454546tragedy, and Politics in Aristophanes' Frogs

Comedy, Tragedy, and Politics in Aristophanes' "Frogs"
Author(s): James Redfield

Source: Chicago Review, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Summer - Autumn, 1962), pp. 107-121
Published by: Chicago Review
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JAMES REDFIELD
COMEDY, TRAGEDY, AND POLITICS IN

ARISTOPHANES' FROGS
In this essay I would like to consider the Frogs of Aristophanes in

relation to its historical context. The Frogs is a kind of historical
epitome; in it are collected the fundamental issues of its period. An
epitome but not a statement; one can only understand these issues
in the play if he has already seen them outside of it. It is necessary,
therefore, to begin with some general discussion of the Athenian
democracy.
Athens was a direct democracy, in which all authority was held
by the mass of the people; there was no representative government.
Further, administrative authority was not delegated by the people to
anyone; the whole people in the assembly, or a section of them as
sembled in the council or the courts, determined each question.
107
On the other hand, this is a democracy without equality. Politics,
in the active sense of holding office, making speeches, deciding pol
icy, is the business of a limited class, of the members of a few great
f amilies. It is the business of men who run large households, who have
the habit of rule and the money to pay for the political life. We
could almost say that the city is divided into a political and a non
political class. This had always been true in the archaic cities, and it
continued to be true at Athens under the democracy. The Athenian
democracy was not created by a rebellion of the lower orders; on
the contrary it was created by the great families themselves, and, it
seems, in their own interest. The gentlemen needed some external
authority which would moderate their disputes, some legal frame
work to make possible competition for power without civil war. The
popular power was deliberately created by the few, not to replace
their government but to secure it. Politics remained in the hands of
the aristocrats, but now they were compelled to secure the consent
of the many at every stage. The rewards of success are smaller, but
the penalties for failure are much lighter; instead of exile or death,
mere temporary obscurity. Athenian power became a joint affair, a
matter of agreement between the political and the non-political class.
The place of the people in the Athenian political structure, then,
is that of a third force. The assembly votes on the laws, but aristo
crats propose and oppose them. The popular courts decide law suits,
but the litigants are members of the few. The few initiate action, the
many listen and decide.
We understand politics as something which occurs between equals;
for us politics is a kind of bargaining which balances diverse interests
until some reasonably acceptable solution emerges. The primary
political skill for us is skill in negotiation. At Athens politics was a
kind of communication between the classes; for this reason the pri
mary political skill was rhetoric. Politics was carried on by constant
reference from the few to the many. The success of the whole sys
tem, in fact, depended upon the clear separation of the classes; the
many could mediate the disputes of the few only because they were
not involved in them. By a kind of paradox the creators of the de
mocracy, by excluding the people from political initiative, secured
popular political power.
The model Athenian political situation is a rhetorical contest be
tween two members of the few, with the many for audience and
jury. In the Athenian assembly the contest would be between two
representatives of great-family groups, in the law-courts between in
108
dividuals. In both cases the issues are defined by the parties to the
dispute; the people decide on the issues as they are set before them.
The position of the many, then, is like that of an audience at a
play. This point is actually made by a number of speakers in Thu
cydides, particularly by Cleon in the debate on Mytilene, and by
Plato in the Republic, when he refers to:
a crowd of people gathered together in the assembly or lawcourt or

theater or army camp or any other kind of popular gathering who with
a great noise praise some of the things said or done and blame others, and
shout and applaud ... until the rocks ring with their noise ...
People go to a political debate, says Cleon, as if it were a dramatic

