Conversations: In Defence of Euripides, Aristophanic Nonsense w/ Julie Levy

Published Mar 10, 2023, 8:00 AM

Liv speaks with returning guest Julie Levy about all things Thesmophoriazusae. What made Aristophanes tick and why is Euripides perfect and amazing, actually? We answer all your questions. Follow Julie on Twitter. Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content!

CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.

Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.

Oh hi, hello and welcome. This is Let's talk about Mitt's baby, and I am your host, she who was feeling very conflicted about the Thesmafore Zusai Live. So well, you all heard this week's narrative episode. You know how I feel. But man, that play, I don't know what to do with it, and frankly, it's only going to get more absurd. Oh well, there's there's some redeeming qualities. Thankfully, fucking Aristophanes, you know who the fuck did he think he was? Anyway, Fortunately for my own excessive emotions and inability to talk about that play objectively, I had the opportunity to speak to not one but two very smart academics about Aristophanes and this play, specifically those women at the those Mephoria. And thank the gods for both of these conversations, because they will absolutely not only redeem the play, but just redeem my inability to tell the play in any kind of coherent and enjoyable way. Today I spoke with past guests of the podcast, Julie Levy, who very kindly volunteered to speak with me about this nonsense play when I tweeted about it. Julie last joined me on the show to talk about asexuality in Greek mythology. Very different topic but even more fascinating because it's not Aristophanes. Highly recommend that last episode with Julie. But today we did talk about Aristophanes, and I am so glad we did, because, as much as I am officially not a fan, talking to Julie about the context and history and Aristophanes himself added so much to this play and next week's conversation is only going to make it better. Honestly, just so much better. My series would have been straight up obnoxious without the addition of this kind of context. So we talked about history and the man himself and how all of that weaves its way into this play and makes it far more interesting and even if you can believe it more tolerable. I'm sorry I'm being so unkind to this play, but frankly, I'm only a human, and if this show is anything, it is not objective when it comes to the mistreatment of women, and of course the slander of my beloved Euripides, and so yeah, we talked a lot about that too, because Julie and I are both enormous Euripides fans who made certain to defend him from all of that Aristophanic slander. He did not deserve this nonsense play being served to him, nor did the women of ancient Athens. But again I'm getting I'm letting my emotions take hold. So let's just listen to a much more reasonable scholar who knows enough about history and context to provide much needed insights into this absolutely wild and absurd play. Conversations in defense of Euripides. Why is Aristophanes the way that he is? With Julie Levy, I want to prep the listener for where I personally am at with this play, which is that I have written two episodes of out it there will be three, and then I just speed read the end of the play so that I had it all in my head to talk to you. But like so, I was quoting the theodore Atist translation for the podcast, But I've also been reading the halliwell, because I have a copy of the book and it's been helpful with like end notes and things and teaching me, you know, well, not teaching me, but reminding me of how some translations go. Which is that I really enjoyed the Theatatist at the beginning because it is much more fun like in colloquial language, and then we can start getting a lot of use of the words like slut and horror that are not in the other translation, and thus, I imagine are a bit of a stretch even from the Greek, which I didn't have a chance to look at. Oh, actually, but the other direction really okay, great, I want to hear about that, because I would have to check, because I haven't looked at the Greek in years. U. But like I said, I just reread the Theodreds because I wanted it to be to be an enjoyable read. I'm not I'm not, you know, here here writing a paper about it. Yeah, it is a much more fun translation for the most part. Yeah. Theodords does a really good job with the poetry and translation site of making really accessible versions of this stuff. I'm really impressed generally. Um. But but it does tend towards the colloquial and the updated. But in Aristophanes in particular, there's a tendency for there to be a lot of really crude and callous jokes. I mean, really, all the comedians do this. Um, I shouldn't say it's just Aristophanes. It's just I can tolerate Aristophanes better than I can tolerate Menander. Is just me. I've never read any Menander, and I've only read this is my third Aristophanes um, and I remain unimpressed. So, um, the one I like best is the Frogs. Yeah, I agree, I mean the Frogs is so fun. I think that's the problem too. So I've read Lecestrata and the Frogs and now, as before, I dousa and the Frogs is so fun. Um, Like it's just so silly and great and we have singing frogs and like aristoph and Euripides rather being silly in the underworld, and I love it. And then like Lycestrata too, I need to reread it because I read it like, uh, it was a while ago for the podcast, and it was before I had like kind of a better grasp on things, and I have a feeling like I would read it very differently now. Um, somebody want to use as like an example, but like, yeah, the comparison between frogs and this is like what's happening? Why? Yeah? Um. The other one I would recommend is the Birds. The birds is also pretty fun. Um more more in line with the frogs, then with those before. As you say, Um, this is just such a strange play. It so um, you know, it's it's got it's got such a strange setting. And I think that's very deliberate, because one thing people don't realize about Aristophanes is that, um, that Aristo at the beginning of his name is not for show. He was. He was a very elitist sort of person, and he really did not like anything that pandered to anyone below his supposed station. Um. You know, we like to think of ancient Athens, especially around this time, as like a haven of of free and equal democracy with no shocial stratification. But that's kind of nonsense. There was a constant tension between the nobleman, the upper class in terms of wealth, in terms of power in terms of holdings, and everyone else. And a lot of the people that we hear the most from, like Aristophanes, like Thucydides, are going to be people in that class. And so Aristophanes is not you know, he's not Terrence the comic playwriter from from Rome who was a former slave who was freed over the quality of his writing. He's not that he's coming at this from the perspective of looking down, and so when he does political satire, which is the main thing that Aristophanes does, it's not always going to be easy to um reconcile that with how we think about things because he was an oligarch. Yeah, you know, well that's yeah, I mean, that's interesting context that I wasn't fully aware of. I've been reading some some sources on him, but they've all kind of tended towards just like his writing style and like kind of all of that. And there's only, you know, so many sources I can read when I'm doing weekly episodes, but so many outside sources. I should say the primary are great, and then trying to learn about the other people, I'm like, woof. But also I mean, I just it's funny because I came into covering this play because all I had really heard about it, you know, is that it features its women's festival, and that it features Euripides slander that like I have had. I would say, I'm trying to remember when this happened, but I know it has, like at least once or twice. I have made my varied defenses of Euripides as as I mean, both like the best. But you know, I guess that we can't all agree that he's the best, but I think that there's a really strong argument to be made that he was the most interested in women's voices and women's characters, and I fucking love him for that. And so like what I've been told abouts before U saw was that it is somehow like a a reasonable source for the idea that Europdes actually hated women, Like people have like used that as a as a source. And now in hind time, I'm like, that's absolute fucking nonsense, not least because this is fiction and Aristophanes is like poking fun at so many things. But also like, I mean, now I've read it, I'm like, well, I mean they're not even they don't even believe it, Like when they're making the arguments these characters, like it's not actually really based much in in Euripides is like actual you know, writing and characters. It's like it's all this like over the top, stereotypical, you know, takes on on everything. But that's what I came into this play as. And now I'm like, oh my god, Like I think the thing I really want to talk about most is the way he's playing with and poking fun at gender because, as like