Laughter in European literature and culture - like almost everything in European literature and culture - begins with antiquity. And perhaps the first form of organized laughter was antique. Of course, the Greeks, like all normal people, apparently always laughed, but in the 5th century BC, for the first time, we are faced with the fact that laughter becomes a conscious part of culture, even more so than literature. It is this phenomenon that is called the ancient Attic Attica is an area in Greece. The center is the city of Athens. comedy.

The ancient Attic comedy is an amazing phenomenon in the history of culture, even with modern point vision, because it is not only a genre of literature, but also a part of the life of at least one city - Athens. Moreover, comedy is one of the most important components of the current life of the city, since the performance of comedies (and) was part of the central ones, which were celebrated quite often in Athens: Small and Great (dedicated to the god Dionysus, who was considered the patron of the theater) and some others.

Where did comedy come from? This is a separate and complex issue, which is not even customary to deal with especially now. Regarding it, there is approximately the same decision that the French Academy of Sciences once made regarding the perpetual motion machine: new versions will no longer be considered.

Nevertheless, it is clear that comedy has mythological, folklore, religious origins, but we do not know what exactly. We have many ancient stories about what earlier people they went around the villages and sang all sorts of, as we would now say, abusive or vile songs addressed to their fellow citizens - and it seems that comedy was born from these songs. Indeed, such holidays exist in different cultures- and we even still have them in the form of some kind of carols. Probably there were some other roots.

But one way or another, comedy came from a very deep mythological idea that a person is good, because in some way it balances the state of the world: if you scold a person, then everything will be fine with him, and if you praise, then there can be all sorts of trouble. This idea is preserved in many signs and rituals, for example, that a newborn child cannot be praised. The same thing happened in Greece.

It is remarkable that this swearing becomes a component of the most important action in the history and life of a highly developed cultural center Greece - Athens, 5th century BC.

Why? First of all, as is usually believed, thanks to its political message: the comedy not only made people laugh, but also carried some political ideas. Aristophanes writes it in 405 BC. This is the end of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which Athens was losing all the time, but shortly before the production of this comedy they won a naval victory - and there were some hopes of success.

It is with this that the important political message of the comedy is connected. According to the text, the god of the theater, Dionysus, goes to the underworld to return the tragedian to the city: all the great tragedians died, and for the city to win the war, a great poet is needed. There are two great tragedians in the underworld, Aeschylus and Euripides, and the choice is determined by which one of them will give the best advice to the city. And although Dionysus initially went to the underworld for Euripides, he brings Aeschylus back, because he gives the most wonderful advice: on the one hand, return the exiles to the city, and on the other, rely on the fleet.

This causes great approval in society, and we are told that it is the political component of comedy that is the key to its success. The paradox, however, lies in the fact that the second time this comedy, the main idea of ​​which is to rely on the fleet, was staged, apparently, after the Athenian fleet suffered a crushing defeat in the battle of Aegospotami, after which the Peloponnesian War ended . The political idea of ​​the comedy turned out to be absolutely wrong - and yet the play is staged a second time. Nobody can explain this.

One possible explanation is that this political idea is correct because it is in line with what the people think. And its final wrongness is not a reproach to comedy. In the comedy, everything was said well, but what happened in practice - well, it didn’t work out. It has nothing to do with comedy. There is politics in comedy, but, apparently, the main thing is not its very presence, but how it is woven into the overall structure. It turns out that the political content had a momentary meaning, but The Frogs is valuable to us and, judging by this second production, to the Athenian audience, not only and not so much.

With what? Apparently, the fact that in this work different levels, different meanings of the comedy were intertwined, perhaps in the most wonderful way. And this is just in time for the question of what they laughed at and how they laughed at in the Athenian comedy.

The viewer began to laugh, right when the heroes went out on. In the first scene, the god Dionysus appears with his slave and they are talking to each other. The slave says to Dionysus: “This is a great joke!” Dionysus replies: “Speak boldly! Don't just say one thing." “What else?” - "What, I'm shifting, you'll crack." “And this: I am dying under the weight. Take it off, or else in your pants ... "-" I beg you, do not continue! It's been bothering me for a long time."

From our point of view, this is something strange. The Athenian audience, apparently, burst into laughter at that moment: there is a hint at the scene traditional for the beginning of a comedy, when a slave appears, dragging something and saying how bad he is, crying, even performing a plaintive song. Accordingly, there are words that must be used in this scene.

Aristophanes forbids the slave to say this, because he is Aristophanes, this is not a simple comedy. Nevertheless, the slave, as you understand, still says it. And everyone is terribly happy. This means that there were recognizable scenes in comedy in which the viewer knew in advance that they were supposed to laugh, almost as if they were raising a sign with the word “Laughter”. In the future, the comedy will develop precisely according to these scenes - the plot and all the scenes, starting from the 4th century BC, will be standard. And still everyone will laugh - laugh at the recognition of the funny. And this in itself is interesting and revealing.

Further, the comedy goes on as usual, and throughout its first part, the god Dionysus appears as an extremely cowardly, constantly lying, ugly god. In the end, he judges who is the best tragic poet. It is remarkable that the question of who is the best poet of tragedy is decided by God in his comic hypostasis, God as a comic actor. It turns out that the comical god is exactly what he is supposed to be.

This comedy is also unique because it has two. The name "Frogs" is the name of one of them. Dionysus crosses, as expected, in Charon's boat along the terrible river Styx, which in the comedy turns into a swamp or a lake, and frogs croak in it. This is a wonderful stage performance: a beautiful choir croaked, apparently dressed up as frogs. Thanks to this, we roughly know how, from the point of view of the Greeks, the frogs croaked. This croaking is portrayed as a poetic song, and it is also extremely funny.

Before his journey to the underworld, Dionysus meets with another choir - a choir of mysts, people initiated into the Athenian cult, a holiday in honor of Demeter and Persephone - the goddesses of fertility - and Dionysus. This choir of mysts is also present on the stage.

In general, one of the main problems with the interpretation of this comedy - were there actually two choirs or one? That is, were there different actors in different costumes, or were the same actors dressed up offstage? This is not only a scenographic issue, but also an economic one, because it was very expensive to train two choirs, and at the end of the Peloponnesian War, apparently, there was no money for this.

The Eleusinian mysteries are the secret cult of Athens, which could not be divulged. The accusation of divulging the cult of the Eleusinian mysteries was one of the most terrible, along with treason. It was presented to many famous people. And yet this undisclosed cult is present on stage, and in the most comical way. For example, it is said that the choristers are dressed in extreme tatters, and this is played up in every possible way. On the one hand, it's just ridiculous. On the other hand, this is one of the ways to solve the economic problem: they just had bad, cheap suits. And on the third hand, this is a joke about the fact that in reality the clothes in which they were initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, then had to be worn without taking off. It was said that people were consecrated in the rip itself, so that it quickly fell into complete disrepair - and it could still be removed. That is, these are jokes on the most sacred - which in itself is extremely revealing. In addition, it is also the joy of recognizing the most secret, including in a funny way.

And finally, this is a literary comedy. She speaks of the status that literature had in Athens: a poet is needed to save the city. The entire second part of the comedy is a competition between Aeschylus and Euripides. In the course of the competition, it is clear that Euripides as a poet is much better. But he loses. And this is wonderfully done comedy, purely technically: huge scales are taken out onto the stage, on which poems are weighed. It is at the same time a parody of one of the most important texts, Homer's Iliad, in which the lot of heroes, in particular Achilles and Hector, is weighed. That hero, whose lot outweighed, dies. In comedy, the opposite is true: whose verses outweighed, that is, whose bowl went down, he wins. Below are the verses of Aeschylus. Why? Because Euripides has light, graceful verses, and Aeschylus writes about serious things, and therefore his verses are heavier. That is, it turns out that he is a worse poet, but he writes about serious things, and since we need about serious things, he wins - and not Euripides, whom Dionysus loves so much. Everything is turned upside down again.

The main scene, which is extremely occupied by everyone, may not be completely clear to us, but it is a wonderful demonstration of the whole mechanism of comedy. In it, Euripides reads his poems, and Aeschylus inserts the phrase “I lost the bottle” all the time.

Well, for example: “Aeneas once, having raised a sheaf of sacrificial ears from the ground ...” - reads Euripides. And Aeschylus adds: "Lost the bottle." The phrase becomes idiotic. And there are a lot of such phrases.

What's the point? The simplest explanation is that Euripides has monotonous verses in which you can put “Lost the bottle” everywhere. This is definitely true. It is remarkable that Dionysus interrupts the process when Euripides finally reads the verses into which "Lost the bottle" cannot be inserted. Dionysus tells Euripides: stop, because Aeschylus will say again: "I lost the bottle."

On the other hand, the bottle has an obvious sexual, even obscene character, because it is not just a bottle, but a vessel with a narrow neck and a wide body. This is an obscene symbol: "lost the bottle" means "lost the masculine power." It's terribly funny. And at the same time it turns out that Euripides is deprived of the most important thing that is in comedy - the power of fertility and therefore loses.

Finally, from how this literary text was further played up, we learn about the third dimension of this joke. This bottle, so puffy, big, puffy, signified a sublime, bloated style (in a good way). With this style, Aeschylus wins, because what is needed now is loftiness and bloat.

Thus, it turns out that even one word in comedy carries several meanings at once. The meaning is sexual, primordial for comedy; the meaning of literal, deliberate humor; literary meaning; the meaning of play - and at the same time a bright, visual, purely stage image, because the bottle, perhaps, was physically present in this scene, Aeschylus discarded it.

It is in this connection in one word of various levels - from political to religious, comic, poetic, sexual - that is the main meaning of the laughter of ancient comedy.

Decryption

The 5th century in Greece - the golden age of ancient culture, associated primarily with Athens - is traditionally called the age of drama, and even, more specifically, the age. Greek tragedy arises at the very end of the 6th century BC and flourishes throughout the 5th century, when the tragic becomes the center of the cultural life of Athens - and indeed of all Greece.

To begin with, it is worth saying what a tragedy is.

For many centuries, the very name "tragedy" - a word that has become part of our lexicon - has been interpreted as a "goat song". One can even recall the work of Konstantin Vaginov, which is so called - precisely because the word “tragedy” is behind it.

Why tragedy is the "goat's song" has been explained in various ways, and several theories of the origin of tragedy are associated with this.

It is more or less clear to everyone that the tragedy must have some ritual roots. She, like comedy, was directly associated with cult, religious in honor of the god Dionysus: Dionysus was considered the patron of the theater and tragic competitions, and in Greek there was an altar of Dionysus. The Greeks even had a proverb "This has nothing to do with Dionysus." As ancient scholars tell us, this is what they said about a bad tragedy, nonsense - something like ours "neither to the village nor to the city."

Now they like to call different articles and books either “Everything in relation to Dionysus”, or “Something in relation to Dionysus”, or “Nothing in relation to Dionysus”. At the same time, in almost none of the Greek tragedies that have come down to us - although, apparently, less than 15% of all the tragedies that were staged in the 5th century have come down to us in their entirety - there is no question of Dionysus. There is only one tragedy in which Dionysus is present, the Bacchae by Euripides. So we can say that the Greek tragedy is not about Dionysus at all.

Nevertheless, the obvious connection of the tragedy with the cult of Dionysus points to the religious and ritual origin of the tragedy. Because of the name, it was believed that it was the goat that connected them with each other. This was explained in different ways. First, the goat was said to be the ritual animal of Dionysus. Secondly, that the goat was a prize at tragic competitions (all tragedies were presented at holidays, mainly at where three tragedians competed with each other). Finally, a third explanation is that the song of the goat is the song of the satyrs, companions of Dionysus, goat-like beings who may have originally composed Greek tragedy.

Each tragedian presented the so-called tetralogy at the celebration: three tragedies, originally connected by a single plot, and one. Only one satyr drama, the Cyclops by Euripides, has come down to us more or less in its entirety, where, in fact, the choir is made up of satyrs. It is usually explained that the satire drama was needed so that the audience could relax after the tragedy. At first, over the course of three dramas, everything is very bad: difficult events take place, everyone is killed, a sea of ​​blood flows, and then a slight, partly comic relaxation sets in. Satyr drama is something between tragedy and comedy, and it gives a positive or even comical version of the myth, including that presented in the tragedy.

Almost all of these explanations are not very convincing. The goat, of course, was the sacred animal of Dionysus, but not the only one, but one of a large list, and by no means the most important. The goat was a prize in tragic contests, but not the first. And, as you understand, when three people compete, anyone who did not take first place lost - so it's strange to call the whole work by the name of something other than the first prize. And finally, it seems that the satyrs became goats rather late and were not at the moment when the tragedy arose. Therefore, some researchers believe that the Greeks themselves did not understand what the word "tragedy" means. And when the Greeks did not know what a word meant, they immediately explained it somehow. So they came up with a very detailed explanation for us why tragedy is a goat song.

I tell this story just to indicate that we don't know where the Greek tragedy came from. There were scientists who confidently and firmly stated that they knew that she was born from a certain ritual, almost in a specific place at a specific time, but all this is to a certain extent fortune-telling - if not on coffee grounds, then on a small amount of evidence, which have come down to us. We can only say that the tragedy had some ritual, cult origins.

When we talk about how tragedy developed, we have to take on faith the information that the Greeks themselves gave us - primarily Aristotle. That part of Aristotle's "Poetics" that has come down to us is entirely devoted to tragedy. To begin with, it says that the tragedy came from and that he showed almost how to write a tragedy correctly. Then Aristotle reports that the tragedy came from the same satyr drama. And, finally, he writes that the tragedy came from the sacred choirs in honor of Dionysus, from the so-called dithyramb. Dithyrambs were performed on the same holidays as the tragedy - and it seems like at first they were just songs in honor of Dionysus, which the choir sang. Then one singer stood out from the choir - he was called the luminary - and tragedy appeared from the dialogue between the luminary and the choir.

That is, Aristotle informs us that the tragedy came immediately from all the genres that existed before it: the epic, and some other drama. This, most likely, indicates that the Greeks themselves did not know exactly where the tragedy came from. But the idea that tragedy encompasses a wide variety of cults in honor of Dionysus or a large number of literary genres indicates at least one thing - that the tragedy in the 5th century was perceived as the main and almost the only genre of literature. A genre that incorporates everything that came before it, and not only literature.

The story of the origin of tragedy from the dithyramb reflects the very structure of tragedy, which consists of two principles: from parts of the choir and actions. This interaction between the choir and the actors is the main thing that distinguishes the tragedy.

The alternating parts of the choir and dialogic parts are written in slightly different languages, in different literary dialects. Some researchers even believe that if the dialogic parts are written in colloquial Greek, which was understandable to the Athenian audience, then the choirs might not be very understandable, especially since they were also sung. Thus, the genre of tragedy is something between theatrical drama as we know it now and, apparently, opera.

