1 Csapo 2013.
2 Hall 2014, 310; Parker 2007, 148. Some scholars even regarded the general structure of comic plots as reflecting the structure of dramatic festivals including procession, sacrifice, preparation of the meal, and feasting; see Sfyroeras 2004, 259. I do not think, however, that there is enough evidence in the plays to ground this suggestion.
3 We do not know what festival in particular features in Women Bagging Tent-Sites, but it is likely that preparing tents would suit for a special time of a festival, although it is not certain if it was a religious festival or athletic one.
4 Bowie 2000, 330, notes that Phrynichos’ Initiates and Philyllios’ Herakles could have a festival as their major theme as well. For the former, the suggested festival would be the celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries; for the latter, the Anthesteria can be suggested, as it featured as one of the characters Dorpia, the first day of that festival.
5 In Men. Kol., Sam., Epitrep., Kitharista.
6 The Panathenaian procession was perhaps depicted in Strattis’ Macedonians, as we can see from fragment 31, where somebody speaks of a peplos lifted on a ship mast (cf. adesp. 73).
7 These include the following: a ban from participation in the sacred mysteries in Frogs, the proclamation of euphemia in the Rural Dionysia in Acharnians, and the proclamation of the beginning of the Assembly during the Thesmophoria in Women at the Thesmophoria.
8 To Phales and Dionysos during the Rural Dionysia in Acharnians; to Iakchos and Demeter in Frogs and Women at the Thesmophoria.
9 Sacrifice is not represented as part of any festival. It is intended in Acharnians at the Rural Dionysia but never fulfilled.
10 The festival theme is discussed in Habash 1995; Fisher 1993; Kavoulaki 2010.
11 On the ritual character of Amphitheos, a god-sent mediator for a peace treaty, cf. Kavoulaki 2010, 235.
12 Fisher 1993, 44, gives a different explanation of this multiplicity of festivals and shifting of settings. He claims that ‘they all help to suggest the complexity, the Dionysiac ambiguities, of the comic voice embodied in this hero, and the sustained ambivalence of his peace and of his relation to the city. […] his participation in three Dionysiac festivals, Rural Dionysia, Lenaia, and Anthesteria, all serve to emphasize his independence and isolation from the communities of the deme and the city rather than celebrate his solidarity or re-integration’. In fact, the character of the Dionysiac celebration is quite uniform, highlighting drinking and pleasure; Habash 1995 argues that the representation of the festivals adds to the ‘peaceful theme’ the motifs of generative fertility and vegetative bloom.
13 Presumably, there was no such festival of Paionia in Athens which makes the scene even funnier.
14 The spatial aspect of the procession was discussed in Chapter 3, p. 116–118 and the ritual role of the khoros in this scene in Chapter 2, p. 50–51.
15 Bierl 2009.
16 947–952, the scene is discussed in Bierl 2009, 94–150.
17 Pauson was an Athenian painter. He is said to be fasting too, not because of his piety but due to his extreme poverty. His name is the future participle of the verb παύω, ‘to stop’, ‘to cease’, which could be a pun on his incessant fasting.
18 Bierl 2009, 97.
19 Perhaps, the idea of this passage is that a correct ritual performance according to the nomos is defined through the regularity of time, whereas Pauson, who symbolises incorrect, non-stop celebration, which does not distinguish between different seasons, is ridiculed.
20 This is the usual comic self-boasting about the sophisticated character of the performed play distancing itself from cheap slapstick; cf. the parabasis in Clouds.
21 Reitzammer 2016, 70.
22 Parker 2007, 173–177; Burkert 2000.
23 They swore with the oath to celebrate the rites of Dionysos at the appropriate time (Dem. 59.78). On altars, see Chapter 3.
24 Lysimache was holding this honourable office in 411, the same year that the play was performed. Lysimache’s career was a long one: she served Athena for 64 years according to Plin. HN 34.76. The priestess had a residence on the Akropolis and was a public figure in Athenian society, Henderson 1987, xxxv, xxxviii.
25 A scholion to Lys. 389: ὅ τ’ Ἀδωνιασμός: ἑορτὴν γὰρ ἐπετέλουν τῷ Ἀδώνιδι αἱ γυναῖκες καὶ κήπους τινὰς εἰς τὰ δώματα ἀνέφερον. τινὲς δὲ ἐκ τούτου τὸ δρᾶμα Ἀδωνιαζούσας ἐπιγράφουσιν οὐ καλῶς. ‘The Adoniasmos: women celebrate the festival in honour of Adonis and put gardens on the roofs of the houses. Because of that some report the title of the play as Women celebrating the Adonia which is not correct.’
