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So let's turn to the Athens debt study then.

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And we've got four plays that students need to be aware of here in different extents, where we'll start actually,

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perhaps counterintuitively, with the one that comes last chronologically and also has the shortest amounts that students need to read.

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That is the I'm going to call it the women at the thesmophoria before you because it's such a long word to pronounce.

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I might ask you to do that.

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And we aren't just looking here at the two sections of the parabasis, I believe that's lines seven, eight, 6 to 800 and then 832 840.

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But before we think about these lines and what they might tell us about the role of women in Athenian society,

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which is something that Athens students need to study, perhaps just give us a little overview of this play because it's it's in 411, isn't it?

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It happens at the same year, but not at the same festival as Lysistrata.

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And it's a lot of fun. It's an absolute riot, and particularly for anyone who likes Euripides.

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But this is just wonderful because it's sketch after sketch parodying his tragedies.

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And so it's a sort of celebration of Euripides. But along the way, we learn a lot about Athens as well.

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So the main story of the premise is that Euripides is going to be put on trial by the women

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of Athens because they're so outraged by the way in which he presents them in his tragedies.

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So he enlists some help. And initially he wants the tragic playwright Agathon to help him, but he's not willing to do it.

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But his in-law is willing to go and infiltrate the female only festival the Thesomphoria

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where all the women are getting together and plotting against Euripides.

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So his the job is to infiltrate and take charge, to get them to change their minds.

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And he totally fails to do that and get discovered.

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And the rest of the play is all about trying to escape from these women and get rescued, eventually gets rescued.

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And so it's an opportunity for Aristophanes to play with ideas about what might go on at

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that all female festival at the same time as exploring and celebrating Euripides' tragedies,

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some of which are actually known as escape tragedies, because they're all about being in a situation where you have to try to get out.

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And so it works in lots of levels.

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As I say, it is terrific fun and I do think it's important, but it's, as you said, in the same year as the Lysistrata.

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So there is certainly something going on in terms of Aristophanes exploring and thinking about women, female characters in that year.

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Okay. Thank you. And yeah, it's worth saying. I mean, the whole concept of that festival is extraordinary anyway, isn't it?

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Because these women, they go and campaign on the Pnyx, which is the the seat of the assembly,

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and that's where they are for, I think, three days conducting their religious rights.

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I think it's in the sort of September, the autumn time of year.

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And that in itself is a fascinating aspect to Athenian public life, that the women almost take control of the the Democratic Assembly place.

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So they do really for three days. So what we're trying to do with these sections, these two sections,

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is think about what they might tell us about the role, the status and the position of women in ancient Athens.

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And I would just like to throw in there when we start that, the famous quote from the end of the funeral speech of Pericles,

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as recorded by each of the things which is also a prescribed source,

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where he goes on and on and on about why Athens is a wonderful city worth dying for if you're a man.

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And in the end, he just throws a kind of a small morsel of comfort to the women.

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So I've got to say something about the women up. You know, chin up.

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Good luck. But he says that the most virtuous woman is the one who is least spoken about, whether for praise or for blame.

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So that might strike us as really surprising that don't even be seen as a good woman,

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because then you might be be talked about, then you're being talked about.

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Just be as an anonymous as possible and then you're super virtuous.

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And we then might think, well, if that's the reality, then they're just stuck at home hiding so that no one ever talks about them.

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Now, that is not realistic in any human society. And possibly therefore, this passage or these two passages give us a more realistic perspective.

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We could talk about this role as the role of women and how we might approach the historians.

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But how would you go about thinking about these two sections, the Thucydides and this Aristophanes together?

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Well, I think I think it's actually right to bring these studies into this not funeral oration,

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because of the way in which Thucydides sets out an ideal that sets out how women should behave.

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And as you say, that can be quite distanced from reality.

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It's important as well to remember in the beginning of that passage that describes the funeral oration.

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There is an acknowledgement that the women have a role to play in lamenting the debt so that they are present.

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They're part of this important civic ritual.

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And yet, you know, you balance that off with, as you say, apparently saying, well, just basically don't be talked about.

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And I think then we look at a passage like this and it does become this sort of corrective.

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We have to be aware that there are gaps between that ideal and the reality, but it's trying to get at the reality that is so, so difficult.

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And so then, you know,

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you look at something like this passage from Aristophanes and it just begins to allow us to see if the cracks just peek through a little bit,

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even though, you know, of course, we have to take that with a pinch of salt because of the way in which it's being presented within a comedy.

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And we have male performers playing the parts of women and that potentially that this whole play is really formed with the idea of men in mind.

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You know, the male audience before anything, and it's written by a male playwright.

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So you have a very important layer of sort of not necessarily obstacles, but factors to take into account.

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But I do think that it's important in Thesmophoriazusae

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that Aristophanes is interested in thinking about women as a way of all female characters,

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as a way of reflecting on actually at the same time, his own treatment of female characters.

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It's always a double level in Aristophanes when he's looking at your approaches,

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is also reflecting on his own artistry in the way in which these female characters are being presented.

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And then the further factor here is this is the parabasis,

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where the chorus step aside from their character to be able to speak apparently a bit more directly to the audience.

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And I think that's slightly misleading to imagine that anything is direct because it's all within a comedy,

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but it is nominally a bit more of a direct address so that you are in theory getting more what they really think.

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You know, that this is something they want to put across.

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And it's really interesting to look at particularly I guess the first section seven, eight, 6 to 800.

