The Wasps

The Wasps is a comedy by Aristophanes, produced in 422 BC. Like a few of his other plays, it explores a conflict inside a single household to comment on the wider Athenian political situation. It begins with the slaves Xanthias and Sosias explaining to the audience that their old master, Philocleon (“the one who loves Cleon”), suffers from a strange affliction: he is a philheliast, a lover of jury service (Wasps 54–135). To keep him at home, his son Bdelycleon (“the one who loathes Cleon”) has shut him in the house under a large net. The old man tries various tricks to get out and reach the law court, but each fails. A group of fellow jurors—elderly, poor Athenians costumed as wasps—arrives at dawn and encourages Philocleon to attempt a more daring escape. This rouses the household and leads first to a physical clash between the two camps, and then to a battle of wits (agon). In the debate Philocleon defends his addiction by claiming that jurors are respected and feared in Athens, while Bdelycleon argues that the politicians are using them for their own interest. A compromise follows: Philocleon is allowed to remain a juror, but only at home, where he is to judge household affairs. The first case is brought at once: one household dog accuses another of eating a Sicilian cheese without sharing it. Used to convicting, Philocleon tries to condemn the defendant, but his son tricks him into dropping his vote in the urn for acquittal (891–1008). Shocked, he gives himself over to Bdelycleon, who promises him a life of pleasure now that the jury days are behind him. It does not go as planned: Bdelycleon has trouble getting his father into finer clothes, and cannot teach him how to behave in fashionable company. Philocleon wrecks a dinner party, insults the guests, takes away a flute-girl and beats the people he meets on the way home. The play ends in a dance, and it leaves open whether Bdelycleon, in curing his father of his addiction, has made him a worse nuisance than before.

Date and Historical Background

The play itself shows that it belongs to the years of Cleon’s influence: the jurors of the chorus go to the trial of the general Laches on Cleon’s instructions (Wasps 240–244). In the parabasis the chorus also complains that the audience “betrayed” the poet’s newest ideas “last year” (1043–1050), usually taken as a reference to The Clouds, staged the year before. According to the ancient introduction (hypothesis) to the play, it was produced through Philonides in the archonship of Ameinias (423/422 BC), at the Lenaea, and finished in second place; first was Philonides with the Proagon (“Preview”), and third Leucon with the Ambassadors. The hypothesis is the only ancient source for the festival and the placings.

At the opening of the play Xanthias tells the audience what not to expect: no nuts thrown to the spectators by slaves, no Heracles cheated of his dinner, no more insults to Euripides, and no new mincing of Cleon “even if Cleon shone through luck” (54–66). The comedy that follows is nevertheless full of Cleon, and the poet in the parabasis presents himself as the man who “fought” the monster Cleon from the beginning of his career, and who still fights for the city (1029–1037). In the second parabasis the chorus answers those who said that Aristophanes had been reconciled with Cleon (1284–1291). In Aristophanes’ earlier Acharnians, a character complains that Cleon dragged him before the Council and slandered him because of last year’s comedy (Acharnians 377–382, 502–503).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Philocleon, an old juror
• Bdelycleon, his son
• Xanthias, a slave in the house of Bdelycleon
• Sosias, another slave in the house of Bdelycleon
• Chorus of old Athenian jurors dressed as wasps, with a leader
• A Boy, one of the jurors’ sons, who lights their way
• Two household dogs: Labes of Aexone, the accused, and the Dog of Cydathenaeum, the prosecutor
• Myrtia, a bread-seller whose loaves Philocleon knocks over, with Chaerephon as her summoner, and a second man who accuses Philocleon of assault
• Dardanis, a flute-girl, a silent role
• The sons of Carcinus, tragic dancers who accept Philocleon’s challenge

Setting

In the street before the house of Philocleon and Bdelycleon. The old man is kept inside; the house has a roof on which Bdelycleon is sleeping when the play begins (Wasps 67–68, 136–137).

