1 Introduction
Awareness of the existence of linguistic varieties and of a suitable vocabulary to designate them was an important part of the development of a technical terminology in various fields as generally attested from the last third of the fifth century BCE on.1 In this chapter, I suggest that Old Attic comedy plays a crucial role in anchoring Attic as standard Greek. On the one hand, Attic playwrights working in Athens and for an Athenian audience use the local dialect and thus behave ‘normally’. On the other hand, there are many examples from theatre where characters speak in non-Attic for different reasons and with different intentions, so that the audience experiences linguistic diversity in theatre.2 Discourses on language varieties as well as on dialect speakers themselves were embodied on stage through the actors’ mockery of dialects, which the audience experienced in the moment of acoustic and phonetic contrast between the lines of the non-Attic characters and the ordinary Attic colloquial speech of the Attic-speaking characters and the majority of the audience.
Furthermore, this chapter focuses on the meaning of the verb
2 ἀττικίζειν : Speak Attic or Behave Attic?
The damaged papyrus fragment 99 PCG of Eupolis’ comedy Demoi (P.Cair. 43227 fr. 1 verso) reads:
And he thinks he has a right to participate in public debate, yesterday and the day before yesterday in our presence (being deprived?) of any members of a phratry, and he would not even speak Attic (behave himself as a pro-Athenian?), if he did not felt shame before his friends.
The verb
The verb
Τὰ μὲν οὖν ἐς τὸν ἡμέτερόν τε ἀκούσιον μηδισμὸν καὶ τὸν ὑμέτερον ἑκούσιον ἀττικισμὸν τοιαῦτα ἀποφαίνομεν . (Thuc. 3.64.5)7
By all that we demonstrate that our medism is constrained whilst atticism was voluntary.
The concept of Attic Greek is documented elsewhere. The first documentation seems to be the well-known passage from Solon:
ἔπειτα φωνὴν πᾶσαν ἀκούοντες ἐξελέξαντο τοῦτο μὲν ἐκ τῆς, τοῦτο δὲ ἐκ τῆς· καὶ οἱ μὲν Ἕλληνες ἰδίᾳ μᾶλλον καὶ φωνῇ καὶ διαίτῃ καὶ σχήματι χρῶνται, Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ κεκραμένῃ ἐξ ἁπάντων τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ βαρβάρων . (Ps.-Xen. Ath. Pol. 2.7–8)
Further, hearing every language, they [the Athenians] have selected some from that and some from this; whilst the Greeks use more their own language, habits and appearance, the Athenians use one that is mixed out of all the Greeks and foreigners.9
The comic playwright Plato notably used the verb
For he was not pro-Athenian/he did not speak Attic, dear Moirai, but whenever he had to say
διῃτώμην , he used to sayδῃτώμην , and whenever he was supposed to sayὀλίγον he used to sayὀλίον .
