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The Humour of Male-On-Male Sexual Insults in Aristophanes' Knights

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The Humour of Male-On-Male Sexual Insults in Aristophanes' Knights Whoring, Gaping and Hiding Meat: The Humour of Male-on-Male Sexual Insults in Aristophanes’ Knights James Robson To cite this version: James Robson. Whoring, Gaping and Hiding Meat: The Humour of Male-on-Male Sexual Insults in Aristophanes’ Knights. Archimède : archéologie et histoire ancienne, UMR7044 - Archimède, 2018, Archimède n°5. Archéologie et histoire ancienne, pp.24-34. halshs-01825097 HAL Id: halshs-01825097 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01825097 Submitted on 28 Jun 2018 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. ARCHIMÈDE N°5 ARCHÉOLOGIE ET HISTOIRE ANCIENNE 2018 DOSSIER THÉMATIQUE : HUMOEROTICA 1 Ruby BLONDELL et Sandra BOEHRINGER Humour et érotisme dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine. Introduction au dossier 7 Marina HAWORTH The Wolfish Lover: The Dog as a Comic Metaphor in Homoerotic Symposium Pottery u 24 James ROBSON Whoring, Gaping and Hiding Meat: The Humour of Male-on-Male Sexual Insults in Aristophanes’ Knights 35 Carmen DAMOUR De qui se moque-t-on ? Les travestis sur la scène de l’Assemblée des femmes d’Aristophane 49 Deborah KAMEN The Consequences of Laughter in Aeschines’ Against Timarchos 57 Yvonne RÖSCH Hunting Hares and Lovers: Socrates’ Playful Lesson in Xenophon, Memorabilia III, 11 71 Eugene O’CONNOR Aroused by Laughter: Martial’s Priapic Humor 83 Sandra BOEHRINGER with the artistic collaboration of Marjolaine FOURTON Not a Freak but a Jack-in-the-Box: Philaenis in Martial, Epigram VII, 67 95 Michel BRIAND Des mœurs sexuelles des Sélénites (Lucien, Histoires vraies, I, 22) : entre satire queer et constructionnisme incarné, le sexe qui donne à rire et à penser 108 ACTUALITÉ DE LA RECHERCHE : DES FEMMES PUBLIQUES. GENRE, VISIBILITÉ ET SOCIABILITÉ DANS L’ANTIQUITÉ GRECQUE ET ROMAINE 185 VARIA 246 LA CHRONIQUE D’ARCHIMÈDE Retrouvez tous les articles de la revue Archimède sur http://archimede.unistra.fr/revue-archimede/ REVUE RCHIMeDE, ARCHÉOLOGIE ET HISTOIRE ANCIENNE WHORING, GAPING AND HIDING MEAT: THE HUMOUR OF MALE-ON-MALE SEXUAL INSULTS IN ARISTOPHANES’ KNIGHTS James ROBSON Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies Open University, UK [email protected] ABSTRACT Cet article propose une étude de l’humour obscène et grossier des Cavaliers d’Aristophane et une This article looks at the obscene and scurrilous analyse de la façon dont les personnages prin- humour of Aristophanes’ Knights with a view to cipaux sont caractérisés du point de vue de leurs examining how its main protagonists are charac- pratiques sexuelles. En examinant la façon dont terized sexually. Through an examination of how Aristophane présente le Marchand de saucisses et the Sausage-Seller and Paphlagon are presented in le Paphlagonien en termes de sexualité insertive terms of both sexual insertiveness and receptive- et réceptive – à la fois anale et orale – je souhaite ness – both anal and oral – I seek to challenge views remettre en question l’interprétation de la pièce qui of the play which cast Paphlagon as the more sexu- fait du Paphlagonien le personnage le plus agres- ally aggressive of the two. Rather, the contention of sif sexuellement des deux. Cet article montre en the article is that the Sausage-Seller’s aggression is effet que l’agressivité du Marchand de saucisses est expressed both through visible à la fois par le caractère direct de ses menaces the direct nature of his sexuelles et l’indécence avec laquelle il exhibe son sexual threats and the plaisir à vendre son corps et à se laisser pénétrer par shameless ways in which l’anus et la bouche. Dans he flaunts his whorish- le cas du Paphlagonien/ Keywords Mots-clés ness and oral and anal Cléon, en revanche, le Aristophanes, Aristophane, Knights, receptiveness. In con- spectateur n’entrevoit sa Cavaliers, obscenity, trast, Paphlagon-Cleon’s dimension sexuelle qu’à obscénité, humour, rire, jokes, sexual character largely travers des métaphores, plaisanteries, homoeroticism/“homosexuality”, emerges through meta- des accusations, des homoérotisme / « homosexualité », penetration, pénétration, insertiveness, phors, allegations, innu- sous-entendus et des insertivité, receptiveness, endos and jokes made at plaisanteries faites à ses réceptivité, prostitution, prostitution, Henderson. his expense. dépens. Henderson. Article accepté après évaluation par deux experts selon le principe du double anonymat 24 ARCHIMÈDE ARCHÉOLOGIE ET HISTOIRE ANCIENNE N°5 2018 - p. 24 à 34 Dossier « Humoerotica » If we are to believe the claims made by pretender to this title, the Sausage-Seller [4]. The Aristophanes, Knights broke important new ground competition between the two men at times amounts in the genre of Old Comedy when it was staged to a struggle