one person telling this story in twenty twenty three, I'm just like, oh my god, how do I do this? Yeah? And there's so much to unpack with this one, because not only is it Aristophanes looking down on Euripides, whom he clearly did not like for a number of reasons, not least because he did explore women's voices in a sympathetic light. Like all of the arguments you get in Thesmaphoria Zusai are basically Aristophanes saying, but women are terrible and you're revealing all of their secrets. Yeah, And it's such a it's such a it's such a right wing argument. It's like it's it reminds me so much of like when you listen to these these I mean, I'm Americans, so forgive me, but these Republican politicians talking about abortion, and you know, they start going off on like you know, personal responsibility and like all of all of these misconceptions about how women will just use an abortion instead of birth control, and it's like, Wow, you've never met a woman in your life, have you? Um, Like it really has that feel to me of like Aristophanes was was pushing that, you know, that agenda of like, well, of course women are terrible, and you writing them as sympathetic as going to make them hate you, um, And that's that's how I have come away from it. Um. But I think it's really fascinating this like how how Aristophanes views women versus how he views Euripides viewing women, which is so complicated, but also just like because the stereotypes are so very different. But one of the things that's really different between between you know, like white Western culture and like ancient Athens is that in ancient Athens, the idea was that women were shamelessly addicted to sex and that men were the ones who were like restrained. And now the idea that that would be the stereotype seems wild because the idea is that women are frigid and men are always like having having to debase themselves to get sex, and like, all of those stereotypes are obviously bunkum both directions. But you can see it in how Aristophanes right to his women, both both in this and in the list of strata, particularly which were almost certainly performed the same year. By the way, Yeah, that's interesting. That was one of them that I was fascinated by. Yeah, so, like the context of Aristophanes putting out these two plays where where the women are in charge and the men are you know, behaving like women to his mind, Mum, the context for this, like this is the year four eleven BC. This is the year, like they're in the Peloponnesian War and things have been going kind of badly because they made some really ridiculous mistakes. And in later in the year then this festival. I'm pretty sure some historians to come and like correct me on the exact chronology here, but this is the same year that we get the overthrow of the democracy and a Persian influenced oligarchic government gets installed to try and finish the war. Yeah, it's it's quite a time, like I mean, politically, and then also in like the relevancy of what you know, like the the overarching themes of this play, because even just you saying the year, I think that's also I mean, and it's it's pretty evident from the text itself too, but I think it's one year after the Helen and the Andromeda were performed by both of those are cited in this play exactly exactly, so they're like they're made very relevant. But but it also kind of feels like this is written in reaction to that, because the other thing that I am like obsessed with when it comes to Euripides broadly. Um but I believe it's the Helen that's the catalyst, at least in my head. But like, certainly the year is that the change is that after that point, Euripides doesn't write choruses that aren't women, and I fucking love that. So I feel like, I mean, it's it's like obviously together, but that's wonderful. Yes, it's my favorite thing in the whole world. Like he hits this line and he's like, I am now disinterested in choruses of men, and I just I could talk about Euripides for the rest of my life. I think he's wonderful. He's I'm right there with you. He's my favorite of the tragedians too. He's magnificent and a lot if it is for how he writes women. Um So, there are two women in particular over the course of three plays that are cited as the reasons why the women hate Euripity Phedra, the Phra, Phiedra, and Melanippe, and unfortunately we don't have either of the Melanippe plays. We have some fragments. When you look at Phiedra, she's such a sympathetic character, even though she's driven by this terrible situation and her her terrible feelings, Like you can feel empathy for her in what she's doing, and it's clearly within the play. It's like, well, yeah, she's like way closer in age to Hippolytis than to his father, so of course, right, um, and also his father is his theseius. Let's be frank, Let's make sure that the listener recalls us because I have not covered the Apolytis. I want to, but I have not as just can I come back for them? Please? Yeah? Well did you know? And I want to share it, I all. I mean, I'll share this on Mike too. But I was going to anyway, and I think he tweeted about it. But I just recently hung out with Jeremy Swist because he was visiting Victoria, and he reminded me or mentioned to me that he is using our episode where where you did already come onto my show to talk at least Hippolytus in terms of like sexuality, and he's using that for his class that everyone has to listen to that after they read Hipolytis, and so yes, I was only can come back, But I'm like, oh, we've already kind of done that too, and I always forget because I haven't covered Hippolytus, but you've come on to talk about it in that context. I was like, oh, right, I have that content. That's great. I'm so glad people are all liking it. I can talk about the Hippolytis for like an entire class. Well, I will make a note to make sure you come back when I covered the full play and shout out to Jeremy and his wonderful kitties. As long as we're on the subject. Yes, God, wouldn't that be a fun class? So yeah, I feel like I've started down a couple of threads that I haven't come back to. So the first thing that I want to jump back to is like I was talking about the sort of cursing at women and calling them hoors and slots um. What you actually find is that a lot of translators into English will tone those down for publication. Those those particular types of things like they'll they'll call a hatira a companion, Like the technical technical definition is companion too. Yeah, like that's a that's an absolutely legitimate thing. But there's a lot of context that makes it very clear that what they mean is escort. Yeah, yeah, okay, I just want to clarify that because I realized I had it in my head because I the reason that that became interesting to me was that it's used for like Patrick West and Achilles and I kind of love the like the difference between the use of like the masculine HATTERA don't know what the masculine form is, but um, and what we think of is I think it's a terrorist. I think it's I think that would make sense. Yeah anyway, but yeah, like hit tita just means, you know, female companion. But when it's used in the context of like I hired a hit tira, yeah, it's very clearly meaning whore, you know. And the sex worker phobia that runs through a lot of translations, like just like the homophobia that runs through a lot of translations is really palpable when you start comparing. So it's I haven't looked at the Greek for this one. I don't know whether Theods or Um or the other translator that you're looking at are more accurate here, but it might well actually be that theod is closer on that subject because they're a lot of slut. I would love to know like the Greek textualizing of like when we should do slut because he uses that um in like all these moments when the women are angry at um Mannisilicus rapides his father in law, and like, yeah, that's where it really got me. Like I understand the use of the word whore as much as I would want to say a sex worker, Like I understand it needs to be whore in these contexts, but like it's the over use of the word slut. I guess that. I was just like, ah, yeah, I think the most common word you're going to see for that in the Greek is pornet. Oh wow, okay, yeah that sounds right. All right, So the gay I'm gonna look into the Greek before I cover the next episode, the final bit of this place, and now I'm just fascinated. Um but yeah, like there there's a whole like categorization system for what kind of sex worker you're talking about, Like a hit Tita is like the the highly paid courtisan type usually, but then you also get like the poor nat who is who's just like sort of a more generic UM. But then there's also I can't remember the word right now, but there's something that means approximately like spring chicken for the stream walking worse. UM. So, like there's a lot about sex work and sex workers, especially in comedy and the AmbiX UM. You do find it mostly we have we have more stuff later on, we have more stuff from Rome, but like it's there, UM, and it gets alighted a lot when we talk about more modern translations UM or or I mean heavens forbid, you know, like