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And if we look at those lines, it sort of starts. Everyone has got lots of bad things to say about women,

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how we were a bad influence of men and responsible for conflicts, quarrels, faction, trouble, anguish, war, the lots.

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Well, we've already talked in the period study parts of the podcast about how Aspasia was essentially blamed for the Peloponnesian War,

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you know, and then the lines carry on about Why'd you marry us?

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Why did you take such a place on us and all the rest of it?

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And then we get into women being looked at in the streets by men and perhaps gawked at, ogled, we could say.

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I mean, these are actually the sorts of complaints that sadly, historically and even today with our MeToo culture,

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which is emerging in recent years, that these are the sorts of things women do complain about with lots of justification.

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And so on the surface it looks like Aristophanes is almost standing up for me to culture, I mean, which is obviously an anachronism.

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But could we at least say that again back to that idea that Aristophanes must be hitting on something based in reality,

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that these are the sorts of complaints which Athenian men would have been hearing at home and from their women think.

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I think it's very tempting to read it in that way, because otherwise, what is this passage doing?

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You know, you have to ask, why does Aristophanes get his chorus to say this?

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What? What? What's the. You know, what's the purpose otherwise?

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And so he, I would say the playwright no longer thought in terms of his criticism, his critique.

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It's not just demagogues, it's the demos. The people themselves get criticised in any of his plays actually I think and you can't

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find anyone who escapes it's and it's not just satire and it's not just the laughs.

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It's also that this is someone who I think thinks very, very, very carefully about society.

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That's why part why I think it's such a good source alongside these oddities,

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this is someone who closely observes the world around him and who writes plays that address all aspects of society.

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So that could well be here, I think an expression of not necessarily what women are saying because after all apart,

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you know from I suppose to their husband,

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where's the where's the place to be able to say this but this is actually identity more about men than it is about women.

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This is I mean, this is Aristophanes calling people out on their hypocrisy, like, well, hang on.

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And you can't have this both ways. And it's it's a long term preoccupation.

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If you think about, for example, you know, in the mythological plain, the myth of Pandora,

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which we know was central within, you know, cultural currency in Athens, it's right there in the Parthenon.

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It's at the pedestal, wasn't it, of that great statue of Athena.

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And it's it's that conflict between hang on, we don't trust.

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Women we don't know. You know, we don't want to give women power.

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And yet there we are gawping at them.

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And so I think there's there's certainly a conflict which is as a as I say, this ongoing preoccupation,

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but that you could make the case that actually Aristophanes is coming out on the side of women in this passage.

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Yeah. That's intriguing, isn't it? And we'll never quite get to the bottom of it.

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But I think the really important thing there that you said,

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it's a corrective to the Thucydides quote and I think that is a really important thing for our students to think about.

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And then if we look at the second part there, that's lines 832-842.

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What we've got here is some evidence for the fact that women actually do play a prominent public role at festivals, which we know from other sources.

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And you've talked about them lamenting for the dead publicly as well.

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So we just get a little bit of a sense here, don't we, of how women might actually be out and about in the city,

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albeit that the the women are complaining that they don't get appropriate credit for raising a good son as opposed to a bad one.

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Well. Well, and Rob, actually, as well, this idea of that, it's not fair for everyone to be treated equally.

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But if you've done a good job, I mean, it really goes back to that funeral oration that you should be not talked about,

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whether you're doing bad things or, you know, whether the praise or criticisms and the same here that yes, you're not going to get the honour.

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There's not a distinction being made between those who actually done the city great good by producing, which is,

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after all, one of the things you can do as a woman is to produce a great citizen for the benefit of the city.

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And that, you know, it doesn't matter if you do a good job on that or not, you're still going to be treated the same.

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And so that may be challenges in a way, some of our notions of, you know, sort of equality within democracy, but actually,

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you know, that there are honours and they should be honours and that fact should extend to it's about recognition as well, isn't it?

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That should extend to recognising the value and contribution that some have made.

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Yeah, that's, that's very interesting that it actually ties in well with what Thucydides or Pericles apparently says,

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that that actually just don't be talked about at all, whether for praise or blame.

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And this is kind of what they're saying here.

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Well, you know, it doesn't matter whether we produce a crook like Hyperbolus or a hero like Lamacus, we don't get any credit anyway.

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So that part of it perhaps, you know, wraps in with Pericles.

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It is a rather just thinking. It's a rather sort of gloomy outlook, really, isn't it?

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The only thing, one of the only things that you can do to contribute to the city is to do a good job as a mother,

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and you're not going to get much for it.

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So, yeah, it is a gloomy outlook, but perhaps, you know, some reality there.

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Well, it's very interesting at least to think about Aristophanes probing that male audience with are you being fair to your womenfolk

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challenging the audience, I think, is one of the things that we can really see throughout is is comedy making them think reflects on practices.

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That's interesting, too. One last thought on that is that it challenges us not to necessarily think of women in Athens

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as just cohesive singular group with the same goal and the same thoughts that actually,

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you know that between you know, that there's that that potential infighting even within that within that group.

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Okay. Well, let's come to Clouds. And we're actually going to go against slightly out of chronological order here.

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The last place we're going to look at will be Knights, which is 424 and Wasps, which is 422.

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And they are to a great extent both about Cleon between the two.

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In 43, we have this play Clouds. So they're actually the version we have was, I think, rewritten or slightly rewritten a few years later.

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And Aristophanes complains about that, that people didn't like Clouds very much, they didn't get it.

