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From Demeter to Dionysos: laughter as a vehicle for transformation in archaic cult ritual and Attic Old Comedy

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From Demeter to Dionysos: laughter as a vehicle for transformation in archaic cult ritual and Attic Old Comedy

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Content   1      From Demeter to Dionysos: Laughter as a Vehicle for  Transformation in Archaic Cult Ritual and Attic Old Comedy  Devon Harlow  Classics Department  Faculty of the USC Graduate School  Ph.D.  University of Southern California  August 9, 2016                      2      Table of Contents:    Introduction: Ritual Laughter               3  Chapter One: Demeter and Eleusis            16  Chapter Two: The Homeric Hymn to Hermes          67  Chapter Three: Laughter and Transformation in Aristophanes    89  Chapter Four: Aristophanes, Pedagogy, and the Transformed City   131  Conclusion                    168  Appendix A: Other Festivals to Demeter          173  Appendix B: Frogs Initiate Chorus Quote            178  Bibliography                   185                      3    Introduction: Ritual Laughter  This project is concerned with a specific type of Greek laughter: ritual laughter and  its relationship with transformation.  This laughter traces a fascinating path through Greek  literature and religious practice from the archaic period into the fifth century and the  flowering of Athenian drama.  It connects worlds as disparate as Mount Olympus in the  Homeric Hymn to Hermes and the bawdy, politically charged satire of Aristophanes on the  festival stages of the Athenians.  Ritual laughter is distinct from other forms of laughter in  its relationship to both “obscenity” 1  and transformation, on both individual and group  levels.  The transformative nature of this laughter is documented in the archaic Homeric  Hymn to Demeter and The Homeric Hymn to Hermes as well as the cult practice to Demeter.  This cult practice was still thriving several centuries later when Aristophanes used ritual  laughter and its attendant aischrologia and transformation as a literary tool in his  comedies; as a device for plot development, and more importantly, as a pedagogical aid to  enact a transform the minds of the Athenian demos.     Overview  My plan is to work chronologically, starting with The Homeric Hymn to Demeter to  fully understand the beginnings of ritual laughter and the tradition that Aristophanes was  drawing upon when using ritual laughter in his comedies.  The first chapter will look at the                                                           1  I am using this word to refer to words in the aizd‐ group in Greek: ai0dw/j, ai0sxro/j, ai0sxu/nh, ai0sxu/nomai, etc. However, this is just a placeholder word, as I feel it does not  accurately translate the sense of the Greek word. Instead it reflects a modern sensibility  about sexual and scatological jokes, talk, etc. I will return to this point at length.    4  plentiful, though very contested evidence for the cult of Demeter at Eleusis and how The  Homeric Hymn to Demeter can help us traverse this evidence.  The beginning of the chapter  will also delve into the specific methodology for a holistic and experiential reading of the  Hymn that I think gives us the clearest picture of the poem’s thematic concerns.  The poem  and the material evidence together layout the paradigm I will be working with for the rest  of the project: the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm. I will also explore  aischrologia in a ritual setting and the figure of Iambe who embodies this type of speech.  Then in Chapter Two I will look at The Homeric Hymn to Hermes and how laughter  and transformation work in the poem.  Hermes’ many aspects as a god are all very  connected to transformation: he leads the souls of the dead to the underworld, he coveys  messages from one realm to another, he protects travelers at cross‐roads, and he is  involved in the coming of age of Greek young men.  The Hymn outlines Hermes’ own  journey from an infant to a god in full command of his powers and the various necessary  transformations along the way, all punctuated with divine laughter in the poem.  I will also  explore what the Hymn might tell us about the Hermaia, festivals to Hermes, and the  ancient concerns around coming of age.  Chapters Three and Four will look at the laughter/revelation/transformation  paradigm in Aristophanes’ comedies.  This transition to a vastly different literary genre is  not arbitrary.  Comedy is where the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm that we  can see in the ritual interests of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Homeric Hymn to  Hermes becomes a literary trope of its own.  The genre of comedy is especially suited to the  joining of ritual and literature, since it takes place at a festival, but is not a text that is  specifically tied to one deity and/or a specific ritual that they are part of.  Aristophanes’    5  comedies are the site where ritual laughter, aischrologia, and transformation converge. If  we can understand the origins and implications of the laughter/revelation/transformation  paradigm, now a literary trope we can more fully understand transformation in comedy  and the claims that Acharnians, Knights, Frogs make about what good comedy is and the  role it should play in Athens’ civic life. Understanding the paradigm’s literary force can also  help us escape from the binary democratic vs. conservative debate about comedy.  Comedy  as a form is neither – it is transformational.  It can therefore be an ideological tool and at  the same time fulfill ritual concerns of renewal and rebirth; giving Aristophanes’ comedies  the chance to remake the demos and reboot their political views.      Key Terms  First I think it would be useful to discuss and define several key concepts: ritual  laughter and aischrologia.  As Halliwell has pointed out, ritual laughter is a phenomenon  that was recognized by the ancient Greeks. 2  This is not a modern concept that I am  mapping back on to the ancient sources.  Both Plato in Laws I.637a and Aristotle in Politics  Book 7 reference ritual jesting and ritual laughter to their audiences as a mutually  understood concept to help illustrate their main point.  This clearly demonstrates that  ritual laughter was a concept that most, if not all, Greek people would have been familiar  with; otherwise it would be useless as an illustration or metaphor.                                                            2  Stephen Halliwell, Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early  Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 159.    6  The most important and most difficult term to pin down is aischrologia  ai0sxrologi/a.  The word is a compound of ai0sxro/j and logoj and is often translated  simply as “obscenity, crude language, or abuse.”  However, this translation is completely  colored by modern sensibilities about sex and bodily fluids, desires, and processes, which  have been heavily influenced by Christian attitudes about these topics.  In contemporary  Western culture these things are seen as dirty, shameful, obscene, and disgusting.   However, there is no evidence that the Greeks saw them this way. In fact there is  considerable evidence to the contrary. Henderson traces the root of the English word  obscenity from the Latin obscenus. He contends that the Romans did have similar notions  about the “shamefulness” of sex and bodies, but also notes that, “the stringent prohibitions  of Puritanism and Victorianism have influenced modern feelings.” 3   In the Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle has an extended explanation of “ποῖα δ᾽ αἰσχύνονται  καὶ ἀναισχυντοῦσιν, καὶ πρὸς τίνας καὶ πῶς ἔχοντες, The causes of shame and  shamelessness, 4  and in front of whom and in what frame of mind men feel them.” 5   Even  though Aristotle began the Art of Rhetoric twenty years after Aristophanes last play and  possibly as much as three centuries after the Homeric Hymn to Demeter was composed his  insight into the nature of what makes something aischros to the Athenians is certainly  much more accurate than the modern terms with their centuries of bias against the body  handed down by the Christian church.                                                             3  Jeffery Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1975), 3.  4  I am using shame here, although I do not agree with the translation because there is no  comparable word in English. All translations are my own.  5  Aristotle, Rhetoric II.6.1    7  Aristotle takes his reader through eight examples of actions or groups of actions  that are aischros because they are outward signs of inward character flaws.  They are: 1)  “τὸ ἀποβαλεῖν ἀσπίδα ἢ φυγεῖν: ἀπὸ δειλίας γάρ throwing away one’s shield or fleeing: for  this is on account of cowardice”; 6  2) “τὸ ἀποστερῆσαι παρακαταθήκην ἢ ἀδικῆσαι: ἀπὸ  ἀδικίας γάρ or withholding a deposit, for this is on account of injustice”; 7  3) “τὸ  συγγενέσθαι αἷς οὐ δεῖ ἢ οὗ οὐ δεῖ ἢ ὅτε οὐ δεῖ: ἀπὸ ἀκολασίας γάρ illicit relations with  anyone at forbidden times and places: for that is on account of licentiousness”; 8   4) “καὶ τὸ  κερδαίνειν ἀπὸ μικρῶν ἢ αἰσχρῶν ἢ ἀπὸ ἀδυνάτων, οἷον πενήτων ἢ τεθνεώτων, . . . καὶ τὸ μὴ  βοηθεῖν, δυνάμενον, εἰς χρήματα, ἢ ἧττον βοηθεῖν. . .πάντα γὰρ ἀνελευθερίας ταῦτα σημεῖα,   and making a profit out of what is petty and shameful , or out of the weak,  such as the poor worker or the dead . . . and refusing aid in money matters, when we are  able to give it, or giving less than we can . . . for all these are on account of stinginess”; 9  5)  “τὸ δ᾽ ἐπαινεῖν παρόντας κολακείας, καὶ τὸ τἀγαθὰ μὲν ὑπερεπαινεῖν τὰ δὲ φαῦλα  συναλείφειν, καὶ τὸ ὑπεραλγεῖν ἀλγοῦντι παρόντα, καὶ τἆλλα πάντα ὅσα τοιαῦτα:  κολακείας γὰρ σημεῖα. And to praise people when they are present, and to overpraise their  good qualities and gloss over their bad, and to show excessive grief at another person’s  suffering when they are present, and all similar actions, for they are on account of  flattery”; 10  6) “καὶ τὸ μὴ ὑπομένειν πόνους… πάντα γὰρ μαλακίας σημεῖα and to not  patiently abide toils … for all these are signs of softness”; 11  7) “καὶ τὸ ὑφ᾽ ἑτέρου εὖ                                                           6  Aristotle, Rhetoric II.6.3  7  Aristotle, Rhetoric II.6.3  8  Aristotle, Rhetoric II.6.4  9  Aristotle, Rhetoric II.6.5‐7  10  Aristotle, Rhetoric II.6.8  11  Aristotle, Rhetoric II.6.9    8  πάσχειν, καὶ τὸ πολλάκις, καὶ ὃ εὖ ἐποίησεν ὀνειδίζειν: μικροψυχίας γὰρ πάντα καὶ  ταπεινότητος σημεῖα and to accept favors from another, often, and then to throw them in  his face, for all these are signs of smallness and baseness”; 12  8) “καὶ τὸ περὶ αὑτοῦ πάντα  λέγειν καὶ ἐπαγγέλλεσθαι, καὶ τὸ τἀλλότρια αὑτοῦ φάσκειν: ἀλαζονείας γάρ. And to talk all  the time about oneself and to make all kinds of assertions, for this is boastfulness.” 13     Seven of these eight actions have nothing to do with the body or sex.  And the one  example that does is the third, not first in Aristotle’s list.  If aischros were the same as  obscenus or obscenity surely Aristotle would start with sexual licentiousness and most of  the other actions would not even be mentioned.  Aristotle seems to be describing  something that is closer to, although not synonymous with, the English word taboo.  The  actions that he describes all break the social contract of Greek society in some way.  The  opposite, or honorable actions from the Rhetoric, bravely standing in battle, generosity in  financial matters, speaking one’s mind (without flattery), are all building blocks of a just  and orderly society, Aristotle and I agree on this.  Something that is aischros is therefore  something that breaks social convention.  No wonder the sexual joking and abuse which  Athenian women engage in during festivals to Demeter is referred to as aischrologia, not  because it is dirty or shameful, but because it is breaking social convention for these  women to talk about sex and because it violates the more common “religious requirement  of euphemia (auspicious, pure speech, often equated with silence).” 14     To correctly understand what is aischros and how aischrologia works we really have  to take to heart the “shame” that Aristotle is describing: the feeling that keeps us all (even                                                           12  Aristotle, Rhetoric II.6.10  13  Aristotle, Rhetoric II.6.11  14  Halliwell, Greek Laughter, 215.     9  in a modern context) from breaking most social rules. That wiggling, nagging, unpleasant  knowledge of what would happen, how people would view us if we acted outside of the  accepted norms (i.e. stopped showering despite working in a very professional  environment, talked loudly on our cell phones in the “quiet” car of the commuter train, took  kickbacks from a shady professional acquaintance, etc.).  But let’s not confuse this feeling  with the idea that the body and sexual appetites are somehow polluted or “bad”. As  Konstan writes, “the ancient Greek emotional lexicon does not map neatly onto modern  English concepts.” 15   We have to carefully attune ourselves to the evidence the Greeks left  us, and attempt to see the notion of aischros through their eyes in order to correctly  interpret aischrologia. 16     Aristophanes and aischrologia  Henderson rightly notes that Aristophanes vehemently maintained that, his own  “use of the obscene comedy was different from that of his (he says) less gifted  contemporaries.  Aristophanes maintains that he avoids kaka\ kai\ fo/rton kai\ bwmoloxeu/mat’ a0yennh~, lowness, vulgarity and sordid clowning (P 748) and ponhra\ skw/mmata, evil scurrility (N 542).” 17   However, Henderson wants to understand this only  in the context of the sophistication and skill of Aristophanes’ comedies.  While it certainly                                                           15  David Konstan, “Shame in Ancient Greece,” Social Research 70 (2003): 1033.  16  David Konstan and Douglas Cairns have very successfully shown the difference between  aid words and aisch words.  The former describes the feeling that keeps people from  behaving in unacceptable ways, and the latter describes the feeling one has after acting in  violation of your society’s norms. Aisch nouns therefore describe actions or circumstances,  which would make one feel an emotion with an aisch verb.    17  Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 9.    10  applies, I think Aristophanes is also referring to the unique type of laughter paradigm  that he is drawing on from cult practice in fertility rituals to Demeter.  He is not using  aischrologia to get a cheap laugh, he is using it for the same reason that cult practitioners  did, it was special speech, outside the realm of their normal discourse and that made it very  powerful.      The Homeric Hymns and Laughter  Ritual laughter is attested in several literary and plastic sources for the worship of  Demeter at Eleusis.  The most clear and direct evidence comes from the Homeric Hymn to  Demeter and the interaction between the goddess and Iambe, a maid in the household of  the Eleusinian king.  The laughter in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is rather unique; the  only other Hymn that has any laughter at all is the Hymn to Hermes. This, perhaps should  not be surprising, Hermes is devious, wily, a jokester.    And in both the Homeric Hymn to  Demeter and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes laughter is a structural theme, framing and  further elucidating the deities’ relationship with their own laughter and the laughter of  mortals.  A close reading of these two Homeric Hymns is, I believe, the first step in really  understanding how laughter functioned in cult practice and what the mythology can reveal  that the ritual may not. 18     The laughter (gela/w in both texts) in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the  Homeric Hymn to Hermes is unusual simply because there is no other laughter in the corpus                                                           18  Sarah Iles Johnston, “Myth, Festival, and Poets: The ‘Homeric Hymn to Hermes’ and Its  Performative Context,” Classical Philology 97 (2002): 111.    11  of the Homeric Hymns 19 .  Aphrodite is given the epithet laughter‐loving, although she  never laughs and there are some smiles but no other divine laughter.  Hesiod is even  grimmer.  There is no laughter at all in the Works and Days; good cheer arrives with the  birth of the Muses and Graces in line 907.  Only Zeus laughs in the Theogony and that is  right before he makes Pandora and unleashes her on the unsuspecting world.  Then, if it is  rare for the (archaic) gods to laugh we must pay careful attention to the moments when  they do.  When we parse the laughter that occurs in the Hymns to Demeter and Hermes a  pattern begins to emerge.  It is not laughter by itself that tells us something about these  gods and the ritual practices for their cults, it is how the laughter works.  Laughter in these  two hymns is part of a three‐element paradigm.  Laughter goes along with a revelation— something that is usually hidden; an action, or a certain type of speech, or body part, etc. is  laid bare. These two narrative components then compel a transformation.  The  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm, present in both Hymns, is the key to  understanding both Hermes and Demeter.  Both are integral to the most significant  transformations in human life.  Demeter controls the agricultural year, the seasons, and the  transformation of seeds into full‐grown crops.  Hermes is the psychopomp, the god of the  crossroads, and the messenger from Olympus to the realm of mortal men, a god who seems  to live in liminal spaces.  It is no wonder than that these two gods would have the unusual  instances of laughter in the Homeric Hymns in their poems, not because they are more                                                           19  The Homeric Hymn to Dionysus doesn’t involve laughter (although many Athenian  rituals for Dionysus do).  However, the hymn centers on Dionysus’ power to transform the  non‐believing pirates into dolphins, and therefore by extension the power to transform any  mortal life.     12  likely to laugh, but because laughter is an essential ingredient to the transformation  paradigm and they are gods of transformation.    The ancient Greek festivals for Demeter had a number of instances of aischrologia  and ritual laughter.  These festivals centered on the agricultural calendar and the changing  needs of the farmer in different seasons.  The aischrologia and laughter at these festivals  were linked with both the mythological basis for the festivals—the rape of Persephone and  Demeter’s journey to ensure her daughter’s return—and to the specific transformations of  the agricultural and seasonal moment. The Thesmophoria, for example had time for ritual  mourning, like that of Demeter for Kore, but also time for the women to make sacred  fertilizer that would be mixed with seed and given out to Athenian citizens.      The worship of Demeter at Eleusis also had a particular relationship with  aischrologia, laughter, and transformation.  This is highlighted by the figure of  Iambe/Baubo, a slave woman who according to various traditions, jokes with Demeter,  either by engaging in aischrologia or by making a gesture of anasyrma, pulling up her skirts  to reveal her genitals and sometimes her breasts as well.  The joking wakes Demeter from  her deep grief over the loss of Persephone and allows her to reengage with the world.   Unlike other festivals to Demeter, transformation in Eleusinian worship did not hinge on  the agricultural year or focus on a specific moment in the lifecycle of the seed.  Instead the  cult at Eleusis offered transformation to individuals and through this transformation a  better, happier afterlife.  Aischrologia and laughter were part of the mediating journey from  Athens to Eleusis, initiate to initiated, just as they were a part of Demeter’s journey from  virtual death (while mourning Persephone) back to life.      13    The Homeric Hymn to Hermes offers a tantalizing glimpse into how the ancient  Greeks may have viewed the anxieties and process of a young man coming of age.  There is  very little surviving evidence for Hermaia, festivals to Hermes, which usually had athletic  contests for young men.   However, the Hymn ties the god so firmly to laughter and  transformation it is necessary to delve into the hymn to see if it can inform either the  Hermaia themselves, or Greek attitudes about transformation as part of the coming of age  process for young men, and to more clearly understand Hermes’ ties to ritual laughter and  transformation.    Old Comedy and Ritual Laughter  The scholarly exploration of laughter and Old Comedy has largely ignored the role of  ritual laughter in comedy or how evoking rituals tied with laughter in comedic plots might  cue the Greek audience that a specific type of laughter is either occurring on stage or  required of the audience.  It seems very significant to me that the action of a third of  Aristophanes’ extant plays either take place during a festival or have festival episodes,  while, of course, being part of a festival themselves.  Clearly ritual and laughter are a major  theme in his poetic work.    Halliwell, in his 2008 book on laughter says that Aristophanes has “left us a gelastic  conundrum” 20  and that we cannot ever tell if laughter in Old Comedy is ritual laughter.  But  I find this very unsatisfying and overly broad.  Halliwell uses only three textual examples  for this section and they are only from the Frogs and the Acharnians.  And while his  following chapter on Old Comedy focuses on shameful speech and its role in comedy and                                                           20  Halliwell, The Maculate Muse, 214.    14  the democracy at large, Halliwell’s focus has shifted away from laughter itself to humor  and what makes something funny, not how the laughter from the jokes may be functioning.   Understanding Aristophanes’ use of ritual laughter and the transformation  paradigm is absolutely essential for a complete understanding of his plays.  Rosen, in his  book Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition argues that Aristophanes was very aware  of the connections that he was making between his own “literary iambos and its ritual  origins;” 21  and I certainly agree.  If the poet is conscious of these connections and is using  context, or setting, or specific characters to present these connections to the audience, than  it is certainly essential that modern readers are aware of this relationship as well.    In her work on iambos, Nancy Worman writes, “Attic comedy does combine  communal insult (i.e. iambos) with revelry (komos) in a state‐run medium, thereby  transforming looser festive modes into an official ritual”. 22   Taking both Rosen and  Worman’s observations, I think we can begin to see a complex but comprehensible  structure underneath the, sometimes messy, abuse and jesting in Aristophanic comedy.   These texts are the bridge between laughter, abuse, and aischrologia in a ritual setting and  the use of the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm as a literary trope.    The ancient audience would have had at least some familiarity with the ritual  associations with laughter and transformation and the use of this paradigm in a literary  text would carry specific associations with it.  This is very similar to Susan Lape’s                                                           21  Ralph Rosen, Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition, (Atlanta: Scholars Press,  1988), 26.  22  Nancy Worman, Abusive Mouths in Classical Athens (New York; Cambridge University  Press, 2008) 68.    15  methodology of the komos as an embedded genre 23  in Menander. As she writes, “Just as  embedded literary genres import their own conventions and ideology the installation of the  komos in comedy would have produced new meaning in accordance with its regularized  conventions.” 24   In exactly the same manner the introduction of the ritual laughter and  transformation paradigm into Old Comedy is the beginning of an important literary  concept that becomes essential to the significance of Aristophanic comedy to Athens, as the  texts themselves claim.  In comedy this trope serves both small and weighty functions; it  can transform individual characters, settings, and moments to move the plot of the play  forward, and it can function as a meta‐theatrical idea, a metaphor of how comedy works on  an audience to change their worldview.                                                             23  For more on embedded genre see Leslie Kurke, “Pindar’s Sixth Pythian and the Tradition  of Advice Poetry,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 120 (1990) and  Richard P. Martin, “Hesiod, Odysseus, and the Instruction of Princes,” Transactions of the  American Philological Association 114 (1984).  24  Susan Lape, “The Poetics of the “Komos”‐Chorus in Menander’s Comedy,” The American  Journal of Philology 127 (2006): 93‐94.    16    Chapter One: Demeter and Eleusis  Introduction  This chapter will focus on the interplay between myth, ritual, and the Homeric  Hymn to Demeter.  This will provide the cultural background that is necessary to  understand the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm that was deeply ingrained in  the Athenian consciousness.  The cultural underpinnings of this paradigm will allow us to  explore how laughter works in the Athenian theater and how Aristophanes is able to play  with this paradigm and use it as a narrative tool for his comedies.    Only by going back to the roots of the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm  are we able to make sense of why it was such a potent and recognizable instrument for  later literary works.  If it was an insignificant model or one only know to a small group of  people it would not have been the effective literary device it becomes in Athenian theater  and also later in Greek philosophy, poetry, and Roman prose.  The rituals at Eleusis and the  myth of Demeter losing and then reclaiming her daughter were widely practiced and  hugely popular, and because of this the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm was  firmly established in the Athenian and more broadly Greek imagination.   There is a great deal of scholarly debate about the relationship between myth and  ritual; how exactly do the two interact, how literally should myth be interpreted when we  attempt to reconstruct ritual worship, and what is the value of using a literary text – can we  discover, through textual analysis, elements of ritual that are not available in the  archeological and historical record?  Myths are often mined for social values and norms of    17  the society in which they were produced, or used as maps on which scholars trace the  routes (sometimes even literally) of a ritual practice and the rites that worshipers  enacted. 25   There are even those who say that religion and festivals cannot be viewed in  this abstract manner but deal only with the practical needs of the practitioners; that  reconstructing social history and re‐evaluating narrative history are the same  undertaking. 26     All of these approaches have certain merits for scholars attempting to understand  and advance our collective knowledge about myth, ritual, festivals, and the ancient peoples  who participated in these rites and ceremonies, as I will discuss.  However, I would also like  to propose two other methods for delving into the relationship between ritual and myth,  what I am calling the thematic and experiential method.  The myth itself, the narrative, or  text is not only a tool to be examined word‐by‐word, but also must be considered as a  whole.  Viewed in its entirety we can tease out thematic elements of the narrative that can  illuminate ritual.  And when we consider the myth or text as an embodied experience, 27  a  performance taken as a whole, we may also be able to shed some light on the ritual  practices of the ancient Greeks.    Myth and Ritual    Many scholars use myth as a sociological or anthropological tool to gain a deeper  understanding of the social mores and customs of ancient Greek culture.                                                             25  Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and  Myth, trans. Peter Bing (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986).  26  Noel Robertson, Introduction to Festivals and Legends: The Formation of Greek Cities in  the Light of Public Ritual, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), xiii.  27  See below for a more in depth discussion of this idea.    18  “All narrative, including mythic narrative, participates in the creation and reflection of  socio‐cultural structures.” 28   Therefore, by understanding the mythic narratives of the  Greeks it is possible to see this double loop of socio‐cultural structures; both how those  structures were reinforced and produced and how the social norms imprinted themselves  on the mythic narratives the Greeks transmitted from one generation to the next.  This  method of analysis seems, to me, to be the standard (and often very useful) model.  This  model enables us to look, for example, at the plays of Euripides and see the socio‐cultural  structures he is questioning and inverting by carefully tracking how he transforms classic  mythic narrative in his dramatic texts.  And through this type of investigation, open even  more fissures in the Athenian socio‐cultural landscape for scholars to explore.    Tyrrell and Brown have a similar approach. They propose that, “myths are a verbal  expression of beliefs, concepts and practices operating in all aspects of culture.” 29   This  takes us one step further into the complex interplay between myth and ritual.  Mythic  narrative not only tells us about the larger socio‐cultural structures of a society, 30  but also  the practices of the people in that specific cultural milieu.  This emphasis on practices is an  essential element for the study of ancient ritual, especially for mystery cults, since often  there is little primary material that deals directly with the specifics of ritual practices  and/or the sources are late or written by Christian authors hostile to ‘pagan religion.’   Mythological narrative not only tells us what social norms, anxieties, and structures a                                                           28  Ingrid Holmberg, “The Signs of Metis,” Arethusa 30 (1997) 1.  29  William Tyrrell and Frieda Brown, Athenian Myths and Institutions: Words in Action,  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 12.  30  These larger socio‐cultural structures may also have very important information for  ritual practice, i.e. who was allowed to participate, what socio‐cultural norms they may be  transgressing within the ritual context, what larger cultural concern did a ritual attend to,  etc.    19  culture found fundamental, but it can also help us piece together the actual ritual  practices that a group of people enacted to ensure that norms were upheld, anxieties eased,  and structures maintained.    A lot of scholarly attention has been focused not only on how myth and ritual impact  each other – but also how one led to the other.  I do not believe that either could take shape  without the other and that there must have been an organic give and take between the two  just as there is even now between myth and ritual.  While it is not the aim of this project to  delve into the origins of myth and ritual –there is nevertheless a need to review the myth‐ ritual debate so that we may go beyond it in our analysis.    Eric Csapo and Robert A. Segal both trace the beginnings of theories about myth and  ritual to the influence of the work of Emile Durkheim on ancient scholars in the late  nineteenth century. 31    His theories of social evolution then inspired both James Frazer and  William Robertson Smith to apply this theory to ancient religions of the Semitic peoples  and of the Greeks respectively.  Smith’s Lectures on the Religion of the Semites is often called  the first myth‐ritualist theory.    The major idea of his theory was that myth developed  subsequently to ritual.   And that ritual was rigidly handed down from generation to  generation.  For those of mythological details had no dogmatic value and no binding authority  over faith, it is to be supposed that nothing was put into a Mac which people at the  time were not prepared to believe without offense. But so far is the way of thinking  expressed in the myth was not already expressed in the ritual itself, it had no  properly religious sanction; the myth apart from the ritual of Ford’s only a doubtful  and slippery kind of evidence. Before we can handle myths with any confidence, we                                                           31  Eric Csapo, Theories of Mythology (Malden: Wiley‐Blackwell, 2005).       Robert A. Segal, The Myth and Ritual Theory: An Anthology (Malden: Wiley‐Blackwell,  1998).    20  must have some definite hold of the ideas expressed in the ritual tradition, which  incorporated the only fixed and statutory elements of the religion. 32    Smith sees myth as developing out of ritual practice and then continuing to evolve on its  own. Therefore in his lectures he first investigates ritual and the evidence that is available  independent of mythology.  The conclusion from all this as to the method of our investigation is obvious.  When  we study the political structure of an early society, we do not begin by asking what  is recorded of the first legislators, or what theory men advanced as to the reason of  their institutions; we try to understand what the institutions were, and how they  shaped men’s lives. In like manner, in the study of Semitic religion, we must not  begin by asking what was told about the gods, but what the working religious  institutions were, and how they shape the lives of the worshipers. 33   Smith’s conclusions are clear, when studying myth and ritual, one must delve first into the  ritual and then into the mythology. He views ritual as very static and myth as much more  susceptible to the changing views of society.     James Frazer dedicated The Golden Bough to Smith “In Gratitude and Admiration.”  However Frazer’s views on myth and ritual are slightly different.  In Frazer’s theory, myth  and ritual work together both growing out of the narrative of the god dying in the fall and  being reborn in the spring just like vegetation.  He uses mythology from all over the world  and from various time periods to show this commonality between many religions,  including Christianity.  For Fraser myth and ritual, all over the world and from all different  time periods, grow out of the agricultural cycle, practitioners use ritual to manipulate the  god of vegetation and thereby ensure the cycle of the seasons and the return of spring.   From this one common narrative many diverse rituals and myths are born, however at the                                                           32   William Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (Chestnut Hill: Adamant  Media Corporation, 2005)   33  Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites,     21  very start myth and ritual work together–one does not take precedence over the other in  Frazer’s theory.       The Golden Bough inspired many scholars of religion and played a key role in the  work of the Cambridge Ritualist School, which consisted of Jane Harrison, A.B. Cook, F.M.  Cornford, and Gilbert Murray; and of Bronislaw Malinowski.  The Cambridge Ritualists, as  their name implies, placed an emphasis on ritual as the spark which led to myth and even  early dramatic performance.  They saw the ritual calendar made up of celebrations of a  “year god” and all myth springing from the rituals surrounding his life, death, and rebirth.   “The works of Murray and Cornford on the rise of tragedy and comedy started a new way  of looking at literature and especially at the theater. It is ‘one and the same impulse that  sends man to the church and to the theater.’” 34   Walter Burkert, writing several decades later, saw myth and ritual springing up  separately but in dialogue with one another. His explanation of the relationship between  myth and ritual stresses the inextricable link that the two have.   Nevertheless myth and ritual can form an alliance for mutual benefit, indeed a  symbiosis, as lichens are formed by a symbiosis between algae and fungi: they are  propagated separately, but they nearly form a new species . . . To speak without  allegory: The defect of ritual, in a human society, is the apparent nonsense inherent  in its redirection of activity, the ‘as‐if’ element; here a tale may supply a plausible  context and fill the vacant places.  The defect of the traditional tale is its lack of  seriousness and stability; here ritual may supply a basis; for the serious character of  ritual is guaranteed by the role of anxiety controlled by it, and its stability is secured  even by explicit sanctions. 35                                                               34  Michael Desplan review of the Myth and Ritual School: J.G. Frazer and the Cambridge  Ritualists, by Robert Ackerman, Numen 50 No. 4 (2003), 479‐481.  35  Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkley: University  of California Press, 1979), 57.    22  If  a  traditional  tale,  or  mythic  narrative,  finds  its  stability  and  seriousness  in  its  relationship with ritual, than in the transmission of the tale—which Burkert notes is more  important than its origin—the myth must incorporate elements of the ritual to mark its tie  with the practice, thereby ensuring its seriousness.    Indeed, this is how Burkert, and many others read myths, “The hymn to Demeter  makes the goddess perform what must have been a part of the initiation ritual: sitting  down on a stool covered with a fleece, veiling her head, keeping silence, then laughing and  tasting the kykeon.” 36  The myth provides direct evidence for the practices of the initiates at  Eleusis.     I am not condemning these methodologies, I think using myth and ritual to probe  the  concerns  and  structures  of  a  society,  and  myth  to  reveal  ritual  practices  can  be  incredibly productive and fruitful.  And certainly I would not say, as Noel Robertson does,  “Nowadays it is the fashion to interpret festivals and other ritual as a figurative language  for expressing the more abstract values and attitudes of a given set of people.  Every  fashion has an element of truth, but in this one it is relatively small.” 37   However I would  like to propose two additional models for understanding how myth and ritual impact each  other and the value of studying myth to uncover and make more apparent elements of  ritual.  Both  of  my  models  involve  approaching  a  myth  holistically  and  imagining  the  experience of the ancient listener who would have heard the entire Homeric Hymn recited  in one sitting.  First I want to explore the Hymn thematically and look at what literary                                                           36  Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 77.  37  Robertson, Festivals and Legends,  xiv.     23  themes resonate with ritual practice.  How might an initiate, or would‐be initiate, gain a  deeper understanding of the ritual from listening to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter?  I  believe that not only would an initiate recognize ritual actions in the actions of the gods  and mortals in the Hymn, but he or she would also see resonance with the larger concerns  of the poem.  The poet makes clear in the themes of the poem what is also essential to the  ritual.    And in that vein, the second model I would like to propose is an experiential model,  which is how the experience of the listener might mimic the lived experience of the initiate  or practitioner.  Are there resonances between the events in the poem and the sequence of  actions in the ritual?   I think, at least in the case of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the myth,  in fact, stands in as a smaller model of the ritual experience.  The listener undergoes the  same experience as the initiate, but on a less dramatic scale.      Theory of Mind and the Human Response to Art and Ritual      This idea of a holistic and experiential approach to the poem is underscored by  recent work on cognitive neuroscience, social cognition, and the role of cognition in  religious teaching and initiation.  For the past sixty years developmental psychologists and  cognitive scientists have posited a theory about how “the cognitive capacity to attribute  mental states to self and others” 38  works.  This theory, which today is called Theory of Mind  (ToM), deals not only with emotions but also with beliefs, desires, intentions, and  mindreading.  ToM presents a scientific basis for my more literary hypothesis and allows us                                                           38  Alvin Goldman, “Theory of Mind” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive  Science, ed. Eric Margolis et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 402.    24  to explore on a very basic and human level how our brain structure and cognition may  play into how we experience literature, theater, and religious experiences.      ToM has gone through several models, but the most recent approach and structure  also make the most sense in terms of how humans interact with art and religion.  Referred  to as Simulation Theory (ST), Goldman explains it as the mental process that a chess player  playing another human (not a computer) must undertake,   they visualize the board from the other side, taking the opposing pieces for their  own and vice versa.  They pretend that their reasons for action have shifted  accordingly.  Thus transported in imagination, they make up their mind what to do  and project this decision onto the opponent. 39      Imagination is the key in this example, it is what enables the attempt to step into an  opponent’s mind and predict his/her actions.  And this in turn has huge consequences for  how we think about the transmission of religious beliefs and rituals (such as those at  Eleusis) and how our brains process art.      Harvey Whitehouse lays out in Modes of Religiosity just how ToM can help us to  understand the communication of religious beliefs from the initiated to the uninitiated.  He  breaks religious transmission down into two modes: the doctrinal and the imagistic.  Doctrinal religions are characterized by very frequent and highly routinized rituals,  (perhaps weekly or even more often), and the frequent repetition of doctrine and narrative  that reinforce the rituals.  Imagistic religions have much less frequent rituals (yearly for  example) but these rituals are also what Whitehouse terms “highly arousing”.  That is they                                                           39  Goldman, “Theory of Mind,” 412.    25  have ecstatic, highly dramatic, or dangerous elements. 40   Greek religion in general and  the practices at Eleusis specifically do not fit the doctrinal mode but rather the imagistic.      Imagistic religions use the imaginative element highlighted in ST to heighten the  experience for practitioners. This helps creates memories that “ can be so vivid and  detailed that they can take the form of (what some psychologists call) flashbulb memories.   It is almost as it a camera has gone off in one’s head, illuminating the scene, and preserving  it forever in memory.” 41   These flashbulb memories can presumably then be replayed in an  initiate’s mind and by “seeing” them again the ritual is reinforced.    This observation is key for understanding how the imagination and memory work in  the flashbulb memories of the initiates mentioned above and the ancient people listening to  The Homeric Hymn to Demeter.  Listening to the poem and creating the visual world in one’s  mind would create “memories” that could be revisited, which would in turn prompt the  neural response again.  Therefore listening to The Homeric Hymn to Demeter does in fact  create a mini‐initiation.  The listener would not have the dramatic flashbulb memories of a  person who actually underwent the process of initiation, but they would have “memories”  of the important actions of the poem.    The Eleusinian Ritual  This section will layout, in great detail, the surviving evidence for the worship of  Demeter at Eleusis.  I believe this is necessary to really understand the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm that the literary works I will explore are                                                           40  Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission  (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2004), 65‐74.  41  Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity, 70.    26  drawing on.  The Homeric poet in both the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Homeric  Hymn to Hermes uses ritual transformation; and then Aristophanes will take this a step  further in his use of ritual settings and the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm in  his comedies.    