eighteen hundreds translations. Nobody wants to write those words out good that would be in UM. It's like, yeah, because you're not translating the Bible. You're translating you know, the wife of Bathtale. Okay, so yeah, I mean the use of the all of the women in in this play, and like all the stereotypes of their their use of their sexuality, like both the more over the top and the so that we're just like, oh, like the time I, you know, snuck out to meet that with my boyfriend. I told my husband I had the stomach ache or whatever, like, I don't know. I found those very very interesting. I feel like I jumped topics. They're sorry, but it just came to my mind. That's that's fine. I'm all over the place too, because like I was thinking about also Melanippe, like, that's not a commonly told tale. Yeah what Melanippe is? Do you know it all hand? Because yeah, so I went, I went and looked it up again to make sure that I had this strength, because, like I said, it's not one that gets told a whole bunch. So Melanippeum was a princess. Of course, she was raped by Poseidon, and she bore a pair of twins. She tried to conceal them, like conceal that she had been pregnant by like just kind of sneakily leaving them as if someone had abandoned them. But then her father was going to kill them, so she admitted that she was their mother, and he went, well, I guess I can't slay my own kin, but let's expose the babies and send you away as a slave. Oh right, So then what happens is that, of course both babies get fat, owned they're cared for by shepherds, and um. They come to be adopted by another queen who has been unable to bear children. UM. Oh, I should really remember her name. I feel like it's Theona. I mean, I'm going to certainly come across this Beth, but I'm surprised it's not more familiar to me, usually better than this Theano. That's why it is. That's what it is. It's Theano. So so so, this other queen, whom Melanippe is now the slave of, ends up adopting Melanippe's sons unknowingly um. But then later on she bears twins of her own, and once all of them are grown, she's like, well, I don't want these, these sons I didn't actually give birth to to come next in line for the throne. So she tells her own sons to kill Melanippe's sons, and that backfires and um Theano and both her sons are defeated. Um. In some versions, Melanippe is the one who is like told to poison her own sons, and she decides to poison the other children instead, um, even though it could get her killed. So so like, this is the basic story, and you can see where so Euripides wrote two plays about Melanippe. We have some fragments of um. I think the first is called Melanippe the Wise, and the second is called Melanippe Bound. Yeah right, so so so the first one is about Melanippe giving birth to her twins and then saving them, and the second one is about Melanippe as a slave and the adoption and the death plot and that stuff. We think probably um so so we can only guess it exactly what it is that Aristophanes is so darn angry about. But you know, given that story, it's very easy from a modern perspective to be like, Melanippe did nothing wrong, Like yeah, what what did she do? But like with all of the complaints in the play, you can kind of see this, well, she might have she concealed her lover, even if it wasn't consensual, that's still a thing that they would get upset about. Um, she concealed her pregnancy. She didn't let the babies get killed. Um, so she's ruined and she's protecting her babies that are you know, the cause of this ruination. And then as a slave, she's an unfaithful slave and h and a murder us so like that's like I can see where coming from the perspective of those sneaky women want us to think that, you know, they have good reasons for doing the things that they do, but they're really just sneaking around with wine sacks and their baby clothes. Like like you can kind of see how that happened with a certain twisted and misogynists perspective. Oh yeah, I mean it's interesting because, like I mean, I can see where the argument gets made in cases like that, and like I'm interested. I'd be interested to know, you know, where or any real woman took any kind of offense. But like I understand what's interesting too is when, um, there's there's these moments where where they're like explicitly mad that Euripides is writing about people like Melanippe and and Fhiedra when he could be writing about Penelope. But oh he never writes about Penelope. And I found that very interesting because I mean, it sounds like, without question, it was written by a man, you know, It's one of those It's like so much of the Penelope discourse of like this virtual woman, virtuous virtual I like that, um, this virtuous woman who's like, you know, utterly perfect and like waited for her husband, all of that nonsense, Like it's this like silly, silly men's ideal of like what a woman should be. And so yeah, it was. It was particularly interesting to hear that comparison because and and and it applies to so much of this play where you're just like, it's screams written by a man, And I get it, it was, and it's the ancient world, and like we're not getting a lot written by not men. But it's fascinating to me. And I think but less than we talk about Yeah, yeah, not nothing, um, but but I mean certainly in these in these like you know, theater contexts, we have men. And so it's but I think it's also has to do with me being so used to reading tragedy and kind of always not like I forget that comedy is going to be different, But I do forget how much at least aristophanic comedy is like so based in real life that it becomes this. It really just is like an insight into the psyche of him and like the people around him in a way that I just at the very least in this play I find very hard to wrap my head around. Yeah, I mean, like it's it's so hard to read Nesilicos because because that's clearly voicing what Aristophanes thinks, right, yeah, Like he goes on and on about the horrible things that women do, and all of the women are just kind of like what the hell and and that's my reaction too, But it's not the reaction that Aristophanes was trying to evoke, and it's probably not the one he got. Um, he probably got men going ha ha yeah, women are yeah. I mean that's the thing too, Like written by a man, performed by men, and viewed by probably almost only men. Like certainly, you know, Lotton is said about whether there are any women in there, but there certainly are not. Like the women who are meant to be at this festival, they are not watching this play. And even if they were, I mean think about it, Like, if you are on the side that Aristophanes is even plausibly correct there that Nessilicus is not just talking out his ass completely, which a reminder he is even in context, if you are even slightly of that mindset, any protest that a woman makes is going to sound hollow in that context. It was like a woman saying, wow, that was a bunch of garbage will be taken as Yeah, and I bet you carry a wine sack around swaddled in baby clothes too, Like there's just no, there's no opening there for maybe women aren't trash. Yeah, oh god, Yeah, it's oh my god, there's I mean, there's there's so much in this play. Um, I also want I want to hear your thoughts and like, I want to just kind of talk about it at loud, because is the thing that I've struggled with the most is also gender expression. Like obviously the presentation of women in this play is wild and bananas and oh my god, but also navigating the way Aristophanes portrays and views Agathon and Kleisthenes and Minnesolocus when he's dressed as a woman is like, there's just so much happening, And personally, I've been really struggling trying to convey the narrative and explain a context without um without like even like, I mean, I feel like a lot of it if you take it too seriously and you kind of forget a lot of the context around, it kind of sounds like, you know, like the nonsense that turf spout, you know, this idea of like a man infiltrating a women's space and getting away with it. And like I've been just been struggling trying to convey how like that. I don't know if there's just so much there in twenty twenty three that makes it like fucking difficult. Yeah, certainly, Like I don't think you're I don't think you're wrong calling it turf like um, not so much in the man sneaking into woman's space part, but in the because Minnesilicus isn't treated like a real threat. Mhm, true, right, Like the women think he's a threat, but like we're supposed to sympathize with him. We're not supposed to sympathize with either Agathon or Kleisthenes. Yeah, And that I think is where it really comes in, right, Yeah, because Agathon is like he's another another tragedian who's a bit younger than Euripides, who is a frequent butt of aristophanic ire. Aristophanes thinks that he is, you know, he's too obsessed with esthetics and that he's womanly, and like we really see that because we see Agathon completely dressed as a woman, and you know, Nesilicus's reaction to seeing Agathon dressed as a woman is that's not a woman, I know that, Or that's not a man I know that whore? I think is what theory is actually