homo Aristophaneus

English

WOTD – 25 March 2021

Etymology

PIE word
*dʰéǵʰōm

Learned borrowing from Latin homō Aristophanēus (literally “Aristophanean man”), not attested in Latin works: homō (“human being, person”) + Aristophanēus (“of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Aristophanes or his works”), possibly influenced by French homo aristophaneus (1951) and German homo aristophaneus (1959) which are attested earlier than the English term.

Homō is ultimately derived from Proto-Indo-European *dʰéǵʰōm (“earth; human”); Aristophanēus is borrowed from Ancient Greek Ἀρῐστοφᾰ́νειος (Aristopháneios, “of Aristophanes”), from Ᾰ̓ρῐστοφᾰ́νης (Aristophánēs) (from ᾰ̓́ρῐστος (áristos, “best”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂er- (“to be suitable, fit; to fix, put together”)) + -φανής (-phanḗs, suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘appearing, seeming’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₂- (“to shine”))) + -ῐος (-ios, suffix forming adjectives with the sense ‘belonging or pertaining to’).

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈhɒməʊ æɹɪsˌtɒfəˈniːəs/, /ˈhəʊ-/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˈhɑmoʊ æɹɪsˌtɑfəˈniəs/, /ˈhoʊ-/
Hyphenation: ho‧mo Aris‧to‧pha‧ne‧us

Noun

homo Aristophaneus (singular only)

(linguistics (philology), rare) A person with the characteristics and nature depicted in the comedies of the ancient Athenian playwright Aristophanes (c. 446 – c. 386 B.C.E.) as a literary figure, rather than a historically accurate Athenian person; an Aristophanic man.
- 1964 December, K[enneth] J[ames] Dover, “Eros and Nomos (Plato, Symposium 182a–185c)”, in Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London, volume XI, number 1, London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, →DOI, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, page 39:
  Lest we exaggerate the difference between classes in real life, let us remember that our problem is essentially literary, not sociological: to explain the difference not between real peasants and real aristocrats, but between homo Aristophaneus and homo Platonicus.
- 1982, Nancy [H.] Demand, “Notes [endnotes to Chapter 6 (The Muses)]”, in Thebes in the Fifth Century: Heracles Resurgent (Routledge Revivals), Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, published 2014, →ISBN, note 52, pages 157–158:
  Despite insistence that he was dealing with the literary man (‘homo Platonicus’ and ‘homo Aristophaneus’), and not the real Athenian aristocrat or farmer, [Kenneth] Dover tended to overlook the literary conventions: Pausanias in the ‘Symposium’ is not ‘homo Platonicus’ but simply one of the characters in the dialogue (who represents a fairly conventional aristocratic view, according to all the evidence); Aristophanes’ world is presented through the rather murky glass of comic distortion and requires interpretation.
- 1991, Jeffrey Henderson, “Varieties of Obscene Expression: An Overview”, in The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y., Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, pages 30–31:
  The evidence with which we must work is primarily artistic rather than popular. This means that what we will be examining is more homo Aristophaneus than real Athenian men and women, an artist's view of his world and the ways in which his imagination operated on the raw material of his life.
- 2001 February, James Davidson, “Dover, Foucault and Greek Homosexuality: Penetration and the Truth of Sex”, in Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies, number 170, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press for the Past and Present Society, →ISSN, →JSTOR, →OCLC, § iii (Giving Their Bodies or Selling Them), page 21; republished in Robin Osborne, editor, Studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Society (Past & Present Publications), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 2004, →ISBN, page 94:
  In 1964 [Kenneth] Dover thought abuse found in comedy and elsewhere revealed in homo Aristophaneus a different, more simple set of attitudes, and his work after 1964 can be seen as an attempt to apply the hostility towards sexual passivity he saw in this abuse onto the discourses of Plato and Aeschines.
- 2008, Iveta Skrastiņa, “Aristofana aizkulises jeb neķītrais Aristofans = Behind the Scenes of Aristophanes or Aristophanes obscenus”, in Hellēņu Mantojums: Rīgas 2. starptautiskās hellēnistikas konferences materiāli [Hellenic Heritage: Proceedings of the 2nd Riga International Hellenistic Conference]‎^[1], Riga, Latvia: Hellēnistikas Centrs, Klasiskās Filoloģijas Nodaļa, Latvijas Universitāte [Hellenistic Centre, Department of Classical Philology, University of Latvia], →ISBN, archived from the original on 5 March 2016, abstract, page 72:
  We have to separate ourselves from Homo Aristophaneus of the 5^th century B.C. The crucial difference is the use of pejorative language which we define as verbal references to certain areas of the human body which are considered social taboo – and therefore must be hidden, for we consider them "dirty". For Athenians, this was not something to be said in a euphemistic way, but as something to be enjoyed and talked about, as the human body was always available as a healthy and important part of life.

Coordinate terms

homo Platonicus

Translations

person with the characteristics and nature depicted in the comedies of Aristophanes

Notes

^ From the collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, originally from the Villa Medici in Rome.