Fishing for a Laugh: Lucian’s Fisherman and its Relationship to Aristophanic Comedy

Anna Peterson (The Ohio State University)

In the Fisherman, Lucian raises Socrates, Plato, and Diogenes from the dead to criticize his persona, Parrhesiades, for mocking philosophers in his own {that is Lucian’s} earlier work, Philosophies for Sale.  Parrhesiades, in turn, asserts that Philosophies for Sale mocked not the late-great philosophers but the fake ones plaguing the Athens of Lucian’s own time.  At the heart of this conflict is Lucian’s debt to Old Comedy.  Socrates’ opening shouts of  “balle, balle” announce the influence of Old Comedy by simultaneously activating three allusions critical to understanding Lucian’s text.  First, as Macleod (1991) has already pointed out, the scenario of the dead returned to life in a non-epic context alludes to Eupolis’ Demoi, while the shouts of  “balle, balle” are borrowed from Aristophanes’ Acharnians.  In addition, the choice of Socrates as the mouthpiece for these shouts evokes the Clouds.   

Lucian uses these allusions to characterize himself and his work in terms of Greece’s literary past.  As Whitmarsh argues (2005), allusions, through their ability to be recognized as allusions, assert a link with the past, while simultaneously emphasizing the impossibility of recreating that past. The Fisherman’s opening thus suggests that Lucian imagines a complex relationship between himself and Old Comedy.

From a more theoretical standpoint, these allusions represent a Bakhtinian “dialogic discourse.”  In the shouts of Socrates, it is possible to hear, not only Lucian’s voice, but Aristophanes’ as well.  The presence of a voice other than the author’s is, in fact, yet another comedic trope borrowed from Old Comedy.  As Platter argues (2001), Aristophanes incorporates the voice of tragedy into many of his comedies so as to engage with and ultimately trump it.  Similarly, Lucian’s incorporation of the voice of Old Comedy thus mimics Aristophanes, while his use of that voice differentiates him from his predecessor. Like the dead philosophers, these allusions mark the past as past, while at the same time offering Lucian the chance to engage with that past.   Lucian does not trump Aristophanes’ voice so much use the clout of Old Comedy to justify his own style.

The allusions to Old Comedy that I will discuss in this paper destabilize Parrhesiades’ dialogue with the dead philosophers.  Though Parrhesiades asserts that he is not mocking the philosophers, Lucian uses these allusions to cast the philosophers as a comedic chorus and thus undermine Parrhesiades’ assertion.  Lucian subverts the claims of his persona so as to characterize his style of humor as inclusive and ultimately different from the pointed attacks of Aristophanes.  By borrowing traits from Old Comedy, Lucian not only engages with the past, but also reanimates it, casting himself as the successor to Old Comedy.