says there. Well, I mean there's one moment where it's like, oh, you don't recognize him, but you've probably had tex with him and you didn't even know it. Like that's in fact, that's in fact what Nissilicus essentially says what happened is like he knows he knows Agathon as a woman. And I think, in context, this is somebody we might suspect to be some manner of transum, certainly Agathon in the portrayals we have of him, which again we got to keep in mind, this is through the lens of somebody who hates him, seems to be gender fluid, seems to be perfectly capable of living life as both a man and a woman at different times, and that is a real thing. People are like that, and that's perfectly fine. And that may be something that helped in Agathon's writing too, Like that's sort of the context it's presented in here. So what we may have is, you know, somebody perfectly fine and respectable doing something that genuinely is an expression of their gender, or what we may have is a whole lot of nothing piled on somebody that Aristophanes finds effeminate, you know, like it's kind of hard to tell. Yeah, that's part the part that I found so fascinating because the way Aristophanes portrays him, Like if you kind of ignore the fact that it's pretty obvious that Aristophanes is trying to insult him, like that's pretty clear. But if you kind of ignore that context, Agathon is actually incredibly fun. Like he is really open about being like I don't care what my gender expression is, Like I want to be all and everything. I want to utilize and have fun with these different you know, aspects. And he's yeah, so much fucking fun to hang out with. Like that's definitely a line that I've said in this is like if we take him at this this version, if that is, you know, in any kind of reference to his real lived experience, Like he sounds amazing and I want to be his friend at least because he was written tragedy throing it. Yeah, and like look at his reaction, Look at his Look at his reaction to Nisilicus needing to dress up is like yeah, his reaction is like, I'm cool with her. Okay, fine, if we're doing this, then here's a dress and oh, honey, you need this wig. Oh my god, not just a hairnet, No, you need this wig. Like you're not going to pull that off, Like, excuse me for doing this. We're doing it correctly. Yeah, you know, and and and I just I find that so interesting, Like it does speak to to at very least a culture that has those things in it for people to recognize, because so many people want to say, oh, like, trans people are this new phenomenon. Absolutely not, absolutely not without this portrayal, Like could still tell you that there were plenty of ancient Greek trans people of various types, but like this portrayal relies on a cultural knowledge that this happens. Yeah, that this is like a thing you can just comment on that people are living like this. Not least because there are two characters, because Kleistones is also a little bit portrayed this way, like differently, but like, yeah, I mean, and between the two of them that it's it's absolutely fascinating to have these kind of overt examples of you know, at the very least some kind of gender fluidity, just like openly about you know, popular a popular tragedian at this time. M and it this is where it comes back around to that that sort of gender critical crap, you know, because because you know, the Queen of Turf Island herself Ums has these awful, terrible trans characters. But when you read them, you can be like, Okay, like a thousand years from now, somebody might look at that and go like, you know, I I can tell that she hates this person. But at the same time, like, here are things that we can acknowledge that must exist in that society to make it acceptable for somebody to do this, even if they're hated. H Yeah. And and really this comes back to what I was saying about Aristophanes just in general, that his viewpoint is very conservative, very right wing, very oligarchic, and anti democracy, and like he despises this breaking of the norms, breaking of the binary um. He despises the women that he assumes are up to no good, because of course they're up to no good. He despises euripidy Is for trying to tell him that women are people, yeah, with with feelings and reasons, and that are not just obsessed with sex. Um that even Fidra is not just a sex obsessed weirdo. You know. Yeah, it's really it's it's the same bigotry in place then as now. And you know, Okay, Aristophanes wrote some great plays. But let me tell you, I'm not going to pay for his video game. Yeah, yep, I'm not going to give him any money. I wouldn't, I wouldn't give him the time of day. Um. Yeah. So so when we come to Klysthenes, there are a couple of really funny things going on. Yeah. Like I mentioned briefly that there's some like some very tense political stuff happening in Athens at this time, um, the the overthrow of democracy, the installation of an oligarchy. There's a subtle thing running through this play of like talking about the Persians. And there's a reason for that, which is that, like the the installation of the oligarchy was actually kind of funded by the Persians. Um, Like they the Athenians had fought the Persians off a hundred years ago or so, but at this point in the war, um, the Persians are funding both sides, both the Athenians and the spartans so that they'll fight each other. And I mean it's just interesting, I suppose, and al Sobietes, who was like the big Athenian general, has been exiled too, where he is trying to get himself basically reinstalled in a position of power from if you ever do a life of al Sobiotes, I don't, I don't know I talked about him. I mean, yeah, I would love to. I need, like if I can find sourcing on things. So if you have anything to share my way, Oh god, put because what I mean, how could you not talk about like? Oh my? I mean, just to remind the listeners of the favorite thing that we have to say about this man is that he was exiled ostensibly because he chipped off all the fucking dicks of all the herms in Athens, and like probably didn't and there's so much more to it, but that is the greatest story that features him just like going around in the dead of night and making sure no harm is left with a penis. It's just my favorite thing, um. But also his character assassins. I think I think the best part of that is the is the idea not just of him knocking the dicks off, but then stealing them. Oh right, he keeps them. You gotta like he's he's not just like removing the protective falloy. He is, he is taking all the dicks for himself. Um, which, um, you know when when Plato writes about him, that kind of makes sense. Apparently he had the hots for Socrates in a bad way. I mean yeah, it's my favorite thing is the Assassin's Creed version of him, where he will have sex with everyone in every city in all of Greece. Like they just have so much fun with his character, and that he pops up like almost everywhere that you travel, and you can romance him in every possible location. And he is just like half naked and hyper sexual in every single moment of that game. That's pretty much what we know about him. Yeah, absolutely conniving with everybody so that he can maintain power. I mean, and he ended up living out his days actually as as a like as a governor of a province in Persia. Um. It's like a nice way to live. Yeah. Um. But like at this point, like the women's counsel in the Thesmaphoria, as you say, they call the council on two things. So it's not just that they want to kill Euripides. The other thing is that they want to kill anybody bringing in Persian influence, right yeah, and here, and you can tell that Aristophanes, for all his like Athenian pride shit, is making fun of them for this, which just lines up perfectly with his support of the oligarchy that the Persians are trying to help install. Like it all lines up. And if you look at the undercurrent of like when the Persians or the or the Corinthians are mentioned, like, you can see aristophanes personal politics coming into play all throughout this. And so Kleisthenes to bring it back around to our other cross dresser, is this Clisthenes is a sort of ambassador who is working with the Persians, and he's tattling to the women. He is ineffectual, he is effeminate, he's inexperienced, and you know, he is openly admitting to being a man in address to go back to the gender critical ideology there, Like he's he's out there saying, look at me, I'm a trends woman, and a trends woman is a man in a dress, because that's me. And it's like wow, that's that's a thing that you just did their aristophanes um and so like the ideas that he's he's a man betraying his own sex m hmm, and a person and an emissary betraying his own city, right, yeah, yeah, that's very interesting. I'm I'm curious because having looked at the two translations, I wondered about how explicit it was that Kleisnes is meant to be actually dressed like a woman like I in the In the theaters, it's he definitely postulates that that he is um. In the hall, well, it's less obvious. It's more so that he's like kind of saying like, I'm one of you women. But at the same time they do like immediately