Hence another big problem: how to stage and translate the Greek tragedy. What might have been incomprehensible to Athenian spectators is already completely incomprehensible to modern spectators. But at the same time, the chorus was the main thing in the tragedy, this is its main line, the main content and, by the way, the main expenses.

Both tragedy and comedy were staged first with state money, and then with private money - the money of the so-called producers, who were entrusted with this by the state and who fought for this right. And, of course, the choir was the most expensive: it was fifteen people for each tragedian, who specially trained, learned their parts. There weren't many actors. Aristotle says that at first there was one actor, then two, and then three.

There were, of course, more actors in the Greek tragedy, which means that the actors played different roles. And the actors were only men, respectively, they played both male and female. female roles. Thanks to that, faces were not visible and it was possible to play different characters. And one of the most interesting problems that we solve in the analysis of Greek tragedy is which actor played whom. This is done by simply counting the number of characters in each particular scene. There were, however, still characters without speeches, the so-called silent actors.

So, I said that it is very difficult to convey the interaction of the choir and the actors speaking almost different languages. At the same time, the main thoughts of the tragedy are conveyed precisely in the parts of the choirs, regardless of whether the choir is external to the action or participates in it - as, for example, happens in Aeschylus' Agamemnon.

The difficulty with translations of choirs also lies in the fact that, unlike the dialogic parts, which are written in iambic, the choir parts are written in complex. Translations of ancient tragedy always tend to more or less accurately convey the size of the original, but sometimes it turns out that in order to convey this perception of the choir as something special and independent, one must look for some other form.

In my opinion, the most successful translation of the choir was the one that corresponds to nothing - neither all the figurative symbolism, nor the size; it is made like a modern Russian verse, in rhyme (of course, the Greeks wrote without rhyme). This is a translation of one of the choirs of Euripides' "Medea" by Joseph Brodsky.

When, excited, Eros
with a sharp arrow, not aiming,
pierces the heart through
the heart loses its value.
Send me - I pray Cyprida -
love, not eumenides,
love that is easy to master
betrayal and resentment
bitterness and pain of discord.
Such love is delight.
I don't need another love.

In this translation, there is almost nothing from the chorus of Euripides. But he conveys the most important part of the Greek chorus and Greek tragedy: it is a kind of bewitching-living text, fastened with very important internal verbal leitmotifs, which in Russian are replaced by rhyme. This is an extremely intense text. For us, it is both incomprehensible and, at the same time, attracting with some content that seems timeless and general to us.

Although in reality the Greek tragedy has always been staged at a specific time and in a specific place. But we will talk about this further.

Decryption

Going to the theater was a civic duty funded by the state: people were paid to do it. One Athenian speaker said that this theatrical money is the glue for democracy. That is, democracy is kept by the theatre, it is there that the Athenians get the experience of democracy.

Plato spoke about the same, albeit from the opposite position. It turned out for him that almost all of the contemporary Athenian democracy, which he did not really like, came from the theater. He said: it would be nice if only knowledgeable people were sitting in the theater, but the devil knows who is sitting there. They shout, express their opinion, and as a result, instead of subtle knowledge, "theatrocracy" reigned in theaters. And it would be nice if she stayed in the theater - but she was transferred to the city, and now in the city we also have a theaterocracy. Plato is obviously alluding to democracy - just as in the theater anyone can express their opinion about the tragedy, so in the city anyone (that is, in fact, any Athenian citizen) can express their opinion about the state of affairs in the state.

And this relationship between tragedy and the city - as we would now say, tragedy and politics - is perhaps the most important thing that was perceived by the viewer. Any Greek tragedy, regardless of its plot, is a tragedy about Athens.

I will give just one example. This is the tragedy "Persians", dedicated to the victory of Athens over the Persians.

In the Persians, that image of Athens is affirmed, which then, like a kind of Athenian myth, will pass through the entire 5th century and remain until our time - moreover, it is affirmed by the words of the Persians, enemies; there are no Athenian people on the stage. Athens is a rich city dominated by the ideals of freedom, wisely ruled, strong by the sea (since it was the fleet that was always felt to be the main strength of Athens, in this tragedy the main victory of the Greeks over the Persians is a naval victory, a victory at Salamis, won mainly due to the Athenian fleet; although in reality the Athenians won several victories, and the victories on land were no less important). This is a brilliant image.

On the other hand, if you look closely at the tragedy, it turns out that the fallen Persia is drawn with very similar features: before it was an extremely wisely arranged state, in which, like in Athens, laws reigned. Even the wealth of Persia, traditional for the image of the East, is similar to the wealth of Athens. Persia ventured on a sea voyage, and it is the sea that becomes the source of the strength of the Persians - and at the same time the place where they are defeated.

Many researchers say that although this tragedy portrays a positive image, which was perceived by the audience as the ideologeme “we won”, this same image simultaneously becomes a warning. In Persia, too, everything was correct before - the correct structure, laws, wealth. And she rushed into the sea, just like Athens. And how did it end? The defeat of the Persian state.

Apparently, it is at the very moment when the "Persians" are staged that Athens begins to think about spreading its influence, about turning into a kind of empire, which they will become after a while. And the tragedy, showing the power and greatness of Athens, at the same time warns the city about what greatness can turn out to be.

This duality, the two-sidedness of the world, which in "Antigone" appears as two truths, in "The Persians" appears as a greatness that can turn into a fall. And no matter what Greek tragedy we read, it the main idea- precisely about the ambiguity of what is happening around, about the complexity of the world order. Including political complexity, that the momentary state of a person and a city (and the tragedy, let me remind you, was staged once, in a specific place, at a specific time) must always be correlated with what was, and with what will be. .

In other words, tragedy as literature is inextricably linked with tragedy as a reflection of history, with tragedy as a political event. The two-sided nature of the world is the same both in politics and in the inner world of a person. And this is what the Greek tragedy is about.

Decryption

Finally, it is worth talking about any one Greek. On the one hand, it is very difficult to choose, and on the other hand, it is very simple, because with the light hand of two people separated by a large time interval, we know which Greek tragedy is the main one.

In Aristotle's Poetics, the idea is unequivocally that the best Greek tragedian of the three great tragedians is Sophocles, and the best Greek tragedy of all Greek tragedies is Oedipus Rex.

And this is one of the problems with the perception of Greek tragedy. The paradox is that Aristotle's opinion was apparently not shared by the Athenians of the 5th century BC, when Oedipus Rex was staged. We know that Sophocles did not lose with this tragedy, the Athenian audience did not appreciate Oedipus Rex the way Aristotle did.

Nevertheless, Aristotle, who says that Greek tragedy is the tragedy of two emotions, fear and compassion, writes about Oedipus Rex that anyone who reads even a line from it will simultaneously be afraid of what happened to the hero, and sympathize with him.

Aristotle turned out to be right: almost all great thinkers paid attention to the question of the meaning of this tragedy, how we should perceive the protagonist, whether Oedipus is guilty or not guilty. Twenty years ago an article was published D. A. Hester. Oedipus and Jonah // Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society. Vol. 23. 1977. one American researcher, in which he scrupulously collected the opinions of everyone, starting with Hegel and Schelling, who said that Oedipus was guilty, who said that Oedipus was not guilty, who said that Oedipus was, of course, guilty, but involuntarily. As a result, he got four main and three auxiliary groups of positions. And not so long ago, our compatriot, but in German, published a huge book called "The Search for Guilt" M. Lurje. Die Suche nach der Schuld. Sophokles' Oedipus Rex, Aristoteles' Poetik und das Tragödienverständnis der Neuzeit. Leipzig, 2004., dedicated to how Oedipus Rex has been interpreted over the centuries since it was first staged.

The second person, of course, was Sigmund Freud, who, for obvious reasons, also devoted many pages to Oedipus Rex (although not as much as it would seem he should) and called this tragedy an exemplary example of psychoanalysis - with the only difference that the psychoanalyst and the patient coincide in it: Oedipus acts both as a doctor and as a patient, since he analyzes himself. Freud wrote that in this tragedy the beginning of everything - religion, art, morality, literature, history, that this is a tragedy for all time.

Nevertheless, this tragedy, like all other ancient Greek tragedies, was staged at a specific time and in a specific place. Eternal problems - art, morality, literature, history, religion and everything else - were correlated in it with a specific time and specific events.

Oedipus Rex was staged between 429 and 425 BC. This is a very important time in the life of Athens - the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, which will eventually lead to the fall of the greatness of Athens and their defeat.

The tragedy opens, which comes to Oedipus, who rules in Thebes, and says that there is a pestilence in Thebes and the cause of this pestilence, according to the prophecy of Apollo, is the one who killed the former king of Thebes Laius. In tragedy, the action takes place in Thebes, but every tragedy is about Athens, insofar as it is staged in Athens and for Athens. At that moment, a terrible plague had just passed in Athens, which mowed down a lot, including quite outstanding ones - and this, of course, is an allusion to it. Including during this plague, Pericles, the political leader, with whom the greatness and prosperity of Athens is associated, died.

One of the problems that preoccupy the interpreters of the tragedy is whether Oedipus is associated with Pericles, if so, how, and what is the relationship of Sophocles to Oedipus, and therefore to Pericles. It seems that Oedipus is a terrible criminal, but at the same time he is the savior of the city both before the beginning and at the end of the tragedy. Volumes have also been written on this subject.

In Greek, the tragedy is literally called Oedipus the Tyrant. The Greek word (), from which the Russian word "tyrant" is derived, is misleading: it cannot be translated as "tyrant" (it is never translated, as can be seen from all Russian - and not only Russian - versions of the tragedy), because originally it the word did not have the negative connotations that it has in modern Russian. But, apparently, in Athens in the 5th century it possessed these connotations - because Athens in the 5th century was proud of its own, that there is no power of one, that all citizens equally decide who is the best tragedian and what is best for the state. In Athenian myth, the expulsion of tyrants from Athens, which took place at the end of the 6th century BC, is one of the most important ideologies. And so the name "Oedipus the Tyrant" is rather negative.

Indeed, Oedipus behaves like a tyrant in tragedy: he reproaches his brother-in-law Creon for a conspiracy that does not exist, and calls the soothsayer Tiresias, who speaks of a terrible fate awaiting Oedipus, bribed.

By the way, when Oedipus and his wife and, as it turns out later, mother Jocasta, talk about the imaginary nature of prophecies and their political engagement, this is also connected with the realities of Athens in the 5th century, where they were an element of political technology. Each political leader had almost his own soothsayers, who specially, for his tasks, interpreted or even composed prophecies. So even such seemingly timeless problems as the relationship of people with the gods through prophecy have a very specific political meaning.

One way or another, all this indicates that a tyrant is bad. On the other hand, from other sources, for example, from the history of Thucydides, we know that in the middle of the 5th century the allies called Athens "tyranny" - meaning by this a powerful state, which is controlled in part by democratic processes and unites allies around itself. That is, behind the concept of "tyranny" is the idea of ​​power and organization.

It turns out that Oedipus is a symbol of the danger that powerful power carries and that lies in any political system. Thus, this is a political tragedy.

On the other hand, Oedipus Rex is, of course, a tragedy of the most important themes. And the main one among them is the theme of knowledge and ignorance.

Oedipus is a sage who at one time saved Thebes from a terrible one (because the Sphinx is a woman), having solved her riddle. Just like a sage, a choir of Theban citizens, elders and youth comes to him with a request to save the city. And as a sage, Oedipus declares the need to unravel the mystery of the murder of the former king and solves it throughout the tragedy.

But at the same time he is a blind man who does not know the most important thing: who he is, who his father and mother are. In an effort to find out the truth, he ignores everything that others warn him about. Thus it turns out that he is a wise man who is not wise.

The opposition of knowledge and ignorance is at the same time the opposition of vision and blindness. The blind prophet Tiresias, who at the beginning speaks to the seeing Oedipus, keeps telling him: "You are blind." Oedipus at this moment sees, but does not know - in contrast to Tiresias, who knows, but does not see.

It is remarkable, by the way, that in Greek vision and knowledge are one and the same word. To know and see in Greek is οἶδα (). This is the same root that, from the point of view of the Greeks, lies in the name of Oedipus, and this is repeatedly played up.

In the end, having learned that it was he who killed his father and married his mother, Oedipus blinds himself - and thereby, finally becoming a true sage, loses his sight. Before that, he says that the blind man, that is, Tiresias, was too sighted.

The tragedy is built on an extremely subtle play (including verbal, surrounding the name of Oedipus himself) of these two themes - knowledge and vision. Inside the tragedy, they form a kind of counterpoint, constantly changing places. Thanks to this, Oedipus Rex, being a tragedy of knowledge, becomes a tragedy for all time.

The meaning of the tragedy also turns out to be dual. On the one hand, Oedipus is the most miserable person, and the choir sings about it. He was plunged from complete happiness into unhappiness. He will be expelled from his own city. He lost his own wife and mother, who committed suicide. His children are the fruit of incest. Everything is terrible.

On the other hand, paradoxically, Oedipus triumphs at the end of the tragedy. He wanted to know who his father was and who his mother was, and he found out. He wanted to know who killed Lai, and he found out. He wanted to save the city from the plague, from pestilence - and he did. The city is saved, Oedipus has gained the most important thing for him - knowledge, albeit at the cost of incredible suffering, at the cost of losing his own vision.

By the way, Sophocles made changes to the well-known plot: Oedipus did not blind himself before, but within Sophocles' drama, blindness is a natural ending, an expression of both defeat and victory.

This duality is the literary and political meaning of the tragedy, since it demonstrates the two-sidedness of power, the connectedness of power and knowledge. This is the key to the integrity, the amazing alignment of this tragedy at all levels, from the plot to the verbal. This is the guarantee of its greatness, preserved over the centuries.

Why didn't the Athenian public appreciate Oedipus Rex? Perhaps it was the intellectualism of the tragedy, the very complex packing of various themes into it, that turned out to be too complicated for the Athenian public of the 5th century. And it was precisely for this intellectualism that Aristotle most certainly valued Oedipus Rex.

One way or another, "Oedipus Rex" embodied the main meaning and the main message of the Greek tragedy. This is, first of all, an intellectual experience, which is correlated with the experience of a very different nature, from religious and literary to political. And the more closely these different meanings interact with each other, the more successful and important its meaning and the stronger its effect.

At the festival of the “great Dionysius”, established by the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus, in addition to lyrical choirs with a dithyramb obligatory in the cult of Dionysus, tragic choirs also performed. Ancient tradition calls Thespida the first tragic poet of Athens and points to 534 BC. e. as on the date of the first staging of the tragedy during the "great Dionysius".

