"THE COMIC CATASTROPHE": AN ESSAY ON EURIPIDEAN COMEDY

Author(s): Erich Segal

Source: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement , 1995, No. 66, Stage
Directions: Essays in Ancient Drama in Honour of E. W. Handley (1995), pp. 46-55
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43767988

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 "THE COMIC CATASTROPHE":
AN ESSAY ON EURIPIDEAN COMEDY

Erich Segal

The idea that the dramatist whom Aristotle called rpayiKœraroç rœv KOirjxœv also had
an enormous influence on the evolution of comedy is not new. In fact it is as old as the
playwright himself. Aristophanes makes direct quotations from the tragedies serve as
punch lines in the Thesmophoriazusae , and the Euripidean caricature in the Frogs (959)
boasts that he introduced oÌKeìa npáypaxa ("domestic affairs", lit. "household objects")
onto the tragic stage. When Cratinus, the eminence grise of Old Comedy, coined the verb
evpimSapiGTOcpavíÇeiv , it was not merely a joke, but a sound literary observation.1
Euripidaristophanization was a two-way process. We are all familiar with the frequent
instances in which the master of Old Comedy parodies (or merely quotes) Euripides,2 but
recent scholarship has increasingly focused on the almost equal but opposite phenomenon
- Euripides' appropriation of Aristophanic elements.3 This was also noticed in antiquity,
at least as early as Pollux, who informs us that Euripides was an unusual poet because he
emulated techniques of Old Comedy: for example, the parabasis in Danae. There were
other instances: while emphasizing that Euripides was exceptional, Pollux remarks on
Aristophanic techniques in many plays, èv noXXolq õpájuaaiv .4 And a scholiast on
Orestes comments that the play, KcojuiKcorepav £%ei ī f¡v KamcTpoipffv , "has a somewhat
comic ending".5
In our own century, Leo's Plautinische Forschungen was among the earliest books to
enlarge the study of comic elements in Euripides.6 The age-old question, however, was

1 Kassel-Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci ( PCG ) fr.342.

2 See, for example, Ar. Thesm. 519 and Eur. Telephus , fr.7 1 1 ; Thesm. 855ff. and Hel. 1-3;
Thesm. 859-860 and Hel. 16-17; Thesm. 863-864 and Hel. 52-53; Thesm. 886 and Hel. 466; and
most notoriously (and significantly for cognitio in comedy) Thesm. 906-912 and Hel. 558,
561-566. For a convenient catalogue of passages, see P. Rau, Paratragodia (Munich 1967) 185ff.
On parody and paratragedy, see the important new contribution of M.S. Silk, "Aristophanic
Paratragedy", in Alan H. Sommerstein et al. (edd.), Tragedy , Comedy and the Polis (Bari 1993)
477-504.
3 See Oliver Taplin, "Fifth-century Tragedy and Comedy: A synkrisis ", JHS 106 (1986) 1
and literature cited there, especially B. Seidensticker, Palintonos Harmonia. Studien zu kom
Elementen in der griechischen Tragödie (Göttingen 1982). Taplin takes a different approach
my own, arguing that tragedy and comedy helped to define each other "by their opposition an
reluctance to overlap".
4 Onomasticon IV. 1 1 1 .
5 Hyp. II: see C.W. Willink (ed.), Euripides Orestes (Oxford 1986) lvi-lvii. Willink also note
scholiast at Or. 1521: rama KCOfi 1 Kcorepá eon koci 7ceÇá.
6 See F. Leo, Plautinische Forschungen 2 165ff., which focuses on the Helen's enor
influence on later comedy - even going as far as to point out verbal echoes in Pļautus: "W
Brücke sucht, die von Euripides zur vea führt, kann getrost von der Helena aus seinen
nehmen."

