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By RICHARD H. ALLISON
Few would dispute that Frogs is one of Aristophanes' supreme achievements; many would further claim as one of his most successful and
famous scenes Dionysos' encounter with those eponymous' amphibians, the frogs themselves. This, however, brings us face to face with a
major paradox which critics of Aristophanes frequently fail to
emphasize in anything like adequate terms: quite simply, and astonishingly for such a well-loved scene, there is no scholarly agreement, even
on the broadest level, as to how it was actually presented in the theatre.
Apart from the fact that it is far from clear how Charon's boat was
represented, we do not even have a sure answer to an even more basic
question - whether those famous characters the frogs were visibly
presented to the audience as yet another of Aristophanes' coups de
theidtre, or whether they were only heard singing from offstage, thus
altering the emphasis (or at least the focus) of the scene very considerably.2 Lack of agreement among scholars on such an important
point is lamentable enough, but, worse, some recent criticism appears
to have been developing a dangerous tendency not only to assert without adequate argument that the frogs were indeed visibly represented
but, further, to build this highly insecure element into the foundations
is the chorus, but rather they imitate the frogs from offstage. The true
and action, that the frogs were indeed unseen and were only heard
singing from somewhere offstage. To support this view, I believe
important considerations of comparative dramatic practice, and even of
natural history, can be adduced.
1. The Text
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observation that supports the strong probability that the frogs were not
visible in this scene, but only heard by the actors and audience. This
is the fact that, throughout the whole sequence in which the frogs
feature, there is not so much as a single word, from Charon or
Dionysos or the frogs themselves, which would refer explicitly to any
visible element in the frogs' immediate behaviour and activities.10 This
is astonishingly unlike the norm when an Aristophanic chorus first
appears on stage, when we generally find explicit descriptions of
vigorous actions of various sorts performed by the incoming chorus,
to say nothing of remarks on their number, appearance, disposition,
and so on. Birds makes a useful comparison: consider the great
dramatic capital which Aristophanes extracts in that play from the
entrance of his chorus. This is elaborately prepared for by the hoopoe's
song of summons and the preliminary 7rapaxopl-qy-qLa of the four
gorgeously costumed individual birds (267-293), building up to the
splendid surprise of the full chorus irrupting into the orchestra
(294ff.) to the accompaniment of the graphic descriptions (of their
numbers, their 'flying', their 'obscuring the entrance', their chirping,
running, and open-beaked, threatening appearance, to say nothing of
their careful individual identifications) which pour from the mouths of
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total absence, then, of any words in the text of the frog-episode remark-
Even when the frogs are not talking about their own immediate vocal
stress their vocal feats and delights, hopping about XalpovTEs -8.)S/
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2. Production
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be made.
e.g. Clouds 520ff., 545ff.), and by contrast frequently derided his rival
for reusing trite old themes or for stealing his own ideas for adaptatio
(see e.g. Clouds 537ff., Peace 739ff.). Much of this was no doubt
standard denigration of rivals (and in spite of his sneers Aristophanes
was not above reheating stock materials himself). Yet on the whole
there seems a fair amount of justification for Aristophanes' claims to
be a prominent comic innovator and a dramatist of considerable
originality;1s and if we turn to the rowing-episode in Frogs
Aristophanes' variation of the theme does indeed emerge rather
favourably from a comparison with Eupolis' version in Taxiarchoi.
Eupolis seems to have concentrated on the humour of straightforward
incompetence in rowing, with the inept Dionysos (probably) being
ungently instructed and corrected by (probably) the old salt Phormion:
thus we have a mention of 'spraying us with water', perhaps from a
crab caught by the tiro.16 The humour of the rowing in Frogs is,
however, more subtly produced. Charon, the 'instructor', gives only
the basic directions in summary fashion to the JdaAd-r-wroT, Dionysos
who thereafter seems to get the hang of the basic idea readily enough,
only to be most amusingly put off the rhythm of his stroke by the
conflicting and changing counter-rhythms of the frogs' song. This
produces further humour in the competitive element which develops
between them and Dionysos, and which probably rose to a crescendo
of volume and stubbornness from which Dionysos emerges as victor.
