Satyr Scenes and Comic Seines: Netfishing in Aristophanes’Peace

Abstract

This article argues that the “hauling scene” (458–728) of Aristophanes’ Peace is modeled on a distinctive fishing technology, the beach seine, and not, as is commonly held, on the hauling of heavily freighted commercial vessels into port. The dance and song of the comic chorus’ halieutic rescue of the goddess Peace evoke mythological and aetiological narratives of the recovery of talismanic objects from the sea and the confinement of maidens with strong fertility associations. The netfishing theme contributes to the creation of a comic succession myth in which Peace is characterized as a maternal figure whose procreative capacities are obstructed by the personified War, who seeks to prevent the flourishing of human and agricultural fertility.