Imaginary women

Klytemnestra, Elektra, Alkestis: Phrynichos and Aischylos made tragedies from the sad and terrible legends of Bronze Age princesses like these, and composed their choruses of Phoenician, Theban and suppliant women, but women seem to have been entirely absent from archaic Attic comedy. We do not know when the first comic actor put on a woman's mask, but it may not have been in Athens. In Sicily, Epicharmos and Phormis were writing mythological comedies before Magnes’ first known victory, and they do not seem to have confined their parodies to all-male myths. Attributed titles include Muses, Prometheus and Pyrrha, Bacchai and Atalanta, which suggests women as leading characters, and perhaps in choruses as well.

As far as we know, Kratinos (active from c.453) was the first Athenian comic poet to dress his choruses as women. His Thrattai (Women of Thrace) satirized an alien cult, and Kleoboulinai refers to a poetess known for riddles. Women as individual dramatic characters were infrequent in early comedy. There are no women's roles in Knights or Clouds. Helen may have appeared in Kratinos’ Dionysalexandros, a travesty of the Paris story, and fictional hetairai were the title roles in Pherekrates’ comedies, Coriander and Leaf, but that does not guarantee they were given a great deal to do, or even that they spoke at all. It would be helpful if we could date his Cheiron, in which a personification of Music vilified the New Musicians who had been her lovers, or learn whether Tyrannis preceded Lysistrata (411). Aristophanes is credited with the first comic heroine who is inescapably a protagonist's role, an innovation of great consequence in the development of comedy. We do not know whether Music or the female Tyrant was a harbinger or merely a participant in the developments that followed. Women's names turned up more frequently in titles attributed to poets transitional to Middle Comedy, such as Nikochares, Theopompos and, of course, Aristophanes: about 20 per cent of the speaking parts in his extant comedies are women, but in Ekklesiazousai women make up the majority of speakers.