The Mysteries that were celebrated at Eleusis for well over a thousand years have  been the subject of countless books, articles, and reconstructions.  So many so, that at times  it is difficult to see through the imaginings, assumptions, and educated guesses to the  evidence that we have from antiquity.  Also, due to the nature of the evidence 42  – there are  bound to be as many interpretations as there are scholars who have scrutinized the  remaining clues about the rites of Demeter and Persephone.  I have attempted in the  following description to explicate what evidence is available and how it has been evaluated  by a number of scholars, myself included.   The worship of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, in the Greek world, centered  around the town of Eleusis, which by the early sixth century had been annexed by Athens. 43    There are legendary accounts of an earlier war between the two cities when Erechtheus  ruled Athens and Eumolpos, Eleusis.   Pausanias (1.36.4 and 1.38.3), Apollodoros (3.15.4‐5)  and Thucydides (2.15) all refer to this war in their work and scholars often point to this as  evidence of longstanding and ongoing tension between the two cities.  Despite, or even  perhaps because of this political tension, the annexation of Eleusis by Athens created new                                                           42  The evidence about the celebrations at Eleusis from the ancient world include, reliefs,  vase paintings, inscriptions, literary sources, and later Christian authors – who are  attempting to discredit ‘pagan’ religions.  Each of these types of evidence has room for  interpretation – there is no straightforward account.  Therefore it is hardly surprising that  so many versions of the ritual events have been postulated.  43  Foley 1994, 169; Meyer 1987, 17; Parke 1986, 60; Zaidman and Panel 1989, 132.    27  ritual elements for the worship of the two goddesses, which linked Athens and Eleusis  spiritually as well as politically.  The main celebration of Demeter and Persephone, the  Great Mysteries, occurred in the month of Boedromion from day fifteen through twenty‐ one, the entire third week of the month and part of the fourth. 44   However, for those who  wished to be initiated into the cult the journey began earlier, in the spring, at the  celebration of the Lesser Mysteries.    The Lesser Mysteries were celebrated at Agrai – a town outside of Athens to the  southwest in the second half of the month of Anthesterion. 45   Participation was a necessary  prerequisite for those who wanted to be initiates at the Greater Mysteries the following  year. 46   The ritual took place in the metroon, near the bank of the Illissos River; the temple  was simply dedicated to the Mother ‐ who some scholars say was Demeter, 47  and some,  Rhea. 48   There is a great deal of conjecture about what exactly occurred at Agrai.  There was  a purification and a sacrifice; and by the fifth century, it was a necessary first step before                                                           44  This correlates approximately with the end of September or beginning of October.  45  The second half of Anthesterion correlates, approximately, to early March.  46  The Greek year began in the month of Hekatombaion (approximately mid July).  So those  who wished to be initiates in the Great Mysteries would attend the Lesser Mysteries in the  spring (at the end of the Greek calendar year) and then in the following fall (a new year in  the Greek calendar system) be initiated into the rites at Eleusis. It is interesting to note that  in both the Ancient Greek and modern western calendar, new year is during the season  when farming is impossible because of the weather  47  Herbert Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (Utica: Cornell University Press, 1977), 58;  Martin Nilsson, “Early Orphism and Kindred Religious Movements,” The Harvard  Theological Review 28 (1955): 667‐9.  48  Helene Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive  Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 66; Erika Simon, The Festivals of the  Athenians: An Archeological Commentary (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983),  26. Parke does note that the temple at Agrai was dedicated simply to The Mother –  however she identifies this goddess as Demeter not Rhea.    28  becoming a mystai at the Eleusinian Mysteries. 49   The purification was held on the banks  of the Illisos and perhaps the participants ritually bathed in the river itself 50  before  sacrificing a piglet.  According to legend the purification at Agrai was first held for the  benefit of Herakles who had to be cleansed of his bloodguilt 51  before being initiated at  Eleusis. 52    The relief on the Lovatelli urn is often used as further evidence of this, it depicts  three scenes; Demeter seated and crowned with grain and Persephone standing next to her  with a torch; Herakles, his feet on a fleece (you can see the ram’s horn by his foot), veiled  and seated, being ritually cleansed; and Herakles holding a piglet while the Daduchos 53   pours a libation over the sacrificial offering.    Exactly when and how the rituals at Agrai were first joined to the rites at Eleusis is  not certain.  It seems that the two were linked in the festival calendar after the political  union of Athens and Eleusis.  Brumfield argues that there must have been more than simply  a political reason to tie the two festivals together, and therefore the rites at Agrai must have  had some resonance with the Eleusinian mysteries. 54   Her reasoning that the timing of the  Lesser Mysteries at Agrai and the Greater at Eleusis occur at the two high points of the  agricultural year  (sprouting and sowing, respectively) seems very plausible.  The  celebration at Agrai may have originally included rites not only to The Mother, but also to                                                           49  Plut. Demetr. 26.1  50  Ludwig Deubner, Attische Feste: Mit 40 Tafeln (Georg Olms, 1932), 70.  51  Herakles had killed the Centaurs and had to be cleansed before becoming an initiate –  since no one who had committed murder could be admitted to the initiation ritual of the  Greater Mysteries.  52  Aristophanes. Scholiast Plutus 845, 1013  53  Simon identifies the figure as a Daduchos because of his winnowing fan in the relief. 124  54  Allaire Brumfield, The Attic Festivals of Demeter and Their Relation to the Agricultural  Year (Ayer Co. Publishing, 1981), 143.    29  Persephone and perhaps to Zeus Meilichios whose festival was celebrated at Agrai in the  third week of Anthesterion. 55     What does seem clear from these various bits of evidence is that the political  alliance between Athens and Eleusis is mirrored in this ritual alliance. Nilsson and Park  discuss the possibility that the procession of the holy things from Eleusis to Athens during  the Greater Mysteries may have demonstrated a desire on the part of the Athenians for the  cult to be moved to Athens.  However, the association of Demeter with Eleusis was simply  too strong.  The mythological etiology of the Lesser Mysteries at Agrai in the Herakles myth  provides a useful link between Agrai and Eleusis other than political annexation and  supplied the mysteries of Demeter with a very famous Pan‐Hellenic initiate 56 , which could  only further the reputation of the Mysteries as a Pan‐Hellenic event.  Once initiates had taken part in the Lesser Mysteries in the spring they could then  be initiated into the Greater Mysteries.  There were two levels of initiation at Eleusis.  In the  first year of initiation participants became a mu/sthj mystes “an initiate” and then the next  year an initiate could become an e0po/pthj epoptes “one who sees”.  After completing the  final level of initiation cult members could become a mu/stagwgo/j mystagogos “a teacher”  and guide to those who were not yet epoptoi along their journey of initiation. 57                                                            55  Brumfield, The Attic Festivals of Demeter, 141 n. 11.  56  Parker notes that the Dioskouri are also famous mythological initiates into the cult at  Eleusis.  Xen. Hell. 6.3.6 and Plut. Thes. 33. Also a very late source, Stephanus of Byzantium  reports that the ritual at Agrai was “an imitation of the story of Dionysus.” Parker 1989  Dionysus at Agrai  57  For an excellent and very detailed analysis of the use of initiation vocabulary in Plato see  Clinton 2003, 59.    30  The Mysteries were administered by a large cast of priests, priestesses, and even  children.  The most important male Eleusinian officials who presided over both the Lesser  and the Greater Mysteries also reflected the annexation of Eleusis by Athens.  Two clans,  the Eumolpidai, who claimed to be descended from a line of Eleusinian kings and the  Athenian Kerykes, provided the three chief male officiants.  The Eumolpidai supplied the  high priest of Eleusis, the Heirophantes, “teacher of the sacred rites” and he held this office  for life. 58   The Kerykes clan supplied both the Daduchos “torchbearer” and the Hierokeryx  “herald of the sacred rites.”  There were also two Hierophantides, high priestesses, one the  priestess of Demeter and Kore 59  and the other the Priestess of Plouton. The Priestess of  Demeter and Kore was a married woman with children, and it is unclear if the office was  held for life. 60  The priests and priestesses were helped by the panageis “all holy ones,”  female attendants sometimes called melissai “bees.” 61   The Archon Basileus oversaw the  bureaucratic elements of registration, fees, and perhaps the acquisition of the necessary  piglets for the sacrifice at Athens.  Four citizens were designated each year as his helpers –                                                           58  George Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Cyceon Tales, 2010), 230; Carl  Kerenyi, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (Princeton: Princeton University  Press, 1991), 22‐23.; Simon, Festivals of Attica, 27.  59  The Priestess of Demeter and Kore also presided over other festivals to Demeter, which I  will discuss later in this chapter.    60  For a wonderful and very in depth discussion of The Priestess of Demeter and Kore,  including the evidence for historical women who served in this office see Joan Connelly,  Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University  Press, 2009): 64‐69.  61  Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 232; Julian Rhet. V.173, CIA iv, p.203 1.81.  (corpus inscriptionum atticarum); Mara Lynn Keller, “The Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter  and Persephone: Fertility, Sexuality, and Rebirth,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 4  (1988): 33.    31  two from the citizen body at large and one from the Kerykes clan and one from the  Eumolpidai. 62     The Eleusinian priests had special, highly decorated vestments called ependytes  and Thracian boots. The Daduchos wore his hair, which he tied up in a special headband,  and beard long the entire year.  Most of what we know about the appearance of the priests  comes from vase painting and representations of Eumolpos or Kerykes, the legendary  figures who are said to be the ancestors of the two clans that provided the Hierophant and  Daduchos.  There are not as many representations of the Priestesses, but Connelly  mentions one black‐figure cup that may have a depiction of the Priestess to Demeter and  Kore; she seems to be dressed in a very similar manner to the female worshippers also on  the cup – so perhaps her costume was not as elaborate as her male counterparts’. 63     The Greater Mysteries took place in the fall during the month of Boedromion right  before the planting (so that initiates then had time to travel home before the planting  needed to take place).   The Hierophant called a sacred truce for fifty‐five days around the  festival, allowing all those in the Greek world who wanted to celebrate the Mysteries to  travel to Athens and then home again safely.  In Metageitnion, the month before  Boedromion, the Hierophant would send messengers, spondophoroi, throughout the Greek  world to proclaim the truce and invite people to Athens and Eleusis for the mysteries. 64    The celebration began on the fourteenth of Boedromion when the Priestess of Demeter and                                                           62  Aristotle Ath Con 57; Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 229; Brumfield, The  Attic Festivals of Demeter, 192‐3; Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, 37.  63  Simon, Festivals of Attica, 27; Parke, Festivals of the Athenians, 58: Kerenyi, Eleusis, 162‐ 163, fig. 50, Ninion tablet fig.15, figs. 24, 25; Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries4  230‐233; Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess, 66 Fig. 3.2; Plutarch Aristides 5.   64  Wilhelm Dittenberger, Sylloge   inscriptionum graecarum (Germany: S. Hirzelium, 1883),  vol. 3, No. 1019 and vol. 1, No. 83; Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 230.    32  Kore and the Priestess of Plutos, accompanied by the ephebes from Athens, carried ta\ i9era, the hiera, or “the Sacred Things” in a procession from Eleusis to Athens.  The  priestesses carried the hiera in special round baskets called kistai so that none of the  uninitiated could see them.  When they arrived in Athens the hiera were placed in the  Eleusinion, a small temple built on a rocky outcropping on the northern slope of the  acropolis 65  and the Phaidryntes “the Cleaner of the Two Goddesses” 66  went to the acropolis  and announced to the priestess of Athena Polias that the hiera were in Athens.    Initiation into the Mysteries was open to any person who could speak Greek (i.e.  anyone who was not a Barbarian) and who had not committed murder. Both free men and  women and slaves took part. 67  Although the mysteries were open to a large group of people  there were fees associated with joining. By the late fourth century the fees totaled fifteen  drachmas, which Parke estimates as ten days’ wages. 68  Therefore, although most could  have participated, for poorer initiates the fee would require planning and saving over the  course of the previous year.  These fifteen drachmas accounted for various fees that  covered payments to the priests and priestesses as well as expenses. 69  It seems that the  necessary sacrificial animals were covered in this fee. 70     The first four days of the festival were celebrated at Athens and the Archon Basileus  was in charge.  Aristotle writes,                                                            65  For a very detailed analysis of the various archeological finds at the City Eleusinion see  Miles 1998.  66  Parke, Festivals of the Athenians, 60.  67  Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 254; Walter Burkert, Greek Religion:  Archaic and Classical (New York: Wiley‐Blackwell, 1991), 285‐6.  68  Parke, Festivals of the Athenians, 61.  69  Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess, 65; Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 233;  Dittenberger, Sylloge, vol. 1, No 42 c; Leges Graecorum Sacrae, No. 3, Col. C, p. 12  70  For more see Parke, Festivals of the Athenians.    33  ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς πρῶτον μὲν μυστηρίων ἐπιμελεῖται μετὰ τῶν ἐπιμελητῶν ὧν ὁ  δῆμος χειροτονεῖ, δύο μὲν ἐξ Ἀθηναίων ἁπάντων, ἕνα δ᾽ ἐξ Εὐμολπιδῶν, ἕνα δ᾽ ἐκ  Κηρύκων.  The Archon Basileus is in charge, first, of the Mysteries along with managers who  have been elected by the people, two from the whole Athenian citizenry, one from  the Eumolpidai and one from the Kerykes.  71           The first day was called o9 a0gurmo/j the Agyrmos (gathering) and it was held on the full  moon of the fifteenth of the month. 72   All grades of initiates and would‐be initiates gathered  at the Stoa Poikile.    On the day following the Agyrmos the initiates bathed in the sea near Piraeus to  purify themselves and according to an anecdote from Plutarch, they also washed the piglet  they would later sacrifice. 73   Several inscriptions preserve the phrase a$lade mu/stai “to the  see mystai” that Mylonas says was also shouted through the city.  Plutarch tells of a sea‐ monster (perhaps a shark) biting an initiate in half as he washed his pig.   μύστην δὲ λούοντα χοιρίδιον ἐν Κανθάρῳ λιμένι κῆτος συνέλαβε καὶ τὰ κάτω μέρη  τοῦ σώματος ἄχρι τῆς κοιλίας κατέπιε, And a huge fish seized a mystic washing his  pig in the harbor at Cantharus and completely devoured the parts of his body below  the belly. 74      Presumably initiates didn’t often have encounters with sharks in the sea – but it still must  have been quite a sight to see initiates and their piglets writhing in the harbor. Properly  purified, the initiates went back to Athens.  Some scholars think that the initiates sacrificed                                                           71  Aristotle, Ath. Con, 57.  72  Brumfield, The Attic Festivals of Demeter, 195 n. 9; Deubner, Attische Feste, 72.  73  A$lade e!lasij IG II 2  847.20; e~([[i] a$lade e[)x]selau/nosin oi( mu/stai IG I 2  94.35 = SIG 93;  Polyaenus Strat. III.ii.2; Schol. Aeschines iii.130; Plut Phoc. 28. See Also Burkert, Homo  Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth trans. Peter Bing  (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986), 258; Burkert, Greek Religion, 78; Brumfield,  Attic Festivals of Demeter, 195; Simon, Festivals of Attica, 32; and Parke, Festivals of the  Athenians, 62‐3.  Pigs were commonly sacrificed to Demeter and feature in other rites of the  Mysteries as well as other festivals to Demeter that I will discuss furthering Appendix B.  74  Phocion 28.3    34  their piglets that afternoon after washing in the sea and some think that the sacrifice  happened on the following day.  It seems to me that it would be rather odd to put a purified  piglet back into a pigpen before sacrificing it, however there is no real evidence one way or  another. 75   There is likewise no direct evidence for what happened on the 17 th  of  Boedromion.  It seems clear that there were citywide sacrifices held at the Eleusinion and  performed by the Archon Basileus 76  during the celebrations at Athens, and that this most  likely took place on the 17 th , but the individual sacrifice of the piglets cannot be placed with  any certainty. 77     The 18 th  of Boedromion was most likely the day that the Epidauria was held.   According to Philostratus it was held in honor of Asclepius who arrived from Epidarus too  late for the initiation, but was allowed to be initiated anyway.    ἦν μὲν δὴ Ἐπιδαυρίων ἡμέρα. τὰ δὲ Ἐπιδαύρια μετὰ πρόρρησίν τε καὶ ἱερεῖα δεῦρο  μυεῖν Ἀθηναίοις πάτριον ἐπὶ θυσίᾳ δευτέρᾳ, τουτὶ δὲ ἐνόμισαν Ἀσκληπιοῦ ἕνεκα, ὅτι  δὴ ἐμύησαν αὐτὸν ἥκοντα Ἐπιδαυρόθεν ὀψὲ μυστηρίων.  It was the day of the  Epidauria, at which it is still customary for the Athenians to hold the initiation at a  second sacrifice after both proclamation and victims have been offered; and this  custom was instituted in honor of Asclepius, because they still initiated him when on  one occasion he arrived from Epidaurus too late for the mysteries. 78      Pausanias confirms that the Athenians gave a day of the celebration of the Mysteries to  Asclepius, but he doesn’t say why.                                                              75  Both Lysias 6.4 and Philostratus VA 4.18 mention the sacrifices at Athens in passing – but  neither gives a clear date or an indication of when these sacrifices took place on either the  second or third day at Athens.  76  Lysias 6.4  77  Mylonas also posits that the 17 th  was a day of citywide sacrifice, although he thinks that  the piglets were also sacrificed on this day. See also Parke, Festivals of the Athenians, 62‐63  and Kerenyi, Eleusis, 60‐62 who also says that the piglets were sacrificed on the 17 th . Paul  Foucart, Les mysteres d’Eleusis (Paris: Picard, 1914), however, says that the Epidaria was  celebrated on the 17 th .  78  VA 4.18     35  τοῦτο μὲν γὰρ Ἀθηναῖοι, τῆς τελετῆς λέγοντες Ἀσκληπιῷ μεταδοῦναι, τὴν ἡμέραν  ταύτην Ἐπιδαύρια ὀνομάζουσι For the Athenians, who say that they gave a share of  the rites to Asclepius, call this day the Epidauria. 79       And Aristotle says that during this procession for Asclepius the initiates stayed inside.   “πομπῶν δ᾽ ἐπιμελεῖται τῆς τε τῷ Ἀσκληπιῷ γιγνομένης, ὅταν οἰκουρῶσι μύσται, And he  [The Archon] supervises processions, the one that is held for Asclepius, when the mystai  keep watch at home” . 80  Parke surmises the initiates used this day to solemnly prepare for  the coming procession to and rites at Eleusis 81 .  It does seem clear, from Aristotle, that the  initiates were separated from the rest of those celebrating the Epidauria – although why,  Aristotle does not make clear.  On the 19 th  of Boedromion the initiates, initiated, and the Eleusinian priests and  priestesses walked 82  in a grand procession from Athens to Eleusis.  The mystai gathered in  the Kerameikos between the Dipylon and the Sacred Gate at the Pompeion. 83  The Sacred  Gate opened onto the Sacred Way – the fourteen‐mile road that lead from Athens to Eleusis  down which the procession wound.  The procession was led by the Eleusinian officials with  the hiera and the ephebes, the Daduchos with torches, and a priest, the Iacchagagos,  carrying a statue of Iacchos from the temple that Pausanias says was near by.   ἐσελθόντων  δὲ  ἐς  τὴν  πόλιν  οἰκοδόμημα  ἐς  παρασκευήν  ἐστι  τῶν  πομπῶν,  ἃς  πέμπουσι τὰς μὲν ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος, τὰς δὲ καὶ χρόνον διαλείποντες. καὶ πλησίον ναός  ἐστι Δήμητρος, ἀγάλματα δὲ αὐτή τε καὶ ἡ παῖς καὶ δᾷδα ἔχων Ἴακχος Entering into                                                           79  2.26.8   80  Aristotle, Ath Con 56.4  81  For more on the political reasons for the inclusion of Asclepius see Parke, Festivals of the  Athenians, 63‐64.  82  By the fourth century it had apparently become something of a problem that the rich  rode in carriages instead of walking, because, according to Plutarch, in his life of Lykourgos,  Lykourgos forbid anyone to ride in a carriage and attached a heavy fine as a penalty.    83  The Pompeion, or Hall of Processions was a building that housed clothing and other  ritual objects used in the processions. Demosthenes 34.39; Diogenes Laertius 2.43, 6.22.      36  the  city  there  is  a  building  for  the  preparation  of  processions,  which  are  conducted in some cases regularly every year, and in other cases at longer intervals  of time. Nearby is a temple of Demeter with statues of the goddess herself and her  daughter and Iacchos holding a torch. 84      In fact the procession was called the Iacchos procession and the mystai called out “i0axh!  i0axh!” 85   There has been a great deal of scholarly (and even perhaps ancient) discussion  and confusion about the relationship between Iacchos and Bacchos (Dionysus).  That the  two names sound very similar may have only added to the perplexity.  Most scholars do  now accept the association and blending of Dionysus with Iacchos. 86   However, some  earlier scholars say that Iacchos is the personification of the joyful cry of the mystai 87  and  Strabo says that Iacchos is a name given to both Dionysus and the leader of the Eleusis  procession. “Ἴακχόν τε καὶ τὸν Διόνυσον καλοῦσι καὶ τὸν ἀρχηγέτην τῶν μυστηρίων, τῆς  Δήμητρος δαίμονα: And they give the name Iacchos to both Dionysus and the leader of the  Mysteries, who is the spirit of Demeter.” 88   And to add to the confusion both Iacchos and  Dionysos are call by ancient sources the son of Persephone. 89   Burkert, Metzger and  Mylonas all see an increasing prominence of Dionysos at Eleusis in the fourth century – so  perhaps the two were once distinct and became linked or perhaps the Dionysian elements  of this deity became more important.                                                           84  Pausanias 1.2.4  85  IG II 2  1078.20‐33; Brumfeld, Attics Festivals to Demeter, 195 n.14; Deubner 73; Kerenyi,  Elesusis, 65; Parke, Festivals of the Athenians, 66.  86  Ismene Lada‐Richards, Initiating Dionysus: Ritual and Theater in Aristophanes’ Frogs  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 49.  87  Deubner, Attische Feste, 73; Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism  (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 279.  88  Strabo X.iii.10  89  See Burkert, Homo Necans, 289: also Lowell Edmunds, Celon, Knights and Aristophanes’  Politics (Lanham: University Press of America, 1987), 139; and Kevin Clinton, The Sacred  Officials of the Eleusinian Mysteries (The American Philosophical Society, 1974), 66‐7.    37    The procession was quite large 90  and it seems to have been very joyful, there  were flute players and groups of singers 91  interspersed through the crowd.  The  participants carried bacchoi; bundles of myrtle leaves tied with either a strand of wool or  held together by rings, 92  and wore myrtle leaf crowns.  Along the way the mystai performed  sacrifices and dances and held other ritual observances. 93   One of the most detailed  contemporary accounts of the procession from Athens to Eleusis comes from a decidedly  comedic rather than solemn source.  In Aristophanes’ Frogs Dionysos and his slave  Xanthias, while in the underworld looking for the recently deceased Euripides, have an  encounter with a procession of dead Eleusinian Initiates.    Xanthias and Dionysos hear pipes, smell torches, and suspect it is the Eleusinian  Initiates that they have been told about. Then the Iacchos Hymn begins and they are sure.   However, Dionysos, ever cautious in the beginning of the Frogs, decides they should hide  and make sure it is the Initiates before revealing themselves.  From their hiding place, the  two witness many of the hallmarks of the Iacchos procession as well as the three elements  of the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm.  The chorus mentions that it will joke  and laugh as is proper for a ritual to Demeter. 94   They also sing that they have just seen an  attractive young woman in the procession whose breast has peaked out of her robes, 95  and  they close with a reminder of their transformation, which allows them to happy in the                                                           90  Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 254; and Foucart, Les mysteres d’Eleusis,  326.  91  Parke, Festivals of the Athenians, 66.  92  Sch. Ar. Ran 333; Bacchoi Sch. Ar. Eq. 406; Simon 32 n.55  93  Plutarch, Alcibiades 34.3 ἀλλὰ καὶ θυσίαι καὶ χορεῖαι καὶ πολλὰ τῶν δρωμένων καθ᾽ ὁδὸν  ἱερῶν, ὅταν ἐξελαύνωσι τὸν Ἴακχον, ὑπ᾽ ἀνάγκης ἐξελείπετο. Also Faucart , Les mysteres  d’Eleusis, 331.  94  Frog 375, 389‐93  95  Frogs 411‐15    38  underworld. 96   These three components of the paradigm appear and remind the  audience of the play of their importance to the rituals for Demeter and also the importance  of transformation in the Frogs. 97   Aristophanes’ chorus of Initiates in the Frogs gives us a window into the mood and  perhaps some of the ritual observances of the procession.  It is impossible to know exactly  what blend of elements from the procession, the ritual at Eleusis, and even perhaps from  rituals to Dionysus (since he is the god on stage for this exchange, and the god to whom the  play is being offered) Aristophanes is mixing together in this giddy, joyful chorus.  There  are, however, thematic concerns and ritual events in the passage (see Appendix A) that  have common characteristics with other ancient accounts of the procession from Athens to  Eleusis. 98     The procession in the Frogs is clearly the Iacchos procession, as the chorus  frequently invokes Iacchos in their hymn.  They mention that he is wearing a myrtle  crown 99  as the initiates did in the actual procession. 100   Iacchos is called the “μέλος ἑορτῆς  ἥδιστον εὑρών, inventor of the sweetest festival song” –he is both the personification of the  song and its author and he (as a god and as a song) is the force that will help the initiates  through the day‐long walk to Eleusis.  Many of the other elements of Aristophanes’ Iacchos  hymn have more to do with the events at Eleusis (the nocturnal torchlight dance), or with  the worship of Demeter more generally (the smell of roasting pigs).   However, the mood of                                                           96  Frogs 454‐59  97  I will return to this idea in Chapters 3 and 4.  98  I will discuss the Frogs in much greater depth in Chapters Three and Four.  99  Frogs 330/1  100  Parke, festivals of the Athenians, 65;  Jennifer Larson, Ancient Greek Cults: A Guide, (New  York: Routledge, 2007), 75; Kerenyi, Eleusis, 64; and Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian  Mysteries, 252.    39  joyful anticipation seems very appropriate, the mood of the ritual would turn darker the  following day in the Telesterion at Eleusis.  Over the course of the day the procession crossed two bridges, the first one spanned  the streams of the Rhetoi, the second, the river Kephissos.  Each bridge had a specific ritual  associated with it.  Rivers and boundaries are liminal points in any geography, but  especially in a ritual geography.  They mark out where something begins spatially, a city,  personal property, or a new vista.  And within the context of a ritual, geographical  boundaries often mark a moment when something changes, both for the celebration itself  (i.e. a new segment of the ritual has begun) and for an individual participant’s ritual  growth, transformation, or new beginning.  Pausanias writes:  οἱ δὲ Ῥειτοὶ καλούμενοι ῥεῦμα μόνον παρέχονται ποταμῶν, ἐπεὶ τό γε ὕδωρ θάλασσά ἐστί σφισι: πείθοιτο δὲ ἄν τις καὶ ὡς ἀπὸ τοῦ Χαλκιδέων Εὐρίπου ῥέουσιν ὑπὸ τῆς γῆς ἐς θάλασσαν κοιλοτέραν ἐμπίπτοντες. λέγονται δὲ οἱ Ῥειτοὶ Κόρης ἱεροὶ καὶ Δήμητρος εἶναι, καὶ τοὺς ἰχθῦς ἐξ αὐτῶν τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν ἔστιν αἱρεῖν μόνοις. οὗτοι τὸ ἀρχαῖον, ὡς ἐγὼ πυνθάνομαι, πρὸς Ἀθηναίους τοὺς ἄλλους ὅροι τῆς γῆς Ἐλευσινίοις ἦσαν, καὶ διαβᾶσι τοὺς Ῥειτοὺς πρῶτος ᾤκει Κρόκων, ἔνθα καὶ νῦν ἔτι βασίλεια καλεῖται Κρόκωνος. The Rheitoi are called streams only because they exhibit currents, since their water  is seawater, it is a reasonable belief that they flow under the earth from the Euripus  of the Chalcidians and flow down into the sea harbor.  The Rheitoi are said to be  sacred to Kore and Demeter and only the priests of these goddesses are allowed to  catch fish from them. I learned that anciently these streams were the boundaries  between the lands of the Eleusinians and the lands of the other Athenians, and that  Krokon was the first to live on the other side of the Rheitoi, where now there is the  place called the palace of Krokon. 101       At the streams of the Rheitoi, the ancient boundary between Athens and Eleusis, there was  an important, ancient, and somewhat obscure ritual.  After passing over the boundary into  what was anciently Eleusis and the territory of Krokon each initiate had a saffron colored                                                           101  Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.38‐39    40  piece of thread tied to their right hand and left lower leg 102  by a member of the Krokadai  – the family with ties to the legendary King Krokos. 103   Deubner accurately points out that it  would have taken quite a long to time to mark each initiate this way, and suggests that the  saffron threads were tied around the initiates limbs before they left Athens. 104   However, I  agree with Mylonas that this could have been perhaps a perfect point in the procession to  rest and take some time so that the procession could arrive at Eleusis after nightfall with  torches lit.  105  This was also most likely where the initiates again bathed in salt water, since  the streams of the Rheitoi are salt water as Pausanias attests above.  However, I will return  to the ritual bath after discussing the other bridge ritual.    The Kephissos River had, in antiquity, two branches, one in Athenian territory and  one that flowed through the Nysian Plain in Eleusis.  It is difficult to tell from the ancient  sources which branch of the river hosted the ritual of gephurismos. 106   I think it is  important to look at all the evidence that we have and then I will comment on the  conclusions that can be drawn directly from our ancient sources.      Pausanias in his journey through Greece follows the Sacred Way from Athens to  Eleusis and mentions both the Athenian and Eleusinian Kephissos.  However, he does not  mention the gephurismos. He instead mentions other monuments near the two rivers and                                                           102  Bekker, Anecdota, 273 “Krokou~n: oi( mu/stai kro/kh katadou~ntai th/n decia\n xei~ra kai to\n a0riste/ron po/da, kai tou~to le/getai krokou~n. 103  Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 256; Parke, Festivals of the Athenians, 66;  Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 67; and Kerenyi,  Eleusis, 65.  104  Deubner, Attische Feste, 77.  105  Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 256.  106  Sch. Ar. Plut 1014; Pausanias 1.37.3‐1.38.6; Hesychius, Lexicon; Strabo 9.1.24 ποταμοὶ δ᾽  εἰσὶν ὁ μὲν Κηφισσὸς ἐκ Τρινεμέων τὰς ἀρχὰς ἔχων ῥέων δὲ διὰ τοῦ πεδίου, ἐφ᾽ οὗ καὶ ἡ  γέφυρα καὶ οἱ γεφυρισμοί, See also Brumfeld, Attic Festivals of Demeter, 195 and Parke,  Festivals of the Athenians,  66.  Also Plutarch uses this verb to mean “to abuse” in Sulla 6.12    41  the association of the Eleusinian Kephissos with the kidnapping of Kore 107 .  From  Pausanias’ description it is impossible to tell where the gephurismos took place.  The  Kephissos located in Eleusis does seem to have more associations with the mythology of  the Mysteries, however that could simply be because it is located very close to the  sanctuary.    ποταμοὶ δ᾽ εἰσὶν ὁ μὲν Κηφισσὸς ἐκ Τρινεμέων τὰς ἀρχὰς ἔχων ῥέων δὲ διὰ τοῦ  πεδίου, ἐφ᾽ οὗ καὶ ἡ γέφυρα καὶ οἱ γεφυρισμοί, διὰ δὲ τῶν σκελῶν τῶν ἀπὸ τοῦ  ἄστεος εἰς τὸν Πειραιᾶ καθηκόντων ἐκδίδωσιν εἰς τὸ Φαληρικόν, χειμαρρώδης τὸ  πλέον, θέρους δὲ μειοῦται τελέως. The rivers (of Attica) are the Kephissos, which  begins  in  the  deme  of  Trinemeis,  it  flows  through  the  plane,  thus  the  bridge  (gephura) and the gephurismos, and then through the legs of the long walls, which  go from the city down to the Piraeus, it empties into the Bay of Phalerion, it is full  and torrential, but in the summer it decreases completely.  108      From Strabo’s account it is clear that the gephurismos took place as the river was crossing  a plain, and from this description it appears that he is talking about the plain within  Athenian territory, since after the river flows through the plain Strabo then describes it as  flowing through the Long Walls that ran from Athens to the Piraeus.     The Hellenistic grammarian Hesychius, writing in the fifth century AD defined  gefu/rij and gefuristai in his lexicon in this way:  Gefuri/j: po/rnh tij e0pi\ gefu/raj, w9j tw~n H9rakle/wn: a)/lloi de/ ou0 gunai~ka, a0lla\ a0/ndra e0kei~ kaqezo/menon tw~n e0n E0leusi~ni mustthri/wn sugkalupto/menon e)c o0no/matoj skw/mmata le/gein ei0j tou\j e0ndo/couj poli/taj. –––  Gefuristai/: oi9 skw~ptai: e0pei\ e0n E0leusi~ni e0pi\ th~j gefu/raj toij musthri/oij kaqezo/menoi e0/skwpton tou\j pario/ntaj. Gephuris: some say a prostitute was on the bridge, like  Herakleon, and others, say it was not a woman, but a man encamped on the bridge,  in  Eleusis  for  the  Mysteries,  with  his  face  covered,  and  throwing  jests  at  the  esteemed citizens, calling them by name.  Gephuristai: the jesters who encamp on  the bridge at Eleusis for the Mysteries. 109                                                              107  Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.38.3‐5  108  Strabo 9.1.24  109  Hesychius, Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon    42  Hesychius’ collected descriptions make it sound as though the gephurismos took place  on the bridge over the Kephissos in Eleusis.  However, he is a slightly less reliable source,  since he has done just that, collected descriptions, not travelled to or participated in the  ritual himself.  He is also writing far later than either Strabo or Pausanias.      Based on the evidence we have, although it seems impossible to be absolutely  certain, I would like to propose a ritual timeline that places the gephurismos on the bridge  over the Athenian Kephissos, followed by the ritual saffron string tying and bathing in the  salt streams of the Rhetoi. 110   The ritual of gephurismos is in keeping with other rituals for  Demeter that engage in aischrologia.  Men or women, perhaps masked, waited at the bridge  to lob jokes and insults at the passing citizens, calling them out by name.  Just as the ritual  at the Rhetoi marks a boundary and the entrance into a new geographical space, the ritual  of gephurismos marks the initiates’ journey into a new spiritual space.  The joking, playing,  laughing at the bridge indicates that they are no longer in the world of everyday life, but in  a Demetrian ritual world; one that will free them from the fear of death and a miserable  afterlife.  It would make sense for the ritual if the gephurismos took place at the very  beginning of the procession, as an entryway into the initiation at Eleusis.  Placing the  gephurismos after the ritual at the Rhetoi, also poses some logistical problems for the end  of the procession.      The rituals at the Rhetoi must have taken some time.  Tying a saffron string to the  arm and leg of every participant certainly would have been time consuming and the ritual  bath in the salt water also would have created a delay in the procession.  The ritual bath at                                                           110  Mylonas’ suggestion that the gephurismos that Strabo is referring to is a ritual that took  place as people made their way back to Athens after the rites at Eleusis were over seems  rather odd.    43  the Rhetoi would give the initiates a chance to cool off and get physically clean after their  long and dusty walk 111  from Athens.  Mylonas interestingly proposes that the delay would  have been welcome because then the sun would set and the initiates could arrive in Eleusis  by torchlight. 112   It certainly seems that the initiates did arrive in Eleusis by torchlight, 113   and there is nothing to suggest that the gephurismos happened after nightfall.  The one  author who could have given us some sure sense of the timeline of the various rituals  carried out during the procession is Pausanias, who not only walked the Sacred Way but  also was initiated into the Mysteries, however he was warned in a dream not to reveal the  celebrations to the uninitiated and he apparently took this advice seriously and left no  account of the Mysteries.  Once the torch light procession reached the sanctuary at Eleusis the statue of  Iacchos was welcomed. 114   Then the initiates most likely participated in the kernephoria 115   eating seeds, peas, and grains out of special vessels known as kernos, which had many tiny  cups.  Then the women and perhaps men as well took part in a pannychris, an all night                                                           111  Herodotus says that the dust formed a cloud that could be seen floating out over the Bay  of Eleusis toward Salamis 8.65.  112  Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 256; Brumfeld Attic Festivals of Demeter,  Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and Kerenyi, Eleusis also place the ritual of  gephurismos before the ritual salt bath.  113  The Ninnion tablet and the representation of the Daduchos in the procession (Mylonas,  Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, fig. 78) both have lit torches.  And the Chorus of  Initiates in the Frogs, likewise, are carrying lit torches.  114  IG II 2  847.21 The inscription details the duties of the ἐπιμεληταὶ of the Archon Basileus from 215/4.  115  Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 256; Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter,  67; Larson, Ancient Greek Cults, 75.    44  festival, which included singing and dancing. 116   Euripides’ chorus in the Ion describes  the scene:  εἰ παρὰ καλλιχόροισι παγαῖς λαμπάδα θεωρὸν εἰκάδων ὄψεται ἐννύχιος ἄυπνος ὤν, ὅτε καὶ Διὸς ἀστερωπὸς ἀνεχόρευσεν αἰθήρ, χορεύει δὲ σελάνα καὶ πεντήκοντα κόραι Νηρέος, αἱ κατὰ πόντον ἀενάων τε ποταμῶν δίνας, χορευόμεναι τὰν χρυσοστέφανον κόραν καὶ ματέρα σεμνάν: if he the sleepless watcher by night  shall see the torch light procession on the twentieth  beside the Kallichorn spring,  when the starry sky of Zeus joins in the dance  and the moon dances, and the fifty daughters of Nereus,  in the sea and the eddies of the ever flowing rivers,  dancing in honor of the golden crowned maiden,  and her august mother. 117     The chorus is clearly referring to a torchlight procession and dances in honor of Demeter  and Kore, and they mention two things that tie this passage specifically to the worship of  the two goddesses at Eleusis.  The first is the Kallichorn spring, or the “spring of the  beautiful dances” which was in the courtyard of the sanctuary at Eleusis and the torchlight  procession on the twentieth. 118   This incredibly beautiful choral ode and the comic chorus                                                           116  Ar. Frogs 342‐352; Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 67, Mylonas, Eleusis and the  Eleusinian Mysteries, 257; Brumfeld, Attic Festivals of Demeter, 195; and Larson, Ancient  Greek Cults, 75.  117  Euripides, Ion, 1076‐1086.  118  The torchlight procession and the dances in the courtyard at Eleusis are on the 20 th  day  of Boedromion because the Greeks counted each day from sunset to sunset (Mylonas,  Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 256 n. 151, Jon Mikalson, Athenian Popular Religion  (Chapell Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 59; Simon, The Festivals of  Attica, 1983, 19 n.9, Deubner, Attische Feste, 72 n. 7 and 93 n.3    45  of the Frogs together give us a taste for the texture of the procession and dancing at  Eleusis; it was a mixture of reverence, joy, joking and raucousness.  The following day, during the daylight hours of the 20 th  of Boedromion, the initiates  fasted and presented sacrifices to Demeter and Kore and the other Eleusinian deities.  They  offered a large pelanos (pelanoj), or grain cake made from grain harvested from the  Rharian plain to the two goddesses and other offerings of the first fruits (aparxai) given  to Demeter and Kore. 119   Some scholars think that at the end of this day the initiates broke  their fast with the ritual drink kykeon, some think that the initiates perhaps drank the  kykeon after the procession reached Eleusis the previous night, perhaps they drank kykeon  both times since it was a drink specifically associated with Demeter and the Mysteries at  Eleusis. 120   After the initiates broke their fast the main ceremony in the Telesterion began,  the ceremony of revelation and initiation.                                                              119  IG II 2  140  120  Kykeon, the ritual drink of Eleusis, is described by Demeter herself in the Homeric  Hymn.  She says that it consists of water and barley and pennyroyal (mint) HH 2089.   There has been quite a bit of conjecture over the properties of kykeon and if it had any sort  of hallucinatory effect on the initiates.  Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck even wrote a book  dedicated to the theory that the barley for the drink contained a hallucinogenic mold, ergot  like the one allegedly responsible for the Salem witch trials in Colonial America.  And one  modern scholar even likened the taste to breast milk.  I have a slightly different theory, that  kykeon was similar to beer.  Beer was traditionally brewed with water, a grain (often  barley because of its propensity for producing sugar needed for the wild yeast to ferment  the drink) and an herb for flavor.  Hops were not added to beer as a matter of course until  around 800AD (Oliver 2001, 48), so the lack of them in kykeon does not mean that the  substance was not similar to beer.  The Egyptians brewed beer in great quantities (Samuel  1996) (Strabo 17.1.14) and beer was also brewed in ancient Mesopotamia.  I do not want to  belabor this point since it is certainly not necessary for my argument or, indeed, even able  to be finally resolved, however, if you presented the three ingredients of kykeon to a  brewer and asked what they could have been drinking at Eleusis the brewer would most  certainly tell you it was beer.  It would be a bit like asking a baker what substance could be    46  One of the largest frustrations in studying the Mysteries of Demeter and Kore at  Eleusis is that our ancient sources took the vow of secrecy very seriously; and therefore  most of the sources we do have are hostile Christian sources written by men who never  took part in the Mysteries and were hoping to discredit them.  Accordingly, we have to  tread very carefully when evaluating the evidence from antiquity about what happened in  the Telesterion at Eleusis when the Mysteries were revealed and the initiates initiated.  