No abstract
The Scythian archer in Thesmo., though sadly neglected, is an unique figure in the literature of the period in several respects. He is the only speaking Scythian prosopon to have survived from classical Greek drama: Sophocles' Σκύθ-αι, whether tragic or satyric, is known only from fragments 2 . He also represents the most important source for the Athenians' view not only of their corps of archerpoliceman, but of all their δημόσιοι ύπηρέται, slaves owned and subsidised by the state who performed in its service a variety of duties 3 . But most importantly, his utterances represent quite the most extensive example of caricature of barbarised Greek speech 4 to have survived from the Greek comic stage: Pseudartabas in Acharnians and the Triballian deity in Birds each deliver but a few words 6 . The fragments of Old Comedy suggest, however, that this kind of linguistic caricature was not uncommon: Plato Comicus brought Cleophon's supposedly Thracian mother, alluded to in Frogs (679-82), onto the stage βαρβαρίζουσαν (fr. 60 Kock). Imitation of a barbarian language for comic effect was a literary convention with a long history. The first clear example is in a poem by the 6thcentury iambographos Hipponax (fr. 92 West), where a woman is portrayed uttering a lewd incantation, supposedly λυδίζουσα (92.1), but what is in fact Greek with an admixture of Lydian and Phrygian words. After the 5th century, an exciting example of the technique in Greek literature is to be found in the 1 A previous draft of this paper was read at a seminar on Aristophanes at Oxford University, February (1987). I would like to thank Dr. Angus Bowie, Dr. Laetitia Edwards, and especially Professor Hugh Lloyd-Jones for helpful criticism.2 Had the fourth-century comedies by Antiphanes and Xenarchus entitled Scythians survived, more could have been said about the projection of this race in drama. The ancient view of Scythia was a. schizophrenic fusion of romantic utopianism and censorious anti-primitivism. The idea that the Scythians were well-governed (eunomoi) probably goes back to Homer's Abii (II. 13.6) and can be found in drama in Aeschylus (fr. 198 Radt) and Antiphanes' comedy Misoponeros (fr. 159.1-3 Kock). See A. O. Lovejoy and G. Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, Baltimore (1935) 315-344, and E. L£vy, Les origines du mirage scythe, Ktema 6 (1981) 57 -68. 8 On the Scythian archers see A. Plassart, Les archers d'Athönes, RfiG 26 (1913) 151-213; on the state slaves in general, 0. Jacob, Les Esclaves Publics k Athfenes, Paris (1928). * As opposed to caricature of non-Attic Greek dialects, such as Lampito's Laconian in Lysistrata. 6 Ar. Ach. 100, 104; Birds 1672, 1615, 1628-9, 1678-9. On the latter see J. Whatmough, On Triballic in Aristophanes (Birds 1615), CP 47 (1952) 26, and for the language and ethnicity of the Triballians, Fanula Papazoglu, The Central Balkan Tribes in Pre-Roman Times, Amsterdam (1978) (= translation of original Serbo-Croatian edition, Sarajevo [1969]) 67 -81. Brought to you by | New York University Bobst Library...
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