Paratragedia intervisuale nelle Ecclesiazuse

This paper argues that Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen engages not only with Aeschylus’ Eumenides but also with an evolving visual tradition inspired by the tragedy. The opening scene, with its mock-tragic invocation of a humble lamp, establishes a comic interplay between language, stage properties, and the spectators’ visual expectations. Further parallels emerge in the unusual entrance and delayed re-entry of the chorus, the transformation of theatrical space into civic space, and the successive appearances of the three old women. Particular attention is paid to the final confrontation, in which two women struggle over a young man: a grotesque tableau that recalls vase paintings depicting Orestes assailed by two Erinyes. Other details, including the awakening of sleeping women and a parodic purification ritual, suggest affinities with iconographic features absent from Aeschylus’ surviving text. Taken together, these correspondences point to a process of intervisuality in which tragedy, vase painting, and theatrical reperformance interact and reshape one another. Aristophanes’ comedy thus offers a distinctive episode in the reception of the Oresteia, revealing how the visual afterlife of a tragedy could become a source of comic invention.