call him a boy obviously in both translations because he's clean shaven. But it was just interesting to me the idea that, like, was he definitely dressing as a woman, like definitely trying to portray himself as one, or was he coming at it more like I'm with you. I you know, I'm a fan, I align myself with women. And I was so curious about about that. I actually think this has this has to come back to sort of the sex work angle. Sex work might be too generous here because the category of young boys who were seen as sex object is really coming into play here, I think, I mean, this is my personal opinion. You'll find people who differ on this. I don't know whether he would explicitly wear a dress in this scene, but I think what they're talking about when they're like, you're a boy, you're clean shaven, you're you're beautiful and youthful, I think what they're getting at is that he is like them in that he is a sex object. Yeah, it's like the pederast of it all right, like the I mean, especially with Agathon, it comes to um, you know the nature of gay relationships obviously between men only in ancient Athens, where it's like it's more respectable if you're the top. If you're the bottom, you're basically a woman. And it feels like that's kind of what what he's doing with both of those characters, right, m And that that difference between the penetrator and the one being penetrated is a big distinction for them, much more so than your actual gender identity. M hm. And so I think that regardless of whether you take lice than he's to actually be wearing a dress, Like, I think that's less important than the implication that he is in the same category as a woman. Yeah, okay, that makes that makes sense. But the fact that he feels such kinship with them is really interesting. Um. And the fact that that Aristophanes doesn't go the next step and have Euripides dress as a woman and Euripides be the one who is associated with women is actually kind of interesting to me because I would have expected it here, right, Like, the whole point of this is that he's he's revealing women's secrets. Oh um, how we hide our boyfriends from our fathers. Yeah, um, but like that's that's the idea. And and so you'd think that that would be a prime opportunity to have Euripides not Nasilicus, cross dress and play the part of the woman. But when when Agathon suggests it, Euripides won't do it. He says he's going to be too recognizable or something. Right, He's like, I can't pass. But it's interesting that he's like, my father in law can pass. Like, yeah, he says, I'm too old, and I have too big a beard, and I have too recognizable a face and it's like, well, but do you if you shave off the beard? Yeah, Like if this, if this father in law of yours, you can shave off his beard, And like I recognize he wouldn't be as he wouldn't be Euripides, but like it seems to be that as soon as that happens, this man like completely looks like he's a woman. And you know they all all the women in there have no problem believing it, right, um, And so so I I wonder at that, I feel like it has some importance. Um My, My thoughts on that line are kind of I wonder if the point of calling out an older respected playwright, if there was a line that was too far across, right, because because you know that's not always the case. Like in the Clouds, Aristophanes lambasts Socrates pretty much by name. Um, like that's the whole point of the Clouds. Well, and in the Frogs he he gets that Euripides pretty hard at that one too. Yeah, but again, like the that's a contest between the words Euripides wrote and the words Escalus wrote at that point, and and so he has some plausible deniability, right, So like there's it's so I feel like there's got to be some other reason underlying this, And I wonder if if there was some reputation of Euripides as very masculine that would have made that joke hard to pass off. M hm um, yeah, that's interesting. I've also heard the theory that, um that like maybe Aristophanes didn't just hate Euripides like it seems, but actually they were like best bros. And he's making fun of him in a more friendly kind of way. I don't totally know how I feel about that, because I feel like, um, anybody's deserves better. Yeah, okay for a second, like, like I just I can't. I can't make that work in my head. I mean, the more I read of Aristophanes and even just the more you said here too, like I agree mostly, I think, because I just think Euripides is so much better than that. But that might be like you know, my own Like I'm also just thinking about euripides writing and the politics that he displays. Yeah, um, Euripides had a fondness for pushing the envelope and and trying to widen people's minds, and that's the total opposite of what Aristophanes likes to do. Yeah, you know, Aristophanes is always on about how every time you do that, you let in more nonsense. Um. If you if you let the women rule, then you know, everything will be topsy turvy and nothing will make sense if you, um, if you're acting no better than women, then we might as well stop fighting at all. Um. If you take lititiousness to its extreme, this is the birds I'm talking about here. If you take licitiousness to its extreme, then you could litigate the crown off of Zeus, which is the actual ending of the birds. You know. So like any time that you let new thoughts in, any time that you have somebody telling corrupting the youths, as they accuse Socrates of doing that, they could think for themselves that they should question things, that things don't have to stay the way they were. That Aristophanes responds by lampooning it, by making it seem like you're just wanting change for change's sake, and there's no actual reason to do that things or find the way they are. It's a very conservative mindset, and Euripides is basically the exact opposite. And it's like, women have feelings. It's worth considering that what they do in bearing children in his media is just as dangerous as standing behind a spear in battle. It's worth considering that, you know, marrying women off against their will is not always going to end up well. Um, it's worth considering that that there is more to to the world than just what we have in front of us, and that you know, if I if what I have to do is stage the furies in a tragedy to get you to listen, that's what I'll do, um, which reportedly made people run out of the stadium and terror. By the way, Um, which moment is that exactly? Oh, I'm trying to remember, but that's that's in them the play about arrestes. Okay, then it's just arrestes. Yeah, the Furies come on to chase him. And staging the Furies was such a taboo that people literally ran from the theater. Reportedly, Oh, I love Euripites, I know, right, so so like, I cannot imagine people with such disparate views of the world sitting down and being bros. Yeah when they're I mean, like, it's not that that can never happen, but the cognitive dissonance you have to hold to do it is pretty hard. Yeah, I mean yeah, it's like today, right, Like, I mean, this came up yesterday. Somebody messaged me to tell me that they really enjoyed the show, really love the content, but they actually had to stop listening because I said, Jordan Peterson and everyone who associates him with our fucking garbage people. And I just think, you know that it reminds me of that where I'm like, I will never be able to be friends with someone who you know, comes at me telling me that Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan are like the salt of the earth and I think, okay, yeah, like that's just the line that gets drawn. So yeah, I mean I think there's lots of modern references like that. Yeah, Like I totally agree. For the record, good, that's why Peterson is like the epitome of the mediocre white man who got by on bullshitting until he found himself in the spotlight. That is like almost exactly. A tweet I tweeted yesterday is yeah, sorry exactly, but yeah, no, no, no, like like I just mean I agree with you completely. Yeah, it's been There is a certain a certain mindset for which that kind of jargony talking in circles is very appealing because it sounds like you have all the answers and they feel like they have none of the answers, and they're like, yes, pour your wisdom into me and I will ignore all the cognitive dissonance that that implies. Um. And it's it's very culty honestly. Oh yeah, absolutely, so, yeah, like it's it's it's a it's a very cultish thing. And I think that we as as a society need to do better with our teaching of of critical thinking, particularly UM, and with our support so that people don't feel so helpless all the time. Mm hmm, yeah, agree entirely. Um, yeah, but this is very gree entirely And yeah, I know exactly what I'm gonna say. I agree completely. And also let's talk more about I want to say Aristophanes, but mostly I mean euripities, because you know, because that's what I really wanted to talk about. But yeah, I mean, it's fascinating that I know, I agree, you know that that the likelihood of them them being friends, um seems not likely at all, Um, but it I mean it is so I don't even know where I was going with that, but I suppose it is just interesting