The Peloponnesian War,

December 3, 1992
CHAPTER II:

THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, 431-404: DEBATE AND CRITICISM





BATTLES AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS






ARISTOPHANES AND THE OLD COMEDIANS

Aristophanes and presumably others who wrote Old Comedy ridiculed two types of "homosexual": boy-crazed boy-lovers, particularly those who were middle-aged, paunchy, ostentatious, nouveaux riches, and gauche andeffete, passive adults (cinaedi and malthakoi). Few commentators have fully appreciated the difference or that the generally conservative playwright in no way condemned boy-love as such. Eupolis was supposed drowned by order of Alcibiades on the way to Sicily in 415, whom he had ridiculed in Baptai (Men Who Die Their Hair). Eratosthenes of Cyrene published On Ancient Comedy, consisting of atleast twelve books. Even earlier Cratinus' Hoi Malthakoi (The Effeminates) satirized such behavior. I believe that it is rash to suppose that the New Comedians entirely abjured such ready objects of ridicule as effeminate, over-dressed, middle-aged adults or even boy-crazed young men. Social rather than political like the Old Comedy, from 404 to Alexander's death the Middle Comedy stressedtypical characters and relationships of persons according to the Aristotelian categories: soldiers of fortune, young lovers, grouchy fathers, accommodating if slaves. Alexis, Anaxandrides, Aristophanes, Antiphanes, Eubulus, who wrote 101 of which the titles of 58 survive--even the Romans read him, were the main representatives.

Comedy is rich in vocabulary but unfortunately many of the sexualdouble entendres are possibly not yet recognized. Moderns have all been handicapped in reading them. Buffiиre, like his antecedent Pogey-Castries, as usual has merely compiled references. Licht, who was very sympathetic and thorough, confused proper boy-love, which the Greeks approved, with adult effeminacy which they abhorred and ridiculed as a common type of homosexuality that was beingdefended by his German allies. Less sympathetic and usually less insightful than Licht, Dover, who still insisted on using that term, did not succeed in freeing himself from the confusion between approved pederasty and reproved effeminacy.

Understandably none of the comic poets, of whom we know of ___, portrayed the heroic side of pederasty. As Dover said, Aristophanes dragged everything down tothe lowest common denominator. We must discriminate between the comedians' references to pederasts and those to effeminates, as neither Licht nor Dover, both rooted in the notion of a uniform homosexuality, bothered to do. Although the dandyism and the foppishness of the over-ardent boy-lover could resemble the over-dressing and fastidiousness of the adult passive, the two phenomena were sociallyclearly distinct. Moderation in passivity did not, of course, gain acceptability. The male prostitutes, very numerous according to Halperin, resident foreigners and more slaves or freedmen, were apparently never (unlike females) older than about 20, but the playwrights satirized them for effeminacy--apparently they were normally sodomized. The lower classes, of course, never experienced theexquisite form of upper-class pederasty. They were often manipulated. There are references to hustlers.

The word "comedy" stems from comos, the serenading of boys usually after the cottabos (drinking bout after the meal at symposia). The strictly Athenian Old Comedy perfected by Aristophanes came from another tradition than the satyr play and involved high politics rather thanslapstick. Of the old comedians whose names are known to us, the only one of whom a complete play survives was Aristophanes, who has eleven, and the audience for which he wrote may not have differed substantially from that of the tragedians. Fifth-century comedians took gibes at everyone who was vulnerable, from country bumpkins to aristocratic effeminates, from crude sausage-sellers to learned...