Content area
Full Text
Abstract.
The formal beginning of comedy is firmly dated to the Dionysia of 486 B.C.E.1 For what preceded it there were at least three ancient candidates: phallic processions, Doric comedy and Susarion. Each is supported by visual evidence of the sixth century B.C.E., each explains certain features of Old Comedy, but all have some anomalies as well. Striking is how many forms of performance attested in the sixth century contained comic elements. All these other forms ceased with the introduction of comedies to the Dionysia in 486 B.C.E., which coincides with the ascendancy of the demos; yet it was not until forty years later that comedy becomes unabashedly political.
THERE is CERTAINLY NO LACK OF RECENT SCRUTINY of the murky early stages of tragedy and dithyramb.2 Less studied recently is the same process of comedy, for which, in contrast to tragedy and dithyramb, a fortunate combination of epigraphic and literary evidence allows us to date the official beginnings in Athens quite precisely:3 the first competition at the Dionysia in Athens was in 487/6 B.C.E., and Chionides was the first victor. But even before this date, and despite Aristotle's warning on the lack of earlier evidence for comedy,4 there has never been a shortage of candidates for its ultimate origins, both ancient5 and modern.6 Usually it is assumed that there are two major ancient ones, both from Aristotle, but the Parian Marble adds a third independent candidate, the much-suspected "Susarion," whose curious name, mid sixth-century date, and possible connection to Attic visual evidence make a very interesting alternative. Comedy's origin in ancient theorizing turns out to be anything but a derivative afterthought to tragedy; not only Aristotle's Poetics, but also Peripatetic fragments7 and the Parian marble of 264 B.C.E., suggest it was a topic of considerable interest in the late fourth and early third centuries, even before Alexandrian literary scholars such as Callimachus, Eratosthenes, and Aristophanes of Byzantium took a systematic interest in the genre. Rather than too little for us to go on, there is, in a way, too much.
Nor do the ancient theories seem invented to suit some neat scheme; for every apparent connection these candidates offer to Old Comedy, there is also a significant misfit. A review of all the alleged...