Plutarch, Comparationis Aristophanis et Menandri compendium, Harold North Fowler (Translator), 1

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

← Previous Next →

[1] In general he¹ much prefers Menander, and in particular he adds what follows:

Coarseness, he says, in words, vulgarity and ribaldry are present in Aristophanes, but not at all in Menander; obviously, for the uneducated, ordinary person is captivated by what the former says, but the educated man will be displeased. I refer to antitheses and similar endings and plays on words. For of these Menander does make use with proper consideration and rarely, believing that they should be treated with care, but Aristophanes employs them frequently, inopportunely, and frigidly; for his punning is applauded, he says, in

because he soused the bankers -

Though they never were that but damn curs,²

and

This fellow blows an ill north-east or calumny,³

and

Give him a belly-punch in his bowels and guts,⁴

and

By laughter driven I soon shall be in Laughter-town,⁵

and

Whatever shall I do to you, you wretched pot,

When gone the way of pots?⁶

and

Since, women, what he does to us are evils wild,

For one who e’en himself in the wild-greens market grew,⁷

and

But look, the moths have eaten up my plumes entire,⁸

and

Lam.

I say, bring here my shield’s round orb all Gorgon-faced.

Dic.

I say, hand me a flat-cake’s orb all faced with cheese,⁹

and many things of the same sort. Moreover, in his diction there are tragic, comic, pompous, and prosaic elements, obscurity, vagueness, dignity, and elevation, loquacity and sickening nonsense. And with all these differences and dissimilarities his use of words does not give to each kind its fitting and appropriate use; I mean, for example, to a king his dignity, to an orator his eloquence, to a woman her artlessness, to an ordinary man his prosaic speech, to a market-lounger his vulgarity; but he assigns to his characters as if by lot such words as happen to turn up, and you could not tell whether the speaker is son or father, a rustic or a god, or an old woman or a hero.

Comparationis Aristophanis et Menandri compendium. Plutarch. Harold North Fowler (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1936.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The National Endowment for the Humanities.

Current edition Perseus

Summary of a Comparison Between Aristophanes and Menander (English) (Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. X. Fowler, Harold North, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1936 (printing).)

Editions (1)

Συγκρίσεως Ἀριστοφάνους καὶ Μενάνδρου ἐπιτομή Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarchi Chaeronensis Moralia, Vol. V. Vernardakēs, Grēgorios N., editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1893.) — 1 focus

[1] 853a ὠς μὲν κοινῶς καὶ καθόλου εἰπεῖν πολλῷ προκρίνει τὸν Μένανδρον, ὡς δʼ ἐπὶ μέρους καὶ 5 853b ταῦτα προστίθησι τὸ φορτικόν φησὶν ἐν λόγοις καὶ θυμελικὸν καὶ βάναυσον ὥς ἐστιν Ἀριστοφάνει, Μενάνδρῳ δʼ οὐδαμῶς. καὶ γὰρ ὁ μὲν ἀπαίδευτος καὶ ἰδιώτης, οἷς ἐκεῖνος λέγει, ἁλίσκεται ὁ δὲ πεπαιδευμένος δυσχερανεῖ· λέγω δὲ τὰ ἀντίθετα καὶ 10 ὁμοιόπτωτα καὶ παρωνυμίας. τούτοις γὰρ ὁ μὲν μετὰ τοῦ προσήκοντος λόγου καὶ ὀλιγάκις χρῆται ἐπιμελείας αὐτὰ ἀξιῶν, ὁ δὲ καὶ πολλάκις καὶ οὐκ εὐκαίρως καὶ ψυχρῶς· ἐπαινεῖται γάρ φησὶν ʼ ὅτι τοὺς ταμίας ἐβάπτισεν, οὐχὶ ταμίας ἀλλὰ Λαμίας 15 ὄντας· καὶ 853c

οὗτος ἤτοι καικίας ἢ συκοφαντίας πνεῖ

καὶ

γάστριζε καὶ τοῖς ἐντέροις καὶ τοῖς κόλοις

καὶ 20

ὑπὸ τοῦ γέλωτος εἰς Γέλαν ἀφίξομαι

καὶ

τί δῆτα σοι δράσω, κακόδαιμον, ἀμφορεὺς ἑξοστρακισθείς;

καὶ 5

ἄγρια γὰρ ἡμᾶς, ὦ γυναῖκες, δρᾷ κακά,

ἅτʼ ἐν ἀγρίοισι τοῖς λαχάνοις αὐτὸς τραφείς

καὶ

ἀλλʼ ἦ τριχόβρωτες τὸν λόφον μου κατέφαγον

καὶ 10

φέρε δεῦρο γοργόνωτον ἀσπίδος κύκλον.

