Aristophanes' Frogs and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod

Dionysus' unexpected decision at the end of the play is generally thought to reflect the notion that poets such as Aeschylus and Euripides had practical moral insight to offer their audiences and to promote an "Aeschylean" over a "Euripidean" approach to life. I argue, however, that this ending offers a curiously offbeat combination of aesthetic insight and intertextual playfulness that ultimately relieves the Aristophanic Aeschylus and Euripides of the moralizing burden they have had to shoulder for so long. My reasons for suggesting this arise from consideration of the relationship between Frogs and another literary text that featured a high-profile poetic contest, namely, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Disciplines Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Comments Postprint version. Published in The Transactions of the American Philological Association, Volume 134, Issue 2, pages 295-322. Publisher URL: http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/7774 This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/classics_papers/4 Transactions of the American Philological Association 134 (2004) 295-322 Aristophanes’ Frogs and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod Ralph M. Rosen University of Pennsylvania for W. Geoffrey Arnott SUMMARY: Dionysus’ unexpected decision at the end of the play is generally thought to reflect the notion that poets such as Aeschylus and Euripides had practical moral insight to offer their audiences and to promote an “Aeschylean” over a “Euripidean” approach to life. I argue, however, that this ending offers a curiously offbeat combination of aesthetic insight and intertextual playfulness that ultimately relieves the Aristophanic Aeschylus and Euripides of the moralizing burden they have had to shoulder for so long. My reasons for suggesting this arise from consideration of the relationship between Frogs and another literary text that featured a high-profile poetic contest, namely, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod. Of all the questions raised by aristophanes’ frogs, one of the most enduring—and one with broad interpretative ramifications—is why Dionysus decides at the end of the play that he should return to Athens with Aeschylus rather than Euripides. As he famously declared at the opening of the play, after all, he had worked up a strong “longing” (53 p“yow) for Euripides while reading his Andromeda on board ship (52–54), and had determined to retrieve that poet from the underworld, not Aeschylus. The plot from that point on is well known: when he arrives in the underworld, Dionysus encounters both Aeschylus and Euripides, discovers that there is a controversy even in Hades about which