In other words, scanty though our evidence undeniably is, we can detect
course one of the oldest elements in the disparate mix that went to
make up the Athenian Old Comedy. If the presentation of an animalchorus specifically of frogs went back to Magnes, one of the earlier
poets of Old Comedy, whom Aristophanes himself could praise rather
condescendingly in 424 B.C. as superannuated before the start of his
own career;17 and even more if another Frogs had subsequently been
produced by Kallias, whose career seems to have fallen roughly between
c. 450 and 420 B.C.;is then it would be very small and old-fashioned
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the vessel, something much less easy for even the most skilful of
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(d) Expense.
This is a factor which has considerable bearing on the problems of
the frog-episode. 406/5 B.C., the year of production and victory of
Frogs at the Lenaia, was a time of severe financial stringency for
Athens, exerting herself to the utmost in what were to prove the last
throes of the Peloponnesian War, and we know that, in an effort to
keep up the customary high standards of the dramatic festivals, the
Xop,7YlaL were unusually divided up between pairs of avyxopp7yol.29
More direct evidence that some measure of penny-pinching may have
been evident in the budget available for production of Frogs is found
in the references by the initiate-chorus (lines 404ff.) to their being
costumed in rags 'for laughter and economy'. Even although it is possible
that old clothing may have been customary in the Mystic processions,
there still seems an inescapable hint here of spinning out straitened
resources;30 certainly it is hard to see any overwhelming dramatic
advantage to Aristophanes in choosing to give his main chorus this
rather drab persona. Athenian audiences tended to expect some show
of splendour in their dramatic festivals, particularly in the costuming
of the choruses, and Dover attempts to find in this an argument in
favour of the spectacular presentation of the earlier frog-chorus, in
order to offset the drabness of the main initiate chorus: 'If the principal
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(on stage for some 1200 lines), which would have avoided the need
to apologize, however wittily, for their dull appearance and his own
shortage of funds?
In any case, we should resist the idea of 'the manager getting away
with something', inasmuch as Frogs does have a spectacular and
probably quite expensive item as an important feature of its production.
This is Charon's boat itself, which has to be large and strong enough
to hold two actors, may very well have had to have been mobile, and
must have allowed at least an approximate suggestion of no less a thing
than a trireme to emerge from its manipulation! As such it is certainly
one of the most elaborate of all the props required in Aristophanic
comedy, and its construction may have been comparatively expensive,
and the item on which Aristophanes chose to concentrate meagre
resources.32 If this is so, it would not only explain the apology for
the raggedness of the initiate-chorus, but would also render a visible,
gorgeous frog-chorus 'a fortiori' even less likely on the grounds of lack
of resources (and, for that matter, possible distraction from the true
focus of spectacle in the frog-scene, the boat).
3. The Behaviour of Frogs
The most a casual observer is likely to see of them is their leap from
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season.3 6
orlAoLs ov aclE/patLuv
aL?Aav E9,9Ey~aMpEUt9a
The frogs are declaring 'Let us now sing the more, if ever we sang
in such circumstances before'. I believe that it is in precisely these
circumstances that Aristophanes intends us to visualize his frog-chorus
singing their challenge to Dionysos - calling loudly from concealment
in the margins of the Infernal Lake, or singing their 'bubbly-splashy'
song from under the surface; in either case invisible, as undetectable
to the eye (though not the ear) as human observers so frequently find
their natural counterparts.38
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NOTES
title from the identity of the subsidiary chorus which plays an extreme
relevant role in the drama. Yet, presumably owing to the outstanding ch
in which the frogs figure (and which, it must be admitted, contrasts gr
rather lack-lustre and anonymous character of the principal chorus of
it is the frogs who seem to have lent their name to the whole play (
principal chorus and thus firmly in the mainstream of traditional Old
from a very early stage of its existence. The citing of the authority of
of Hypotheses 1 and 2 makes it very likely that the play was known
was so known in both the early circulating written version of the text
4. The full scholiastic notice in fact runs TarTa KaAELTaL 7rapaxopqy-qaLaTa, E7TEL67S OUX dp
IEv rT?9 EaTpo0 o; aTpaxoL, oV36E o Xopo'g, d AA ' EvUWEv (LtLOUtvTaL ToV flaTpXOvs . 6 6o S AErl Xo
T&v EUErWV VEKpWV OUVW'UTrTiKEv. It is normal to discount the validity of this evidence, a
scholia being very often based on little more than inferences from the text itself, uninformed from any independent source. It is notable here, however, that, apart from Charon's
dKOvaEL (line 205), there is very little in the text (at least superficially) to have prompted this
remarkably positive and fairly extensive statement of the scholiast's, who is in addition primarily
concerned to define 7rapaXopqlyI7/ara and not principally to emphasize the invisibility of the
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frogs. It is thus possible that something more may underlie this pie
visible choruses (especially when one would fit so well into the fami
animal-chorus) than make such an unprompted and far from obv
5. Sifakis, op. cit., p. 94. Also Dover, op. cit., p. 177: 'Kharon's w
6. Thus, e.g., Dover, ibid., p. 178: 'If the chorus of frogs actually appeared dressed in skintight costumes of green and yellow, crouching and leaping in all directions round the orchestra
like frogs in a marsh, ... [this would afford] an agreeable and ingenious spectacle ...'