performance; they bring to politics not judgment but their aesthetic
sensibilities; they treat the debates as if they were taking place in the
theater.
This comparison holds better for the Athenian theater than for
ours; their theater, in its turn, was something like a political debate.
Plays were produced with public money at the great civic festivals,
before the whole city. They were written by members of the few,
and given before an audience of the many. They were given only
a single performance, at the end of which they were awarded prizes
according to their success with the audience. The playwright, like
the statesman, succeeded only through the consent of the many.
In comedy, tragedy, and politics, then, we have three social situa
tions which are analogous to one another. An understanding of the
whole analogy helps explain many things about each of the parts.
For one thing it explains why so many plays turn, like the Frogs,
on a formal debate. The situation of the play affects its internal con
stitution. As drama is analogous to politics, so the dramatic action is
assimilated to political action. For the Athenian audience, the fully
expressive mode is competitive debate.
The analogy between tragedy and politics is also, I think, sugges
tive in relation to the contemporary political content of the trage
dies. Nearly all the tragedies seem to have some connection to the
events of the year in which they were produced, although it is diffi
cult to be sure what the connection means. Victor Ehrenberg, for
instance, has devoted many pages to an analogy between the Creon
and young Oedipus of Sophocles and the historical Pericles. There
is certainly some parallel, but it is peculiarly elusive; while I can see
the similarities which Ehrenberg points out I have always been un
certain whether Sophocles favored Pericles or opposed him. The
109
Oresteia of Aeschylus, which concludes with the foundation of the
Areopagus by Athene, was produced shortly after the dissolution of
the power of the Areopagus by Ephialtes. There must be some con
nection, but no one has ever been sure whether Aeschylus meant that
the dissolution of the Areopagus was a good thing or the reverse.
It seems to me a mistake to look for political programs in tragedy,
for while tragedy and politics are analogous, they are also comple
mentary. We could say rather crudely that while politics is con
cerned with the particular, tragedy is concerned with the universal.
Athens, because of the peculiar nature of her politics, had a special
need for tragedy. When we think of rhetoric we think of the 4th
of July oration, full of wooly phrases about manifest destiny,
patriotism, and what Marx calls "religion, property, and the family."
This follows from our use of rhetoric. In our society rhetoric is
used to create generalized consent for a political candidate, a political
program, or a whole political system. At Athens, on the other hand,
rhetoric was a means for the solution of particular problems: this
law, this expedition; as a result it cultivated a tone of harsh realism.
The Athenian masses were personally and directly involved in man
aging their city and empire; they lived continually in an atmosphere
of crisis; they could not afford vague feelings about God, destiny,
and justice. The speeches in Thucydides, which at least reflect actual
speeches, lay out the issues firmly in terms of advantage and dis
advantage. The kind of realistic bargaining, which in our system
goes on in senators' offices and at the closed sessions of international
conferences, at Athens occurred in open debates.
But every healthy society requires some kind of moral center,
some universal point of reference; at Athens tragic drama answered
this requirement. The tragedies are not naturalistic plays about con
temporary life but statements and restatements of a limited number
of themes drawn from traditional myths. Tragedies about contem
porary life were tried at an early stage, but they quickly went out
of fashion. Tragedy is supposed to transcend the particular historical
situation of the city; if a tragic competition is a debate, it is a debate
about universals. The formal, traditional style of the plays and the
special poetic language in which they are written help to free them
from any special setting; the world of the myths is not that of any
particular period; it is, in a way, the real world of all periods. So that
if tragedy is like politics it is the politics of universal history.
In this setting Athens developed what is, for us, the characteristic
tragic theme: the relation between the individual and the order of
110
the world. The needs of the communal order drove them to a uni
versal order which transcended the community. Why, then, the
contemporary references? I think that in these plays the particular
illuminates the universal, rather than the reverse; the plays speak to
this year's city and this year's audience, but they also speak to the
city of the myth. In the intersection of the mythical and the con
temporary, the playwright found a beginning point for their state
ments about the nature of man. The plays are not intended to speak
to the special circumstances in which they were written; they speak
to a universal vision of man.
Athenian tragedy provided for the Athenian community a world
of fundamental moral discourse, and in this way complemented the
narrow realism?perhaps actualism, if I can invent a word?of politi
cal debate. I might call tragedy the religious life of a thoroughly
political people. Hence the enormous responsibilities which were
proposed to, and accepted by, the tragedians; they had at least a
symbolic responsibility for the moral constitution of the city.
What then is the place of comedy in this structure? There is very
much less comedy than tragedy; and if we want to talk about old
comedy we are virtually restricted to early Aristophanes, particular
ly the Archarnians, the Wasps, the Knights, and the Peace. It is dif
ficult to generalize from four cases; nevertheless I will try to say
something about the form in general.
The Athenians always speak of comedy as complementary to