The floor plan and architecture of the Telesterion was very different from that of the  standard Greek temple.  By the Periclean Era it measured 51.5m in length by 49.45m in  width 121  with steps around each wall for initiates to sit or stand on and six doors, two on  the north, south, and east sides. 122   Aside from these six entry points the Telesterion was  completely walled, unlike most open‐air Greek temples.  Close to the center of the building  was the Anaktoron a rectangular enclosure with one small entrance next to the throne of  the Hierophant. 123   It seems likely that the Hierophant conducted the ceremony from this  central location.  What exactly he revealed to the initiates is impossible for us to know,  however there are hints from antiquity.   Plutarch compared the ceremony of initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries to a  student learning philosophy.                                                             made from flour, yeast, water and a little sugar – they would look at you askance and tell  you it was bread.  121  The temple grew larger and larger from the time of Solon through the Roman period.  Presumably to hold more and more initiates as the popularity of the cult increased.  122  Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 115.  123  The Anaktoron remained in the same place through out the centuries that the Mysteries  were celebrated at Eleusis, even as the Telesterion was reconstructed around it several  times.  The throne, with the inscription IEROFANTHS was reconstructed and situated by  I.N. Travlos.    47  ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ τελούμενοι κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς μὲν ἐν θορύβῳ καὶ βοῇ συνίασι πρὸς ἀλλήλους ὠθούμενοι, δρωμένων δὲ καὶ δεικνυμένων τῶν ἱερῶν προσέχουσιν ἤδη μετὰ φόβου καὶ σιωπῆς, οὕτω καὶ φιλοσοφίας ἐν ἀρχῇ καὶ περὶ θύρας πολὺν θόρυβον ὄψει καὶ λαλιὰν καὶ θρασύτητα, ὠθουμένων πρὸς τὴν δόξαν ἐνίων ἀγροίκως τε καὶ βιαίως ὁ δ᾽ ἐντὸς γενόμενος καὶ μέγα φῶς ἰδών, οἷον ἀνακτόρων ἀνοιγομένων, ἕτερον λαβὼν σχῆμα. καὶ σιωπὴν καὶ θάμβος ὥσπερ θεῷ τῷ λόγῳ ταπεινὸς ξυνέπεται καὶ κεκοσμημένος.   Just as people who are being initiated into the Mysteries at the beginning throng  together in confusion and shouting, and jostle against one another, but when the  sacred rites are being performed and brought to light the people are immediately  attentive in awe and silence, so too at the beginning of philosophy; around its  threshold you will see great tumult and chatter and arrogance, as some ignorantly  and violently try to jostle their way towards the reputation it bestows: but he who  has been born within, and has seen a great light, as though the Anaktoron were  opened, adopts another form of silence and amazement, and humble and orderly  attends upon  reason as upon a god. 124     From Plutarch’s description it seems that during the performance of the Mysteries the  crowd looked on in awe and silence and there was a great light perhaps produced when the  Anaktoron was opened.   Themistius also described the Mysteries in his essay On the Soul a  part of which has survived in Stobaeus:   The soul [at the point of death] has the same experience as those who are being  initiated into the great mysteries . . . at first one wanders and wearily hurries to and  fro, and journeys with suspicion through the dark as one uninitiated: then come all  the terrors before the final initiation, shuddering, trembling, sweating, amazement:  then one is struck with a marvelous light, one is received into pure regions and  meadows, with voices and dances and the majesty of holy sounds and shapes:  among these he who has fulfilled initiation wanders free, and released and bearing  his  crown  joins  the  divine  communion,  and  consort  with  pure  and  holy  men,  beholding those who live here uninitiated, an uncleansed horde, trodden under foot  of him and huddled together in mud and fog, abiding in their miseries through fear  of death and mistrust of the blessings there. 125     At first glance this passage seems to support the Plutarch passage above and even give  more insights into the activities of the initiates at Eleusis.  Mylonas argues, we simply do  not know how much of this is Themistius’ knowledge of the Mysteries and how much is                                                           124  Progress in Virtue, 81e  125  Stobaios, IV.    48  conjecture, or even if he has conflated several accounts of different mystical  initiations. 126   Foucart, in contrast to Mylonas, took this passage very seriously and  postulated that there must have been a period of the initiation ceremony that terrified the  initiates as if they were near death, and in the underworld itself. 127     Initiation rituals and associations with the underworld are particularly potent  because they provide a clear linear narrative of the initiate’s experience: the initiate’s old  self dies, he or she goes to the underworld, and is then reborn with new insight.  I am only  one in a long line of scholars 128  to see the parallels between a katabasis and initiation, and  although I do take Edmunds point that, “A katabasis does not necessarily imply an initiation  nor an initiation a katabasis,” 129  in the instance of Eleusis a journey to the underworld and  back would not be out of place with the mythology of Persephone’s yearly journey from  Hades.     What exactly it was that terrified the initiates or represented a katabasis is  impossible to know.  Clement of Alexandria, writing at the end of the second century CE,  claimed that there was a ritual drama, 130  and if there was perhaps this performance took  the initiates on a journey to the underworld. 131   A relief showing Demeter seated on a                                                           126  Progress in Virtue, 81e  127  Foucart, Les mysteres d’Eleusis, 382‐3.  128  Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt  Brace Jovanovich, 1987); Jane Harrison, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek  Religion (London: Merlin Press, 1912); Lada‐Richards, Initiating Dionysus.  129  Radcliffe Edmunds, Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the  'Orphic' Gold Tablets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 114.  130  Protrepticus 2.12.2  131  Most of the sources we have for the actual ritual in the Telesterion are late, Christian,  and very hostile.  We therefore have to use their claims with extreme caution.  Mylonas  even goes so far as to suggest that we discount these sources all together. Tertullian claims  that the Priestess of Demeter is raped, as Demeter was (ad Nat. 2.7) – but as Brumfield    49  throne, watching as two adult figures, one male and one female (perhaps the Hierophant  and the Priestess of Demeter and Kore) with torches hold flames over a scared child could  represent a possible moment of extreme initiatory fear. 132   Perhaps the initiates were  threatened with fire or perhaps the “child from the hearth” 133  stood in for all of the initiates  and they were all terrorized as the child was symbolically purified/threatened by fire.    This is all conjecture, but the architecture of the Telesterion indicates that there was  a great fire that burned on the top of the Anaktraton and the smoke and flames exited  through a skylight in the roof of the Telesterion.  No doubt this was the source of the light  that illuminated the sacred object or objects that the initiates were shown by the  Hierophant.  Like so many aspects of the Mysteries, the identity of this sacred object has  been the subject of hundreds of pages of speculation.  Clement suggests that the revelation  was lewd and sexual, Polemon, preserved by Athenaios (XI, 56) says that the Hierophant  distributed something that was tasted by the initiates, or perhaps it was Kore herself who  appeared before the initiates, 134  or an ear of wheat, 135  or a phallos. 136                                                            points out The Priestess of Demeter was also the Priestess of Kore, who would be much  more likely to be the goddess who was raped in any ritual drama that took place.  132  GRR plate 45.2.  Nilsson calls it the “Feuerreinigung des Demophon” (fire purification of  Demophon), but it could be the child of the hearth standing in for Demophon, especially  since Demeter herself is not conducting the purification, but is a seated observer of the  ritual.   133  One child every year was initiated in to the Mysteries as the “hearth initiate”.  There are  dedicatory inscriptions commemorating the children who served in this office starting in  the late second century. The children were from aristocratic families, mostly the  Eumolpidai and the Kerykes: in the classical period the chosen child was male and in the  Hellenistic period female. The archon basileus chose the child by lot from those nominated  by their families.  For more see Clinton, The Sacred Officials of the Eleusinian Mysteries and  Eleusis: The Inscriptions on Stone, Documents of the Sanctuary of the Two Goddesses and  Public Documents of the Deme; Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess; and Mikalson, Athenian  Popular Religion.  134  Papyrus d. R – University of Milan    50  Although we can only guess at the specifics, darkness, fire, and the revelation of  the sacred objects were all part of the main initiation ceremony.  The two names given to  the two grades of initiate, mystai, one “who keeps silence or closes the eyes” 137  and epoptes,  one “who has seen”, also emphasize the importance of sight and the revelation of the  sacred objects.  Many scholars also think that the epoptes stayed in the Telesterion for a  further revelation after the initiation of the mystai. 138   Clement of Alexandria claimed that  there was a sacred formula that all those who had been initiated knew   e)nh/steusa, e!pion to\n kukew~na, e!labon e)k ki/sthj, e)rgasa/menoj a)peqe/mhn ei)j ka/laqon, kai\ e)k kala/qou ei)j ki/sthj I have fasted; I have drunk the kykeon; I have  taken (it) from the chest (kiste); having done the work, I have placed (it) in the  basket (kalathos), and from the basket into the chest. 139       This passage indicates that the initiates themselves performed some sort of “work” with  the sacred objects while in the Telesterion, and that this work was part of their  transforming experience.     Aristotle (preserved by Synesius of Cyrene), in contrast explains the initiation in the  Telesterion not in terms of work or learning, but as an experience that produces an  emotional response.  The initiate does not “do” anything but is made to feel a certain way,  and that this emotional response itself is what the initiation was.  kaqa&per 0Aristote/lhj a)cioi= tou_j teloume/nouj ou) maqei=n ti/ dei=n, a)lla_ paqei=n kai\ diateqh~nai, dhlono&ti genome/nouj e0pithdei/ouj:                                                            135  Hippol. Haer. 5.8.39  136  Tert. Valent. 1  137  K. Dowden, “Grades in the Eleusinian Mysteries” RHR 197 (1980), 414; Clinton Eleusis:  The Inscriptions on Stone, 50; Foley The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 66.  138  Clinton, Eleusis: The Inscriptions on Stone; Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries,  274; Larson, Ancient Greek Cults, 76.  139  Clem. Protrep. 21.2    51  Just as Aristotle thinks the initiates do not need to learn anything,  but to experience and be arranged, manifestly while coming into a  suitable new state of being. 140     Here Aristotle is drawing a contrast between active learning and the changes that occur  during an initiatory experience.  The mystes are not learning dogma but rather through  their participation in the initiation they are changed into the new state of being that is  required of them.    On the final day of the celebration at Eleusis initiates made offerings to the  underworld.  They used special vessels called plemachoi and each initiate filled two with  water, tipped one to the east and one to the west while reciting a ritualistic formula 141   which Burkert says was the ritual cry that Hippolytus tells us about, “Rain! Conceive! Hye!  Kye!” although it isn’t clear that this was the moment Hippolytus was talking about.  On this  final day the initiates would also dedicate the special clothes they had worn at the  Mysteries to the Goddesses and some, after the dedication, took them back home to wrap  around their infant children. 142       The Homeric Hymn to Demeter    The Homeric Hymn to Demeter was, most likely, written at the end of the six or  beginning of the fifth century BCE (650‐550).  Scholars date the hymn to this period based  on stylistic elements of the poem and interpretation of aspects of the hymn (such as the                                                           140  Patrologiæ cursus completus [Series Græca], 66.1133‐1136  141  Athenaeus 496a‐b; Hippolytus 5.7.43; Burkert Homo Necans, 289; Larson, Ancient Greek  Cults, 76; Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 279; Parke, Festivals of the  Athenians, 71.  142  Ar. Wealth 844‐5; Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 279    52  temple that is described) in the context of the historical and archeological record. 143    There is still a great deal of debate about how closely the poem’s version of the hymn can  be tied to the cult at Eleusis and if we can consider the hymn the “official” version of the  story.  In the previous section about the evidence we have for the worship of Demeter and  Kore at Agrai and Eleusis there was one piece of evidence that I, perhaps conspicuously,  ignored – the Homeric Hymn.  This is because I want to look at the poem as a whole, and  unpack several important literary themes in the poem rather than break it down into small  fragments.  It is, in fact, the only “whole” piece of evidence that we have for the worship of  Demeter and Kore.  Everything else is fragmentary; the remains of the temples, the pieces  of pots, friezes, sarcophagi, figurines and tablets, and the sections of literary texts or  lexicons that make reference to Eleusis.  However the hymn is (almost) 144  completely intact  – and therefore offers us a unique view into the worship at Eleusis, and the thematic  elements that the myth in the hymn and the ritual share.    The ritual at Eleusis is centered around one major concept, the transformation of  the mystes and epoptes through the several days of celebration, ritual purification, and the  revelation of the mysteries in the Telesterion.   The poem, likewise, is full of  transformations: Persephone’s shift from maiden to wife, Demeter’s flight from Olympus  and her mortal disguise, her reawakening after her deep grief over Persephone’s abduction,  Demeter’s revelation of her divine status to Metenaira, the destruction and then  rejuvenation of the natural world, Persephone’s return to her mother, the creation of the  agricultural cycle and the establishment of the Mysteries at Eleusis.  Many of these                                                           143  See Robert Parker, “The ‘Hymn to Demeter’ and the ‘Homeric Hymns’”, Greece & Rome  38 (1991), Foley, Richardson, and Janko for more on the dating of the poem.  144  There are very small lacunas in the text at lines 236‐7, 344‐5, 387‐401, and 462‐478.    53  transformations are deliberate manipulations, either by Demeter to her own physical  form, or to the natural world through her powers as the goddess of fertility.  The first of Demeter’s purposeful shifts occurs after the kidnapping of Persephone.   Angry with Zeus for giving her daughter to Hades without her knowledge or consent she  leaves Olympus and “w!?xet’ e)p’ a)nqrw&pwn po&liaj kai_ pi&ona e!rga ei}doj a)maldu&nousa polu_n xro&non: she went to the cities and the rich fields of men, concealing her form for a  long time (93‐94).” 145   This change is clearly motivated by Demeter herself – and in fact is  more of a disguise.  She is concealing her true self rather than fundamentally changing who  she is.   In a very similar vein, she disguises her true form from Kallidike, Kleisidike, Demo,  and Kallithoe, the four daughters of Metenaira and Kelios.    e(&zeto d’ e)ggu\j o9doi~o fi/lon tetihme/nh h0~tor. . . th\n de\ i(&don Keleoi~o E0leusini/dao qugatrej . . . a0gxou! d’ i9sta/menai e0/pea ptero/enta proshu/dwn: Ti/j po/qen e0ssi\ grhu\ palaigene/wn a0nqrw/pwn; She sat by the road, grieving in her dear heart . . .  and the daughters of Kelios, son of Eleusis, saw her . . . and standing near her they  spoke winged words, “Who are you, old woman, of those full of years?” 146    Just like the previous passage, this physical alteration is a disguise, a mask, to hide her  divine nature and allow her to remove herself completely from Olympus and inhabit the  human realm.  It doesn’t change her essential self, but is like a cloak that she can easily cast  aside.  Indeed, Demeter effortlessly reverts from elderly nursemaid to immortal goddess  when Metenaira discovers the goddess’s nighttime ritual of plunging Demophon into the  glowing embers of the hearth and screams.                                                             145  I am using the Greek text from Foley’s 1994 commentary.  All of my translations of the  Homeric Hymn to Demeter are adapted from Foley’s translations.  146  Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 98, 101, 112‐3.    54  qea_ me&yeqoj kai_ ei}doj a!meiye gh~raj a)pwsame&nh, peri& t’ a)mfi& te ka&lloj a!nto: o0dmh_ d’ i(mero&essa quhe&ntwn a0po_ pe&plwn ski&dnato, th~le de_ fe&ggoj a0po_ xroo_j a0qana&toio la&mpe qea~j, canqai_ de_ ko&mai katenh&noqen w!mouj, au)gh~j d’ e_plh&sqh pukino_j do&moj a)steroph~j w$j. The goddess changed her size and form, thrusting  away old age. And her beauty breathed all around her, and a lovely fragrance was  dispersed from her sweet‐smelling robes; and a far off light shone from the  goddess’s immortal skin, and her flaxen hair lay upon her shoulders.  And the well‐ built house was filled with shining light like lightening. 147     Here again Demeter is facilitating her own change; she is the one changing her form and  thrusting away old age. The choice to assume her divine form is her own, and it is a  revelation of her true nature, rather than a change that impacts who Demeter is or how she  thinks.  However, two of the transformations in the poem are not purposeful.  The being that  is changed is caught off guard and transformed in spite of themselves.   These two shifts,  preceded by laughter, are distinctly different from the transformations I mentioned in  previous paragraphs. Both Demeter and Persephone are subject to unbidden  transformations.  These changes are not merely a goddess exchanging her shape for that of  a young man, or a bird, as Athena frequently does in the Iliad and Odyssey, 148  or a young  mortal woman, as Aphrodite does to woo Anchises. 149   They are transformations that  change the essence and identity of the two goddesses.  The unbidden nature of these two  transformations parallels Aristotle’s ideas about the role of the initiates at Eleusis.  That is,  it is the experience itself that changes Persephone, Demeter, and the mystes.  They do not  intend to change or learn to change, but are passively arranged by their experiences and  come into a new state of being.                                                             147  Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 275‐280.   148  Iliad 22.226‐247, Odyssey 1.102‐105, Odyssey 1.319‐320, etc  149  Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 81‐3    55  The poem opens with the rape of Persephone.  She is introduced as Demeter’s  daughter, “h$n A)i+dwneu_j h$rpacen, dw~ken de_ baru&ktupoj eu0ru&opa Zeu&j, whom Hades  kidnapped, whom heavy‐thundering, far‐seeing Zeus gave.” 150   Her impending, unwilling  transformation is her very identity in this poem.  Zeus and Hades conspire and have Gaia  create a hundred‐headed narcissus, as a snare for Persephone.  When the flower blooms,   “pa~j d’ ou0rano\j eu0ru\j u$perqe gai~a/ te pa~s’ e0ge/lasse kai\ a9lmuro\n oi^dma qala/sshj. The  whole wide heaven above and the earth and the salty wave of the sea laughed.” 151   This  universal laughter occurs the moment before Persephone is kidnapped by Hades and  transformed from a maiden to a wife; however unwillingly.    It is very significant that the Homeric poet begins the hymn with Persephone’s  transformation.  There is no time wasted, the laughter of the universe and Persephone’s  rape occur within the first twenty lines.  The poet is showing the audience the thematic  importance of both laughter and transformation and their link.  This divine laughter  highlights the potential danger of laughter; it is not necessarily a benevolent force –simply  a powerful one.  The laughter of the earth and the sea and the heavens sets the stage for  Persephone’s transformation and the reader can almost imagine the cracks in the earth  that must appear if all of these entities laugh.   If the sea, earth, and heavens laugh  everything is unsettled, physically and psychically.  And indeed cracks do appear in the  Nysian plain through which Hades emerges, and into which (in some versions of the myth)  Eumolpus pigs fall.                                                           150  Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 2‐3.  151  Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 13‐14.    56  The poet may be using this scene to evoke the ritual joking and laughter that  accompanied wedding ritual.  Halliwell and Burkert both see laughter at weddings in the  context of fertility ritual 152  used to ensure the continuation of life.  I certainly agree that  laughter was used to facilitate the change from daughter to wife, maiden to mother;  however I think it is useful to consider about laughter and transformation on a larger scale.   It is necessary to look at individual instances of laughter and then to look for the larger  pattern.  The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is, naturally, focused on fertility (both human and  agricultural) and the transformations we see within the poem mirror those concerns.  But  laughter is not limited to fertility ritual; rather fertility and agricultural ritual are part of a  larger group of practices that call upon laughter to facilitate their desired transformations.    After the loss of her daughter, Demeter turns her back on her divine status and  wanders the earth looking for Persephone.  Disguised as a mortal woman, Demeter  becomes the nurse of the infant son of the king of Eleusis.  When she first arrives at King  Keleos’s house Demeter is so consumed by her grief for her missing daughter that she is  unable to do anything but sit on a stool in Keleos’ house.  She sits, “a0ge/lastoj a!pasatoj e0dhtu/oj h9de\ poth~toj, unlaughing, abstaining from food and drink.” 153   However the maid  Iambe makes jokes and causes Demeter “μειδῆσαι γελάσαι τε καὶ ἵλαον σχεῖν θυμόν, [to] smile, and laugh, and hold graciousness in her heart.” 154   Demeter’s own laughter  triggers her transformation from a grieving, almost dead old woman (she won’t eat or  drink and is wasting with desire for her daughter) to a nurturing mother figure for young  Demophon.                                                             152  Halliwell, Greek Laughter, 179 n.74, 198, 400 501.   153  Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 200.  154  Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 204.    57  This moment is the second transformation that occurs without the prior  knowledge and explicit will of the character that is transformed.  In contrast with  Persephone’s transformation, Demeter is transformed by her own laughter.  And in this  respect her experience inspires/mirrors the experience of the initiates at Eleusis, rather  than that of a bride (as Persephone’s experience arguably does).  This interaction is one of  the most important moments in the narrative of the myth.  It is Demeter’s initiation.    Not only is this a significant moment for the narrative, it is marked as a unique scene  by its meter.  Richardson writes, “ The line is progressive: first Demeter smiles, then she  laughs, and finally she is in a propitious mood.  The form is that of a ‘tricolon crescendo’  [Foley also notes this tricolon crescendo]. The rhythm at the end of the line, with three  spondees and a monosyllable in the second half of the fifth foot, is unusual”. 155   The  crescendo of the meter mirrors the crescendo of Demeter’s mood and the stepping‐stones  of her return to life.  One can even imagine that the goddess’s physicality reflects this  ascent as she rises from a still, veiled figure with her head bowed, to a form with rising  focus, looking up at Iambe, and finally a fully upright person, straightening her back and  laughing.    Iambe has two roles in the poem; she operates as both a character and a metaphor.   Her name is the feminine form of iambos, a type of poetry that is often linked with poetic  abuse and ribaldry.  I am following Rosen and using “the term ‘iambos’ to indicate a poetic  genre, distinguished by content rather than meter, although as the word implies, most                                                           155  N. J. Richardson, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (New York: Oxford University Press,  1979) 222‐3.     58  iamboi were composed in iambics”. 156   This type of poetry may seem a bit out of place  both as a literary stand‐in for a potentially illiterate slave woman and as a character in an  epic poem.  It is precisely this odd pair of juxtapositions that should make the reader pause  and take note.  This interaction, a slave entertaining a goddess, and the character of Iambe  both violate the norms of the epic genre of the Homeric Hymn. 157     Iambe’s function in the poem as a character is to get Demeter to laugh, and in  laughing leave her grief behind.  After her encounter with Iambe Demeter not only lays  aside her sorrow, but she is altered and transformed by the experience.  The verb that the  Homeric poet uses is tre/pw – turn, divert, alter, change;     pri/n g’ o#%te dh\ xleu/h|j min I0ambh ke/dn’ ei@dui~a polla\ para\ skw/ptous’ e)tre/yato po/tnian a(gnh\n meidh~sai gela/sai te kai i(/laon sxei~n qumo/n: 158     and although the poem makes sense with any of these translations it is most often  translated as “alter or change” when the verb is in the middle voice, as it is here. 159   Since  the Greek can contain all of these possibilities, an ancient person listening to or reading the                                                           156  Rosen, Old Comedy and the Iambographic Tradition, 3.  157  I am contending that Iambe, as a stand in for abuse poetry and as an unusual host for a  goddess (surely she should be catered to by the nobles in Keleos’ household) does violate  generic norms for epic poetry. In private correspondence, Helene Foley has pointed out to  me that she is a bit like Thersites in the Iliad. And I think that perhaps the two do serve  similar narrative functions. They are unusual characters, the slave woman and the ugly,  lowborn man, who dare to interact with characters far above their social strata, i.e.  Demeter and Agamemnon. I think in both instances their interactions indicate an important  moment in the narrative – Demeter is forever altered by her interaction with Iambe and the  rites for Eleusis are born out of this moment.  Thersites speaks only what many in the  Greek army appear to be thinking. But when he speaks and is violently rebuked by  Odysseus he takes on the role of scapegoat for the army – who can then laugh at him and  turn from an unruly group of men, unhappy with their leadership, to a biddable,  dependable army once again (Iliad II.211‐77).   158  Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 202‐204.  159  See also Thucydides 1.140 and Plu. 2.71e    59  poem would understand the palimpsest of meaning and realize that the tense of the verb  is coloring the sense – Demeter wasn’t simply diverted from her mourning by Iambe, but  altered and this change is what allows her, “to smile and laugh and hold a gracious heart.”      Demeter is, in fact, the first initiate into her own cult.  After her encounter with  Iambe the goddess comes back to life.  She is given a new life after her death‐like state of  mourning for Persephone just as the Eleusinian initiates are given a good afterlife; and she  becomes a model of female fertility as she cares for Demophon 160  just as her rites promise  continued human and agricultural fertility; and she begins to instruct the people of Eleusis  in the proper observance of her rites.    The Homeric Hymn is not the only evidence for the importance of laughter to  Demeter’s rebirth from her death‐like grief.  There are a number of ancient references to a  figure called Baubo.  In many ways she is similar to Iambe and in some versions of  Demeter’s journey Baubo is the one who revives the grieving Demeter and makes her  laugh.  Scholars often point to one key difference between Iambe and Baubo: Iambe jests  with words and Baubo lifts her skirts, using her physical body to “tell” a joke.  The two  written sources we have for Baubo’s bodily joke and role in the transformation of Demeter  are both early Christian sources: Clement of Alexandria and Arnobius.  The sources cite  Orphic texts and although both men claim to directly quote Orpheus they present two  slightly different versions of the Orphic Baubo story. 161   In addition, both Christian sources                                                           160  Demeter feeds and protects Demophon as any mortal mother or nursemaid would.   However, she does not accomplish these tasks in the typical mortal fashion (breastfeeding  and attentiveness), but in an immortal manner, feeding him ambrosia and carefully placing  him in the hearth‐fire to burn away his mortality.    161  It is entirely possible that Arnobius, writing a century after Clement, could have used  Clement’s text and altered the Orphic quote, although his motivations for leaving out the    60  begin their Orphic quotes indicating that Baubo has just finished speaking and then lifts  her skirts.  So it seems this distinction is not really clear‐cut. Clement of Alexandria writes,   A0lwme/nh ga\r h/ Dhw\ kata\ zh/thsin th~j qugatro\j th~j Ko/rhj peri\ th\n E)leusi~na th~j A0ttikh~j de/ e)sti tou~to to\ xwri/on a)poka/mnei kai\ fre/ati e)pikaqi/zei lupoume/nh. Tou~to toi~j muoume/noij a)pagopeu/etai ei)se/ti nu~n, i$na mh\ dokoi~en oi( ghgenei~j: o)no/mata au)toi~j Baubw\ kai\ Dusau/lhj kai\ Tripto/lemoj, e!ti de\ Eu)bouleu/j: bouko/loj o( Tripto/lemoj h}n, poimh\n de\ o( Eu!molpoj, subw/thj de\ o( Eu)bouleu/j: a0f5 w{n to\ Eu0molpidw~n kai\ to\ Khru/kwn to\ i(erofantiko\n dh\ tou~to A)qh/nsi ge/noj h!nqhsen. kai\ dh\ ou) ga\r a)nh/sw mh\ ou)xi ei)pei~n’ ceni/sasa h( Baubw\ th\n Dhw\ o)re/gei kukew~na au)th~; th~j de\ a)nainome/nhj labei~n kai\ piei~n ou)k e)qelou/shj ‘penqh/rhj ga\r h{n’ perialgh\j h( Baubw\ genome/nh, w(j u(peroraqei!sa dh~qen, a)naste/lletai ta\ ai)doi~a kai\ e)pideiknu/ei th~ qew~: h( de\ te/rpetai th~ o!yei h( Dhw\ kai\ mo/lij pote\ de/xetai to\ poto/n, h(sqei~sa tw~| qea/mati. Tau~t’ e!sti ta\ kru/fia tw~n A0qhnai/wn musth/ria. Tau~ta toi kai\ O0rfeuj a)nagra/fei. Paraqh/somai de/ soi au)ta\ tou~ O0rfew/j ta\ e!ph, i$n’ e!xhj ma/rtura th~j a)vaisxunti/aj to\n mustagwgo/n; w$j ei)pou~sa pe/plouj a)nesu/reto, dei~ce de\ pa/nta sw/matoj ou0de pre/ponta tu/pon: pai~j d’ h{en I!akxoj, xeiri/ te/ min r(i/ptaske gelw~n Baubou~ju(po\ ko/lpoij: h( d’ e)pei\ ou}n mei/dhse qea/, mei/dhj’ e)ni\ qumw~, de/cato d’ ai)o/lon a!ggoj, e)n w{| kukew\n e)nekeito. For Demeter, wandering and searching for her daughter Kore, grew quite weary  near Eleusis, a place in Attica, and grieving sat down on a well.  This is now still  forbidden to the initiates least they should seem to imitate the weeping goddess.  The  earthborn  inhabitants  who  then  lived  in  Eleusis  were  named  Baubo,  and  Dusaules and Triptolemus; and also Eumolpus and Eubouleus. Triptolemus was a  cowherd and Eumolpus a shepherd, and Eubouleus a swineherd; from whom the  Eumolpidae and the Kerkyes, the race of hierophants who flourished at Athens.  And  indeed, for I shall not refrain from speaking, Baubo receives Demeter and offers  kykeon to her, she refused to take it and to drink, unwilling for she was very  sorrowful, and Baubo changes, thinking herself looked down upon, and she lifted up  her skirts and showed her pudenda to the goddess. Demeter is gladdened by the  view and only just then she takes the drink and delights in the sight. These are the  concealed mysteries of the Athenians, these Orpheus describes. I shall provide for  you the very words of Orpheus, so that you might have an instructing witness of the  shamelessness. “Thus she spoke and she pulled up her peplos and she brought to  light the whole unseemly [unseemly because it was not an appropriate gesture, not  because her body was irregular in some way] figure of her body, and the child  Iacchos was there laughing and putting his hand under Baubo’s breasts, and then in  fact the goddess grinned and smiled in her heart and received the gleaming cup that  contained the kykeon.” 162                                                             infant Iacchos are unknowable.  Of course, the two could simply have seen different Orphic  texts that related different versions of the myth.  162  Clement, Protrepticus, 2.20‐2.21    61        Clement leaves out (or perhaps did not know) Baubo’s dialogue in his quote of the  Orphic text, thus it is impossible to compare it to Iambe’s joking in the Homeric Hymn.  But  this quote adds several interesting dimensions to Baubo’s character.  She is tied to both the  ritual at Eleusis and to the fertility and child rearing elements of Demeter’s powers through  her interaction with the child Iacchos.  For Iacchos is the personification of the cry “Iacche”  that  the  initiates  shout  during  the  procession  from  Athens  to  Eleusis  on  the  19 th   of  Boedromion,  indeed  the  procession  was  called  the  Iacchos  procession.    In  several  important ways it also ties the figure of Baubo to Iambe in the Homeric Hymn.  Both  women are nursemaids and most crucially both women and their verbal or nonverbal  joking make Demeter laugh.      25.1 In istius conquisitionis errore Eleusinios etiam pervehitur fines. Pagi istud est nomen regione in Attica constituti. 2. Qui<nque> illud temporis has partes incolebant terrigenae, quibus nomina haec fuerant: Baubo Triptolemus Eumolpus Eubuleus Dysaules: boum iugator Triptolemus, capellarum Dysaules custos, Eubuleus porcorum, gregis lanitii Eumolpus, a quo gens ecfluit Eumolpidarum et ducitur clarum illud apud Cecropios nomen et qui postea floruerunt caduceatores, hierophantae atque praecones. 3. Igitur Baubo illa, quam incolam diximus Eleusinii fuisse pagi, malis multiformibus fatigatam accipit hospitio Cererem, adulatur obsequiis mitibus, reficiendi corporis rogat curam ut habeat, sitientis ardori oggerit potionem cinni, cyceonem quam nuncupat Graecia: aversatur et respuit humanitatis officia maerens dea nec eam fortuna perpetitur valetudinis meminisse communis. 4. Rogat illa atque hortatur contra, sicut mos est in huiusmodi casibus, ne fastidium suae humanitatis adsumat: obstinatissime durat Ceres et rigoris indomiti pertinaciam retinet. 5. Quod cum saepius fieret neque ullis quiret obsequiis ineluctabile propositum fatigari, vertit Baubo artes et quam serio non quibat allicere ludibriorum statuit exhilarare miraculis: partem illam corporis, per quam secus femineum et subolem prodere et nomen solet adquirere genetricum, longiore ab incuria liberat, facit sumere habitum puriorem et in speciem levigari nondum duri atque histriculi pusionis. 6. Redit ad deam tristem et inter illa communia quibus moris est frangere ac temperare máerorss retegit se ipsam atque omnia illa pudoris loca revelatis monstrat inguinibus. Atque pubi adfigit oculos diva et inauditi specie solaminis pascitur: tum diffusior facta per risum aspernatam sumitatque ebibit potionem, et quod diu nequivit verecundia Baubonis exprimere propudiosi facinoris extorsit obscenitas.   62  26.1. Calumniari nos improbe si quis forte hominum suspicatur, libros sumat Threicii vatis, quos antiquitatis memoratis esse divinae, et inveniet nos nihil neque callide fingere neque quo sint risui deum quaerere atque efficere sanctitates. 2. Ipsos namque in medio ponemus versus, quos Calliopae filius ore edidit Graeco et cantando per saecula iuri publicavit humano: 3. sic effata simul vestem contraxit ab imo obiecitque oculis formatas inguinibus res: quas cava succutiens Baubo manu - nam puerilis ollis vultus erat - plaudit, contrectat amice. 4. Tum dea defigens augusti luminis orbes tristitias animi paulum mollita reponit: inde manu poclum sumit risuque sequenti perducit totum cyceonis laeta liquorem. In her wanderings on that quest, she passed through the boundaries of Eleusis—  that is the name of a region in Attica. At that time these parts were inhabited by  indigenous  people  named  Baubo,  Triptolemus,  Eubuleus,  Eumolpus,  Dysaules:  Triptolemus, who yoked oxen, Dysaules, a keeper of goats; Eubuleus, of swine;  Eumolpus, of sheep, from whom also flows the race of Eumolpidae, and from whom  is  derived  that  name  famous  among  the  Athenians,  and  those  who  afterwards  flourished as torchbearers, hierophants, and heralds. So, then, that Baubo who, we  have said, dwelt in the region of Eleusis, hospitably receives Ceres, worn out with  ills of many kinds, fawns on her with pleasing attentions, beseeches her to restore  her body because of her toil, brings to quench her thirst wine thickened with spelt,  which the Greeks call kykeon. The goddess in her sorrow turns away from the  kindly offered services, and rejects them; nor does her misfortune allow her to  remember what the body always requires. Baubo, on the other hand, begs and  exhorts her — as is usual in such emergencies — not to despise her humanity; Ceres  remains utterly immoveable, and tenaciously maintains an invincible austerity. But  when this was done several times, and her fixed purpose could not be worn out by  any attentions, Baubo changes her plans, and determines to make merry by strange  jests her whom she could not win by earnestness. That part of the body by which  women both bear children and obtain the name of mothers, this she frees from long  neglect: she makes it assume a cleaner appearance, and become smooth, not yet  hard and rough with hair. She returns to the sorrowing goddess; and while trying  the common expedients by which it is usual to break the force of grief, and moderate  it, she uncovers herself, and baring her groins, displays all the parts which decency  hides; and then the goddess fixes her eyes upon these, and is pleased with the  strange form of comfort. Then becoming more cheerful after laughing, she takes and  imbibes the drink spurned before, and the indecency of a shameless action forced  that which Baubo's modest conduct was long unable to win. If any one thinks that  we  are  speaking  wicked  calumnies,  let  him  take  the  books  of  the  Thracian  soothsayer, which you speak of as of divine antiquity; and he will find that we are  neither cunningly inventing anything, nor seeking means to bring the holiness of the  gods into ridicule, and doing so: for we shall bring forward the very verses which  the son of Calliope uttered in Greek, and published abroad in his songs to the human  race throughout all ages:  " With these words she at the same time drew up her  garments from  the lowest hem,  and exposed to view the things shaping the groin,   Which Baubo strikes with her hand, for their appearance was infantile, touches  gently.  Then the goddess, fixing her orbs of august light, and softening, lays aside,    63  for a little, the sadness of her mind; then she takes the cup in her hand, and with a  laugh, drinks off the whole draught of kykeon with gladness." 163   Arnobius’ account also quotes the Orphic text beginning just after Baubo stops speaking.   There is no infant in this account, it is simply Baubo’s exposure that persuades Demeter to  laugh and drink the kykeon.    There has been much scholarly ink spilled over the difference between Baubo and  Iambe and their joking, however, I think first it is profitable to look at the similarities  between the two.  The two figures are essentially doing the same thing.  Iambe jokes and  Baubo exposes herself, however, both figures are engaging in a type of aischrologia in  differing modes of communication.  Interestingly the key to their particular “language” is in  their names.  Iambe is the feminine form of iambos, abuse poetry, and therefore naturally,  Iambe uses her verbal talents to make Demeter laugh and initiate her transformation.   Baubo is linguistically connected to the verbs   baubao mean[ing] ‘sleep’ but also ‘put to sleep,’ and baubalizo, ‘to rock [a baby].’  Baukalao, semantically linked to the preceding verbs, also designates the action of  ‘putting to sleep by rocking and singing.’  Two different names of objects are derived  from this verb: ‘cradle’ (baukale), and baukalion, ‘a vase with a narrow neck so that  it gurgles when emptied or filled,’ a sound that may perhaps recall the singing of a  nurse. 164     Baubo is therefore firmly tied to the physical world, the rocking motion of the nurse or  cradle or the humming of a nurse or a vase; and as a physical being, she uses the language  of her body to joke with Demeter.  Even though it does seem clear that Iambe is firmly tied to the verbal world and  Baubo to the physical, either gesture (verbal or physical), makes the hidden visible and                                                           163  Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, 25.1‐26.4  164  Froma Zeitlin, et al. Before Sexuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 98.    64  violates the cultural norms of female behavior.  The gestures are part of the larger ideas  of laughter and transformation, which the rituals at Eleusis are working within, that is the  three‐part  paradigm  of  laughter/revelation  (here  aischrologia), 165   and  finally  transformation.    This literary initiation of Demeter would have allowed the ancient listener to have a  small window into the initiatory rituals for the Mysteries of Eleusis.  As they listened to the  narrative, each person would have imagined the world of the poem. Within this world they  would have “watched” the characters carrying out the actions that the poet describes.  By  “watching” Iambe and Demeter jesting and laughing the listeners would laugh themselves.   This laughter would have been a catalyst allowing the listener to transform along with  Demeter.  The two major status shifts in the poem, engendered by laughter, ensure the  narrative of the poem and myth continue.  Without the rape of Persephone, she, her maiden  friends, and Demeter would remain on the Nysian plain gathering flowers.  Likewise if  Demeter remains locked in her grief for her daughter the narrative would come to a  screeching halt and the cult at Eleusis would not have its mythological storyline.   Not only  are these events of paramount importance to the rituals to Demeter at Eleusis and the  Homeric Hymn, but they also have important connections to the ideas present in the                                                           165  Some scholars have hypothesized that aischrologia and other aischros behaviors  common during the various rituals to Demeter were to make women feel more sexually  aroused and therefore increase the potential for intercourse and offspring. This, however,  seems slightly prosaic.  Of course the aischrologia could have had this effect on the women  involved in the ritual, although oftentimes the rituals were conducted without men present  or the women would be away from home for several days, making it rather unlikely that  the aphrodisiac effect of the dirty jokes would last until they were reunited with their  husbands.  This interpretation also takes the aischrologia completely out of the ritual  context within which it is uttered.    65  worship to Demeter more generally.   The paradigm of  laughter/revelation/transformation isn’t only used at Eleusis but in many rituals to  Demeter and it tells us something important about the goddess and her rituals.  Demeter’s grief, the loss of her daughter (even in the final resolution of the poem the  two must live apart for three months of the year), and her own transformation as an  initiate of the Mysteries underscore her important mythical relationship with change.  A  goddess, who is supposed to be unchanging, in the space of five hundred lines must endure  the marriage of her daughter against both of their wills and renounces and then revives her  divine status.  And through this shift in Demeter and Persephone’s lives comes the cyclical  agricultural change of the year that structured the lives of the residents of Attica.  The myth  is substantiating Demeter’s connection to change and therefore her role in the  transformation of the initiates and their afterlives.  All of this sounds very serious – and yet  the key to unlocking these transformations is laughter.  Demeter’s laughter in the moment  of her deep grief is, “the subject looki[ing] at itself like an abject object and instead of  weeping bitter tears, it laughs and finds consolation therein”. 