how much he does come at Euripides, and I'm interested to hear your thoughts on those moments. So I haven't I haven't written the episode on this bit yet, but basically, like after Kleisines comes and goes and and then they just kind of start like just acting out the Helen and the Andromeda and another one I think, and like it's as if they're just especially with the Helen, it's like everybody's comes on stage. He's playing Mentalis and they just like act out a huge portion of the Helen. And it felt so bizarre to me, and like, I don't you know, I read The Helen like eight months ago now, so I'm not going to remember exactly what the line comparison is, but it felt to me that that's what it is. And I just sort of curious, like what Aristophanes is doing, like and I guess he's insulting the Helen, which I fucking love that play. Yeah, it's such a good plays. So yeah, So so the Helen is one of those moments, especially the beginning, and that is that is a I don't know if it's a direct quotation or paraphrase of the opening scene of The Helen, but it is. It is the opening scene of the Helen where Helen is claiming sanctuary at a tomb to you know, keep herself free of marrying this guy, and Mentelais washes up on shore and they have this sort of weird reunion. Um. But the thing is that Euripides is playing with the myth in an interesting way, not not necessarily of Helen being in Egypt, because that existed before. Um, that goes the you know, that variation goes back at least to Stasicarus, where you have like the Cloud Helen essentially, which again lovely. Yeah, I did a whole series on it last year. It's one of my favorite things. So, so like you have you have, first of all, you have virtuous Helen, which is gonna piss off at Aristophanes to no end just for being virtuous Helen. Yeah, right, because because the Oligarchs, especially the conservatives especially love to hate Helen, love to show her off as the epitome of what every woman does wrong and why women are cursed. She's she's practically eve, right, So so to to have it start with virtuous Helen and then to take Menelais one of the heroes and have him be kind of a bumbling comedic idiot in a tray. Yeah, it's so interesting because these are the things that I talked about and obsessed over when I was talking about the tragedy itself last year, and then now I'm I was thinking about it in Aristophanes, and I was like, well, he's just quoting it, but you're right, like he, I mean, he's quoting this one so intentionally, and meanwhile it leaves us to go, this is a play that makes Euripides like like the fucking realist, like he's just so good. And meanwhile, of course it's exactly the play that makes Aristophanes go, whoa this guy? Like, oh he likes the women? Right, So this is exactly This is an exact parallel to what Aristophanes is doing with his women in Thesmaphoria, right, because the woman is in charge, so to speak, and the man is a bumbling buffoon, and so like with Aristophanes sort of saying like right now, or women are in charge, and because the men are acting like women, acting no better than women, and here he has and look, Euripides is reinforcing that by having this woman who is virtuous and who knows what's going on and this great Greek hero who is you know, tumbling ass over fist and doesn't know his head from his stomach, right, So, and that in a tragedy that's supposed to be serious. So putting that in this context reframes it as Euripides is so bad at tragedy that he's writing comedy, and Euripides is so bad for the city with his politics of pushing the envelope that he's acting no better than a woman. Yeah. Ah, So like that's that's my personal read on it. You might find others. Um. Now, the Andromeda I don't know as much about. Yeah, well, it's fragmentary, so it's harder for us. I feel like this has got to be like a I mean probably it's one of our reference points. I haven't looked into The Andromeda too much. I did have a guest on during the helen Um because to or yeah tough Marshall m c W. Marshall. He wonderful, Yes, absolutely, and yeah, and so he studied the helen and then the fragmentary ribities. So we talked a little bit about like the Andromeda then. But it is interesting because it is fragmentary, so we don't really know entirely what what he's playing on or what the play um contained. I mean, obviously it had the Perseus myth. But but it's fascinated me generally that that he did write the Andromeda and in the same year as the Helen, because and that he's like, I mean, I guess just just having these plays that are are so focused on the women alongside more famous men. And I wouldn't say necessarily that Helen is not you know, it is less famous than Mentalist, but certainly Andromeda and Perseus, like you would think that the tragedian would be writing a play called Perseus, not Andromeda. And so that kind of in itself is fascinating. And then obviously just even the woman centered notion of these plays is what Aristophanes is picking up on, Like, oh my god, he went to year and he wrote all these plays about women, and then it's almost like the next year, that's exactly what Aristophanes daddy. He's like, but it's I'm going to be insulting women rather than you know, making them interesting like Euripides. Yeah, and you know, it does make me wonder a little about the context of the Andromeda. I wonder if in that as well, we have an Andromeda who is pure and virtuous shown against a Perseus who is ide full and hebristic, Which is not a hard read of the myth, right, Like, that's pretty true the myth not, but like when you frame the story that way, especially up against something like the hellen Um, this sort of theme of virtuous women captives struggling to find some semblance of normalcy while the men blunder about and make fools of themselves and muck everything up. You know, that's that's a very that's a very euripidi in take, right, Like that's a very sort of like, well, think about this is this is the year before when they exiled out Sobietes again, when they decided to send the Sicilian expedition and everything start to go hey wire, And like the context of this is is like it's not hard to read that the next step as our bad military decisions are making Athens suffer, right, And if you put that up against of course Aristophanes, like, well, yeah, your bad decisions not mine, Like you know, like that's because you're too lenient, It's definitely not because of our policy of conquest. Um, Like you know, it kind of it kind of it reads very it reads very politically to me, um, Like, I don't think any of that's an accident. M. There's this line in the theory it is translation that has that has been you know, bouncing around my head. It's one of the cruder jokes when when I mean, because there's so many jokes that involve Simocus's giant comic Phallus, right, and when the women sort of lift his dress and find it, and and there's this like, oh there it is. Oh it's gone again, Oh there it is, And they say, your Phallus is coming and going like the Corinthians out of our isthmus. Yeah. And so that is very directly Aristophanes saying that the Corinthian navy is fucking us. We are being penetrated by these Corinthian ships and um, and we should fight back against it. And that's it's just such a very political war time reference that it's like it feels almost out of place here. It kind of jars you back to that mindset of like, oh, wait, Aristophanes is being a warhawk. Yeah yeah, Oh it's so interesting. I'm glad to hear all this like political additions to the whole narrative, because as much as I've been reading a bunch of I mean, it's interesting because if this play is not one that's written about a lot when you're reading on Aristophanes. So I've been like reading a couple of different books and like, you know, just kind of skimming through a bunch of different sections on Aristophanes the person, and and that's before it has to be like one of the least referenced plays in the sources I've been looking at. So I've been like, yeah, there's a lot of honestly, but yeah, it's it's amazing to me how little has been written about this one when there's such clear political driving forces. Yeah, and there are very few translations too, Like there's not a lot broadly on this play at all. Yeah, I was. I was kind of looking around to see what commentaries were out there, and um, there really are not very many. There really just aren't. Um. I mean like they're there are articles, for sure, like it's not completely neglected, but like there's really only one translation and commentary that I found, and that was you know, in the last ten years, I think. And I was just like huh. You know, like I never I never read the Thesmaphoria until pretty pretty far into my career as as an academic. But I thought that was just because I wasn't focusing on comedy. Um. But no, like it really is understudied, and I wonder if part of that is because it's so hard to translate the context. Yeah, um, I mean I understand, like I mean, I would under I understand. I've seen people talking about it too, But I understand that that Aristophanes broadly would be very difficult to translate, like yeah, I mean, especially