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They didn't understand what he was trying to do, say, you go.

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So it's a very interesting play and let's see if we can try and understand what he's trying to do.

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We have three sections of the play to look at, but he turns to two things combined.

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One is the the cultural of the intellectual, in essence.

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And that's a lot to do with the new learning, the new science, which comes up in lines 365-381.

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But the core anxiety is an outworking of that new learning, which is this sort of science of rhetoric,

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of being able to speak well and persuasively in a democracy.

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And of course, rhetoric is closely associated with democracy because when you're in a democratic system,

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if you get your arguments out best, then you win.

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And we've had so many conversations in recent years about social media and people using arguments ethically and unethically.

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It's a really core anxiety of our society today and other democratic societies around the world.

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And what's interesting is that rhetoric becomes a core anxiety in Athenian democracy.

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And basically the idea that people are manipulating you with clever but unethical arguments.

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And that really is the heart of this play, isn't it? It absolutely is.

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And that idea of what's going on in those places and it is it's the anxiety of, well, what happens to society.

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If you can teach someone to make a case for something that is morally, ethically.

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No. And, you know, it explores those implications.

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And I think it brings it out quite brilliantly when eventually.

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So you have a father and son in this play Strepsiadies and Pheidippides, and eventually the son,

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once he's been trained in rhetoric, can make the case that it's okay for him to hit his father.

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Now that always stays with me, you know, as the way in which Aristophanes just shows the way the society unravelling.

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And typically, as you might expect in a comedy, it starts on the level of an oikos, a home, a family.

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But actually, you're reflecting on the whole society through looking at what's happening in that household.

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And so, yeah, by the time Pheidippides can turn around and hit that and make a case to say,

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yeah, that's that's fine, now, of course, I'm entitled to hate you.

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And then I think, you know, it's a sort of exposé, really.

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But it also quite clearly pastiche mish-mash of all the different ideas that are out there.

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So while people might think about this as sort of a targeted attack on Socrates, in fact, you know,

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I think it's deliberately framed in a way that allows us to understand and audience members

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who know enough to understand that Aristophanes is playing with all those different ideas,

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because as we know, Socrates famously did not take money for teaching rhetoric.

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That's not how he operated. So I think that's sort of quite deliberately set up by Aristophanes to signal that this is not just about Socrates,

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this is about the teaching of ideas and the implications of that and the ways in which people respond to those ideas.

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That's what we were exploring through the play, rather than sort of targeting Socrates in the same way as he had sort of targeted Cleon.

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Yeah. And it's great to make links to other prescribed sources.

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You've mentioned Socrates, and the Apology is a prescribed source.

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And of course, he says there in his defence speech that this prejudice against him within Athens really starts from Aristophanes' play, this play.

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It's actually we've only got three ancient sources who write about or relatively contemporary ones who write about Socrates.

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The first one is Aristophanes himself here, and then we've got his to followers, students, if you like.

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Xenophon and perhaps more famously, Plato.

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This gives us a very different picture of Socrates.

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And the usual way of reading this is that Socrates becomes a lightning rod for all of these issues, that everything is hung on him.

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Is that correct? Yeah. And I think.

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Again, it goes to the question of the audience. And you can write something and intentionally show that it's tongue in cheek to some extent.

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But the audience might not necessarily take it in that way.

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It's about the point of when meaning is generated and the actual performance is not just the authorial intention,

188
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it's also how the audience takes it, where they think the humour is.

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And I wonder whether that was partly a mismatch between what Aristophanes intended with this and the way it was received.

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So yeah, in 423 B.C., it gets last place, and this revised version that we have,

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our surviving texts is from about 418 to 416 B.C. So we don't know which bits he changed to to try to compensate or modify or improve that play.

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So it's really difficult from what we're working with.

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But I do think there's something to be said for the way in which an audience might respond, the way in which the audience might take the joke.

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And even within the play itself, there's an awareness that.

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And so you have Socrates presenting ideas.

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And then the fathers strepsiades, simply not having the capacity to get the concept.

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I was thinking about that bit where Socrates explains about, Oh, that's not how the world works.

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And there's this complex explanation about eddies, or I think it's called, well, yes, this is our prescribed lines, 36381.

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And that's really interesting, because it speaks to the fact that these pre-socratic were coming up with new scientific theories.

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And the idea in these lines is that actually the rain is not just Zeus pissing through a sieve,

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but it's clouds banging against each other, which we today think, well, yeah, that's obvious.

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But this is presented as an outlandish idea, isn't it?

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It is. And in a way, here you have perfectly the example of Socrates, meaning one thing and explaining one thing and Strepsiades

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having a different takeaway message from it, you know, at a level at which someone might operate, you know, in response to these new ideas.

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So, you know, there's a, I think an awareness of how Socrates himself or whoever we think Socrates represents, the new thinking is misunderstood.

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Right. I mean, Strepsiades simply cannot get it.

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But but also what's potentially so dangerous there is that you have then people going around with these half ideas, half notions.

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And so their belief has been disrupted.

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But their understanding hasn't caught up. And I think that's quite important to this idea of that whole suggestion of introducing Socrates,

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introducing strange gods, and the notion of how dangerous the idea of atheism may or may not have been at the time.

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You know, how how threatening these notions might have been, how open people were to saying, okay, the Olympian gods don't matter.