Bearing in mind the political connotations (in all probability the politician Hyperbolus, whose name is the title of the comedy, is the subject of the verb
Over the course of the fifth century BCE, the morpheme –
In particular, the verb
In assessing the question of newly formed verbs denoting ‘speaking in another language/dialect’, we may consider several comic fragments.14 In the early comedy Babylonioi (426 BCE), Aristophanes uses the verb
We find other verbs ending in -
The verb
Plato in fragment 183 PCG recalls the Persian Pseudartabas in Aristophanes’ Acharnians (
Another verb of this kind,
In view of these parallels, let us look again at the fragments of Plato and Eupolis and in particular at the use of the verb
Here the probable candidate cannot speak properly, he speaks a ‘low urban’ rather than a rural variety of Attic: perhaps the nascent ‘international’ Attic […]. If this is true, it is worth remarking that a type of Greek which is likely to have been heard quite commonly on the streets of Athens and Piraeus is characterized by the playwrights (at least implicitly, and perhaps explicitly) as barbarous—a character with a Thracian mother reveals his low background by his low morals, his deficient paideia and his substandard Greek.27
Plato’s fragment constitutes an example of political attack, a particular pronunciation being ridiculed. We don’t know the identity of the speaker, but whoever he or she was, it’s all the funnier that a character in a distorted comic costume behaves on stage like a purist grammarian who flew in a time machine from a later Alexandrian era: as a point of fact, the earliest attestations for linguistic studies belong to the fifth century BCE and reveal prosodic exercises.28 The verb
3 Shaping Attic Identity: Wasps and Grasshoppers
In Plato’s fragment, the verb
If any of you spectators, seeing my appearance and seeing me in the middle with a wasp’s waist, wonder what the purpose of our sting is, I can easily explain it, even if one is unlearned beforehand. We who have such a sting are the only true native Athenians, a very masculine race, who helped this city greatly in battle when the barbarians came, covered the city with smoke, set it on fire, and tried to destroy our nests by force. Immediately we attacked ‘with spear and shield’ and fought them after we had drunk a draught of sharp, bitter liquor; one man stood next to another and bit his lip in anger. Because of their arrows the sky could not be seen, but nevertheless, with the help of the gods, we drove them back towards evening; for an owl had flown over our ranks before the battle. Then we pursued them and harpooned them through their baggy trousers, and they fled, stung in the jaws and eyebrows, and so to this day it is said everywhere among the barbarians that there is nothing more manly than an Attic wasp.
The wasp identity of the chorus is justified by Athens’ glorious martial past, while their presence as jurors in the contemporary city is further described by the wasps’ persistent behaviour during their service.29 The history of the Persian Wars in vv. 1078–1088, 1092–1093 and 1098–1101 which partly echoes Herodotus’ account Hist. 8.50–53 can be read as a disjointed hodgepodge of elements borrowed from the battle at Thermopylae (1084:
Now when the wasps, the ‘only true Attic natives’ (
The meticulous, colorful details of the battles serve to remind the audience of the victories in the Persian Wars, but the framing of the narrative, as well as the mockery of the Athenians’ boastful autochthonous origins, distracts from the sublime story of the glorious past and teases the popular misuse of historical memory.31 For our purposes here, and especially for the use of
Similarly, in Aristophanes’ Knights (424 BCE), Demos (the Athenian people of the Pnyx) is the symbol of the glorious ‘violet-crowned’ Athens, as once sung about by Pindar.32
Sausage-seller: … Shout for joy at the appearance of the old Athens, the wonderful and much-praised one where the famous Demos dwells.
Chorus leader: Athens, the radiant, the violet-crowned, the universally envied, show us the monarch of Greece and of this land.
Sausage-seller: Behold this man wearing a golden grasshopper, resplendent in ancient garb, smelling not of conch shells but of peace libations, and anointed with myrrh.
Chorus leader: Hail, King of the Greeks, we rejoice with you, for your deeds are worthy of the city and trophy of Marathon.
The city of Athens of the period of the Persian Wars is recalled, and Athenian Demos is glorified as a monarch—an obvious parallel to the Persian Great King!—of Greece and of ‘this land’. He is a true autochthon, just like the chorus-wasps in the parabasis discussed above, as he wears a golden cicada in his hair (
Athens’ prominent position is seen as a consequence of its almost single- handed victory over the Persians, which in turn justifies the empire and the resulting revenues as compensation for saving Greece.34 At the same time, the cruel power of laughter is at work: the statement should not be perceived literally, the audience is trained in perceiving irony and distortion. Attic identity— “the appearance of the old Athens” (
The implications of the verb
4 Hearing and Evaluating Non-Attic on Stage
A number of passages from Old Attic comedy attest to a certain awareness of dialects spoken in Greek, such as Megarian (Ar. Ach. 729–835), Boeotian (Ar. Ach. 860–954), Ionian (Ar. Pax 45–48), and Laconian (Ar. Lys. 1242–1315).38 Some dramatic titles also suggest that the opposition between Attic and non- Attic, as well as regional differentiation, were perhaps a central and important part of the plot of these plays, although no such tragedy or comedy has survived.39
Furthermore, the discourse on dialectal variety is reflected in a fragmentary dialogue from Strattis’ comedy Makedones e Pausanias (around 400 BCE?):
Α. ἡ σφύραινα δ’ ἐστὶ τίς ;
Β. κέστραν μὲν ὔμμες ὡττικοὶ κικλήσκετε . (Strat. fr. 29 PCG)
