The Art of Greek Comedy

Abstract

I wonder sometimes ", writes Professor Kathleen Lever in the fi al sentence of her recent book1, " if we are right in hoping that we can revive Aristophanes; perhaps we should hope Aristophanes can revive us." Certainly the times seem unpro pitious, both in the world at large and more especially in what Timon the Sceptic called the scholar's cloistered bird-coop, for an uninhibited enjoyment of the master's unique combination of literary parody and ribald wit. We look back nostalgically to the halcyon days of Benjamin Bickley Rogers at the turn of the century, when the polymath could afford to be genial and even occasionally inexact; nowadays we shake our heads crossly at such effervescence, and smugly point to the textual gaffe at line so-and-so of Ecclesiazusae. We are all so busy pondering our social function, meticulously filling the gaps of scholarship Uke the car-park attendants at Leopardstown, that the scholar with the belly-laugh is all but extinct. What, one wonders, would have been Rogers' reaction to that significant work of a Miss Kathryn S. Bennett entitled The Motivation of Exits in Greek and Latin Comedy ?