A Career in the Navy (Arist. Knights 541–4)

Aristophanes' description of the stages of promotion in the Athenian navy recently received renewed attention, when Mastromarco and Halliwell enlisted it in their battle against the traditional opinion that Aristophanes' early career fell into two stages, a secret one of writing plays but not producing them, and a public one in which he undertook both activities. Mastromarco argues for a tripartite career, and Halliwell, who is against a too strict correlation, for a gradual development, a sort of a complex apprenticeship, which eventually he divides also into three stages similar to those discerned by Mastromarco. In summing up their position, MacDowell paraphrases the above passage according to its prevalent interpretation: ‘The nautical metaphor (541–4), with its progression from oarsman to prow-officer to helmsman, indicates that Aristophanes did not take over his task all at once, but by stages. But what were the stages?’