Summary of The Wasps

Prologue

(Wasps 1–229) The Wasps opens before dawn with two slaves, Xanthias and Sosias, keeping watch before a house covered with a net. They tell each other their dreams and then notice the audience. “Come,” says Xanthias, “let me tell the spectators the plot” (54), and he sets out the situation. Xanthias invites the audience to guess what is wrong with their master, and he and Sosias repeat the guesses of spectators: a gambler, a drinker, a lover of sacrifices or of guests (74–84). It is none of these. He is a philheliast (88): he loves to judge and groans if he cannot sit on the front bench. He cannot sleep for thinking of the water-clock; he holds his pebble between three fingers as if offering incense at the new moon (94–96); he keeps a beach in the house in case he runs short of voting pebbles (109–110). He does not listen to advice, and the more he is warned the more he judges (111–112).

Philocleon’s son Bdelycleon, who is on the roof, first tried persuasion, then washing and cleansing, then the rites of the Corybantes; Philocleon, however, rushed into the court with the drum itself. He then took him to Aegina and laid him down in the temple of Asclepius at night, but at dawn the old man appeared at the bar of the court (115–124). Now Bdelycleon has had the whole courtyard covered with nets, and the two slaves guard the house.

Bdelycleon wakes and cries out that his father is trying to escape through the chimney (Wasps 136–151). Philocleon says he is smoke (“of fig-wood”) and is pushed back down. Next he tries the door, which Bdelycleon and the slaves block. “Will you not let me out to judge, or Dracontides will be acquitted?” he cries, and he invents an oracle of Apollo at Delphi that told him he would shrivel if anyone escaped him (156–160). He threatens to gnaw through the net, though he has no teeth, and asks for a sword (164–167). Then he says he wishes to sell the donkey at the new-moon market (169–171); and finally he is found clinging under the donkey’s belly, calling himself Nobody (“Outis”), in parody of Odysseus escaping from the Cyclops (179–190). When he tries again, climbing out under the roof tiles like a sparrow (205–210), Bdelycleon’s patience runs out. He warns the slaves that the jurors will soon come to fetch his father, and that old men are like wasps: they have a sharp sting in the loins, and jump and shoot like sparks (223–227).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

(Wasps 230–333) The chorus enters at night, led by boys with lamps. Their leader says that they must hurry to the trial of Laches, who is said to have a hive full of money, and that Cleon, “their guardian,” ordered them yesterday to come early with three days’ bad temper to punish him (240–244). They go to the house of Philocleon to fetch him, the most dedicated juror of all, and are surprised not to find him at the door. They wonder whether yesterday’s acquittal of an accused man made him sick, and sing outside his door to call him (273–333).

Episode

(Wasps 316–525) Philocleon hears the voices and sings his troubles through an opening in the house: he longs to go to the courts with them, and prays that Zeus will turn him into smoke or into the stone on which the pork is counted (316–333). The jurors encourage him to try again. He lets himself down on a rope from the window, praying to the hero Lycus, the neighbour of the courts, to save him (379–394). Bdelycleon, Xanthias and Sosias are woken and run to stop him. The wasps attack them with their stings (403–437), and the household drives them off with blows and with smoke (456–462).

The jurors accuse Bdelycleon of plotting tyranny, of being a lover of monarchy, and a friend of Brasidas (463–476). Bdelycleon complains that everything is called tyranny nowadays: if a man buys one fish and not the other, the seller next door cries that he must be buying his food with tyranny in mind, and the vegetable-woman says the same to anyone who asks for a little leek to go with his sprats (488–499). He proposes to talk instead of fighting. Philocleon, who wants to remain a juror, agrees to debate, and asks for a sword: if he loses the argument, he will fall on it (519–523). The debate is called the agon.

Agon

(Wasps 526–759) In the debate, Philocleon tries to prove that no king holds greater power than a juror (548–549). He is respected and feared: great men wait outside the court at dawn and beg him for mercy; he can condemn anyone to prison or fines; he is paid; and when the Council and the people leave a great decision to the jurors they do not worry about their own reputation (550–595). “Cleon himself,” says Philocleon, “the great shouter, is the only one who does not badger us, but protects us with his hand and drives off the flies” (596–597). At the time of the first performance Cleon was one of the most powerful men in Athens, and the poet had reason to attack him.

