Comic Rivalry and the Number of Comic Poets at the Lenaia of 405 B. C.
Abstract
This paper considers further evidence that five comic poets as opposed to three competed at the Lenaia and City Dionysia festivals in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Aristophanes’ abuse of his comic rivals Phrynichos, Ameipsias and Lykis in the opening scene of Frogs, produced at the Lenaia of 405, is interpreted as a response to his immediate competitors at the dramatic contest that year. A survey of the evidence elsewhere in comedy suggests that comic poets usually reserved such attacks on rival poets for occasions when all were in direct competition at the same festival. Further analysis of Aristophanes’ competitive strategies also suggests these poets immediate participation in the festival and therefore that five poets competed at the Lenaia that year.
© by Akademie Verlag, Berlin, Germany
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Articles in the same Issue
- Comic Rivalry and the Number of Comic Poets at the Lenaia of 405 B. C.
- The Historical Present of Atelic and Durative Verbs in Greek Tragedy
- Matching in Mind the Sea Beast’s Complexion. On the Pragmatics of Plutarch′s Hypomnemata and Scientific Innovation: The Case of Q. N. 19 (916 BF)
- Per la storia del testo di Plauto nell’antichità (e ancora sui due Sisenna)
- Willkürliche Rechtssprechung. Ovids verhüllte Augustuskritik in der Tieropfer-Passage der Fasti (1, 349–456)
- Hungernde Dichter, unwillige Mäzene. Baptista Mantuanus’ Ekloge V und die römische Satire
- Der Trevi-Brunnen, Statius und Homer. Das Modell Nicola Salvis und die Bauten Clemens’ XII
- „Unser Rohde“. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Franz Overbeck und Otto Crusius
- Observations on the Hesiodic fragment 65 M–W
- Catullus 64, 94: A Textual Note