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That's not the way the world works. So is there a sense even that Aristophanes is parodying or satirising people who are scared of new ideas,

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that it's not just parodying Socrates and these kind of newfangled ideas and how clever and impressive he is or he sees himself to be.

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Yes, but also the way those ideas are received is being mocked as well.

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But, you know, these are simpletons who can't really get it.

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Absolutely. I think that, as I suggested before, I think, you know, the critique does not stop with one character.

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The critique is of Strepsiades, who by the way, through the play does not come off well at all.

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You know, this is someone who owes money and who, instead of being he can't pay his debts and he finds a way of cheating.

219
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Those who come and ask for the money back because he argues his way out or he uses violence.

220
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But he isn't. He's not entirely the victim in this, I wouldn't say.

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And he absolutely does not grasp the concepts fully.

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And so, yes, I do think there's a critique of those who don't get it.

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I mean, Aristophanes, I think as much as he replies or the other playwrights I think are fully conversant with these new ideas, with new thinking.

224
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I think they probably moved in the sort of circles where you would at least be aware of these ideas, even if you didn't necessarily agree with them.

225
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Yeah. And it's, I think in Plato's symposium for all that, in the apology, Socrates says,

226
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Oh, well, it was Aristophanes who made all these assertions in this play.

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And then that started the prejudice in Plato's Symposium.

228
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I think Aristophanes and Socrates are all dinner guests together and getting on terribly well.

229
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Is that right? Oh, yes, of course. Yeah, exactly.

230
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So who who's being mocked, I think, is really at the heart of this.

231
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And I, you know, I think. It's such an interesting resource for thinking through responses to these new ideas and different types of responses.

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And. Well, Strepsiades, the father is a different prospect from his son Pheidipiddes

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That also is important to the way it makes him.

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Athe charge of Socrates corrupting the youth that Pheidippides is actually far more open to learning properly.

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A If he does have the capacity to learn how to make the wrong argument sounds right.

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And so that's a different sort of danger. But it is really being explored in the round by Aristophanes.

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Yeah, everyone. Everyone comes in for grief, which is a good satirist.

238
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Really, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. Well, if we look at the main final section, the so to summarise lines 92-118,

239
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and just introducing this idea of the thinkery and the idea that you go there to learn making persuasive but unethical arguments.

240
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We then talked about 365-381,

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which is looking at possible interpretations of atheism or scientific explanations for the why it rains.

242
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If we then come on to eight, 14 to 13 to the the meat and drink of this is what we call the arguing,

243
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the contest between the right arguments and the wrong argument.

244
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Or that just arguments and the unjust argument.

245
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There was actually one other source that I was going to bring in which I think is relevant here for this play,

246
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which is the encomium of Helen by Gorgias, which is on the the reading list and Gorgias from Sicily.

247
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He's known as the father of rhetoric.

248
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And we know from I think, thucydides or certainly another source that he actually pays a visit to Athens in about 427.

249
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And he's there giving lectures and meeting with young people.

250
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And so I wonder to what extent that's part of this, or is it just generally a response to unethical arguments in the democracy?

251
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We've also studied by this point the Mytilenean debate, which happens in 427,

252
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as portrayed by Thucydides these is Aristophanes thinking that manipulative, unethical rhetoric is just getting out of control, do you think?

253
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Oh, well, I think I think that's very important. And arrival.

254
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Yes. You know, this is this becomes one of those mark marked moments, doesn't it, when it almost quite the invention of rhetoric.

255
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But, you know, this is when someone turns up and all of a sudden we're we're able to learn arguments.

256
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I think that's cultural prominence of that. And the closeness to the Clouds is really important to think about and to think well.

257
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There's anxiety about rhetoric for a much longer time than this.

258
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I mean, I think it's an ongoing anxiety in Athens, as you said, it's such a danger in a direct democracy.

259
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If you have someone who is really able to persuade their listeners, say, Rosie,

260
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tell us a little bit about particularly this αγων between the just arguments and the unjust argument and what we could read into that.

261
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Well, I think it's typical of Aristophanes that he doesn't make it straightforward for us.

262
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Well, and the worse argument comes across as entirely odious, entirely shameless.

263
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So you think you're on a stable footing in terms of knowing where you should stand with this?

264
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Right.

265
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So that new ideas represented by the worse argument will say absolutely anything to persuade you of the case, whether it's morally right or wrong.

266
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Okay. So far so good. But. Actually the better argument is shown to be problematic because in talking about the good old days,

267
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you get extraordinary details about how the better argument of these personifications,

268
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this old guy like to look at where the boys had been sitting with their buttocks and you could see the distal imprint from the buttocks in the sand,

269
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etc. Right. So he is discredited through the action and in the end, the worst argument wins by being able to say, just give way to the tide.

270
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Go on. You want to go sit on someone's back in the audience. Off you go. And so it's not straight forward.

271
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You know, it's not as easy as saying all these new arguments and this new way of arguing is problematic,

272
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because actually also we get to see that there's a problem with the old system as well.

273
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:14,550
Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think it's right that the that's how it ends.

274
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The good argument does go and sits in the audience. Is that right? Yes.

275
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So you can't I mean, I suppose you could say, well,

276
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that showing just how shameless and manipulative the worse argument is, you don't even win by arguing your point.

277
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You simply say, you know, you play on someone's weakness and you use that.

278
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And after all, that is the sort of picture that we get of demagogues elsewhere in Aristophanes fact, and we're going to talk about notes.

279
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The whole idea is that you say and do absolutely anything.

