of Plautus and other sources with their profound similarities to the dialogue form (in the other Socratics too, not just in Plato) will help us, I aim to show in future, understand the *origin and development* of Sokratikoi Logoi as such, and perhaps also the development of comedy too throughout the period of Plato's literary and philosophical life. There are too many people to thank here for helping me with this project over the years, and only a few could be recognised in the document alone. Here is a snippet from the abstract not included in this document. It contains the spirit of the work: This thesis has two aims. The first is to reorient the scholarly norm when thinking about Plato in relation to the genre of Greek Comedy. That is, since modern scholarship started taking Plato’s relationship to comedy seriously as a means of analysing his work, it has been dominated by the thought and writings of Aristophanes, especially his extant Clouds. I aim to show that such scholarship has become overburdened by this figure. Socrates, for example, was a character of concern for many poets of the fifth century, those contemporary with Aristophanes. What, then, can or should we say about Plato’s reactions to the ‘other’ comic poets surrounding him both before and during his life? I thus aim in this thesis to ‘lift the weight’ of Aristophanes from the standard scholarly procedure in the discourse on Plato’s intertextual dealings with comedy.'

According to the anonymous Life of Aristophanes, when Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse wanted to learn 'the ways of the Athenians' public life' (tn %qhna©wn polite©an), Plato answered by sending him Aristophanes' works and advising him to peruse them (t drmata aÉtoÓ skhqnta).  Anecdotal as this piece of evidence may be,  it is not an altogether unfitting reception of some of Plato's long-standing concerns, in his dialogues, with laughter, and especially comic laughter, as a powerful social and political medium.  In particular, Plato's uneasy relationship with comedy is one of the most intriguing aspects of what Monoson has called his 'democratic entanglements'.  In classical Athens comedy was a festival sponsored by the state and performed by citizens for the citizens themselves: with all its marked distortion of everyday reality, its appeal to 'free speech' (parrhs©a) and 'equality' («s»thv) nevertheless contributed My sincerest thanks to M. Schofield, G. Lloyd and the anonymous Cambridge referees for improving substantially an earlier version of this chapter. I alone am responsible for any mistakes and/or misunderstandings.  Ar. T  ll. - K-A (= Prolegom. de com. i, ia, xxviiii, ll. - Koster).  On its possible pro-Athenian origin, see Riginos : . Riginos dates the anecdote as 'no later than the sixth century ad'(: ).  The bibliography on the subject is endless; I quote here only what I found most relevant for my present argument. Comedy as a form of ritually institutionalized laughter: Halliwell : -, , aandb: -;Rosen: -. On Plato and laughter: McCabe ; Halliwell : - and : -;Rosen: -;Jouët-Pastré  and : -;Rowe; P. M. Steiner ; Mader  (esp. - on comedy). On Plato's engagement with comedy as a competing 'civic' discourse: Nightingale : -, -; on Plato's redeployment of comic tropes of speech, see Brock . On the alleged fondness of the historical Plato for Aristophanes, Epicharmus and Sophron, see Riginos : -.  Monoson . Plato's moral interpretation of comedy as a public, if not overtly political, vehicle of communication is, of course, determined by his own philosophical agenda. That is, Plato's response is only one of the possible audience responses to the complexities of Aristophanes' self-presentation as a 'civic voice' (see Silk a: ). I share here the moderate scepticism expressed by Heath  and now Olson  (esp. -) on the unambiguous seriousness of comic discourse qua political discourse (vs. Jeffrey Henderson  and ).