tragedy; between them the two genres make a complete dramatic
festival. If they complement one another it is because they are in
exact contrast. Tragedy is about the world of myth, with contem
porary references; comedy is about the actual city, with references
to myth. Tragedy depends upon heightened language and aims at
solemnity of effect; comedy continually debases the language and
makes its effects through triviality. But the greatest contrast is one
of form. Attic tragedy is drama of the highest formal perfection;
comedy is without apparent form. Aristophanes' early plays are con
structed rather like Alice in Wonderland; scene succeeds scene with
no apparent connection; there is no attempt at balance or internal
order. As several people have pointed out, the structure of these
plays is like that of a dream. Each scene is sharply real while it lasts,
but scene follows scene like a set of free associations.
In fact, old comedy is a good deal like a dream. Like dreams,
comedy permits all the elements normally forbidden in polite so
ciety: obscenity, aggression and insult, blasphemy, unrestricted sex
111
uality. The freedom of form reflects a complete psychological free
dom; in the plays everything is allowed. Perhaps, as the dream pro
vides a release for impulses which have no acceptable expression in
real life, so comedy provided the city with a release from the tense
political life of this exceptionally intimate community. It is, at least,
notable that political figures are attacked in the comedies in direct
proportion to their popularity. As far as we can judge from the
fragments, Pericles, during his years of power, was the great comic
butt; and Aristophanes won the first prize for the Knights, which is
one long obscene insult at Cleon, in the very year in which Cleon
was at the height of his influence. Historians are not necessarily
correct in concluding that such plays were successful because they
appealed to a politician's enemies; they may well have been rewarded
by the politician's supporters. I suspect that an action in the realm
of politics produced a reaction in the complementary realm of come
dy, and so the psychological balance of the city was preserved.
The action of the plays, too, is something like a dream; as anything
is permitted, so anything is possible. And what happens has a curious
relation to politics. In the Acharnions the hero makes a private peace
with Sparta, by the intervention of a singularly absurd God, and
sets up his own market in contravention of the law, drives off the
agents of the Athenian government, and settles down to laugh at
the sufferings of the leading general of the period who is carried on
wounded from a battle. In the Wasps the hero manages to distract
his father from an unhealthy interest in jury service by providing
him with a parody of jurisprudence in his own kitchen. The hero
of the Knights, after defeating Cleon in a terrific slanging match,
miraculously renovates the Athenian people and apparently puts an
end to political life altogether. The hero of the Peace produces peace
by miraculous means, and the play ends with a marvelous feast.
These plays are both political and anti-political. They start from
a real political problem?the war, popular leadership, the developing
power of the law-courts?but they do not offer any kind of political
program; the problems belong to the real world, but the solutions
to the realm of the marvelous. Here again I think we can only
understand the plays in relation to the political life of the people.
The Athenian people were continuously involved with the practical
problems of their city, with the limitations of the real world; comedy
is a kind of day-dream in which everything is radical and easy. If
politics is the art of the possible, comedy is the art of the impossible.
The plays are not so much satire as wish-fulfillment; if I could make
112
a definition parallel to my definition of tragedy, I would say that
Old Comedy is the fantasy life of a thoroughly political people.
That this kind of fantasy could remain for decades one of the
central themes of the Athenian theater is, I think, a sign of the re
markable vitality of Athenian political life. Only a city with a strong
grasp of reality can afford a public drama of wishfulfillment; only
a city sure of the stability of its political life can afford a theater
which thrives by making totally irresponsible nonsense of its politi
cal leaders. And in fact, as soon as the democracy starts to decline
old comedy starts to disappear. The Peace is nearly the last of it;
the plays which follow it, the Birds, the Thesmophoria, the Lysis
trata, are far more muted in tone. The Birds is nearly the best play
of Aristophanes we have, but in it he makes political satire only by
transplanting his play into the clouds where he can, as it were, make
mild fun of a political life which is a long way off. The early come
dies went on in the Athenian street.
When we come to the Frogs we are at the very end of the period
we call fifth-century; one of its editors has called the Frogs the "last
masterpiece of classical art." Six months after it was produced the
Athenian navy was destroyed at Aegispotomae. The other two plays
of Aristophanes which remain belong to the very different world
of the Fourth century; they are middle comedy, and are without
any satirical characterization of individuals. But the Frogs is old
comedy; in some respects it is more of an old comedy than the plays
which immediately precede it. In it a number of elements which are
dropped in the intermediate plays?particularly the parabasis, the
section in which the chorous addresses the audience directly?are
restored. The Frogs is an archaizing play. It is as if, at the end of the
long process which marked the breakdown of the democracy, Aris
tophanes looked back, in the form of his play, to a brighter period.
And the play itself is about political decline.
It is not always very clear what we mean by the decline of
Athenian politics. We do not mean the end of the democracy, for
the city continued to be a democracy until it was conquered by