166   It is the moment of  realizing the absurdity of the ego, the construction of self – almost like a small death.  Indeed the whole poem reverberates with change and transformation.  Not only do  the two main goddesses experience huge shifts, the world changes – twice: the order of  Olympus sways as Demeter asserts her dissatisfaction, and ultimately mortals’  relationships with both Demeter and agriculture are transformed.  Change as a poetic  theme unifies the many episodes of the poem and for the ancient listener (and indeed the                                                           166  Simon Critchley, On Humour (London: Rutledge, 2002), 102.    66  modern reader) this stands out as the major concern of the poem.      67    Chapter Two: The Homeric Hymn to Hermes  Introduction  This chapter will focus on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes and the important role  laughter and transformation play in this text.  The Homeric Hymns as a corpus have very  little laughter, only the Hymn to Demeter discussed in the last chapter and the Hymn to  Hermes have characters that laugh.  Both of these hymns also have significant thematic  relationships with transformation; for Demeter it was initiation and agricultural change,  for Hermes it is the transformation of a child into a man.  Laughter is in the text of the Hymn  to Hermes and it also has infused its structure.  I will look at how the structure of the hymn  as a whole can influence our understanding of who Hermes is and his significance for the  ancient Greek audience of this poem.    I will continue to use the holistic and experiential reading methodology that I  employed for the Hymn to Demeter.  This model works particularly well for the Hymn to  Hermes, because the hymn is a unique window into ancient Greek ideas, anxieties, and  expectations around boys coming of age in the archaic period.  And although we cannot  point to specific instances in the poem and correlate them to known coming of age rites or  ritual worship of Hermes (as we could with specific rituals to Demeter in the last chapter),  this model of inquiry allows the modern reader to encounter the poem in as close a manner  as possible to the ancient listener.  I will also continue to look at the scientific work on  cognition and ToM in my examination of laughter and transformation in the Homeric Hymn  to Hermes.    68  The Homeric Hymn to Hermes  Laughter in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes structures the stages of Hermes’ growth  from infant to brother‐god of Apollo to an adult god, fully recognized in his own right by  Zeus.  In fact one of the very first things Hermes does after his birth is laugh at the tortoise  with whose shell he will create the first lyre.  After stealing some of Apollo’s sacred cattle  Apollo comes looking for Hermes and laughs at the child‐god’s trickery.  Apollo’s laughter  marks Hermes as a fellow god, for certainly Apollo would not laugh at a mortal who had  tricked him, and Apollo then carries Hermes to Olympus to state both their cases in front of  Zeus.  This interaction moves the poem to the divine sphere (for even though the narrative  has been following Hermes it has all taken place on Earth) and Hermes is now an equal of  Apollo –their dispute cannot be decided by either of the two half‐brothers, but needs the  mediation of their father Zeus.    Baby Hermes’ crafty defense on Mount Olympus makes Zeus laugh.  And it seems  that he is laughing at his son, so soon living up to his qualities of trickster and thief.  It is  Hermes coming into his own as a full god that makes Zeus laugh.  However, the  transformation from baby in swaddling clothes to god is not quite complete until Hermes  and Apollo strike a bargain and each god receives from the other emblematic objects and  powers.  Apollo, not surprisingly, laughs with joy when he hears the lyre for the first time.   His desire for the lyre and Hermes’ for Apollo’s whip and herd lead to their exchange in  which Apollo gets the lyre and Hermes’ oath not to steal anything else, and Hermes receives  Apollo’s cattle and his characteristic staff.  Through each laughing encounter Hermes has  grown up and acquired the traits and objects that the god’s adult self is know for.    The first laughter in this poem is Hermes’ own laughter as a newborn, barely out of    69  his mother’s womb.          ὃς καί, ἐπειδὴ μητρὸς ἀπ᾽ ἀθανάτων θόρε γυίων,   οὐκέτι δηρὸν ἔκειτο μένων ἱερῷ ἐνὶ λίκνῳ,   ἀλλ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἀναΐξας ζήτει βόας Ἀπόλλωνος   οὐδὸν ὑπερβαίνων ὑψηρεφέος ἄντροιο.   ἔνθα χέλυν εὑρὼν ἐκτήσατο μυρίον ὄλβον:   Ἑρμῆς τοι πρώτιστα χέλυν τεκτήνατ᾽ ἀοιδόν:   ἥ ῥά οἱ ἀντεβόλησεν ἐπ᾽ αὐλείῃσι θύρῃσι   βοσκομένη προπάροιθε δόμων ἐριθηλέα ποίην,   σαῦλα ποσὶν βαίνουσα: Διὸς δ᾽ ἐριούνιος υἱὸς   ἀθρήσας ἐγέλασσε   When he sprang from his mother’s immortal womb  He did not stay sleeping for long in his holy cradle  But, he sprang up and was seeking the cattle of Apollo.  Stepping over the threshold of the high‐roofed cave,  There he found a tortoise and gained boundless delight.  For it was Hermes who first made the tortoise a bard,  For it met with him by chance at the opening to the cave,  Feeding on the luxurious grass at the door of the house,  Waddling, going along on its feet; when he saw it  The luck‐bringing son of Zeus laughed. (20‐24)  The discovery of the turtle and Hermes’ laughter are the beginnings of his evolution from  infant to god.  The revelation that goes with Hermes’ laughter and proceeds the radical  transformation of the tortoise takes place in Hermes’ mind.  The tortoise’s potential is  revealed to him, and through this ingenious moment of invention on Hermes’ part the first  glimmers of his πολύτροπος polytropos nature are revealed to the audience or reader.      Hermes realizes that the tortoise would make an amazing musical instrument.   ὡς δ᾽ ὁπότ᾽ ὠκὺ νόημα διὰ στέρνοιο περήσῃ /ἀνέρος, ὅν τε θαμειαὶ ἐπιστρωφῶσι μέριμναι, /ἢ ὅτε δινηθῶσιν ἀπ᾽ ὀφθαλμῶν ἀμαρυγαί, /ὣς ἅμ᾽ ἔπος τε καὶ ἔργον ἐμήδετο κύδιμος Ἑρμῆς. Just as when a swift thought drives through the heart of a    70  man when thick cares visit him, or when a sparkling glance whirls from eye to  eye, so glorious Hermes planned both thought and deed at the same time (43‐46). 167       He kills the creature and scoops out the body, fitting the shell with a neckpiece and strings  (40‐50). The tortoise is transformed into the first lyre.  And Hermes is transformed from a  baby to a resourceful inventor.  We are beginning to see the god he will become by the end  of the poem.    After creating the lyre, Hermes, naturally, plays the instrument and sings.  There are  two very interesting things to note in this passage.  First, “θεὸς δ᾽ ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄειδεν /ἐξ αὐτοσχεδίης πειρώμενος, ἠύτε κοῦροι /ἡβηταὶ θαλίῃσι παραιβόλα κερτομέουσιν, the god  sang sweet random snatches as he tried it, just as young men taunt with double meanings  at festivals (54‐56).” The poet is referencing ritual joking and laughter, making a point of  comparing Hermes in this moment to the young men who take part in sanctioned  aischrologia and ritual laughter.  This indicates that the idea of transformation is at the  forefront of this comparison, because the comparison is not to a poet, or singer, or  musician, but to young men involved in ritual joking.  Both Hermes and the young men the  poet is referencing are supplying the two conditions necessary for transformation:  aischrologia and laughter. 168   Second, Hermes is beginning to build his own mythology; he  puts his parent’s romance and his own conception and birth to music.  By doing this he is  proclaiming that his story is worthy of song, he is no mere mortal offshoot of Zeus, but one                                                           167  I am using the Greek text from Evelyn‐White’s 1914 commentary. All translations are  my own, unless otherwise noted.  168  Halliwell notes the association of komastic performance and Hermes’ first song in Greek  Laughter, 102. See also S. Eitrem, “Die homerische Hymnus an Hermes,” Philologus 19  (1906): 252‐3 and F. Cassola, Inni Omerici Milan: 1981), 520‐1.    71  of the immortal Olympians. 169  This is the beginning of his quest to be accepted by the  gods as an equal.    The transformation of the tortoise onto the lyre also substantiates in physical terms  the transformation from baby to adult god that Hermes is slowly undertaking.  Roy  Rappaport writes about the importance of sacral objects in the transformation of  individuals and in the life of a liturgical community, “both the act producing the object and  the object itself are significant.” 170   This certainly applies to Hermes’ invention of the lyre  from the tortoise.  The act of producing the lyre has several layers of significance in the  Hymn; is a transformation – signaling a key theme in the poem, but also this moment  demonstrates an essential element of who Hermes is, he is a god who can transform,  objects and humans (leading them from the mortal realm to Hades).  The episode also  illuminates his craftiness. Since the lyre will be a key part of his “treaty” with Apollo sealing  their friendship and assuring that the two gods will treat each other fairly in all future  interactions.    Once he laid the groundwork for his immortality with his song, 171  Hermes needs to  get the attention of the gods.  In order to do this, Hermes steals Apollo’s cattle, stealthily  driving them backwards and hiding them in a cave.  In the cave he makes a fire and                                                           169  Of course there is also a very nice moment when Hermes in the hymn is doing exactly  what the poet reciting the hymn is also doing: singing of the birth and pedigree of Hermes.   E. E. Sikes and Thomas Allen, The Homeric Hymns (London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd., 1904)  note that Hermes appears to be singing on one theme while devising his cattle raid, “This  implies that he sang to an audience” – just like the poet of the hymn.   170  Roy Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge  University Press, 1999), 147.  171  Athanassios Vergados, The “Homeric Hymn to Hermes”: Introduction, Text, and  Commentary (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013), 4 writes, “This hymn‐within‐the‐Hymn is  clearly a new beginning”.  Although he doesn’t remark on the transformation paradigm I  have laid out, he clearly sees the result, “a new beginning”.    72  sacrifices to the twelve Olympian gods, twelve, because he is including himself as one. 172   “ἔνθ᾽ ὁσίης κρεάων ἠράσσατο κύδιμος Ἑρμῆς: /ὀδμὴ γάρ μιν ἔτειρε καὶ ἀθάνατόν περ ἐόντα /ἡδεῖ᾽: ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ὥς οἱ ἐπείθετο θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ, Then glorious Hermes longed for the  sacrificial meat, for the sweet smell weakened him, even though he was a god; but his  proud heart was not persuaded (130‐133).”  This moment is a slightly odd one, but it fits  nicely into the timeline of Hermes’s quest to become an immortal god.  He wants to eat the  meat, like a human sacrificing to the gods would.  But his heart won’t let him, and this is for  the best; he needs to be like the gods and only receive sacrifice, not eat the meat in order to  be recognized by them. 173   Hermes then returns to his mother’s cave to wait for Apollo to  notice that his cattle are missing.    Apollo observes that the cattle are missing the following morning and after  receiving an omen that tells him the thief was a son of Zeus (214‐5) he hurries to Maia’s  cave to find Hermes.  When he hears Apollo approaching, Hermes pretends to be just a  harmless infant in his crib (235‐242).  This deceit doesn’t fool Apollo and he harangues  Hermes and threatens him with violence (243‐259).  Hermes finally answers Apollo but  maintains his innocence and even swears an oath to this effect (274‐5). 174   As Cathy                                                           172 Sikes and Allen follow Gemoll here and say, “this is the first reference to a system of  twelve gods, of whom Hermes is one . . . Hermes is consciously claiming his prerogative,  and is himself instituting the ritual which is hereafter to be observed by men.”    173  Vergados, The “Homeric Hymn to Hermes,” 5.  174  This oath to Apollo and the later oath that Hermes swears to Zeus are fascinating  moments that many scholars have noted and debated, since it seems that Hermes is  perjuring himself to both his brother and father.  However Cathy Callaway, in her 1993  article, “Perjury and the Unsworn Oath” in Transactions of the American Philological  Association proves that the oaths are unsworn and therefore not gross behavioral errors on  Hermes’ part, but indicative of his wily nature (her article also discusses other gods and  their unsworn oaths).  Judith Fletcher, in her 2008 article “A Trickster’s Oaths in ‘The  Homeric Hymn to Hermes’” in The American Journal of Philology contends that these oaths    73  Callaway has argued, this oath (which is patently false) is “unsworn”, as Hermes only  offers to swear, using the future tense (o0mou~mai 274) but never actually swears the oath. 175     Despite the scholarly debate about this oath, Apollo clearly recognizes the trickery  of his young half‐brother and laughs. “τὸν δ᾽ ἁπαλὸν γελάσας προσέφη ἑκάεργος Ἀπόλλων:  /ὦ πέπον, ἠπεροπευτά, δολοφραδές, but far‐shooting Apollo, laughing softly, spoke, ‘O my  dear little wily deceiver (281‐2).’”  This is not the response of either a boob, duped by a  false oath, or an enraged god who has been offended by perjury.  Apollo clearly recognizes  Hermes for who he is, a wily deceiver, and even uses pe/pon (282), a diminutive  endearment in Homeric texts 176  indicating he is not very angry.      The laughter and revelation for the transformation at this stage of Hermes’ coming  of age go hand‐in‐hand.  Apollo laughs as he sees, and then names the true character of  Hermes that the trickster infant is attempting to hide.  The second stage of Hermes’ journey  from infant to full god is therefore complete.  After the revelation and laughter Apollo  acknowledges Hermes as one of the immortals and gives him a title, “τοῦτο γὰρ οὖν καὶ  ἔπειτα μετ᾽ ἀθανάτοις γέρας ἕξεις. /ἀρχὸς φηλητέων κεκλήσεαι ἤματα πάντα. For in fact,  hereafter, this shall be your title among the immortal gods; to be called the King of Thieves  for all time (291‐2).”  This recognition from Apollo even goes a step further.  Not only does  he include Hermes in the ranks of the gods, but he also concedes his parentage a few lines  later (310)—thereby binding himself to Hermes as a half‐brother.                                                             are part of a larger pattern of oath taking in the hymn including the oaths of friendship that  Hermes and Apollo take at the end of the poem. Sowa is less forgiving and rigorous, and so  simply states that the oaths are false oaths (172).  Allen and Sikes also believe that Hermes’  oath to Apollo is a false oath (176).  175  Callaway, “Perjury and the Unsworn Oath,” 23.  176  George Autenreith, A Homeric Dictionary for Schools and Colleges (New York: Harper and  Brothers, 1891).    74    Apollo and Hermes make their way to Olympus to have Zeus mediate their  dispute about the missing cattle.  For Hermes this is an ideal turn of events because the  final recognition that Hermes needs is from his father.  Both gods make their case to Zeus  and Hermes is very careful—he again offers to swear an oath using the future tense  e0pidw/somai (383) 177  and this time he is also painstaking in the language he uses.  “The wily  god has chosen his words carefully; neither here nor later, in the presence of Zeus, does he  actually perjure himself: he never drove the cows through the door.” 178  Zeus, as we might  expect from the all‐knowing god, seems to enjoy both the offered oath and the very precise  language. For as soon as Hermes finishes speaking, Zeus laughs (389), recognizing as  Apollo did the hidden clever nature of Hermes. And then gives his judgment to his two  sons.      Hermes, in addition to carefully avoiding a literal lie begins his speech by addressing  Zeus as his father (368).  At the end of the encounter the poet refers to Apollo and Hermes  as, “Διὸς περικαλλέα τέκνα the very beautiful children of Zeus” (397).  Hermes has attained  another step on his journey of transformation; his father has acknowledged him and has  treated him as Apollo’s equal.  He is no longer just a baby in a cave who can claim divine  parentage without confirmation. He is the son of Zeus, an immortal god with a title.      All that is left on this journey is for Hermes to acquire his whip and staff, his  characteristic props.  Hermes leads Apollo to his lost cattle, just as Zeus instructed him.   However the two have an altercation; Apollo is wary of what Hermes might be able to do                                                           177  Callaway, “Perjury and the Unsworn Oath,” 23.  178  Jenny Straus Clay, Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns  New York: Bristol Classical Press, 2006), 134; A. Baumeister, Hymni Homerici (Leipzig,  1860), 229; Gemoll 236, and Allen and Sikes,  The Homeric Hymns, 176 also note the very  precise vocabulary Hermes uses to avoid perjury.      75  next, since he is so powerful at such a young age and attempts to bind his wrists.   However, the binds do not hold Hermes and drop to the ground where they begin to grow  (409a‐414).  To diffuse the tension, Hermes picks up the lyre and plays it for Apollo, and  “γέλασσε δὲ Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων /γηθήσας, Phoebus Apollo laughed, rejoicing” (420‐1). This  revelation of the lyre, an instrument previously unknown to Apollo in the narrative of the  Hymn since Hermes has just invented it earlier that day, and Apollo’s laughter trigger the  final stage of Hermes’ transformation; a trade between the two gods.  They agree that  Hermes will give Apollo the lyre and Apollo in turn will give Hermes his whip, and also  name him Keeper of the Herds (498).  The two then return to Olympus, where Zeus makes  them friends (506‐7) and Apollo gives Hermes a golden, three‐branched staff (530).      The moments of laughter, each coming after a revelation, all mark important  transitions in Hermes’ quest to become a god.  By the end of the poem Hermes’ true nature  has been revealed, he has been recognized as a god, son of Zeus, and he has obtained the  two props that he is known for both in literature and in pictorial representations on  architectural decorations and pottery.  Hermes has come of age.  The instances of laughter in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes are not the only unusual  aspects of the Hymn. The overall structure and tone of the hymn have received quite a bit  of scholarly attention.  Many scholars feel that the tone is too base, and that the narrative is  too choppy. 179   As Johnston writes, “Textual critics have run wild, excising or rearranging  portions in attempts to impose thematic unity.” 180   The text is certainly more humorous                                                           179  Allen, Halliday and Sikes, The Homeric Hymns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936),  Sarah Iles Johnston, “Myth, Festival, and Poet: The “Homeric Hymn to Hermes” and Its  Performative Context,” Classics Philology 97 (2002) 110.  180  Johnston, “Myth, Festival, and Poet,” 109.    76  and episodic than many of the other Homeric Hymns.  However, perhaps this is  purposeful and the poet wants the audience to learn something about Hermes from the  structure of the hymn as well as the narrative.  I agree with Radermacher, Janko, and Richardson that perhaps the text is more like  a comedy.  Old Comedy is often episodic and while most of the hymns describe one event in  a god or goddess’ mythology the Homeric Hymn to Hermes attempts to account for  numerous stories about Hermes, his inventions, and his characteristic personality traits  and props.  Richardson even believes that we should view the text as a “forerunner of later  comedic genres.” 181   If we look at the hymn as a comedic text it would certainly help account for all the  laughter and why Apollo and Hermes are both treated with a mixture of reverence and  derision.  This explanation of the structure of the text would also help explain the oracular  fart or burp (there has been quite a bit of debate as to which it is) that Hermes emits when  Apollo first picks him up from his cradle (295‐6).  A proto‐comedy could easily get away  with poking fun at Zeus’ two sons and using scatological humor.  The hymn therefore does  not simply lay out the attributes of the god it is celebrating or give an episodic list of his  exploits as Allen, Halliday, and Sikes charge, but the generic elements of the text give the  listener the essence of the character of the god himself.  “Rather than simply repeating the  messages that a ritual conveys, a myth may ensure that they are delivered in their full                                                           181  Nicholas Richardson, Three Homeric Hymns: To Apollo, Hermes, and Aphrodite  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 19. Of course, not all comedy is episodic,  but it is often a feature of Old Comedy.  The episodic nature of the Hymn and the laughter in  the text point to an affinity with comedy.    77  complexity.” 182   The myth underscores Hermes’ nature in both its form and its subject  matter.                  Hermaia and comingofage  There is little evidence for the worship of Hermes in the ancient world.  The  Hermaia, athletic competitions for young men are the most well attested festivals to  Hermes who otherwise is most often worshiped at festivals in conjunction with other  gods. 183   “Athletic festivals called Hermaia, which eventually were celebrated all over the  Greek world, particularly stress Hermes’ connection to maturing males in this setting, for  cases where we have more than a passing reference to Hermaia, it becomes clear that they  focused on pai~dej, neani/skoi, ne/oi, and e!fhboi.” 184   Therefore the only festivals that we  know of that were dedicated solely to Hermes are for young men to prove their physical  strength and athletic endurance.     The Hermaia and their concerns of athletic prowess, which are not frivolous  concerns for a society that relied on its citizen army to defend its land and economic                                                           182  Johnston, “Myth, Festival, and Poet,” 111.  183  The Anthesteria is a good example of this.  Although the three‐day festival is mostly in  honor of Dionysos, some sources tell us that on the third day (Pot Day) Hermes is offered  the food cooked in the pots.  However, it is unclear if Hermes is a later addition to this  festival or if the Anthesteria and an older festival to Hermes were on the same days and  over time the two distinct festivals became one and both observances continued in a  confusing (for the historian) hodgepodge.    184  Johnston, “Myth, Festival, and Poet,” 116. See also Aeschines 1.10, Plato Lys 206d, and  Jon Mikalson, religion in Hellenistic Athens (Berkley: University of California Press, 1998).   Johnston, “Myth, Festival, and Poet,” 115, notes the pictorial evidence from Attic vases from  the 6 th  century BCE onward of Hermes’ interest in the maturation of young males.  See also  G. Baudy, Hermes (Stuttgart, 1998); G. Costa, “Hermes dio delle iniziazioni” CCC 3 (1982);  and Ph. Gauthier and M. B. Hatzopoulos, “La Loi gymnasiarchique de Beroia” Melemata 16  (1993).    78  interests, mirror the concerns in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes.  Hermes’ raid on Apollo’s  cattle did not reflect current coming‐of‐age rituals in archaic Greece when it was  composed. 185   But the anxieties are the same: are the young men mature enough, physically  and mentally to inherit the control of a society.  Under the watchful eye of Hermes, young  men attempted to prove that they were ready and able to navigate the transformation from  child to man. 186     Johnston argues very convincingly that the poem could have been a part of the  Hermaia since the myth and the ritual are so closely tied in their attention to the coming of  age of young men.  “In the climate of boys’ and young men’s festivals such as the Hermaia, a  story of maturation would have rung true in the same way that the stories about  mythological and historical heroes rang true when sung by young men at symposia.” 187   Whether or not the poem was recited at the Hermaia, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes has  quite a bit in common with the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, since both inspire in their  listener the feelings and anxieties that the rituals to their titular gods also stir.  This is where ToM (theory of mind) plays an important role in our understanding of  the poem and its relationship with the rituals to Hermes concerning young men.  Like a  person listening to the Hymn to Demeter, mirror neurons and the visual, imaginative  element of the mind that one uses when listening to a narrative would create the “world” of                                                           185   The Hymn is usually dated to the late 6 th  century BCE.  In private correspondence  Helene Foley has also pointed out to me that Nestor’s story in Book 11 (670‐82) of the Iliad  seems to imply that cattle raiding was part of the coming of age tradition. Or at least it was  when he was young.  186  For more on athletic competition and maturation see A. Brelich, Paides e Parthenoi  (Rome, 1969) 450‐6; M. Dickie, “Phaeacia Athletics” Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 4  (1984); and H. Jeanmarie, Couroi et Couretes (Lille, 1939), 413‐8.  187  Johnston, “Myth, Festival, and Poet,” 119.    79  the poem in the listener’s head.  While listening to and visualizing the actions of Hermes  and the other gods the listener would have a neural response to the actions they “watched”  the characters in the poem perform.  In fact, this level of active engagement is not even  necessary.  In order for sense making to work all the listener needs to “do” is to experience  the emotions of the character with whom they identify. This neural response to actions  actually creates the same reaction in the brain as it would if the listener/watcher were  performing the actions themselves.  (Remember this is part of what makes religious rituals  so engaging – even watching them the worshipper feels as if they are carrying out the  actions of the priest or priestess.) 188    If the ancient person listening to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes experienced the  action of the poem along with the young god, they would have been taken on a journey of  initiation and transformation.  Even though most Greeks didn’t practice cattle raiding as an  initiatory ritual 189  the exhilaration, fear, and anxiety that Hermes feels in the poem would  have been palpable to the poem’s audience.  Those emotions would also mirror the feelings  of the young men who participated in the athletic contests of the Hermaia. 190  But anyone  listening has a sense of the metaphorical journey from boyhood to adulthood.    Gallese, Lakoff, and Glenberg’s discovery that the Mirror Mechanism not only works  when a person observes an action in real time (like a ritual) but also works with action                                                           188  See more detailed explanation in Chapter One and also Goldman, Theory of Mind, 11 and  Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity, 65‐74.  189  For modern cattle raiding and coming of age on Crete see Michael Herzfeld, The Poetics  of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village (Princeton: Princeton  University Press, 1988).  190  I am not making any claims that the poem was recited at the Hermaia, there is simply no  evidence either way, but I do agree with Johnston that these festivals to Hermes would  have been a very appropriate moment for the performance of the Hymn.      80  words as a person imagines an action (as when a person listens to a narrative and  animates the story in their own mind) means that not only did the poem’s audience feel the  emotions of the characters, they also had an embodied sense of the action.  Their brains  experienced Hermes’ cattle raid in the same way their brains remembered actions the  audience member had accomplished with his or her own body.  Even though Hermes’  initiatory experience in the Hymn was not what a sixth or fifth century Greek boy would  have undertaken (first because Hermes is a god and second because cattle raiding was not  practiced in mainland Greece, at least by this time); a young man hearing this poem, no  matter the setting, would have an embodied sense of cattle raiding as well as an emotional  impression of what that initiation would have been like.   Classical Athens did not have any initiation rituals for ephebes, instead all young  men served in the military for a period of time defending the polis from her enemies. 191    However, many scholars believe that Apollo had a very close relationship with ephebic  transformation before the classical period.  Walter Burkert, in his 1975 article revitalized a  theory of the connection between Apollo’s Doric name Apellon, the month of Apellaios and  the Apellaia, ceremonies in which young men were ritually introduced to the adult male  community. 192   He was drawing on the work of Jane Harrison on representations of Apollo  as a young man with unshorn hair, which she connected to an ephebe about to undergo  ritual hair‐cutting as part of his initiation. 193   Burkert further developed this argument in                                                           191  See Pierre Vidal‐Naquet and Jean‐Pierre Vernant, Mythe et Tragedie en Grece ancienne  (Paris: La Decouverte, 1986).  192  Anton Bierl, “Apollo in Greek Tragedy: Orestes and the God of Initiation,” in Apollo:  Origins and Influences, ed. Jon Solomon (Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press, 1994),  84‐5.  193  For more on this, see Harrison, Themis, 1912.    81  Greek Religion and Versnel built on this work even further to show many disparate  aspects of Apollo’s sphere of influence connect back to his role as an ephebic god. 194   Hermes’ relationship with Apollo in the Hymn is therefore even deeper than two  brothers finding their balance of powers and jockeying for their father’s attention and  affection.  Apollo is Hermes’ guide through the journey from boyhood to the company of  adult men.  He even accompanies Hermes as he goes to Olympus for the first time and is  presented to all the gods, most importantly Zeus, whose approval and acknowledgment  Hermes needs to join the Olympian ranks.   The initiatory aspect of the poem would not be  as clear if Hermes was raiding the cattle of Ares or Dionysos and forcing them to bring him  to Zeus for arbitration.  As a coming of age poem the Hymn’s primary focus is the transformation of Hermes  from a newborn to an Olympian god.  This transformation is facilitated through revelation  and laughter, like the initiatory transformation at Eleusis.  This paradigm was, therefore,  part of a larger idea about laughter and the power it wielded in the Greek world; it was not  simply a notable phenomenon in the Eleusinian cult to Demeter, but has larger application.   Laughter, in circumstances when it is accompanied by a revelation seems to lead to  transformation.  And the Homeric poet, when composing a song that is supposed to tell its  audience about the essential nature of a god or goddess used the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm over and over to tell his audience that  Hermes is a god of transformation.  The paradigm is a signpost to indicate one of the most  important characteristics of Hermes – and therefore the relationship between laughter,  revelation, and transformation must have been a widely understood and accepted concept.                                                             194  Bierl, “Apollo in Greek Tragedy,” 1994.    82                 Hermes the psychopomp  Although the poem tells the story of Hermes’ transformation from boy to adult male  god, this was not the only transformation that Hermes was concerned with.  Hermes was  most often represented on pottery 195  as an adult god in one of his two main roles:  psychopomp or messenger.  As the psychopomp he was in charge of leading moral souls  from the realm of the living to the afterlife in Hades.  He was also often pictured on vases  portraying Herakles’, Odysseus’, or Orpheus’ heroic journeys to the underworld before  their deaths and Persephone’s return from Hades to Demeter in the spring.    The journey to the underworld is perhaps the most profound transformation in a  human being’s lifecycle and Hermes is at the center of this momentous change.  Between  death and coming of age, Hermes was the guide and witness to two of the most important  changes of a Greek man’s life.  His essential nature is completely bound up with  transformation; and to illustrate this fact the Homeric poet used the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm.  The paradigm was such a culturally  understood phenomenon that it could be used to communicate an idea to a Greek audience.  Hermes’ ability to travel between worlds was not limited to his role as psychopomp.   He also served as Zeus’ messenger – carrying his father’s directives from Olympus, the  realm of the immortals, to the mortal world.  Of course the other gods can and do move  between these two planes of existence, however Hermes makes this journey with greater  frequency than any other god.  He also is one of the only gods to regularly negotiate the                                                           195  This assertion is based on my research in the Beazley Archive looking at over two  thousand images.      83  passage between the mortal or immortal world and Hades.  In fact, most of the  immortals, other than Persephone, never go to Hades.  Hermes facility with transformation  seems to enable him to move between realms with ease.    This ability to cross boundaries and navigate liminal spaces can even be seen in the  etymology of the god’s name – herma, “a pile of stones”.  These stone piles were used to  demarcate boundaries “between fields or territories”. 196  Hermes not only negotiates the  metaphysical boundaries between the worlds of gods, the living, and the dead, but also  plays a role in physical boundaries in the everyday life of archaic Greek people.  His  protection can help cross or maintain a border. 197                   Hermes and Odysseus  Hermes’ close relationship with transformation is illustrated in an episode of the  Odyssey when he makes it possible for Odysseus to avoid a transformation.  In Book Ten,  Odysseus and his remaining men, recently escaped from the cave of the Cyclops and the  massacre of their comrades by the Laestrygonians, land on Circe’s island.  They draw lots  and a company of the men set off to investigate the large house Odysseus has discovered  and its mistress.  Circe invites the men in and they eagerly accept, except the wise  Eurylochus who hides.  Circe then feeds the men a potion, transforms them into swine, and  imprisons them in pens outside her house.  After hearing Eurylochus’ report of the  encounter Odysseus sets off to rescue his men.                                                             196  Marinatos 2003 141.   197  Marinatos notes that this is his role in both the Iliad and Odyssey; helping humans  navigate dangerous boarders in the human realm and traveling between mortal and  immortal worlds.    84  Immediately before entering Circe’s domain Odysseus is intercepted by Hermes.   Hermes scolds Odysseus for thinking that he can overpower Circe and free his men, and  tells him that without the god’s help he would be transformed and put in a pig sty himself.   However Hermes has a tool for Odysseus that will allow him to be impervious to Circe’s  power to transform him.  This tool is the Moly root –   ῥίζῃ μὲν μέλαν ἔσκε, γάλακτι δὲ εἴκελον ἄνθος: μῶλυ δέ μιν καλέουσι θεοί: χαλεπὸν  δέ τ᾽ ὀρύσσειν ἀνδράσι γε θνητοῖσι, θεοὶ δέ τε πάντα δύνανται. The root was black  and but the blossom was like milk: the gods call it Moly and it is difficult for mortal  men to dig up, but the gods are able to do anything. Odyssey 10.304‐6  Homer refers to the plant as a pharmakon – a drug, and it is both difficult for mortals  to procure and its powers are only know to the gods. 198   What is noteworthy in this episode for this discussion is the close tie again of  Hermes and transformation.  Odysseus has not asked for help from Hermes or any other  god.  Hermes simply takes pity on Odysseus whom he sees as “wretched” (Od. 10.281).   However, this unique problem is well within Hermes’ purview as a god.  He knows all about  transformation and can help in the opposite case as well, staying oneself in the face of  potentially transforming circumstances or powerful magic.    Just as quickly as he appears Hermes is gone, back to Olympus.  Odysseus is now  able to save himself and his crew, who Circe, by means of another potion, transforms back  into men; although they are now, “νεώτεροι ἢ πάρος ἦσαν, καὶ πολὺ καλλίονες καὶ μείζονες  εἰσοράασθαι younger than they were formerly, and more beautiful and powerful to look at  (Od. 10.395‐6).”  The men forgive Circe and are thrilled to see Odysseus, and the whole                                                           198  For more on what Moly is and the gods’ relationship with special herbs see Jerry  Stannard, “A Plant Called Moly” Osiris 14 (1962) for an in depth survey of the literature  about Moly, see Jenny Clay, “The Planktai and Moly: Divine Naming and Knowing in Homer”  Hermes 100 (1972).    85  company stays and feasts in Circe’s house for a year.    Hermes’ role in this book of the Odyssey is very straightforward, as a god who is  intimately connected to transformation he naturally saves Odysseus from a potentially  disastrous conversion into a pig.  Hermes also matches the method of transformation.   Unlike in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes where transformation happens as part of the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm characteristic of ritual experience, here  Hermes complements Circe’s use of pharmakon (236) with a drug of his own, the Moly root.   Since Hermes is not in anyway a god of drugs, or herbs, or potions the reason for him to  appear to Odysseus and not any other god is his link with transformation.                 Hermes and Comedy  This link is also evident in Hermes appearance in Aristophanes’ Peace. 199   He  oversees the central episode of the play—the transformation of the Greek world from a  state of war to a time of peace.  Like the transformations in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes  Aristophanes uses the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm to accomplish the  transformation in the world of the play and to communicate with the audience through  their shared cultural understanding of the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm  as a part of ritual practice to both Demeter and Hermes.    In the Peace Hermes tells Trygaeus how to rescue Peace, who has been entombed by  War, and then the two create a ritual to free her and unite Greece.  The ritual, beginning on                                                           199  I am anticipating Chapters 3 and 4 here.  The ideas are discussed in greater detail in  both, however I want to establish Hermes’ connections with transformation across genres  and in both the Archaic and Classical eras before moving on to my discussion of  Aristophanes.    86  line 433 involves a libation and then a call and response between Hermes and Trygaeus  of joke set‐ups and punch lines with Hermes serving up the opening of the joke and  Trygaeus delivering the funny quip to end the witticism.    Ἑρμῆς σπονδὴ σπονδή εὐφημεῖτε εὐφημεῖτε σπένδοντες εὐχόμεσθα τὴν νῦν ἡμέραν Ἕλλησιν ἄρξαι πᾶσι πολλῶν κἀγαθῶν, χὤστις προθύμως ξυλλάβοι τῶν σχοινίων, τοῦτον τὸν ἄνδρα μὴ λαβεῖν ποτ᾽ ἀσπίδα. Τρυγαῖος μὰ Δί᾽ ἀλλ᾽ ἐν εἰρήνῃ διαγαγεῖν τὸν βίον, ἔχονθ᾽ ἑταίραν καὶ σκαλεύοντ᾽ ἄνθρακας. Ἑρμῆς ὅστις δὲ πόλεμον μᾶλλον εἶναι βούλεται Τρυγαῖος μηδέποτε παύσασθ᾽ αὐτὸν ὦ Διόνυσ᾽ ἄναξ ἐκ τῶν ὀλεκράνων ἀκίδας ἐξαιρούμενον. Hermes  Libation, libation:  Use words of good omen.  Let us pray, offering libation that this day  Is the first of many happy days for all Greece,  And that he who is eager to help with the ropes  Will never again need to lift his shield.  Trygaeus  God no, but let us spend our life in peace,  Holding our mistress and poking her coals.  Hermes  May he who would prefer war –  Trygaeus  Oh Lord Dionysos, may he never stop  Pulling arrowheads out of his elbow. 200     This ritual is actually a duet of jokes designed to elicit laughter from the audience, one of  the necessary components in the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm.      The second element that is necessary for the paradigm is some sort of a revelation                                                           200  Aristophanes, Peace    87  or aischros behavior or language –something outside of the usual bounds of socially  accepted behavior.  In the Peace this is the appearance of three nude women on stage, 201   Peace, Cornucopia, and Festival.  These three metaphorical characters represent the  resumption of normal life, with all of Greece in harmony and not at war.  Hermes is in  charge of welcoming these three characters and giving the different women to various male  characters and the council.  This of course leads to many sexually explicit jokes and more  laughter.  Once the women have been properly paired with their respective male  counterparts the transformation is complete and Greece is now at peace.  The main  transformation of the play is achieved through the comedic use of the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm. 202     Hermes is a god of transformation; he is a guide and mentor to young Greek men, he  leads souls to the afterlife and he is the god who moves most freely through the three  realms of the mythological world.  Therefore the use of the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes is not  surprising.  This interpretation of the poem also negates the need to rearrange the episodes  in the poem or dismiss the poem as an inferior Hymn.  Rather we can look at the instances  of laughter in the poem as our key to unlocking the essential themes of the poem and a  central characteristic of Hermes’ power.                                                             201  See Chapter Three for more on nudes in the theater.    202  This is the only surviving instance of Aristophanes using Hermes to spearhead the  transformation in a play.  More often he uses the rituals to Demeter and Dionysos as a ritual  backdrop for his character and plot transformations, as I will discuss in the following  chapters.      88  In the next two chapters I will be looking at ritual laughter, transformation, and Old  Comedy.  This may seem like a leap, however Aristophanes is drawing on the paradigm I  have traced in these two Hymns and the rituals at Eleusis, as well as other rituals to  Demeter, to create plots, characters, and plays full of transformation.  In fact this project  began with my investigation of transformation in Aristophanes and only through studying  his texts and ideas about laughter in ancient Attica did I realize that the roots for this  paradigm could be traced back to the archaic period, Demeter, and Hermes.  I have  presented the earlier evidence first as the necessary foundation to fully grasp the  complexity of laughter and transformation in Aristophanes’ work.    89    Chapter Three: Laughter and Transformation in Aristophanes  Introduction  Aristophanes’ characters are not stable beings; they shift alliances, change  gender, and swap statuses.  Their psychological and physical contortions are often  the sources of humor in Aristophanes’ plays, and thereby the cause of the audiences’  laughter.  However this is not a simple one‐to one transaction.  On closer inspection  Aristophanes’ audience’s laughter precedes the characters’ transformations.  The  laughter is elicited by a revelation, something aischros 203  in nature that then spurs  the characters’ transformations.  This revelation and the burst of laughter that  follows is the seed that allows the audience to see the world (or at least the world of  the play) in a new light. The transformative and revelatory nature of laughter has  shifted their perspective.  Aristophanes is actually working within a well‐established  paradigm that I have traced through the last two chapters.  The transformational  power of laughter that is harnessed in ritual context is put to work in his comedies  to move the action of the plays forward, to alter characters, and to engage the  audience in the process of transformation as well – to modify their understanding of  an idea, social construct, political policy, or current event.                                                           