46

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 ERICH SEGAL: THE COMIC CATASTROPHE 47

given rich new impetus in the last thirty years - first by the
the new Euripides fragments among the Oxyrhynchus papyri.
The modest aim here is to add two small suggestions to wh
about the intertextuality of the genres. I shall argue that the
were presented by Euripides as his offerings for the tragic st
the genre we call New Comedy, whether it be by Menander
Euripidean formula with a) one thematic alteration, and b) on
In an important and influential article, Bernard Knox desi
earliest modern comedy, not merely because of its domestic
his broom), but because, among other things, it is also a lost
and a wish-fulfilment play. It also presents humorous tr
traditionally comic character, the cuckolded husband.7
After the expository prologue by Hermes, õaijuóvcov Xárp
young Ion appears in front of the temple at Delphi, sw
apostrophized broom and lamenting that the birds seem to be
for the sacred statues.8 Then his (real) mother Creusa en
strangers have a highly ironic dialogue about parenthood - o
of it. During this exchange, she strongly emphasizes that he
king of Athens, is a foreigner, i.e. not a native of the city:
âXXrjç x&ovóç (290).
The scene which follows is the keystone of Knox's argume
consulting the oracle about his and Creusa' s childlessness. H
news that he will meet a son of his just as he is leaving ( éÇió
argues that there is a sexual misunderstanding in the opening
and younger man, and that Ion thinks Xuthus is making an a
Even the metre, trochaic tetrameter catalectic, is most often u

So. h žernov, %aîp '• f¡ yap apxfj rov Xóyov

Ico. xaipoßev- cv S 'ev (ppóvei ye, Kai Sv 'övr 'ev KpáÇopev.
So. ôòç%£pòç çíXryuá juoi crrjç acbļiarog t 'àjuçv vrvxáç
Icd. ev çpoveíç juév; rj a 'ëjirjve ůeov nç, h Çéve, ßXaßri;
So. (júxppovo) • xa cpíXxaů * evpœv ov cpvyeîv êcpíejuai.
Ico. nave, jur¡ y/avoaç xa rov ůeov (jrejujuara pijÇrjçxepí.
So. aiffo/iav kov pvmáÇco, râjuà S ' evpicKCO çíX a.
Xuthus Son, my blessing. - It is right to greet you in this way.
Ion Sir, my thanks. We are both well - if you are not mad.
Xuthus Let me kiss your hand, embrace you.
Ion Are you sane? Or can the god have made you mad somehow?
Xuthus Mad, when I have found my own and want to welcome him?
Ion Stop. - Or if you touch it, you may break Apollo's crown.

7 B.M.W. Knox, "Euripidean Comedy", in Word and Action (Baltimore 1979) 250-274,
reprinted from A. Cheuse and R. Koffler, (edd.,) The Rarer Action : Essays in Honor of Francis
Fergusson (New Brunswick, N.J. 1970).
8 With the bathos of the monologue, Knox aptly compares Aristophanes' parody of Euripidean
monody at Frogs 133 Iff. See Knox (n.7 above) 259.
9 Similar instructions are given to Chremylus in Aristophanes' last extant play: cf. Plutus 4 Iff.
(and êÇiœv).

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 48 STAGE DIRECTIONS - ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF E. W. HANDLEY

Xuthus I will touch you. And I am no robber. You are mine.10

At this point, Ion draws his bow.
Explanations ensue. Xuthus tells of the oracle, and "father" affectionately g
(561-562). As for Ion's mother (540-541):
Ico. ea. tívoç Sé goi néçvKoc pr¡rpóg; So. ovk exco ępaa
Ico. ovSè Ooißog eine; So. t epçùelg rovro, keiv * ovk f
Ion Well, who is my mother?
Xuthus That I cannot say.
Ion And Apollo?
Xuthus Happy with this news, I did not ask.
Ion questions him further (550-553):
Ico. Flvůíav S 'řjXůeg néxpav Kpív;
So. eg cpavág ye Bgckxíov.
Ico. KpoÇévœv S '¿tv rov Kareaxsg;
So. ogļie AeXçícn v KÓpaig . . .
Ico. eůiáaeval f¡ nćbg ráô 'avõâç;
So. Mai vácn v ye Bockxíov.
Ico. ëpçpov 'fj Károivov ovia;
So. Bockxíov npog fiSovaig.
Ion Have you been before to Delphi?
Xuthus To the wine-god's torch feast.
Ion You stayed with a temple steward?
Xuthus He - there were girls of Delphi.
Ion He introduced you to their rites?
Xuthus Yes, they were Bacchanals.
Ion You had drunk well?
Xuthus I was revelling in the wine-god's feast.
The lines recall Terence's description of a young man's loss of self-control at a similar
festival ( Adelphoe 470):
persuasit nox amor vinum adulescentia.
As with all the rapes in Greek New Comedy (for example, the Hecyra ), the ultimate
cognitio leads to a better life for all concerned. But in Euripides' Ion , there is a greater
discovery to come. After near-infanticide and near-matricide, the Happy Ending is
effected by the gnorismata (tokens) produced by the priestess, and then by Athena ex
machina.

