This
vase painting, dating from 420 to 410 BC, may be a depiction of the famous
contest (agon) between the Greater and Lesser Arguments in the Clouds.
An unidentified ancient scholar writing in the margin of a manuscript of
this play (called a ‘scholiast’) claimed that the two actors portraying
Greater and Lesser Arguments were dressed up as fighting cocks and fought
in a wicker cage. What the scholiast probably meant is that the two
fighting cocks were brought on stage in a wicker cage and then were released
to fight, as would be normal in cockfighting even today. Note that
the artist has not depicted the two cocks as confined by any enclosure.
Here the two cocks, accompanied by the music of a double-aulos player,1
show an appropriate amount of aggression against each other. Note
that these two roosters have very human phalluses.
1. The double-aulos (an oboe-like instrument) is the normal instrument used to accompany choral and solo songs in tragedy and comedy.