280
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You make promises, whatever it takes to get the people to agree to what you're suggesting.

281
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And I know we said it before, but I think it's worth emphasising that this is really tied up with democracy.

282
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We're not seeing these sort of anxieties in Sparta, for example,

283
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only that we suddenly Athens during this century has evolved a system where you've got to stand up in the assembly and persuade people.

284
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And yes, all the cities have assemblies and things like that. But this is really tied up with democracy and getting people's votes.

285
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And as I said when we started talking about this, it's a deep anxiety in our own society as well.

286
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Yeah. And but I mean, I think the chilling aspect of this is because of the way in which direct democracy works.

287
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It is the lives at stake and actually not just the lives of those who have revolted.

288
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You know, if you think about in any debate, but actually looking ahead and looking forward,

289
00:31:47,030 --> 00:31:51,260
I always think about the generals from the best of Athens.

290
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And obviously that's in the future when count as restored.

291
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But it's a precise example of where actually even your own citizens who have been generals in that battle are put on trial.

292
00:32:05,390 --> 00:32:09,080
And the persuasive argument is life and death for them.

293
00:32:09,830 --> 00:32:14,060
And they are put to death or they are executed based on someone's argument.

294
00:32:15,140 --> 00:32:17,390
And we could also that's a great example.

295
00:32:17,390 --> 00:32:23,540
We could also throw in from the period study the debate about whether to go to Sicily, which is a prescribed reading.

296
00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:27,709
Yes, Nicias saying it's not a good idea and Alcibiades being very gung ho.

297
00:32:27,710 --> 00:32:32,270
And again, how many thousands of deaths came out of his argument.

298
00:32:33,350 --> 00:32:38,380
Exactly. And I think that it's the way in which, you know,

299
00:32:39,980 --> 00:32:49,010
that the decisions that you make are based on whether you're finding someone persuasive on such a huge scale.

300
00:32:49,550 --> 00:32:56,500
You know, we might be used to that in the setting of the law court. But when you get the same principle in an assembly, yeah, absolutely.

301
00:32:56,510 --> 00:33:00,710
It's people's lives. And if you take the wrong choice it's then rowing back from that.

302
00:33:01,980 --> 00:33:05,000
Well, that brings us really nicely to our last plays.

303
00:33:05,310 --> 00:33:09,240
First of all, Knights in 424 and we have the lines.

304
00:33:09,570 --> 00:33:13,380
147-395 prescribed and then WASPs.

305
00:33:13,620 --> 00:33:20,490
891-1008. I putting them together as a set because a lot of what's going on here is about Cleon.

306
00:33:20,790 --> 00:33:29,310
But let's come to Knights, first of all. So this is performance at the Lenaia, I believe, in 424.

307
00:33:29,790 --> 00:33:37,650
And we should put this in context. It's just after Cleon's fantastic triumph down in Pylos and Bacteria area,

308
00:33:37,950 --> 00:33:44,190
where he has managed to take the islands to capture 120 Spartan soldiers who have surrendered.

309
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:48,510
They've been brought back to Athens. They are hostages of war there.

310
00:33:48,770 --> 00:33:54,780
But in a later source, they're being sort of gawked and looked at and objects of fascination for the Athenians.

311
00:33:55,080 --> 00:34:00,120
But Cleon is really riding high politically. He's having a fantastic success.

312
00:34:00,570 --> 00:34:09,210
This play is an attempt at a take, though I don't think it's the first play we know of that really just aims at one individual above all others.

313
00:34:09,930 --> 00:34:13,950
And again, it's important to say that even though it won first prize, they obviously loved it.

314
00:34:14,310 --> 00:34:19,740
He was still re-elected general for the next year. So it's not as if they're like, Oh yeah, we've seen the light now.

315
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:24,090
CLeon, what a shocking guy he is. We mustn't have him anymore because they re-elect him.

316
00:34:24,500 --> 00:34:32,190
Yeah. So. And he continues to be a target for Aristophanes, I think partly for that very,

317
00:34:32,340 --> 00:34:40,680
very reason that it doesn't convince people that you can acknowledge, you know, you can laugh in the night.

318
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:48,059
So this is a pretty devastating exposé of trial and his ways of operating.

319
00:34:48,060 --> 00:34:51,600
And yet, as you say, they still elect Cleon.

320
00:34:51,960 --> 00:35:00,210
So that's quite a useful example when you're thinking about how serious Aristophanes is or how directly his plays,

321
00:35:00,210 --> 00:35:05,460
influence, impacts on everyday life, the politics of the city.

322
00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:11,070
And it's perhaps worth positing the idea that the Athenians might have thought, Yeah, you know,

323
00:35:11,070 --> 00:35:16,800
he's pretty dodgy character in lots of ways, but he's a winner and he's our winner, so we'll vote for him.

324
00:35:17,010 --> 00:35:29,340
Yeah, well, I mean, the the flipside of the Knights is exposing how fickle diagnosis and susceptible and persuadable.

325
00:35:29,850 --> 00:35:33,060
And it isn't really a victory within the play.

326
00:35:33,750 --> 00:35:38,260
You have, of course, a sort of replacement for Cleon the sausage seller.

327
00:35:38,490 --> 00:35:48,030
who can out-Cleon Cleon and what a prospect that the best you can do to oust Cleon is replace him with someone even worse.

328
00:35:49,090 --> 00:35:57,040
Yeah. It's not exactly a compliment to Demos, as you say, which is itself a parody of the Athenian people,

329
00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:01,419
and that there's such an irony there that the play is being performed for the Athenian people.