A. What is a sphyraina? Β. You Attic people call it kestra [a type of fish].
Here too, it remains an open question who speaker B might have been (
In a fragment from another comedy by Strattis, his Phoenissai, a character mocks the Boeotian dialect:
You understand nothing, all of you, the whole city of Thebes, nothing whatsoever. First of all, they say that you call a cuttlefish opisthotila. A rooster [you call] an ortalikhos, a doctor [you call] saktas, a bridge [you call] bephyra; figs [you call] tuka, swallows [you call] kotilades, a morsel of food [you call] akolos, laughter [you call] kriddemen, and if something is newly-patched, it is neospatotos.
The differences between Boeotian and Attic (two dialect regions that bordered each other) were surely recognizable for Strattis’ audience, hence the power of this humor.41
The character of the doctor seems to have served as a stereotype for the non-Attic speaker, as the early comic playwright Crates (fl. 440s BCE) staged a doctor speaking the Doric dialect, perhaps because authoritative medical schools were to be found in Cos and Cnidus, where Doric was spoken (Crates incert. fr. 46 PCG).42 In Ameipsias’ comedy Sphendone (after 427 BCE, fr. 17 PCG), there is a character—perhaps again a doctor—recommending a recipe in Ionian Greek (Ameips. fr. 17 PCG).43 Furthermore, Eupolis’ comedy Heilotes (429–425 BCE?) included a (Spartan?) character speaking a Doric dialect (frr. 147 and 149 PCG include one verse in Doric each, whilst the corrupt fr. 151 PCG perhaps contains a Doric word).44
The audience was obviously aware of dialectal differentiation, Attic increasingly becoming dominant, and this could be employed for comic aims, while a dialect could also be used as a marker to identify a stock character on stage. The function of marked language, when a character speaks a dialect, is difficult to determine even in surviving comedy because the immediate contemporary context and the extent of comic effect are unknown.45 This is even less possible in comic fragments. The passages gathered here sufficiently demonstrate that whilst emphasizing Greek linguistic varieties which became increasingly the focus of Athenian audiences and readers towards the end of the fifth century BCE, Attic comic playwrights were engaged in a gradual process of both implicitly and explicitly establishing Attic as the main and standard variety being performed and listened to or read.
5 Being Ashamed because You Don’t Speak Attic?
In the context of the whole cultural-historical range of Attic identity construction, the use of the verb
As is well known, the ancient Greek vocabulary of emotions does not correspond to modern concepts, and it is not easy to translate
Philoi in Eupolis’ verse (
The verb
As a result, the politically important maritime center of Athens, a leading city in the defense of Greece against the Persians, became a kind of ‘linguistic empire’, occupying a superior position both inside and outside the Aegean.54 When Eupolis’ character comments on stage about a politician that he feels shame/disgrace/embarrassment/disdain/dishonor/humiliation before his philoi in not acting like an Athenian and speaking any other dialect but pure Attic, however provocative and disturbing this might sound, the linguistic norms and standards had already been imposed and accepted by his Athenian audience.
