A Commentary On Menander's Aspis 1-163.

Abstract

In the years immediately following the initial publication of Menander's Aspis by R. Kasser and C. Austin (1969) several commentaries on the play were produced, most notably C. Austin's (1970), F. Sisti's (1971), A. Borgogno's (1972), and F. H. Sandbach's (1973, part of the larger commentary begun by A. W. Gomme on all of Menander's comedies). None of these relatively short works, however, is as thorough or as generally useful as a book-length commentary, similar to E. W. Handley's on Menander's Dyskolos (1965), would be. My dissertation represents the first step toward a full-scale commentary that I plan to write on the Aspis. In a line-by-line analysis of vv. 1-163 I evaluate textual problems and offer interpretations of passages, taking into account the advances made in our understanding of the Aspis, and of Menander's comedy in general, between 1969 and 1982. Particular attention is paid to the mixture of tragic and comic elements in the play; to fine points of Menandrean meter, diction, plot, and characterization; to the playwright's techniques for generating humor. These topics are treated more thoroughly in my Introduction, which discusses (1) the stages in the discovery of the Aspis, the state of the text today, and the possibility of the play's having had a second title; (2) the structure of the Aspis, the importance of antitheses and parallels, and the relationship of the play's exposition design (an introductory dialogue between two human speakers, followed by a prologue delivered by a divinity) to that found in Euripides and Aristophanes; (3) the goddess (TAU)(upsilon)(chi)(eta), her importance in the Hellenistic world and her depiction in the Aspis; (4) the human characters in the Aspis, Menander's creative playing with audience expectations and with traditional stereotypes (especially to characterize Daos), his use of contrasting pairs (for example, Smikrines and Chairestratos); (5) the light shed by the Aspis on Athenian legal practices involving guardianship and inheritance (especially in the case of an (epsilon)(pi)(iota)(kappa)(lamda)(eta)(rho)(omicron)(sigma)); (6) metrical characteristics of the Aspis, features of its tetrameters and trimeters, Menander's varying of rhythmic patterns to underline changes in the speaker's tone or emotions.