The wish-fulfilment element follows the pattern of what Freud and Rank referred to as
the Familienroman , a fantasy that a young man will discover he is really from a noble
family, or that he has a "better" parent. Ready examples from the English novel include
Tom. Jones and Oliver Twist. One may also adduce Aristotle's analysis of the happy
ending, which he says proceeds from the "weakness of the audience", àaùéveia rœv
ůeárpcov ( Poetics 1453a34); and the spectators long for things to end well. John Gay put
it more accurately in The Beggar's. Opera: "All this we must do to comply with the taste

10 The translations of Euripides are those of David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (edd.), The
Complete Greek Tragedies (Chicago 1958). On Ion 517-562, P.T. Stevens comments: 'This lively
passage of dialogue in stichomythia has a flavour of comedy and eight, perhaps nine colloquialisms
contribute something to the liveliness and conversational tone of these exchanges." See Colloquial
Expressions in Euripides (Wiesbaden 1976) 66.

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 ERICH SEGAL: THE COMIC CATASTROPHE 49

of the town." The cognitio in Ion is part of this pattern

recognition scenes in New Comedy where a child though
Athenian after all.
I have claimed that 412 was Euripides' great innovative season, and there are fairly
strong arguments for dating the Ion in that year.11 Why might the Athenians have
particularly hungered for "more comic" endings at this juncture in their history? In 413,
the Sicilian fleet had been utterly destroyed. According to Thucydides, the woes of
Athens included a financial crisis, a crowded city, lack of food, a general "fear and
trembling", as the historian sums it up: (poßog re Kai KaxánXriÇig ļ ieyicTtļ (8.1.2). The
sophists had called traditional values into question. The Ionian cities were in revolt,
seduced by that protean creature Alcibíades, who was reviled as a "Helen" by some of his
contemporaries.
Now we have certain knowledge of two plays presented by Euripides in 412: the Helen
and the Andromeda .12 (Whatever prize Euripides gained, according to Aristophanes the
Andromeda was Dionysus' favourite tragedy.13) The Helen was prefigured two years
earlier in another Euripidean proto-comedy, usually referred to as Iphigenia in Tauris.
Here too we find a damsel in distress rescued from a barbarian land by a hero whom at
first she does not recognize.
Platnauer's edition of IT. details the astonishing similarities between the two plays.14
Inter alia , we have the heroine of each play dreaming up a trick to dupe a barbarian ruler
into letting her go off - the sort of thing Pļautus would call a frustratio.15 Also, both
plays are set in semi-legendary lands, as geographically imprecise as the seacoast of
Bohemia. Compare Alfred Jarry's prologue to King Ubu , a play whose 1896 production
arguably marked it as the first modern comedy:

Quant à l'action . . . elle se passe en Pologne, c'est à dire, nulle part.

In the Thesmophoriazusae , Aristophanes refers to Euripides' Helen as fļ Kaivi] ' EXevrj
(850), most frequently translated as "his recent Helen". But the adjective as Aristophanes
himself uses it means more than that. In Birds 255-257, Epops convokes the avian
assembly with the news that an old codger from Athens has brought them a novel idea for
a novel enterprise:
"Hkei yáp rig Spipvg npeaßvg
Kaivòg yvū)ļi7ļv
Kaivœv ëpycov t 'ej^eiprļTrjg.

Here comes a shrewd old codger,

New in notions, new in planning,
Innovative.

11 See, among others, A.M. Dale, Euripides Helen (Oxford 1967) xxviii; A.P. Burnett, trans. Ion
(Englewood Cliffs 1970) 1, who opts for "about 410 B.C."; and K. Matthiessen, Elektra, Taurische
Iphigenie und Helena (Göttingen 1964) 89-91, who settles on 413. See also the comments of Albin
Lesky, Greek Tragic Poetry , trans. M. Dillon (New Haven 1983) 316, who regards 414 or 413 as
the most probable date.
12 The date is firmly established by the scholia to Ar. Thesm. 1012 and 1062, as well as to Frogs
53.
13 See Frogs 53.
14 M. Platnauer, Euripides Iphigenia in Tauris (Oxford 1938) xv-xvi.
15 PL Mostellaria 1151: optumas frustrations dederis in comoediis.