2005

Schole. Ancient Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, 2022

The irony of Socrates is one of the essential elements of Plato’s dialogues. However, what appears ironic or playful to modern readers, was not apprehended in the same way by Neo-platonic commentators. For Proclus, one of problematic Plato’s passages concerns the “labori-ous game,” which refers to the refined eight hypotheses of the Parmenides. Proclus turns to various places of Plato’s dialogues where different games are mentioned. Some of them are mimetic arts, which are partly restricted in Plato’s Republic. Other games are distinguished as pertaining to “old men” and to children: the former is appropriate to philosophers, while the latter is not. Even the “laborious” mode of Parmenides’ playing is given an ontological inter-pretation. Damascius was aware of the “Parmenides’ game” problem, but he primarily used ready Proclean interpretation. Unsurprisingly, Damascius approaches the conclusion that Parmenides was not playing at all — despite the apparent wording of Plato and minute in-vestigations of Proclus. The extant writings of Simplicius contain no dedicated Platonic com-mentaries. However, the commentary on Epictetus’ Enchiridion contains a verbose argument on human laughter and its role in a philosopher’s ethos. In general, Simplicius continues Damascius’ trend of rigorous seriousness. Olympiodorus the Younger follows his predeces-sors in a mere serious reading of Plato, but he acknowledges numerous instances of Socrates’ irony and joking. However, Olympiodorus dissociates Plato from Socrates’ irony and empha-sises its purely didactic extent. Generally, we can conclude that the later a Neoplatonic com-mentator is, the less perceptive to Plato’s humour he appears.

In this article, I propose a close analysis of Plato’s Ion to focus on comic procedures. My main goal is provide a conceptual framework that enables contemporary readers to connect text and comic tradition. This approach is based on an approximation between Classical and Performance Studies.

This thesis presents a comprehensive examination of the relationship between philosophy and comedy in 5th and 4th Century B.C.E. Athens – a project which has been lacking in the scholarship to date. The thesis is divided into two sections, the first of which analyses Plato’s use of comedy and the second devoted to a survey of representations of philosophy on the comic stage. Section One is divided into four chapters which discuss the various techniques through which Plato employs allusions to comedy in his composition of certain characters. I argue that Plato’s intention here is to liken these persons to the alazonic philosopher of contemporary comedy, thus undermining the credibility of any doctrines they promote. Section Two seeks to define the type of personality this ‘comic philosopher’ had and why Plato seemed so concerned with him. This will begin by analysing the portrayal of philosophy and the philosopher in Old Comedy, before advancing to the threshold of the Middle period with a discussion on the Ecclesiazusae, and conclude by looking at the philosopher in the fragments of Middle Comedy. The results will show that although Plato seemed quite anxious about being likened to the philosopher of comedy, such worries may have been unfounded. The philosopher of Old Comedy was certainly an undesirable fellow with selfish, parasitic and subversive tendencies; such qualities, however, are not universal in the genre and diminish when we approach the Middle period, where the philosopher is now depicted more as a haughty pedant devoting his life to trivial endeavors. It will be argued that this is due to the establishment of the first permanent philosophical institutions in Athens, which replaced the methods of the itinerant sophists of the previous century. The exception to this is the case of the Pythagorean, who – due to his reclusive lifestyle – generates the same suspicion as the philosopher of Old Comedy.

One of the evident but difficult-to-characterize aspects of Platonic writing is its relationship to comic tradition. This relationship is expressed in the use of comic procedures; a Platonic text is organized based on the appropriation and transformation of these procedures. The text alludes to production contexts and practices which, although recorded in writing, become comprehensible, ef- fective, and best understood in performance.

M.A. Harder, R.F. Regtuit and G.C. Wakker (eds.) (2018) Drama and Performance in Hellenistic Poetry. Hellenistica Groningana 23. Leuven (Peeters): 225-271.

The significance and influence of Attic drama on Hellenistic poetry has been a topic of little consistent focus in recent scholarship, reflecting the dominant academic emphasis on Hellenistic poetry as a written artefact, allegedly detached from any immediate context of performance. This paper attempts to reverse this trend by setting out the continuing vitality and cultural importance of drama in the Hellenistic world, before exploring the role of Attic Old Comedy as both a precedent and a model for Hellenistic poetry. Much of what is often thought distinctively ‘Hellenistic’ can in fact be shown to have clear old comic precedent: Old Comedy, just like Hellenistic poetry, is heavily intertextual (even to the point of re-appropriating Homeric hapax legomena); engages in frequent generic manipulation; displays a strong interest in literary history; emphasises its own literary and metrical innovations; and displays a self-conscious awareness of the tensions between textuality and performance. Yet more than this, Old Comedy also offered a key paradigm of agonistic self-fashioning and literary-critical terminology which Hellenistic poets could parrot, appropriate and invert. Hellenistic poets’ direct engagement with Old Comedy extended well beyond the famous literary agon of Aristophanes’ Frogs.