6 Conclusion
In the course of the fourth century BCE, Athenian hegemony weakens and Attic comedy production becomes increasingly international, so that the discourse of ‘barbarian’ versus Athenian will also change.55 The Greeks, whose language was fragmented into several dialects and lacked a standard variety before the fourth century BCE, notoriously did not develop dialectological studies until the Hellenistic period.56 Yet, as we have seen, the discourse about ‘the Greek language’, as such, and about ‘the dialects of Greek’ (although ethnic in character), strongly existed, with its roots in pre-Classical thought.57 Comments on an alien language or dialect onstage reflect fifth-century BCE proto-linguistic discussions and thus take part in the process of the further development of dialect studies and their vocabulary. Discourses on Greek language dialects must have been prominent towards the end of the fifth century BCE, as these are reflected in various genres.58 Furthermore, a clear distinction (in terms of both markers and function) is maintained between social and regional varieties, as also between dialect Greek and barbarized Greek.
There are many examples from drama where the characters speak in a non-standard Attic or non-Attic language, for various reasons and with various functions.59 Dialect speakers are brought onto the stage, dialects are marked and recognized by the audience through the acoustic and phonetic juxtaposition of the lines of non-Attic characters with the familiar vernacular Attic. The moment this fact becomes the object of (self-)reflection, the effect is achieved: through the vivid incorporation and distorted embodiment of this ongoing process on stage, through the ethical and moral evaluation of the phenomenon, through the anchoring of the juxtaposition of Attic and non-Attic, mockery and derisive comedy have shaped a significant part of this linguistic diversity.
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Willi (2003, pp. 70–95). See also Novokhatko (2020), and Novokhatko (2023, pp. 24–29 and in particular 135–147).
Colvin (2019).
On the date of the comedy, see the discussion in Olson (2017, pp. 304–310) with bibliography. See also Tuci (2014). On the verb
Cf. recent translations of the verse 25 of Eupolis’ fragment: ‘and he wouldn’t even have spoken Attic if he hadn’t been afraid of embarrassing his friends’ (Colvin), ‘and wouldn’t even be speaking Attic if he weren’t ashamed before his friends’ (Storey), ‘and he wouldn’t even speak Attic, if he weren’t embarrassed in front of his friends’ (Olson).
See Eleni Bozia’s chapter in this volume, p. 288.
Thuc. 3.62.2–3. See Rhodes (1994, ad loc.) and Hornblower (1991, ad loc.) who emphasizes that the verb
Cf. Thuc. 4.133 and also 8.38. The verb
See Novokhatko (2020, p. 16).
See Cassio (1981) and the introduction in this volume p. 12, 22 above. On deliberate mingling of language and identity in the fifth-century Athenian discourse, see Willi (2002, pp. 25–149).
See the discussion in Pirrotta (2009, pp. 329–331).
Colvin (1999, p. 282 and 2000, pp. 289–290). See also Cassio (1981).
Schol. Ar. ad Av. 1680 Dübner. On the comparison with a swallow for speaking a wrong or awkward Greek, cf. also Ar. Av. 1677–1681 (
For further parallels, see Fraenkel (1950, ad loc.).
See also adverbs meaning ‘in such a such tongue/dialect’:
Orth (2017, pp. 533–536).
See Anacr. fr. 399 PMG. For the fifth century BCE, cf. further
For the Athenian perspective on the Lydians, both in written record and in vase painting, see DeVries (2000, pp. 356–363). For the verbs on -
Bagordo (2014, pp. 82–84).
It occurs thirty times in Herodotus and five times in Thucydides.
For the obscene connotations of the verb
On a possible reconstruction of genuine Old Persian in Ar. Ach. 100 and a hypothesis that Pseudartabas presented a letter, see Willi (2004).
On the analysis of the Scythian’s language, see Willi (2003, pp. 198–225). See also Long (1986, pp. 194–207), Sier (1992), Colvin (1999, pp. 290–291) and Austin & Olson (2004, pp. 308–309).
Dunbar (1995, pp. 725–725, 727–728, 735–736); Morpurgo Davies (2002 [1987], p. 166); Olson (2002, pp. 104–105). See Colvin (1999, pp. 288–290) on Pseudartabas and Triballos.
Contrast this with Arist. Rhet. 1407a:
Gomme (1956, p. 202).