203  I discussed the use of aischrologia in rituals to Demeter in Chapter One; in  Aristophanes’ plays the paradigm opens up a bit.  In addition to aischrologia there  are also jokes making use of the visual possibilities in theater.      90  While it could be argued 204  that the laughter during Aristophanes’ comedies  should be considered ritual laughter, since it takes place at either the City Dionysia  or the Lenaia (both theatrical festivals in honor of Dionysos), there should be a  distinction between laughter used as a specific step in a ritual and laughter at the  theater. Although Aristophanes is using the same paradigm and was potentially  hoping to facilitate the learning of the demos through the transformative effects of  laughter there is a subtle difference between the two instances of laughter.  The  laughter during a ritual is a necessary, proscribed step in completing the ritual  properly. At the theater, Aristophanes is using the ritual paradigm, and laughter is  necessary for the paradigm to work properly, but the ritual to Dionysos (i.e. The City  Dionysia or the Lenaia) is not ruined if no one laughs during a play (although, it  would make for a rather dull comedy).      Theories of Laughter     The comedies of Aristophanes and his use of the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm are, in fact, very complex.  There are  several layers of ritual and several layers of laughter to sort through.  As I stated  above the first ritual layer is the larger context of a comedic performance, either the  City Dionysia or the Lenaia, both large rituals performed in honor of Dionysos.   Within Aristophanic comedies the action of a play often occurs during or at another                                                           204  Halliwell does in fact classify this as ritual laughter. However, I don’t think his  explanation of this is clear or deep enough.  He simply looks at all laughter in the  theater as the same (audience laughter and the characters laughing within the world  of the play), and mentions the use of ritual settings in Aristophanic comedies  (especially rituals tied to Demeter – where he rightly sees ritual laughter) as proof  that there is a ritual connection.    91  ritual to Dionysos or a ritual to Demeter.  This is the second layer of ritual and it is  essential to note if any laughter is specifically tied to these ritual settings within the  play.  In a few instances there are even laughter rituals from specific festivals  portrayed on stage – adding a third ritual level to this investigation.      Likewise, not all laughter at the theater is the same.  There are two broad  laughter categories: audience laughter, and characters laughing within the context  of the action on stage.  Both can and should be further divided to allow for a precise  interpretation of how and when Aristophanes uses the paradigm of laughter and  transformation.  The audience can laugh both with and at the play.  That is, they can  laugh at an absurd predicament or statement (i.e. the wit of the poet), or they could  laugh  in  sympathy  with  (putting  themselves  in  the  shoes  of)  one  or  more  characters 205 .  The characters in the play can laugh at another character (just like  the audience), laugh at their own joke, or even laugh in the ritual contexts that  Aristophanes uses as settings.  Of course, not all of the laughter that happens at the  theater can be part of the paradigm that I am tracing, however, I believe a significant  part is and that the ritual connections are not coincidental, but part of the way that  Aristophanes attempted to communicate with his audience.     Both Plato and Aristotle’s investigations and thoughts about laughter can  help us think about the role of laughter in Athenian theater.  Aristotle’s views on  laughter are less well defined than Plato’s – one has to read between the lines to get                                                           205  For more on the pendulum swings in how scholars have theorized laughter see  Stuart Tave, The Amiable Humourist (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,  1960).    92  a sense of his evaluation of the role of laughter 206 .  In Nicomachean Ethics 4.8  Aristotle divides men into three types in relation to their sense of humor and jokes  diagwgh/ paidih/ (playful amusement/conversation): first, the buffoons or vulgar  jokers (bwmolo/xoi or  fortikoi/), second the witty (eu0tra/peloj), and third the  uncultivated and harsh (a!groikoj and  sklhpoi/).  These three types of men are:  either too eager and coarse in their joking, pleasant to be around and a valid and  necessary part of the relaxation needed in life, or those who are too serious with  absolutely no sense of humor. 207       Although Aristotle does not address laughter directly in this passage his  evaluations of the three types of men give some indication of what he thinks of the  laughter that might result from jokes made by them.  The humorless men, naturally,  wouldn’t make jokes and therefore conversation with them would be devoid of  laughter.  However for the first two Aristotle gives his reader a comparison,   ἴδοι δ᾽ ἄν τις καὶ ἐκ τῶν κωμῳδιῶν τῶν παλαιῶν καὶ τῶν καινῶν: τοῖς μὲν γὰρ  ἦν γελοῖον ἡ αἰσχρολογία, τοῖς δὲ μᾶλλον ἡ ὑπόνοια: διαφέρει δ᾽ οὐ μικρὸν  ταῦτα πρὸς εὐσχημοσύνην.  Comparing old comedy might see the difference  and new; for aischrologia was amusing to the former, and innuendo is better  for the latter. This makes no small difference concerning decorum. 208     That  is,  the  buffoons  are  like  the  aischrologia  in  Old  Comedy  –  funny  but  not  decorous or what a person should aspire to, nor by implication, laugh at.  Aristotle                                                           206  Halliwell has a very clear and detailed explanation of Aristotle and laughter as it  applies to his megalopsuchos.  However, he does not really go into Aristotle’s  evaluation of Old Comedy (Halliwell himself notes that he will not be doing this).  207  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics  1128a4‐11.  208  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 4.8     93  doesn’t give the reader much more here about why this type of humor and laughter  isn’t desirable; simply that it is outside the bounds of normative behavior. 209   Plato, in a much more straightforward manner; expressed grave doubts  about the wisdom of engaging in laughter.  He writes in Book III of The Republic,   ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδὲ φιλογέλωτάς γε δεῖ εἶναι. σχεδὸν γὰρ ὅταν τις ἐφιῇ ἰσχυρῷ γέλωτι, ἰσχυρὰν καὶ μεταβολὴν ζητεῖ τὸ τοιοῦτον. Again, they  [the guardians of the city, i.e. the men of Athens] must not be prone to  laughter. For ordinarily when one abandons himself to violent laughter he  seeks such a violent change.    Samuel Weber writes that this danger expressed by Plato is twofold; “because of its  tendency to get out of hand” 210  and because,  Rather than deciding or choosing to laugh, ‘one abandons oneself to’ it, and it  is  this  necessity  of  self‐abandonment  no  doubt,  that  explains  why  the  ‘condition’ of laughter would tend to be ‘violent’, as well as to provoke ‘a  violent reaction’.  Laughter is violent and dangerous . . . because it tends to  ‘overpower’ those who laugh. 211                                                              209  Aristotle and I actually agree on this point of normative behavior.  Aischrologia  was not something that happened in everyday life and that is precisely what makes  it heightened and part of the transformation paradigm. For a discussion of the  problematic use of this passage to trace a linear trajectory from Old Comedy to New  see Eric Csapo, “From Aristophanes to Menander? Genre Transformation in Greek  Tragedy” in Matrices of Genre: Authors, Canons, and Society, ed. Mary Depew and  Dirk Obbink (Cambridge: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2000) and also “Review of H.‐ G. Nesselrath, Die attische Mittlere Komodie Ihre Stellung in der antiken  Literaturkritik und Literaturgeschichte” Phoenix 47 (1993) where he wrote, “The  changes in comedy from the fifth to the fourth centuries are best understood, not as  a succession of qualitatively distinct products, but as a shift in the dominance of one  style over another.”  See also Kenneth Dover, Greek Comedy (Oxford: Clarendon  Press, 1968), 145‐46; W.G. Arnott, “Tout est probleme au subject de la Comedie  Moyenne” Classical Review 42 (1992) 60‐1; and Jefffrey Henderson, Beyond  Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy (Atlanta: Scholars Press,  1995) 181.  However, here Aristotle is not making claims about the development of  comedy, but rather the proper and normative things for a person to laugh at.  210  Samuel Weber, “Laughter in the Meanwhile”, MLN Vol. 102, No. 4, French Issue  (Sep., 1987) 693.  211  Webber, “Laughter in the Meanwhile,” 693.    94  The other danger of “abandoning oneself” to laughter is losing oneself altogether.   This is certainly an uncanny effect of laughter.  While laughing a person is  suspended, taken out of him or herself and given over to the laughter.      This departure from oneself (similar to ek‐stasy) occurs not only when an  individual laughs, but also when participating in the laughter of others; the  paradigm of transgression/laughter/transformation is a dangerous one, as Plato  says because of the potential it has for massive change.  Halliwell agrees that Plato  finds abandoning yourself to laughter very troubling and notes that it is because of  “the vicarious quality of the” laughter in Comedy.” 212  This vicarious feature of  laughter that Plato is talking about is made clear in Book 10 of his Republic.  Socrates  is discussing the effect that poetry has on the listener.  His first observation is to  relate to his interlocutor and the assembled listeners that poetry unleashes  emotions that had been properly repressed by the soul. His listeners agree. He then  continues, and offers the observation that participating in any activity that provokes  laughter,   ὅτι, ἃν αὐτὸς αἰσχύνοιο γελωτοποιῶν, ἐν μιμήσει δὲ κωμῳδικῇ ἢ καὶ ἰδίᾳ  ἀκούων σφόδρα χαρῇς καὶ μὴ μισῇς ὡς πονηρά, ταὐτὸν ποιεῖς ὅπερ ἐν τοῖς  ἐλέοις; that if in comedic imitations,   or for that matter in private talk,   you  take intense pleasure in buffooneries that you would blush to practice  yourself, and do not detest them as base, you are doing the same thing as in  the case of the piteous (i.e. tragedy)? 213      has the same effect, unleashing the inner comedian in this instance.  Both of these he  goes on to explain should be avoided because they foster strong emotions and base                                                           212  Halliwell, Greek Laughter, n.91 p. 300.  213  Plato, Republic 606c.  This is adapted from John Burnet’s translation.    95  comic jokes respectively, which are both detrimental to the soul of the person  participating in them,   τρέφει γὰρ ταῦτα ἄρδουσα, δέον αὐχμεῖν, καὶ ἄρχοντα ἡμῖν καθίστησιν, δέον  ἄρχεσθαι αὐτὰ ἵνα βελτίους τε καὶ εὐδαιμονέστεροι ἀντὶ χειρόνων καὶ  ἀθλιωτέρων γιγνώμεθα. For it waters   and increases these feelings when  what we ought to do is to dry them up, and it establishes them as our rulers  when they ought to be ruled, to the end that we may be better and happier  men instead of worse and more miserable. 214     Modern literary critics have also noticed this vicarious element of laughter  that Plato is concerned about.  Bataille writes, “Seeing laughter, hearing laughter, I  participate from within the emotion of the one who laughs.  It is this emotion  experienced from within which, communicating itself to me, laughs within me.” 215   This explanation of the contagious nature of laughter resonates with Nicholas  Royle’s writing on what he calls “the telepathy effect”.  Royle argues in his book The  Uncanny that what has been traditionally called the “omniscient narrator” is really  “something like narrative telepathy” as it “involves the familiar‐unfamiliar logic of a  narrator ‘enter[ing a character’s] consciousness’, becoming temporarily amanuensis  to their ‘inmost, unexpressed thought.’” 216   The ability of the narrator to enter a  character’s consciousness is like Bataille’s explication of experiencing within himself  the emotion of another person.  The emotion engulfs both people and the beholder  or listener temporarily enters the consciousness of another.    Royle’s discussion of the omniscient narrator is centered on literature that  one reads silently to oneself.  But with Bataille’s idea of “participat[ing] from within                                                           214  Plato, Republic 606d. This is adapted from John Burnet’s translation.  215  George Bataille, L’Erotisme Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 2011), 169.  216  Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny (New York: Routledge, 2003) 262.    96  the emotion of the one who laughs” 217  mediating between literature and theater I  think it is possible to see how Royle’s paradigm of entering a character’s  consciousness also applies to Aristophanic comedy.  Aristophanes’ characters often  make direct addresses to the audience, or verbalize their internal thoughts, and  through both of these means the audience, each individual member as well as the  collective whole, can step inside the character’s consciousness and experience the  character’s emotions as their own.   More often than not, Aristophanic characters address the audiences or  verbalize internal thoughts for comic effect. The comic aspect of these quips enables  a further element of theatrical telepathy: laughter.  If, as Bataille and Plato write,  upon seeing or hearing laughter we participate “from within” the emotion of  another, the audience laughing as a group is experiencing a mass emotion.  If the  actor on stage laughs and the audience participates in his or her emotion the aspect  of telepathy is increased even further.  Then the audience is not communally  laughing at the play (in telepathic connection with each other as they were  formerly), but they are “within” the emotion of the character and therefore  somehow within the play 218 .    The idea of the audience being “within” the play is also evident in Samuel  Taylor Coleridge’s thinking about poetry.  He famously wrote in Biographia Literaria                                                           217  Bataille, L’Erotisme, 169.  218  If we return to the tenants of embodied cognition we can enlarge this  phenomenon even further.  This doesn’t only happen in the theater, but can happen  anytime a person is watching or listening, e.g. in a religious ceremony, at a poetic  reading, while people watching, etc. Ian Ruffell, Politics and AntiRealism in Athenian  Old Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) also writes about identification  with the laughter a character experiences in the plot of the play – the breaking of the  fourth wall is not a necessary part of the recognition.     97  that literature requires, “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which  constitutes poetic faith.” 219  The difference between Coleridge’s idea and the nature  of laughter is precisely the “willing suspension.”  While reading or watching a play  the reader or audience member actively participates in the suspension, however  laughter is not as biddable.  It bursts forth as an instantaneous response; laughter  overtakes and seizes us.  As we have seen in Plato’s Republic, the theory of laughter  has, for a long time, been concerned with the dangerous side of laughter.    There have been many attempts to define exactly what laughter is in the  vocabulary of physical science.  Simon Critchley writes in his book On Humour, “It is  important to recall that the succession of tension by relief in humour is essentially a  bodily affair . . . Laughter is a muscular phenomenon, consisting of the spasmodic  contraction and relaxation of the facial muscles with corresponding movements in  the diaphragm.” 220  This very recent description focuses on the physical  manifestations of laughter. Aristotle likewise, saw a connection between the  physical and the mental in laughter, in Parts of Animals he wrote about purely  physical reasons that may transfer to a mental state and cause a person to laugh,  namely tickling and being struck on the chest in battle. 221    Freud, taking a physical  and psychological approach wrote, “We should say that laughter arises if a quota of  psychical energy which has been earlier used for the cathexis [which is in Freud’s  vocabulary the concentration or accumulation of mental energy in a particular                                                           219  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bioraphia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross (London: Electric  Book Co., 2001) 272.  220  Critchley, On Humour, 7‐8.  221  Aristotle, Parts of Animals 3.10, 367a8 and 28    98  channel] 222  of particular psychical paths has become unusable, so that it can find  free discharge.” 223  This explanation of laughter sounds rather painful, as though  laughter forces energy out of the body.  However even in colloquial speech we use  volatile verbs to talk about laughter.  We say, he burst into laughter, the room  exploded in laughter, bust a gut, split my side, in French éclater de rire.  The Greek  muse of Comedy Thalia gets her name from the Greek verb thallo, “to bloom, sprout,  grow” she is explosive and generative just like the genre she represents.   There is something essential at the heart of this danger, the explosion and  self‐abandonment  of  laughter.  Samuel  Weber  writes,  “In  both  cases,  joke  and  laughter do not emerge gradually, they are not the product of long and continuous  processes: rather, they are simply “there”, all of a sudden.” 224  The theory of laughter  closely ties it with death—not only because of its explosive force and sudden arrival  but as Mikkel Borch‐Jacobsen writes, “Laughter, truly major and sovereign laughter,  only bursts forth, solar and ravishing, on the condition of dying of laughter, of letting  oneself be ripped apart by the hiccoughs of the impaling stake.” 225   To laugh then is  to look death in the face.  “It is a glance at tragedy as tragedy, in its tragic truth:  namely, that immortality comes only with death, as death itself.  Laughter is the                                                           222  OED Online, December, 2008 < http://dictionary.oed.com/entrance.dtl>  223  Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, ed. and trans. James  Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1960) 147.  224  Weber, “Laughter in the Meanwhile,” 703.  225  Mikkel Borch‐Jacobsen, “The Laughter of Being”, MLN Vol. 102, No. 4, French  Issue (Sep., 1987): 739.    99  knowledge of this truth, and therefore the highest consummate knowledge.” 226  No  wonder the warrior in Aristotle laughs when receiving a chest wound.    Laughter both simulates the feeling of the void by requiring self‐ abandonment and allows the psyche to glimpse death.  It is a physical act as  Critchley postulates and also psychological exploration.  If we repeatedly abandon  ourselves briefly to the nothingness of laughter we can see our lives dotted with tiny  ruptures, a very uncanny thought.  We leap from life to laughter and back to . . . what  exactly, the same life –perhaps, but also perhaps not.  For Aristophanes’ characters  the answer is they are not the same and they experience a new life in the wake of  laughter.      Transformation at work in Aristophanes    Investigating laughter and transformation in Aristophanes’ comedies we are  already further removed from ritual than when we looked at the Homeric Hymns.   The Hymns are very tied to the gods they are written for and also closely bound up  in the rituals that were performed for these gods.  Certainly, as I have said above all  theater was performed for Dionysos at a festival in his honor, so perhaps we could  stretch the definition of ritual laughter to cover all laughter at a theatrical festival,  but I think this is overly broad and would end up being vague and very unsatisfying.      The transformations in the comedies that I will look at in this chapter are still  transformations of presence.  That is they involve the transformations of  individuals, characters in stage changing from human to animal, male to female,                                                           226  Jean‐Luc Nancy, “Wild Laughter in the Throat of Death”, MLN Vol. 102, No. 4,  French Issue (Sep., 1987): 724.    100  hero to heroine, etc.  However, I will also being to investigate the transformation of  texts, in this case the tragedies of Euripides.  The purpose of this is to look at how  the revelation/laughter/transformation paradigm, so intimately connected with  ritual in the literary texts of the Homeric Hymns becomes a literary topos of its own,  functioning outside of a specific ritual context.  The paradigm continues to have  strong ritual undertones and associations because of its birth in ritual, but it can be  applied more broadly.    For laughter to still have its power, as it does in ritual, it needs to be closely  tied with something aischros. As we have seen previously in the writing of Plato and  Aristotle it is this type of laughter, the laughter at something aischros that is usually  to be avoided because it is powerful and has a transformative nature.  This potent  combination of aischros things (objects or words) and laughter is what ritual  harnesses and what good, skillful literature also employs when it uses the  revelation/laughter/transformation paradigm as a topos.    In a literary context, then the ancient audience would have been alerted to  this paradigm when they saw or heard the three elements together. And we as  modern readers or audience members should be too.  It will deepen our  understanding of an ancient text if we can identify this paradigm and examine the  multiple ways in which it is being employed. Just as we look at ancient tragedy and  how different mythological stories are tailored to fit each plot and how that may  have resonated with an audience in a particular year, in comedy we can look for the  revelation/laughter/transformation paradigm and how it functions in various    101  plots. 227  This is where we can use the idea of an embedded genre 228  of the ritual  associations with laughter and transformation or a formalizing of earlier, looser  festival joking into a recognized literary trope to investigate the form of comedy  more comprehensively.    Aristophanes’ plays can be broadly divided into two categories: plays with  ritual connections; 229  either because rituals are heavily referred to or because they  are set during a ritual, and non‐ritual plays. 230   Both types of plays have character  transformations facilitated by the now familiar revelation/laughter/transformation  paradigm; however, the ritual plays have a higher concentration of these  transformations, often several in one play.  It is not surprising that the ritual plays  should have a higher rate of transformations since this paradigm seems to originate  in cult practice.  But it is only through the careful investigation of each  transformation that we can say with any certainty what each transformation is  doing for the play and the audience and why they might be present in Aristophanes’  work.  I think it is best to look first at the ritual plays where the phenomenon of  transformation seems most predictable (the characters are after all taking part in  rituals that emphasized transformation): and then to turn our attention to the non‐ ritual plays and the transformations that have no direct correlation with a ritual or  connection to a festival.                                                             227  This can even include moments when transformation is expected or attempted  but doesn’t work for some reason.   228  Lape, “The Poetics of the “Komos”‐Chorus,” 93‐94.  229  These plays are: Acharnians, Thesmophoriazusae, and Frogs.  230  These plays are: Knights, Clouds, Wasps, Peace, Birds, Lysistrata, Assembly Women,  and Wealth.    102  The Acharnians  Beginning chronologically then, the first transformation in a ritual play 231  is  an early scene in Acharnians, which features the transformation of two Megarian  girls into pigs.  The scene takes place at Dicaeopolis’ private market that he has  opened after securing his personal peace treaty with Athens’ enemies.  A Megarian  merchant, out of desperation and a desire to save his daughters (korh) from  starvation, has put them in a sack and is attempting to sell them as sacrificial piglets,  perfect for the Mysteries to Demeter.  These piglets were part of an initiate’s  propitiation of Demeter and helped facilitate the initiation into her cult.  The scene begins with the Megarian merchant giving his daughters a choice –  be sold or starve to death.  The two eagerly choose slavery and he gives them  hooves and snouts to wear and puts them in a sack.  He then invites Dicaeopolis to  inspect his wares, “xoi/rouj e2gw/nga mustika/j I’ve got piggies for the Mysteries.” 232    Here we have all the necessary ingredients for transformation: a revelation of  something usually hidden (in this case the daughters’ naked bodies) and laughter  (from the audience as the Megarian merchant tells the audience and his daughters  of his plan).  This transformation of the girls from human to pig is both  instantaneous and slow to develop; instantaneous because of the disguise (as soon  as they put on the hooves and snouts) and the joking and laughter from the  audience, which enable the quick transformation. However, it also takes some  convincing before Dicaeopolis sees the girls as piggies and necessitates lots of joking                                                           231  I am only looking at transformations in the complete extant plays of  Aristophanes, not in the fragments because the fragments simply do not have  enough context to adequately assess if and how transformations take place.  232  Aristophanes, Acharnians, 763.    103  with double meaning before he accepts them as piggies and purchases them.  The  association with the Mysteries and Demeter also enhance the transformation in this  scene.  The shift from human to pig creates a sacrificial tool (i.e. the suckling piglets)  that Dicaeopolis or someone in his household could then use to facilitate their own  initiation and transformation as part of the cult worship to Demeter.    However, in Aristophanic comedy piglets are not simply livestock or  sacrificial animals.  The Greek work for piglet xoi=roj is a common slang word for  the hairless female genitalia.  As Henderson notes, “the entire Megarian scene of  Acharnians is built around its double meaning.” 233   Indeed it is, but the necessity of  the double meaning goes even deeper than the double entendre/joke that  Henderson explains in his “Note on Aristophanes Acharnians 834‐35”, where he  explains the overlapping meaning of pai/ein as both eat and a slang term for sexual  intercourse. 234   Dicaeopolis is consuming the two girls as either piglets for sacrifice  (and then a meal) or as sexual objects, as is the audience – a point I will elaborate on  shortly.       First it is worthwhile to think about who would have played these parts; are  they played by male actors in padded “nude” female costumes or could these two  characters be mute, nude women? 235  Zweig thinks that the parts could have been  portrayed by either group.  She strongly believes that there were mute nude hetairai                                                           233  Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 131 – for further explanation of the slang term  see his excellent and thorough explication.   234  Jeffrey Henderson, “A Note on Aristophanes Acharnians 834‐5” Classical  Philology 68 (1973).   235  For a summary of the scholarly discussion of the mute nude female see Cedric H.  Whitman Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,  1971); Henderson The Maculate Muse and Laura M. Stone, Costume in Aristophanic  Poetry (New York: Ayer Co. Publishing, 1981).    104  on stage although she argues that sometimes it worked best for comic relief if the  actors were men dressed and padded as nude women instead of naked hetairai. 236    She believes, in this instance, the comedy of sexually explicit double speak between  the Megarian Merchant and Dicaeopolis would have been enhanced by men  costumed to look like naked women.  However, it is certainly interesting to also  consider the striking and frankly honest representation of male domination over  female sexuality in fifth century Athens, if the characters were portrayed by women.         If the Piggies are two naked hetairai wearing hooves and snouts 237  it is very  clear to the audience that these “piggies” are for consumption; by Dicaeopolis, by the  audience, by Demeter (as a sacrifice).  And since they are an object for consumption  or a tool for sacrifice they are not equal.  Zweig is absolutely right that,   rather than joyfully celebrating the sexuality that brings forth life, as the  sexual play in women fertility rituals seems to have done, . . . in these scenes  there is no mutuality, no interaction between two active agents, there is not  even sexuality.  In each scene the female is an object gazed at, lusted after,  and manipulated by a subject. 238       In fact, the naked hetairai or men costumed to look like naked women also serve as  a tool for the joke and the transformation in the play from human to animal.  They  not only provide the necessary visual backdrop for the sexual banter, but also serve  as the revelatory element necessary for transformation, that is they display what is  normally hidden, female genitalia.  This scene shows the audience how  transformation works.  It clearly illustrates all the necessary elements and ties the                                                           236  Bella Zweig, “The Mute Nude Female Characters in Aristophanes’ Plays” in  Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome ed. Amy Richlin (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1992), 78.  237  Aristophanes, Acharnians, 740 and 744.  238  Zweig, “The Mute Nude Female Characters in Aristophanes’ Plays,” 87.    105  human/animal transformation closely with a ritual that a Greek audience would  closely associate with transformation.    This scene also dovetails with ToM and the idea of the audience’s telepathy  with certain characters in a play.  The audience in this instance looks at the scene  from the perspective of Dicaeopolis.  They are also consuming the bodies of the two  hetairai and see them as both sexual objects and tools, although for the audience  they are tools for the transformation (and the illustration of how it works) rather  than sacrificial animals for the Mysteries of Demeter.      The Thesmophoriazusae  The Thesmophoriazusae, a ritual play set in Athens at the autumn festival to  Demeter 239  also has numerous transformations.  One works as an individual  transformation and a notable set work together to ensure a favorable outcome of  the play for the two main male characters, Euripides and his Kinsman.  The theme of  transformation (and its impact on identity) runs through the play and is underlined  and supported by the setting of the Thesmophoria.  The autumnal ritual to Demeter  is all about the cycle of the agricultural calendar and both the harvest of summer  crops in the fall and the fall planting for crops that will need the winter rainy season  to grow. 240                                                              239  See Appendix 1 for more information on festivals to Demeter other than the  Eleusinian Mysteries.  240  Greece’s Mediterranean climate allowed (and still allows) for year round  planting, unlike Western Europe and most of the United States.  This difference in  agricultural practices has lead to some confusion about and conflation of the Ancient  and modern agricultural seasons and therefore assumptions about the festivals to    106    In an early scene of the Thesmophoriazusae, Euripides’ Kinsman, his father‐ in‐law, undergoes a radical transformation from an Athenian man to an Athenian  women and participant in the Thesmophoria.  This transformation happens at  Euripides’ request, as he needs an insider to protect him from the wrath of the  Athenian women whom he has slandered in his plays.  Euripides’ first choice is the  effeminate poet Agathon.  However Agathon refuses and Euripides is left to either go  himself or send his Kinsman in disguise.      The process of disguising Kinsman has ample opportunities to cause the  audience to burst into laughter.                                                           Demeter.  For more on this see the excellent dissertation, The Attic Festivals of  Demeter and Their Relation To The Agricultural Year by Allaire Chandor Brumfield.    107  Eu)ripi/dhj e)negka/tw tij e)/ndoqen da=|d' h)\ lu/xnon. e)pi/kupte: th\n ke/rkon fula/ttou nun a)/kran. Mnhsi/loxoj e)moi\ melh/sei nh\ Di/a, plh/n g' o(/ti ka/omai. oi)/moi ta/laj. u(/dwr u(/dwr w)= gei/tonej. pri\n a)ntilabe/sqai prwkto\n th=j flogo/j.  Eu)ripi/dhj qa/rrei. Mnhsi/loxoj ti/ qarrw= katapepurpolhme/noj; Eu)ripi/dhj a)ll' ou)k e)/t' oi)de\n pra=gma/ soi: ta\ plei=sta ga\r \a)popepo/nhkaj. Mnhsi/loxoj fu= i)ou\ th=j a)sbo/lou. ai)qo\j gege/nhmai pa/nta ta\ peri\ th\n tra/min. Eu)ripi/dhj mh\ fronti/sh|j: e(/teroj ga\r au)ta\ sfoggiei=. Mnhsi/loxoj oi)mwceta)/r' ei)/ tij to\n e)mo\n prwkto\n plunei=. Eu)ripi/dhj )Aga/qwn, e)peidh\ sauto\n e)pidou=nai fqonei=j,a)ll' i(ma/tion gou=n xrh=son h(mi=n toutw|i\ kai\ stro/fion: ou) ga\r tau=ta/ g' w(j ou)k e)/st' e)rei=j. ) Aga/qwn lamba/nete kai\ xrh=sq': ou) fqonw=. Mnhsi/loxoj ti/ ou)=n la/bw; )Aga/qwn o(/ ti; to\n krokwto\n prw=ton e)ndu/ou labw/n. Mnhsi/loxoj nh\ th\n )Afrodi/thn h(du/ g' o)/zei posqi/ou. su/zwson a)nu/saj. ai)=re nu=n stro/fion. Euripides Stand up; I am now going to remove your hair. Bend down.  Kinsman Alas! By the god! They are going to  grill me like a pig.  Euripides Come now, a torch or a lamp! Bend down and watch out for the tender  end of your tool!   Kinsman Aye, aye! But I'm on fire! oh! oh! Water, water, neighbor, or my ass will be  alight!   Euripides Keep up your courage!   Kinsman Keep my courage, when I'm being burnt up?   Euripides Come, stop your whining, the worst is over.  Kinsman Oh! it's really black, all burnt down there!   Euripides Don't worry! Satyrus will wash it.   Kinsman Woe to him who dares to wash me!   Euripides Agathon, you refuse to devote yourself to helping me; but lend me a tunic  and a belt. You cannot say you do not have them. Agathon Take them and use them  as you like; I consent.  Kinsman What shall I take?   Agathon First put on this long saffron‐colored robe.  Kinsman By Aphrodite! What a sweet sent! How it smells of young male tools! Hand  it to me quickly. 241                                                            241  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, 237‐256.    108    To begin, the situation of depilating one’s father‐in‐law is funny. Then the specific  obstacles that Euripides and Kinsman encounter add to the humor of the situation.  Kinsman has to keep his penis and ass out of the way of the flame that is singeing his  body hair off. 242  Then his penis turns black from the soot.  Of course the stage  picture would also add to the humor of the scene because Kinsman would be bent  over making an exaggerated show of his giant costume genitals to Euripides and  perhaps also to the audience.  Something that is familiar has become unfamiliar, and therefore funny. 243    That is depilation, a normal activity for a Greek woman has been subverted by it use  on a man.  And something that is hidden has been revealed, namely Kinsman’s  genitals. The laughter of the audience at this scene is an example of the collective  whole laughing together and experiencing theatrical telepathy with each other.   They are laughing at the play, however, and are therefore not experiencing the effect  that Bataille described as being within the emotion of the character.      The laughter has served as a catalyst and several lines later Euripides  exclaims, “ἁνὴρ μὲν ἡμῖν οὑτοσὶ καὶ δὴ γυνὴ τό γ᾽ εἶδος, man, you have a female                                                           242  Colin Austin and Douglas Olsen, Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2004), 133; Lesley Ferris, Acting Women: Images of Women  in Theatre (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 1989), 28; Lauren Taafe, Aristophanes  and Women (London: Routledge, 1993), 79 and 84; Elizabeth Bobrick, “The Tyranny  of Roles: Playacting and Privilege in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae” in The City  as Comedy: Society and Representation in Athenian Drama, ed. G.W. Dobrov (Chapel  Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 179. For more on the word play  of house fires see Plu. Rom. 20.6; Quint. Decl. 12.6; Prop. iv. 8. 58; Sen. Ep. 17.3; Juv.  3.198. Taafe, Aristophanes and Women, 84‐85; Ferris, Acting Women, 28.  243  Freud called this juxtaposition of familiar and unfamiliar the Uncanny.    109  shape indeed!” 244 ; Kinsman’s transformation is complete.  After this laughter the  world is not the same for Kinsman.  He must go to the Thesmophoria like a good  Athenian woman and attempt to navigate in a female world, which, of course, goes  horribly awry. 245     We can clearly see ritual ties in the Thesmophoriazusae, although the  transformation of Kinsman does not make him a tool to use in the ritual like the  Megarian girl/piggies in Acharnians.  The key concept to note is that the  transformation of Kinsman introduces change as an important theme in the play and  calls to mind important rituals of transformation that took place at the  Thesmophoria, with which every Athenian citizen, and most likely any Greek  watching the play would have been familiar. 246  This scene and the ensuing  transformation would have made the audience think of the ritual abuse and jesting  that was an integral part of the Thesmophoria.  In addition the audience, no doubt,  would have made the further connection of transformation with the ritual fertilizer                                                           244  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 266. Austin and Olsen, Aristophanes’  Thesmophoriazusae, 140 and Seager, CJ 3 (1890) 499. On the participle see GP 251‐ 2; cf. 213‐14 n. For more on men “acting like” women see Eric Handley, “Acting,  Action and Words in New Comedy” in Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient  Profession, ed. Pat Easterling and Edith Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University  Press, 2002).  245  For a very thorough discussion of Comic costume see Helene Foley’s “The Comic  Body in Greek Art and Drama” in Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction  of the Other in Greek Art, ed. Beth Cohen (Boston: Brill, 2000). Foley also discusses  the particulars of Kinsman’s transformation in terms of the specific costuming  elements that the actor would have worn.  246  This is not to say that the male audience would know about the specifics of the  rites, which were kept secret, but that they would have been aware of the general  idea of the Thesmophoria celebrations; i.e. that they were connected to Demeter, the  cycles of the agricultural year, and fertility.  Unlike the rituals at and before Eleusis  for the Mysteries, each city‐state celebrated the Thesmophoria in its own way,  although certain similarities naturally occur.    110  that was created at the festival with rotten pig remains, 247  which is both a literal,  material transformation 248  and a palimpsestic metaphor of change.  The piglets  sacrificed and put in a huge hole in the ground several days earlier are retrieved and  made into fertilizer, the fertilizer indicates the change of season and the fall planting  that is about to begin, the cycle of life and death, the transformation of seed into  food, etc.  The rituals and Kinsman’s transformation serve to back each other up and  strengthen the theme of transformation in the play. The later series of  transformations even parallels (although not perfectly) Demeter’s search for  Persephone and her eventual release from Hades for nine months of the year with  Euripides’ attempts to free Kinsman from the women of Athens. 249       After Kinsman’s arrival at the Thesmophoria the women quickly become  suspicious of him and his disguise, and attempt to have him arrested and brought to  trial for sacrilegiously attending a female‐only festival. 250   In order to free himself  Kinsman, and then Kinsman and Euripides use a series of plots (and lines) from four  of Euripides’ tragedies: Telephus, Palamedes, Helen, and Andromeda.  In doing so  they set off a series of transformations, an infant turns into a wineskin, Kinsman and  Euripides become various tragic heroes and heroines, tragedy becomes comedy, and  finally, Kinsman becomes male again.  This set of transformations works as a whole  to undo the topsy‐turvy power dynamic of the play where women are calling the                                                           247  See Appendix A for more on the specific events that took place during the  Athenian Thesmophoria.   248  This I again an example of Rappaport’s idea about both the ritual to change and  object and the changed object both being important.  249  Angeliki Tzanetou, “Something to Do with Demeter: Ritual and Performance in  Aristophanes' Women at the Thesmophoria,” The American Journal of Philology 123  (2002): 342.  250  Taafe, Aristophanes and Women, 74 and Bobrick, “The Tyranny of Roles,”178.    111  shots and exercising their power over both Kinsman (they can have him arrested)  and Euripides (they are condemning him to death) 251  and reassert the patriarchal  system.  It also is a key part of an ongoing conversation that Aristophanes is having  with the Athenian audience about genre and intertextuality. 252     Transformation and intertextuality in the Thesmophoriazusae have some  very clear common ground.  One of the main purposes of the intertextual scenes is  to facilitate the transformation of Kinsman and Euripides to enable their escape  from the wives of Athens.  Intertextuality in Aristophanes is, in fact, a subset of  transformation.  Aristophanes uses snippets of Euripides’ texts and segments of his  plots to re‐imagine them as comedy and to transform their meaning. Platter argues  that Aristophanes makes the intertextual plots sometimes successful and sometimes  unsuccessful to create a matrix of ambivalence about tragedy and how the wisdom  from it can be applied. Zeitlin sees intertextuality in the Thesmophoriazusae as part  of an investigation of theater and identity through mimesis, gender, and genre. 253    Intertextuality in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusae can certainly be a method for  investigating both of these things, however, it is also very much about                                                           251  Bobrick, “The Tyranny of Roles,” 177; Frances Muecke, “Playing with the Play:  Theatrical Self‐consciousness in Aristophanes,” Antichthon 11 (1977); and Froma  Zeitlin, “Travesties of Gender and Genre in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae” in  Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. Helene Foley (New York: Gordon & Breach,  1981).  252  See Charles Platter, Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres (Baltimore: Johns  Hopkins University Press, 2006) for more on intertextuality in other Aristophanes  plays. For the links between gender and intertextuality see Froma Zeitlin, Playing  The Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature (Chicago: The University  of Chicago Press, 1985).  I will elaborate on the ideas of genre and intertextuality in  Chapter 4.  253  Froma Zeitlin, Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classics Greek Literature  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) esp. Chapter 9, “Travesties of Gender  and Genre in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae.”    112  transformation.  At a festival dedicated to seasonal change and agricultural  transformation a male character changes gender (four times!) and employs the plots  of tragedies within a comedic contest, and, as Zeitlin points out, 254  by using these  abduction/rescue plots from Euripides transforms the mythological tale that forms  the backbone of the Thesmophoria, the rape of Persephone by Hades and her  seasonal rescue by her mother.    The first Euripidean tragedy the Kinsman employs in an attempt to escape  from the women at the Thesmophoria, who by this time have seen through his  costume, is the Telephus. 255   Euripides’ Telephus did not survive intact; we have only  fragments and Aristophanes’ parody of the play.  It presumably involved the kidnap  and threatened death of baby Orestes with a positive outcome for Telephus, 256   because Kinsman employs the same strategy.   He grabs Mica’s baby and claims he  will kill the baby if the women do not let him go (692‐695).  