26 Reitzammer 2016, 76–79, 89.
27 Lysistrata invites women to seize the jug of wine, which she calls a kapros, a boar, hinting at the sacrifice which was to be performed to confirm the oath; see Reitzammer 2016, 77.
28 Adonis’ mother Myrrha was turned into a myrrh tree, and myrrh was used in his cult, as shown on vase paintings; see Reitzammer 2016, 79. Note that the second most important character in the Lysistrata is called Myrrhine.
29 See Simms 1998 and Servais 1984. A similar suggestion is found in Reitzammer 2016, 21. Dillon 2003 argues that the summer setting for the festival should be abandoned. See also bibliography and discussion of the problem in Furley 1988.
30 In Acharnians, as shown above, Dikaiopolis performed the festival out of season because of his sudden revelation after tasting the wine of the peace-treaty libation.
31 For instance, cf. the parabasis in Clouds (518–562) and the opening of Acharnians (8).
32 Fragments 103 and 113. The scholia report that comic poets portrayed him as crazy, Χολοζύγης. Another possibility would be that he was the producer of the play, since it is known that one of Eupolis’ plays, Autolykos, was produced in 421 BCE ‘through Demostratos’ (Ath. 5.216c–d). On Bouzygai, see Guía 2009.
33 On Aristophanes referring to his own earlier plays in a similar meta-theatrical way in the Clouds, see Chepel 2014.
34 Other comic representations of Eastern cults include Diokles’ Bacchant Women, Kratinos’ Thracian Women, Autokrates’ Tambourine-Players, Eupolis’ Dyers, Lysippos’ Bacchant Women and Thyrsos-keeper, and Magnes’ Lydians; see Bowie 2000.
35 On personifications in Pherekrates, see Henderson 2000, 142, 148, and Hall 2000.
36 Smith 2011, especially 83–89.
37 Cf. Lys. 1114, 1162–1172. She is only mentioned in Acharnians and is a non-speaking character in Lysistrata.
38 The word derives from ἀναρρύω, ‘to pull back (the victim’s head to facilitate the slaughter)’. This is also the name of the second day of the Apatouria festival.
39 Thuc. 2.15.
40 Parker 2007, 458–461.
41 This festival celebrated the myth of the Attic heroine Erigone; see Chepel 2009.
42 For instance, Alkibiades arrived in Piraeus on the day of Plynteria and it was considered ill-omened because business was prohibited on that day. Plut. Alc. 34.1–2. Xen. Hell. 1.4.12.
43 Parker 2007, 192: ‘The internal structure of the month was a vehicle of religious meaning’.
44 Mikalson 1975, 24.
45 They were called Tetradistai, Dekadistai, and Eikadeis; see Parker 1996, 335–336.
46 Parker 2011, 196 (as in Lysias fr. 53, Dem. 25.99). In Plut. Mor. 828A, it is called the holiest of days.
47 Parke 1977, 24.
48 Storey 2003, 215.
49 Attic months are personified as young males sometimes accompanied by women who have been interpreted as personifications of festivals. See Palagia 2008; Wachsmann 2012.
50 It was interpreted as an attempt to coordinate the lunar calendar (Athenian festivals) and the solar calendar (zodiac), see Palagia 2008.
51 Hannah 2005, 27. Already a Mykenaian calendar in Linear B, for example, records details of sacrifices to different gods according to the months: Hannah 2005, 16, Gemin. Eisagoge 8.6–9; also Pritchett 2001, 31, Pl. Leg. 7.809c.
52 Carbon 2015, 537–538.
53 The value of the seasonal system contrasted to the political calendar is argued in Thuc. 5.20. 1–2; see discussion in Hannah 2005, 46.
54 Discussed in Hannah 2005, 30; Persky 2009, 35–36; Pritchett 2001, 35; Parker 2007, 192–194; Parker 2011, 196; Samuel 1972, 57. The Athenian calendars are complicated and debated matters; cf. Dunn 1998, 1999; Waerden 1960; Meritt 1961; Pritchett 2001. Both the festival civic calendar (‘according to the archon’) and the lunar calendar (‘according to the goddess’, i.e., based on the lunar cycle) were to some extent irregular and did not follow any strict astronomical scheme. The calendrical system had to be adjusted both ad hoc and on a regular basis with intercalations. The festival calendar is also called the archon’s calendar because the archon had the authority to regulate it and to insert intercalary days if needed. The changes in the calendar were allegedly proclaimed through a public notice by special heralds. Cf. Machon fr. 11; Gow 1965, 86.