Colvin (2020, pp. 76–77) in detail. See also Cassio (1981, pp. 86–87).
Colvin (2000, p. 290) and his discussion there of Ar. fr. 706 PCG as well. Cf. also Colvin (1999, p. 282).
Two fifth-century BCE ‘scholars’ from Thasus are credited with having interest in prosody. Hippias of Thasus perhaps emended two verses, Il. 2.15 (the form 1. pers. plur. ‘we grant’ (
Sommerstein (1983, pp. 219–220), Biles & Olson (2015, pp. 400–414). On intertextual and transtextual parallels in this passage, see Michel (2023, pp. 231–232).
On the continued emphasis in fifth-century BCE Greek literature on Attic ‘masculinity’ in contrast to, for example, Ionian softness and ‘femininity’, see also Thuc. 2.35–41 and Cassio (1981).
Cf. the Epitaphios of Pericles in Thucydides, where the myth of the Athenian autochthonism plays an instrumental role. (Thuc. 2.35–26).
Sommerstein (1981, pp. 215–216).
Cf. Eust. 395.34, and
Cf. Ar. Vesp. 684–685 and 1078–1090, Ach. 694–697, Eq. 781–782, Hdt. 9.27.5, Thuc. 1.73.4.
On this ‘vilified demagogue’, see Storey (2003, pp. 149–160); on phratry membership and the link to Athenian identity, see Lambert (1993, pp. 25–57).
See the discussion with all necessary bibliography in Olson (2017, ad loc.).
See Telò (2007, pp. 358–377) and Olson (2017, ad loc.).
Willi (2014, pp. 171–172, 175–179).
Cf. titles in comedy such as Chionides’ Persai e Assyrioi, Magnes’ Lydoi, Crates’ Samioi, Pherecrates’ Persai, Cratinus’ Thrattai, Cratinus’, Eupolis’, Plato’s and Nicochares’ Lakones, Cratinus’ Seriphioi, Metagenes’ Thouriopersai, Strattis’ Makedonioi, Strattis’ Phoinissai, Apollophanes’ and Nicochares’ Kretes. On ethnic stereotypes in Attic comedy, see Ornaghi (2020). Cf. also Aeschylus’ and Euripides’ Kressai, Sophocles’ Lakainai, and Euripides’ Kretes for tragedy.
On the debates concerning what kind of Greek was spoken by the Macedonians, see Hall (1989, p. 179, n. 65). See also Brixhe (1997) and Crespo (2012). On Strattis’ fragment, see also Orth (2009, pp. 156–157).
Colvin (1999, p. 278). See also Orth (2009, pp. 217–222). See Ornaghi (2020) for more parallels.
Colvin (2000, pp. 293–294).
Orth (2013, ad loc.).
See Olson (2016, ad loc.).
Willi (2003, pp. 198–225 and 2014).
Cairns (1993, passim and especially pp. 138–139), though no reference to be ashamed of speaking a ‘wrong’ language is found in his study. On feeling
Konstan (2003, p. 1033).
Arist. Rhet. 2, 6 1383b–1385a.
Diog. Laert. 7, 112. On the link between
Benveniste (1969, pp. 335–353), Konstan (1999), Herman (2002).
Thuc. 2.17.1:
Arist. Rhet. 2, 6, 22 1384b 26–27. Cf. also Eupolis’ comedy Philoi and Olson (2016, pp. 438–439).
Mitchell (1997, p. 45). On the pattern of the philia network, see Mitchell (1997, pp. 41–72).
On the rise of Attic during the fifth and fourth century BCE, see Horrocks (2010, pp. 67–78).
On the internationalization of theater production, see Konstantakos (2011).
Tribulato (2014, p. 458). See also Novokhatko (2020, pp. 16–22).
Hall (1997, pp. 170–177); Van Rooy (2020).
Colvin (1999, p. 295).
Colvin (2000), Willi (2003, pp. 198–225).