Maced?n. The change is not in institutions but in their meaning, not
in the locus of power but in attitude to power. The health goes out
of the democracy toward the end of the century because of a subtle
change in the balance of classes.
The Athenian democracy, as I have described it, was a balance
between two communities, the many and the few. It was a rather
delicate balance; if the democracy was to remain a creative form of
113
government the two parties had to preserve their respective positions.
But the democracy itself gradually brought about a change, par
ticularly in the character of the few, and this change upset the bal
ance of the city.
I would identify this change with two related developments. In
the first place the locus of politics shifted. Archaic politics consisted
of a struggle for power between competing great families, whose
members were bound by a strong political tradition. A young man
would be introduced to politics by the older members of his family;
he would be brought up in their policies, with their traditional al
liances and feuds, and he would carry them on into the next gen
eration. The politics of the early democracy was also of this kind.
With the shifts of popular feeling, with the success and failure of
different generals, the city would adopt for its leaders one great fam
ily or another.
Toward the end of the century, however, a new kind of locus
begins to appear, that of the hetaireiai, or drinking-clubs. These
were originally social societies, but gradually developed into some
thing between mutual aid societies and subversive conspiracies. They
cut across family lines and their members were usually more or less
of the same age. Club members were loyal, not to traditional policies,
but to the club whatever it might do, and as most clubs had no
ideology, they might do anything at all.
As the drinking clubs developed political importance the authority
of the people was gradually eroded. The great families had provided
political stability and continuity, and perhaps more important, they
had informally clarified the issues of politics. The people knew the
speakers and they knew their affiliations; they had thus a context
within which to judge the speeches. But the clubs shifted their pol
icies and their alliances erratically. The people, however, were never
well enough informed to judge each case on its merits; they were
dependent on the few for a clear definition of the issues. When the
questions were no longer clearly defined by the family structure of
the aristocratic world the answers of the many became increasingly
erratic.
But the development of the drinking clubs was itself only the out
ward sign of a more important subjective change in the few. The
democracy was a new political situation for the men of the great
families, and they developed new political skills to meet it. The late
fifth century was the great age for the development of political tech
nique. By this I mean partly technical rhetoric, partly new skills of
114
party organization. The drinking-clubs themselves, in their new
role, were a kind of technical invention, a new tool of the few for
the management of the many.
With this grew up a new attitude toward politics. The men of
the archaic age and the men of the early democracy took part in
politics because it was the ordinary occupation of a gentleman. They
felt that they were part of a community, and looked for their re
ward in the honor bestowed upon them by their peers, or, under
the democracy, by the city as a whole. The drinking-club politi
cians entered politics to seek their own advantage, often simply for
money, which they made largely from graft. As these new politi
cians developed new skills of manipulating the people they came
more and more to look upon politics as a technique of manipulation.
And their manipulations were quite skillful; the authority of the
people gradually disappeared as they became a tool in the hands of
the aristocrats who manipulated them. Politics was no longer an ac
tivity good in itself; it became a technical means to the profit of its
practitioners.
Out of this situation Aristophanes wrote the Frogs. It is a work of
passion, a kind of last appeal to the city. Aristophanes took as his
central character Dionysus, the god of Athenian festivals, because
he wanted to appeal to the traditional sense of community, a com
munity which no longer existed. And he composed his chorus from
the initiates of the mysteries because the mysteries were the one
Athenian institution which transcended politics. The Frogs, it seems,
is the work of a man who despairs of politicians; it looks to a kind
of politics which would not be in the hands of the political man.
The first half of the Frogs, however, is pure clowning; it has no
point except the comedy itself. The tone is set from the first few
lines, where Xanthias asks if he can use "the good old jokes that
all the poets use." The jokes are very funny, but there is not much
else to say about them. The serious half of the Frogs opens with the
parabasis; at this point politics enters the play. In the second half the
jokes are more obscure and, to us at least, less funny, but I think
they are more interesting. My theme here is this second half, and
particularly the relation between the parabasis and the contest be
tween the poets.
Let us begin with the parabasis, and with the explanation of a few
of its allusions. The mention of Phrynicus refers to the revolution
of the 400, a transient attempt to set up an oligarchy, the main ef
fect of which had been to discredit a good many aristocrats in the
115
eyes of the people and force them to withdraw from politics. Many,
in fact, lost their citizen-rights. The poet contrasts these men with
the slaves who received their freedom for fighting in the battle of
Argineusae. The mention of the currency refers to an attempt to put
out a debased coinage?bronze plated with silver?and so get the city
out of debt. The attempt was a complete failure, for by Gresham's
law the sterling coin went out of circulation; solid silver coins had
to be reissued. This, then, is the parabasis of the Frogs.
Our sacred chorus has the right

