3. Stichomythia and σκώμματα: Euripides’ Cyclops, Aristophanes’ Wealth, and Plato’s Euthydemus

One of the most interesting adaptations of stichomythia in satyr play and late Old Comedy is that its structure is deliberately made to incorporate ridicule and abuse. Something of the structural formalism of tragic stichomythia remains, but the main point is clearly for one member in the exchange to ridicule the other. The ridicule is enhanced because of the limitations imposed by the stichomythic form, which either places the respondent at the receiving end of the ridiculer’s questions, or allows the ridiculer to control the respondent’s meaning by subverting or suggestively insinuating beyond each reply. In each of the sequences to be examined below, the stichomythic capping, not unlike the ληκύθιον ἀπώλεσεν game in the Frogs, is intentionally played at the expense of the respondent although the effects achieved vary with the dramatic situation. Whether we are dealing with satyr play, late Old Comedy, or as we shall see, Platonic dialogue, in all cases the comic possibilities of the stichomythic form are now centrally on display.

The first sequence to be examined is from Euripides’ Cyclops, which on several grounds is reasonably dated toward the end of Euripides’ career. After the Cyclops has eaten Odysseus’ men, Odysseus gives him draughts of the Maron wine to debilitate him (409–24), except that now the Cyclops would like to leave his cave to share the wine with his brothers (445–46). Odysseus, in preparation for blinding the Cyclops, engages the Cyclops before the chorus of satyrs and Silenus in an exchange ultimately aimed at dissuading him from leaving his cave (521–31):

Because this is the key issue that Odysseus is aiming to control, the following repartee becomes more pointed and the responsion more strict (532–33):

On the face of it, this is a good retort, respectable by Greek standards of sympotic behavior. [1] So Odysseus now shifts ground to the darker side of sympotic activity and resorts to the common progression (as we will see in Part II) from reveling to abuse (534):

This reply seems to appeal to the Cyclops’ sense of irony. Why should fighting be of concern to him, given his size and his recent devouring of Odysseus men? But a different irony lurks in his own reply and alludes to the most famous Homeric joke of Οὖτις between Odysseus and the Cyclops (535):

This is of course precisely Odysseus’ plan, down to the mention of the name he will use, which is stated more explicitly by Odysseus at 548–49 and will become the basis of the paratragic “antanagnorisis” between the Cyclops and the chorus later on (672–75). The clever Odysseus has inadvertently elicited from the Cyclops a pronouncement of his own fate. The double meaning of οὔτις here is directly reminiscent of moments in tragic stichomythia when the implications of a turn of phrase are lost on the speaker but communicate the deeper situation of the plot to the audience. [2] Odysseus’ reply is almost patronizing (536–38):

The point-counterpoint of ἠλίθιος ~ σοφός is nicely brought out in the word order. It may be that we are to take Odysseus’ reply as decisive, at least for the moment, because at this point the Cyclops addresses Silenus for a second opinion about whether to stay home. When given, Silenus’ answer will seal the Cyclops’ decision (539–40):

The capping of δοκεῖ ~ δοκεῖ between the Cyclops and Silenus again can be compared with close responsion in tragic and comic stichomythia; although Silenus is in collusion with Odysseus, here the repetition signals agreement rather than ironic distance. There is much more to this scene than need concern us here, but we can highlight several important points. Like many tragic stichomythiai, the exchange is unevenly balanced because the uneducated Cyclops is no match for the clever Odysseus. Thus we expect the lighthearted, aloof responses of Odysseus to the Cyclops’ questions about the wine, as we also expect that by the end of the exchange Odysseus will win. Yet the Cyclops is not entirely ineffective in his responses even though he admits to being drunk at 535. More significant for our purposes is that the talk of Maron wine leads directly to sympotic themes. Not only is the threat of fighting and λοίδορος ἔρις ‘abusive strife’ (534) suitable as a topic of sympotic conversation, as we shall explore in detail in Part II, the stichomythic framework itself of this discussion suggests sympotic strife. Competitive elements of tragedy, comedy, and the symposium merge in this scene.

After Odysseus manages to bore out the Cyclops’ eye, another stichomythic scene occurs between the Cyclops and the chorus of satyrs. It is a paratragic scene of anagnorisis that takes place in ἀντιλαβαί, which in tragedy commonly enough follow full-verse stichomythiai, with verse divisions at both the penthemimeral and hepthemimeral caesurae. [3] Here the ἀντιλαβή is fully exploited for its comic possibilities, with the chorus deliberately echoing the Cyclops in mockery (669–75): This scene is reminiscent of a tragic anagnorisis, except that the Cyclops recognition is blocked at every turn by the satyr chorus’s deliberate misconstrual of his words. The Cyclops notes the mockery at 675 (σκώπτεις), yet it still continues until 676 (not above) when the Cyclops specifically clarifies himself by mentioning the ξένος ‘stranger’, namely Odysseus.