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50 STAGE DIRECTIONS - ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF E. W. HANDLEY

Kaivóv is something invented fresh - and it is the most significant cha

comic poet's task.16 Antiphanes fr. 191 compares the tasks of writ
comedy, arguing that whereas the tragedian retells stories already know
number does not have this advantage: 17
rjļāv Se TCCVT ' ovk ëanv, àXXa navra Sei
evpeîv, òvójuara Kaiva, Kaiva npajļiaia,
Kaivovç Àóyovç KČmeiia xa Siņicrļļieva
xpórepov, xavvv napóvxa, rf]v Karaarpocpr/v,
Tīļv eiaßoÄrjv.
But we comedians aren't so lucky - we
Must make it all brand new - brand new names,
Brand new plots, brand new dialogue, what happened
Previously, the act on stage, the denouement, and even
The opening.
There is no contesting that Euripides' Helen presents much that is Ka
evident from outset: Helen, dressed in bridal white, is seated on a tomb
Proteus!), singing that she has taken refuge to preserve her purity here b
virginal waters", KaXXinápůevoi poaí (1) of the Nile. Surely this i
wondrous strange snow".
Helen's virginity was always a good joke - compare, for example,
song of Ar. Lys., with Helen, now called "pure and fair", àyva %op
(1315), leading the parade. Normally she was proverbial for sexual p
witness the joke in Martial 1.62.5-6 about the chaste Roman matron wh
Baiae:

incidit in flammas: iuvenemque secuta relicto

coniuge Penelope venit, abit Helene.
But the waters in Euripides' play have had exactly the opposite effect: Helen has been
Penelopized. Despite years of waiting, her créais intact (cf. 67). Yet as the play begins,
this purity is imperilled. Theoclymenus, the barbarian king of Egypt, "hunts me to have
me", ůTjpa yajieïv ļue (63). She is preoccupied with the threat of rape and the violation of
her bed, a word repeated seven times in her opening speech alone. In fact, Helen has more
references to Xéx°Ç than does Medea™ where the heroine is obsessed by the bedroom.
If this alone were not sufficiently Kaivóv, at line 386 her long-lost husband Menelaus
enters - in rags - having just been shipwrecked. He is the traditional alazon, a mile

16 On Kaivóg in Aristophanes, see Thomas K. Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy (Ithaca 1991) 103
and 162; C. Moulton, Aristophanic Poetry (Göttingen 1981) 35 and 136 (on the "new" Helen). Th
word's resonances give an extra twist to the parodie echo of the opening line of Sophocles' famous
ode in the Antigone (332) & Birds 1470: noXXa ôfj Kai Kaiva koli ůavjuáar ' èneKîôjieoùa koli
ôeivà Kpáyjiaz 'eïôofiev, "Many strange, wonderfully new and awesome things have we seen from
aloft." On the treatment of f¡ Kaivf] ' EXévr¡ in Thesm A.M. Bowie observes with insight that
"Aristophanes takes on an especially difficult task in choosing for parody a scene . . . which is itsel
highly comic: he must produce in effect a parody of a parody": see Aristophanes: Myth , Ritual and
Comedy (Cambridge 1993) 223.
17 Eric Handley has an interesting discussion of this celebrated fragment in P.E. Easterling and
B.M.W. Knox (edd.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1.2): Greek Drama
(Cambridge 1989) 159-161.
18 Hel. 30, 32, 48, 65, 376, 427, 475, 584, 590, etc. for a total of 17 references, against 15 for
Medea.

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 ERICH SEGAL: THE COMIC CATASTROPHE 5 1