55 There existed also stelai, presumably more recent inscriptions on the sacrificial law, and syngraphai, further instructions how to use kyrbeis and stelai. See the chapter Solon’s Calendar in Parker 1996.
56 Remarkably, Lys. 30. 17–22, is the main source for the process of the revisions and the work of the commission appointed to do this: see Lambert 2002.
57 See discussion in Carawan 2010.
58 Four of these are discussed extensively in Ekroth 2002.
59 This has been noted by Persky in his unpublished thesis, 2009, 58–59.
60 The same idea, of the amount of money waxing along with the moon, is repeated in 1287–1289.
61 Persky 2009, 58.
62 To trap the moon is a typical magical trick particularly associated with Thessalian women; cf. Pl. Gorg. 513a; Sophron’s mime The Women Who Are Said to Expel the Moon; Men. Woman from Thessaly.
63 The point is that ‘the deposits should have been made on a fixed day, and consequently the parties will lose them, since they have not obeyed this regulation’ (Starkie 1966, 257).
64 Starkie 1966, 258: ‘The arguments ἀπὸ διανοίας τοῦ γράψαντος were permitted in the Athenian courts […] . When the language of a law was equivocal, the speaker might argue that the received interpretation was erroneous, or might refer to the motive of the lawgiver’. Cf. Dem. 22. 30; also Sommerstein 1982, 218: ‘Pheidippides’ argument is based on the pretence that henē kai neā ‘Old-and-New’—in reality a current expression familiar to everybody—is an archaism to be found only in the laws and requiring interpretation […] Presumably, if Strepsiades’ creditors were to take him to court, Pheidippides would argue that as the presiding magistrate had accepted the plaintiff’s deposits on the wrong day (the last of the month instead of the first) the suits were null and void.’
65 The phrase ‘according to the moon’ is a term for lunar calendars corresponding to the phrase ‘according to the goddess’, meaning Selene, which is attested epigraphically in Athens and other Greek cities; see Pritchett 2001, 89–91.
66 However, Persky 2009, 59, sees the two passages as inconsistent and contradicting each other, drawing on different systems of time reckoning: ‘In the Clouds, the moon relayed the Greek gods’ complaint that mortals have been mismanaging their festival calendars and thus cheating the gods out of their festivals. Here, it is the moon that is cheating the gods, with the sun as co-conspirator. Taken together, these passages clearly do not add up to a consistent critique of Athenian timekeeping, nor does Aristophanes unquestionably regard religious festivals as divinely ordained to the extent that he has been taken to.’ In both passages, however, through the relationship of the gods with the moon Aristophanes shows the importance of the calendar for the performance of rituals and celebration of festivals.
67 Samuel 1972, 58.
68 Storey 2003, 215, suggests that Eupolis’ play New-Moons could also be about calendrical issues of this kind.
69 Dunn 1998, 230–231; Parker 2007, 193.
70 The problem described in the parabasis refers to the deviation between the dates of festivals set by the archon, on the one hand, and the actual time which passed between the same festival from year to year, on the other. Cf. Persky 2009, 38: ‘Festivals took place on specific dates in the festival calendar, unchanging from year to year, although, in practice, the eponymous archon could intercalate or omit days from the calendar at his discretion, so even though festivals happened on set dates, the date does not necessarily indicate how much time had passed since the last performance of that festival. Set dates, therefore, did not necessarily mean fixed times.’
71 The verb προτενθεύειν means here metaphorically to take money before the proper time. Athenaios cites a fragment of Philyllios’ Herakles (Ath. 4.171 c–e = fr. 7) where Dorpia, the personified second day of the Apatouria festival, describes herself as ‘Dorpia of Fore-tasters’. In Pherekrat. Wild Men fr. 8, the Fore-Tasters are the characters speaking.
72 This is not unusual. Noumenia was probably familiar for the audience as significant in both the ‘legal’ and ‘ritual’ calendars; cf. noumenia as the ritual day for business in Wasps (96, 171) and as ritual day for religious celebrations in Theopomp. Penelope fr. 48.
73 It is mentioned also in Av. 997. There is already some disagreement reported concerning the number of the sundials set up by Meton and their location in the scholion. According to the text of Birds and a fragment of Banqueters, the sundial was built in Kolonos, while the Hellenistic historian Philochoros gives the Pnyx location. Halliwell 1984, 86 n.18, suggests that there was only one monument and that Kolonos should be understood simply as ‘hill’. However, in this case the audience must have been familiar with the habit of calling the Pnyx just a ‘hill’ which is not attested anywhere else.