Bdelycleon answers by counting. The total revenue of Athens, he says, including tribute and taxes, comes to nearly two thousand talents a year; the six thousand jurors take 150 talents; the rest goes to the politicians who say they will never betray “the Athenian mob” and who take fifty talents in gifts from the allied cities with threats of destruction (655–677). The allies know that the jurors are merely “the vote of Connus,” while the politicians are given wine, carpets, cheese and honey. The jurors get three obols, and must hurry to court at dawn at the order of a young man (682–695). Bdelycleon adds that those who govern deliberately keep the people poor, to keep them tame, and that jurors are like workers who gather olives: they follow whoever pays them (698–712). If the city really wished to feed the people, a thousand tribute-paying cities could each support twenty men (706–709). “That is why I always kept you shut in,” he says. “I wished to feed you myself, and not to let these shouters laugh at you” (719–721). Philocleon feels the sword slipping from his hand (713–714). The chorus accepts that Bdelycleon has won (725–749). But the old man is not ready to give up his addiction. “Do not promise me any of this,” he cries: he longs to be where the herald calls, “Who has not yet voted?” (751–759). Bdelycleon asks him to do anything but one thing, and Philocleon answers that he will not stop judging: Hades will decide that sooner than he will (761–763).

Episode

(Wasps 760–1008) Bdelycleon proposes a solution: Philocleon may judge at home, on the slaves, and Bdelycleon himself will pay his wage (764–786). The old man is delighted: he can sit in the sun, by the fire or in the rain, and no magistrate will shut him out (771–775). The court is furnished with a chamber pot, a brazier with lentil soup, a cock to wake him, the hero-shrine of Lycus, and the rail of the bar, which is a pen for Hestia’s pig (805–846). Voting urns and a water-clock are brought, and the court opens with prayer (848–862). The first case is a slave woman who burnt a pot, but it is dropped when Sosias announces a better one: the dog Labes has snatched a Sicilian cheese from the kitchen and eaten it (826–842). The Dog of Cydathenaeum indicts Labes of Aexone for eating the cheese alone; the penalty proposed is a collar of fig-wood (894–897). The names of the dogs and of their demes are a plain hint at the real trial of Laches, to which the chorus was hurrying, and at Cleon, whose deme was Cydathenaeum. Philocleon decides at once that the defendant looks a thief and deserves a dog’s death (898–901). The prosecuting dog complains that Labes ran into a corner and ate the cheese in the dark and gave none to him (907–925). Bdelycleon asks his father not to condemn before he hears both sides (919–921).

The witnesses are a dish, a pestle, a cheese-grater, a brazier, a pot and other half-burnt utensils (937–939). Labes himself stays silent. “I think he has what happened to Thucydides in court,” says Bdelycleon: his jaws have suddenly set fast (946–948). Bdelycleon takes over the defence. Labes, he says, is a good dog, who chases wolves and is the best guardian of flocks (952–955); if he stole, forgive him, since he cannot play the lyre (959). He calls the cheese-grater as a witness to say that it grated the cheese for the soldiers (962–966), and finally brings in Labes’ puppies to whine and weep for their father (975–978). Philocleon is moved, and then blames his tears on the lentil soup (973–984); but he refuses to acquit, since, as he says, he does not know how to play the lyre (989). Bdelycleon leads him around by the urns so that he drops his pebble in the urn for acquittal without knowing it (987–994). Philocleon is shaken when he learns the result: “Then I am nothing” (997). “Do not be distressed, father,” says his son. “I will keep you well, take you everywhere with me, to dinner, to the symposium, to the festival, so that you pass the rest of your life agreeably” (1003–1007).

First parabasis

(Wasps 1009–1121) As the son takes his father inside, the jurors (still masked as wasps) turn to the spectators and address them in a conventional parabasis. The leader complains for the poet that the audience has been ungrateful. He says that the poet first helped other writers in secret, then spoke for himself, and that, although he was honoured as no poet before him, he did not become proud or chase boys in the wrestling schools (1015–1029). The chorus praises him for taking on Cleon, the monster with the eyes of Cynna and a hundred flatterers licking round his head, without being bribed by him (1029–1037), and says that last year the audience betrayed his newest comedy through misunderstanding (1043–1050). Then the old men describe themselves as wasps: the Attic wasps, born of the soil, fought with the Persians when they came to burn the city, and the barbarians still say that nothing is braver than an Attic wasp (1071–1090). They add that jurors live like wasps, gathering in swarms in different courts, and that drones who have no sting but eat the jurors’ pay, never having taken an oar or spear, should receive no three obols (1102–1121).

