Phallology, phlyakes , iconography and Aristophanes 1

Abstract

Two highly unusual vase paintings, which may be more or less direct representations of Aristophanes, have been first published recently. They have received little attention to date, and yet both bring with them intriguing problems, which are not, in my opinion, resolved in the original publications. This double accession is all the more remarkable since up till now there has been so little that might be claimed to illustrate pictorially the golden age of Old Comedy (say 435 to 390 B.C), however loosely or tightly the debatable term ‘illustration’ is used (see note 24). The best known has probably been the attic oenochoe with a squat, near-naked figure prancing on a low stage before an audience of two. He is usually taken to be burlesquing Perseus; but presumably his stage model, if indeed the genre is comedy at all, did not really perform naked and without mask. Closer to representation of actual performance may be the four unglazed oenochoai with polychrome decoration from towards the end of the fifth century, found in the Athenian Agora in 1954. For example the two porters, who are alleged to be carrying a large Dionysiac loaf, and who may be slaves or members of a chorus, have masks which are fairly grotesque, but their bodies are not particularly so (unless the one on the left is supposed to have a long but sketchy phallus pointing diagonally down?).