κἀμοὶ πλακοῦντος τυρόνωτον δὸς κύκλον

καὶ πολλὰ τοιαῦτα. ἔνεστι μὲν οὖν ἐν τῇ κατασκευῇ τῶν ὀνομάτων αὐτῷ τὸ τραγικὸν τὸ κωμικὸν τὸ σοβαρὸν τὸ πεζόν, ἀσάφεια κοινότης, ὄγκος καὶ 15 δίαρμα, σπερμολογία καὶ φλυαρία ναυτιώδης. καὶ 853d τοσαύτας διαφορὰς ἔχουσα καὶ ἀνομοιότητας ἡ λέξις οὐδὲ τὸ πρέπον ἑκάστῃ καὶ οἰκεῖον ἀποδίδωσιν οἷον λέγω βασιλεῖ τὸν ὄγκον ῥήτορι τὴν δεινότητα γυναικὶ τὸ ἁπλοῦν ἰδιώτῃ τὸ πεζὸν ἀγοραίῳ τὸ 20 φορτικόν· ἀλλʼ ὥσπερ ἀπὸ κλήρου ἀπονέμει τοῖς προσώποις τὰ προστυχόντα τῶν ὀνομάτων, καὶ οὐκ ἂν διαγνοίης εἴθʼ υἱός ἐστιν εἴτε πατὴρ εἴτʼ, ἄγροικος εἴτε θεὸς εἴτε γραῦς εἴθʼ ἣρως ὁ διαλεγόμενος.

Translations (1)

An Abstract of a Comparison Betwixt Aristophanes and Menander Perseus (Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. III. Goodwin, William W., editor; Baxter, William, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.) — 1 focus

[1] To speak in sum and in general, he prefers Menander by far; and as to particulars, he adds what here ensues. Aristophanes, he saith, is importune, theatric, and sordid in his expression; but Menander not so at all. For the rude and vulgar person is taken with the things the former speaketh; but the well-bred man will be quite out of humor with them. I mean, his opposed terms, his words of one cadence, and his derivatives. For the one makes use of these with due observance and but seldom, and bestows care upon them; but the other frequently, unseasonably, and frigidly. For he is much commended, said he, for ducking the chamberlains, they being indeed not chamberlains ( ταμίαι) but bugbears ( Λαμίαι). And again,— This rascal breathes out nothing but roguery and affidavitry; and Beat him well in his belly with the entrails and the guts; and, I shall laugh till I go to Laughington ( Γέλαν); and, Thou poor sharded ostracized pot, what shall I do with thee? and, To you women surely he is a mad plague, for he grew up himself among these mad worts;—and, Look here, how the moths have eaten away my crest; and, Bring me hither the gorgon-backed circle of my shield; Give me the round-backed circle of a cheese-cake;—and much more of such like stuff.¹ There is then in the structure of his words something tragic and something comic, something blustering and something prosaic, an obscurity, a vulgarness, a turgidness, and a strutting, with a nauseous prattling and fooling And as his style has so great varieties and dissonances in it, so neither doth he give to his persons what is fitting and proper to each,—as state (for instance) to a prince, force to an orator, innocence to a woman, meanness of language to a poor man, and sauciness to a tradesman,—but he deals out to every person, as it were by lot, such words as come next to his hand, and you would scarce discern whether he that is talking be a son, a father, a peasant, a God, an old woman, or a hero.

Notes on the current edition

Summary of a Comparison Between Aristophanes and Menander

1. He seems to mean Plutarch; the compiler of this summary (or the editor who included it among Plutarch’s works) regarding Plutarch as the author of the statements which are introduced in this first sentence.

2. This quotation is not found in any collection of the fragments of Aristophanes (Bernardakis). The play on words in the Greek consists in the change of the initial letters of the words tamias ( treasurers) and Lamias, fabulous creatures such as the bugbears with which children are frightened by their nurses.

3. Knights, 437. In the Greek north-east and calumny both have the same endings in - ias, characteristic of the names of winds.

4. Knights, 454. The play here consists in the use of gastrize, usually meaning stuff the belly with food, as punch in the belly. The language is intentionally coarse as being characteristic of the Sausage-dealer, Cleon’s rival for political leadership.

5. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 546, no. 618. The play is on the word gelôs laughter and the city of Gela in Sicily.

6. Kock, ibid. p. 543, no. 593. The speaker seems to be about to smash a pot in order to get some ostraka or potsherds on which to inscribe the name of the politician for whose ostracism he desires to vote.

7. Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria, 455. One of the assembled women is arraigning Euripides for the wrongs he has done to the sex in his tragedies. The reference in the second line is to the then current story that the poet’s mother earned her living by selling wild greens and vegetables.

8. Acharnians, 1110. The speaker is the general Lamachus, who comes on the scene in his full officer’s regalia. The word for moth in Greek is trichobros hair-eater.

9. The first line is spoken by Lamachus, who has been ordered to lead out his forces for the defence of the frontier in blustery wintry weather. Everything he says is parodied by the pacifist Dicaeopolis, the charcoal-burner, who for his part is preparing for a grand banquet.

Plutarch Comparationis Aristophanis et Menandri compendium 1

Harold North Fowler (Translator)

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

Lam.

Dic.

Current edition Perseus

Notes on the current edition

Stable identifiers