An Interpretation of AR. Vesp. 136–210 and its consequences for the stage of Aristophanes

Abstract

In front of the house are two slaves, one of whom, the company's chief actor, has been commending the play to the public and explaining the situation. Bdelycleon, who has been asleep on the flat roof, wakes up and calls to the slaves: ‘One of you run round here quick; my father has got into the kitchen and he is scuttering around like a mouse inside; mind he doesn't get out through the waste-hole. And you, up against the door with you!’ Slave A, the chief actor, disappears round the side of the house, to take up position as Philocleon inside. A rapid change of mask would enable him to poke a head up through the chimney—144 —only to be extinguished by the bread-trough and log which his watchful son claps on. (How the chimney was represented, if at all, is anybody's guess.) Now comes a diversion from the ground floor, the exact form of which is unfortunately uncertain. RV give the unmetrical , (imperative): whether this is to be emended as Hermann , or whether it is a gloss on the following which has displaced the original text, it is clear that after being warned of the new situation Bdelycleon tells Slave B to press well and truly against the door—which implies that Philocleon is pushing from the inside. ‘I'll be down there in a minute myself,’ he goes on; ‘look out for the bolt, and keep an eye on the bar to see he doesn't gnaw out the pin.’ (βάλανος was edible as ‘date’, ‘acorn’.) Bdelycleon thereupon disappears down the back of the roof [there was of course a staircase or ladder giving access to the roof out of sight of the spectators, as required on occasion by tragedy too (Ag., PV, Psychostasia, HF, Or., Phoen.)] and comes round on to the stage presumably by the same way as Slave A left it. This would take one or two minutes, and of course the next few remarks in the dialogue with Philocleon are made by Slave B, not by Bdelycleon as in the Oxford Text; he would in any case not address his father as Philocleon (163). The ‘net’ which Philocleon threatens to gnaw through (164) cannot be stretched across the door, which has to open unimpeded the next minute; it is over the upper part of the house only, covering the window or windows, as we learn from 367 ff., having been put up to prevent him from hopping over the courtyard wall behind (130 ff.). 164 suggests that Philocleon is talking through a window during this exchange, which would make him more easily audible.