The scene is  unsuccessful in several ways, first the “baby” turns out to be a wineskin that Mica  has been drinking from, second the wineskin is “sacrificed” by Kinsman, (unlike the  baby Orestes in Telephus), and thirdly Kinsman does not have a successful                                                           254  Zeitlin, Playing the Other, 375‐416.  255  Harold Miller, “Euripides’ Telephus and the Thesmophoriazusae of  Aristophanes,” Classical Philology 43 (1948): 182‐3; P. Rau, “Die Tragodienspiel en  den ‘Thesmophoriazusen,’” in Aristophanes und die Alte Komodie, ed. Hans‐Joachim  Newiger (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975); Zeitlin, “Travesties  of Gender and Genre, ”184; Taafe, Aristophanes and Women, 94‐5; Alan  Sommerstein, Aristophanes: Thesmophoriazusae (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1994),  212 and 223; and Bobrick, “The Tyranny of Roles,” 184.  256  Telephus was wounded by Achilles in a battle as the Achaeans made their way to  Troy to reclaim Helen. When the wound wouldn’t heal, Telephus went to Delphi to  ask the oracle for advice and was told, “he that wounded shall heal”.  When the  Achaeans at first would not help him, he snatched the baby Orestes and threatened  to kill him if the Achaeans didn’t help.  Ultimately, Odysseus figured out how to heal  the wound (with Achilles’ spear) and Orestes was returned unharmed.      113  conclusion to his standoff with the women (Telephus’ standoff with the Achaeans  ends in his favor). 257   Despite a revelation: the baby is unswaddled and revealed to  be a wineskin 258  and much joking and double entendres that would have elicited  laughter the transformation that Kinsman is hoping for, from prisoner to free man,  does not occur.  Certainly the scene is rife with transformative language and  allusions; Mica threatens to change Kinsman into a piece of charcoal by burning him  (729), the baby “changes” from an infant to a wineskin (730‐734), and Kinsman  makes reference to the Anthesteria, 259  a festival to Dionysos that celebrated the  successful aging of grape juice into wine (745‐6), however Kinsman has to try  another tragic plot in the hopes of escaping.  Kinsman realizes that since Euripides got him into this mess he should turn  to Euripides for help and decides to use a method of silently getting a message to  Euripides from his recent Palamedes.  In the play, which does not survive,  Palamedes’ brother Oeax scratches a message to their father into oar blades and  drifts them back to Greece.  In the absence of oars, Kinsman uses wooden votive  tablets which he sends off with,  “βάσκετ᾽ ἐπείγετε πάσας καθ᾽ ὁδοὺς Away! Hasten  down every road” 260  rather than the sea. This second parody carries through the  parabasis in which the women of Athens offer their defense of themselves against                                                           257  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 695‐764. For the specifics of tragic language  used here see Austin and Olsen, Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, 244‐5.  258  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 730‐734.  259  Austin and Olsen, Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae, 254; Euripides, Iphigenia in  Taurus, 947‐60; Arthur Pickard‐Cambridge, the Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1989), 10‐12; Deubner, Attische Feste, 93‐122; Richard Hamilton,  Choes and Anthesteria: Athenian Iconography and Ritual (Ann Arbor: The University  of Michigan Press, 1992), 5‐62.  260  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 783.    114  men’s common complaints about them.  The women are defending themselves from  what they claim are false accusations, just like Palamedes in Euripides’ play, who  has been set up by Odysseus and charged on the basis of false evidence. Like  Palamedes, they are doomed to pay the price for these charges, as it doesn’t seem  like men will stop their complaints and at the end of the comedy any power the  women have has been taken away from them, as I will discuss in more detail shortly.   At the close of the parabasis Kinsman is still waiting for Euripides and decides if he  really wants to be rescued he had better try another plot, because although  Palamedes has been transformed for comedy Kinsman is still a prisoner.  Although he has been unmasked (figuratively) as a man in women’s clothing,  Kinsman decides that since he is already costumed as a woman he will try  reasserting his womanhood and use Euripides’ Helen and star as Helen for his next  escape plan. 261   Critylla, the leader of the women during the festival takes part in  this scene as a disbelieving audience, the straight man, who can’t quite catch up to  the literary parody by Kinsman and Euripides. And finally Euripides arrives dressed  as a shipwrecked Menelaus to rescue Kinsman/Helen.  However, despite their  attempts to draw Critylla into the plot 262  she blocks their escape as the Marshal and  Archer arrive to guard Kinsman.                                                           261  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 850‐1. See also Austin and Olsen, Aristophanes’  Thesmophoriazusae, lx‐lxi and 279; A. M. Bowie, Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and  Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 218‐9; Taafe, Aristophanes  and Women, 95; and Bobrick, “The Tyranny of Roles,” 184.  262  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 874‐6; 881‐4; 892‐4; 896‐99; 918‐23. For  more on Aristophanes’ parody of tragic conventions see Peter Arnott, Greek Scenic  Conventions in the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 62.    115  The council has decreed that Kinsman must be tied to a plank while still in  women’s cloths and executed. 263   And this set‐up allows Kinsman to try one more  tragic plot to evade his fate, Euripides’ Andromeda.  Just like the eponymous heroine  he is bound and suspended, skirts fluttering.  Kinsman makes a plea to the women to  free him and then Echo arrives.  In Euripides’ tragedy Andromeda is imprisoned in  Echo’s cave, however Echo’s vocal quirks here only serve comedy, in fact she is a  jester who claims to have helped Euripides last year when he put up Andromeda. 264    Echo begins to interrupt and repeat Kinsman, who quickly becomes angry and the  two trade the same insults back and forth.  Then the archer enters and he quickly  falls into the same trap.  Finally Euripides arrives as Perseus, however this time it is  the Archer, who is portrayed as too foreign/stupid to understand the parody.  Again  Euripides is forced to retreat without Kinsman.    The final strategy Kinsman and Euripides employ is not a Euripidean tragedy  at all, but a comedy.  Euripides, dressed as a madam, brings a slave girl (a mute nude  hetaira) to distract the Archer.  He offers the women a deal – if they allow him to  rescue Kinsman he won’t say anything bad about them in the future and if they don’t  agree he will tell their husbands what they have been up to while the husbands have  been away.  The women agree and Euripides begins his comedy.  The Archer is  easily diverted from his task of guarding Kinsman by the beautiful slave girl, which  allows Kinsman and Euripides to escape.                                                             263  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 929‐34.  264  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 1059‐63. Taafe, Aristophanes and Women, 97  and Bobrick, “The Tyranny of Roles,” 185.    116  This series of parodies, transformations, and failed transformations was  often categorized by scholars of comedy as a hodgepodge, an instance of comic fun  with no real substance and dismissed it in favor of other Aristophanes plays with  women in charge or ritual associations. 265   However, I agree with Zeitlin that the  play and this series of parodies are cohesive and purposeful.  First, and perhaps  most obviously, we have the triumph of comedy over tragedy. 266   Or at the very least  comedy is revealed to be more useful than tragedy, since it is not until Euripides and  Kinsman employ a comic rather than a tragic plot that they are able to escape. 267     However this series goes much deeper than a criticism of theatrical  aesthetics and generic concerns. There are certain characters who understand the  parody and revelation/laughter/transformation paradigm and therefore the  conventions of the theater and certain characters who do not.  Crytilla and the  Archer play the same role in the two parodies of Helen and Andromeda and are  linked in their thick misunderstanding of what is happening. 268   Only Kinsman and                                                           265  Zeitlin discusses this in Playing the Other; Harriott Poetry and Criticism Before  Plato; Snell “Aristophanes and Aesthetic Criticism” in The Discovery of the Mind: The  Greek Origins of European Thought; Whitman Aristophanes and the Comic Hero are  all examples of scholarly work that either shortchanges Thesmophoriazusae in favor  of the other “women’s plays” (Lysistrata and Assemblywomen) or overlooks  Thesmophoriazusae in favor of other ritual plays (Frogs).   266  I am certainly not the only person to see this triumph of comedy.  See also Anton  Bierl, “Dionysos und die griechische Tragodie. Politische und  ‘metatheatricalische’Aspekte im Text” Classica Monacensia 1 (1991); Thomas  Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy: Aristophanes and the Intertextual Parabasis (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1991), 182‐99; Bowie 1993 217‐25; Taafe, Aristophanes  and Women, 98‐9; Henderson, Three Plays by Aristophanes, 96‐7; Zeitlin, Playing the  Other, 387‐99; and Tzanetou, “Something to do with Demeter,” 355‐9.    267  I will return to this idea of usefulness and to what use Aristophanes was putting  his comedies in Chapter 4.  268  Joseph Dane, “Aristophanic Parody: “Thesmophoriazusae” and the Three‐Actor  Rule,” Theatre Journal 36 (1984): 78 also notes that Crytilla and the Archer are    117  Euripides understand and can play with the conventions of genre, costume, and  transformation.  This complete confusion on the part of the leader of the women in  the play and her connection with the buffoon‐like Archer greatly undermine the  power of the women in the play and are a significant element in the “re‐aligning” of  the power, into its “proper” sphere.   At the start of Thesmophoriazusae the women are in charge.  They have taken  over the ritual space on the Pnyx (as was customary during the Thesmophoria).  But  their power is not limited to the ritual space or to the ritual at hand.  Instead they  have decided to hold a trial of Euripides and to determine if he will be put to  death. 269   Even though in reality a trial could not be held on ritual days and certainly  not by a group of women; in the world of the play the power structure is topsy‐ turvy.  By the time Kinsman is unmasked as a man and taken prisoner by the women  the women’s power has reached it zenith. They have control over both the male  protagonists and the power to put them to death.  It is only through the series of  parodies that Euripides and Kinsman are able to topple the women’s administration  and reassert their dominant roles.    This is accomplished in part by their mastery of transformation.  Even though  the play is set during a festival of transformation controlled by women, the leader of  their religious practices does not seem to understand transformation at all.   Crytilla’s interactions with Kinsman/Helen and Euripides/Menelaus are ploddingly                                                           linked in their misunderstanding of the parody. Although he believes that the  audience would side with Crytilla and the Archer, I do not agree.  Audiences usually  identify with the hero of the play and in this instance either Euripides or Kinsman  (or perhaps both) are the Comic Hero(es). See also Taafe, Women and Aristophanes,  96 and 101 on Thesmophoriazusae uniting men against women.  269  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 81‐85.    118  prosaic and literal.  When Kinsman tells Euripides that they are in the halls of  Proteus, Crytilla insists that Proteus has been dead for 10 years – and is clearly  referring to a former acquaintance, not the mythical Proteus from the Trojan  cycle. 270   When Euripides (still playing the part of shipwrecked Menelaus) asks  where he has landed and Kinsman/Helen tells him they are in Egypt, Crytilla still  does not understand the parody and insists they are in the Thesmophorium. 271   This  basic exchange continues (Euripides and Kinsman acting their roles and Crytilla  taking them literally) until Crytilla decides that Euripides is a criminal like Kinsman  (although still never recognizing him as either Euripides, the playwright the women  have just been talking about at length, or as Menelaus) and at the entrance of the  Marshall and the Archer Euripides runs away to think up another strategy.  In the subsequent parody of Andromeda, the Archer is the bumbling prosaic  straight man who doesn’t understand what Euripides, Echo, and Kinsman are up to.   By having these two scenes with Crytilla and the Archer fulfilling the same role back  to back the association of the two and the underlying message is clear: women and  foreigners do not understand transformation and cannot interact with  transformation on the same level of mastery as Athenian men are able to. 272                                                            270  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 874‐6.  271  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 877‐880.  272  Many scholars talk about these parodies as failed and I agree – they do not  facilitate transformation.  They do fail to set Kinsman free or smooth over the rift  between Euripides and the women of Athens.  However, if we look at them in terms  of transformation they can give us very useful information about what a failed  transformation is. Euripides and Kinsman are transformed into various characters.  Where they fall short is audience transformation.  All of the Euripidean plots while  clear to an ancient audience watching, and a modern reading audience, are opaque  to their intended audiences within the play (the Chorus, Crytilla, and the Archer).   And this is a noteworthy element of transformation for the theater – nothing will be    119    In fact, in the play men are so much more in control of transformation that  Euripides is able to use the series of parodies to get exactly what he wants.  When,  after four of his tragic plots have been unsuccessful, he enters dressed as an old  woman with a flute girl in tow it is clear that Euripides is now parodying comedy.  Immediately he tells the women that they should make a deal with him because he  now has figured out a foolproof way to rescue Kinsman and evade the women’s  punishment.  In the space of the four tragic parodies the women have lost  considerable power.  Euripides offers them a deal,  Εὐριπίδης γυναῖκες εἰ βούλεσθε τὸν λοιπόν χρόνον σπονδὰς ποιήσασθαι πρὸς ἐμέ, νυνὶ πάρα, ἐφ᾽ ᾧτ᾽ ἀκοῦσαι μηδὲν ὑπ᾽ ἐμοῦ μηδαμὰ κακὸν τὸ λοιπόν. ταῦτ᾽ ἐπικηρυκεύομαι. Χορός χρείᾳ δὲ ποίᾳ τόνδ᾽ ἐπεσφέρεις λόγον; Εὐριπίδης ὅδ᾽ ἐστὶν οὑν τῇ σανίδι κηδεστὴς ἐμός. ἢν οὖν κομίσωμαι τοῦτον, οὐδὲν μή ποτε κακῶς ἀκούσητ᾽: ἢν δὲ μὴ πίθησθέ μοι, ἃ νῦν ὑποικουρεῖτε τοῖσιν ἀνδράσιν ἀπὸ τῆς στρατιᾶς παροῦσιν ὑμῶν διαβαλῶ. Χορός τὰ μὲν παρ᾽ ἡμῶν ἴσθι σοι πεπεισμένα: Euripides Women, if you will be reconciled with me, I am willing, and I undertake never to say anything ill of you in future. Those are my proposals for peace. Chorus And what impels you to make these overtures?                                                          accomplished or even be comprehensible if you do not transform your audience as  well.  The transformation of the audience is an idea I will return to in the next  chapter. In a private email Helene Foley noted that she believes they fail because  they are neither tragedy nor comedy.  I think this is an intriguing idea and could  have further development with the trugodia discussed in the next chapter. See also  Bobrick, “The Tyranny of Roles,” 188‐9 and Edith Hall, “The Archer Scene in  Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae,” Philologus: Zeitschrift fur das klassische Alterum  133 (1989). Also see Zeitlin, Playing the Other, 69 on the role of women as useful  tools to help along the plot of a comedy.    120  Euripides This unfortunate man, who is chained to the post, is my father-in-law; if you will restore him to me, you will have no more cause to complain of me; but if not, I shall reveal your pranks to your husbands when they return from the war. Chorus We accept peace. 273 His proposal to the women is half compromise and half threat.  And since they are  about to loose all of their leverage the women have no choice and are forced to  agree to Euripides’ terms, luckily they do get a promise of no more misogyny. 274   As  Zeitlin and others have argued, at the close of the play we see the patriarchal power  structure restored.  This would happen in reality at the close of the Thesmophoria,  when the women left the Pnyx and resumed their normal lives in the home, far from  any courts or other powerful institution.  The difference I want to highlight is that it  is only through the authoritative use of transformation that the two Athenian men  are able to restore their own autonomy and by extension the “correct” power  structure for all of Athens.      The Frogs  Aristophanes’ Frogs has many well‐documented ritual moments representing  and reinterpreting festivals to both Demeter and Dionysos.  Despite the fact that this  play has been dissected and discussed for centuries I don’t think there has been a                                                           273  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae  274  Zeitlin in Playing the Other also argues that the women are about to loose all of  their bargaining power.    121  compelling argument for why there are two choruses and why the first chorus is a  group of frogs.  However, I do believe that if we look at this play with the theme of  transformation in mind there is a cohesive and compelling reason for the two  choruses and that this theme carries through to the contest between the great  tragedians: Euripides and Aeschylus.    The first transformation of the play takes place before the action commences.   Dionysos enters wearing his own customary garments with a lion skin over the  top. 275   He has attempted to transform into Herakles in order to make his way down  into  the  underworld  to  retrieve  Euripides,  who  has  recently  died. 276     This  transformation is interesting from the perspective of my paradigm; it has partially  occurred – but doesn’t quite work and needs some fine‐tuning. Herakles when he  sees the disguised Dionysos can’t stop laughing 277  and doesn’t recognize himself in  the costume Dionysos has devised. 278   However this laughter and then the revelation  by Herakles of how to get to Hades 279  seem to do the trick because once in Hades  Dionysos is mistaken for Herakles by Aeacus 280  who yells at him and threatens to  beat him up for mistreating Cerberus last time he was in Hades (Herakles was  actually the one to manhandle Cerberus).    After this initial mis‐recognition of Dionysos‐Herakles there is a whole series  of transformations as Dionysos and his slave Xanthias swap the lion skin back and                                                           275  Aristophanes, Frogs 45‐48.  276  Dionysos has a powerful craving for Euripides’ poetry, such as one might have  for thick soup (ἔτνος). Frogs 63.   277  Aristophanes, Frogs 42‐45.  278  Aristophanes, Frogs 108‐9.  279  Aristophanes, Frogs 109‐164.  280  Aristophanes, Frogs 465‐9.    122  forth and each in turn get mis‐recognized as the Herakles.  This series follows a  more standard formula of revelation and laughter and then transformation.  First  Dionysos, terrified of Aeacus, defecates all over himself and after several jokes,  reveals his ass to the audience in an effort to clean up.  This enables Xanthias to take  the lionskin, and then in turn he is mistaken for Herakles by the Maid, who promises  him  dancing  girls  and  a  delicious  feast  (to  uproarious  laughter  no  doubt). 281    Dionysos then snatches back the lionskin cloak, only to be taken for Herakles by the  angry Innkeeper who reminds “Herakles” how much damage he did to the inn and  how much he ate last time he was in Hades all without payment. 282  Xanthias and  Dionysos proceed to each attempt to force the other to wear the lionskin and then  both claim to be a god, which leads to a flogging contest. 283   However, the set‐up for  this quick back and forth is the standard: revelation and laughter, the combination  of which engenders a transformation.    These scenes and the transformations of Dionysos and Xanthias into (and out  of) Herakles are, strictly speaking, the only transformations in the play. However,  the entire play is about transformation as we can see when we look at the two  Choruses that Aristophanes has written into the play: the Frogs and the Initiates  (they have been initiated into the cult of Demeter at Eleusis).   Dionysos encounters the Frogs as he is rowing himself across the Styx 284  on  his way to Hades to retrieve Euripides.  The scene is funny, strange, and for a  modern reader a bit confusing; why is there a chorus of Frogs? What does it mean                                                           281  Aristophanes, Frogs 503‐518.  282  Aristophanes, Frogs 549‐578.  283  Aristophanes, Frogs 635‐671.  284  Aristophanes, Frogs 205 and following.    123  for the play as a whole, and what do they represent? I am certainly not the first  person to investigate the scene between Dionysos and the Frogs and look for an  explanation. Nancy Demand writes,   In most of the plays of Aristophanes the choruses are clearly related  to the play as a whole.  The birds and the clouds and the wasps are  intrinsic  parts  of  their  plays,  and  one  need  not  question  why  Aristophanes chose choruses of women for the Thesmophoriazusae,  the Ecclesiazusae, and the Lysistrata, and the choruses of the country  folk  for  the  peace  plays,  the  Peace  and  the  Acharnians.  Even  the  central chorus of initiates in the Frogs seems a reasonable enough  choice for a trip to Hades.  However, the case is very different with the  other chorus in this play, the chorus of frogs, which participates in  only one brief episode and yet lends its name to the play. 285      David Campbell notes that, “most recent critics find relevance in the scene and see  the contest between the Frogs and Dionysos as in some way an anticipation of the  contest between Aeschylus and Euripides; or they regard the song of the Frogs as an  unfavorable comment on contemporary writers.” 286   I certainly agree that there is a  resonance  between  the  contest  between  the  frogs  and  Dionysos  and  the  later  contest.  However, as Demand observed, usually the animal/nonhuman chorus in  some way relates to the play overall and is “intrinsic”.      I believe the key to figuring out why the frogs are in the play and why  Aristophanes named the play for them is in the very beginning of the scene itself.  As  the frogs begin their song they exhort each other,                                                            285  Nancy Demand, “The Identity of the Frogs,” Classical Philology 65 (1970): 83.  286  David Campbell, “The Frogs in the Frogs,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 104  (1984): 164. For more on the scene as parody of the skill of other poets see:  Demand, “The Identity of the Frogs”; Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes  (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966); and Alexis Solomos, The Living  Aristophanes (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1974).    124  λιμναῖα κρηνῶν τέκνα,   ξύναυλον ὕμνων βοὰν   φθεγξώμεθ᾽, εὔγηρυν ἐμὰν ἀοιδάν,   κοὰξ κοάξ,    ἣν ἀμφὶ Νυσήιον   Διὸς Διόνυσον ἐν   Λίμναισιν ἰαχήσαμεν,   ἡνίχ᾽ ὁ κραιπαλόκωμος   τοῖς ἱεροῖσι Χύτροισι   χωρεῖ κατ᾽ ἐμὸν τέμενος λαῶν ὄχλος.   Children of the marsh and spring,  Let us sound a song in concert with the flute,  Our own sweet‐sounding song,  Koax Koax  Which once we sounded   About Nysian Dionysos, son of Zeus  In Limnae when the crowd of drunken revelers, on sacred Pot Day,   travelled through my sacred precinct. 287     The frogs’ song has a number of clues about why they are the chorus. First is the  holiday that they mention: Chytroi or Pot Day.  This was the third day of the three‐ day festival for Dionysos in the spring, the Anthesteria.  The Anthesteria celebrated  the “arrival of Dionysos to the city” through several ritual observances.  Someone,  most likely the Archon Basileus, dressed as Dionysos, or perhaps a cult image of  Dionysos arrived at the port of Athens by boat/chariot and was brought into the city  in a procession. 288   This most likely occurred on the first day of the festival, the  Pithogia (opening of the casks). 289   Also on this day the casks of new wine that had  been fermenting since the previous harvest were opened in the sacred precinct to  Dionysos southwest of the acropolis, 290  the Limnaion, the temple of Dionysos e0n                                                          287  Aristophanes, Frogs 211‐219.  288  See Simon, Festivals of Attica, 94, Figure 12 for a black figure skyphos painted  with this procession.  289  Simon, Festivals of Attica, 93.  290  Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, ii. 15.    125  li/mnaij or in the Marshes.  This precinct was only open during the Anthesteria, so  presumably wildlife, like frogs would have been free to colonize the area all other  parts of the year.  It seems reasonable that a precinct in the marshes would have had  a good number of frogs, especially one that was very rarely used for celebration.  And the Athenian audience would have been well aware of this and the association  of frogs with Dionysos and the Anthesteria may not have been so strange. 291     This explanation however, does not go far enough to justify Aristophanes  using them for the first chorus and naming the play for them.  The second clue is in  the very nature of a frog’s life cycle. Frogs are not born or hatched fully formed;  instead a mature female frog lays a group of eggs that then hatch as tadpoles.  Over  the next few weeks the tadpoles sprout four legs, slowly lose their tails, and begin to  breathe out of the water, until they transform into frogs.  So unlike many other  animals frogs are not born as tiny versions of their mature selves but as a wholly  other type of being that is transformed.  Indeed, this is the link between the two  choruses – they are both choruses of transformed beings.      The frogs mention their presence at the Anthesteria both perhaps as an “in‐ joke” that only a celebrant at Athens would understand, but also to remind the  audience of the transformative nature of that festival.  Dionysos arrives in a literal  way at Athens with the boat and procession, and he also arrives in the new wine, or  transformed grape juice.  And this transformation is the main reason for the  Anthesteria and the opening of the precinct at Limnae.  During the first day the  casks of wine are opened and a jug is given to every household that wants one. The                                                           291  Parke, The Festivals of the Athenians, 108 agrees with me that the association  between the frog chorus and the Anthesteria would have been natural.    126  second day of the festival, Choes or Wine Jug Day, 292  revolves around private  drinking parties and contests in Athenian homes and the city held a citywide  drinking contest. 293       The chorus and the title of the Frogs is neither baffling nor does it require a  tortuous explanation when we look at it through the lens of transformation.  Viewed  this way the frogs are clearly intrinsic to the play and are a comedic counterpoint to  their co‐chorus, the Eleusinian Initiates, just as their contest with Dionysos is a  comedic foreshadowing of the tragic contest between Aeschylus and Euripides. 294     The Birds    The transformation of Euelpides and Peisetaerus in Aristophanes’ Birds 295  is  a species transformation rather than a gender or identity conversion.  The two  elderly men have left Athens in search of Tereus, the man who, after raping and  mutilating his sister‐in‐law, was turned, by the gods, into a bird.  Finally the two  Athenians find Tereus and his kingdom and convince the birds that they do not wish  to harm them but instead to join them 296  and help them overthrow the gods.  Once                                                           292  The only remaining literary evidence for this day of the festival is the Acharnians  and a story from Timaeus. Although there are numerous representations on wine  jugs see Henry Immerwahr, “Choes and Chytroi,” Transactions and Proceedings of  the American Philological Association 77 (1946).  293  Simon, Festivals of Attica, 95.  294  I will discuss this scene between Dionysos, Aeschylus and Euripides in much  greater detail in Chapter 4.  295  The Knights is chronologically the first non‐ritual play to have a transformation  as a major part of the action in the play.  However, this play explains and illustrates  a much larger project of Aristophanes’.  So I will look at it in the following chapter.  296  Aristophanes Birds, ed. and trans Alan H. Sommerstein (Oxford: Oxbow Books,  1987) 62‐64.    127  the birds are persuaded of the Athenians’ good intentions they give Euelpides and  Peisetaerus lunch and an erotic show before their transformation into birds.    Χορός  τούτους μὲν ἄγων μετὰ σαυτοῦ  ἀρίστισον εὖ: τὴν δ᾽ ἡδυμελῆ ξύμφωνον ἀηδόνα Μούσαις κατάλειφ᾽ ἡμῖν δεῦρ᾽ ἐκβιβάσας, ἵνα παίσωμεν μετ᾽ ἐκείνης. Πισθέταιρος  ὦ τοῦτο μεντοι νὴ Δί᾽ αὐτοῖσιν πιθοῦ: ἐκβίβασον ἐκ τοῦ βουτόμου τοὐρνίθιον. Ἐυελπίδης  ἐκβίβασον αὐτοῦ πρὸς θεῶν αὐτήν, ἵνα  καὶ νὼ θεασώμεσθα τὴν ἀηδόνα. Ἔποψ ἀλλ᾽ εἰ δοκεῖ σφῷν, ταῦτα χρὴ δρᾶν. ἡ Πρόκνη  ἔκβαινε καὶ σαυτὴν ἐπιδείκνυ τοῖς ξένοις. Πισθέταιρος  ὦ Ζεῦ πολυτίμηθ᾽ ὡς καλὸν τοὐρνίθιον,  ὡς δ᾽ ἁπαλόν, ὡς δὲ λευκόν. Ἐυελπίδης  ἆρά γ᾽ οἶσθ᾽ ὅτι ἐγὼ διαμηρίζοιμ᾽ ἂν αὐτὴν ἡδέως; Πισθέταιρος ὅσον δ᾽ ἔχει τὸν χρυσόν, ὥσπερ παρθένος. Ἐυελπίδης  ἐγὼ μὲν αὐτὴν κἂν φιλῆσαί μοι δοκῶ. Πισθέταιρος  ἀλλ᾽ ὦ κακόδαιμον ῥύγχος ὀβελίσκοιν ἔχει. Ἐυελπίδης  ἀλλ᾽ ὥσπερ ᾠὸν νὴ Δί᾽ ἀπολέψαντα χρὴ  ἀπὸ τῆς κεφαλῆς τὸ λέμμα κᾆθ᾽ οὕτω φιλεῖν. CHORUS‐LEADER: Take these men with you, and give them a good lunch; but bring  out here the nightingale, the sweet‐voiced fellow‐songstress of the Muses, and leave  her with us, so that we can disport ourselves with her.                                    PEISETAERUS: Oh, yes, by Zeus, do this as they ask; bring the little birdie out of the  sedges.                                                                                                                       EUELPIDES: Yes, in the gods’ name, bring her out, so that we two can have a look at  the nightingale.                                                                                                                       TEREUS: Well, if that’s what the two of you want, that’s what we must do. Procne!  Come outside and show yourself to our visitors.                                                            [Procne comes out. She has a woman’s body with a bird’ head, and is equipped as a  piper.]                                                                                                                    PEISETAERUS: Holy Zeus, what a lovely birdie! How fair, how tender!            EUELPIDES: Do you know, I’d have great pleasure in spreading her legs for her?   PEISETAERUS: And what a lot of gold she’s wearing, like a real young miss!  EUELPIDES: I think I’d like to kiss her.                                                         PEISETAERUS: But, you silly fool, she’s got a pair of spits for a beak!            EUELPIDES: Why, then, we’ll just have to peel her like an egg – strip the shell firmly  off her head and kiss her like that. 297                                                            297  Aristophanes, Birds 658‐674.    128  The chorus leader of the Birds directs this strange little scene that precedes  Euelpides and Peisetaerus’ transformation from men to birds.  For Tereus tells them  in line 654, “mhde\v fobhqh1j e!#sti ga/r ti r9izi/on, o# diatrago/nt’ e!sesqon e0rterwme/vw. Don’t be afraid. There is a small root which you can chew and you will  have wings.”  But instead of immediately going with Tereus to get this root the  Chorus Leader presides over the Athenians’ lunch.      The lunch scene, although lunch is called for, does not center on food, but the  woman/nightingale Procne, who in all likelihood would have been a hetaira, nude  except for her bird mask. 298   She is called out of her hiding place to dance for the  Athenian men and other birds.  The chorus leader has set the tone for the scene by  saying that they, Euelpides and Peisetaerus and the birds can pai/zw or play  amorously with Procne.  The men then admire her and Euelpides makes several  erotic jokes about parting Procne’s legs and peeling her like an egg (stripping her)  so that he can kiss her.  This sexual banter combined with the stage action of  Euelpides trying to kiss the beaked Procne and failing would certainly elicit laughter  from the audience.  And indeed right after Euelpides fails to kiss Procne (the  comedic climax of the scene) Tereus leads the two Athenians away to consume the  root and transform into birds. 299                                                            298  Zweig, “The Mute Nude Female Characters in Aristophanes Plays,” 77. On hetairai  appearing in Old Comedy see also Madeleine Henry, Menander’s Courtesans and the  Greek Comic Tradition (Frankfurst: Peter Lang, 1985), 13‐31 and Eva Keuls, The  Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (Berkley: The University of  California Press, 1993), 191.  299  Bowie, Aristophanes, 159; Taafe, Aristophanes and Women, 41‐2; and F. E. Romer,  “Good Intentions and the o(do\j h( e)j ko/rakaj,” in The City as Comedy, ed. G. W.  Dobrov (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 58.    129    The laughter of the audience in the Birds pre‐transformation scene is slightly  different from the scene of Kinsman’s transformation and the parody scenes in the  Thesmophoriazusae.  Like the audience at the Thesmophoriazusae, the Birds viewers  would have laughed together creating an audience wide theatrical telepathy.   However, they still would have been laughing at the play and not along with the  characters in the play. But, the scene in the Birds is organized differently. Euelpides  and Peisetaerus as the audience for Procne’s performance are in effect in the same  position as the audience of the play.  This parallel role allows the audience to go  through the scene as the characters do.   Thereby experiencing the Royle/Bataillian  telepathy with the characters in the play.  They are also watching Procne and the  jokes pull each audience member into the play so that they laugh from within it. 300    Procne is not only a visually titillating nude woman, but also a necessary tool for the  transformation of the two men.  Despite the fact that they have been told that their  transformation is a simple matter of eating a root this scene allows for the  transformation paradigm to play out before the two are lead off stage, including the  audience in the “ritual” of transformation.      All of these transformations are examples of Aristophanes employing the  power of laughter and transformation, usually seen in a ritual context, to change a  character, plot, or genre in one of his plays.  Not surprisingly, many are from plays  that already have strong resonance with rituals of transformation because of their  setting (the Thesmophoriazusae and the Frogs) or because of their characters  (Dionysos).  The transformation in The Birds is a nice example of the literary topos                                                           300  Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny (New York: Routledge, 2003) 262.     130  now functioning by itself, outside of an explicitly ritual context.  The episode has the  three ingredients of the revelation/laughter/transformation paradigm, but it is no  longer tied to its original, ritual setting.     Seeing how the literary trope of the revelation/laughter/transformation  paradigm works outside of an explicitly ritual setting can allow us to look at a larger  issue in Aristophanes’ comedy: didactic transformation. Several texts, Acharnians,  Knights, and Frogs make specific claims about teaching the people of Athens and  convincing them of certain beliefs through Comedy.  The next chapter will look at  these three plays for examples of how this larger didactic project worked and how  laughter and revelation played a part.      131        Chapter Four: Aristophanes, Pedagogy, and the Transformed City  Introduction  The first three chapters of this project have all, in some way, served to set‐up  the revelations of this final chapter.  I have traced a laughter paradigm from archaic  myth, ritual, and literature into the Classical period and onto the comedic stage.  I  think this longstanding relationship between something aischros, laughter, and  transformation in the Greek imagination is enormously important for  understanding and interpreting Old Comedy in general and Aristophanes in  particular.  Understanding the laughter/transformation paradigm can help us  appreciate the ideology of the form of Old Comedy even more clearly, and also  comprehend the theatrical project of didactic transformation of the Athenian  citizens’ political opinions.  This chapter will focus on the larger didactic and meta‐theatrical use of the  revelation/laughter/transformation paradigm in both the second half of the Frogs  and in the Knights.  In these plays the characters and the chorus in the parabases  make the case for using the paradigm to enable didactic transformation of the  audience.  In essence the entire experience of an Aristophanic play for the viewer is  the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm writ large.  Their experience is  one full of laughter, revelations, and aischrologia and through their encounter with  comedy they are altered in some way themselves.  The ultimate goal for the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm writ large is to transform the views    132  of the demos of Athens; all of the smaller transformations within the plot of the  comedies and the ritual settings of many of Aristophanes’ plays serve this larger  purpose.    The Frogs and the Knights highlight this meta‐theatrical use of the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm most clearly, so I will use these two  plays to layout what I see as the larger pedagogical and thematic concerns in  Aristophanes’ comedies.  The Knights especially, as it is one of Aristophanes’ earliest  plays 301  and the play he wrote directly after the Babylonians and the Acharnians and  their political aftermath, seems to offer a unique window into the craft behind  Aristophanes’ productions, the evolving mind of the playwright, and his view of  what role theater should play in the Athenian democracy.      Politics, Cleon, and Aristophanes  First it is crucial to trace some of the political and thematic roots of the  Knights through both the Acharnians and the Babylonians.  These two earlier plays  and their reception in Classical Athens are both part of the driving force behind the  Knights and its inspiration.  The Knights defends and solidifies one brand of  Aristophanes’ comedy, and attacks the forces that the chorus says are ensnaring and  enfeebling the demos of Athens.  The play is a natural progression of the ideas about  comedy that Aristophanes is working with in the Acharnians and the Babylonians,                                                           301  The Knights was Aristophanes’ fifth play, which he produced for the Lenaea in  424 BCE.    133  and also a clear product of the growing animosity between Aristophanes and  Cleon. 302   Although the Babylonians is not extant, there are clues in the Acharnians and  the Scholia 303  about its political content, “Babylonians evidently criticized Athenian  imperial policies, and attacked Cleon personally, prompting the politician to indict  the poet . . . on charges of having slandered the magistrates, Councillors, and the  people of Athens in the presence of foreign allies.” 304   The Acharnians, written  directly after the Babylonians, offers absolutely no apology about the pointed  critique of Athens in the Babylonians but defends the role of comedy in the political  life of the city and foreshadows Aristophanes’ much sharper attack of Cleon, 305   which he launched in the Knights the following year.    Previous scholarship on the Knights has focused on the politics of the play, 306   as well it should – it is an intensely political play; however, there has been very little  investigation of how this political satire would work to change the audience or  convince its members that the play’s point of view is the correct one.  For surely  there were larger concerns then just making fun of political figures or eliciting  laughter without any meaningful critique of the current political circumstances.                                                            302  Although there are clear allusions to this very public quarrel, the play cannot be  reduced to just this – as I will discuss in much greater detail.  303  Aristophanes, Acharnians 377‐382, 502‐508, with Schol; T 1.21‐29  304  Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 13.  305  Aristophanes, Acharnians 299‐302.  306  See Edmunds, Cleon, Knights, and Aristophanes’ Politics, and David Littlefield in  “Metaphor and Myth: The Unity of Aristophanes’ Knights,’” Studies in Philology 65  (1968) notes that, “I follow the traditional practice of referring to the First and  Second Slaves as Demosthenes and Nicias, respectively”, indicating the intense and  entrenched scholarly assertion that Knights must be political and must conform to  certain rigid academic assumptions.    134  There is a real sense in both plays that something dangerous is happening that could  have actual consequences in the real world of Athens, outside of the theater. 307   The  Knights is actually very direct in its aims – the point of all the aischrologia, laughter,  and revelation is transformation of Athens, of the demos itself.  And this holds true  throughout Aristophanes’ canon – the point of the smaller transformations is to  remind the viewer that a larger transformation is at work, the one that will have an  effect on him.   The Acharnians explains rather clearly what comedy should do and defends  Aristophanes’ brand of political comedy as necessary to the city’s wellbeing.   Dicaeopolis, whose very name suggests that he will counsel the city about the right  course of action, early in the play, defends his own endeavors (negotiating a  separate peace with the Spartans) to the chorus.                                                          307  Edmunds, Cleon, Knights, and Aristophanes’ Politics notes that there were two  decrees, “that sought to blunt the effect of comedy.  In the archonship of Morychides  (440/39 B.C.) a decree forbade kwmw|dei~n i.e. ridicule; it was rescinded after three  years in the archonship of Euthymenes (437/6 B.C.) (school. Ar. Ach. 67).  In 415 B.C.  a decree was passed mh\ kwmw|dei~sqai o0nomasti tina ‘that no one be ridiculed by  name.’”(60). And in his Apology Plato emphatically lays blame on Aristophanes’  Clouds as part of the reason Socrates’ reputation has been damaged with the citizens  of Athens. 18b‐19c and 23c‐d.    135  μή μοι φθονήσητ᾽ ἄνδρες οἱ θεώμενοι,   εἰ πτωχὸς ὢν ἔπειτ᾽ ἐν Ἀθηναίοις λέγειν   μέλλω περὶ τῆς πόλεως, τρυγῳδίαν ποιῶν.   τὸ γὰρ δίκαιον οἶδε καὶ τρυγῳδία.   ἐγὼ δὲ λέξω δεινὰ μὲν δίκαια δέ.   οὐ γάρ με νῦν γε διαβαλεῖ Κλέων ὅτι   ξένων παρόντων τὴν πόλιν κακῶς λέγω.   αὐτοὶ γάρ ἐσμεν οὑπὶ Ληναίῳ τ᾽ ἀγών,   Do not bear me ill will, gentlemen spectators,   Although I am a beggar, if I am ready to speak to the Athenians   About the city, while making comedy.  For comedy knows about what’s right,   What I will say is terrible, but right  And now Cleon will not accuse me of   Slandering the city with foreigners present,   For we are here by ourselves at the Lenaean Festival. 308                                                               308  Aristophanes, Acharnians 496‐504.    136  There are two appeals here: first, Dicaeopolis is defending himself to the chorus 309   and second, is a defense of the craft of comedy. 310   The previous spring after the  production of Babylonians at the City Dionysia, Cleon charged Aristophanes with  adikaia (wrongdoing) for slandering the city and its officials in front of foreigners, 311   and the Acharnians was Aristophanes’ public rebuttal.      I think it is important to be very clear about the difference between  interpreting the literary themes, meter, structure, tone, etc. of Aristophanes’ work  and claiming to have access to authorial intention.  