gloriosus, boasting of his lineage, from Pelops down. He immediately has an

embarrassing confrontation with the old hag who guards the palace door (465-478):
Me. egt 'ovv év OÏKOIÇ övTiv ' òvojuáÇeiç ãvaÇ;
rp. T Ó8 ' éaů v avrov ļivfjjua, nalq S a apxei x$ovóç.
Me. kov Srjr '&v eïrj; xórepov èicvòç f} V õójuoiç;
rp. ovK evõov "EÀÀrjOïv Sè KoXepiánaToç
Me. tív airíav (7%cov fjç é7tr¡vpójir¡v êyá>;
rp. rEXévr¡ kolt ' oïkovç ècn tovgô 'rj tov Aióç
Me. Ttmç çfjç; tív eíxaç juvůov; avúíç poi (ppáoov.
rp. f¡ TvvSapiç naïç, fj Kara E7táprr¡v kot v.
Me. nóůev juoĀovcra; ríva to npâyji 3 ě%ei Àóyov;
rp. AaiceSaíjuovoç yrjç ôevpo vocTrļaaa * ano .
Me. nore; ov tí kov ÀeÃfjajueú 'éÇ ãvTpcov Xéxoç;
rp. Kpiv tovç 'Axaiovç, ò Çév,' éç Tpoíav juoÀeív.
àkX 'ëpK 'àK ' oïkcov: eau yáp tiç êv Sójuoiç
TVXTJ, Tvpavvoç f¡ TapáaaeTai ôófioq.
Menelaus Is there some master of the house you could name to me?
Portress This is his tomb you see here. Now his son is king.
Menelaus Where would he be then? In the house, or gone somewhere?
Portress He is not in; and above all else he hates Hellenes.
Menelaus What have we done to him that I should suffer for it?
Portress It is because Zeus' daughter, Helen, is in this house.
Menelaus What? What is this you are telling me? Say it again.
Portress I mean Tyndareus' daughter who lived in Sparta once.
Menelaus Where did she come from? What is the explanation of this?
Portress She came from Lacedaemon and made her way here.
Menelaus When? Has my wife I left in the cave been carried off?
Portress She came, friend, before the Achaeans sailed for Troy.
So go away from here quietly. The state of things
inside is such that all the great house is upside down.
At this point Menelaus is totally befuddled - reminiscent of Pļautus' Menaechmus.19

Some commentators, for example A.M. Dale, have tried to explain away Menelaus
obtuseness.20 But his conclusion shows that he is merely a comic fool: "the world is large
and full of many people and things. Therefore it is possible that they have similar names.
So much for the uniqueness of the tragic hero. Here Menelaus' attitude is exactly like tha
of Amphitryon's slave Sosia in Pļautus' comedy: when outfaced by Mercury, who claim
he is the real Sosia, the bondsman can only conclude, omnes congeminavimus - and
then he slinks off saying aliud nomen quaerendum est mihi (423).

19 On the "loss of face" in comedy (vs. the uniqueness of tragedy), Harry Levin, in Refraction
Essays in Comparative Literature (Oxford 1966) 130, appositely refers to the observation of Pasc
that Bergson later amplified in Le Rire : "Two faces that are alike, though neither of them excites
laughter in itself, make me laugh when together on account of the likeness."
Coincidentally, Euripides' use of the verb rapácaco in line 478 in a way anticipates Bergson'
famous description of the paradigmatic comic situation as "monde renversé": Le rire: essai sur
signification du comique (Paris 1900) 72.
20 See Dale (n.ll above) 99. R. Kannicht remarks ad loc.: "Die Zweiteiligkeit der Rhesis ist al
sinnenfälliger Ausdruck der Unfähigkeit des Men., die Informationen der Pförtnerin richtig
auszuwerten"; cf. Euripides Helena II (Heidelberg 1969) 140.

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52 STAGE DIRECTIONS - ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF E. W. HANDLEY

At last the long-awaited cognitio : Helen emerges from her cons

priestess (compare Xuthus in the Ion), She has now heard news that M
Ttoúeivòç &v juóXoiç (540): "Would that you were here, dear one." Thi
fulfilling wish that would pervade Greek New Comedy: he is right th
when Helen first sees him, she thinks he is yet another of Theocly men
in his eye (see 541ff., especially 545, oç ļie úr¡párai Xaßeiv). S
gratuitously bourgeois comment that this fellow is dressed like a real h
and she rushes back to the tomb for asylum. They talk it over (563-566
Me. 'EÀévji a ' õpoíav ôfj juáXiar ' eiõov , yúvai.
EX. êyœ Se MevéXeœ ye aé ovS së%co ri çâ>.
Me. ëyvœç yap ôpùœç avôpa Svarvxéararov.
EX. & xpóvioç êXùcov aqç ôájuaproç éç xépaç
Menelaus You are more like Helen, my lady, than any I know.
Helen You are like Menelaus, too. What does it mean?
Menelaus The truth. You have recognized that most unhappy man.
Helen Oh, you are come at long last here to your wife's arms.
Now Menelaus is unsure (567):
Tcoíaç õájuaproç; ļif] úíyyç êjuœv jténXcûv.
Wife? What wife do you mean? Take your hands off my
clothes.