This early Attic tragedy of the late 6th and early 5th centuries. was not yet a drama in the full sense of the word. It was one of the offshoots of choral lyrics, but differed in two essential features: 1) in addition to the choir, there was an actor who made messages to the choir, exchanged remarks with the choir or with its leader (coryphaeus); while the chorus did not leave the scene, the actor left, returned, made new messages to the chorus about what was happening behind the scenes and, if necessary, could change his appearance, playing the roles of different people in his various parishes; unlike the vocal parts of the choir, this actor, introduced, according to ancient tradition, by Thespis, did not sing, but recited choreic or iambic verses; 2) the choir took part in the game, depicting a group of persons put in a plot connection with those who were represented by the actor. Quantitatively, the actor's parts were still very insignificant, and, nevertheless, he was the bearer of the dynamics of the game, since the lyrical moods of the choir changed depending on his messages. Plots were taken from myth, but in some cases, tragedies were composed on modern themes; so, after the capture of Miletus by the Persians in 494, the poet Frynikh staged the tragedy "The Capture of Miletus"; the victory over the Persians at Salamis served as the theme for the "Phoenician Women" of the same Phrynichus (476), which contained the glorification of the Athenian leader Themistocles. The works of the first tragedians have not been preserved, and the nature of the development of plots in the early tragedy is unknown; However, already in Phrynichus, and perhaps even before him, the main content of the tragedy was the image of some kind of “suffering”. Starting from the last years of the 6th century, the tragedy was followed by the "drama of satyrs" - a comic play on a mythological plot, in which the choir consisted of satyrs. Tradition calls Pratyna from Phliunt (in the northern Peloponnese) the first creator of satyr dramas for the Athenian theater.

Interest in the problems of "suffering" and its connection with the ways of human behavior was generated by the religious and ethical ferment of the 6th century, reflecting the formation of the ancient slave society and state, new ties between people, a new phase in the relationship between society and the individual. The democratic religion of Dionysus played an important role in the struggle that the emerging slave-owning* class of the city waged, relying on the peasantry, against the aristocracy and its ideology; tyrants (for example, Peisistratus in Athens or Cleisthenes in Sicyon) promoted the religion of Dionysus as a counterbalance to local aristocratic cults. The myths about heroes, which belonged to the main foundations of polis life and constituted one of the most important parts in the cultural wealth of the Greek * people, could not but fall into the orbit of new problems. With this rethinking of Greek myths, it was no longer epic "feats" and not aristocratic "valor" that began to come to the fore, but suffering, "passions"; in this way it was possible to make the myth an exponent of a new worldview and extract from it material for those relevant in the revolutionary era of the 6th century. problems of "justice", "sin" and "retribution". The tragedy that arose in response to these requests took the type closest to the usual forms of choral lyrics: images of "passions", often found in primitive rites: "passions" do not occur in front of the viewer, they are reported through, through the "messenger", but the collective celebrating the ritual action reacts with song and dance to these messages. Thanks to the introduction of an actor, a “messenger” who makes messages to the choir and answers his questions, a dynamic element entered the choral lyrics, mood transitions from joy to sadness and vice versa - from crying to jubilation.

Very important information about the literary genesis of the Attic tragedy is reported by Aristotle. In the 4th chapter of his "Poetics" it is said that the tragedy "subjected to many changes" before it took its own = final form. At an earlier stage, it had a "satyr" character, was distinguished by the simplicity of the plot, a playful style and an abundance of a dance element; it became a serious work only later. Aristotle speaks of the "satyr" character of tragedy in somewhat vague terms, but the thought seems to be that tragedy once had the form of a drama of satyrs. Aristotle considers the improvisations of the "initiators of the dithyramb" to be the origins of tragedy.

Aristotle's messages are valuable only because they belong to a very knowledgeable author, who had at his disposal a huge amount of material that has not come down to us. But they are also confirmed by the testimony of other sources. There is evidence that in the dithyrambs of Arion (p. 91) * mummers performed choirs, after which individual dithyrambs received one name or another, that in these dithyrambs, in addition to musical parts, there were also declamatory parts of satyrs. The formal features of the early tragedy, therefore, did not represent an absolute innovation and were prepared by the development of the dithyramb, that is, that genre of choral lyrics, which is directly related to the religion of Dios. A later example of a dithyramb dialogue is Bacchilid's Fesei (p. 95).

Another confirmation of Aristotle's instructions is the very name of the genre: "tragoidia" (tragoidia). Literally translated, it means "goat song" (tragos - "goat", ode - "song"). The meaning of this term was already unknown to ancient scholars, and they created various fantastic interpretations, such as that the goat allegedly served as a reward for the choir that won the competition. In the light of Aristotle's reports of the former "satiric" nature of tragedy, the origin of the term can be easily explained. The fact is that in some areas of Greece, mainly in the Peloponnese, fertility demons, including satyrs, seemed to be goat-shaped. Otherwise, in Attic folklore, where horse-shaped figures (silenes) corresponded to the Peloponnesian goats; however, in Athens theatrical mask satire contained, along with horse features (mane, tail), also goat features (beard, goat skin), and among Attic playwrights, satires are often referred to as "goats". Goat-like figures embodied voluptuousness, their songs and dances should be imagined as rude and obscene. Aristotle also hints at this when he speaks of the playful style and dance character of the tragedy at its "satiric" stage.

"Tragic" choirs were also associated outside the cult of Dionysus with mythological figures of the "passionate" type. So, in the city of Sikyon (northern Peloponnese), "tragic choirs" glorified the "passions" of the local hero Adrast; at the beginning of the VI century. the Sikyonian tyrant Cleisthenes destroyed the cult of Adrastus and, as the historian Herodotus says, "gave the choirs to Dionysus." In the "tragic choirs", therefore, the element of lamentation, which was widely used in later tragedy, must have occupied a significant place. The lament, with its characteristic alternation of the lamentations of individuals and the choral weeping of the collective (p. 31), was probably also a formal model for the scenes of the joint weeping of the actor and the choir that are frequent in the tragedy.

However, if the Attic tragedy developed on the basis of the folklore game of the Peloponnesian "goats" and the dithyramb of the Arion type, the decisive moment for its emergence was the development of "passions" into moral problem. While formally retaining numerous traces of its origin, tragedy in content and ideological character was a new genre that raised questions of human behavior on the example of the fate of mythological heroes. In the words of Aristotle, the tragedy "has become serious." The dithyramb underwent the same transformation, which lost the character of a stormy Dionysian song and turned into a ballad on heroic plots; an example is the praises of Bacchilids. In both cases, the details of the process and its individual stages remain unclear. Apparently, the songs of the "goat choirs" first began to receive literary processing at the beginning of the 6th century. in the northern Peloponnese (Corinth, Sicyon); at the turn of the 6th and 5th centuries, when a democratic system was established in Athens, which gave rise to all the further problems of the tragedy, it was already a work on the theme of the suffering of heroes Greek myth, and the chorus dressed up not as a mask of "goats" or satyrs, but as a mask of persons plotted with these heroes. The transformation of tragedy did not take place without opposition.

supporters of the traditional game; there were complaints that at the festival of Dionysus, works were performed that "have nothing to do with Dionysus"; new form, however, prevailed. The choir of the old type and the corresponding playful character of the game were preserved (or, perhaps, restored after some time) in a special play, which was staged after the tragedies and received the name "satire drama". This merry play with an invariably successful outcome corresponded to the last act of the ritual action, the jubilation of the resurrected god.

The growth of the social significance of an individual in the life of the policy and the increased interest in its artistic image lead to the fact that in the further development of the tragedy the role of the choir decreases, the importance of the actor grows and the number of actors increases; but the very two-part structure, the presence of choral parts and parts of the actor, remains unchanged. It is reflected even in the dialectal coloring of the language of tragedy: while the tragic choir to a certain extent gravitates towards the Dorian dialect of choral lyrics, the actor pronounced his parts in Attic, with some admixture of the Ionian dialect, which until that time was the language of all declamatory Greek poetry (epos , iambic). The two-part nature of Attic tragedy also determines its external structure. If the tragedy, as was usually the case later, began with the parts of the actors, then this first part, before the arrival of the choir, constituted the prologue. Then followed n a - the genus, the arrival of the choir; the choir would enter from both sides in a marching rhythm and sing the song. Subsequently, there was an alternation of episodies (additions, i.e., new arrivals of actors), acting scenes and stas - ms (standing songs), choral parts, usually performed when the actors left. The last stasim was followed by an ex od (exit), the final part, at the end of which both the actors and the choir left the place of the game. In episodies and exodes, a dialogue between the actor and the luminary (leader) of the choir is possible, as well as com m 6 s (“beats” - usually on the chest - as an expression of grief), a joint lyrical part of the actor and choir. This latter form is especially characteristic of the traditional mourning of tragedy. The choir parts are strophic in structure (p. 95). A stanza corresponds to an antistrophe; they may be followed by new stanzas and antistrophes of a different structure (scheme: aa y bb, ss) epods are relatively rare.

There were no intermissions in the modern sense of the word in Attic tragedy. The game went on continuously, and the choir almost never left the place of the game during the action. Under these conditions, changing the scene in the middle of a play or stretching it out for a long time created a sharp violation of the stage illusion. Early tragedy (including Aeschylus) was not very exacting in this respect, and dealt rather freely with both time and place, using different parts of the ground on which the game took place as different places of action; subsequently it became customary, although not absolutely obligatory, that the action of the tragedy takes place in one place and does not exceed one day in its duration. These features of the construction of a developed Greek tragedy were obtained in the 16th century. the name of "unity of place" and "unity of time". Poetics French classicism attached, as you know, very great importance to "unities" and raised them to the main dramatic principle.

More or less constant components of Attic tragedy are "suffering", the message of the herald, the lamentation of the choir. A catastrophic end is by no means obligatory for her; many tragedies had a conciliatory outcome. The cult nature of the game, generally speaking, demanded a happy, happy ending, but since this end was provided for the game as a whole by the final drama of the satyrs,. the poet could choose the ending he saw fit.

From Aeschylus and Sophocles, seven fully preserved works have come down to us, from Euripides - nineteen. These will not be discussed in the first place, but only those Attic tragedies that have been preserved in fragments. Completely preserved tragedies are known much more widely than fragments, so it seemed to me more important to give some information about the latter.

Aeschylus

Of the dramas of Aeschylus, known to us only through random quotations, we can mention the tragedy "Lai", since here, judging by the content, it was about love for young men. It constituted the initial part of the tetralogy, with which the poet won the first award in the 78th Olympiad (467 BC), under the archon Theagenides; the second, third and fourth parts were represented by the tragedies "Oedipus", "Seven against Thebes" and the satyr drama "Sphinx".

Unfortunately, only two minor glosses survive from "Lai"; however, we are in a position to say something about its plot. There are many arguments in favor of the fact that the love of Laius for the youth Chrysippus, the beautiful son of Pelops, formed the background of the further tragic fate of the ill-fated king. According to many Greek traditions, Lai was considered

inventor of love for young men. To this we can also add the message that Pelops, the father who lost his son, pronounced a terrible curse on the kidnapper, which prevailed, secretly being inherited, by the son and grandchildren of Laius, until the power of the curse was undermined by the death of Oedipus, who, after a life full of sorrows, by the will of heaven was cleansed from sin. Here one should avoid the gross mistake made by other people who otherwise know antiquity well; the father's curse is not caused by the fact that Lai fell in love with the young man and got along with him, and therefore, not by the "unnatural nature" of his passion, as one might assume, taking into account modern views on pederasty, but only and exclusively because Lai kidnaps and kidnaps the young man against the will of his father: it is not the perverted direction of his passion that makes Lai guilty, but the violence he used. Kidnapping is, without a doubt, the most common beginning of all primitive sexual relations, and we know that the kidnapping of women and boys as a religious ceremony can take place in highly civilized times; but similarly we find everywhere that the kidnapping must remain sham, and that the use of real violence is condemned as public opinion as well as laws. That this view of Laius's guilt is correct, we will see from a comparison of this plot with the form of kidnapping common in Crete, which will be discussed later.

Thus, we have the right to say that a separate theme of this tragedy of Aeschylus was the curse to which Lai, who violated the generally accepted norm, was doomed: the hero thought that he was forced to kidnap the boy, while he could ask for this wonderful gift freely and openly. The curse called upon his head contains a terrible irony: after the marriage, the king will be denied what was for him the main joy of youth - in his beloved youth. His marriage remains childless, and when, despite fate, he still gives birth to a son, the catastrophic chain of fate dooms him to death at the hands of the heir he so passionately craved. Guided by the blind fury of fate, the hand of the parricide avenges the sinful violation of the boy's free will, which was previously committed by Lai himself. But death at the hands of his son is a consequence of the appearance of the terrible Sphinga; in order to free his country from this evil, Lai goes to Delphi to ask for advice or help from the luminiferous god; on the way back, he meets an unrecognized son, who sheds the blood of his father. Suddenly a new light illuminates and deep meaning the riddles of Sphingi, to which Oedipus answered this way: “A man at the dawn of life is fresh and full of joyful hopes, and at sunset he is a weak and broken creature.” Lai was one of these pitiful creatures, and the son who struck his father turned out to be the only person who was smart enough to solve the riddle. If someone is not touched by such a tragedy, if - in accordance with the modern view - someone sees the guilt of Laius in love for the son of Pelops - well, the poet did not write for him.

Elsewhere I have spoken of the widely held view that there is no trace of pederasty in Homer's poems, and only in later era degeneration, the Greeks found traces of it in Homer. In his drama The Myrmidons, Aeschylus shows that the bonds of affection between Achilles and Patroclus were interpreted as a sexual relationship, and for the first time this happened not in an era of decline, but at the time of the most beautiful spring flowering of Hellenic culture. The drama contained an episode in which Achilles, gravely offended by Agamemnon, in anger refrains from participating in the battle and consoles himself in his tent with Patroclus. The tragic chorus was represented by the Achilles Myrmidons, who finally persuade the hero to allow them to fight under Patroclus. The drama ended with the death of the latter and the hopeless grief of Achilles.

SOPHOCLE

In fragments preserved from dramatic works Sophocles, often speaks of love for boys and young men.

This will not surprise those familiar with the poet's life. The great tragedian, whose male beauty still eloquently testifies better than other monuments famous statue in the Lateran, as a boy he was endowed with extraordinary charm and good looks. He excelled so much in dance, music, and hymnics that a victorious wreath was often placed on his black hair. When the Greeks were preparing for the feast in honor of the glorious battle of Salamis, the young Sophocles seemed to be such a perfect embodiment of youthful beauty that he was put at the head of a round dance of young men - naked and with a lyre in his hands (see γένος Σοφοκλέους and Ath., i, 20).