74 On Meton and his cycle: Hannah 2005, 52–59; Bowen and Goldstein 1988, 78. Meton as the comic type of an intellectual is discussed in Zimmermann 1993. A lexical parallel between Sokrates’ and Meton’s occupation with astronomy in comedy is the word πνιγεύς, which both use for comparison of the dome of the sky with a baking-lid: Av. 998–999, Nub. 95–96, also in Kratin. fr. 167 ascribed to the philosopher Hippon. The adoption of the Metonic cycle as the reason for the Moon’s concern in the parabasis of the Clouds was argued by Guidorizzi 1996, 268–269, and by Amati 2010, 225.
75 The astronomy practised in the Thinkery would be cosmological, not calendrical, strictly speaking, but at that time the two were interdependent of one another; see Bowen and Goldstein 1988.
76 Parker 1996, 333–336.
77 Delneri 2006, 75 n. 19.
78 Il. 22.450; 2.471; Od. 5.485, Od. 24. 344; 9.135. See also Jolles 1913, 2302–2303. The word in the singular can be used for ‘time’.
79 Il. 5.749, 6.393.
80 IG II3,1 1002.13 (250/49 BC) and IG II2 4877. See Smith 2011, 77–78; Philochoros FGrH 328 F 5 and 173.
81 The festival reveals itself as having special relevance for fertility and growth. Special bread, thargelos, was shown at the festival and a sacrifice was offered to Demeter Chloë.
82 Porphyry cites verbatim Theophrastos’ On piety 2. 44. (= Porph. Abst. 2.7); see also Parker 2007, 203–205.
83 Olson 1998, 170.
84 A role similar to the one they are given in Hesiod’s Works and Days, to decorate Pandora with flowers, v. 75.
85 The Aristophanic hapax plays with the two words καίρος, time, and καῖρος, thrum of the loom, perhaps the parody of the tragic word λεπτοσπάθητος, fine-woven.
86 Moreau 1954, 330; Delneri 2006, 74, 106. Harvey 2000, 107, suggests that since the Horai were responsible for growth, it is possible that they were depicted in greater numbers than is strictly correct. He suggests two options for the khoros: either of traditional gods or of two groups of new gods and old gods.
87 Test. ii = Leg. 2.37: novos vero deos et in his colendis nocturnas pervigilationes sic Aristophanes, facetissimus poeta veteris comoediae, vexat, ut apud eum Sabazios et quidam alii dei peregrini iudicati e civitate eiciantur. ‘Thus Aristophanes, the very witty poet of old comedy, attacked new gods and the nocturnal vigils that accompanied their worship, so that in his play Sabazios and certain other immigrant gods are expelled from the city after a trial.’ Transl. Henderson 2008.
88 The reference to Egypt implies not only the lack of seasonal change and excessive fertility of the land but also barbarian luxury: Storey 2011, 379 n. 33; Moreau 1954, 332; cf. Hdt. 2.19, 77. The passage is discussed in Pellegrino 2000, 178 n. 7, who provides a summary of interpretations. Pellegrino comes to the conclusion that the episode praises the wealth of Athens. See also Ceccarelli 1996, 151–153, on this fragment as reflecting imperial ambitions of Athens.
89 τοῖσιν μελιηδέα καρπὸν / τρὶς ἔτεος θάλλοντα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα, ‘for whom the grain-giving field bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing three times a year’, transl. G.W. Most..
90 For instance, Kratin. frs. 176, 363, Aristoph. Thesm II fr. 333, Pherekr. Basket-Bearers fr. 63, Didaskalos, fr. 50. See Ruffell 2000 and Pellegrino 2000.
91 Ceccarelli 1996, 153, interprets the abundance of all products at every time of the year as a comic metaphorical parody of Periklean promises concerning thalassocracy. Cf. Thuc. 2.38.2 and Ps.- Xen. Ath. Pol. 2.7–9.
92 Moreau 1954, 343–344, suggests that the reference is to the Egyptian calendar as less organised than the Athenian one. Moreau even speculates whether the dialogue between Trygaios and Hermes in Peace could refer to Seasons as a comedy depicting the calendrical disorder in Athens related to the conflict between indigenous and immigrant (barbarian) gods.
93 Transl. Godley 1960.