ABSTRACT
In the prologue, the tragic poet Euripides (who was at this time about seventy years old), accompanied by his Kinsman (whose name we are never told), visits the young tragic poet Agathon to seek his help in a crisis. Agathon is portrayed as effeminate: he is clean-shaven, has a high-pitched voice, wears women’s clothes and enjoys the passive role in sex. Under hostile questioning by the conventionally masculine Kinsman, Agathon reveals that his effeminacy not only expresses his own nature and his preference for the luxurious clothing of old-time Ionian poets, but also has a practical purpose: by dressing and acting like a woman he can better create female roles for his plays.1 Now we learn the reason for Euripides’ visit: the matrons of Athens are about to decree a death sentence on him because his scandalous heroines have opened husbands’ eyes to the hitherto secret misbehavior of wives. This decree is to be enacted at the festival of Thesmophoria, which in actual life was exclusively run by citizen matrons and off-limits to men. In the play, the matrons plan to use their festive assembly to usurp the juridical function of the male Assembly and thus condemn Euripides to death. Euripides asks Agathon to infiltrate the Thesmophoria as a woman and plead his case. When Agathon refuses, the Kinsman reluctantly volunteers for the job. Shaven and disguised as a woman, the Kinsman attends the festival and delivers a defense speech that outrages rather than mollifies the matrons: Euripides, he argues, failed to reveal even the tiniest fraction of the whole shocking truth about women, a claim which he proceeds to document graphically. The women become suspicious, and with the help of another Athenian effeminate, Kleisthenes, soon expose the Kinsman as a male intruder and sentence him to death. But the Kinsman (in parody of Euripides’ play Telephos) seizes a hostage (which turns out to be a
wineskin disguised as a baby girl) and takes refuge at an altar, where he is guarded first by Kritylla, a tough old woman, and then by a barbaric archerpoliceman. Euripides tries to rescue the Kinsman by reenacting rescue scenes from his own recent plays (Palamedes, Helen and Andromeda), but these fail to deceive Kritylla. Finally, Euripides disguises himself as an old bawd, distracts the policeman with a sexy young prostitute and escapes with the Kinsman, having promised the women that he will never again portray them unfavorably.