The dazzling hero of the Iliad, Achilles, in the play Achilles Admirers, which was most likely a satyr drama, appears before us in the guise of a beautiful boy. It is highly probable that the action of the drama, of which a few meager fragments have survived, took place on the summit of Pelion or in the cave of Chiron, the famous centaur and educator of heroes. The beauty of the young man can be judged by the line: “He throws arrows with his eyes” [Sophocles, frag. 151; translation Φ. Φ. Zelinsky]. A longer fragment of nine lines (Sophocles, 153) compares love to a snowball that melts in the hands of a playing boy. It can be assumed that in this way Chiron hints at his vague attraction to the boy. In the end, Thetis takes her son away from his mentor (Sophocles, fragm. 157, where the expression τα παιδικά is used in an erotic sense), and the satyrs try to console Chiron, who is experiencing the loss of his lover. Probably, the satyrs who made up the chorus also acted as admirers of the boy; it has been suggested that in the end they had to retire "deceived and tamed".

Known from the Iliad (xxiv, 257), the gentle son of Priam Troilus, whose youthful beauty was already admired by the tragedian Phrynichus, in

Sophocles' drama of the same name acted as a favorite of Achilles. All we know about the plot of the play comes down to the fact that Achilles mistakenly kills his pet during some kind of gymnastic exercises. In other words, Achilles suffers the same misfortune as Apollo, who, as a result of an accident while throwing a discus, killed his beloved Hyacinthus. Achilles mourned the death of Troilus; from his weeping came the only verse in which Troilus is called άνδρόπαις, or a boy who is not inferior to her husband in mind (Sophocles, fragm. 562).

There is no doubt that obscene expressions were encountered even in the dramas of Sophocles (for example, fragm. 388 άναστΰφαι; fragm. 390 άποσκόλυπτε; fragm. 974: ούράν).

EURIPID

The story of Chrysippus, the young favorite of Laius, also served as a plot for the drama of Euripides. Named after the protagonist, the drama "Hri-sipp" was based on the personal experience of the poet himself. Agathon, the son of Tisamenes, belonged to the number of the most beautiful young men who attracted strangers to the streets of Athens in that era. Aristophanes gives a well-known witty characterization to this Agathon in "Women at the Feast of Thesmophoria"; he plays an important role in Plato's "Feast"; as a tragic poet he was highly regarded by Aristotle. To contemporaries, he seemed to be a god descended from heaven and walking in human form on earth. But many sought to achieve the love of this ephebe; its beauty led to the scene of jealousy between Socrates and Alcibiades, which is so delightfully described by Plato. It is reported that even the mocker Euripides was bewitched by the extraordinary charms of this amazing handsome man, that it was for him that he wrote and staged his Chrysippus. If this assertion is true—and we have no reason to doubt it—one can surmise that the hero of the play, Chrysippus, was created in the image of the beautiful Agathon, and that in the image of Laius the poet deduced himself. At Cicero (Tusc. disp., iv, 33, 71) we find a remark from which it is clear that the drama was based on lusty sensuality, and that the desires of Laius, seeking the favor of a young man, were revealed here quite clearly and undisguised. It needs to be made clear that we are talking about a drama performed in public; it, of course, was attended by Euripides and the beautiful Agathon. At the end of the fifth century, in Athens, a famous poet sought in this way to win the favor of an outstanding youth, equally famous for his beauty and refined education.

The few fragments do not, of course, give detailed information about the content of the tragedy. Euripides is of the widely held opinion that Laius was the first to introduce love of youth into Greece. Lai also seems to have resisted his passion, especially considering the conviction of the Greeks

in the fact that love is a kind of illness, it upsets the serenity of the spirit, and therefore it should be fought with the weapon of the mind. that people know what is right, but do the opposite. Perhaps the drama ended with the death of Chrysippus, since Euripides wrote a tragedy, due to the inconsistency of tradition, we are not able to say more.

II. ATTICA COMEDY

Greek comedy is born of pious ecstasy splashing over the edge, an expression of gratitude to Dionysus, the greatest crusher of worries and giver of joy, the eternally young god of fertility of a generous, invariably renewing nature. Therefore, comedy is replete with obscenities that are inextricably linked with the veneration of the spirits of fertility. Since comedy is a grotesquely distorted reflection of life, so far in Greek comedy sexual life comes to the fore everywhere, presenting us with a seething cauldron of witches, a monstrous orgy in which, stunning the viewer, as if around the gigantic axis of a grotesque phallus, endlessly intricate sexual desires and all kinds of varieties of love affairs. Love for boys is almost as important in comedy as love for women. It goes without saying that Greek comedy, like all other types of poetry, is simply inconceivable without love for boys; this love is by no means the underside of the grotesque humor of Dionysian debauchery, but serves as one of the focuses on which Greek, especially Attic, comedy is concentrated. But, as already mentioned, we will have to deal with a distorted reflection. That is why the gentle speeches of the modest young man Eros, who turned into a rude Priapus, are not heard here. Harita, of course, will hide her face in shame, but science cannot pass over these facts in silence.

FERECRATES

From the unknown comedy of Ferekrates (fragm. 135), an insulting saying has come down to us. Reproaching Alcibiades for being too compliant with men, the character of Ferekrates also denounces him as a threat to women: “Alcibiades, who, it seems, was not a husband at all, has now become the husband of all wives” 36 .

36 Cf. Suetonius, "Caesar", 32 Cuno pater eum (sc Caesarem) omnium muherum virum et omnium virorum muherem apellat, Cicero, "Against Verres", and, 78, 192 at homo magis vir inter muheres, impura inter viros muheroula profem non potest

EUPOLID

Eupolis of Athens is a more generous source for us. Its heyday falls on the years of the Peloponnesian War, and around 411 BC. he died fighting for his country at the Hellespont. He was one of the most subtle minds among the authors of the Ancient Comedy, and for many years after his death, the cheerful muse Eupolis enjoyed universal love due to her wit and charm. No less than seven of his fourteen or seventeen comedies (according to various accounts) were awarded the first prize. In the fourth year of the 89th Olympiad (421 BC), Eupolis staged the comedy Avtol and K, a revised version of which was performed a second time ten years later. Autolycus was the son of Lycon and Rodia, a young man of such beauty that the admiring Xenophon (Symposition, i, 9) wrote about him like this: “... just as a luminous object that appears at night attracts the eyes of everyone, so here the beauty of Autolycus attracted the eyes of everyone to him” [translated by S. A. Sobolevsky]. This Autolycus was a favorite of Kallias, famous for his wealth and frivolous lifestyle, who, in commemoration of the victory of a beautiful young man in pancratia at the Panathenaic Games of 422 BC. set a feast in his honor, described by Xenophon in the famous "Symposium". The life of Autolycus was cut short tragically: after the capture of the city by Lysander, he was executed by order of the Thirty Tyrants.

About the content of the play, only the following can be said with certainty: the love of Callias and Autolycus was exposed here in an extremely unfavorable light, and even the parents of the young man who took part in the feast were showered with ridicule and dirt; The feast itself (Ath., ν, 216e; Eupolis, Frag. 56: ύύτρήσιςσθαι τον τετρήσθαι όον αεόλις σκώπτει; fragm. 61: άναφλασμός (onanism)).

Β 415 BC Eupolis presented a perky comedy at the city Dionysia Baptae("Sprinklers"), where the private life of Alcibiades was cruelly ridiculed. In these sprinklers one should probably see the comrades of Alcibiades, who organized nightly orgies in honor of the goddess of debauchery Cotitto and imitated the dances of women on them; voluptuous ablutions and cleansings played a certain role here. From a passage in Lucian (Adv. Ind., 27:“And you didn’t blush reading this play”), it is clear that the comedy was replete with obscenities.

The Flatterers (staged in 423 BC) were obviously devoted entirely to the love of young men. Here is Demos putting himself up for sale, and in fragment 265 we hear his lament: "By Posidon, my door knows no rest" - so many visitors rushing to look at him. Demos, the son of Pyrilampus, a wealthy Athenian and friend of Pericles, also acts as a famous favorite of Aristophanes (The Wasps, 97; cf. the play on words in Plato's Gorgias, 481d). The play also contains a conversation between Alcibiades and B. - a person unknown to us - where Alcibiades is ridiculed for some reprehensible innovations, especially since he himself boasts of them. By λακωνιζειν the simplicity of Spartan meals was meant, while the expression "fry in a frying pan" alludes to a certain luxury for which Alcibiades was so eager. But B., apparently, attaches a sensual meaning to this word: according to

Sude, λακωνίζει ν means "to have a penchant for boys" (παιδικοΐς χρησθαι), so Alcibiades has the opportunity to boast of another of his merits: he taught people to start drinking early in the morning 37 . The Athenians, no doubt, condemned those who began to drink in the morning; From this point of view, the passage from Baton is interesting, in which the father laments that, under the influence of an admirer, his son has become addicted to this bad habit and now cannot get rid of it. Pliny also names Alcibiades as the inventor of this innovation.

ARISTOPHANES

We will not discuss the significance of the comedian Aristophanes and his prominent role in the history of Greek comedy, but only briefly dwell on the historical background of individual comedies and their relationship. As part of our topic, excerpts from the following comedies can be given:

(a) The Acharnians (drama staged 425 BC)

Here we find a phallic song (262 pieces):

Thales, friend of Bacchus, you

Lover of nighttime sprees

Both boys and women!

Six years have passed. And here again

I pray to you, returning to the house. Enough grief, enough fighting!

Lakhs are tired!

[translated by A. Piotrovsky]

(b) "Women in the People's Assembly" (staged in 389 or 392 BC)

Lines 877 et seq. A grotesque scene of an amoeba (alternate) song dispute between an old and a young prostitute; the only such scene in all world literature.

OLD WOMAN Why don't the men go? The time has come.

Having anointed your face with white

And dressed up in a saffron skirt,

I sit in vain, I hum a song,

I coo to catch a passerby.

O Muses, descend upon my lips,

Inspire a sweet-Ionian song!

37 Frasch. 351: - ΑΛΚΙΒ. μνσω λακωνιζειν, ταγηνιζειν δε καν πρναιμην.

Β. πολλας δ ...οχμαι νυν βεβινησθαν..

Α. ...ος δε πρώτος εξευπεν το πρωί πιπινειν

Β πολλην γε λακκοπρωκτιαν ημιν επισταζ ευπων.

Α. ειεν. τις ειπεν αμιδα πόα πρώτος μεταξύ πίνων;

Β. Παλαμηδικον δε τούτο τουςευρημα καν σοφον σου.

About drinking in the morning Wed. Baton at Athenaeus, sh, 193 s; also commentaries on the "Birds" of Aristophanes, 131; Pliny, Natural. history, xiv, 143; Ath., 519e.

GIRL Rotten! Hung cheekily out of the window

And you think while I'm away, mine

Eating grapes? song

Attract a friend? I will sing an answer.

Such a joke is at least familiar to the audience,

Still entertaining and akin to a comedy.

OLD WOMAN Hang out with the old man! Have fun with it!

And you, dear flutist, take the flute

And play a song worthy of both of us.

FLUTE PLAYER plays. (Sings with flute accompaniment.)

If you want to know bliss,

Sleep, my friend, in my arms.

There is no sense in young girls,

Sweetness in us, mature girlfriends.

Of the girls who wants

Faithful to be and unchanged

Friend of the heart?

They flutter from one to another.

YOUNG WOMAN (Sings with flute accompaniment.)

Do not scold young beauties!

The languid bliss of pleasure

Our lovely camp is breathing.

Breasts are a sweet flower.

You are an old woman

A coffin in lime, a corpse in rouge,

Death misses you.

OLD WOMAN Crap, you wretched girl!

Let your bed fall

You want to hug a little!

Let the snake lie in the pillows

Let the snake lick you

You want to kiss a little!

YOUNG WOMAN (sings) Ah ah ah! I'm tired

Darling doesn't come.

Mother left the yard

Where - it is known, only it is impossible to say.

(To the old woman.)

I conjure you, grandmother,

Call Orthagoras if

You love to have fun yourself.

OLD WOMAN Hurry in the Ionian way

You will stop the itch of sin!

Or maybe you can adapt a lesbian way ...

GIRL I have fun cute

You won't take it! Hour of love

You won't ruin mine, you won't steal it!

OLD WOMAN Sing all you want! Bend over sweetie! They will come to me first, and then to you.

GIRL They will come to your funeral, old!

OLD WOMAN Old women don't chase novelty! Are my years sad for you?

GIRL What else? Your blush, right? Ointments?

OLD WOMAN Why tease?

GIRL Why are you looking out the window?

OLD WOMAN I sing about Epigon, a faithful friend.

GIRL Rotten old age - that's your only friend!

OLD WOMAN Now you will see a friend - he will come to me.

Yes, here he is.

A YOUNG MAN appears in the distance

GIRL Leprosy! Not you at all

Here he is looking.

OLD WOMAN Me.

GIRL Consumption skinny!

Let him prove it himself. I'll leave the window.

OLD WOMAN And me. Look how noble!

YOUTH (in a wreath and with a goblet in his hand enters the orchestra, sings.)

If I could sleep with a young girl,

If I didn't lie down first with a snub nose,

Rotten old lady! Disgust!

This is unbearable for a free!

OLD WOMAN (looks out the window.)

Even if you cry, lie down! Zeus is my witness!

You did not get along with the fool Hariksena.

The just commands the law,

We live democratically.

I'll see what he will do now,

(Removed again.)

YOUTH Send me, oh gods, that beauty,

To which I left the booze, languishing.

YOUNG WOMAN in the window.

I deceived the damned old woman -

She disappeared, believing that I would also leave.

But here's the one I always remembered. (Sings.)

Oh come, oh come!

My dear, come to me!

Stay with me the night without sleep

For sweet, happy games.

Infinitely attracts me passion

To your resinous curls.

Boundless Desire

Burns with a languid flame.

Come down, I pray, Eros,

To have him in my bed

Showed up right away!

YOUTH (sings under the girl's window.)

Oh come, oh come! Dear friend, hurry up

Open doors for me! And if you don’t open it, I’ll lie down here, on the ground, in the dust,

My life! I crave your chest I stroke with a hot hand

And press the thigh. Why, Cyprida, do I burn with passion for her?

Come down, I pray, Eros,

So that she is in my bed

Showed up right away.

Where is the song to find and where are the words to convey the ferocity

My longing? Heart friend! I beg you, have mercy!

Open up and be gentle! You broke my heart.

Golden-winged my concern! Daughter of Cyprian!

You are the bee of songs! Weasel Harit! Joy! Smile of happiness!

Open up and be gentle! You broke my heart!

(He knocks furiously on the door.)

OLD WOMAN Why are you knocking? Are you looking for me?

YOUTH Not at all.

OLD WOMAN You knocked on my door?

YOUTH Fail me!

OLD WOMAN So why did you rush here with a torch?

YOUTH Looking for friends from the Onanists' deme 38 .

OLD WOMAN How?
YOUTH For the old nags of the rangers, look for yourself.

OLD WOMAN I swear by Cyprida, whether you like it or not...

YOUTH At the age of sixty, we are still

No need. We have postponed them for tomorrow.

Those who are not even twenty are in use now.

OLD WOMAN It was like that under the old regime, my dear!

