Delphi Complete Works of Aristophanes (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (44 page)

LYSISTRATA. All is for the best; and now, Laconians, take your wives away home with you, and you, Athenians, yours. May husband live happily with wife, and wife with husband. Dance, dance, to celebrate our bliss, and let us be heedful to avoid like mistakes for the future.

CHORUS OF ATHENIANS Appear, appear, dancers, and the Graces with you! Let us invoke, one and all, Artemis, and her heavenly brother, gracious Apollo, patron of the dance, and Dionysus, whose eye darts flame, as he steps forward surrounded by the Maenad maids, and Zeus, who wields the flashing lightning, and his august, thrice-blessed spouse, the Queen of Heaven! These let us invoke, and all the other gods, calling all the inhabitants of the skies to witness the noble Peace now concluded under the fond auspices of Aphrodité. Io Paean! Io Paean! dance, leap, as in honour of a victory won. Evoé! Evoé! And you, our Laconian guests, sing us a new and inspiring strain!

CHORUS OF LACONIANS. Leave once more, oh! leave once more the noble height of Taygetus, oh! Muse of Lacedaemon, and join us in singing the praises of Apollo of Amyclae, and Athena of the Brazen House, and the gallant twin sons of Tyndarus, who practise arms on the banks of Eurotas river. Haste, haste hither with nimble-footed pace, let us sing Sparta, the city that delights in choruses divinely sweet and graceful dances, when our maidens bound lightly by the river side, like frolicsome fillies, beating the ground with rapid steps and shaking their long locks in the wind, as Bacchantes wave their wands in the wild revels of the Wine-god. At their head, oh! chaste and beauteous goddess, daughter of Latona, Artemis, do thou lead the song and dance. A fillet binding thy waving tresses, appear in thy loveliness; leap like a fawn; strike thy divine hands together to animate the dance, and aid us to renown the valiant goddess of battles, great Athené of the Brazen House!

Anonymous translation for the
Athenian Society, London, 1912

The
Θεσμοφοριάζουσαι
was first produced in 411 BC and like
Lysistrata
offers revealing insight into the subversive role of women in a male-dominated society, as well as providing an amusing satire of contemporary tragic poets.  The play is also notable for Aristophanes’ free adaptation of key structural elements of Old Comedy and for the absence of the anti-populist and anti-war comments that permeate his earlier works.

The play concerns the real-life tragedian Euripides, who is afraid that, “the women at the festival/Are going to kill me for insulting them!” 
The Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria
presents the absurd premise that women are incensed by Euripides’ continual portrayal of women as mad, murderous, and sexually depraved, and that they are using the festival of the Thesmophoria, an annual fertility celebration dedicated to Demeter, as an opportunity to plan their revenge on the tragedian.

Terrified of their retribution, Euripides seeks out the aid of his fellow tragedian, Agathon, in the hope of persuading his rival to spy for him and to be his advocate at the festival, requiring him to go disguised as a woman. Agathon is already dressed as a woman, in preparation for a play, but he believes that the women of Athens are jealous of him and he refuses to attend the festival for fear of being discovered. Euripides’ aged in-law Mnesilochus then offers to go in Agathon’s place and so Euripides shaves him, dresses him in women’s clothes borrowed from Agathon and finally sends him off to the Thesmophorion, the location of the women’s secret rites.

The play is celebrated for its reversal of sexual stereotypes, where men dress as women and the women appear to be the equal of men, particularly in their imitation of the democratic assembly. The sexual role-reversals can be understood to have a broad, political significance. The warrior ethos of an older generation versus the effete intellectualism of a younger generation is a debate that recurs in various forms throughout Aristophanes’ works. Later on in
The Frogs
, for example, a debate is held between Aeschylus, who values Homer for the warrior ethos he inculcates in his audience, and Euripides who values the intellectual and philosophical quibbling of a legalistic society. The debate in
The Frogs
is won by Aeschylus and he is brought back from the dead to reform the polis with his instructive poetry. In
The Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria,
the female Chorus argues that they are better than their men because they have preserved their heritage, as represented by the weaving shuttle, the wool-basket and the parasol, whereas the men have lost their spears and shields, referring to Athens’ loss to Sparta in the war. 

Bust of Euripides, Roman copy after a Greek original, c. 330 BC

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

THE THESMOPHORIAZUSAE

INTRODUCTION

Like the ‘Lysistrata,’ the ‘Thesmophoriazusae, or Women’s Festival,’ and the next following play, the ‘Ecclesiazusae, or Women in Council’ are comedies in which the fair sex play a great part, and also resemble that extremely
scabreux
production in the plentiful crop of doubtful ‘double entendres’ and highly suggestive situations they contain.

The play has more of a proper intrigue and formal dénouement than is general with our Author’s pieces, which, like modern extravaganzas and musical comedies, are often strung on a very slender thread of plot. The idea of the ‘Thesmophoriazusae’ is as follows.

Euripides is summoned as a notorious woman-hater and detractor of the female sex to appear for trial and judgment before the women of Athens assembled to celebrate the Thesmophoria, a festival held in honour of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone, from which men were rigidly excluded. The poet is terror-stricken, and endeavours to persuade his confrère, the tragedian Agathon, to attend the meeting in the guise of a woman to plead his cause, Agathon’s notorious effeminacy of costume and way of life lending itself to the deception; but the latter refuses point-blank. He then prevails on his father-in-law, Mnesilochus, to do him this favour, and shaves, depilates, and dresses him up accordingly. But so far from throwing oil on the troubled waters, Mnesilochus indulges in a long harangue full of violent abuse of the whole sex, and relates some scandalous stories of the naughty ways of peccant wives. The assembly suspects at once there is a man amongst them, and on examination of the old fellow’s person, this is proved to be the case. He flies for sanctuary to the altar, snatching a child from the arms of one of the women as a hostage, vowing to kill it if they molest him further. On investigation, however, the infant turns out to be a wine-skin dressed in baby’s clothes.