10. 'Fostering Apollo's reeds' (232ff.) means no more than that the frogs are dear
because the reeds for his lyre's construction grow in the frogs' domain under the
surveillance. So too 'hopping through the galingale and reeds ... fleeing Zeus' showers'
(244ff.) refers to generalized past behaviour (El 8 7TorT 242), and is not a description of present
activity suggesting that the frogs were seen 'hopping' or 'fleeing' as they actually sang this
song.
11. The only exception might be at the end of Knights, but many scholars hold that there a
final choral utterance has been lost from our text. In Lysistrata, Lysistrata invites the
Spartan(s) to respond to the ode that the chorus has just sung, and presumably that adequately
13. P. Oxy. xxxv. 2740. See also C. Austin, Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta i
Reperta (Berlin and New York, 1973), 98, pp. 114-18; also A. M. Wilson, CQ 24 (1974
with his addendum in CQ 26 (1976), 318.
14. Suda s.v. KaAAL'ag.
of the earliest Athenian Old Comic poets known to him; we have epigraphic evidence of a
victory of his in 473/2 B.C. (IG ii2. 2318 and 2325). Aristophanes' remarks, Knights 250ff.
18. We know of a victory by Kallias in 446/5 B.c. (IG ii2. 2318).
19. Thus Dover, op. cit., p. 178.
20. Cf. the highly suggestive language of line 193, rEptJEPLEEL ... K KA y. Dearden, op. cit.,
pp. 67-69, suggests that the boat may have been displayed on the ekkyklema rather than actually
down in the orchestra, but, be that as it may, the activities of the frog-chorus, if visible, would
presumably still have to be related to that acting area. (I find totally unlikely Dearden's
suggestion (Mnemosyne 23 (1970), 17ff.) that 'the Frogs, if present at all, then appear through the
door on the stage to sing while Dionysos mimes his rowing only to disappear again as they are
defeated'. The stage is not a common location for the chorus at the best of times, and certainly
not when, as here in Frogs, we are dealing with a lyric sequence inviting dance-accompaniment
from any visible chorus.) Lastly, we should be sure to dismiss Bieber's statement (op. cit., p. 70)
that the frogs themselves 'drew and shoved the boat'; there is nothing whatsoever in the text
to suggest or support this.
21. Radermacher, for example, converts the 'acherusische See' into a simple 'Sumpf' in
the space of a single sentence (op. cit., p. 168).
22. I agree with Dearden (op. cit., 1976, p. 69) that the boat was probably presented broadside on. Dionysos is not sculling with two oars, but pulling a single oar (cf. lines 197, 199,
269), trireme-style. The parody of trireme-practice is further manifested in Charon's bosun's
chant of Wd 'ro7T (line 208) and of course by Dionysos' own protestations that he is
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36. I have personally heard a very raucous group (although admittedly not of the species
ridibunda) calling from a distance of about 150 metres in a swampy inshore area of a large lake
in New Zealand, but my very cautious attempts to get closer to them resulted in silence and not the
least visible sign of so much as a single frog.
37. Frogs can and frequently do call underwater, as some commentators have recog-
nized: see, e.g., Gilbert Murray's translation (London, 1908), p. 21. Ovid also was clearly a worthy
field-observer of this phenomenon - see Metamorphoses 6.376: quamvis sint sub aqua, sub aqua
maledicere temptant.
38. I must particularly thank Sir Kenneth Dover and Miss Nan V. Dunbar for much
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