Now it's not the same - for us now the first move.

YOUTH How do bones move? Dice is not a player with you.

OLD WOMAN And not a player - so you will be without lunch.

YOUTH I don't know what you're talking about. I'm knocking on this door!

OLD WOMAN First you must knock on my door.

YOUTH I don't need a rotten sieve for nothing.

OLD WOMAN You love me, I know. wonder

That I'm here, in front of the door. Let me hug you!

YOUTH Let go! I'm afraid of your lover.

OLD WOMAN Who?

YOUTH The notorious painter.

OLD WOMAN Who?

YOUTH Vessels are painting funerary

He is for the dead. Get away! You will be noticed here.

OLD WOMAN What you want, I know.

YOUTH I know what you are.

OLD WOMAN I swear by Cyprian, who has chosen me, I will not let you go!

YOUTH You're delirious, old man!
OLD WOMAN You're talking nonsense. I will drag you into my bed.

YOUTH Why did we buy bucket hooks?

Isn't it better that these old pitchforks

Down into the well and pull a bucket on them?

OLD WOMAN Do not scoff, dear, and come to me.

YOUTH Don't you dare force me! You are the five hundredth

Put some of your good into the treasury first!

OLD WOMAN I will! And I swear by Aphrodite

It is pleasant for me to sleep with such young people.

YOUTH And I have no desire to lie with the old ones! I don't agree to anything!

OLD WOMAN Witness Zeus will force you this is here

38 Literally: "from the Anaflistian deme". (Note per.).

YOUTH What is this here?

OLD WOMAN Law. He tells you to spend the night with me.

YOUTH And what is in the law? Read!

OLD WOMAN Read!

“Women decided when the youth

With a young girl wants to sleep, first

Let him hug the old woman. A will refuse

Hug the old woman and sleep with the young one,

In legal right older women,

Grabbing the tourniquet, drag the youngster duty-free.

YOUTH Trouble! I'm afraid of the tricks of the Procrustes.

OLD WOMAN We will force our laws to be obeyed!

YOUTH And what if my countryman or friend

Will he ransom me?

OLD WOMAN He is not authorized to dispose of the amount in excess of the copper.

YOUTH Can you save yourself with an oath?

OLD WOMAN No influence!

YOUTH How about saying that I'm a merchant?

OLD WOMAN You'll cry!

YOUTH So what am I to do?

OLD WOMAN As I command, go with me.

YOUTH This is violence!

OLD WOMAN Diomedovo!

YOUTH Then pour wormwood on the marriage bed,

Set up four bundles of vines, and mournful

Bandage tie and funeral

Take out the jugs, pour water at the door!

OLD WOMAN Then buy me a grave wreath!

YOUTH Of course! If you only live to see the candles

And like a pinch of dust you will not crumble.

A GIRL comes out of the house.

GIRL Where are you taking him?

OLD WOMAN My! I'm taking it with me.

GIRL Nonsense! He is not your age.

Well, how can a youngster spend the night with such an old woman?

You are fit for a mother, not for a mistress.

After all, if you follow the law,

Oedipus fill the whole earth.

OLD WOMAN You envy me, O worthless creature!

And that's why you talk! I will avenge you! (Leaves).

YOUTH Savior Zeus, beauty, glorious is your feat!

Flower! You took me away from the witch.

For this mercy tonight

I will repay you with a mighty, hot gift.

[translated by A. Piotrovsky]

ALEXID

Alexis was a native of Thurii in Lower Italy, lived approximately 392-288. BC. and left, according to the Court, 245 comedies.

The first of the comedies of interest to us is "Agonida" (the name of the getter). The meager fragments say nothing about its content, but are not subject to

there is no doubt that Misgol from the Attic deme Collit played a certain role in it. Some writers testify to Misgol's passion for boys, especially those who can play the cithara; yes, Aeschines says (Tim., i, 41): “This Misgol, the son of Naucrates from the deme Collit, is in other respects a man fine in soul and body; but he always had a weakness for boys, and some kind of kifareds and kifarists constantly hover around him. Antiphanes (fragm. 26, 14-18) even earlier hinted at him in his Fishermen, and Timocles (fragm. 30) in Sappho. In Agonid (fragm. 3), a girl says to her mother: “Mother, please don’t give me away as Misgol, because I don’t play the cithara.”

Fragment 242 (from the comedy "Dream"): "This young man does not eat garlic, so that, kissing his beloved, he will not be disgusted."

TIMOCL

In the comedy of Timocles "Orestautoclides" a certain role was played by love affairs with the youths of a certain Autoclides. This meant Autoclides of Agnus, who is mentioned by the orator Aeschines in the well-known speech against Timarchus (i, 52). The idea of ​​the comedian was approximately as follows: as the furies once pursued Orestes, so now a flock of hetaerae is pursuing the admirer of the boys Autoclides; this is indicated by at least fragment 25, which says that at least eleven hetaerae guard the unfortunate even during sleep.

MENANDER

Menander of Athens, son of Diopite and Hegesistratus, who lived from 342 to 291. BC, was the nephew of the aforementioned Alexis, the poet of the Middle Comedy, who introduced Menander to the art of comedy. Already at the age of 21, Menander won, and although he won the first prize no less than seven more times, he can be attributed to those poets who were more appreciated and loved by descendants than by contemporaries. We have already spoken of his Androgyne, or Cretans.

Fragment 363 describes the behavior kineda (cinaedus, libertine); the poet here deftly alludes to Ctesippus 39 , the son of Chabrius, about whom they said that he even sold the stones from his father's tombstone, if only to continue to indulge in pleasures: “And I, wife, was once a young man, but did not bathe five times for the day. And now I'm swimming. I didn't even have a thin coat. And now there is. And there was no fragrant oil. And now there is. I will dye my hair, I will pluck my hair, and soon I will turn into Ctesippus.

39 For Ctesippe, see Diphilus, fragm. 38 (i, 552, Kock) and Timocles, fragm. (n, 452, Kock); fragm. 480: πόσθων, penis and an affectionate name for a little boy. Wed Hesychius, s.v. σμόρδωνες υποκοριστικώς από των μορίων, ως ποσθωνες; Apollodorus, frag. 13, 8; την γαρ αΐσχύνην πάλαι πασαν άπυλωλέκασι καθ" ετέρας θύρας. Other sexual allusions, witticisms and obscenities from Attic comedy are collected by me in Anthropophyteia, vu, 1910, SS.

ALONG WITH holidays and festive customs, public performances are of the greatest importance for the knowledge of folk customs. It goes without saying that our description of the Greek theater will necessarily be limited to highlighting the features characteristic of the Greek sexual life; reader's knowledge of Greek dramatic art, at least surviving dramatic works, is assumed as a self-evident postulate of a common culture. In this case, a circumstance will be revealed that will strike many, although there is nothing unexpected in it for the connoisseur: on the Greek stage, the homosexual components of life are not only not in any way ignored or glossed over for any reason, but, on the contrary, play an important, sometimes a dominant role; therefore, many facts related to later chapters will be mentioned or detailed already here.

I. ATTIC TRAGEDY

From Aeschylus and Sophocles, seven fully preserved works have come down to us, from Euripides - nineteen. These will not be discussed in the first place, but only those Attic tragedies that have been preserved in fragments. Completely preserved tragedies are known much more widely than fragments, so it seemed to me more important to give some information about the latter.

1. Aeschylus

Of the dramas of Aeschylus, known to us only through random quotations, we can mention the tragedy "Lai", since here, judging by the content, it was about love for young men. It constituted the initial part of the tetralogy, with which the poet won the first award in the 78th Olympiad (467 BC), under the archon Theagenides; the second, third and fourth parts were represented by the tragedies "Oedipus", "Seven against Thebes" and the satyr drama "Sphinx".

Unfortunately, only two minor glosses survive from "Lai"; however, we are in a position to say something about its plot. There are many arguments in favor of the fact that the love of Laius for the youth Chrysippus, the beautiful son of Pelops, formed the background of the further tragic fate of the ill-fated king. According to many Greek traditions, Lai was considered

inventor of love for young men. To this we can also add the message that Pelops, the father who lost his son, pronounced a terrible curse on the kidnapper, which prevailed, secretly being inherited, by the son and grandchildren of Laius, until the power of the curse was undermined by the death of Oedipus, who, after a life full of sorrows, by the will of heaven was cleansed from sin. Here one should avoid the gross mistake made by other people who otherwise know antiquity well; the father's curse is not caused by the fact that Lai fell in love with the young man and got along with him, and therefore, not by the "unnatural nature" of his passion, as one might assume, taking into account modern views on pederasty, but only and exclusively because Lai kidnaps and kidnaps the young man against the will of his father: it is not the perverted direction of his passion that makes Lai guilty, but the violence he used. Kidnapping is, without a doubt, the most common beginning of all primitive sexual relations, and we know that the kidnapping of women and boys as a religious ceremony can take place in highly civilized times; but similarly we find everywhere that kidnapping must remain sham, and that the use of real violence is condemned both by public opinion and by law. That this view of Laius's guilt is correct, we will see from a comparison of this plot with the form of kidnapping common in Crete, which will be discussed later.

Thus, we have the right to say that a separate theme of this tragedy of Aeschylus was the curse to which Lai, who violated the generally accepted norm, was doomed: the hero thought that he was forced to kidnap the boy, while he could ask for this wonderful gift freely and openly. The curse called upon his head contains a terrible irony: after the marriage, the king will be denied what was for him the main joy of youth - in his beloved youth. His marriage remains childless, and when, despite fate, he still gives birth to a son, the catastrophic chain of fate dooms him to death at the hands of the heir he so passionately craved. Guided by the blind fury of fate, the hand of the parricide avenges the sinful violation of the boy's free will, which was previously committed by Lai himself. But death at the hands of his son is a consequence of the appearance of the terrible Sphinga; in order to free his country from this evil, Lai goes to Delphi to ask for advice or help from the luminiferous god; on the way back, he meets an unrecognized son, who sheds the blood of his father. Suddenly, a new light illuminates the deep meaning of the Sphingi riddle, to which Oedipus answered this way: “A man at the dawn of life is fresh and full of joyful hopes, and at sunset he is a weak and broken creature.” Lai was one of these pitiful creatures, and the son who struck his father turned out to be the only person who was smart enough to solve the riddle. If someone is not touched by such a tragedy, if - in accordance with the modern view - someone sees the guilt of Laius in love for the son of Pelops - well, the poet did not write for him.

Elsewhere I have spoken of the widely held view that there is no trace of pederasty in Homer's poems, and that only in the later degenerate period did the Greeks find traces of it in Homer. In his drama The Myrmidons, Aeschylus shows that the bonds of affection between Achilles and Patroclus were interpreted as a sexual relationship, and for the first time this happened not in an era of decline, but at the time of the most beautiful spring flowering of Hellenic culture. The drama contained an episode in which Achilles, gravely offended by Agamemnon, in anger refrains from participating in the battle and consoles himself in his tent with Patroclus. The tragic chorus was represented by the Achilles Myrmidons, who finally persuade the hero to allow them to fight under Patroclus. The drama ended with the death of the latter and the hopeless grief of Achilles.

2. SOPHOCLE

In the fragments that have survived from the dramatic works of Sophocles, love for boys and youths is often spoken of.

This will not surprise those familiar with the poet's life. The great tragedian, whose masculine beauty is still eloquently testified by the famous statue in the Lateran, even as a boy, was endowed with unusual charm and good looks. He excelled so much in dance, music, and hymnics that a victorious wreath was often placed on his black hair. When the Greeks were preparing for the feast in honor of the glorious Battle of Salamis, the young Sophocles seemed to be such a perfect embodiment of youthful beauty that he was put at the head of a round dance of young men - naked and with a lyre in his hands (see ????? ???????? ?? and Ath., i, 20).

The dazzling hero of the Iliad, Achilles, in the play Achilles Admirers, which was most likely a satyr drama, appears before us in the guise of a beautiful boy. It is highly probable that the action of the drama, of which a few meager fragments have survived, took place on the summit of Pelion or in the cave of Chiron, the famous centaur and educator of heroes. The beauty of the young man can be judged by the line: “He throws arrows with his eyes” [Sophocles, frag. 151; translation? . ? . Zelinsky]. A longer fragment of nine lines (Sophocles, 153) compares love to a snowball that melts in the hands of a playing boy. It can be assumed that in this way Chiron hints at his vague attraction to the boy. In the end, Thetis takes her son away from his mentor (Sophocles, fragm. 157, where the expression ?? ??????? is used in an erotic sense), and the satyrs try to console Chiron, who is experiencing the loss of his lover. Probably, the satyrs who made up the chorus also acted as admirers of the boy; it has been suggested that in the end they had to retire "deceived and tamed".

Known from the Iliad (xxiv, 257), the gentle son of Priam Troilus, whose youthful beauty was already admired by the tragedian Phrynichus, in

Sophocles' drama of the same name acted as a favorite of Achilles. All we know about the plot of the play comes down to the fact that Achilles mistakenly kills his pet during some kind of gymnastic exercises. In other words, Achilles suffers the same misfortune as Apollo, who, as a result of an accident while throwing a discus, killed his beloved Hyacinthus. Achilles mourned the death of Troilus; from his weeping came the only verse in which Troilus is called ????????? , or a boy who is not inferior to her husband in reason (Sophocles, fragm. 562).

There is no doubt that obscene expressions were encountered even in the dramas of Sophocles (for example, fragm. 388 ????????? ; fragm. 390 ???????????? ; fragm. 974: ?????).

3. EURIPID

The story of Chrysippus, the young favorite of Laius, also served as a plot for the drama of Euripides. Named after the protagonist, the drama "Hri-sipp" was based on the personal experience of the poet himself. Agathon, the son of Tisamenes, belonged to the number of the most beautiful young men who attracted strangers to the streets of Athens in that era. Aristophanes gives a well-known witty characterization to this Agathon in "Women at the Feast of Thesmophoria"; he plays an important role in Plato's "Feast"; as a tragic poet he was highly regarded by Aristotle. To contemporaries, he seemed to be a god descended from heaven and walking in human form on earth. But many sought to achieve the love of this ephebe; its beauty led to the scene of jealousy between Socrates and Alcibiades, which is so delightfully described by Plato. It is reported that even the mocker Euripides was bewitched by the extraordinary charms of this amazing handsome man, that it was for him that he wrote and staged his Chrysippus. If this assertion is true—and we have no reason to doubt it—one can surmise that the hero of the play, Chrysippus, was created in the image of the beautiful Agathon, and that in the image of Laius the poet deduced himself. At Cicero (Tusk. disp., iv, 33, 71) we find a remark from which it is clear that the drama was based on lustful sensuality, and that the desires of Laius, seeking the favor of a young man, were revealed here quite clearly and undisguised. It must be clear that we are talking about a drama performed in public; it, of course, was attended by Euripides and the beautiful Agathon. At the end of the fifth century, in Athens, a famous poet sought in this way to win the favor of an outstanding youth, equally famous for his beauty and refined education.