This is yet another example of the sexual innuendo in Euripidean comedy. One can
compare the moment when Orestes goes to embrace Iphigenia at LT. 798-799:21
Xo. č,év I ov SiKaiœç rrjç ůeov rf]v npóoKoXov
Xpaíveiç àúÍKTOiç TrepißaXcov nénXoiç xépa.
Do not lay hands, whoever you may be,
Upon a vestment sacred
To Artemis! Do not profane that robe!
At last Menelaus and Helen convince each other that they are who they claim to be,
and the plot proceeds from the husband's stupidity to the wife's ingenuity.
Just as Iphigenia concocts a brand new escape plan ( Kcavòv éÇevpTjjuá ri, I. T. 1029),
Helen dreams up a ßTixocvr] aœvqpiaç for Menelaus (1034). At 1049, she comes up with
what she calls "a women's idea". In fact, after King Theoclymenus is totally duped, his
chief chagrin is that he was foiled by female wiles ( yvvaiiceíaiç rexvccicnv, 1621). The
plans of both Iphigenia and Helen have something significant in common: the gamut of
barbarům ludificare - a Greek outwits a foreigner.
In Helen's case, she tells Theoclymenus that Menelaus is dead and must be buried (in
effigy) on the high seas - with lots of funeral gifts. The plan works.22 Helen's escape is
elevated to myth by the appearance ex machina (in the nick of time) of her brothers the
Dioskouroi: twins, sea gods, stars - and former rapists. They predict her future
deification. She too will become a heavenly body.
Both Helen and LT. emphasize rebirth from the sea - Hades lies beyond. And so does
the other Euripidean offering of 412, Andromeda.
Although the play exists only in fragments, we know that it dealt also with a damsel in
distress on an exotic shore. As in Ion , the hero Perseus is a man of questionable (or at

21 Compare also Hipp. 607.

22 Cf. Leo (n.6 above) 159.

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 ERICH SEGAL: THE COMIC CATASTROPHE 53

least unproven) lineage. Like Helen, Andromeda is dressed

rQck in the sea - a scene which has been the subject of m
novelist Achilles Tatius gives us a detailed description of a
temple of Pelusium, in which a kore , dressed in bridal w
resembled "one who was assigned to be the bride of Death
play, Perseus seems at first to have thought Andromeda a s
We can reconstruct the early part of the play, namely th
calyx krater of the late fifth century in the Berlin Muse
bound: her royal parents had exposed her with much prec
gods. Her parents, King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia, are
what will happen. Perseus is hovering in his winged tr
bourgeois feeling to it all, as in fr. 143 (Nauck):
Zpījjuacnv yàp £vtv%cò ■
raîç (TVjucpopaîcn 8, 'œç ôpâç, ovk evtvxcû.
"I am fortunate with money, but otherwise n
Is her father offering Perseus a bribe? If so, to do what? In
- a prime element of what Gilbert Murray charact
Menander's world.
Fragments 141-142 suggest that after the rescue King Cepheus reneged on his promise
to give Andromeda to Perseus in marriage, on the grounds that he was a pauper and a
bastard. If, as Oscar Wilde would later assert, "a handbag is not a proper mother", surely
a rain shower is not a proper father.
But all will be well - all must be well, since this is a comedy. The krater suggests that
the crisis was resolved by the eleventh-hour appearance of Aphrodite ex machina , who
doubtless revealed that Perseus was not a thing of shreds and patches but the son of Zeus,
the celestial Mikado himself. As the god Castor remarks in the epilogue to the Euripidean
Electra (1342): "the rest is marriage", roiaSe ļiekrļaei yáfioç.
So much for Euripides' offerings of Kaiva Trpáyjuara on the so-called tragic stage of
412 BC. Significantly, this was also a watershed year for the comic festivals. In all
likelihood, this was also the season of Eupolis' Demoi , in which four dead Athenian
leaders (Miltiades, Solon, Aristides, and Pericles) were resurrected from the underworld
and asked to advise the city.26 Whatever the issue of this comedy, its avowed aim, like
that of the Frogs , was "to make our city gush and bloom again",27 in other words to be
fertile, yovijuoç (cf. Frogs 96). It was a dream of spring, rejuvenation, healing.
Can we explain this universal hunger for purification, for rebirth, for a Happy Ending
via wish-fulfilment? In The Greeks and the Irrational , E.R. Dodds describes the Athenian
climate around 412 BC as one of "intellectual regression". Symptomatic of this
atmosphere was not only the waning of all creative activity (except comedy), but a greatly
increased interest in new healing cults which "within a generation or two transformed
Asclepius from a minor hero into a major god - and made his temple at Epidaurus a