330
00:36:01,420 --> 00:36:11,350
And this character Demos, he's sort of described as being these are old and blind and the you know, he's he's a kind of idiot, basically.

331
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:18,760
And I think the couple of other passages from prescribed sources, first of all, in the old oligarch,

332
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:25,150
the old oligarch says at one point that the Athenian people would never allow their own type to be parodied.

333
00:36:25,210 --> 00:36:28,690
Well, this play slightly goes against that and suggests otherwise.

334
00:36:29,050 --> 00:36:37,620
And then the Plato analogy of the ship and the owner of the ship, who I think is himself blind, has some similarities to this.

335
00:36:37,640 --> 00:36:43,870
So we get this this same theme, the idea that the people, the ordinary people,

336
00:36:43,870 --> 00:36:47,299
we're back to that idea that they can't really choose very wisely for themselves,

337
00:36:47,300 --> 00:36:51,310
that they're not very clever, which is when our aristocratic view isn't that well.

338
00:36:51,310 --> 00:36:56,140
And that's where Aristophanes comes in, because he's there to help them and there to guide them,

339
00:36:56,470 --> 00:37:00,520
which, you know, is something that he reflects on himself in his comedies.

340
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:05,350
But as we suggested, you know, it doesn't always work that he might be there to offer advice.

341
00:37:05,680 --> 00:37:16,150
But his frustration or his projected frustration, as in the persona he presents in his play, says, I gave you good advice you wouldn't take it.

342
00:37:17,140 --> 00:37:21,400
So that's another way in which I think he reflects on his role as a playwright.

343
00:37:22,540 --> 00:37:27,310
And it's worth just saying that there's quite a lot of personal between Aristophanes and Cleon and 

344
00:37:27,460 --> 00:37:34,270
This doesn't come out of nowhere. So can you just give us a little bit of the background about how they might have got on or not?

345
00:37:34,420 --> 00:37:38,530
Well, so they're from the same deme in Athens from Cydathernaeum.

346
00:37:38,890 --> 00:37:46,690
And it means that I think there's a personal aspect to the rivalry, certainly early on in Aristophanes, his career.

347
00:37:47,260 --> 00:37:51,130
The second play he produces, the Babylonians, it gets first prize,

348
00:37:51,370 --> 00:37:58,390
but then he gets a legal charge headed up by Cleon for slandering the city in the play.

349
00:37:58,690 --> 00:38:04,120
And we know about this from again, Aristophanes is a reference to it.

350
00:38:04,450 --> 00:38:10,220
in the Arcarnians where he has to say, well, it's okay, I can speak freely because I'm upset now.

351
00:38:10,540 --> 00:38:16,809
I'm not slandering the city. So that distinction between the sort of audience that you have in those two

352
00:38:16,810 --> 00:38:22,110
festivals the Lenaia, is a home audience the Dionysia has other people so that,

353
00:38:22,150 --> 00:38:25,360
you know, the charge of slandering the city in front of foreigners is the point.

354
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:32,559
So we know that there's that rivalry between them and it is always worth asking.

355
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:40,720
Well, how personal is this that Aristophanes keeps going back to Cleon even after Cleon's died?

356
00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:45,670
There's no comment, negative comments about him in Aristophanes.

357
00:38:45,700 --> 00:38:53,050
So there is no limit, I think, to the extent to which Aristophanes will pursue that.

358
00:38:54,060 --> 00:39:01,080
Yeah. I love there's a passage in a piece around line 750 or so where I think it might

359
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:06,209
be the parenthesis where he's defending and explaining his role as a playwright,

360
00:39:06,210 --> 00:39:15,060
comic, playwright, as a sort of almost a public prosecutor. And he's defending why he went for killing so much just a year after Cleon died.

361
00:39:15,060 --> 00:39:21,660
So the idea don't speak ill of the dead. It doesn't work here. And he he talks about him like this and he says,

362
00:39:21,660 --> 00:39:28,649
I'm the first ever dared to go straight for that beast with the sharp teeth and the terrible eyes that flashed gleaming fun like those of Scylla

363
00:39:28,650 --> 00:39:31,680
It's surrounded by 100 year old.

364
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:33,900
 spittle licked into his heart's content.

365
00:39:34,380 --> 00:39:41,700
It had the voice like a roaring torrent, the stench of a seal, the unwashed balls of a lamia and the arse of the camel.

366
00:39:42,240 --> 00:39:50,520
I did not recoil in horror at the sight of such a monster, but fought him relentlessly to win your deliverance and that of the island.

367
00:39:50,700 --> 00:39:56,009
So he feels that he has a public role.

368
00:39:56,010 --> 00:40:03,270
He says, I think in Frogs and much later on in the century he's there to be a teacher and he feels that he's justified in doing this.

369
00:40:03,540 --> 00:40:05,850
Absolutely. That is necessary.

370
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:17,129
So one of the points about the way in which he treats Cleon in both Knights and Wasps is how far we think this is a problem with an

371
00:40:17,130 --> 00:40:26,460
individual in politics or whether that individual Cleon stands for actually that sort of breed of demagogue you have around that time.

372
00:40:27,180 --> 00:40:32,610
I mean, I actually think it's probably a bit of both, but there certainly is that sort of personal element.

373
00:40:33,150 --> 00:40:43,770
But I mean, you can start to sort of clock up the allegations because it's not just personal insults like the ones we just heard.