The few fragments do not, of course, give detailed information about the content of the tragedy. Euripides is of the widely held opinion that Laius was the first to introduce love of youth into Greece. Lai also seems to have resisted his passion, especially considering the conviction of the Greeks

in the fact that love is a kind of illness, it upsets the serenity of the spirit, and therefore it should be fought with the weapon of the mind. that people know what is right, but do the opposite. Perhaps the drama ended with the death of Chrysippus, since Euripides wrote a tragedy, due to the inconsistency of tradition, we are not able to say more.

II. ATTICA COMEDY

Greek comedy is born of pious ecstasy splashing over the edge, an expression of gratitude to Dionysus, the greatest crusher of worries and giver of joy, the eternally young god of fertility of a generous, invariably renewing nature. Therefore, comedy is replete with obscenities that are inextricably linked with the veneration of the spirits of fertility. Since comedy is a grotesquely distorted reflection of life, so far in Greek comedy sexual life comes to the fore everywhere, presenting us with a seething cauldron of witches, a monstrous orgy in which, stunning the viewer, as if around the gigantic axis of a grotesque phallus, endlessly intricate sexual desires and all kinds of varieties of love affairs. Love for boys is almost as important in comedy as love for women. It goes without saying that Greek comedy, like all other types of poetry, is simply inconceivable without love for boys; this love is by no means the underside of the grotesque humor of Dionysian debauchery, but serves as one of the focuses on which Greek, especially Attic, comedy is concentrated. But, as already mentioned, we will have to deal with a distorted reflection. That is why the gentle speeches of the modest young man Eros, who turned into a rude Priapus, are not heard here. Harita, of course, will hide her face in shame, but science cannot pass over these facts in silence.

1. FERECRATES

From the unknown comedy of Ferekrates (fragm. 135), an insulting saying has come down to us. Reproaching Alcibiades for being too compliant with men, the character of Ferekrates also denounces him as a threat to women: “Alcibiades, who, it seems, was not a husband at all, has now become the husband of all wives” 36 .

36 Cf. Suetonius, "Caesar", 32 Cuno pater eum (sc Caesarem) omnium muherum virum et omnium virorum muherem apellat, Cicero, "Against Verres", and, 78, 192 at homo magis vir inter muheres, impura inter viros muheroula profem non potest

2. EUPOLYD

Eupolis of Athens is a more generous source for us. Its heyday falls on the years of the Peloponnesian War, and around 411 BC. he died fighting for his country at the Hellespont. He was one of the most subtle minds among the authors of the Ancient Comedy, and for many years after his death, the cheerful muse Eupolis enjoyed universal love due to her wit and charm. No less than seven of his fourteen or seventeen comedies (according to various accounts) were awarded the first prize. In the fourth year of the 89th Olympiad (421 BC), Eupolis staged the comedy Avtol and K, a revised version of which was performed a second time ten years later. Autolycus was the son of Lycon and Rodia, a young man of such beauty that the admiring Xenophon (Symposion, i, 9) wrote about him like this: “... as a luminous object that appears at night attracts the eyes of everyone, so here the beauty of Autolycus attracted the eyes of everyone to him” [translated by S. A. Sobolevsky]. This Autolycus was a favorite of Kallias, famous for his wealth and frivolous lifestyle, who, in commemoration of the victory of a beautiful young man in pancratia at the Panathenaic Games of 422 BC. set a feast in his honor, described by Xenophon in the famous "Symposium". The life of Autolycus was cut short tragically: after the capture of the city by Lysander, he was executed by order of the Thirty Tyrants.

About the content of the play, only the following can be said with certainty: the love of Callias and Autolycus was exposed here in an extremely unfavorable light, and even the parents of the young man who took part in the feast were showered with ridicule and dirt; the feast itself was also ridiculed (Ath ., ? , 216e; Eupolis , frag. 56: ????????? ???? ?? ????????? ????? ? ??????? ???????; fragm. 61: ?????????? (masturbation)).

415 BC Eupolis presented a perky comedy at the city Dionysia Baptae ("Sprinklers"), where the private life of Alcibiades was cruelly ridiculed. In these sprinklers one should probably see the comrades of Alcibiades, who organized nightly orgies in honor of the goddess of debauchery Cotitto and imitated the dances of women on them; voluptuous ablutions and cleansings played a certain role here. From a passage in Lucian (Adv. Ind. , 27: “And you didn’t blush reading this play”), it is clear that the comedy was replete with obscenities.

The Flatterers (staged in 423 BC) were obviously devoted entirely to the love of young men. Here is Demos putting himself up for sale, and in fragment 265 we hear his lament: "By Posidon, my door knows no rest" - so many visitors rushing to look at him. Demos, the son of Pyrilampus, a wealthy Athenian and friend of Pericles, also acts as a famous favorite of Aristophanes (The Wasps, 97; cf. the play on words in Plato's Gorgias, 481 d). The play also contains a conversation between Alcibiades and B. - a person unknown to us - where Alcibiades is ridiculed for some reprehensible innovations, especially since he himself boasts of them. Under?????????? the simplicity of Spartan meals was meant, while the expression "fry in a pan" alludes to some luxury, to which Alcibiades was so eager. But B., apparently, attaches a sensual meaning to this word: according to

Court, ????????? ? means "to have a penchant for boys" (????????? ???????), so Alcibiades has an opportunity to boast of another of his merits: he taught people to start drinking early in the morning 37 . The Athenians, no doubt, condemned those who began to drink in the morning; From this point of view, the passage from Baton is interesting, in which the father laments that, under the influence of an admirer, his son has become addicted to this bad habit and now cannot get rid of it. Pliny also names Alcibiades as the inventor of this innovation.

3. Aristophanes

We will not discuss the significance of the comedian Aristophanes and his prominent role in the history of Greek comedy, but only briefly dwell on the historical background of individual comedies and their relationship. As part of our topic, excerpts from the following comedies can be given:

(a) The Acharnians (drama staged 425 BC)

Here we find a phallic song (262 pieces):

Thales, friend of Bacchus, you

Lover of nighttime sprees

Both boys and women!

Six years have passed. And here again

I pray to you, returning to the house. Enough grief, enough fighting!

Lakhs are tired!

[translated by A. Piotrovsky]

(b) "Women in the People's Assembly" (staged in 389 or 392 BC)

Lines 877 et seq. A grotesque scene of an amoeba (alternate) song dispute between an old and a young prostitute; the only such scene in all world literature.

OLD WOMAN Why don't the men go? The time has come.

Having anointed your face with white

And dressed up in a saffron skirt,

I sit in vain, I hum a song,

I coo to catch a passerby.

O Muses, descend upon my lips,

Inspire a sweet-Ionian song!

37 Frasch. 351: - ?????. ???? ??????????, ?????????? ?? ??? ???????.

?. ?????? ? ...????? ??? ??????????..

?. ...?? ?? ?????? ??????? ?? ???? ????????

? ?????? ?? ????????????? ???? ??????? ?????.

?. ????. ??? ????? ????? ??? ?????? ?????? ?????;

?. ??????????? ?? ????? ?????????? ??? ????? ???.

About drinking in the morning Wed. Baton at Athenaeus, sh, 193 s; also commentaries on the "Birds" of Aristophanes, 131; Pliny, Natural. history, xiv, 143; Ath., 519e.

GIRL Rotten! Hung cheekily out of the window

And you think while I'm away, mine

Eating grapes? song

Attract a friend? I will sing an answer.

Such a joke is at least familiar to the audience,

Still entertaining and akin to a comedy.

OLD WOMAN Hang out with the old man! Have fun with it!

And you, dear flutist, take the flute

And play a song worthy of both of us.

FLUTE PLAYER plays. (Sings with flute accompaniment.)

If you want to know bliss,

Sleep, my friend, in my arms.

There is no sense in young girls,

Sweetness in us, mature girlfriends.

Of the girls who wants

Faithful to be and unchanged

Friend of the heart?

They flutter from one to another.

YOUNG WOMAN (Sings with flute accompaniment.)

Do not scold young beauties!

The languid bliss of pleasure

Our lovely camp is breathing.

Breasts are a sweet flower.

You are an old woman

A coffin in lime, a corpse in rouge,

Death misses you.

OLD WOMAN Crap, you wretched girl!

Let your bed fall

You want to hug a little!

Let the snake lie in the pillows

Let the snake lick you

You want to kiss a little!

YOUNG WOMAN (sings) Ah ah ah! I'm tired

Darling doesn't come.

Mother left the yard

Where - it is known, only it is impossible to say.

(To the old woman.)

I conjure you, grandmother,

Call Orthagoras if

You love to have fun yourself.

OLD WOMAN Hurry in the Ionian way

You will stop the itch of sin!

Or maybe you can adapt a lesbian way ...

GIRL I have fun cute

You won't take it! Hour of love

You won't ruin mine, you won't steal it!

OLD WOMAN Sing all you want! Bend over sweetie! They will come to me first, and then to you.

GIRL They will come to your funeral, old!

OLD WOMAN Old women don't chase novelty! Are my years sad for you?

GIRL What else? Your blush, right? Ointments?

OLD WOMAN Why tease?

GIRL Why are you looking out the window?

OLD WOMAN I sing about Epigon, a faithful friend.

GIRL Rotten old age - that's your only friend!

OLD WOMAN Now you will see a friend - he will come to me.

Yes, here he is.

A YOUNG MAN appears in the distance

GIRL Leprosy! Not you at all

Here he is looking.

OLD WOMAN Me.

GIRL Consumption skinny!

Let him prove it himself. I'll leave the window.

OLD WOMAN And me. Look how noble!

YOUTH (in a wreath and with a goblet in his hand enters the orchestra, sings.)

If I could sleep with a young girl,

If I didn't lie down first with a snub nose,

Rotten old lady! Disgust!

This is unbearable for a free!

OLD WOMAN (looks out the window.)

Even if you cry, lie down! Zeus is my witness!

You did not get along with the fool Hariksena.

The just commands the law,

We live democratically.

I'll see what he will do now,

(Removed again.)

YOUTH Send me, oh gods, that beauty,

To which I left the booze, languishing.

YOUNG WOMAN in the window.

I deceived the damned old woman -

She disappeared, believing that I would also leave.

But here's the one I always remembered. (Sings.)

Oh come, oh come!

My dear, come to me!

Stay with me the night without sleep

For sweet, happy games.

Infinitely attracts me passion

To your resinous curls.

Boundless Desire

Burns with a languid flame.

Come down, I pray, Eros,

To have him in my bed

Showed up right away!

YOUTH (sings under the girl's window.)

Oh come, oh come! Dear friend, hurry up

Open doors for me! And if you don’t open it, I’ll lie down here, on the ground, in the dust,

My life! I crave your chest I stroke with a hot hand

And press the thigh. Why, Cyprida, do I burn with passion for her?

Come down, I pray, Eros,

So that she is in my bed

Showed up right away.

Where is the song to find and where are the words to convey the ferocity

My longing? Heart friend! I beg you, have mercy!

Open up and be gentle! You broke my heart.

Golden-winged my concern! Daughter of Cyprian!

You are the bee of songs! Weasel Harit! Joy! Smile of happiness!

Open up and be gentle! You broke my heart!

(He knocks furiously on the door.)

OLD WOMAN Why are you knocking? Are you looking for me?

YOUTH Not at all.

OLD WOMAN You knocked on my door?

YOUTH Fail me!

OLD WOMAN So why did you rush here with a torch?

YOUTH Looking for friends from the Onanists' deme 38 .

OLD WOMAN How?
YOUTH For the old nags of the rangers, look for yourself.

OLD WOMAN I swear by Cyprida, whether you like it or not...

YOUTH At the age of sixty, we are still

No need. We have postponed them for tomorrow.

Those who are not even twenty are in use now.

OLD WOMAN It was like that under the old regime, my dear!

Now it's not the same - for us now the first move.

YOUTH How do bones move? Dice is not a player with you.

OLD WOMAN And not a player - so you will be without lunch.

YOUTH I don't know what you're talking about. I'm knocking on this door!

OLD WOMAN First you must knock on my door.

YOUTH I don't need a rotten sieve for nothing.

OLD WOMAN You love me, I know. wonder

That I'm here, in front of the door. Let me hug you!

YOUTH Let go! I'm afraid of your lover.

OLD WOMAN Who?

YOUTH The notorious painter.

OLD WOMAN Who?

YOUTH Vessels are painting funerary

He is for the dead. Get away! You will be noticed here.

OLD WOMAN What you want, I know.

YOUTH I know what you are.

OLD WOMAN I swear by Cyprian, who has chosen me, I will not let you go!

YOUTH You're delirious, old man!
OLD WOMAN You're talking nonsense. I will drag you into my bed.

YOUTH Why did we buy bucket hooks?

Isn't it better that these old pitchforks

Down into the well and pull a bucket on them?

OLD WOMAN Do not scoff, dear, and come to me.

YOUTH Don't you dare force me! You are the five hundredth

Put some of your good into the treasury first!

OLD WOMAN I will! And I swear by Aphrodite

It is pleasant for me to sleep with such young people.

YOUTH And I have no desire to lie with the old ones! I don't agree to anything!

OLD WOMAN Witness Zeus will force you this is here

38 Literally: "from the Anaflistian deme". (Note per.).

YOUTH What is this here?

OLD WOMAN Law. He tells you to spend the night with me.

YOUTH And what is in the law? Read!

OLD WOMAN Read!

“Women decided when the youth

With a young girl wants to sleep, first

Let him hug the old woman. A will refuse

Hug the old woman and sleep with the young one,

In legal right older women,

Grabbing the tourniquet, drag the youngster duty-free.

YOUTH Trouble! I'm afraid of the tricks of the Procrustes.

OLD WOMAN We will force our laws to be obeyed!

YOUTH And what if my countryman or friend

Will he ransom me?

OLD WOMAN He is not authorized to dispose of the amount in excess of the copper.

YOUTH Can you save yourself with an oath?

OLD WOMAN No influence!

YOUTH How about saying that I'm a merchant?

OLD WOMAN You'll cry!

YOUTH So what am I to do?

OLD WOMAN As I command, go with me.

YOUTH This is violence!

OLD WOMAN Diomedovo!

YOUTH Then pour wormwood on the marriage bed,

Set up four bundles of vines, and mournful

Bandage tie and funeral

Take out the jugs, pour water at the door!

OLD WOMAN Then buy me a grave wreath!

YOUTH Of course! If you only live to see the candles

And like a pinch of dust you will not crumble.

A GIRL comes out of the house.

GIRL Where are you taking him?

OLD WOMAN My! I'm taking it with me.

GIRL Nonsense! He is not your age.

Well, how can a youngster spend the night with such an old woman?