to prove which man is the better friend at the Lenaea in 424 BCE [1]. In the parabasis (φίλος) and lover (ἐραστής) of Paphlagon’s master, of Clouds (first produced the following year, 423 Demos (i.e. ‘The People’ of Athens) [5]. But at other BCE, but subsequently revised between 418 and times it is a race to the bottom [6], the conceit 416 BCE), the chorus makes a series of assertions being that “the leadership of the people is no longer about the innovative nature of Knights, elements of a job for an educated man or one of good qualities, which, they say – most prominently its sustained but for one who’s ignorant and foul” [7]. Knights is attack on a single political figure – have since been thus a play of pandering, wheedling and flattering shamelessly copied by other comic playwrights on the part of Paphlagon and the Sausage-Seller as such as Eupolis and Hermippus [2]. Whatever the they vie to prove their dedication to Demos. But it status of these claims about originality and plagia- is also a play of shameless deeds, scurrilous alle- rism, certainly Knights’ relentlessly hostile focus gations and scandalous admissions, many of which on Paphlagon – a thinly veiled caricature of Cleon, involve the sexual realm. Aristophanes’ favourite comic target in the 420s – is A further unique feature of Knights is the male- unique in our surviving plays [3]. Unappealing ele- on-male orientation of the play’s sexual humour. ments of this Paphlagonian slave’s character con- This is a fact already noted by Henderson in his tinue to be revealed throughout the play, much of analysis of the obscene language of Knights in The the action of which is taken up with a contest (or, Maculate Muse, where he suggests that the preva- rather, a series of contests) between Paphlagon- lence of “homosexual and scatological” obscenities Cleon, the current “leader” of Athens, and a new is intimately connected to the “attack and exposure” [1] Thanks are due to Sandra Boehringer and the two ad loc. on Clouds, 554). It is noteworthy that Eupolis anonymous reviewers for their helpful corrections and appears to have responded to Aristophanes’ allegations insightful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper. of plagiarism by claiming to have played a role in the [2] Aristophanes, Clouds, 553-559. Not that the composition of Knights (fr. 89), although this may simply pillorying of political figures was unknown in Old Comedy amount to a counter-claim that Aristophanes plagiarized before 424 BCE, of course. Pericles was famously the butt him (thus Sommerstein 1980: 51-53). On the rivalry of humour in a number of Cratinus’ plays, for example, between Aristophanes and Cleon, see Lafargue 2013: though his attacks plausibly took a somewhat different 21-26. form from the sustained ad hominem attack on Cleon in [4] As outlined by Brock 1986, who also articulates Knights: see Storey 2011a: 236. a number of the play’s inconsistencies and paradoxes, [3] While claims to innovation and disparagement of e.g. discrepancies in the characterization of both the rivals are something of a commonplace in Old Comedy Sausage-Seller and Demos, and the “grand alliance” (21) (see, esp., Wright 2012: 70-99), Aristophanes’ central between the base Sausage-Seller and the noble Knights. point may well be valid here, namely that he innovated [5] Scholtz 2004 and Yates 2005. At Knights, 42, this in making a single politician the central target of a play’s character is explicitly referred to as “Demos of the Pnyx”, attack. The first example of such a comedy by another i.e. “The People” of Athens as constituted as a political poet seems to be Eupolis’ Maricas (staged in 421 BCE: body at the city’s Assembly. see Storey 2011b: 148-151), which is singled out as [6] derivative of Knights at Clouds, 554. As Cassio 1985: Or as Silk 2000: 336, puts it, an “extravagant 38, and Storey 2011b: 150, both note, the surviving exercise in competitive odiousness”. fragments of this play suggest various parallels with [7] Aristophanes, Knights: 191-192. Translations from Knights, not least the casting of a politician, Hyperbolus, Knights are those of Sommerstein 1981: the Greek text in the role of a foreign slave (cf. Sommerstein 1982, of his edition is also used throughout. 25 Whoring, Gaping and Hiding Meat: The Humour of Male-on-Male Sexual Insults in Aristophanes’ Knights of Paphlagon-Cleon (as well as the Sausage- on what is arguably a tendentious interpretation Seller) [8]. Henderson further states that, when it of a short exchange between Paphlagon and the comes to obscenity, Knights is almost devoid of what Sausage-Seller (Knights, 962-964), and also fails to he terms “heterosexual language” since, unlike so take into account the fact that the Sausage-Seller, many other Aristophanic plays, it fails to “celebrate too, is capable of threatening his rival with anal peace and unfettered fertility” [9].
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