Monica
FLORENCE In Search of the Melting Pot: Athenian
Ethnic Identity in Old Comedy
This paper
addresses the construction of Athenian ethnic identity in
Old Comedy. The aim of the paper is to
demonstrate that Aristophanes does not, like other comic
poets, distance the Athenians from the Ionian ethnos.
Instead, he
collapses this boundary for comic effect.
In four different comedies, Aristophanes associates Athenian
characters with the term "Ionian" (Akharnians 102-122; Peace 930-936;
Thesmophoriazousai 159-165;
Ekklesiazousai 877-883,
918-920), and he twice puts the Ionic dialect into the
mouths of Attic speakers (Thesmophoriazousai 101-103; frag. 556). In fact, only once in extant Aristophanic comedy
is the term "Ionian" not associated with an Athenian
character (Peace 46). As I argue, this temporary
ethnic ambiguity functions as reinforcement of Athenian
cultural and ethnic superiority.
Recent
studies have shown that fifth-century Athenian literature
and art increasingly emphasized a distinct Athenian
identity (Hall 2002, 1997; Cohen 2000; Shapiro 1999;
Mills 1997; Rosivach CQ 1987), but no one has evaluated
comprehensively the comic instances of the term "Ionian"
and its significance in the articulation of Athenian
ethnic identity. Like
other comic poets, Aristophanes employs the label to
denote effeminate, extravagant, sophistic, and
pusillanimous behavior; however, his targets are
prominent Athenian ambassadors, assemblymen, and sophists
rather than the expected Ionian islanders.
In Akharnians for example, a Persian character, speaking
gibberish Greek, reduces a powerful Athenian ambassador
to the role of an effeminate "Ionian" supplicant (103).
Yet Aristophanes only superficially blurs the boundaries of
the ambassador's Athenian identity. The ambassador speaks Attic,
rather than Ionic, Greek and no mention is made of
"Ionian" manners or attire. Indeed, the Athenian comic
hero reveals that both ambassadors sent to Persia, far
from Ionian "eunuchs", are in fact the politician
Kleisthenes and the wrestler Straton (115-122). Similarly in Peace, a slave
suggests to Trygaios a scheme to frighten the Athenian
assemblymen into speaking in the Ionic dialect (930-936).
The clear implication is that Ionians are cowardly and the
Athenians would be startled into acting momentarily like
the Ionians. These
ethnic jokes work because comedy generally presents the
Athenians as superior to other Greeks and the assumed
alternate ethnic identity is only temporary. So in
Peace, the god War begins to pound all the different
Greek groups together to make a single dish (230-288),
but the Athenian comic hero, as leader, prevents this
ethnic stew by browbeating the diverse groups into
excavating the goddess Peace (296-300, 458-519).
Kallias
has inquired: "why is Ionia effeminate and full of
feasts?" (frag.
8). As this
paper reveals, Aristophanes redirects the same question
inwards --against public figures within Athens itself.
Ultimately such playful reversals do not create a melting pot. Instead, the comic reversals
create a comparison that reinforced the belief that
Athenians were both culturally dominant and ethnically
distinct among the Greeks.