The paper examines the theme of Helen’s regression to the stage of prenuptial imminence in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 BCE), in dialogue with Euripides’ Helen, staged the previous year. Particular attention is therefore devoted to the exceptional characterization of Lampito as a comic alter ego of Euripides’ new and blameless Helen. The author thus investigates the political significance assumed—on the morrow of the Sicilian disaster and on the eve of the coup of the Four Hundred—by both the rehabilitation of Helen and the refunctionalization of the cliché, deeply rooted in the Athenian imagination, of the unrestrained boldness of Spartan maidens.
Staging the “new Helen” of Euripides: the ethos and ethnos of Lampito in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.
Sabina Castellaneta
2025-01-01
Abstract
The paper examines the theme of Helen’s regression to the stage of prenuptial imminence in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 BCE), in dialogue with Euripides’ Helen, staged the previous year. Particular attention is therefore devoted to the exceptional characterization of Lampito as a comic alter ego of Euripides’ new and blameless Helen. The author thus investigates the political significance assumed—on the morrow of the Sicilian disaster and on the eve of the coup of the Four Hundred—by both the rehabilitation of Helen and the refunctionalization of the cliché, deeply rooted in the Athenian imagination, of the unrestrained boldness of Spartan maidens.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
