PRUEBA DE HIPÓTESIS

Whenever quantitative methods are applied to historical research, it is helpful to state the presuppositions that are at work in the collection and manipulation of the raw data into a data set and the data set’s subsequent analysis.^^ The theoretical raw data in question here is the entire corpus of plays of the genre ‘Old Comedy,’ produced at the Lenaia and Great Dionysia in Athens. Traditionally the period is dated from 488/7 or 487/6 for the Great Dionysia, from just before 440 for the Lenaea until the end o f the fifth century, or until 388, to take in Aristophanes’ last two extant p l a y s . T h e theoretical raw data has been manipulated, both by the transmission of texts from antiquity and by a deliberate selection of cases and variables, in order to create a series of data sets which were analysed and the results presented in Chapter 2.

A1.2.i The Selection of Cases

This theoretical raw data, the output of Old Comedy, consisted probably of some six to seven hundred comedies by more than fifty playwrights."^® The ravages wrought by the transmission process, both in antiquity and in subsequent periods, have left us with eleven extant comedies by Aristophanes and some four thousand words, phrases, lines or passages cited by other ancient writers and the fragmentary remains of ancient copies. These comic fragments do contain examples o f personal satire. But the comic fragments are notoriously difficult to interpret; the text is often corrupt and without the surrounding context, it is sometimes difficult to reconstruct the humour and focus of the satire."^! The fragments are hard to date, militating against their use in any analysis that is looking for patterns over time. Above all, the sample of individuals and their associations preserved in the comic fragments is un-representative of the genre as a whole. From the Hellenistic period onwards, scholars have been interested in the satirical attacks on individuals in Old Comedy. Many of the comic fragments were preserved as a result of this interest, as ancient scholars compiled lists o f satirised

See p .l83n .l for definitions of these statistical terms. 39 See Dover (1972) 210.

40 Dover (1972) 210.

individuals.'^^ Consequently the sample is skewed towards selecting individuals who were prominent and reoccur frequently in Old Comedy and other sources. On these grounds, I have rejected the comic fragments from the data set. The transmission process has manipulated the theoretical raw data further, by preserving a sample of eleven plays by Aristophanes from a potential total o f about forty p l a y s . T h e preservation process appears to have been random. The first preserved, the Acharnians o f 425, was produced two years after Aristophanes began his career, and the last preserved, the Plutus of 388, was followed by only another two plays.^ The surviving plays were produced at scattered intervals between 425 and 388, with nearly half dating from the second half o f the 420s. So it appears that the transmission process has sampled the plays of Aristophanes on a random basis. From a statistical perspective, independent random sampling is an appropriate method o f selecting data.'^^ In the analysis below, I have treated each play as a separate data set but have applied the same criteria in the selection of cases and variables for each play, allowing comparisons to be made across the plays.

As a result of the transmission processes, the individuals and their associations in the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes have been selected from the theoretical raw data to form eleven data sets. But even some o f this data will be irrelevant or inappropriate to the questions under consideration. As has been outlined in Section A. 1.1, the playwright’s choice and treatment of satirical subject are significant. On the basis o f this methodological model, there is little point in analysing the associations that collect around individuals from mythology, of non-Athenian extraction, from previous generations or o f on-stage characters in the eleven plays of Aristophanes. Therefore each named Athenian citizen in a play of Aristophanes represents a case in the data set for that play. Given I am attempting to count not just the variety of associations, but the quantity o f those associations, the inclusion of on-stage characters, whether fictive or purporting to be contemporary historical figures, would seriously distort the figures. To summarise, the following categories of named individual have been excluded from the data sets:

• individuals referred to in the text that also appear on the stage of the same play, thus systematically excluding on-stage fictitious characters and off-stage individuals who appear on stage, whose inclusion will seriously distort the results:

See Halliwell (1984) on the tradition of oi/ouaail KooiiQ)6eTi/. '^3 See Dover (1972) 1-14.

The Banqueters (427) and the Babylonians (426) predated the Acharnians, and the Plutus was

followed by \h& Aeolosicon and the Cocalus, both produced at unspecified dates after 388 (Dover (1972) 13-14).