While we can look at  Aristophanes’ extant corpus in depth and with the historical, social, and cultural  milieu that it was created within, we have no evidence (letters, Aristophanes’ own  notes on the plays, etc.) that can direct us to his intention.  What is left than is to                                                           309  Dicaeopolis is dressed as a beggar because Aristophanes is using plot elements  from Euripides’ Telephus.  For more on the intertextuality of the Acharnians see  Helene Foley, “Tragedy and Politics in Aristophanes’ Acharnians,” The Journal of  Hellenic Studies 108 (1988); also Simon Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice: Essays on Poetics  and Greek Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) esp. 188‐200.   310  Hubbard writes in The Mask of Comedy, 31, “Each . . . parabasis encapsulates an  overview of the poet’s entire career and thus relates his intentions in the present  play to those of earlier works and of his dramatic oeuvre as a whole.” There is also a  very interesting pun in this passage.  Dicaeopolis refers to kwmwdia (comedy) as trugwdia, a word that only appears in Aristophanes and appears to be half  tragwdia (tragedy) and half kwmwdia. LSJ: “Variously explained by Gramm: either  because the actors smeared their faces with lees (τρύξ) or because new wine was  given as a prize, cf. Sch.adloc, Anon.Proll.Com. in CGFp.7 K., etc.; or because comedy  was acted at the season of vintage (τρύγη), Ath. 2.40b).”  However, this word seems  to be doing exactly what Dicaeopolis is doing – blending comedy and tragedy. For  more on this pun see Paulette Ghiron‐Bistagne, “Un calembour méconnu  d’Aristophane: Acharniens 400, Oiseaux 787,” Revue des Etudes Grecques 86 (1973);  O. Taplin, “Tragedy and Trugedy,” The Classical Quarterly 33 (1983); Kenneth  Reckford, Aristophanes’ OldAndNew Comedy: Volume 1: Six Essays in Perspective  (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987); and Foley, “Tragedy and  Politics in Aristophanes’ Acharnians”.  311  Aristophanes, Acharnians 377‐82. And fragment of a scholion on the Ox. Pap. vi  856, esp. 25‐7.    137  figure out how a text is working and what is being conveyed to an audience?  Scholars no longer uncritically accept that the parabasis is Aristophanes speaking  directly to the Athenian people. 312     In addition to countering Cleon’s charges in Acharnians the parabasis also  lays out what a good comedy should do.  In the parabasis the choral leader steps  forward and tells the audience that the poet asks to defend himself (from Cleon’s  accusations).  And the Chorus Leader’s remarks about what Aristophanes has done  for the city are a “how‐to” of good comedy.  “φησὶν δ᾽ εἶναι πολλῶν ἀγαθῶν ἄξιος  ὑμῖν ὁ ποιητής, παύσας ὑμᾶς ξενικοῖσι λόγοις μὴ λίαν ἐξαπατᾶσθαι, μήθ᾽ ἥδεσθαι  θωπευομένους, μήτ᾽ εἶναι χαυνοπολίτας. The poet asserts that he is worthy of great  reward from you, since he stopped you from being thoroughly deceived by  foreigner’s speeches, from delighting in flattery, and from being openmouthed  idiots.” 313   In addition to this the Choral Leader reports that the poet promises to  continue giving the city the best direction. 314   So it seems there are two essential  undertakings for just comedy: to mock the city’s shortcomings so that the citizens  are able to curb their bad behavior and to give counsel to the city to ensure that it  stays on the correct path.                                                               312  Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice, 191 notes that the very fact that the parabasis took  place within a theatrical event “fractures” the voice of the poet. Bowie 1982:29  argues for a more intimate connection between the poet and the comic hero.  De Ste  Croix 1972 argues that “Dicaeopolis alone” can be indentified with Aristophanes and  Foley 1988 also sees this close connection.  This may well be the case – because here  we can see the close connection in the text, and there is no need to surmise about  authorial intention.  313  Aristophanes, Acharnians 633‐5.  314   Aristophanes, Acharnians 656.    138  The Knights    The comedy Aristophanes produced for the following Lenaea in 424 BCE the  Knights is a scathing send‐up of demagogic politicians and how they have brought  Athens to its knees. 315   Demos (representing the people of Athens) is an old man and  his house (Athens) is being run by a flattering slave who takes credit for work that  isn’t his 316  and is scheming behind Demos’ back to steal food and luxuries and  tribute from him. 317   This slave named Paphlagon represents Cleon even though  Aristophanes never explicitly states this 318  and he is brought down by a Sausage  Seller who beats him at his own demagogic games.  The Knights in addition to being an attack on Cleon and all demagogic  politicians is an illustration of the type of comedy 319  that Aristophanes outlined in  the Acharnians.  It is a comedy that “knows what’s right” 320  and makes sharp use of  mockery to help the city see its own shortcomings.  In fact the entire play is one                                                           315  Alan Sommerstein, “Platon, Eupolis and the ‘demagogue‐comedy,’” in The Rivals  of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy, ed. David Harvey and John Wilkins  (London: Duckworth Publishers and The Classical Press of Whales, 2000), 438  argues that Knights is Aristophanes’ only demagogue‐comedy and that the subgenre  offers very little room for creativity.  This is a similar (if more sophisticated)  argument to the belief that Knights is “less” of a play because of its attack on Cleon.  However, Sommerstein falls into the trap of thinking that Aristophanes’ plays are a  direct mouthpiece and not a constructed text and in reality deserving interpretation  and careful reading just like the rest of Aristophanes’ corpus. For the first study of  the subgenre of demagogue‐comedy see H. Lind, Der Gerber Kleon in den Rittern des  Aristophanes: Studien zur Demagogenkomodie (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1991), 235‐ 52.  316   Aristophanes, Knights 52‐3.  317  Aristophanes, Knights 1218‐20.  318  Nial Slater, Spectator Politics: Metatheatre and Performance in Aristophanes  (Philadelphia, The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 70. Henderson, The  Maculate Muse, 237.  319  Sommerstein, “Platon, Eupolis and the ‘demagogue‐comedy’”.  320  Aristophanes, Acharnians 500.    139  large laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm.  By the end of the stage action,  Demos has been transformed and is no longer a crabby old man 321  but a beautiful  young man again. 322   The result of the comedy is that the demos of Athens is pure  again.  Knights could not be clearer about what good comedy should do (purify the  city) and therefore the necessity of comedy for the city.  Much of the recent scholarship on the Knights has focused on the demophilic  relationship between Paphlagon, the Sausage Seller, and Demos or on the specifics  of the political satire (i.e. decoding the very dense puns, aspersions, and allusions in  the text).  Andrew Scholtz writes that Aristophanes, “ by sexualizing this topos [the  demophilic topos]” and making the relationships pederastic where Paphlagon and  the Sausage Seller are would be erastes (older lovers) and Demos is the eromenos  (younger beloved); “discovers within the dysfunctional give and take of  “demophilic” politics a whole tangle of contradictory reciprocities, symmetries, and  asymmetries—strategies, in other words, whereby power is got through surrender,  and dominance through subservience.” 323   Although the pederastic elements in the                                                           321  Aristophanes, Knights 40‐3.  322  Aristophanes, Knights 1321‐1334.  323  Andrew Scholtz, “Friends, Lovers, Flatterers: Demophilic Courtship in  Aristophanes’ “Knights,’” Transactions of the American Philological Association 134  (2004): 264‐5. For more on the pederastic relationship between the three main  characters see also Manfred Landfester, Die Riter des Aristophanes: Beobachtungen  zur dramatischen Handlung und zum komischen Stil des Aristophanes (B.R. Gruner  Publishing, 1967); Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 66‐70; Paul Ludwig, Eros and  Polis: Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge  University Press, 2006); and; Victoria Wohl, Love among the Ruins: The Erotics of  Democracy in Classical Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 73‐123.  For more on Cleon and political jokes see Edmunds, Cleon, Knights, and Aristophanes’  Politics and Carl Anderson, “Themisticles and Cleon in Aristophanes’’ Knights,” The  American Journal of Philology 110 (1989).    140  Knights are very clear I believe they are only one component in a larger commentary  on the power of comedy.    The vitriol and invective in the Knights is strikingly sharp and relentless.  Rosen and Henderson also note this “extreme quality” 324  and the  “savage  indictment” 325  of the politicians in the play. 326   The vast majority of the action of the  play consists of the Sausage Seller and Paphlagon insulting each other in an  increasingly sexually suggestive or scatological manner.  There is no intertextuality  with tragedy, as there so often is in Aristophanes’ plays; and the plot is deceptively  simple.  So minimal that, in fact, is has often been maligned by scholars who see the  play as a distastefully obscene rant by Aristophanes against Cleon. 327     The simple plot serves to highlight two elements of the Knights: the  aischrologia and the agwn (contest).  These two elements are not just important for                                                           324  Cedric Whitman, Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge: Harvard  University Press, 1971), 80; Rosen, Old Comedy & the Iambographic Tradition, 64 n.  15; and Scholtz, “Friends, Lovers, Flatterers”.  325  Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 221.   326  Rosen, Old Comedy & the Iambographic Tradition, 61 also notes that many  scholars find this element of the play to be a serious flaw; see Gilbert Norwood,  Greek Comedy (New York: J.W. Luce, 1932), 207‐8; Wilhelm Schmid, Geschichte der  griechischen Litteratur (Toronto: University of Toronto Libraries, 2011), 231; and  Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 66‐67. Malcolm Heath, Political Comedy in  Aristophanes (Gottingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), 323 also notes the  invective, but makes no judgment on its use.  327  Bowie, Aristophanes, 77; Rosen, Old Comedy & the Iambographic Tradition, 79 and  82; Reckford, Aristophanes’ Comedy, 113‐4, and Littlefield, “Metaphor and Myth,” 3,  agree with me that Knights is much more than a screed of hatred for Cleon that can  be written off, but that the extreme satire is part of Aristophanes argument about  the nature and use of comedy.  For more on views that the play has serious plot  flaws see Gilbert Murray, Aristophanes: A Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press,  1993), 50; M. Pohlenz, “Aristophanes’ Ritter,” Nachrichten der Akademie der  Wissenschaften 2 (1965): 122; Octave Navarre, Les Cavaliers d’Aristophane; etudes et  analyse (Parise: Editions Mellottee, 1956), 152; Whitman, Aristophanes and the  Comic Hero, 80‐4; and Norwood, Greek Comedy, 207‐8 calls the play, “trash, hardly  worth reprinting, certainly not translating.”    141  the Knights, but are the two of the most basic and essential constituents of comedy.   The aischrologia, as noted above, is particularly venomous and heavy‐handed.   Henderson writes, “the real purpose of Knights is to attack and degrade Cleon in the  most violent possible ways.” 328  While certainly Aristophanes is degrading Cleon  through the medium of his play, I think it is vital not to dismiss the play 329  as a hate  letter. 330   The Knights is a stripped down play whose purpose is to display (in an  amusing way) the nature of comedy and its fundamental building blocks.      This also helps explain not only the savagery of the aischrologia but also its  preponderance in the Knights.  Unlike all of the other extant plays of Aristophanes  the Knights has remarkably few episodes and primarily focuses on the contest  between the Sausage Seller and Paphlagon for Demos’ love and esteem. 331   The  contest for all intents and purposes begins with the entrance of the chorus on line  242 and continues until the Sausage Seller get the better of Paphlagon on line 1253  – virtually the entirety of the play.  While contests are often part of the action in                                                           328  Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 67.  329  I find it a troubling trend in Aristophanic scholarship to dismiss any of the extant  plays as “simply x” or as “a hodgepodge” with no structure or internal cohesion.  I  think this is part of a leftover bias that favors tragedy over comedy and sees the  former as a more “serious” undertaking and unjustly writes off the latter because of  its jokes and connection to laughter instead of tears. See Whitman 1964 81.  330  Knights is often described as one of the most “factual” plays in Aristophanes’  oeuvre.  See Norwood, Greek Comedy, 207‐8; Rosen, Old Comedy & the Iambographic  Tradition, 60‐1; Reckford, Aristophanes Comedy OldandNew, 120; and  Henderson,  The Maculate Muse, 66. I think this assumption is the result of the false view that the  Knights is not a “good” play and that there isn’t anything more complex going on in  its structure.   331  Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 67.    142  Aristophanes 332  no other play has such a sustained and unyielding contest.  Here  again the simplicity is deceptive.  The contest stands in for the comedic contest that  Aristophanes and the Knights are part of at the Lenaean Festival.  Like aischrologia,  the competition is necessary to comedy and, as this contest between Paphlagon and  the Sausage Seller demonstrates, is for the good of the city.    The scholarly emphasis on the “historicity” of the Knights has led to a good  deal of debate about Aristophanes’ self‐presentation in the play.  Some scholars,  most notably de Ste. Croix, 333  want to make a one‐to one‐connection between the  legal battle between Cleon and Aristophanes mentioned in the Acharnians and the  Knights and the characters who talk about it: making them the mouthpiece of the  poet – speaking his lines.  Reckford takes a more metaphorical approach, arguing  that the Sausage Seller “is a disguise of Aristophanes himself.” 334   For Rosen this  means not that the Sausage Seller is a puppet mouthing the words of the poet, but  that he plays the same metaphorical role as the comic poet; the one who “because he  experiences the same Dionysian revival of spirit that he shares with us – can . . .  remain what he is: a good steward, a nurturing cook, and an honest public  servant.” 335   Heath takes the opposing view and argues that the persona  Aristophanes puts forward in a number of plays (the Knights included), as the savior                                                           332  See the contests in the Frogs first between the Frogs and Dionysos and then  between Euripides and Aeschylus; the struggle between Euripides and Kinsman and  the   333   G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (Ithaca: Cornell  University Press, 1972), 363, “Dicaeopolis  . . . is carefully and explicitly identified by  the poet with himself” (emphasis is de Ste. Croix’s).   334  Reckford, Aristophanes Comedy OldandNew, 120.  335  I will return to this idea – I think Reckford has it almost right, but there is  something even more complicated going on in Aristophanes’ self presentation.    143  of Athens and victor in his fight against Cleon and other demagogic politicians, is  either “blatantly untrue” or internal to the action of the play, intending and having  no political impact since “the comic poet was not in direct competition with the  {politician}. 336 ”  I think in some sense all of these scholars are correct (although I do  find Heath’s hostile tone puzzling); because there isn’t just one Aristophanes or  anything as straightforward as self‐presentation –there are multiple “Aristophanes”  who serve different functions in various plays. 337     In Knights Aristophanes’ explicit “self‐presentation” is in the parabasis (507‐ 550). 338   However, it is delivered by a third party – Aristophanes himself doesn’t  stride out onto the stage; the choral leader reports what Aristophanes “asked” the  chorus to convey to the audience.  But yet again the flow of information is not simply  from the poet to the chorus to the audience because the choral leader also adds his  own commentary on both the poet and the information he has been asked to pass  on.  Despite the fact that Aristophanes wrote each word, he has carefully crafted the                                                           336  Heath, Political Comedy in Aristophanes, 238‐9.  337  Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice.  338  Many scholars have focused exclusively on Aristophanes’ “arrogance” and self‐ promotion.  Heath is especially vitriolic, writing that Aristophanes had a habit  “of  making blatantly untrue statements about himself” (see also Whitman, Aristophanes  and the Comic Hero, 82‐3). I agree with Reckford that this is more a generic  necessity, and moreover I feel that by only looking at Aristophanes’ boasts about his  own comedy these scholars are missing what is actually at stake in the parabasis:  the emphasis on the importance of mockery and the important role the comic poet  has in educating the city. See Littlefield, “Metaphor and Myth” for a discussion of  metaphor in the parabasis and Douglas MacDowell, “Aristophanes and Kallistratos,”  The Classical Quarterly 32 (1982); Stephen Halliwell, “Aristophanes’  Apprenticeship,” The Classical Quarterly 30 (1980); and G. Mastromarco, “L’esordio  “segreto” di Aristofane,” Quaderni di Storia 10 (1979) for discussions of the  historical nature of the parabasis (i.e. Aristophanes and his producer Callistratus).   See Reckford, Aristophanes’ OldandNew Comedy, 202‐04 for a refutation of older  scholarship that treats Aristophanes’ plays as a whole (not just the parabases) as  plays with just one idea in them – therefore robbing the plays of their complexity.      144  parabasis to seem as though the choral leader is choosing how to present the ideas  of the author and “his own” impressions of Aristophanes.  By doing this  Aristophanes has doubled himself – he is both the author and a character in the  play. 339   Both of these personas serve a purpose: each one introduces an element of  comedy that the Knights is making an argument about.  The author Aristophanes,  the one who so carefully crafted the second Aristophanes, is creating on stage a  replica Athens, what Reckford calls a transformation of reality, “the Athenians are  presented with an absurd, distorted, grotesque 340  version of their ‘real’ world.” 341   I  agree with Reckford that this heightened and farcical Athens allows the audience to  see their own folly more clearly. 342     The “authorial Aristophanes” with this creation of a same‐but‐different  Athens is infusing the play with the idea of transformation.  Athens on stage is a  transformed version of the everyday reality of the audience.  The audience can see  themselves in the world of the play – and therefore their foibles and faults more  clearly too.  In the case of the Knights this is not just an idea for this play, but an  argument about how comedy functions, since the entire play is a metaphor for the  role and composition of comedy; didactic transformation is essential to a good                                                           339  Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy and Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice.  340  The idea of the grotesque and Attic comedy has a very long scholarly history.  See  Anthony Edward’s, “Historicizing the Popular Grotesque: Bahktin’s Rabelais and  Attic Old Comedy” in Theater and Society in the Classical World, ed. Ruth Scodel (Ann  Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993) who rightly argues that Old Comedy  cannot be called grotesque in the Rabelaisian sense.   341  Reckford, Aristophanes OldandNew Comedy, 197‐8.  342  See Ruffell, Politics and AntiRealism for a very clear use of cognitive and  narrative theory to explain jokes.  Especially 181‐211 for the “doubling” of the world  of Athens and the necessary identification of the audience with the comic hero.    145  comedy. If the audience can’t grasp something new about themselves and they city  and change for the better a didactic comedy has failed.  The “character” Aristophanes, the one who the choral leader tells the  audience about is both part of the real/not real world of Athens on stage (what  would Athens be without an Aristophanes!) and he also introduces two important  ideas for comedy: the importance of mockery and the didactic role of the comedic  poet.  The choral leader reveals that Aristophanes was slow to produce his own  comedies because of how the Athenians treated older comedic poets 343  and because  he wanted to make sure that he knew what he was doing. 344     Reckford sees Aristophanes’ parabases in general as introducing the  “organizing ideas” of his plays.  The parabasis in the Knights is no exception. He sees  the Knights as a “comedy of ideas” and the two he identifies are the development of  comedy and the poet as teacher. 345   For Reckford the ideas about comedy that  Aristophanes is grappling with mostly have to do with jokes and the witticisms  Aristophanes is so skilled at creating.  I agree with his idea that the Knights is a  comedy of ideas.  The parabasis is very clear; the poets that Aristophanes claims  were treated badly by the Athenian public (part of his reluctance to produce his own  work) because in their old age they could no longer mock (skw/ptw). 346   This is their                                                           343  Knights was the first play Aristophanes produced himself, as was customary for  comedic poets.  Callistratus produced both Acharnians and Babylonians.  344  Lines 541‐44 Aristophanes uses a naval metaphor to explain that a poet should  work his way up to the top position (producer), first learning the various skills  necessary to make a good play.  345  Reckford, Aristophanes OldandNew Comedy, 123‐130.  346  See also Zachary Biles, “Aristophanes’ Victory Dance: Old Poets in the Parabasis  of ‘Knights,’” Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 136 (2001): 196 and    146  primary duty as comedic poets and when they can no longer perform this function  Athens scorns them.  Aristophanes is scolding the Athenians for their desertion of  these poets, not because they don’t enjoy plays without mockery, but because they  should appreciate and venerate the comic poets’ earlier work when they could  execute this important duty for the city. It is clear from the parabasis that comedy is  no longer any good when the mockery is subpar.  The association of comedy and mockery is often discussed in terms of  carnival and the work of Bakhtin.  As Goldhill writes, the ideas around carnival have  been especially fruitful for classicists and the study of Old Comedy. 347   This  investigation of carnival has allowed scholars to link together ideas of reversal,  liminality, theater, and ritual.  Many argue that in the liminal space of ritual (or the  theater) this hierarchical reversal allows for true subversive possibilities. 348   Others  dispute this assertion and allege that the reversal in a festival context allows the  oppressed to “blow off steam”, but eventually the dominant hierarchy reasserts  itself.  In fact, under this “release‐valve” theory the dominant culture allows the  freedom of reversal to ensure the ultimate return to the status quo. 349   However there has always been a stumbling block when applying this idea to  Old Comedy – the question of license and the state sanction, and indeed sponsorship                                                           Hubbard, The Mask of Comedy, 116‐33, and 77‐82 who says that this is a critique of  the Athenians for not adhering to traditional values.  347  Goldhill, The Poet’s Voice, 176. See Meyerhoff 1978 for the argument that comic  reversal can indicate a number of distinct possibilities about power structures and  hierarchies in a society.   348  For more on this perspective see Thompson (1972); Marx (1978); Bakhtin  (1940); Burke (1978); Le Roy Ladurie (1979); Davis (1978); Carriere; Schareika.  349  For more on this perspective see Reckford’s argument in Aristophanes’ Oldand New Comedy that the world of the festival is insulated from everyday life and has no  bearing on it – therefore poets could mock politicians and have no impact 479.    147  of theatrical festivals. 350   With this in mind can we truly call Old Comedy  carnivalesque? Edwards argues that the writers of Old Comedy are primarily  conservative in their message, not “mocking the powerful, which comedy had  probably always done, because they attacked the demos and the democracy through  its leaders and criticized their policies, while suggesting alternative policies.” 351   I  agree with his assessment that because of this and the element of state sponsorship  of the theatrical festivals Old Comedy cannot truly be called carnivalesque.  However, Edwards goes on to argue that the ideology of the form of comedy  is democratic; even if its authors began to use it against the very democracy it was  intended to support. 352   That is to say that Old Comedy grew out of rituals of  mockery and abuse – tools of the democratic carnival, and not subject to the  oversight of the power of the state.  Using this binary vocabulary of conservative vs.  democratic ideology Edwards makes the most convincing assessment of the  theories of Bakhtin and their relationship to Attic Old Comedy in the current  scholarship.    The laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm I am tracing in this  project offers another alternative to the dualistic concept of conservative vs.  democratic ideology in Old Comedy.  Comedy messages through this use of ritual  laughter; the form of comedy is transformational.  It doesn’t conform only to the  narrow idea of democratic ideology through mockery, but ties into the very early                                                           350  Edwards, “Historicizing the Popular Grotesque” very clearly articulates this.    351  Edwards, “Historicizing the Popular Grotesque,” 101.  352  Edwards, “Historicizing the Popular Grotesque,” 103‐4.    148  and deeply ingrained uses of laughter in ritual practice. 353   It can therefore be an  ideological tool and at the same time fulfill ritual concerns of renewal and rebirth;  giving Aristophanes’ comedies the chance to remake the demos and reboot their  political views.  The idea of the poet as teacher is one that Reckford, Edmunds 354 , and I all  agree on.  This idea is present in Aristophanes’ first extant play the Acharnians, as I  discussed above and the Knights’ parabasis furthers this argument; making claims  about the necessity of mockery in comedy 355  and the need for the poet to be an  expert, not an inexperienced newbie. 356   Rosen also agrees and sees the dual role of  comedy to “amuse and enlighten.” 357    However, although all of these observations  about the comic poet as teacher are correct and very important they do not go quite  far enough – the ultimate role of the didactic function of comedy is to transform.    Transformations in the Knights are both explicit and implied.  As I will  discuss at length in a moment, Demos is transformed at the end of the play. There  are also hints at other character and audience transformations.  Edmunds points out  that in the parabasis Aristophanes manages to align himself not only with the elite  knights, but also the “nautical activities of the Athenian lower class.” 358   Thereby  uniting all members of the audience with the poet and chorus.  These three  seemingly disparate entities have common cause in the triumph of the Sausage                                                           353  See Chapter One and Appendix 1  354  Edmunds, Cleon, Knights, and Aristophanes’ Politics, 59.  355  Aristophanes, Knights 525‐540.  356  Aristophanes, Knight 541‐544.  357  Rosen, Old Comedy & the Iambographic Tradition, 82.    358  Edmunds, Cleon, Knights, and Aristophanes’ Politics, 41.    149  Seller over the demagogic Paphlagon.  All three are also caught up in another  transformation plot that runs through the play.    This transformation plot is the slow transformation of the Sausage Seller  himself.  Bowie points out that the Sausage Seller is about the same age as the  ephebic Knights, and that the play is all about “the rites of passage” to maturity. 359   If  the Knight chorus is part of this transforming group, so is the audience through their  previously established link with the chorus.  As the ephebes and the Sausage Seller  mature and transform through the play, so potentially can the audience.  The  Sausage Seller doesn’t have a single moment of transformation, however the  character at the end of the play is distinctly different than at the beginning.  He  begins as a lowly tradesman, a demagogue who can out‐flatter, steal, cheat, and  deceive even Paphlagon (134‐137).  However, by the end he is “ the noble  Agoracritus,” 360  the even‐headed transformer of Demos.  Reckford also describes  this transformation, 361  but he is silent on just how the transformation took place.   The process that got the Sausage Seller to his final character was the process of the  play itself, and its fierce agon filled with aischrologia.                                                            359  Bowie, Aristophanes, 45 and 52. This has very interesting overlap with the  transformation of Hermes in the HH to Hermes discussed in Chapter 2.  Both young  men, Hermes and the Sausage Seller mature over the course of their respective texts  through multiple encounters with a rival (Paphlagon or Apollo) and the resulting  laughter from these interactions. Coming of age transformations in both of these are  underscored with laughter.   360  Reckford, Aristophanes’ OldandNew Comedy, 119.  361  He notes that the Sausage Seller slowly moves up in the world from Sausage  Seller to butcher to “Magic Cook” or the embodiment of Comedy – and by the end of  the play the Sausage Seller certainly seems to be the embodiment of comedy or at  the very least the orchestrator of comedy.    150    Once the Sausage Seller is deemed the victor of the very long contest against  Paphlagon, Demos and the Sausage Seller go into Demos’ house and the chorus sings  about how to properly insult bad people.  Suddenly, the Sausage Seller returns to the  stage and proclaims, εὐφημεῖν χρὴ καὶ στόμα κλῄειν καὶ     μαρτυριῶν ἀπέχεσθαι,   καὶ τὰ δικαστήρια συγκλῄειν οἷς ἡ πόλις       ἥδε γέγηθεν,   ἐπὶ καιναῖσιν δ᾽ εὐτυχίαισιν παιωνίζειν      τὸ θέατρον.  Use words of good omen, everyone;   Close your mouths abstain from   Testimony, shut up the law courts that   This city rejoices in, and on the occasion   Of our unforeseen good luck,  Let the audience sing a paean! 362    This complete change in tone is because he has transformed Demos.  Demos is now  young and beautiful again, and his home (Athens) is also transformed several lines  later.      The Sausage Seller says that he has a0deyh/saj (purified by boiling) Demos  and that this has made Demos kalo/j (beautiful) rather than ai0sxro/j (ugly,  shameful, out of the natural order of things).  In this one simple line Aristophanes  has distilled both the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm and the  pedagogical aims of comedy.  Conceivably, the Sausage Seller means that when they  were in the house he literally boiled down Demos and therefore purified him.   However, we could take this line to mean (and I think we should) that through the  process of the play and the aischrologia and laughter Demos, the character, and the                                                           362  Aristophanes, Knights 316‐9.    151  demos of Athens, there at the theater have been “boiled” and transformed e0c ai0sxrou~ out of or through something aischros.  And the something aischros, in this  case, is the play itself and its heavy use of aischrologia as I (and many others) noted  above.  Through the transformation of Demos Athens itself is changed back to the  Athens of old. 363   The a0gwn (contest) of aischrologia that the Sausage Seller and  Paphlagon undertook transformed the character Demos and by watching,  understanding, and most importantly laughing at comedy during a festival contest  the demos of Athens can be likewise changed for the good.    The transformation of Demos is seen by many scholars as strange, out of  nowhere, “feeble, 364 ” and only a “plot‐device. 365 .  This criticism smacks of the  dismissal of Aristophanes, the Knights, and Old Comedy in general that I have been  arguing against for two chapters.  These attacks fail to see the central theme of  transformation in the Knights (and much of Aristophanes’ poetry) and gloss over the  arguments in the Knights about how comedy should be made and how it should  function in the discourse of the polis.  The transformation of Demos is, in fact, the  only rational ending for the Knights because it is the goal and purpose of comedy.   Aristophanes makes that explicit in the Knights the play that lays out most clearly  and simply his ideas about what makes a good comedy.  The Knights won at the Lenaea of 424 BCE.  And Aristophanes continued to  refer to the Knights and his skill and daring in subsequent plays. 366   This pride in his                                                           363  Aristophanes, Knights 1325‐1330.  364  Whitman, Aristophanes and the Comic Hero, 84 and 102.  365  Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 88.  366  Aristophanes, Clouds 549‐62.    152  work is definitely at odds with modern critics who dismiss the Knights as simply a  vindictive attack on Cleon after his legal action against the poet.  I believe this  disconnect is the direct result of reading the Knights on its most superficial level and  not seeing the deeper claims about comedy and its essential role in civic life.    The Frogs  The Frogs, produced almost twenty years after the Knights, has a much more  layered, nuanced, and in‐depth approach to theater and transformation.  While the  Knights laid the foundation of Aristophanes’ pedagogical program, the Frogs  explicitly links ritual transformation through the use of its two choruses with  theatrical transformation, and carries on an extensive investigation of both tragedy  and comedy and how these dramatic forms and their poets transform the city of  Athens.  The two choruses in the Frogs, the Frogs and the Initiates, are one of the  many signals to the audience that the main theme of the play is transformation,  since both groups change their physical or spiritual selves during their lifetimes. 367    Many scholars have stumbled over why the play has two choruses and some even  gloss over the fact that there are two – treating the frogs as just another character in  one episode of the play. 368   Many recent readings of the play see ritual connections                                                           367  See Chapter Three for an in depth discussion of the Frog chorus and  transformation.  368  W. B. Stanford, Aristophanes: Frogs (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1958) xxi  and Kenneth Dover, Frogs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 28‐9.    153  as the link between the two choruses; 369  the frogs explicitly mention the Anthesteria  and the Initiates are part of the dense use of Eleusinian ritual in the play.  Although  this is true, the two choruses are related in a much more direct way –  transformation.  This relationship is the key to understanding this incredibly dense  and layered text.  The Chorus of Initiates is not explicitly labeled as Eleusinian Initiates, and  this has allowed some scholars to hypothesize other specific ritual connections 370  or  to see the Chorus as a general mystery religion chorus.  I agree with Bowie and Graf  that there are far too many Eleusinian specifics in the text 371  to think that the  Chorus of Initiates could be anything but initiates into the Mysteries of Demeter at  Eleusis. Certainly, the theme of transformation would still be relevant if the chorus  were initiates into another mystery religion, however, since the Mysteries at Eleusis  were the largest mystery cult in the Greek world it makes sense that Aristophanes  chose them for the chorus since many people in his audience would have personal  initiatory experience from their own journeys to Eleusis.  There is also a very interesting overlap between Dionysos and Eleusis that  the play makes use of, the confusion and partial merging of Bacchos and Iacchos.  As                                                           369  See Lada‐Richards, Initiating Dionysus, esp. 45‐121; Edmunds, Myths of the  Underworld Journey; and Rosen, Old Comedy & the Iambographic Tradition, esp. 25  370  See T.G. Tucker, The Frogs of Aristophanes (New York: MacMillan & Co., 1906)  and Charles Segal, “The Character and Cults of Dionysus and the Unity of the Frogs,”  Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 65 (1961) for discussion of the Chorus as a  group from Agrae and M. Tierney, “The Parados in Aristophanes’ ‘Frogs,’”  Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 42 (1934) and M. Guarducci, “Le Rane di  Aristofane e la topografia ateniese,” Studi in onore di A. Colonna (1982) for  arguments that it is the procession at the Lenaea.    371  See Bowie, Aristophanes, 228‐30 and Fritz Graf, Greek Mythology: an Introduction  (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 40‐50 for very in depth  discussions of the Eleusinian rituals specifically mentioned in Frogs.      154  I discussed in Chapter One, this confusion seems to start in the ancient world and  carry through in some modern scholarship. 372   The Initiates in the Frogs are taking  part in the journey to Eleusis in a parade that celebrates Iacchos—who becomes  somewhat linked with Dionysos by the fifth century—while conversing with  Dionysos 373  as he undertakes a journey of his own, both a katabasis and an  initiation.  Like the two choruses, the character of Dionysos, the comedic hero of the  play, is in a state of flux.  My earlier discussion of the play in Chapter 3 chronicled his  numerous transformations in the first section of the play.  First, he assumes the  identity of Herakles with the aid of a lionskin cloak and a club. And then Dionysos  and his slave Xanthias swap identities multiple times in one scene, each appearing  as Herakles and then Herakles’ slave in rapid succession in order to escape the  numerous people Herakles angered in the Underworld.    The character of Dionysos also undergoes a play‐long transformation.  He  begins the play as a buffoon version of himself, nothing less than one might expect in  a comedy. The play begins with a short exchange between Dionysos and Xanthias,  and then Dionysos encounters Herakles who immediately begins laughing at him,                                                           372  The Scholia to Frogs 482 mentions that, “At the Lenaea, the Daduchos cried ‘Call  on the god’ and the people replied ‘Son of Semele, Iacchus giver of wealth.’” If this is  true than clearly Iacchos and Dionysos have become conflated.  See Bowie,  Aristophanes, 232‐3 for more archeological and literary evidence of the two gods  merging in the fifth century.     373  Segal, “The Character and Cults of Dionysus,” 208 goes even further and says that  Dionysos makes an “appearance as Iacchos in the Mystic Procession.”  I could  certainly imagine a production playing up Dionysos at the Iacchos procession – but  there is not textual evidence that the Initiates recognize him as a god or, as  Dionysos, let alone as Iacchos. Reckford, Aristophanes’ OldandNew Comedy, 414‐5  also notes the blurring of the boundary between Dionysos and Iacchos.    155  inviting the audience to do the same with his asides about Dionysos’ ridiculous  costume. 374   Then Dionysos reveals to Herakles that he needs to get to Hades to  retrieve Euripides for whom he has o9 po/qoj, a longing. This in and of itself is not  ridiculous, but he says he longs for Euripides the way one longs for e!ntoj thick bean  soup. 375   This analogy and his reason for going to the underworld are hardly the  tragic circumstances that usually surround a katabasis (journey to the  underworld). 376   Dionysos seems like a gadabout – contemplating a journey to  Hades on a whim and dressing in a ridiculous costume in the hopes of facilitating  that journey.  Once in Hades, he is subjected to a series of indignities because no one there  recognizes who he is. 377  First he must row himself across the Styx; 378  he then  encounters the frog chorus, who sings about the Anthesteria, but seemingly has no  idea that the god for whom the holiday is celebrated is the one rowing the boat.   Once across the Styx, he and Xanthias come across an inn where Herakles caroused  when he was in Hades.  Since Dionysos is dressed in his Herakles costume, the  innkeepers think he is Herakles and threaten to beat him.  Dionysos warns them not                                                           374  Aristophanes, Frogs 42‐3, 45‐8.  375  Aristophanes, Frogs 62. As Helene Foley has pointed out to me, this is for  Herakles’ sake – because he has no literary taste but loves food!  376  Orpheus goes to Hades to retrieve his wife who died during their wedding and  Herakles goes to capture Cerberus as part of his labors to atone for the murder of  his wife and children.  Odysseus goes to the underworld to get a prophesy from  Tiresias in order to have a successful homecoming to Ithaka after the Trojan War.  All much more somber and significant reasons to visit Hades.  377  The misrecognition of Dionysos is not, of course, limited to the scope of this play.   It is a key part of the plots of both the Homeric Hymn to Dionysos and Euripides’  Bacchae.  378  Aristophanes, Frogs 197‐206.    156  to hurt him since he is a god, 379  but when Xanthias claims the same thing the  innkeeper can’t tell who is lying and beats them both. 380     Throughout this first part of their Underworld journey Dionysos continues to  act like a buffoon.  He complains nonstop while he is rowing across the Styx. 381   He is  a complete coward, forcing Xanthias to dress in his Herakles costume after it  becomes clear the innkeepers are going to exact some sort of revenge. 382   And when  they encounter the Initiate Chorus Dionysos wants to join in, not because he is  impressed or interested by their claims of a happier afterlife, but because he wants  to pai/zw play with a half naked female initiate he has seen. 383   Although he has  come across two different choruses with the ability to transform he himself is still  the same Dionysos that he was at the beginning of the play.  It is not until the contest  between Aeschylus and Euripides that Dionysos transforms.    I am certainly not the first person to see Dionysos’ katabasis in the Frogs as a  journey of initiation.  Segal arguing against earlier critiques that the katabasis must  have been an afterthought on Aristophanes part 384  claimed that the katabasis was,  in fact, the unifying factor of the play, and therefore the play was about Dionysos’                                                           379  Aristophanes, Frogs 628‐32.  380  Aristophanes, Frogs 644‐673.  381  Aristophanes, Frogs 221‐255.  382  Aristophanes, Frogs 579‐89.  383  Aristophanes, Frogs 412‐14.  384  This argument (see B.B. Rogers, The Comedies of Aristophanes (London: G. Bell &  Sons, 1919); Carlo Russo, “The revision of Aristophanes’ ‘Frogs,’” Greece & Rome 13  (1966); and J.T. Hooker, “The Composition of the Frogs,” Hermes 108 (1980)) that  the element of katabasis was a last minute attempt of Aristophanes to link the  beginning and end of the play I see as part of the dismissive attitude toward Old  Comedy by many scholars.    157  own initiation. 385   Konstan further develops this theme by demarcating three levels  of the play, which constitute, “a logical arrangement imitating a ritual of  initiation. 386 ”  These discussions, however, don’t name a specific initiation ritual that  Dionysos is under going – they note the katabasis, the three‐part structure, and the  Eleusinian rituals, but see Dionysos as the embodiment of Comedy, so that Comedy  itself is undergoing some initiation.  Lada‐Richards takes this theory one step  further and claims that there are also echoes of “other initiatory contexts, such as  ephebic rites of passage.” 387   Although I agree with this tradition of seeing Dionysos’ journey in the Frogs  as an initiation, I think that putting too much emphasis on this aspect of the play  risks missing the larger ideas that Aristophanes is presenting.  Although the  katabasis can represent an initiation, and although there are specific ritual elements  from other initiatory journeys, the unifying idea of the Frogs is transformation; the  initiation of Dionysos is one of many transformations happening in the play.  