Thesmophoriazusae

"Thesmophoriazusae" ( _el. Θεσμοφοριάζουσες / "Thesmophoriazouses"; meaning "Women Celebrating the "Thesmophoria" Festival", also called "The Poet and the Women") is a comedy written by the Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was first produced in 411 BC, probably at the City Dionysia. How it fared in the competition is unknown.

Plot

In the implied background to the action, the character Euripides has learned that the women of Athens are secretly holding a meeting to decide his fate. The women are up in arms over Euripides' continual portrayal of women as mad, murderous, and sexually depraved, and are using the festival of the Thesmophoria, an annual fertility celebration dedicated to Demeter, as a cover for their plot to hold Euripides accountable for his slanderous words.

The play begins with Euripides, panicked by this turn of events, on his way to seek help from the effeminate tragic poet Agathon. He is accompanied on this mission by his aged Kinsman (never further identified. Euripides' plan is for Agathon to pretend to be a woman and infiltrate the Thesmophoria in order to advocate on his behalf. When Agathon refuses, the Kinsman offers to go in his place. Euripides then shaves the Kinsman, dresses him in women's clothes borrowed from Agathon, and sends him off to the women's assembly.

At the assembly, a number of women take recite their grievances against Euripides, such as how their husbands no longer trust them after going to his plays. The Kinsman then speaks up, saying things about women that are even worse than how Euripides has portrayed them, and the women are disgusted by his words. Just then Cleisthenes, a contemporary Athenian regularly accused by Aristophanes of being an effeminate, arrives to warn them that a man in the disguise of a woman has been sent by Euripides and is in their midst.

The women suspect the Kinsman, pointing out that "she" is the only member of the group they do not know. After they remove his clothes, they discover he is indeed a man. In a parody of a famous scene from Euripides' Telephus, the Kinsman grabs what is supposed to be the child of one of the women, but is actually a wine skin fitted with booties, and holds it hostage. This is to no avail, for the women the authorities, and the Kinsman is captured and strapped to a plank for eventual execution.

Most of the rest of the play is occupied by Euripides attempts to free the Kinsman by means trickery that involves acting out scenes from his own tragedies. The first is from "Helen"; the Kinsman plays Helen, and Euripides plays the disguised Menelaus. The attempt fails, and Euripides next tries a scene from Andromeda, in which he swoops onstage, dressed as the legendary hero Perseus, by means of the theatrical crane, which was frequently used by Greek playwrights to allow for "deus ex machina" scenes. This attempt fails as well. Euripides then enters a third time, and again his identity is discovered. Finally he sends a dancing girl and flute player to distract the Scythian Archer, who has been put on guard, and promises the women that he will cease slandering them in his tragedies. Euripides and the Kinsman run off into the wing; the Scythian attempts to follow them, but is steered in the wrong direction by the chorus; and the comedy ends happily.

tandard Edition

The standard critical edition of the Greek text of the play (with commentary) is:Colin Austin and S. Douglas Olson, Aristophanes Thesmophorizusae (Oxford University Press, 2004)

Translations

*Arthur S. Way, 1934 - verse
*Eugene O'Neill, Jr, 1938 - prose: [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Aristoph.+Thes.+1 full text]
*Dudley Fitts, 1959 - prose and verse
*David Barrett, 1964 - prose and verse
*Alan H. Sommerstein, 1994 - prose
*unknown translator - prose: [http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/thesmoph.html full text]
*George Theodoridis, 2007 prose, full text [http://bacchicstage.com/]