Comic Satire and Freedom of Speech in Classical Athens

Abstract

For at least several decades of its official history of performance at state festivals—the period usually and, in part for this very reason, known as that of Old Comedy—Athenian comic drama was marked by an exceptional degree of indulgence in ridicule and vilification of named or recognizable individuals: ὀνομαστὶ κωμωιδεῖν, as it became termed by Hellenistic scholarship. In character and extent this practice belongs to a cluster of generic features (alongside, most notably, obscenity and outspoken comment on topical political issues) which give urgency to the question of the relation between the comic stage and the laws, mores, and values current in Athenian society of the time.