To warn and teach the city what is good:
Firstly, then, we think it best
That all should have an equal amnesty;
If Phrynicus led him astray
I say he ought to have a chance to change
And earn forgiveness for his crime.
Indeed it's shameful that one naval battle
Should turn a slave to master?(I
Would not protest at this?In fact it was
The only place you showed good sense)?
But what's the sense that those who've fought for years
Beside you, and their fathers too
Should lose their rights in one catastrophe?
Show your nature, slack your wrath
Accept all men as fellow-citizens?
As kinsmen?if they'll fight for you!
But if we load the state with empty pride
Now while she labors in the deep
She'll leave no memory but vanity.
# #
We've often thought the city's m

The best of them, the gentleme
Are like the ancient currency:
In commerce with barbarian and
We use no more the sterling coi
The only true-struck metal, rin
But pass this base and plated bras
The recent issue of an evil mint.
Thus, all the noble citizens
Brought up amid the games and c
The just and noble gentlemen
We spurn them and invest our p
Base and from baser parents spr
The last arrived?such men our a
Would not have used for sacrific
But come now, cast aside your fo
Accept the good again?they'll he
116
If help be anywhere, or if they fail
That is a failure wise men can respect.
(686-705 and 718-737)
The theme of this parabasis is the decline of politics as a result of