23 See Kyle M. Phillips, Jr., "Perseus and Andromeda", AJA 72 (1968) 1-23.
24 Cf. Apuleius, Met. 4.32ff., where Psyche is melodramatically prepared for a thalamus funereus.
° See A.D. I rendali and l.B.L. Webster, Illustrations oj Uree k Drama (London 19 /1) 111.3,1U =
ARV2 1336.
26 Ian C. Storey, however, argues that Demoi was staged in 416; see "Dating and Re-dating
Eupolis", Phoenix 44 (1990) 1-30, especially 24-27, following W.G. Forrest in YCS 24 (1975) 41.
27 PCG fr.119.

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54 STAGE DIRECTIONS - ESSA YS IN HONOUR OF E. W. HANDLEY

place of pilgrimage as famous as Lourdes."28 Another example wa

heightened interest in foreign, orgiastic mystical religion, "magic for
cures, easy answers for those desperately searching for easy solutions.
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle , Freud explains the struggles betwe
death instincts as man's unconscious search for an earlier state of things
recapture of time". Another way of denying time among primitive peop
cosmogonie ceremonies - rites which give the spectator-participants
their world will enjoy a fresh new beginning. These are often in the f
gamos.
Could these theories possibly explain the near-ridiculous emphasis on gamoi in th
later plays of Euripides? Perhaps the most extreme example is the denouement of the
Orestes , where Apollo appears ex machina as Orestes, Pylades and Electra are about to
slaughter their hostage Hermione. Not only does the god order Orestes to marry the girl
whose throat he is holding the knife, not only must Pylades marry Electra, but none othe
than Menelaus, the archetypal monogamist (whose wife this time has not been abducted
but translated) must also marry again! The three gamoi at the end of Molière' s L'Avare
pale in comparison.
Granted that comedy in the late fifth century BC had a social function, providing a
troubled city with needed psychic balm or a draught of hope, audiences even in th
securest of times, as Aristotle rightly noted, always crave the rļSovf] oÌKeia of comedy
what Henry James would later refer to as "the time-honored bread-sauce of the Happy
Ending". Like every comic author, Euripides was merely "complying with the taste of th
town".
There remained but two significant variations which would transform the Euripidean
formula into Menandrian New Comedy. First, to use the phrase of Northrop Frye, was the
"blocking character", who in Euripides is a barbarian (Thoas in I.T. , Theoclymenus in
Helen) and who in Menander becomes instead a non- Athenian, rather than a non-Greek.
The relationship can be schematized thus:

E = Non-Greek M = Non- Athenian Citizen

(Blocking Character) (Blocking Element)
vs. vs.

Greek Citizen

In Menander, the lov

sometimes a slave) a
marriageable. In the S
Menandrian corpus co
The marriage law w
legislation since the P
carried grave penaltie
New Comedy wroug
described the tragic p
followed by mechane
intrigue. Lesky even

28 E.R. Dodds, The Gre

29 A.R.W. Harrison, The

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 ERICH SEGAL: THE COMIC CATASTROPHE 55

threatened to become a pattern".30 But that is precisely th

essential sameness.31 Webster, in the terminology of Lévi-
as a basic armature on which the code of story was encrust
The single structural change made by the New Comedy
order of Euripidean anagnorisis and mechanema. Thus in P
first and the cognitio at the end.
So it is that we laugh at the rogueries of the Plautine sl
- and then discover all those long-lost, legitimate, marria
These, I would argue, constitute the only significant dif
and modern comedy. But our ambidextrous playwright alre
potential of the comic cognitio. In that watershed year of
remarks: "How utterly divine it is to recognize your love
Kai to yiyváxjKEiv çíXovç This is the impassioned excla
Kaivîj ' EÀévrj (560). It was written by the man who perf
honored bread sauce of the Happy Ending" - if not the fat
of modern comedy: Euripides.

Wolfson College, Oxford

30 Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature , trans. J. Will

London 1966) 386ff.; see also Matthiessen (n.l 1 above) 93, 127ff
31 See the famous story of Menander and the ôiáúeaiç at Plut
Handley in The Dy skolos of Menander (London and Cambridge
32 An Introduction to Menander (Manchester 1974) 130. .

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