John Whitehorne

The Rapist’s Disguise in Menander’s Eunuchus

Impersonation and disguise are favourite devices of ancient comedy, both Old and New. They may be used to confuse and deceive one or more of the characters within a play. Or they may serve as a plot device to advance or redirect the action, while at the same time amusing and diverting those outside the drama’s framework or presenting them with an alternative viewpoint upon the action itself. In the case of Aristophanes there is hardly a single play which does not exhibit some use of disguise in one way or another, from his earliest extant play to the last Old Comedy we have by him. Thus in the Acharnians (425 B.C.) the hero borrows the rags and Mysian cap of the Euripidean beggar-king Telephus to plead his case before the irate chorus of Acharnian charcoal burners, while the Ecclesiazusae, written over thirty years later (c. 392 B.C.), begins with the women of Athens dressed in their husbands’ clothes in order to infiltrate the assembly and take control of the state.