374
00:40:43,770 --> 00:40:50,639
It's also that there are allegations being made in effect through comedy where we have, in fact,

375
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:58,720
knights and wasps present in which, for example, that victory that you mentioned in pylos that that was.

376
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:06,180
It was really Cleon taking the credit for something he didn't really do or you have sent me

377
00:41:06,210 --> 00:41:12,900
multiple suggestions of Cleon being on the take and that he's somehow making money embezzling.

378
00:41:13,180 --> 00:41:21,930
And so there are. Specific issues raised by Aristophanes repeatedly in his comedies.

379
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:25,260
And yet, of course, Cleon still enjoys political success.

380
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:32,370
Thank you. Well, let's think a bit more about WASPs then. So this is 422, the last year of his life.

381
00:41:32,370 --> 00:41:34,440
He's still alive when it's put on.

382
00:41:34,710 --> 00:41:42,060
And this is a sort of double attack, really, it's attack on Cleon again, because that's we know Aristophanes loves to attack Cleon,

383
00:41:42,450 --> 00:41:47,400
but it's an attack on or a critique of is perhaps a better way of putting it.

384
00:41:47,700 --> 00:41:50,999
The jury system and the court system in Athens.

385
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:57,629
And again, I think we have this situation of Aristophanes wanting to point out to his large

386
00:41:57,630 --> 00:42:02,220
citizen audience the flaws in the system and to get them to think about it.

387
00:42:02,580 --> 00:42:04,950
So maybe talk a little bit about the play in general.

388
00:42:04,950 --> 00:42:13,860
And then the prescribed lines that we have are eight nine 1 to 1008, as I said, and that is the, the mock trial of the dogs.

389
00:42:14,790 --> 00:42:19,859
Yeah. Then I think that the wasps is absolutely, as you say, doing both things.

390
00:42:19,860 --> 00:42:28,680
It's thinking about Cleon, but also the broader legal system in Athens and politically influenced,

391
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:33,149
again, a very dangerous thing in the same way that being a very good speaker,

392
00:42:33,150 --> 00:42:36,810
having him to persuade the assembly could have dramatic implications,

393
00:42:37,140 --> 00:42:42,630
being able to dominate those law courts or exert influence over the outcomes in the courts,

394
00:42:43,110 --> 00:42:47,580
which are mass juries compared to are really miniature juries compared.

395
00:42:48,070 --> 00:42:55,170
So the reason I mention them is that you have this sort of broad group of people who can be swayed.

396
00:42:56,550 --> 00:43:02,980
And it is important because that's also where scrutiny for public office could take place.

397
00:43:03,010 --> 00:43:12,089
Right. So it's much more than being able to dominate or control the outcome of a trial for an individual over a crime.

398
00:43:12,090 --> 00:43:20,249
It also has political implications. Right. Control of the court as well as control of the assembly is, I think, a terrible combination.

399
00:43:20,250 --> 00:43:27,960
And Aristophanes suggests that Cleon has both the ability to control the Assembly and the ability to control the law.

400
00:43:28,380 --> 00:43:38,110
And so in WASPs again, you explore this broad political issue through looking at their household and oikos as a family, a father and a son.

401
00:43:38,130 --> 00:43:46,230
Again, this time the father is pretty clearly is totally against Cleon and their names reflect that.

402
00:43:46,230 --> 00:43:55,260
So, you know, there's no escaping. It is very obvious from the outset that Cleon is going to feature as a sort of targeting his fate.

403
00:43:56,210 --> 00:44:02,840
And Aristophanes uses that relationship between father and son and the power dynamic between the father and the son,

404
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:10,460
not just to reflect on Cleon and his influence and attitudes towards him between different generations,

405
00:44:10,910 --> 00:44:16,550
but also to think about the Persian wars versus the Peloponnesian Wars.

406
00:44:16,790 --> 00:44:23,990
To think about the past and the present. To think about actually how Athens forms its identity.

407
00:44:24,500 --> 00:44:31,800
Who is Athens, now that they have this empire, was the place of those people who were prominent in the Persian War,

408
00:44:31,850 --> 00:44:39,440
in this new kind of set up where people like Crown are on the take and yet people influence that older generation.

409
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:45,650
And so I think all of that is at play in the WASPs and particularly in the scene that we came to think about.

410
00:44:45,980 --> 00:44:50,000
You have the concern around where the law courts sit in that.

411
00:44:51,610 --> 00:45:00,670
Well, you know, whether that functions appropriately because, you know, again, it's not just a criticism of Cleon for being influential.

412
00:45:00,910 --> 00:45:07,240
It's also that the individual jurors or deacasts are open to corruption.

413
00:45:08,570 --> 00:45:11,000
So it's not just that we're not clear.

414
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:17,270
 and, you know, is willing to sort of act as everyone would want in the law courts.

415
00:45:17,660 --> 00:45:20,870
It's not that he's an innocent victim in this.

416
00:45:21,410 --> 00:45:26,660
He takes great pleasure in convicting. He's absolutely open to bribery.

417
00:45:26,990 --> 00:45:31,310
And so, you know, the problem goes beyond the individual demagogue.

418
00:45:31,430 --> 00:45:34,870
And I think Aristophanes wants you to think that through.

419
00:45:35,790 --> 00:45:44,549
Yeah. And so the core idea is that with someone like the father of the cleon lover that he represents, that a typical dikast,

420
00:45:44,550 --> 00:45:49,830
the typical juror that he's probably based in the city because it's easy for him to get

421
00:45:49,830 --> 00:45:54,680
to the courts and he's probably elderly because he's not having to work basically.

