Inversions

Inversion of the social and moral order is a key technique in all of comedy and especially in Aristophanes. This is often portrayed in men dressing as women or in slaves dressing as their masters. It is comic to see someone pretending to be something they are not. This is especially true when slaves impersonate their masters. To the Greeks this would be similar to seeing children pretending to be adults. Furthermore, in the Wasps we see two key inversions. The first is the inversion of the legitimate legal order into a tool for gain by jurymen and demagogues. This inversion is so serious that it leads to another equally serious inversion, namely the inversion of the proper relationship of father to son.

Aristophanes has dealt with this relationship before, notably in the Clouds but here the inversion is portrayed, at least in some sense, as being the...