The Musical Laughter of Aristophanes
Agathon’s Song and the Critique of New Music in Thesmophoriazusae
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-2096.2025.57167Keywords:
Aristophanes, women at the Thesmophoria, new music, AgathonAbstract
Ancient comedy has musicality as a fundamental element of its performance. As the greatest representative of his time, Aristophanes (c. 450-385 BC) developed a remarkable musicality. In Women at the Thesmophoria (c. 411 BC) he parodies songs associated with the musical movement called “New Music”, whose main representatives were the tragic poets Euripides and Agatho. This article is a bibliographical research that aims to present a translation of a song (vv. 101-129) by Aristophanes sung by the character Agatho. In the first section, a brief introduction is presented on the state of the art of the piece and on general aspects of Aristophanic songs, mainly following Parker (1997). In the second section, we examine the formal and semantic aspects of the selected song. In the final considerations, it is suggested that musicality is a constitutive element of the comic.
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