Alan Sumler

Ancient Greek comedy takes interesting approaches to mythological narrative. This article analyzes one excerpt and eight fragments of ancient Greek Old, Middle, and New Comedy. It attempts to show a comic rationalizing approach to mythology. Poets analyzed include Aristophanes, Cratinus, Anaxilas, Timocles, Antiphanes, Anaxandrides, Philemon, Athenion, and Comic Papyrus. Comparisons are made to known rationalizing approaches as found in the mythographers Palaephatus and Heraclitus the Paradoxographer. Ancient comedy tends to make jokes about the ludicrous aspects of myth. Early Greek myth rationalization and mythography share a similar approach to comedy in that they attempt to rationalize the improbable parts of myth narrative.

There are spells in the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri which promise divine visitations, assistants, ecstatic states, vessel inquiries, and vivid dreams. They also require powerful psychoactive botanical ingredients. How did these spells work and what were the expectations of somebody purchasing them? Looking at the ingredients of visionary spells and relying on the pharmacology of Dioscorides and Theophrastus, I ascertain how these spells achieved the promised visions and altered states of consciousness for the user. These spells guarantee great spiritual and recreational entertainment to the client who would need an abundance of money to purchase the ingredients.

In Herodas Mime 6 Metro first learns from Coritto that she purchased her scarlet dildos from Kerdon the cobbler. In Mime 7 Metro comes to Kerdon’s cobbler’s shop and he shows her some special shoes, which the poet displays in a catalogue. Most scholars agree that the shoes in Mime 7 refer to the dildos in Mime 6, yet more work remains to unlock their hidden meaning. I argue that the catalogue of shoes in Mime 7 stands as a catalogue of double entendres and that it is set among a series of sexual puns.