the rise of the new politicians. As bad money drives out good, so the
new technical politicians have driven out the old politics of honor.
Aristophanes proposes a general amnesty?but more than that he
proposes a change of heart. He wants to revive the old politics of
the great houses with their tradition of service to the city, to put an
end to civil faction and restore to the city the unity of the Persian
wars.
This much is clear. The difficulty is to see the relevan

theme to the contest between Aeschylus and Euripides
of the things which need to be said have already been im
general discussion of tragedy and politics. Euripides, a
Socrates, always appears in Aristophanes' plays as the repr
and spokesmen of the new men. The conflict between
and Euripides is a poetic expression of the conflict betwe
new politics, and the victory of Aeschylus is a rejection o
fife-style, a return to the old moral center. As Dionysus
I came here for a poet. Why?
To save the city for her chorus.
Which ever one advises us
The better, that one I'll take back.
(1418-21)
The comic poet is looking for a new strength for politics, and he
looks in the place he would most naturally expect to find it, in
tragedy.
That Euripides was identified with the new politics is clear
enough; Euripides himself in the Frogs says that his pupils were
"Cleitophon and Theramenes." Why Euripides belongs in this camp
is far from clear. What is the relation between Euripides' politics
and his other qualities as a poet? Aristophanes' attacks are scatter
shot; there is no system to them. He makes fun of one quality or
another as they happen to come under his hand, and it is difficult to
see the connection. Take, for instance, Aeschylus' description of
Euripides:
What hasn't he done?
He writes about pimps
And births in the temples
117
And sleeping with brothers
And people who say
That living is dying
And so fills the city
With sub-secretaries,
With rascally demagogues
Cheating the people;
No one's for the torch race
They're all out of training.
(1075-88)
This might be taken as an epitome of Aristophanes on Euripides:

the characters in his plays are immoral; the intellectual content of
his speeches is far-fetched and paradoxical; and so he is responsible
for the new kind of professional politician and for a general decline
in Athenian physical and moral vitality. The description is exagger
ated, but I maintain that there is a great deal of truth in it.
Euripides says that when he received tragedy from Aeschylus it
was swollen with big words and fuzzy thinking; he put it on a diet
of clever little ideas he got out of books, invented a new kind of
prologue, set all the characters talking, and soon had a kind of play
clever men could enjoy. And it is true that Euripides invented a
new style or, better, a whole set of new styles. He is by far the most
original of the three great playwrights; he is the first who set out to
be original. He is constantly experimenting with the limits of the
tragic form, pushing it toward farce or pathos or horror. Moreover
he manages the form self-consciously; Euripides' prologues, for in
stance, don't even try to be naturalistic; an actor simply comes out
and tells the audience what it needs to know. Euripides is the first
playwright with a professional attitude toward the theater; he is in
terested in the play as a thing in itself, rather than as a medium
through which something else can be expressed.
The heart of Euripides' plays is not the message but the effect.
Aeschylus and Sophocles had tried to communicate something to
the audience; Euripides works on them. Sophocles' plays are terrify
ing because the world, for him, was a terrifying place; Euripides has
no particular view of the world; he enjoys exploiting his dramatic
resources to produce a feeling of terror in his audience. But the
playwright himself stands apart from the play. For this reason there
is nothing Euripides enjoys more than a reversal of effect; a charac
ter will be made sympathetic in one scene, equally unsympathetic
in the next. We are in the poet's hands; he does not communicate
118
his emotion to us; rather, with cold-blooded expertise, he produces
an emotion in us.
It is this quality in Euripides which most clearly relates him to
the new politics. He is to tragedy what Critias and Phrynicus are to
politics. As they manipulate the people in the assembly, so Euripides
manipulates them in the theater. And in both cases we are asked to
admire, not the validity of what is said, but the skill with which it is
expressed; Euripides claims a kind of moral neutrality for the art; he
treats it as a purely technical problem.
So the intellect, for Euripides, is a manipulating agent; it manipu
lates ideas. The aim is not truth but originality. He adores paradox,
because the ingenuity of a man is shown best in the self-conscious
rearrangement of ideas into new and striking patterns. But there is
no objective referrent; the ideas are things to be grouped and re
grouped, not statements about reality. Like the new politicians,
Euripides can argue on any side of any question; he can even invent
wholly new questions and new answers to go with them.
Aristophanes makes a lot of Euripides' dramatic technique. He
laughs at the standardization of form, particularly in the prologues,
and parodies Euripides' choruses, in which the music has become
more important than the words and any occasion will serve for a
torrent of emotion. Aristophanes caricatures the style of a poet who
sets out to make an effect. He has Euripides dead to rights here; the
technique alone is enough to connect the poet with the new politics.
But Aristophanes also makes a good deal of Euripides' characters.
Euripides' plays, he says, are full of lecherous women, panders, and
beggers. And there is something new about Euripides' characters,
something, again, characteristic of the atmosphere of the end of the
century. Through these characters, however, Euripides transcends
the intellectual tradition of the new politics; in his new view of man,
he shows himself as the one great man of the sophistic movement.
Euripides was certainly not the first to exhibit the criminal and
maimed on the stage; think of Aeschylus' Clytemnestra, for exam
ple, of Sophocles' Philoctetes. What is new is not the quality of the
characters but the tone in which the poet talks about them. Euripi
des' characters have an uneasy lack of definition which results from
the fact that they have no clear status as moral agents. They do ter
rible things, but they are not responsible; the poet is constantly tell
ing us that they could not do otherwise. While Clytemnestra acts,
and Philoctetes at least chooses inaction, Euripides' characters are
acted upon. Tragedy does not happen to them for tragedy implies a
119
measure of knowledge and choice. They are at best pathetic, they
suffer, they are what love or hate or madness make them. Euripides'
great theme, expressed in his lechers and beggers and corrupted
women, is that of the human being whose nature is transformed by
circumstance. And their final destruction or salvation is as meaning
less as the forces which save or destroy them. Euripides invented
this kind of character; in it he expressed the human implications of
the new politics.
The notion that politics is a technique of manipulating people
constitutes an offense against human integrity. A man who is being
manipulated is in the full sense no longer a human being; he has lost
his freedom. So Callicles, in Plato's Gorgias, divides the world into
the manipulators and the manipulated; only those who, like Callicles,
can control others are men in the full sense. Callicles is a fool, but
Euripides is not; for him the manipulation of some men by others
implies a new view of the human situation in general. Euripides saw
that if a man can control others he also can be controlled, if not by
other men then by the forces that transcend man. Man's vulnerabil
ity, then, is part of his humanity; human freedom is at best delicate,
at worst illusory. As the many are manipulated by skilled politicians,
so Euripides' characters are manipulated by the world.
Athenian tragedy developed from the need for a moral center in
Athenian democracy. Tragedy speaks to the order of the world and
so helps to secure the order of the community. But for Euripides
there is no order either in community or in the world; in his plays
the cosmic disorder of the human condition reflects the disorder of
the community for which the plays were produced. Technical play
wright and technical politician jointly destroyed politics and trag
edy; this double destruction marks, at Athens, the end of the classi
cal age.
The Frogs is the last classical work of art. It is in the form of an
old comedy, but it has a larger theme. Old Comedy was built around
fantasies of politics, fantasies which could only take place within a
secure political structure. The Frogs is a fantasy of the recreation of
the political structure. Dionysus in the Frogs is the god of the Athe
nian audience. He sets out for Hades to bring back Euripides, for
whom he feels a passion sufficient to force him to invade the world
of the dead. But in the second half of the play he undergoes a
change of heart; he abandons Euripides for Aeschylus. No poet has
ever brought him the pleasure which Euripides created, no poet has
ever had such technical skill, such ingenuity and originality. But
120
Dionysus abandons all that; he asks the poets instead for a kind of
political morality, for advice. He chooses Aeschylus, because Aes
chylus asserts the power of the community to dominate Sparta and
Alcibiades, its enemies abroad and its dangerous citizens at home.
Aeschylus speaks to the power of the communal order. In the Frogs
the revival of politics and the revival of tragedy are one.
As the Knights ends with the rejuvenation of the people in the
assembly, so the Frogs ends with the rejuvenation of the people in
the theater. The play is a fantasy of moral renewal. And the hope
lessness of the fantasy makes it the saddest comedy I know.
121

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Comedy, Tragedy, and Politics in Aristophanes' "Frogs"

Author(s): James Redfield

COMEDY, TRAGEDY, AND POLITICS IN

In this essay I would like to consider the Frogs of Aristophanes in

a crowd of people gathered together in the assembly or lawcourt or

People go to a political debate, says Cleon, as if it were a dramatic

Our sacred chorus has the right

We've often thought the city's m

The theme of this parabasis is the decline of politics as a result of

This much is clear. The difficulty is to see the relevan

This might be taken as an epitome of Aristophanes on Euripides:

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