As we have seen, Aristophanes’ plays furnish us with many potential examples of comical strife exhibited through stichomythic capping, such as in the Frogs between Aeschylus and Euripides (see above) or in the Knights between Paphlagon and the Sausage-seller (esp. 284–98). But there are two stichomythic sequences in Wealth, his last play produced under his own name, that come close to the riddling that we observed in the Cyclops. What remains central is that the meaning of one speaker is controlled by the respondent through capping. The first example occurs between Chremylus and the old woman, who has shown up to complain that her gigolo is no longer interested in her since Wealth regained his sight. Early on, Chremylus is distrustful of the old woman’s claims and his snide responses have already suggested to her that he is mocking her (σκώπτεις, 973). Certainly he is, and at the same time Chremylus attacks the motives of both the old woman and the gigolo (1018–22):

In each of Chremylus’ replies, he both doubts the sincerity of the old woman, whom he already distrusts, and her young man. By controlling the implications of her statements, Chremylus’ responses insinuate a deeper and more sinister intent on the part of both of them. A few lines later before the young man appears on the scene, the exchange between Chremylus and the old woman becomes more vicious. She asks Chremylus whether she is not entitled to any benefit from the young man at all, to which he replies (1031–37):

Here Chremylus continues to alter the meaning of the old woman, but in this sequence he deliberately echoes and puns on words in each of her statements. The pun with the perfect forms κατατέτηκα ‘I am melting away and κατασέσηπας ‘You are rotting away’ shows how carefully matched Chremylus’ responses are to those of the old woman. And of course the pun on the size of the ring (δακτύλιος) through which the old woman could be dragged completes the exchange, since following Chremylus’ retort the young man appears on the scene. Point for point the old woman is given no chance by Chremylus to be sincere, as her own words are cleverly undercut and her meanings are spun in unpredicted directions.

There are more such examples of this kind of invective achieved through stichomythia that can be found within Wealth. [5] Βut these examples should be sufficient to illustrate the comic potential of the older tragic form. Outside of Old Comedy and satyr play, the closest parallel to the examples above is found in Alcidamas’ Certamen, where as we shall see in Part III the stichomythic game there depends on the rhapsode Homer making sense of a ridiculous hexameter line or lines recited by the rhapsode “Hesiod.” Such stichomythic games are not limited to poetry in the fourth century, however. Plato, in the Euthydemus, employs a stichomythic model to illustrate the reductio ad absurdum of sophistic dialectic. [6] This may not be surprising since in his early dialogue, Ion, Plato had already given evidence of a serious preoccupation with the techniques of rhapsodic performance, which could incorporate stichomythia (to be seen in Part III). Indeed, some experts have recently argued that Plato employs specifically rhapsodic models in other dialogues, although this view has been questioned. [7] But Plato is surely not drawing only upon rhapsodic performance techniques in the passage from the Euthydemus that we are about to examine. His debt to the comedic use of stichomythia in Old Comedy and satyr play is also readily apparent.

The scene that interests us involves a dialectical exchange between Socrates, Euthydemus, and Ctesippus over whether words, such as ἀδελφιδοῦς ‘nephew’ or πατήρ ‘father’, mean what they mean absolutely or whether their meanings are only true in some partial sense. The exchange proceeds by question and answer, reminiscent of stichomythia, but the deliberately subversive line of questioning by Ctesippus takes its cue directly from Old Comedy. In order to avoid the paradox of a “father” being so only at some times but not at others, Euthydemus asserts that Socrates’ father, Sophroniscus, must be a “father” to all (298c). Ctesippus then presses Euthydemus further (298c–d):

What follows is more of the same, with Dionysodorus interjecting at this point to prove that Ctesippus’ father is also a dog and he a brother of puppies (298d–e). But this passage illustrates with comic parody a sequence of dialectical cum stichomythic speech in what has been called a “Billingsgate repartee.” [9] Each of Ctesippus’ outlandish questions is capped by Euthydemus’ replies, which create a close responsion through the repetition of καί that I have tried to bring out somewhat artificially in the translation. Note also the economy of Euthydemus’ retorts: each alternation of καί + possessive pronoun captures his point with a minimun of expression. Of course the thread of the joke is that despite the slanderous implications of Ctesippus’ questioning, by the logic of the argument the same must be true of Ctesippus and his mother and father. Thus Euthydemus can agree with Ctesippus in principle and simultaneously requite him with the same slander.

Plato need not have had a given passage of tragic or comic stichomythia in mind when he composed this scene in the Euthydemus. Rather, what draws our attention is that for Plato, dialectic and dialogue share similarities with comedic stichomythia as well as with other performance techniques, like those of rhapsodes. The similarities with rhapsodic performance are noticeable in Plato’s choice of verbs in the Euthydemus to describe how one speaker takes over from another. We find, for example, the frequent usage of ὑπολαμβάνω ‘take up/reply’ and ἐκδέχομαι ‘receive’, [10] forms that unmistakably reference rhapsodic exchange (see Part III). More strikingly, near the beginning of the dialogue after Socrates has grown tired of Euthydemus’ and Dionysodorus’ rhetorical tricks, which are confusing the youth Cleinias, Socrates offers to ‘improvise away’ (ἀπαυτοσχεδιάζω, 278d7) in their presence—upon which follows his masterful προτρεπτικὸς λόγος ‘hortatory speech’ illustrating the importance of wisdom as the proper aim of education for the youth (278e–282e). And finally I note that the setting of the conversation in the Euthydemus is the Lyceum (271a1), which is where Isocrates [11] reports that rhapsodes can be found performing Homer and Hesiod. All told, this evidence supports the view that Plato felt a kinship between dialectic, dialogue, and other competitive performance genres like rhapsodic exchange and stichomythia that involve live, extemporaneous speaking. Like dramatic stichomythia, Plato’s dialogue only represents extemporaneous conversation, a point to which I will return later. For Plato, rhetorical performance and oratorical debate are intimately connected to competitive poetic performance, although it will take us too far afield to venture into the debt that certain forms of classical rhetoric owe to poetic competition.