Law and Greek Comedy

BUIS, EMILIANO JERÓNIMO

Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy

Oxford University Press

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2014; p. 321 - 339

While many questions about the spectators of Athenian drama are still far from being fully answered, it is certain that the comic audience was mainly composed of adult citizens who were familiar if not intimate with Athenian law. We know from numerous sources that during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE the Athenians spent much time in court or dealing with all sorts of legal business (e.g., contracts, leases, inheritance). Large numbers served as dikastai (judges) for a year at a time or appeared in court as litigants or witnesses; all fifty-nine year olds served as public arbitrators who would hear most private cases for claims worth more than ten drachmas before they went on to court. Moreover, they were used to listening to speakers proposing laws in the Assembly; they may also have listened to legal business in the Council for an entire year at a time and sometimes may have served a second term. If we take into account this first-hand experience of law, it is not surprising that comedy frequently refers to law and legal matters in order to accomplish its main mission, i.e. to elicit laughter. The general relationship between comedy and law, nevertheless, is not straightforward. Some questions that arise when exploring the interface between comedy and law in Athens are as follows: What evidence does comedy provide as a source for Athenian law? Can it only be used to corroborate what we know from other sources already (e.g. oratory and inscriptions), or can it additionally supplement our knowledge when it is our only source for terminology and procedure? How much and what knowledge of Athenian law do the comic dramatists expect a typical spectator to possess? How important is this knowledge for a full appreciation of the plays? And finally, how can an understanding of the Athenian legal system help us to place the dramatists? criticism of the courts in the appropriate context and evaluate the seriousness of their comedies? Since these issues complement each other but at the same time imply different aspects of the relationship between comedy and law and thus require different approaches, I deal with each of them briefly, one after the other. Profound differences between the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander, as far as their legal background is concerned, suggest that Old and New Comedy should be discussed separately. As if I were a prosecutor in a trial, I contend here that Greek comedy relies heavily on Athenian law in order to produce laughter; I argue first that this is mainly elicited in Old Comedy by means of parody, exaggeration and/or trans-contextualization; and second, that law in New Comedy provides the basis for the rhetorical agones about the oikos-conflicts that appear on stage.