Appendix 1: Quantitative Analysis of Personal Jokes in Aristophanes 190

e.g. Cleisthenes, Theorus (AcA.118ff, 134ff); or Cleisthenes, mentioned at Thesm. 235, and appearing on stage {Thesm. 574ff).

• individuals who do not appear on-stage who are known to be fictitious and a product of Aristophanes’ imagination: e.g. Thratta, a common name for a slave girl in Aristophanes {Ach. 273); Sostrate, the stock name for a married citizen woman in comedy {Vesp. 1397, Thesm. 375, Eccl. 375).

• individuals from mythology: e.g. the list of mythological characters from Euripides’ plays that Dicaeopolis runs through {Ach. 418ff); Memnon, the mythological king of the Ethiopians {Nub. 623).

• non-Athenians: e.g. Sitalces, king of Odrysae in Thrace (AcA. 134); Lais, the Corinthian hetaira {Pint. 179).

• individuals who died on or before 466/5. This date has been chosen because it represents the time when the older members of the audience (sixty plus) of the

Acharnians would have come o f age and so began to come into contact with

prominent individuals on a regular basis. This date also corresponds to the start of Generation E in APF:^ e.g. Phayllus, a runner from the Persian War period {Ach. 214); Hippias, the last of the Peisistratid tyrants {Vesp. 503); and the tragic poet Phrynichus who lived in the early fifth century {Vesp. 220,269, 1490).

This set of criteria for inclusion or exclusion o f cases presumes that it is possible to distinguish between a named individual who exists only in the on-stage world and a named individual who exists in the off-stage world. As Table 19 in the Statistical Appendix shows, on average, 29% of the individuals in a data set are only known to us from Aristophanes. Of the 71% who are known from sources other than Aristophanes, it is often very hard to securely identify this individual with an individual o f the same name in other sources. Inevitably, there are times when it is unclear whether a named individual in Aristophanes should be included as a case in the data set or not. I have tried to indicate where the inclusion o f a case is questionable, and if a case is very questionable, it has been excluded.'*^ This study has never pretended to be a detailed prosopographical analysis of individuals in Aristophanes. Consequently many of the identifications in the tables below follow those offered in the commentaries.^

APF xxvii. I chose this cut off point of 466/5 before I made the decision to describe the ‘age of Aristophanes’ as starting in approximately 445 (see p.9), so there is an obvious discrepancy.

For instance in the Ecclesiazusae, the inclusion of Geron at Eccl. 846 is questionable. The name is attested in the fourth century (see Ussher (1973) 192), but also fits the character of the individual in the play, that of a rejuvenated old man. I have included Geron as a case, with a footnote expressing my reservations. Glyce at Eccl. 43, appears not to be included among the other members of the chorus whose names are mentioned as they enter {Eccl. 41-53) and so is not excluded on the grounds of being an on­ stage character. But her name is a typical for a woman {PA 3038-41,3038a, b) and Aristophanes has used the name before {Ran. 1344, 1362). See Rogers (1917) 10-11 and Ussher (1973) 79 for different opinions. Consequently Glyce has been rejected as a case from the data set.

I have relied particularly on the massive prosopographical research of Kirchner in PA and Davies in

APF. I have consulted a range of commentaries, cited in the notes to each of the tables in the Statistical Appendix. I have found the series of commentaries by Sommerstein (1980 onwards) particularly helpful.

A1.2.Ü The Selection of Variables

As soon as I started to categorise and count the variables that cluster around each case in the data sets, it rapidly became obvious that the number o f variables was huge. For instance, in the Acharnians, Aristophanes pins a plethora of associations on the individuals he has chosen to satirise: all those listed in Table 1 in the Statistical Appendix plus scatological, culinary, medical, criminal and boasting associations."^^ As the primary aim o f this quantitative analysis is to examine attitudes to the legal activity, rather than produce an analysis of the satire of individuals in Aristophanes, I felt there was no need to categorise and count every incident of every variable. It is legitimate to exclude variables on a number of occasions, including when the variable is considered irrelevant to the questions that are being asked of the material or when the variable does not add any extra information that already has been gained from other v a r i a b l e s . ^ o

Therefore I chose six other variables, in addition to the legal variable, which were well