You are fit for a mother, not for a mistress.

After all, if you follow the law,

Oedipus fill the whole earth.

OLD WOMAN You envy me, O worthless creature!

And that's why you talk! I will avenge you! (Leaves).

YOUTH Savior Zeus, beauty, glorious is your feat!

Flower! You took me away from the witch.

For this mercy tonight

I will repay you with a mighty, hot gift.

[translated by A. Piotrovsky]

4. ALEXID

Alexis was a native of Thurii in Lower Italy, lived approximately 392-288. BC. and left, according to the Court, 245 comedies.

The first of the comedies of interest to us is "Agonida" (the name of the getter). The meager fragments say nothing about its content, but are not subject to

there is no doubt that Misgol from the Attic deme Collit played a certain role in it. Some writers testify to Misgol's passion for boys, especially those who can play the cithara; yes, Aeschines says (Tim., i, 41): “This Misgol, the son of Navcrates from the deme Collit, is in other respects a beautiful person in soul and body; but he always had a weakness for boys, and some kind of kifareds and kifarists constantly hover around him. Antiphanes (fragm. 26, 14-18) even earlier hinted at him in his Fishermen, and Timocles (fragm. 30) in Sappho. In Agonid (fragm. 3), a girl says to her mother: “Mother, please don’t give me away as Misgol, because I don’t play the cithara.”

Fragment 242 (from the comedy "Dream"): "This young man does not eat garlic, so that, kissing his beloved, he will not be disgusted."

5. TIMOCL

In the comedy of Timocles "Orestautoclides" a certain role was played by love affairs with the youths of a certain Autoclides. This meant Autoclides from Agnus, whom the orator Aeschines mentions in a well-known speech against Timarchus (i, 52). The idea of ​​the comedian was approximately as follows: as the furies once pursued Orestes, so now a flock of hetaerae is pursuing the admirer of the boys Autoclides; this is indicated by at least fragment 25, which says that at least eleven hetaerae guard the unfortunate even during sleep.

6. MENANDER

Menander of Athens, son of Diopite and Hegesistratus, who lived from 342 to 291. BC, was the nephew of the aforementioned Alexis, the poet of the Middle Comedy, who introduced Menander to the art of comedy. Already at the age of 21, Menander won, and although he won the first prize no less than seven more times, he can be attributed to those poets who were more appreciated and loved by descendants than by contemporaries. We have already spoken of his Androgyne, or Cretans.

Fragment 363 describes the behavior kineda (cinaedus, libertine); the poet here deftly alludes to Ctesippus 39 , the son of Chabrius, about whom they said that he even sold the stones from his father's tombstone, if only to continue to indulge in pleasures: “And I, wife, was once a young man, but did not bathe five times for the day. And now I'm swimming. I didn't even have a thin coat. And now there is. And there was no fragrant oil. And now there is. I will dye my hair, I will pluck my hair, and soon I will turn into Ctesippus.

39 For Ctesippe, see Diphilus, fragm. 38 (i, 552, Kock) and Timocles, fragm. (n, 452, Kock); fragm. 480: ?????? , penis and an affectionate name for a little boy. Wed Hesychius, s. v. ????????? ????????????? ??? ??? ??????, ?? ???????; Apollodorus , frag . 13, 8; ??? ??? ??????? ????? ????? ??????????? ???" ?????? ?????. Other sexual allusions, witticisms, and obscenities from Attic comedy are collected by me in Anthropophyteia, vu, 1910, SS. 173, 495.

RETROSPECTIVE AND ADDITIONAL REMARKSON TRAGIC AND COMIC POETRY

Ancient tragedy still rarely uses erotic motifs; With the exception of Aeschylean's Agamemnon, whose theme is the murder of Agamemnon by an unfaithful wife seized with violent jealousy, we can hardly point to a single tragedy, the core of which would be love, if we do not take into account the homoerotic motives already considered. At first it was believed that love stories with a tragic end were not suitable for allowing people to feel the sublimity of a tragic fate at the festival of a god who gives the highest delight.

Already Sophocles used love passion much more often, but only as an auxiliary motive: an example of this is the love of Medea for Jason in the Colchian Women or Hippodamia for Pelops in Oenomaus. As the main and only theme, love passion appears only in one of his dramas - in Phaedra, whose axis around which the whole action revolves was Phaedra's irresistible love for her beautiful stepson Hippolytus, pushing the queen to crime. This is the oldest example of Greek love tragedy in the proper sense of the word. We have the right to assume that the brilliant depiction of demonic passion made a deep impression on the audience and served as a powerful stimulus for the subsequent development of erotic plots. Not only did Euripides use the same motif in two dramas, one of which has come down to us, but, according to Pausanias (i, 22,1), it was precisely the tradition of Phaedrus and Hippolytus that was later known everywhere “even to non-Greeks, if only they knew Greek language". Euripides especially willingly turned to erotic themes and thereby transformed the heroic tragedy into a kind of "petty-bourgeois drama" with an unhappy ending; despite the fact that he quite often introduced characters of the heroic era into his plays, his heroes are his contemporaries, and the feelings and passions captured by the poet have become the common property of all mankind and are no longer associated with a certain historical period.

From that time on, erotica reigned on the Greek stage, and Euripides and later tragedians never tired of portraying the omnipotence of love - the highest of beatitudes and burning passion - in ever newer and newer variations, allowing viewers to look into all the depths and abysses of the greatest of mysteries called love 40 . Euripides was also the first to dare to present on stage the motif of incest in Aeolus (for fragments, see the Nauck collection, TGF 2, p. 365), the theme of which was the love of Kanaka and her brother Macareus with all its tragic consequences. Similar motifs were used much more often by later tragedians, and in this connection we must remember that not only Byblida's love for her brother Caunus was represented on the stage, but also Mirra's love for her father Kinir, and Harpaliki for her

40 Regarding erotic motifs in Greek tragedies, see? rohde , Dar Roman, 1900, S. 31, although Rode leaves out multiple homosexual motives

Father Clymen. Ovid certainly does not exaggerate in the least (Tristia, ii, 381-408) when, after listing many erotic tragedies, he declares that lack of time will not allow him to name them all by name and that listing the titles alone would take up his entire book 41 .

While Aristophanes ("Clouds", 1372; "Frogs", 1043 ate., 1081), the main representative of Ancient Comedy, rebelled against the fact that thanks to Euripides, the image of love passions reigned on the stage, which became the main driving force and focus dramas (however, the comedies of Aristophanes himself, as we have already seen, also abounded in erotica), - with the advent of the New Comedy, the situation changed here too. Just as in reality women more and more emerged from the isolation that was obligatory for them in antiquity, so in comedy the love of a man for a woman occupied an increasing place. Gradually love affairs and sentimental love turned into main theme comedies. Therefore Plutarch (see Stobaeus, Florilegium, 63, 64) is absolutely right when he says that "Menander's poetry was connected by a single thread - love, which, like a general life-giving breath, is poured into all his comedies." However, even at this time, the sensual side of love remains the main one, because all the girls of the New Comedy, who are courted by young men passionately in love, are hetaerae. The belief still prevailed that marriage is the fulfillment of duty, and relations with a hetero are a matter of love.

It needs no proof that the ancient scene was made up of several actors and that the female roles were played by men.

Along with fantastic masks, wild inventions and jokes, ancient comedy is also characterized by the fact that the actors, as servants of the fertilizing deity, wore a phallus, mostly made of leather. After all that has already been said about the cult of the phallus, this custom does not seem any more strange; comedy grew out of songs performed during phallic processions.

If the actor was to play a naked character, then in this case a tight-fitting corsage was put on, as a rule, with a false stomach and chest, on which the navel and nipples were clearly marked. As time went on, the phallus seems to have been used less and less; in any case, we know of a considerable number of vase-paintings depicting a stage performance, in which the phallus is absent. Obviously, he was an integral attribute of the Ancient Comedy, where in those scenes that comically used mythological motifs, he emphasized the grotesque and aggravated the comic of the situation. The choir of the satyr drama wore an apron made of goatskin, from under which the phallus peeped out in front, and the satyr's tail in the back.

Modern man is likely to wonder if comedy, with its intensely erotic, often highly lewd scenes, was also attended by women and children. Surely it was not forbidden; perhaps comedy viewers more often than respectable wives

41 Wed. his Ars Amatona, i, 283-340; Propertius, iii, 19; Virgil, Aeneid, ?? , 442 pp.

citizens, there were hetaerae, but the presence of boys on them is evidenced quite definitely. Anyone to whom this seems strange or even outrageous should once again remember that the ancients had a completely naive attitude towards sexuality, that, seeing it as something taken for granted, they did not surround it with a veil of secrecy, but rendered it religious veneration as necessary precondition for universal existence. The last shoots of this religious feeling - albeit distorted to the point of the grotesque - are still discernible in the comedy.

III. SATIRE DRAMA. PANTOMIME. BALLET

It seems to be common knowledge that the performance of serious tragedies was followed by the so-called satyr drama, which, recalling the gaiety of the early feasts of Dionysus, satisfied the desire of the public for coarser food and, through fun and jokes, restored balance after the emotional upheavals caused by tragic destinies. Such satyr dramas, of which only one survives, the Cyclops by Euripides, enjoyed great popularity until the Alexandrian era, although very little can be said with certainty about their plots. Ancient Attic comedy found imitators for a long time; her life was supported by the “artists of Dionysus”, who, having settled on the island of Theos, spread the “Dionysian customs” everywhere - at the courts of kings, in military garrisons, in all cities and towns.

Along with this, the farce gained more and more importance, and if we have the right - and we, perhaps, the right - to believe Polybius (xxxii, 25; cf. Athenaeus, x, 440), along with these countless actors, singers, dancers and the like "Ionian licentiousness and immorality" penetrated everywhere. In the era of the Roman Empire, the dialogic parts of tragedies and comedies were still performed, until they were gradually supplanted by pantomime, the effect of which was completely determined by sensual charm. Through continuous exercise and a strict, measured lifestyle, mime actors achieved complete control of their bodies and, thanks to the flexibility of the limbs, performed every movement with perfect grace. Of course, the most beautiful and graceful actors labored in this field. “In the obscene scenes that spice up this type of drama, seductive charm, combined with luxury and shamelessness, knew no bounds. When the beautiful young man Bafill danced, Leda - the most impudent of mimic actresses - at the sight of such a perfect art of refined seduction felt like an ordinary uncouth beginner. (L. Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners, Engl. Transl., ii, 106).

42 For an unbroken tradition of dramatic performances, see Dio Chrysostom, XIX, p. 487; Lucian, De saltat., 27.

Performances on mythological subjects enjoyed special love; a detailed description of such a mythological ballet can be found in Apuleius' Metamorphoses (x, 30-34). A tall wooden model of Mount Ida was erected on the stage, planted with bushes and living trees; streams ran down from its top; goats wandered in the thickets, which Paris, a beautiful young man in a Phrygian dress, pastured. Here enters a beautiful, as in the picture, lad, who, except for a short cloak on his left shoulder, is completely naked. Falling over his shoulders, his head is crowned with beautiful hair, from which two golden wings are breaking through, tied with a golden ribbon. This is Mercury; dancing, he glides across the stage, hands the golden apple to Paris and with gestures announces to him the will of Jupiter, after which he gracefully leaves.

Then Juno appears - beautiful woman with diadem and scepter; Minerva quickly enters behind her, wearing a shining helmet, in her hand a shield, she shakes her spear. Behind her is a third. An inexpressible charm envelops her whole being, and the color of love is poured over her face. This is Venus; the impeccable beauty of her body is not enviously hidden under clothes, she steps naked, and only a transparent silk veil covers her nakedness. “The impudent wind either lifted the light veil, so that the flower of youth was visible, then its warm breath tightly pressed the veil to the body, and under the transparent cover all sweet forms clearly appeared” [translated by M. A. Kuzmin].

Each of the three virgins that represent the goddesses, marches with her retinue. Juno is followed by Castor and Pollux; to the lovely sounds of flutes, Juno appears in reposeful grandeur, with noble gestures promising the shepherd royal power over Asia if he gives her the reward for beauty. Minerva in a warlike outfit is accompanied by two of her usual companions and squires - Fear and Horror, who perform a dance with drawn swords.

Around Venus flutters a crowd of Cupids. Smiling sweetly, in all the splendor of her beauty, she stands among them, delighting the eyes of the audience. You might think that these round, milky-white, tender boys are real Cupids; they carry lighted torches before the goddess, as if she were going to a wedding feast; the goddess is surrounded by the lovely Graces and the beautiful Charites in their dizzying nakedness. They impishly shower Venus with bouquets and flowers, and, having paid honors to the great goddess of sensuality with the first spring, they whirl in a skillful dance.

Behold, the flutes uttered sweet Lydian tunes, and every heart is filled with joy. Venus - she is more beautiful than any melody - begins to move. Slowly she raises her leg and gracefully moves her body and shakes her head; each of the charming poses harmoniously echoes the sweet sounds of flutes. A numb Paris hands her an apple as a victory prize.

Juno and Minerva leave the stage dissatisfied and angry, and Venus rejoices in victory, performing a dance with all her retinue. After that, a high stream of wine mixed with saffron strikes from the very top of Ida, and fills the whole theater with a sweet fragrance. Then the mountain descends and disappears.

On pantomime and her favorite dances, Lucian wrote a very remarkable work, from which it appears (“On the Dance”, 2 and 5; see also Libanius, “On the Dance”, 15) that of the many mythological subjects, it was erotic ones that were especially popular. Of course, even then the reaction made itself felt in the face of pedants hiding under the mask of philosophy, one of whom - a certain Kratok - makes such speeches in Lucian's dialogue: “Really, Likin, a kind friend, a real man, moreover, not alien to education and to a certain extent involved in philosophy, is able to leave the desire for the best and his communication with the ancient sages and, on the contrary, find pleasure in listening to the flute and admiring the pampered man who exposes himself in thin clothes and amuses himself with dissolute songs, depicting dissolute women, the most lascivious in ancient times - various Phaedras, Parthenopes and Rhodopes - accompanying their actions with the sound of strings and tunes, beating the size with their foot? And below: “Only this was still lacking. So that I, with my long beard and gray head, sit down among all these women and distraught spectators and, in addition, begin to beat my hands and shout out the most inappropriate praises to some scoundrel who breaks down without any need ”[translation by N. Baranov].

Among the plots mentioned in this passage from Lucian, there are also those related to incest, for example, the love affair of Demophon (erroneously called Acamant by Lucian) and his sister Phyllis, the love of Phaedra for her stepson Hippolytus or Scylla for her father Minos. Of course, there was no shortage of homosexual motives in Greece. Of the stories associated with boys and staged in the form of a ballet, Lucian names the legend of Apollo and Hyacinth. The enumeration of the scenes played out in pantomime takes Lucian several pages; we see that almost all erotic motives Greek mythology(whose number is strikingly large) were used in pantomime.

