Cultured Animals and Wild Humans? Talking with the Animals in Aristophanes’ Wasps

Abstract

This article focuses on animal characters and choruses as both companions and opponents to human action in Aristophanes’ Wasps (422 B.C.). In the world of Aristophanic comedies that contain animal choruses a unique situation emerges: humans and animals are seen to co-exist in a society where animals can employ human speech and humans may take on animal attributes. This paper explores these points using Aristophanes’ Wasps as its focus because (1) Wasps contains the largest array of animals in extant comedy, (2) Wasps has been noted for its very strong Aesopic elements, and (3) Wasps has received less attention than Birds in the study of animals in comedy. The article explores the variety of ways in which humans and animals are seen to interact within just one comic drama: from Philocleon introduced as a “monstrous creature” (Wasps 4: κνώδαλον) and first appearing on stage disguised under a donkey, to the waspish chorus, the satirical dog-trial, and finally the crab-dance which ends the play. No other extant comedy contains such a variety of animal characters and animalinspired jokes, many of which are orchestrated by the protagonist Philocleon, who appears to possess shape-shifting qualities that see him straddle the thin boundary between human and animal worlds. The article explores how the confrontation between animal and human is played out through the character of Philocleon alongside the use of slapstick, contemporary satire and musical contests in which the human wins out but at the cost of part of their anthropic identity.