SOURCE: Sidwell, Keith. “Poetic Rivalry and the Caricature of Comic Poets: Cratinus's Pytine and Aristophanes's Wasps.” In Stage Directions: Essays in Ancient Drama in Honour of E. W. Handley, edited by Alan Griffiths, pp. 56-80. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1995.

In the following essay, Sidwell argues that Aristophanes's Wasps and the second version of his Clouds are parodies of Catinus's Pytine, and that all three plays use caricature, politics, and the audience's familiarity with contemporary people and events to make their attacks effective

Recent scholarship has been paying more attention to the other poets of Old Comedy besides Aristophanes.¹ Not much has been made, though, of poetic rivalry itself, instanced in many insults traded between the poets. Nor has anyone questioned critically what poets were doing when they openly appropriated material from one another.² Indeed, there is no trace of any discussion which takes seriously the reality of...