like you know, you get into I think the Skythion is probably a really good example of this too. But he also wrote a lot of people in like weird dialects that like, then you have to try to convey that, like I know the Spartan woman in Lisistrata as an example of that. And I would imagine this Skibeon because I read this the end half in the hallei Wild just because it was easier to make sure i'd read the whole thing before talking to you. Um, But the translation of the Skideon speech in that is like very odd and interesting and like you can tell they're trying to make some kind of I mean, there's a play as if like obviously Greek is not this person's first language. Um, but it's interesting, and I imagine there's like a lot of that in Aristophanes, and trying to translate that would be like, oh my god. You know, yeah, political context is so important for Aristophanes in particular, like it's it's it's important for most things. But like with most other comedians, comic play rights that we have even fragments of they're the more common style of comedy is very It's what turned into comedie a Dillard. It's very stock. It's got a few characters that that like you can always recognize and like it's it's very like mythologically based, so you can recognize that trajectory. But with people doing political satire like Aristophanes, you really have to know what they're satirizing in order to make any sense of it, and sometimes we just don't. Um. It's like if somebody tried to, you know, play SNL sketches to aliens two thousand years in the future without telling them anything about modern American politics, it wouldn't make any sense. You know, they get the sense of who who the who Donald Trump is and who Hillary Clinton or whatever, But like they wouldn't actually know what it happened in the news. And that's the kind of thing we're working with here. Like you know, I spoke very like confidently about Klaisthanes, like we know he was essentially an ambassador and an official emissary. I speculate that he was working with Persia because that's what makes sense in context. Um and and there are probably historians who study this period as like their their focus that know a lot more about him than I do. But like, without knowing who Klaisthanes is, it's like, oh, just some just some some guy in address, okay, well yeah, even even Agathon too, Like I mean, you know, in my for my purposes, I've had to go into a lot of detail about like I don't have the whole history background, but I've just done some like googling of these because it's vital that you that I explain who Agathon is, because like we don't have his tragedies, so he's just a name and without the context of knowing that he is not an invented character, he is a real person. Like the play itself is so different without that knowledge, it's like, yeah, I mean, if you're reading this play and you don't know who Agathon is, maybe you don't even know who Euripides is, Like I can't I can't really see that happening, but like it's not impossible, you know. And so like if somebody who doesn't have any background in any kind of classics picks this up and I don't even know who Euripides is, like what a baffling thing to read, Let alone the fact that there is all this historical and political context that is, you know, needed, on top of the fact that this is a play explicitly about a very real person who wrote tragedies. You know. It's yeah, it's I often forget how different it is because I have not covered many comedies because they're not really my favorites. But I often forget how different it is to tragedies because tragedies primarily are focused on mythological characters, and while there is like political context that's often under the surface, like it is not as obvious and in your face as Aristophanes, where he is almost always writing about real people from his time who did real things, and you need so much more knowledge to understand like everything in the play other than like the very dick jokes, those are universal and timeless, and there are so many in this play. There are so many, there's too many. Yeah, um, I yeah, I'm not a big fan of of comedy either. Honestly, I find it more interesting as a source, yeah, as an artifact in and of itself, primarily because you know, the sense of humor of the comedians we have left is so very conservative and sexist and gross to me. Um like feels it feels like I'm following back on my catchphrase of I'm too aced for this shit. I don't I don't enjoy dick jokes most of the time. I don't enjoy how crass everybody is in these things. Yeah. So I'm much more interested in, you know, in what it says about what's going on at the time, which for me makes Aristophani's actually kind of fascinating. But for anybody coming at this as just a play, it's like, but who the hell is that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean it's I agree completely. Like I start to cover this, I was just like, oh my god, the volume of dick jokes like in this play that is about a women's only festival, and like, I'm just I'm tired of it. Like there, it's quite excessive. I I really, you know, I've said this on the episodes already, but I regret telling starting this play I do, you know. I think it's probably good in the end that people will know it and great and I get to defend eurippites, but like, this is not the favorite thing that I've ever done. Frogs was so different because it is so silly and they are singing frogs, and there are fewer dick jokes because the silly is the singing frogs. But this one is just it's just all dick jokes. Like I mean, yeah, it's it's quite a play. Yeah, And you know, I think it's really interesting that it is set out of the women's Festival, like that the thesmaphoria existed is something that I think is a little bit hard to conceptualize for now. Yeah, I went into it in the beginning. While this episode will air tomorrow, obviously we'll have aired by the time this one airs, but I spent like the first half of the episode talking about what we know of the thes beforia, which is like a decent amount which was so exciting, because that's why I covered this play because I was like, oh my god, there's a women's only festival, and also Euripides is in this play, like obviously I should cover it, and then I'm reading it and I'm like, right, but I just forgot the Aristophanes part, Like I just kind of neglected to think about the fact that, sure, there this is about a women's only festival in Eurippides features and even though I knew it was a Euripy slander, I still just failed to think of, right, this is Aristophanes. It's really fascinating to think about these women's festivals in the context of the men who wrote about them, mum, because like, this is not our only example we have we have I think I think there's a passage in Thucydities even that is about the women off celebrating the Adonia at the same time the men are holding like a council, and like the sound is interrupting the council. And I'm gonna be really upset at myself if I misremembered who that passages from, because it sounds like it should be in Herodotus, but I think it was. I think it was in Athens, so it wouldn't be. But also we have like if you look at the back eye to bring in always always happy to look at the back eye. Another Euripides um. So that whole play is about a man who is obsessed with and upset by the women having a festival without the men outside the city walls, and how it cans Uh, they're too cool for him at all. Yeah, that's so true. Now I want to look up when when The Buckeye was written, because now I wonder if it was a response to this play. It's not impossible, but I don't think so, because it was it was at least performed posthumously, and I think Euripides had another chunk of years after this that he was writing. Not to say that he didn't write it and just not perform it, but I know it was luth performed after he died. But that is an interesting question too, because it does kind of feel like it could be like, well, I can write about women going to a festival too, and it's just going to be a hell of a lot gorrier and more fun, much more more realistic. Like yeah, you know, because because in that play you have the main character whose name is escaping me at the moment. Yeah, Pentheus is sitting in his city like imagining all of the nasty things the women must be up to, when really they're just out there dancing in the fields, and like it doesn't get nasty until he shows up to interrupt them. Yeah. Um, And and everybody, everybody tries to tell him this and he just refuses to believe it. And like that that just feels so much to me, like Aristophanes, come, come your shit down. Yeah, yeah, that's so true. I like that comparison of I mean, just all of it, and I could I could think of the back Eye forever. But but it is so yeah, so uniquely different ways of of handling. You know, a festival that, at the very least in back eyes almost all women aside from you know, the the god um. But but yeah, and the Pentheas of it all. But h oh my gosh, I don't know, my brain kind of went off. We had a weird but yeah. I mean, like like we started talking about like gender presentation and