In despair Mnesilochus sends urgent messages to Euripides to come and rescue him from his perilous predicament. The latter then appears, and in successive characters selected from his different Tragedies — now Menelaus meeting Helen again in Egypt, now Echo sympathising with the chained Andromeda, presently Perseus about to release the heroine from her rock — pleads for his unhappy father-in-law. At length he succeeds in getting him away in the temporary absence of the guard, a Scythian archer, whom he entices from his post by the charms of a dancing-girl.

As may be supposed, the appearance of Mnesilochus among the women dressed in women’s clothes, the examination of his person to discover his true sex and his final detection, afford fine opportunities for a display of the broadest Aristophanic humour. The latter part of the play also, where various pieces of Euripides are burlesqued, is extremely funny; and must have been still more so when represented before an audience familiar with every piece and almost every line parodied, and played by actors trained and got up to imitate every trick and mannerism of appearance and delivery of the tragic actors who originally took the parts.

The ‘Thesmophoriazusae’ was produced in the year 412 B.C., six years before the death of Euripides, who is held up to ridicule in it, as he is in ‘The Wasps’ and several other of our Author’s comedies.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

EURIPIDES.
MNESILOCHUS, Father-in-law of Euripides.
AGATHON.
SERVANT OF AGATHON.
CHORUS attending AGATHON.
HERALD.
WOMEN.
CLISTHENES.
A PRYTANIS or Member of the Council.
A SCYTHIAN or Police Officer.
CHORUS OF THESMOPHORIAZUSAE — women keeping the Feast of Demeter.

SCENE: In front of Agathon’s house; afterwards in the precincts of the Temple of Demeter.

THE THESMOPHORIAZUSAE

OR

THE WOMEN CELEBRATING THE THESMOPHORIA

MNESILOCHUS. Great Zeus! will the swallow never appear to end the winter of my discontent? Why the fellow has kept me on the run ever since early this morning; he wants to kill me, that’s certain. Before I lose my spleen entirely, Euripides, can you at least tell me whither you are leading me?

EURIPIDES. What need for you to hear what you are going to see?

MNESILOCHUS. How is that? Repeat it. No need for me to hear….

EURIPIDES. What you are going to see.

MNESILOCHUS. Nor consequently to see….

EURIPIDES. What you have to hear.

MNESILOCHUS. What is this wiseacre stuff you are telling me? I must neither see nor hear.

EURIPIDES. Ah! but you have two things there that are essentially distinct.

MNESILOCHUS. Seeing and hearing.

EURIPIDES. Undoubtedly.

MNESILOCHUS. In what way distinct?

EURIPIDES. In this way. Formerly, when Ether separated the elements and bore the animals that were moving in her bosom, she wished to endow them with sight, and so made the eye round like the sun’s disc and bored ears in the form of a funnel.

MNESILOCHUS. And because of this funnel I neither see nor hear. Ah! great gods! I am delighted to know it. What a fine thing it is to talk with wise men!

EURIPIDES. I will teach you many another thing of the sort.

MNESILOCHUS. That’s well to know; but first of all I should like to find out how to grow lame, so that I need not have to follow you all about.

EURIPIDES. Come, hear and give heed!

MNESILOCHUS. I’m here and waiting.

EURIPIDES. Do you see that little door?

MNESILOCHUS. Yes, certainly.

EURIPIDES. Silence!

MNESILOCHUS. Silence about what? About the door?

EURIPIDES. Pay attention!

MNESILOCHUS. Pay attention and be silent about the door? Very well.

EURIPIDES. ’Tis there that Agathon, the celebrated tragic poet, dwells.

MNESILOCHUS. Who is this Agathon?

EURIPIDES. ’Tis a certain Agathon….

MNESILOCHUS. Swarthy, robust of build?

EURIPIDES. No, another. You have never seen him?

MNESILOCHUS. He has a big beard?

EURIPIDES. No, no, evidently you have never seen him.

MNESILOCHUS. Never, so far as I know.

EURIPIDES. And yet you have pedicated him. Well, it must have been without knowing who he was. Ah! let us step aside; here is one of his slaves bringing a brazier and some myrtle branches; no doubt he is going to offer a sacrifice and pray for a happy poetical inspiration for Agathon.

SERVANT OF AGATHON. Silence! oh, people! keep your mouths sedately shut! The chorus of the Muses is moulding songs at my master’s hearth. Let the winds hold their breath in the silent Ether! Let the azure waves cease murmuring on the shore!…

MNESILOCHUS. Brououou! brououou!
(Imitates the buzzing of a fly.)

EURIPIDES. Keep quiet! what are you saying there?

SERVANT. … Take your rest, ye winged races, and you, ye savage inhabitants of the woods, cease from your erratic wandering …

MNESILOCHUS. Broum, broum, brououou.

SERVANT. … for Agathon, our master, the sweet-voiced poet, is going …

MNESILOCHUS. … to be pedicated?

SERVANT. Whose voice is that?

MNESILOCHUS. ’Tis the silent Ether.

SERVANT. … is going to construct the framework of a drama. He is rounding fresh poetical forms, he is polishing them in the lathe and is welding them; he is hammering out sentences and metaphors; he is working up his subject like soft wax. First he models it and then he casts it in bronze …