Relief with Menander and New Comedy Masks - Princeton Art Museum

''Aspis'' (), translated as ''The Shield'', is an

Ancient Greek comedy Ancient Greek comedy () was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece; the others being tragedy and the satyr play. Greek comedy was distinguished from tragedy by its happy endings and use of comically ex ...

Menander Menander (; ; c. 342/341 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek scriptwriter and the best-known representative of Athenian Ancient Greek comedy, New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times. His record at the Cit ...

(342/41 – 292/91 BC) that is only partially preserved on papyrus. Of a total of lines, about 420 lines survive, including almost all of the first and second act and the beginning of the third act. It is unknown when and at which festival the play was first performed.

Plot

Set in

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

, the play is a comedy of intrigue that revolves around a greedy old miser, Smikrines, and two decent but impoverished young people, the

mercenary soldier A mercenary is a private individual who joins an armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rather th ...

Kleostratos and his sister. Kleostratos' loyal slave, Daos, returns from war in

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

with his master's battered shield; he believes that Kleostratos has fallen in battle (in a delayed prologue, the goddess Chance soon assures the audience that Daos is mistaken). The soldier's greedy uncle, Smikrines, wants to get his hands on the soldier's rich booty that Daos brought back as well. So he declares that he will marry the soldier's heiress, his sister. Smikrines invokes an Athenian law that obliges the oldest male relative to marry an orphaned heiress (

epikleros An ''epikleros'' (; : ''epikleroi'') was an heiress in ancient Athens and other ancient Greek city states, specifically a daughter of a man who had no sons. In Sparta, they were called ''patrouchoi'' (), as they were in Gortyn. Athenian women wer ...

). This is devastating news to Chaireas, who is in love with the girl and was supposed to marry her, and his stepfather, Chairestratos, who happens to be Smikrines' younger brother. A clever plan by Daos saves the situation. Daos stages a false funeral for Chairestratos, claiming that he died of a broken heart and left his daughter heiress of his huge fortune. Smikrines then reconsiders, betrothes Kleostratos' sister to Chaireas, and wants to marry his other niece instead. At this point, the soldier Kleostratos, who had only been taken captive, returns. As a result, there are two engagements: Kleostratos is betrothed to Chairestratos' daughter, and Chaireas to Kleostratos' sister. The ending is lost. There are hints that a cook was called to prepare for a wedding feast, and Daos and the cook may have schemed to punish Smikrines. The end would probably have included the final defeat and humiliation of the greedy Smikrines.

Characters

*Kleostratos,

, nephew of both Smikrines and Chairestratos, believed dead *Daos, elderly slave of Kleostratos *Smikrines, old miser, Kleostratos’ uncle *Chairestratos, younger brother of Smikrines *Chaireas, step-son of Chairestratos *A friend of Chaireas, disguised as a physician *Tyche (''Chance''), divine prologue speaker *A cook *A waiter *Spinther (Spark), cook’s assistant *Group of Lycian captives *Slaves of Chairestratos *Chorus of drunken revellers

Themes and Issues

The Solonic law regarding orphaned heiresses (

epikleroi An ''epikleros'' (; : ''epikleroi'') was an heiress in ancient Athens and other ancient Greek city states, specifically a daughter of a man who had no sons. In Sparta, they were called ''patrouchoi'' (), as they were in Gortyn. Athenian women wer ...

) was a popular topic in Greek and Roman New Comedy. Apart from Menander's ''Aspis'', the law also plays a role in Terence's ''Phormio'' and ''Adelphoe'', and there were numerous other plays with titles such as ''Epikleros'' ("Heiress"), including two by Menander, or ''Epidikazomenos'' ("The man to whom an estate and its heiress are adjudged"). The latter was, for example, the title of the play by

Apollodorus of Carystus Apollodorus of Carystus () in Euboea, was one of the most important writers of the Attic New Comedy, who flourished in Athens between 300 and 260 B.C. He is to be distinguished from the older Apollodorus of Gela (342—290), a contemporary of ...

that inspired Terence's ''Phormio''. Menander's ''Aspis'' affirms the democratic values of its Athenian audience by portraying marriage as a reward for some, but not for other characters. Smikrines' regard for money rather than morals or good social relations marks him as an oligarch, and the play implicitly connects his oligarchic ideology with impotency and infertility. As a mercenary, Kleostratos himself also does not automatically fit the ideal of a comic lover. Elsewhere in Menander (''Perikeiromene'' and ''Misoumenos''), the mercenary needs to be socialized before he can become an acceptable husband. The fact, however, that Kleostratos is a mercenary not by choice but out of necessity (he enlisted to win a dowry for his sister, ''Aspis'' 8-9) shows that his mercenary service is not a reflection of his character, and that makes him a worthy husband after all. In general, Menander's comedy regards mercenary service as "threatening to dissolve identity, as well as the demographic and cultural foundations of the polis."Lape (2004) 237. Accordingly, Menander repeatedly uses the tools of the mercenary's trade as "tokens of misrecognition". In ''Aspis'' 69-73, for example, Daos falsely interprets the shield that he finds on the battlefield next to an unidentifiably bloated corpse as a sign that its owner, Kleostratos, has died.

Pictorial evidence

A second century BC wallpainting on the west wall of a large room (room N) in the House of the Comediens (La Maîson des Comédiens) on Delos shows three scenes from New Comedy. The one least well preserved (metope c) shows a standing man and a slave holding a shield. It probably represents the opening scene of Menander's ''Aspis''.Bruneau et al. (1970), pp. 151-193 (with plates); Webster et al. (1995), vol. 1, p. 87.

Text editions and commentaries

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English translations

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References

Notes

Secondary sources

* * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Aspis (play) Plays by Menander Hellenistic Athens Plays set in Athens Plays set in ancient Greece