gender expectation, and I think the back Eye is a really good counterpoint here because in that play, somebody who is far too rigid, rigid to the point of his own death. Is clearly like fascinated by the gender play but afraid of it, afraid that it will destroy him, and in the end it does because he's too rigid. And the god themself is very much presented in a gender fluid way in that play, and not without reason, like this is Dionysus. We're talking the breaker of norms, the destroyer of binaries. That's what That's what Dionysus does. That's why he is the god of drama and of wine and of the wild places where rules don't apply. That's set up against in Thesmaphoria, where the gender binary is incredibly strict and people who break it are to be mocked and burnt and shot with arrows. And the people on the other side of the line, the women are necessarily evil, right, They're necessarily as sex crazed and deceptive as everybody wants to think they are. They're this other, this unknowable and suspicious other, rather than exactly what they seem, other human beings doing things their own way. And I think that really is very telling about that difference I see between aristophanes approach to gender and to politics and Euripides approach to gender and politics. Yeah, yeah, I hadn't thought of how perfect back Guy is as a counter to this, but I mean it is both a perfect counter and it is just like I mean, for so many reasons. But like you know, a great example of why Euripides is not only you know, just the best and I love him, but like also just a fascinating person, and especially like certainly this play was written after so whether it was you know, whether he had it in mind or not that he was writing back Guy to counter, says Mephoria, Like, I think, I think that the idea is certainly there, Like he would he would have known, and while even if it was like five or ten years later, he could have just been still thinking about, you know, all the nonsense that Aristophanes put into this play and and all the ways that he you know, very rigidly and very critically played with gender. And then I almost called Euipdes Dionysius that works, honestly, And then you know, Euripides like was like, well, you know, if you're going to do that, and in my name no less, then I'm going to write this play where we have this character who is fascinated by gender fluidity, and his conservative nature is actually his downfall, even when he does play with gender, like he lets himself play with it and it blows up, you know, and and he is, Yeah, this this conservative character who is too rigid and too many things. It's yeah, I'm I'm very into the idea of beckey now in connecting to this. But yeah, in general, ancient comedy is a little bit too crude for me. I've never really gotten into the AmbiX or or into comedy for its own sake. But I think it's also pretty telling that, you know, the funniest joke that Aristophanes ever told it is the same joke the babylonbie tells every three weeks. Well what is it? Pronouns? Oh god? Yeah, you know, like yeah, like it's It's it's pretty telling that the Aristophanes idea of the funny thing that you can say about gender is ha ha, look at the man in address. Yeah yeah, And that this is still somehow compelling to so many people. I think it. I think it speaks to my personal mantra when it comes to humanity, is that people as a whole never really change. We have the same you know, the same flaws, the same foibles and weaknesses as people a thousand and two and years ago did, but we also have the same greatness that they did. Yeah, yeah, And I think it speaks very well of people who are more open minded that Euripides is still so popular and Aristophanes is just making the same tired joke as all of the turfs. Yeah, they never cut up with anything new in two thousand years of history. And it's I mean, at the at the very least, I do think, you know, as much as I want to joke about singing frogs, but I do think at the least like Aristophanes is known for something like the frogs in comparison two thousand before you obviously Licestrata is. He's certainly well known for that, but I think that the most commonly talked about tends to be the frogs. And I think it might even just be because enough people today would much rather see a joke about singing frogs than have to hash the very tired and now deeply offensive. Certainly was offensive always, but enough people realize it now. Idea that like comedy is a man dressing as a woman, ha ha ha. You know, so it's vaguely reassuring. Honestly, I'm surprised The Birds isn't more popular because the way that Americans latch on to people being over litigious is it's so relatable. Um. But yeah, I think as as as fascinating as I find the thesmaphore A Zusai, I'm glad that it's this least popular comedy I know that speaks really well of humanity. Yeah, yeah, agree entirely. Well, I mean this has been so much fun um and also insightful and so many things because it's Aristophanes. But at least we're defending Euripides. Because if we had just spent this hour and a half having to only look at Aristophanes, I would have been far less enjoyable. So I'm glad she wanted my defense of Euripides. Thank you. This has been a real pleasure. Um. You know, like I said, anytime, I love doing this. So um, we must stand for Euripides. And you know, those those aristo Aristophanic conservatives need to learn that there's more to life than their narrow scope. Absolutely well said um, well is there? Um? For one, I will absolutely be jotting down your name for Hippolytis. So thank you. Um, but do you want to tell if my listeners where to find more from you? If you want them to follow you read more? What have you? Yeah? Well, first of all, most importantly, you can find me on a previous episode of this podcast, yeah right, not just a phase where we talk about asexuality in Greek mythology. And you can also find me on both Twitter and Mastodon at Brododactylos. That's b r O d O d A k t y l O sum and it will be linked in the episode's description in case you didn't type that out, which is perfectly reasonable. Um, I'll tell you right now that it's it's um Aolic dialect, which is sapphic for rosy fingered, which is an epithet for the dawn. Oh, I'm so glad you told me that. Yes, Oh my god, I love that. I've like noted your handle for so long. And also rosy fingered down is one of my full time favorite things. So and god sapphic an aolic. Those are probably probably the best places to follow me. You can also find my work on such blogs as Piezo Men, where I talk about the mechanics of antiquity in video games. And I also have a relatively new post about the Gods of the Forgotten City. You can find me talking academia on Ancient Office Hours with the Ozamandeous Project. Thank you, oh my gosh, so much fun. Few nerds that conversation. Honestly like it helped so much. It helped me so much, so I hope it helped you all do. And as you heard, I went into this thinking I absolutely just hated the play, And while I don't entirely feel differently now, I at least feel like I understand it and can appreciate more things about it. The historical and political context helps immensely. That's one of those things that as much as I generally know the culture of ancient Greece at the time, the specific time periods and really intricate political machinations that go on in those little time periods or not something that I know offhand or have the bandwidth to research for every episode of the show. So thank the gods for amazing nerdy academics who want to come on and both explain history and politics and also espose the wonders of Euripides. He deserves the world, So make sure you follow Julie on Twitter and beyond taking their work whenever you can find it. I'm fairly certain you're going to hear her on the podcast again because Gods know, I want to cover Hippolotis in more detail. Now more Euripides is always a good thing. Next week we have the final narrative episode of this play. But also fortunately another scholar came on the show, and who knows even more about Aristophanes as a person, And I think that will make even more of a difference in understanding this play and appreciating it beyond my attempts to make it a narrative structure. Let's talk about mits. Baby is written and produced by me Live Albert MICHAELA. Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians and handles so many podcasts related things. But I'm so glad for her that she did not have to read the those before. He is Zusa. Stephanie Folly works to transcribe the podcast for YouTube captions and accessibility. The podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeartMedia. Help me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the ancient Mediterranean by becoming a patron where you'll get bonus episodes and more, visit patreon dot com, slash mits baby, or click the link in this episode's description. Thank you all for listening. Nerds, you are the best God's I love conversation episodes. They are so damned insightful and can really change the trajectory of the series, particular Lily this one. Thank fuck I am living. I love this ship, but not Aristophanes. He was a douchebag.