20

Introduction

4. Themes and Motifs
From Anaxandrides’ total output of 65 plays (test. 1), 41 titles (63 %) are known
from literary or epigraphical sources or both; the known titles should thus
form a representative sample. Unfortunately, the one piece of external evi-
dence about the content of the plays (πρώτος ούτος έρωτας καί παρθένων
φθοράς είσήγαγεν [‘he was the first to introduce on stage love-affairs and
seductions of maidens’; test. 1]), while not necessarily offering conflicting
testimony, does not correspond well with what little can be deduced about
Anaxandrides’ plots from the titles and fragments themselves.
Anaxandrides was obviously not the first to put on stage plays involving
the seduction of girls. Aside from examples in the extant tragedies of Euripides
(e.g. Ion), Satyrus in his Life of Euripides attributes to Euripides the intro-
duction of βιασμούς παρθένων among other hallmarks of later comedy; the
anonymous Life of Aristophanes (Ar. test. 1) claims much the same thing for
that poet and maintains that Aristophanes introduced φθοράν (sc. παρθένων)
in his Kokalos. These apparently conflicting claims can be reconciled without
rejecting any of them, since they all seem to rely ultimately on late Hellenistic
scholarship and a fairly detailed familiarity with the work of the authors in
question, by positing that Euripides was the first dramatic poet to introduce
such stories, but was soon followed by Aristophanes, who adapted such plots
into mythological comedies; and that he in turn was followed by Anaxandrides,
who transferred these plots from comedies based on mythological parody to
ones set in contemporary society.23 The issue is simplified, however, if the
Suda’s statement is applicable only to comedy, in which case Euripides is
irrelevant. In addition, Kokalos is late enough that it may have coincided with
the beginning of Anaxandrides’ career; conceivably, the chronological dispute
represents two distinct scholarly issues, one concerned with Aristophanes as
a precursor of later comedy, the other with establishing Anaxandrides as a
starting point for a period of comedy.
The extant titles and fragments add only minimal support to the claim
that plots based on seduction were a notable part of Anaxandrides’ work. Five
titles (Amprakidtis, Samia, Kanephoros, Phialephoros, and possibly Kitharistria)
might suggest such plots, although the scanty fragments of the comedies

23 This interpretation is in essence a simplification of that proposed by Nesselrath
1993. Nesselrath was preceded by Webster 1970. 77 (cf. Webster 1960.169ff), whose
arguments Nesselrath 1990. 195 n. 29 at first rejected, but subsequently (1993. 192)
hesitantly accepted, although with the reservation that Webster’s ‘solution is too
neat and simple to be possibly true.’