Under the mythological shell, love scenes with animals were also staged in the theater. The most famous of these pantomimes is Pasiphae (Lucian, De saltat., 49; Suetonius, "Nero", 12; Martial, "The Book of Spectacles", 5; Barens, Poetae Latini Minores, v, p. 108). As the legend says, Posidon, angry that he was bypassed during the sacrifice, inspired Pasiphae - the wife of the Cretan king Minos - an irresistible passion for a bull of rare beauty. The famous architect Daedalus came to her aid, creating a wooden cow and covering it with a real skin. Pasiphae hid in the empty belly of a cow and thus combined with the bull, from which she gave birth to the Minotaur - the famous monster, half bull, half man. (Ovid, Ars amatoria, ii, 24: Semibovemque virum semivirumque bovem.)

That such scenes were not unheard of in the Greek theaters of the imperial era is evidenced by the fact that the mythological plot and accessories were discarded and copulations between man and animal took place on the stage. in puns naturalibns. The plot of Lucian's "Lukia, or donkey", as you know, is that through witchcraft, Lukius turns into a donkey, which, however, retains

human mind and feelings. At the end of the adventures of the donkey-man, the love story of a noble lady from Thessalonica is set out. Lucian tells the story at some length; we can only briefly recount an episode which in itself is well worth reading, and must refer the curious reader to the original text. (asinus, 50 eat.)

This noble and very rich lady heard about the amazing abilities of the donkey, in which, of course, no one sees a bewitched person. She comes to see him and falls in love with him. The woman buys him and henceforth treats him like a lover. However, the joys of this amazing love couple do not go unnoticed, and a decision is made to put the donkey's rare talent on public display. The audience will be presented with the spectacle of the mating of a donkey with a criminal sentenced to death.

“Finally, when the day came on which my master was to give the city his holiday, they decided to take me to the theater. I entered in this way: a large couch was arranged, adorned with an Indian tortoise and trimmed with gold; I was laid down on it and next to me they ordered a woman to lie down. Then, in this position, they put us on some kind of device and rolled into the theater, placing us in the very middle, and the audience screamed loudly, and the noise of clapping reached me. A table was placed in front of us, laden with everything that happens to people at luxurious feasts. We had beautiful butler-bearers with us and served us wine in golden vessels. My overseer, standing behind me, ordered me to dine, but I was ashamed to lie in the theater and scared that a bear or a lion would jump out of somewhere.

Meanwhile, someone passes by with flowers, and among other flowers I see the leaves of freshly picked roses. Without hesitation for a long time, jumping off the bed, I rush forward. Everyone thinks that I got up to dance, but I run from one flower to another and pick and eat roses. They are still surprised at my behavior, and the guise of cattle fell off me and completely disappeared, and now there is no longer the former donkey, and before us stands naked Lukiy, who was inside the donkey.

Not soon managed to calm the deceived public. Lukiy, rejoicing at the fact that he has again become a man, considers it a duty of decency to pay a farewell visit to a noble lady who loved him so much when he was a donkey. She graciously receives Lukiya and invites him to stay for dinner.

“I decided that it was best for me to go to the woman who was in love with me when I was an ass, believing that now, having become a man, I will seem even more beautiful to her. She received me gladly, fascinated, apparently, by the extraordinary nature of the adventure, and asked me to dine and spend the night with her. I agreed, deeming it reprehensible after being loved in the form of an ass, to reject her and neglect her mistress now that I was a man.

I dined with her and rubbed myself heavily with myrrh and crowned myself with lovely roses, which saved me and returned me to the human form. Already late at night, when I had to go to bed, I get up from

at the table with I proudly undress and stand naked, hoping to be even more attractive than the donkey. But as soon as she saw that I had become a man in every respect, she spat on me with contempt and said: “Get away from me and from my house! Get out of bed!"

“What have I done so wrong to you?” I asked. "By Zeus,

She said, - I loved not you, but your donkey, and with him, and not with you, I spent the night; I thought that you managed to save and preserve the only pleasant and great sign of the donkey for me. And you came to me, turning from this beautiful and useful creature into a monkey!” And immediately she called the slaves and ordered them to drag me out of the house on their backs. So, exiled, naked, adorned with flowers and perfumed, I lay down to sleep in front of her house, hugging the bare earth. At dawn I ran naked to the ship and told my brother my ridiculous adventure. Then, as a fair wind blew from the direction of the city, we immediately set sail, and a few days later I arrived in my native city. Here I made a sacrifice to the savior gods and gave offerings to the temple for having escaped not “from under a dog’s tail”, as they say, but from the skin of a donkey, falling into it due to excessive curiosity, and returned home after a long time and with such difficulty” [translated by B. Kazansky].

2. Tragedy

1) Origin and structure of Attic tragedy

At the festival of the “great Dionysius”, established by the Athenian tyrant Peisistratus, in addition to lyrical choirs with a dithyramb obligatory in the cult of Dionysus, tragic choirs also performed. Ancient tradition calls Thespida the first tragic poet of Athens and points to 534 BC. e. as on the date of the first staging of the tragedy during the "great Dionysius".

This early Attic tragedy of the late 6th and early 5th centuries. was not yet a drama in the full sense of the word. It was one of the offshoots of choral lyrics, but differed in two essential features: 1) in addition to the choir, there was an actor who made a message to the choir, exchanged remarks with the choir or with its leader (coryphaeus); while the chorus did not leave the scene, the actor left, returned, made new messages to the chorus about what was happening behind the scenes and, if necessary, could change his appearance, playing the roles of different people in his various parishes; unlike the vocal parts of the choir, this actor, introduced, according to ancient tradition, by Thespis, did not sing, but recited choreic or iambic verses; 2) the choir took part in the game, depicting a group of persons put in a plot connection with those who were represented by the actor. Quantitatively, the actor's parts were still very insignificant, and, nevertheless, he was the bearer of the dynamics of the game, since the lyrical moods of the choir changed depending on his messages. Plots were taken from myth, but in some cases, tragedies were composed on modern topics; so, after the capture of Miletus by the Persians in 494, “the poet Phrynichus staged the tragedy “The Capture of Miletus”; the victory over the Persians at Salamis served as the theme for the "Phoenician Women" of the same Phrynichus (476), which contained the glorification of the Athenian leader Themistocles. The works of the first tragedians have not survived, and the nature of the development of plots in the early tragedy is not known exactly; however, already in Phrynichus, and perhaps even before him, the main content of the tragedy was the image of some kind of “suffering”. Since the last years of the VI century. the staging of the tragedy was followed by the "drama of satyrs" - a comic play on a mythological plot, in which the choir consisted of satyrs. Tradition calls Pratina from Phlius (in the northern Peloponnese) the first creator of satyr dramas for the Athenian theater.

Interest in the problems of "suffering" was generated by the religious and ethical ferment of the 6th century, the struggle that the emerging slave-owning class of the city waged, relying on the peasantry, against the aristocracy and its ideology. The democratic religion of Dionysus played a significant role in this struggle and was put forward by tyrants (for example, Pisistratus or Cleisthenes) as opposed to local aristocratic cults. The myths about heroes, which belonged to the main foundations of polis life and constituted one of the most important parts in the cultural wealth of the Greek people, could not but fall into the orbit of new problems. With this rethinking of Greek myths, it was no longer epic "exploits" and not aristocratic "valor" that began to come to the fore, but suffering, "passions" that could be depicted in the same way as the "passions" of dying and resurrecting gods were depicted; in this way it was possible to make the myth an exponent of a new worldview and extract from it material for those relevant in the revolutionary era of the 6th century. problems of "justice", "sin" and "retribution". The tragedy that arose in response to these requests adopted the type of depiction of “passions” closest to the usual forms of choral lyrics, which is often found in primitive rites: “passions” do not occur in front of the viewer, they are reported through the “messenger”, and the person who celebrates the ritual action the collective responds with song and dance to these messages. Thanks to the introduction of an actor, a "messenger" answering the questions of the choir, a dynamic element entered the choral lyrics, mood transitions from joy to sadness and vice versa - from crying to jubilation.

Very important information about the literary genesis of the Attic tragedy is reported by Aristotle. In the 4th chapter of his "Poetics" it is said that the tragedy "subjected to many changes" before it took its final form. At an earlier stage, it had a "satyr" character, was distinguished by the simplicity of the plot, a playful style and an abundance of a dance element; it became a serious work only later. Aristotle speaks of the "satyr" character of tragedy in somewhat vague terms, but the thought seems to be that tragedy once had the form of a drama of satyrs. Aristotle considers the improvisations of the "initiators of the dithyramb" to be the origins of tragedy.

Aristotle's messages are valuable only because they belong to a very knowledgeable author, who had at his disposal a huge amount of material that has not come down to us. But they are also confirmed by the testimony of other sources. There is evidence that in the dithyrambs of Arion (p. 89) mummers performed choirs, after which individual dithyrambs received one name or another, that in these dithyrambs, in addition to musical parts, there were also declamatory parts of satyrs. The formal features of the early tragedy, therefore, did not represent an absolute innovation and were prepared by the development of the dithyramb, that is, that genre of choral lyrics that is directly related to the religion of Dionysus. A later example of a dithyramb dialogue is the Fesei by Bacchilid.

Another confirmation of Aristotle's instructions is the very name of the genre: "tragedy" (tragoidia). Literally translated, it means "goat song" (tragos - "goat", oide - "song"). The meaning of this term was already unknown to ancient scholars, and they created various fantastic interpretations, such as that the goat allegedly served as a reward for the choir that won the competition. In the light of Aristotle's reports of the former "satiric" nature of tragedy, the origin of the term can be easily explained. The fact is that in some areas of Greece, mainly in the Peloponnese, fertility demons, including satyrs, seemed to be goat-shaped. Otherwise, in Attic folklore, where horse-shaped figures (silenes) corresponded to the Peloponnesian goats; however, in Athens, the theatrical mask of a satyr contained, along with horse features (mane, tail), also goat features (beard, goat skin), and among Attic playwrights, satyrs are often referred to as "goats". Goat-shaped figures embodied voluptuousness, their songs and dances should be imagined as rude and obscene. Aristotle also hints at this when he speaks of the playful style and dance character of the tragedy at its "satiric" stage. "

Tragic, that is, mummers of goats, the choirs were also associated outside the cult of Dionysus with mythological figures of the "passionate" type. So, in the city of Sikyon (northern Peloponnese), "tragic choirs" glorified the "passions" of the local hero Adrast; at the beginning of the VI century. the Sikyonian tyrant Cleisthenes destroyed the cult of Adrastus and, as the historian Herodotus says, "gave the choirs to Dionysus." In the "tragic choirs", therefore, the element of the zallachka, which was widely used in later tragedy, must have occupied a significant place. The lament, with its characteristic alternation of the lamentations of individuals and the choral lamentation of the collective, was probably also a formal model for the scenes of the joint crying of the actor and the choir that are frequent in the tragedy.

However, if the Attic tragedy developed on the basis of the folklore game of the Peloponnesian "goats" and the dithyramb of the Arion type, the decisive moment for its emergence was the development of "passions" into a moral problem. While formally retaining numerous traces of its origin, tragedy in content and ideological character was a new genre that raised questions of human behavior on the example of the fate of mythological heroes. In the words of Aristotle, the tragedy "has become serious." The dithyramb underwent the same transformation, which lost the character of a stormy Dioisian song and turned into a ballad on heroic plots; an example is the praises of Bacchilids. In both cases, the details of the process and its individual stages remain unclear. Apparently, the songs of the "goat choirs" for the first time began to receive literary processing at the beginning of the 6th century. in the northern Peloponnese (Corinth, Sicyon); at the turn of the 6th and 5th centuries. in Athens, the tragedy was already a work on the theme of the suffering of the heroes of Greek myth, and the choir disguised itself not as a mask of "goats" or satyrs, but as a mask of persons plotted with these heroes. The transformation of tragedy did not take place without opposition from the supporters of the traditional game; there were complaints that at the festival of Dionysus, works were performed that "have nothing to do with Dionysus"; the new form, however, prevailed. The choir of the old type and the corresponding playful character of the game were preserved (or, perhaps, restored after a while) in a special play, which was staged after the tragedies and received the name "satire drama". This merry play with an invariably successful outcome corresponded to the last act of the ritual action, the jubilation of the resurrected god.

The growth of the social significance of the individual in the life of the polis and the increased interest in its artistic representation lead to the fact that in the further development of the tragedy the role of the choir decreases, the importance of the actor grows and the number of actors increases; but the very two-part structure, the presence of choral parts and parts of the actor, remains unchanged. It is reflected even in the dialectal coloring of the language of tragedy: while the tragic choir gravitates towards the Dorian dialect of choral lyrics, the actor pronounced his parts in Attic, with some admixture of the Ionian dialect, which until that time was the language of all declamatory Greek poetry (epos, iambic) . The two-part nature of Attic tragedy also determines its external structure. If the tragedy, as was usually the case later, began with the parts of the actors, then this first part, before the arrival of the choir, constituted the prologue. Then came the parod, the arrival of the choir; the choir would enter from both sides in a marching rhythm and sing the song. Subsequently, there was an alternation of episodies (additions, i.e., new arrivals of actors), acting scenes, and stsims (standing songs), choral parts, usually performed when the actors left. The last stasim was followed by the exod (exit), the final part, at the end of which both the actors and the choir left the place of the game. In episodies and exodes, a dialogue between the actor and the luminary (leader) of the choir is possible, as well as kommos, a joint lyrical part of the actor and choir. This latter form is especially characteristic of the traditional mourning of tragedy. The choir parts are strophic in structure (p. 92). A stanza corresponds to an antistrophe; they may be followed by new stanzas and antistrophes of a different structure (scheme: aa, cc, ss); epods are relatively rare.

There were no intermissions in the modern sense of the word in Attic tragedy. The game went on continuously, and the choir almost never left the place of the game during the action. Under these conditions, changing the scene in the middle of a play or stretching it out for a long time created a sharp violation of the stage illusion. Early tragedy (including Aeschylus) was not very exacting in this respect, and dealt rather freely with both time and place, using different parts of the ground on which the game took place as different places of action; subsequently it became customary, although not absolutely obligatory, that the action of the tragedy takes place in one place and does not exceed one day in its duration. These features of the construction of a developed Greek tragedy were obtained in the 16th century. the name of "unity of place" and "unity of times and". The poetics of French classicism, as you know, attached great importance to "unities" and raised them to the main dramatic principle.

The necessary components of Attic tragedy are "suffering", the message of the messenger, the lamentation of the choir. A catastrophic end is by no means obligatory for her; many tragedies had a conciliatory outcome. The cult nature of the game, generally speaking, demanded a happy, joyful end, but since this end was provided for the game as a whole by the final drama of the satyrs, the poet could choose the ending that he saw fit.