Episode

(Wasps 1122–1264) The parabasis is interrupted by Philocleon’s refusal to give up his old juror’s cloak, which once saved him on campaign when the north wind attacked (1122–1124). Bdelycleon covers him with a thick cloak woven in Ecbatana (1131–1148) and makes him put on Laconian shoes (1157–1164), though Philocleon fears for his old feet. He then teaches him how to behave in the company of wealthy men: how to walk, how to recline, how to tell polite stories, how to sing the drinking-songs (1168–1250). Philocleon’s own stories—of Lamia caught and the stolen vine-props—are not what Bdelycleon had in mind (1177–1207), and the old man insists on coming back to lawsuits. Bdelycleon gives up and takes him to the dinner party all the same (1251–1264).

Second parabasis

(Wasps 1265–1291) The chorus is left alone for a short second parabasis. They praise a few Athenian citizens, and the poet answers those who say that he was reconciled with Cleon: he did not make peace; he merely waited until Cleon had pressed him hard, and then, when others laughed to see him beaten, he played the ape for a while (1284–1291).

Episodes

(Wasps 1292–1449) Xanthias comes out, complaining that he has been beaten with a stick, and says that the old man is the worst of all plagues. At the party, he reports, Philocleon was the most insolent of the guests (Hippyllus, Antiphon, Lycon, Lysistratus, Theophrastus and the circle of Phrynichus were there): he leaped about, laughed, struck Xanthias, insulted the other guests with clumsy jokes and, drunk, went off beating anyone who met him (1299–1325). Philocleon comes in with a torch, shouting that he will roast the people who follow him, and a flute-girl, Dardanis, whom he has taken from the party (1326–1331, 1341–1347, 1371). When Bdelycleon tries to take her away, Philocleon calls her a torch and gives a tale of an Olympic pancration (1364–1387). A bread-seller, Myrtia, then appears, and says that he knocked ten obols’ worth of loaves out of her basket with his torch, and she summons him through her summoner Chaerephon (1388–1414). Philocleon answers with tales: of a Sybarite who fell from a chariot and of a Sybarite woman who broke a hedgehog (1427–1440). Another man arrives, charging him with assault (1417–1418, 1441), until Bdelycleon carries his father into the house, leaving the chorus alone again. In a short song, the chorus praises the young man for his devotion to his father and observes that it is hard to change one’s nature (1450–1473).

Exodos (Exit Song)

(Wasps 1474–1537) Xanthias comes out and announces that some spirit has come into the house. The old man, having drunk and heard the flute after a long time, has been dancing all night the old steps with which Thespis competed, and says that he will show the present tragedians to be old fogeys (1474–1481). He rushes out of the house, with his son and the slave after him, mad with joy. He dances and calls for a competition: if any tragic poet says he dances well, let him come and dance with him (1497–1499). Only one answers, a son of Carcinus, and then two more appear, his brothers (1500–1511). Philocleon calls them “crabs” and “shrimps” and declares that he will beat them. The chorus agrees to clear the stage so that the contestants may spin, and then dances off with the whole company (1516–1537).

A Brief Analysis

The action of The Wasps follows a single household through one day. The scene never changes: from the first line to the last it is the street before the house of Philocleon and Bdelycleon, and the play is concerned with one problem, how Bdelycleon is to cure his father of his addiction to jury service.

Funny as it is, the play deals with serious matters: the influence of Cleon and the use made of the Athenian jury-courts. The first is shown in the chorus’s orders from Cleon to come early to the trial of Laches (240–244), in Philocleon’s belief that Cleon is the one politician who protects the jurors (596–597), and in the dog trial, where the names point to Cleon and to Laches (894–897). The second is in Bdelycleon’s account of what the jurors are paid and what the allies pay the politicians (655–724). In the end Bdelycleon’s remedy does not clearly work: Philocleon is cured of the courts but turns his appetite on the dinner party, the flute-girl and the passers-by, and the chorus observes that it is hard to change one’s nature (1457–1461). The play therefore ends with a dance, not a verdict.

The Wasps Sources

The main source for this page is the play itself: Aristophanes, Wasps 1–1537, read in the Greek text (Perseus Digital Library). Aristophanes, Acharnians 377–382 and 502–503 is used for Cleon’s earlier attack on the poet, and the ancient hypothesis to the Wasps for the production notice.

See Also: Aristophanes, The Knights, The Acharnians, Peace