This is  a subtle but important distinction, if we interpret the Frogs as just about Dionysos’  initiation we lose the amazing complexity of the poetry and plot. 388   Using                                                           385  See also Whitman, Aristophanes and the Comic Hero, 236; Richard Morton, “Rites  of Passage in Aristophanes’ ‘Frogs,’” The Classical Journal 84 (1989): 322, and Bowie,  Aristophanes, 247.  386  David Konstan, “Poesie, politique et rituel dans les Grenouilles d’Aristophane,”  Metis 1 (1986): 291.  387  Lada‐Richards, Initiating Dionysus, 50.  388  Edmunds, Myths of the Underworld Journey argues completely against an  initiatory interpretation because he sees it as too narrow, and would rather  interpret the play through a more political lens. But this is a bit like throwing the  baby out with the bathwater –using transformation as the unifying idea I can allow  for both the initiatory aspects of the play and the political – and therefore not ignore  either aspect, since both are so clearly in the text.    158  transformation as the unifying concept we can see the many layers of ritual,  political, theatrical, and intertextual themes that Aristophanes has woven together.  The Frogs was so well received by the Athenian public that the play won the  Lenaea in 405 and according to Hypothesis I “οὕτω δὲ ἐθαυμάσθη τὸ δρᾶμα διὰ τὴν  ἐν αὐτῷ παράβασιν, the play was so admired because of its parabasis that it was  produced again”; a very unusual honor.  An ancient biography of Aristophanes  doesn’t mention a re‐performance specifically, but reports that Aristophanes,   “τούτου οὖν χάριν ἐπῃνέθη καὶ ἐστεφανώθη θαλλῷ τῆς  ἱερᾶς ἐλαίας, ὃς  νενόμισται ἰσότιμος χρυσῷ στεφάνῳ,  εἰπὼν ἐκεῖνα τὰ ἐν τοῖς Βατράχοις περὶ τῶν ἀτίμων· τὸν  ἱερὸν χορὸν δίκαιον πολλὰ χρηστὰ τῇ πόλει  ξυμπαραινεῖν because of this [the parabasis] was  praised and crowned with a sacred olive branch, which  was regarded as an honor equal to a gold crown, having  spoken those words in Frogs about the men who had  been disenfranchised: ‘It is just for the sacred chorus to  offer good counsel to the city.’ 389 .      The parabasis of Frogs is organized slightly differently than other  Aristophanic parabases.  Instead of the classic seven parts of a full parabasis there  are only four parts: an ode, a direct address to the audience, an antode, and a final  direct address. 390   The tone of the direct address to the audience is also unusual.   The anapest section of the parabasis is missing 391  and this section is often the one  that contains the most abuse or grandiose statements of the author’s own prowess.  According to Storey and Allan anapestic tetrameter is used in comedy for the agon  and the beginning of the parabasis, “The anapestic tetrameter catalectic seems to                                                           389  Ralph Rosen, “Reconsidering the reperformance of Aristophanes’ Frogs,” Trends  in Classics 7 (2015): 238‐9.  390  Stanford, Aristophanes: Frogs, xlvi‐xlix.  391  There is a section of anapests, however they are much earlier in the parados 354‐ 71.    159  have been an elevated meter, suitable for arguments, grand statements, and  declarations, and by the ancients was called ‘Aristophean.’” 392  Aristophanes himself  hints at this in the Acharnians (627)“ἀλλ᾽ ἀποδύντες τοῖς ἀναπαίστοις ἐπίωμεν. But  let’s strip and attack the anapests”.  With out the anapestic tetrameter, the parabasis  in Frogs is more somber than usual. 393     The passionate yet more subdued 394  parabasis clearly struck a chord with  the Athenian public and reflects the extremely unsettled social and political climate  of 405 BCE.  Athens had just won a naval victory at Arginusae the previous summer,  however the cost was incredibly steep. 395  They had rejected the Spartan peace offer,  and the Athenian economic situation was very grave – necessitating the melting of  the victory statues in the Parthenon and the casting of silver plated coins. 396       The appeal in the Frogs is for Athenian unity.  The chorus delivering the plea  is the Chorus of Initiates – a group of people who understand transformation and  are therefore very well placed to urge transformation on the Athenian public.   Edwards argues that they are the perfect group to deliver this message because they  are the “idealized vision of the Athenian people,” 397  and while this is true, what is  even more significant is that they are ideal because they have undergone a  transformation.  Despite the subdued tone of the parabasis, the following agon                                                           392  Storey and Allan, A Guide to Ancient Greek Drama, 291.   393  Reckford, Aristophanes OldandNew Comedy, 415 also notes the significance of  moving the anapests.  394  Naturally, this being comedy there is still some mockery.  395  After the battle a storm came up making it impossible to collect the bodies of the  dead or to rescue survivors, and a large number of additional sailors drowned.  The  Athenian public was so enraged by this that they held an illegal trail and executed  six of the generals as a group (the remaining two fled).    396  Henderson, Frogs, 6‐7.  397  Edmunds, Myths of the Underworld Journey, 156.    160  between Aeschylus and Euripides is full of mockery and laughter.  And this is exactly  what the Frogs argues is necessary – Athens needs the theater, and in particular  comedy if it is to transform.  The Frogs has several smaller contests that foreshadow the main contest of  the tragedians, the contest between Dionysos and the Frogs and the beating contest  between Xanthias and Dionysos.  Like the extended contest in the Knights, these  three contests highlight the agonistic nature of the theatrical festivals at Athens,  culminating in a poetic contest 398  between Aeschylus and Euripides with Dionysos  as the undisputed judge.  The very first lines of the Frogs indicate the importance of  poetic competition.  Xanthias and Dionysos enter bantering back and forth about  what joke to use to open the play.  They complain that most jokes are so overused  that they aren’t funny anymore.  Xanthias even mentions three of Aristophanes’  competitors by name as some of the worst repeat offenders, recycling the same  jokes over and over in their plays. 399     Although theses jibes are very good‐natured, their position at the opening of  the play points up the important role that contests will have throughout the text.   The first contest, the one between Dionysos and the Frogs, as I discussed in Chapter  Three, foreshadows the more extended contest later in the play, and subtly  introduces the link between competition and transformation.  Although the contest  of who can Brekekekex koax koax longer and louder 400  doesn’t bring about any  direct transformation in Dionysos, it does occur as he crosses the Styx, and                                                           398  Zachary Biles, Aristophanes and the Poetics of Competition (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2011), 211.    399  Aristophanes, Frogs 12‐15.  400  Aristophanes, Frogs 260‐67.    161  transitions from the land of the living to the home of the dead, and it presents these  two important themes side by side, again anticipating the later, more extended  contest.    The second contest, the “beating contest” between Dionysos and Xanthias  also ties together the themes of competition and transformation.  Like the first  contest, although the two themes of transformation and competition are explored  parallel to each other the contest does not facilitate a transformation in the  character of Dionysos. The transformation actually occurs before the contest and  only makes things more confusing.  Dionysos and Xanthias attempting to avoid  trouble (for Herakles’ bad behavior in Hades) and gain favor (one of the maids at the  inn offers Xanthias, who she thinks is Herakles, sexual favors and a feast), end up  thoroughly confusing everyone at the inn. Therefore the contest is required because  of Dionysos’ childish and cowardly behavior, but does nothing to curb or influence  it.  Transformation and the contest have occurred in the wrong order and produced  no result.    The final contest is a poetic competition between Aeschylus and Euripides to  decide who will get maintenance at the Prytaneum and the right to sit in the Chair of  Tragedy to the right of Pluto, 401  which indicates that the sitter is the best at his  respective art in all of Hades.  There was no one qualified to judge the contest, but  luckily Dionysos happened along and Pluto asked him to judge the contest,  immediately recognizing him as a fellow god. 402   This contest ends up changing  Dionysos’ mind about who he will take back to Athens with him, although he                                                           401  Aristophanes, Frogs 761‐5.  402  Aristophanes, Frogs 668‐673.    162  originally conceived of the journey to Hades to get Euripides, when the two poet’s  lines are “weighed” in the scales that Pluto has, Aeschylus writes the more  substantial poetry. 403     What is it then that makes Dionysos change his mind and crown Aeschylus  victor and take him back to Athens?  The poetic agon transforms Dionysos.  The  contest is naturally comedic, but also addresses very serious contemporary  issues: 404  the nature of democracy, 405  what the city should do about Alcibiades, 406   the ideal role of poets in their society, 407  and if Athens can be saved. 408   The contest,  full of comedy, is an example of how poetic competition works on an audience.  Here  Dionysos stands in as the audience, and we see him slowly transform over the  course of the agon from buffoon to competent judge of tragedy.    At the beginning of the competition he is already recognizable as himself, he  is no longer wearing his Herakles costume and is seated next to Pluto, as one might  expect a visiting god to be.  The first exchanges between Aeschylus and Euripides  delight Dionysos with their wit and sarcasm.  Then the poets “weigh” their lines  against each other in the scales made for this purpose.  After this Dionysos turns  more serious, he questions each poet about real issues facing contemporary Athens  and states that the winner will be the one with the best advice.                                                             403  Aristophanes, Frogs 1378‐1406.  404  Reckford, Aristophanes OldandNew Comedy, 424.  405  Aristophanes, Frogs 952‐967.  406  Aristophanes, Frogs 1422‐3.  407  Aristophanes, Frogs 1053‐56.  408  Aristophanes, Frogs 1441‐65.    163  This statement harkens back to Aeschylus’ claim that the poet is the teacher  of young men and women, 409  and Euripides’ declaration that poets should make the  city better, 410  and cements these ideas as the central elements by which a poet  should be (and will be in the Frogs) judged.  Dionysos has come quite some distance  from the silly, cowardly, horny dilettante, scampering down to Hades on a whim to  fetch Euripides; he is now the god of theater, 411  channeling his desire for good  theater through the perspective that good theater is also what is good for the city,  not what is just entertaining (as poor Euripides is judged to be).    Henderson argues that the idea of tragedians as teachers is under scrutiny  here. 412   I would like to expand on this idea, certainly the two great tragedians are  being judged – but their judge is comedy, the comedic Dionysos who has travelled to  the underworld to be initiated, transformed, and claim his rightful role as the arbiter  of theater.  The implication being, that if he can successfully judge which tragic poet  is better for the city, he can accurately diagnose and tend to the ills of the city as  well. 413     The agon in the Frogs, like the agon in the Knights, serves as a tiny  competition within a competition.  Both are examples and lessons for the audience  about what is happening to them as they watch the dramatic festival they are  currently attending.  The Frogs is making a more specific claim, that it is poetic  competition, not just any contest for the love of the demos, that has the ability to                                                           409  Aristophanes, Frogs 1053‐6.  410 Aristophanes, Frogs 1008‐9.  411  Garry Wills, “Why are the Frogs in the Frogs?” Hermes 97 (1969): 317.  412  Henderson, The Maculate Muse, 91.  413  Reckford, Aristophanes’ OldandNew Comedy, 424.    164  change, both people’s character, as it does for Dionysos, and their preconceived  notions.  As Susan Lape writes, “In the end, Dionysus’ decision [to take Aeschylus  back to Athens, not Euripides] is made necessary because comedy portrays the  secret of the transmutable self, that is, its ability to remodel itself or be  remodeled.” 414   This self is what Dionysos reveals is within every audience member.  Lape argues that Aristophanes is concerned with the transmutable self, the  ability for identity to be transformed by outside forces and the possibility that  citizens “might devolve in to something Other.” 415   I agree that these are issues the  Frogs grapples with, however I want to add to this argument.  Lape divides the Frogs  in half – in the first half of the play we see Dionysos concerned with trivial and venal  pursuits and ideas because of his exposure to too much Euripides.  The agon in the  second half is, for Lape, the turning point when Aeschylus wins the argument that he  is the best poet for Athens at war. 416    The character of comedic Dionysos is not only an example of how theatrical  mimesis can alter identity, he is Comedy – and the agon in the Frogs claims both that  comedy can undo the potential damage of tragedy and that comedy is the best  medium through which to filter tragedy.   The claims for comedy that this scene  stakes are incredibly high.  Although Dionysos transforms over the course of the  poetic competition scene, he is still a comedic Dionysos.  He is not the awesome and  terrifying god of the Homeric Hymn who changes the disbelieving pirates into                                                           414  Susan Lape, “Slavery drama and the alchemy of identity in Aristophanes” in  Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greek Drama ed. Ben Akrigg and Rob Tordoff (New  York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 90.  415  Lape, “Slavery drama and the alchemy of identity in Aristophanes,” 90.  416  Lape, “Slavery drama and the alchemy of identity in Aristophanes,” 89.    165  dolphins.  Nor is he the vengeful Dionysos of the Bacchae, humiliating or killing all of  those who refuse to recognize him as a god.  His last line of the play is a mash‐up of  Euripides and comedic silliness, “τίς οἶδεν εἰ τὸ ζῆν μέν ἐστι κατθανεῖν, τὸ πνεῖν δὲ  δειπνεῖν, τὸ δὲ καθεύδειν κῴδιον; Who knows if life is truly death, food breath, and  sleep a fleecy sheepskin?” 417  Certainly this is not the tragic or epic Dionysos  speaking.     If the comedic Dionysos has the authority to judge tragedy and the great  tragic poets, is comedy, then, the more discerning genre?  The Frogs seems to make  this claim.  Aristophanes is holding a mirror up to the entire city; political life, poetic  competition, transformation, war – everything is under the microscope in comedy.   The episodic nature of comedic composition allows the poet to discuss this  hodgepodge of subjects over the course of just one play.  Aristophanes’ plays  present comedy as the ideal medium for instructing the demos. And this is why  comedy can even stand in judgment of tragedy.    This conviction that comedy should be the arbiter for the most vital issues in  Athenian life is central to Aristophanes’ pedagogical program. The Frogs, like the  Knights makes a number of claims about the power of theater and the comedic  chorus specifically.  Aeschylus poses the central question of his contest with  Euripides asking, “τίνος οὕνεκα χρὴ θαυμάζειν ἄνδρα ποιητήν; on account of what  qualities should a poet be admired?” and Euripides’ answer is, “δεξιότητος καὶ  νουθεσίας, ὅτι βελτίους τε ποιοῦμεν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν. Cleverness                                                           417  Aristophanes, Frogs 1477‐8.    166  and good advice, and because we make men better in their cities.” 418   Aeschylus  agrees with Euripides and he then claims that his Seven Against Thebes, “ὃ  θεασάμενος πᾶς ἄν τις ἀνὴρ ἠράσθη δάιος εἶναι. Made all men who watched it lust to  be warlike.” Both Aeschylus’ specific boast about Seven Against Thebes and  Euripides’ assertion concerning theater in general mirror the claims made for  theatrical competition and comedy that Aristophanes makes in the Knights, just in  much more explicit terms.    The chorus of initiates in the Frogs also makes claims about the chorus’ role  in theatrical productions and what a good chorus should do. “τὸν ἱερὸν χορὸν  δίκαιόν ἐστι χρηστὰ τῇ πόλει ξυμπαραινεῖν καὶ διδάσκειν. It is righteous and useful  for the sacred chorus to help give good advice and instruct the city.” 419   This  assertion just like the contentions of the two playwrights above assume the end goal  of any good play or poet is a transformation of the audience.  Why would a poet or a  chorus give good advice, or how would they make men better for their cities if not  by altering their attitudes and shaping their worldviews, i.e. transforming them over  the course of a play.  And even though Dionysus brings Aeschylus back to help  Athens, it is comedy that is the arbiter of what is good tragedy. 420   The claims that  Frogs is staking are not just for theater in general, but very specifically for the  essentialness of comedy.                                                           418  Aristophanes, Frogs 1008‐1010  419  Aristophanes, Frogs 686‐7.    420  Even though in Frogs Aeschylus is rescued from Hades, Aristophanes most  frequently parodies the tragedies of Euripides.  Reckford says Aristophanes must  have been shaken by Euripides’ death, which is of course unknowable.  But it  certainly seems that good Aristophanic comedy needs good tragedy. Perhaps  Aristophanes and Euripides were like an ancient Ginsberg and Scalia –seemingly at  odds, but good friends and scholars who pushed each other’s talents and intellect.    167    The Knights lays out this idea in a rather heavy‐handed way, using the entire  play as a metaphor for theatrical competition and the city.  However, two decades  later the idea that theater should be transformative has become woven into the  tapestry of the play using ritual, competition, costume, and the character arc of key  figures to remind Athens that theater is entertainment, but more importantly it is  also the most valuable form of instruction possible for a city.        168        Conclusion      The existence of ritual laughter in ancient Athens is something that many  scholars, especially scholars of Greek religion have discussed at length. I hope I have  shown that this phenomenon is only part of the story.  Ritual laughter is an element  of the three‐part transformation paradigm I have identified.  This pattern began in  Attic cult practices (especially those to Demeter and Kore) and is present in the  Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes indicating the two  deities close relationship with transformation (both human and agricultural).  This  paradigm, so essential to Aristophanes’ comedies, was formalized in his work, which  “appropriates social practices for use in a ritualized literary sphere.” 421  This  appropriation converted the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm from a  ritual and festival practice into a literary trope that, while retaining its ties to ritual,  also functioned outside the ritual realm as an entity unto itself.  Aischrologia or something else that is described as asichros is the second  component of this paradigm.  This is sometimes a physical revelation of something  that is usually hidden, but can also be aischrologia, spoken by people who would  normally either speak very appropriately or be silent. However, I want to reiterate  my earlier caution about the association with asichros and shame.  Following the  definition of aischros from Aristotle it is clear that the shame that is generated after                                                           421  Worman, Abusive Mouths, 68.    169  aischros speech or actions is on account of violating a societal norm – most often  not one having to do with sexual mores.    This may seem like an overly exacting definition, but it allows us to fully  understand the scope of the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm.   Laughter by itself does not always engender change – that would be an  oversimplification of the many instances and uses of laughter in Athenian culture  and literature.  Ritual laughter and aischrologia (or an aischros action) do, most  often go together – the laughter/transformation paradigm always has three  components.  That is what made it identifiable for the ancient Athenians and now  makes it possible to trace the paradigm through cult practice and into Greek  literature and the cultural consciousness.    Despite some scholars hesitation to classify the laughter in Aristophanes’  work as ritual laughter I believe it is clear from the presence of the  laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm in so many plays that these texts are  deliberately drawing on a model of ritual laughter and its power to create a new  identity or at least a new component of an identity for the audience at the Dionysia  and the Lenaea.  The texts are using a familiar and powerful tool to both stimulate  the audience’s awareness of the claims the comedies are making about  transformation and to engender that very change in the consciousness of the demos.  The embedded genre of the laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm in  Aristophanes’ comedy also made the paradigm into a recognizable literary trope,  and the cultural reach of the paradigm was not limited to Old Comedy, in fact it  permeated Greek poetry, philosophy, and later Roman literature and theater as well.     170  And because of the paradigm’s influence on classical authors and texts modern  commentaries on the philosophy and nature of laughter often note its relationship  with potentially dangerous power, even if they don’t explicitly reference ancient  ideas about laughter and transformation.  This paradigm shows up in many other places in the ancient world – often in  literature, but also in popular mythology about initiation.  The Arkhilokheion on  Paros where Archilochus and the Muses were jointly worshipped 422  had an  inscribed column dating to the third century BCE, which told the story of  Archilochus’ poetic initiation.    According to this story, Archilochus received his verbal powers of  poetry from the Muses, who appeared to him in disguise as he was on  his way to sell a cow (E1 col. II 23‐29). Archilochus thinks that they  are rustic women leaving the fields and heading for the city; he draws  near and "ridicules" them (lines 29‐30: skoptein), but the Muses  respond with playful laughter (lines 30‐31). They then induce  Archilochus to trade them his cow for a lyre; once the transaction is  made, they disappear (lines 32‐35). He falls into a swoon, and when  he awakens he is aware that the Muses have just given him the gift of  poetry (lines 36‐38). 423      Archilochus, in this story, acts in a socially transgressive manner, he ridicules  immortal beings.  Using Aristotle’s definition this is an aischros action and this  aischros action rather than begetting disaster leads to laugher: the Muses’ laughter,  which then transforms Archilochus. When he wakes from his “swoon” he is now a  poet.  This perfect example of the tripartite laughter/revelation/transformation                                                           422  See Gregory Nagy, “Convergences and Divergences between God and Hero in the  Mnesiepes Inscription of Paros,” Archilochus and his Age II (2008) and Clay, Politics  of Olympus.   423  Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek  Poetry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 301.    171  paradigm is still alive and well about 150 miles from Athens and 150 years after  Aristophanes’ Frogs was produced in Athens.        Clearly this paradigm spoke not only to the Athenians in the sixth and  fifth centuries BCE, but also to a much wider audience over the course of many  hundreds of years (not unlike the Mysteries to Demeter which were celebrated at  Eleusis for over a thousand years). It became not only a model borrowed from cult  practice, but a literary trope passed from genre to genre and between cultures. This  may point to a larger truth about the nature of laughter itself and how human beings  process laughter and its attendant emotions.    This is why the work of Gallese, Chapelle, Lakoff, Glenberg, and Whitehouse  on ToM and ST is interesting to think with about how and why laughter and  transformation are so closely tied in ritual and why the paradigm is such a  compelling literary device not only in Athens, but in the Roman world, and even the  modern context of the philosophy of laughter.  Perhaps the neural pathways created  in a person’s brain during ritual or in a listener’s imagination as they hear a text  recited, are different because of their association with laughter – more memorable,  and therefore more easily recalled (like a soft Flashbulb memory).     The laughter/revelation/transformation paradigm’s move from social and  cultural custom to literary trope (whatever the reason for its persistence in Western  literature) in Aristophanes’ comedy gives us an extremely useful tool to deepen our  understanding of Old Comedy and how it was experienced in its ancient context. The  ideas about transformation that the paradigm is working with are, in fact, essential  to understanding how Aristophanes’ texts are structured, the cultural milieu in    172  which they were created, and the driving force behind their aischrologia,  political humor, and laughter.                                              173    Appendix A: Other Festivals to Demeter  The following festivals, the Proerosia, Stenia, and Thesmophoria all seem to have  originally been celebrated as local festivals, either in individual demes or in small  towns in Attica; and later some become incorporated into the festival calendar of  Athens.  As a result of this shift from local to state, small to monumental, the  evidence can be somewhat contradictory depending on its age and if it refers to  local practices or the practices of the larger state festivals.  I am including this  overview so that my reader will have easy access to the more detailed evidence for  these festivals, which I may not always repeat in my larger arguments about  aischrologia, laughter, and transformation.    Not surprisingly, the month of Pyanopsion in the fall had several important  festivals to Demeter.  In a Mediterranean climate many crops are planted in the fall  and grow during the rainy season of the winter and the spring 424 .   The fall was  therefore a very important month for ensuring the fertility of the fields and the  blessing of Demeter.    The Proerosia was a fall festival that took place before the plowing as the  name implies, pro and a)ro/w 425 . Inscriptional evidence from Eleusis indicates that  the festival, at least in Athens and Eleusis, was celebrated after the 5 th  of Pyanopsion                                                           424  For more on the agricultural climate of the ancient Mediterranean see  Brumfield’s excellent book The Attic Festivals of Demeter and Their Relation to the  Agricultural Year.  425  See Brumfield, The Attic Festivals of Demeter, 54 and following, for more on the  various spellings of the festival in inscriptions and the controversial conclusions by  Deubner that there were two festivals, the Proerosia and Plerosia.    174  when the hierophant and the keryx announced the festival 426  at Athens.  Parke  believes that the Proerosia was primarily an Eleusinian festival that was imported to  Athens after the annexation of Eleusis. 427  The actual date of the festival is difficult to  pinpoint.  Hesychius indicates that the Proerosia took place after the rising of  Arktouros.  Perhaps, as Brumfield suggests 428  the date was left flexible to allow for  variations in the weather every year, which would, naturally, vary the best date for  the fall plowing.  What actually occurred during this festival is also difficult to  determine with any certainty.  Perhaps there was a central gathering of Attic  women 429  and there were public sacrifices in several cities including Eleusis.   Several scholars 430  believe that a sacred plowing also took place during the  Proerosia. 431   Mikalson 432  points out that the inscriptional evidence does not  indicate that the Proerosia was an Athenian state festival.  Rather, there are several  sacred plowings, one at Eleusis (of the Rharian field), one in the Piraeus and one in  the deme of Myrrhinos, leading him to conclude that it is a deme festival.  This  conclusion supports Parke’s idea that the festival was more Eleusinian than  Athenian.  And perhaps it could also account for the various and scarce evidence for                                                           426  IG II 2  136.3‐7  427  Parke, Festivals of the Athenians, 74.  428  Brumfield, The Attic Festivals of Demeter, 59.  429  IG II 2  1177.8  430  Larson, Ancient Greek Cults, 72; Deubner, Attische Feste; Mikalson, Ancient Greek  Religion, 68.  431  Brumfield will only go so far as saying that the sacred plowing could have taken  place then.  432  Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion, 68.      175  this festival, since it was celebrated on a deme‐by‐deme basis and was not a  larger state festival. 433       The Stenia, celebrated on the 9 th  of Pyanopsion, was closely linked to the  Thesmophoria (celebrated two days later 434 ), so much so that Brumfield 435  includes  it in her five‐day plan for the celebration of the Thesmophoria, although she does  note that it may have been a separate celebration in earlier times.  However, by the  third century the Athenian state sponsored a sacrifice to the Goddesses 436  during  the Stenia, indicating that perhaps this festival, which had been separate, was now  under the umbrella of the Thesmophoria, also an important state festival.  Both  festivals were for women only.  The nocturnal Stenia included aischrologia and a  sacrifice.  We can’t be entirely certain what the sacrifice was, however the close  association of the Stenia with the Thesmophoria allows for the possibility that the  remains of piglets and wheat cakes that were gathered from pits during the  Thesmophoria may have been deposited during the Stenia. 437   The Thesmophoria was a three‐day festival to Demeter open only to women,  celebrated in Athens from 11‐13 th  of Pyanopsion. 438   (It was celebrated on the 10 th   in Halimus. 439   There is some debate about whether prostitutes were allowed to                                                           433  Brumfield, The Attic Festivals of Demeter, 63 and Larson, Ancient Greek Cults, 72.  434  Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 834.  435  Brumfield, The Attic Festivals of Demeter, 79.  436  IG II 2  1363.17  437  Parke also offers this same conjecture at page 20.  438  Simon, Festivals of Attica, 18 and Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion, 72‐4.  439  Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 72 and Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion,  71.    176  attend the festival.  However Aristophanes makes several references to slave  girls being present in the Thesmophoriazusae and it seems odd that he would  include these characters if they were forbidden since his audience would have been  well aware of the rules of attendance for the Thesmophoria.  Which leads me to  believe that female slaves were allowed to attend.    The name of the festival, Thesmophoria (qesmoforia), means, “things laid  down”.  Demeter herself, is often given the epithet, Thesmophoros (Qesmoforoj), which refers to her role in establishing her own rites at Eleusis.  I agree with  Brumfield and Foley that the “things” laid down are the sacred rites, and think that  the very literal reading of qesmoforia as the piglets, pinecones, and cakes deposited  in pits is a bit too narrow.  However, there is no reason that the name of the festival  could not have included both meanings at once, the divine rites laid down by  Demeter and the sacrifices to the goddess that were thrown into sacred pits during  the Stenia.    The first day of the festival at Athens was called the anados (anadoj) or  kathedos (kaqedoj)– “going up” or “going down”. 440   The scholion to Aristophanes  says the “ascent” refers to the position of the Thesmophorion in Athens on the Pnyx,  so the worshippers would have had to ascend the hill.  However, it could certainly  also describe the ascent of Persephone from the underworld to the human realm or  the decent of Demeter from Olympus to Earth. The second day, the women fasted                                                           440  Hesychius A!nadoj, Scol. Ar. Thes. 80, 585, Alciphr. II.37.2, Phot, s.v.  qesmofori&wn.   177  and mourned. 441   The mourning most likely had a mythological connection to  Demeter’s loss of Persephone. Day three was called, Kallegenia, “beautiful offspring”  referring to both human and agricultural fertility.  In all likelihood the feast we  know to have taken place at the festival happened on this day.    During the festival women called Bailers (antletriai), who had purified  themselves for three previous days by abstaining from sexual intercourse, went into  underground pits to retrieve rotted remains of piglets and wheat cakes in the shape  of phalloi, snakes, and pine cones.  All of these fertility symbols were most likely  deposited during the Stenia (see above) rather than at the previous year’s  Thesmophoria as some scholars have proposed, since a year of decomposition  would have left nothing but bones.  The rotted remains were mixed with the seed  that was about to be planted to ensure a good growing season and a bountiful  harvest.  There was also ritual abuse and jesting – Christian sources say women  worshiped a large model of female pudenda. 442                                                                               441  Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Parke, Festivals of the Athenians; and  Brumfield, The Attic Festivals of Demeter.  442  Foley, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 73 and Theodoretos of Kyrrhos GAC 3.84.    178      Appendix B: Frogs Initiate Chorus Quote   Ξανθίας οὐ κατήκουσας; Διόνυσος τίνος; Ξανθίας αὐλῶν πνοῆς. Διόνυσος ἔγωγε, καὶ δᾴδων γέ με αὔρα τις εἰσέπνευσε μυστικωτάτη. ἀλλ᾽ ἠρεμὶ πτήξαντες ἀκροασώμεθα. Χορός Ἴακχ᾽ ὦ Ἴακχε. Ἴακχ᾽ ὦ Ἴακχε. Ξανθίας τοῦτ᾽ ἔστ᾽ ἐκεῖν᾽ ὦ δέσποθ᾽: οἱ μεμυημένοι ἐνταῦθά που παίζουσιν, οὓς ἔφραζε νῷν. ᾁδουσι γοῦν τὸν Ἴακχον ὅνπερ Διαγόρας. Διόνυσος κἀμοὶ δοκοῦσιν. ἡσυχίαν τοίνυν ἄγειν βέλτιστόν ἐσθ᾽, ἕως ἂν εἰδῶμεν σαφῶς. Χορός Ἴακχ᾽ ὦ πολυτίμητ᾽ ἐν ἕδραις ἐνθάδε ναίων, Ἴακχ᾽ ὦ Ἴακχε, ἐλθὲ τόνδ᾽ ἀνὰ λειμῶνα χορεύσων ὁσίους ἐς θιασώτας, πολύκαρπον μὲν τινάσσων περὶ κρατὶ σῷ βρύοντα στέφανον μύρτων, θρασεῖ δ᾽ ἐγκατακρούων ποδὶ τὰν ἀκόλαστον φιλοπαίγμονα τιμάν, χαρίτων πλεῖστον ἔχουσαν μέρος, ἁγνάν, ἱερὰν ὁσίοις μύσταις χορείαν. Ξανθίας ὦ πότνια πολυτίμητε Δήμητρος κόρη, ὡς ἡδύ μοι προσέπνευσε χοιρείων κρεῶν. Διόνυσος οὔκουν ἀτρέμ᾽ ἕξεις, ἤν τι καὶ χορδῆς λάβῃς;   179  Χορός †ἔγειρε φλογέας λαμπάδας ἐν χερσὶ γὰρ τινάσσων†, Ἴακχ᾽ ὦ Ἴακχε, νυκτέρου τελετῆς φωσφόρος ἀστήρ. φλογὶ φέγγεται δὲ λειμών: γόνυ πάλλεται γερόντων: ἀποσείονται δὲ λύπας χρονίους τ᾽ ἐτῶν παλαιῶν ἐνιαυτοὺς ἱερᾶς ὑπὸ τιμᾶς. σὺ δὲ λαμπάδι † φλέγων† προβάδην ἔξαγ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀνθηρὸν ἕλειον δάπεδον χοροποιὸν μάκαρ ἥβαν.         Xanthias  Didn’t you hear that?  Dionysos  What?  Xanthias  The blowing of pipes.  Dionysos  Indeed, and a most mystical vapor   Of torches blew over me.  But let’s quietly crouch down and listen.    Chorus  Iacchos! O Iacchos!  Iacchos! O Iacchos!  Xanthias  This is it, Master; the initiates are playing here somewhere, the ones he was telling  us about.  At any rate, they are singing the Iacchos hymn, the Diagoras one.  Dionysos  I think so too, therefore it’s best that we should maintain silence, until we know for  sure.  Chorus  Iachhos, O greatly honored, dwelling here in sanctuaries.   Iachhos, O Iachhos  Come here and to dance up and down the meadow with your hallowed revelers.  Shake your fruitful crown, teeming with myrtle around your head,   With your foot the unbridled fun‐loving rite  The Graces, a dance, richly endow that  Pure and holy to pious initiates.    180  Xanthias  O greatly honored lady, daughter of Demeter  What a sweet odor of pork chop just wafted by me.  Dionysos  Then hold still, and you may get sausage  Chorus  Awake! Shaking blazing torches in your hands  Iacchos, O Iacchos!  The light‐bringing star of the nocturnal rite,  The meadow is bright with flame,  The knees of old men leap,  They shake off pain,  And the long cycles of ancient years,  Through the sacred rite.  Blazing up your torch,  Lead onward to the flowering meadowland  Our dancing youth, blessed one.        Χορός  εὐφημεῖν χρὴ κἀξίστασθαι τοῖς ἡμετέροισι χοροῖσιν,   ὅστις ἄπειρος τοιῶνδε λόγων ἢ γνώμῃ μὴ καθαρεύει,   ἢ γενναίων ὄργια Μουσῶν μήτ᾽ εἶδεν μήτ᾽ ἐχόρευσεν,   μηδὲ Κρατίνου τοῦ ταυροφάγου γλώττης Βακχεῖ᾽ ἐτελέσθη,   ἢ βωμολόχοις ἔπεσιν χαίρει μὴ ν᾽ καιρῷ τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν,   ἢ στάσιν ἐχθρὰν μὴ καταλύει μηδ᾽ εὔκολός ἐστι πολίταις,   ἀλλ᾽ ἀνεγείρει καὶ ῥιπίζει κερδῶν ἰδίων ἐπιθυμῶν,   ἢ τῆς πόλεως χειμαζομένης ἄρχων καταδωροδοκεῖται,   ἢ προδίδωσιν φρούριον ἢ ναῦς, ἢ τἀπόρρητ᾽ ἀποπέμπει   ἐξ Αἰγίνης Θωρυκίων ὢν εἰκοστολόγος κακοδαίμων,   ἀσκώματα καὶ λίνα καὶ πίτταν διαπέμπων εἰς Ἐπίδαυρον,   ἢ χρήματα ταῖς τῶν ἀντιπάλων ναυσὶν παρέχειν τινὰ πείθει,   ἢ κατατιλᾷ τῶν Ἑκαταίων κυκλίοισι χοροῖσιν ὑπᾴδων,   ἢ τοὺς μισθοὺς τῶν ποιητῶν ῥήτωρ ὢν εἶτ᾽ ἀποτρώγει,   κωμῳδηθεὶς ἐν ταῖς πατρίοις τελεταῖς ταῖς τοῦ Διονύσου:   τούτοις αὐδῶ καὖθις ἀπαυδῶ καὖθις τὸ τρίτον μάλ᾽ ἀπαυδῶ   ἐξίστασθαι μύσταισι χοροῖς: ὑμεῖς δ᾽ ἀνεγείρετε μολπὴν   καὶ παννυχίδας τὰς ἡμετέρας αἳ τῇδε πρέπουσιν ἑορτῇ.    Χορός  χώρει νυν πᾶς ἀνδρείως   ἐς τοὺς εὐανθεῖς κόλπους   λειμώνων ἐγκρούων   κἀπισκώπτων     181  καὶ παίζων καὶ χλευάζων,   ἠρίστηται δ᾽ ἐξαρκούντως.  ἀλλ᾽ ἔμβα χὤπως ἀρεῖς   τὴν Σώτειραν γενναίως   τῇ φωνῇ μολπάζων,   ἣ τὴν χώραν   σῴζειν φήσ᾽ ἐς τὰς ὥρας,   κἂν Θωρυκίων μὴ βούληται.          Chorus Leader  Be silent and stand aside from our dances,  Any one who is ignorant of sacred language, or has not cleansed their mind, or who  has not seen or dances the secret rites of the noble Muses, or who has not  performed the Bacchic revelry of bull‐eating Cratinus’ language, or who delights in   Vulgar language from those who speak at the wrong time, or who does not destroy  hated factionalism and act peaceably with other citizens, but ignites and fans civil  unrest desiring personal gain, or any official who betrays the city for bribes when  she is storm‐tossed, or who gives up our forts and ships to the enemy, or who sends  off forbidden items to Aegina like Thorycion the evilly ingenious tax collector,  sending padding and flax and pitch to Epidaurus, or who persuades anyone t hand  over supplies to the ships of our enemies, or who shits on the shrine of Hecate while  singing dithyrambic choruses, or any politician who nibbles at the reward of the  poets for being lampooned in the ancestral rites of Dionysus, to all these I renounce  once and renounce again and thrice I strongly renounce, stand aside from out mystic  dances, but you, you rouse the song and our night‐long rituals that befit the festival.        Chorus  Go forward now everyone, filled with courage  Onto the flowery bosom of the meadow  Stomping and playing and laughing and jesting  You have breakfasted enough.  Go quickly and be sure you extol  The Savior Goddess nobly  Singing of her with your voices  She who claims to save our land in the passing seasons  Even against the will of Thorycion        182  Χορός  ἄγε νυν ἑτέραν ὕμνων ἰδέαν τὴν καρποφόρον βασίλειαν   Δήμητρα θεὰν ἐπικοσμοῦντες ζαθέαις μολπαῖς κελαδεῖτε.    Χορός  Δήμητερ ἁγνῶν ὀργίων   ἄνασσα συμπαραστάτει,   καὶ σῷζε τὸν σαυτῆς χορόν,   καί μ᾽ ἀσφαλῶς πανήμερον   παῖσαί τε καὶ χορεῦσαι:  καὶ πολλὰ μὲν γέλοιά μ᾽ εἰ‐   πεῖν, πολλὰ δὲ σπουδαῖα, καὶ   τῆς σῆς ἑορτῆς ἀξίως   παίσαντα καὶ σκώψαντα νικήσαντα   ταινιοῦσθαι.  ἄγ᾽ εἶα νῦν   καὶ τὸν ὡραῖον θεὸν παρακαλεῖτε δεῦρο   ᾠδαῖσι, τὸν ξυνέμπορον τῆσδε τῆς χορείας.  Ἴακχε πολυτίμητε, μέλος ἑορτῆς   ἥδιστον εὑρών, δεῦρο συνακολούθει   πρὸς τὴν θεὸν   καὶ δεῖξον ὡς ἄνευ πόνου   πολλὴν ὁδὸν περαίνεις.   Ἴακχε φιλοχορευτὰ συμπρόπεμπέ με.  σὺ γὰρ κατεσχίσω μὲν ἐπὶ γέλωτι   κἀπ᾽ εὐτελείᾳ τόδε τὸ σανδαλίσκον   καὶ τὸ ῥάκος,   κἀξηῦρες ὥστ᾽ ἀζημίους   παίζειν τε καὶ χορεύειν.   Ἴακχε φιλοχορευτὰ συμπρόπεμπέ με.  καὶ γὰρ παραβλέψας τι μειρακίσκης   νῦν δὴ κατεῖδον καὶ μάλ᾽ εὐπροσώπου   συμπαιστρίας   χιτωνίου παραρραγέν‐   τος τιτθίον προκύψαν.   Ἴακχε φιλοχορευτὰ συμπρόπεμπέ με.  Διόνυσος ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἀεί πως φιλακόλου- θός εἰμι καὶ μετ᾽ αὐτῆς παίζων χορεύειν βούλομαι. Ξανθίας κἄγωγε πρός. …    183    Chorus Leader  Come now sing a different form of hymn to the harvest queen, the Goddess Demeter  decorating her with sacred songs.  Chorus  Demeter, lady of the pure rites  Be with us  And keep safe your chorus  And may I play and dance all day safely  And may I say many funny things and many serious things, as is worthy of your  festival,  And may I play and joke and win and wear the victor’s crown.  Come now  Hither invoke the seasonable god   Our partner in this dance.  Highly honored Iacchos,  inventor of the sweetest festival song,  Follow along with us to the goddess, and show us how you travel the long road  without effort .  Iacchos lover of choruses, lead me on.  For you, to provoke laughter and for economy split my sandal and my ragged  clothing,  So that you discovered a way to play and dance for free.  Iacchos, lover of the chorus, lead me on.  For just now I got a sidelong glance at a very gorgeous girl, a playfellow  And through a tear in her robe  I saw a titty peaking out.  Iacchos, lover of the chorus   Lead me on.    Dionysus  I am always ready for fun   And I want to dance while playing with her!    Xanthias  Me too!    Χορός  χωρεῖτε νῦν   ἱερὸν ἀνὰ κύκλον θεᾶς, ἀνθοφόρον ἀν᾽ ἄλσος   παίζοντες οἷς μετουσία θεοφιλοῦς ἑορτῆς:   ἐγὼ δὲ σὺν ταῖσιν κόραις εἶμι καὶ γυναιξίν,   οὗ παννυχίζουσιν θεᾷ, φέγγος ἱερὸν οἴσων.    184  χωρῶμεν ἐς πολυρρόδους   λειμῶνας ἀνθεμώδεις,   τὸν ἡμέτερον τρόπον   τὸν καλλιχορώτατον   παίζοντες, ὃν ὄλβιαι   Μοῖραι ξυνάγουσιν.  μόνοις γὰρ ἡμῖν ἥλιος   καὶ φέγγος ἱλαρόν ἐστιν,   ὅσοι μεμυήμεθ᾽ εὐ‐   σεβῆ τε διήγομεν   τρόπον περὶ τοὺς ξένους   καὶ τοὺς ἰδιώτας    Chorus  Onward now  To the sacred circle of the goddess, to the flowery grove, playing with all those who  partake in the festival, dear to the gods.  I will go with the women and the girls  Where they dance all night for the goddess,  Bearing the sacred torch.  Let us go to the flowery meadows,  Abundant with roses,  Playing in our own style  Of beautiful dance,  Which the blessed Fates draw together.  For us alone there is the sun and cheerful light,  For us who have been initiated,  And follow the path of piety towards strangers and the uninitiated.                                    185    Bibliography    Ackerman, Robert. 2002. The Myth and Ritual School: J.G. Frazer and the Cambridge  Ritualists. Subsequent edition. New York: Routledge.  Akrigg, Ben, and Rob Tordoff, ed. 2013. Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greek Comic Drama.  New York: Cambridge University Press.  Alexiou, Margaret. 2002. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, 2nd Edition. Edited by  Dimitrios Yatromanolakis and Panagiotis Roilos. 2 edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman &  Littlefield Publishers.  Amy Richlin, ed. 1992. Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome. 1 edition.  New York: Oxford University Press.  Anderson, Carl A. 1989. “Themistocles and Cleon in Aristophanes’ Knights, 763ff.” The  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Creator Harlow, Devon (author)

Core Title From Demeter to Dionysos: laughter as a vehicle for transformation in archaic cult ritual and Attic Old Comedy

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

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Publication Date 08/04/2016

Defense Date 05/05/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Aristophanes,Demeter,Dionysos,Dionysus,Frogs,Hermes,initiation,Knights,Laughter,OAI-PMH Harvest,Old Comedy,Ritual,transformation

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Advisor Lape, Susan (committee chair), Collins, James (committee member), Foley, Helene (committee member), Habinek, Thomas (committee member), Lai, Rongdao (committee member)

Creator Email devlinharlow@gmail.com,dharlow@usc.edu

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