422
00:45:54,700 --> 00:45:58,379
So you've got the kind of retired people of the city of Athens,

423
00:45:58,380 --> 00:46:08,280
which is not massively representative of the broad male citizen population, but are likely to be quite conservative.

424
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:12,209
We might say hang them, flog them, type judges looking to convict.

425
00:46:12,210 --> 00:46:18,000
That's how it's portrayed. But also they're the sorts of people who are in the pockets of Cleon.

426
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:22,050
That's that's kind of what he's getting at, isn't it? Exactly.

427
00:46:22,380 --> 00:46:29,580
And one of the things that's interesting, I think, in terms of thinking what Aristophanes might be doing with the play is,

428
00:46:30,240 --> 00:46:37,590
you know, again, as it might have, you actually got anything better if you remove Cleon and he owns power?

429
00:46:37,950 --> 00:46:42,389
You know, there's this power vacuum and there's also try to take some in the wasps.

430
00:46:42,390 --> 00:46:51,990
You have three sons influence over the father being disgraced only for the son to take that space and to introduce his father,

431
00:46:52,230 --> 00:46:58,220
Philocleon, into a different way of being into this luxurious, aristocratic sort of lifestyle.

432
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:05,430
And he absolutely doesn't fit in that. And it brings out the worst in Philocleon.

433
00:47:05,580 --> 00:47:10,920
So again, I think you're not always getting solutions in these comedies.

434
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:15,990
What you're getting is the question to the audience of What are we going to do about this?

435
00:47:16,230 --> 00:47:19,680
Inviting them to confront the issues within their society.

436
00:47:19,950 --> 00:47:23,760
Even if you don't have necessarily the solution which is ready made.

437
00:47:25,350 --> 00:47:29,009
Okay. And thank you. And let's attack this from a different angle as well,

438
00:47:29,010 --> 00:47:35,670
because we need for this course to understand how the Athenian law, courts and legal system worked.

439
00:47:36,150 --> 00:47:48,340
And perhaps particularly putting alongside the apology, how can we read this as evidence for the basic workings of the law court or of a court case?

440
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:55,680
I mean, obviously it's a wild parody on one level, but can we actually take things from it and say, okay, this tells us that X happened?

441
00:47:56,580 --> 00:48:00,719
Yes. So it of course, as you say, it's a parody.

442
00:48:00,720 --> 00:48:08,350
There's exaggeration, there's comic substitution for the different sorts of equipment that you'd expect in a law court.

443
00:48:08,370 --> 00:48:14,060
But as a parody, it, of course, anchors itself in reality and it reflects on that.

444
00:48:14,070 --> 00:48:22,500
So there are set phrases, there's procedural aspects of this which absolutely align with what we understand took place in the law court.

445
00:48:22,710 --> 00:48:28,860
One of the difficulties, of course, is that this is some of our best evidence for what took place in the law court.

446
00:48:28,860 --> 00:48:36,090
So it's it's a bit circular, but what you can consider it alongside another source, as you said, like the Apology.

447
00:48:36,300 --> 00:48:41,430
And you can start to see things like, for example, whether puppies get brought out for sympathy.

448
00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:49,500
And in the apology, we know that they're not going to bring out the relatives to create sympathy for the one in the dock.

449
00:48:49,980 --> 00:48:58,139
Then you can start from those two sources to get a picture of what happened in the law court so we can think about,

450
00:48:58,140 --> 00:49:07,590
for example, the vote and then dropping the stone. You got a choice of the guilty or the not guilty pot to cast your stone into.

451
00:49:08,220 --> 00:49:16,590
And of course, in this scene, the protagonist Philocleon is duped into acquitting when he wanted to convict.

452
00:49:16,870 --> 00:49:23,410
Maybe pointing to one of the problems with that. But in in terms of procedure, this is how it would work.

453
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:28,410
We know that from everybody follows painting as well to support that understanding of the system.

454
00:49:28,860 --> 00:49:39,210
And so, yes, you can start to look at it as evidence for law courts, even though, of course, there are ways in which it's distorted, exaggerated, etc.

455
00:49:39,780 --> 00:49:45,479
Okay. Wow. Well, we've covered so much ground. Rosie, I just appreciate so much your time.

456
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:50,520
I've loved chatting to you about Aristophanes. I kind of feel we could go on and on and subject suggest.

457
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:59,160
You should know that it's been a real pleasure. And he's an extraordinarily interesting source, I think, for an ancient historian, isn't he?

458
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:03,150
As you said, that beginning it's more obvious with him that we have to take care.

459
00:50:03,150 --> 00:50:06,780
But I think your point that we should take care about all our sources.

460
00:50:07,020 --> 00:50:10,310
Maybe that's what he teaches us to some extent. Yes.

461
00:50:10,320 --> 00:50:13,620
And I think I mean, it's been such a joy to talk about Aristophanes.

462
00:50:13,620 --> 00:50:21,240
I'd say it is an exceptionally valuable source, don't be afraid of it, just tackle it head on.

463
00:50:21,570 --> 00:50:25,799
And you can take into account, you know, the aspects that you have to be cautious of.

464
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:29,280
But it has so much to offer if you're willing to be brave.

465
00:50:30,180 --> 00:50:32,430
Thank you so much. Thank you.