SOURCE: MacDowell, Douglas M. “Akharnians.” In Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays, 46-79. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

[In the following essay, MacDowell examines Dikaiopolis's use of the Euripidean hero and his trappings in order to promote his speech urging peace with Sparta.]

THE EFFECTS OF WAR

Akharnians was performed at the Lenaia in 425 bc, and won the first prize. It is a play about war and peace. The Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta was already in its sixth year and there was no prospect of an early end to it. The chief character of the play, Dikaiopolis, hates the war, but he fails to persuade the other Athenians to consider how peace can be made. He therefore, by fantastic means, makes a separate peace treaty for himself and his family, to the horror of the warlike old men of Akharnai who form the chorus.

The main reason why Dikaiopolis hates the war is that he has been compelled to leave his home in the country and live in the town. This was a consequence of Athenian strategy in the war's early years. The Spartans' method of conducting the war was to invade Attica with their army. Perikles realized that the Athenians, whose power was primarily naval, could not defeat the Spartans and their allies by land, and so he persuaded the Athenians not to attempt a land battle, but to take refuge within the town walls and rely on their navy to obtain subsistence from overseas.

On hearing this the Athenians did as he said, and brought in from the country their children and women, and also the property which they had at home, even taking down the woodwork of their houses too. Farm-animals they sent across to Euboia and the neighbouring islands. The removal was irksome to them, because most of them had always been accustomed to living in the country.

(Thucydides 2.14)

In Akharnians Dikaiopolis is one of these Athenians who have had to move into the town, and at the beginning of the play he tells the audience how he dislikes the town and longs for peace to be made so that he may return to his rural home. What does he miss about the country? A modern reader might expect him to praise the beauty of the landscape, or the more leisurely pace of rural life, but in fact he does not. The reason he gives is economic:¹ in the country he can get for nothing (by producing or gathering them) various items which have to be paid for in the town.

I look towards the country, longing for peace,
Hating the town and yearning for my deme,
Which never said ‘Buy coal! Buy vinegar!
Buy olive oil!’ It didn't know the word.
It gave us everything; no buy-man there!

(Akharnians 32-6)

The Spartans and their allies invaded Attica in the years 431, 430, 428, and 427. On each occasion they ravaged part of the countryside. The most serious destruction was of the vines and olive trees, which would take years to grow again; the cutting down, trampling, and burning of vines is mentioned repeatedly in Akharnians. But in no year did the Spartans remain for more than forty days, and in 429 and 426 they did not enter Attica at all. One might have expected countryfolk like Dikaiopolis to return to their homes between invasions, but the clear implication of Akharnians 32-6 and 266-7 is that they did not.² When they had dismantled their houses and shipped their animals to the islands, presumably they thought it not worthwhile to restore them as long as the threat of invasions remained; for they never knew that the Spartans were not about to invade again. Yet almost the opposite seems to be implied by a scene later in the play, where Derketes of Phyle laments that Boiotian raiders have snatched his two oxen (1018-36). Clearly his cattle either had not been shipped to an island or had already been brought back. Perhaps the explanation is that the evacuation of the countryfolk was not as complete as Thucydides makes it sound, and it was really only the farmers of the plains in western and central Attica who moved into the town, those being the areas most vulnerable to incursions from the Peloponnese. The Boiotians coming from the north, though allied to the Peloponnesians, may have made only brief raids without undertaking systematic destruction.

When the first invasion occurred in 431, the enemy army advanced as far as Akharnai; and it was the Akharnians, shut up in the town and knowing that their own land was being ravaged, who were particularly clamorous that the Athenians should march out and fight, though Perikles still adhered to his policy of not doing so.³ That may be the main reason why Aristophanes chose Akharnians to be the bellicose chorus of his play, though there is also a little evidence that the Akharnians had a reputation as brave warriors even before 431.⁴ Akharnai was a small town about eight miles from Athens; from the Akropolis it must have been possible for the Akharnians actually to see the Peloponnesian army on their land. It was an important centre for producing charcoal from the woods of Mount Parnes, and that fact gives rise to several jokes and humorous metaphors about coal, wood, and fire in the course of the play. But the old men who form the chorus also have their patches of ground for agriculture, and their purpose in wanting the war to go on is to punish the Spartans for their invasions, ‘to teach them not to trample on my vines’ (232-3).

Dikaiopolis too hates the Spartans because his vines have been cut down (509-12). There is no difference between his and the Akharnians' suffering; the difference lies in what they want to do about it. The Akharnians want to fight back, and, although we must make some allowance for comic exaggeration, essentially that may have been the attitude of the majority of Athenians in 425. Dikaiopolis, on the other hand, regards peace as more important than revenge. This conflict of opinion, on the most serious question facing Athens at that time, is the theme of the play.

THE ASSEMBLY AND ITS ENVOYS

In democratic Athens all major decisions were taken by the Assembly (ekklesia); to the Assembly, therefore, Dikaiopolis must go if he wants to persuade the Athenians to make peace. The Assembly was, in theory, a meeting of all Athenian citizens (adult males of Athenian parentage), held normally on the Pnyx, a hillside west of the Akropolis. But at the beginning of the play Dikaiopolis has arrived on the Pnyx for a meeting, due as usual to begin at dawn, and no one else is there, not even the Prytaneis who have the duty of presiding.

                                        The main Assembly's due today
At dawn, and yet the Pnyx here is deserted!
They're chattering in the Agora; up and down
They run, avoiding the red-painted rope.
Even the Prytaneis haven't yet arrived;
They'll get here late, then jostle one another
Like anything, to get to the front bench,
All streaming down together. They don't care
A scrap for making peace. Oh city, city!

(Akharnians 19-27)

Classical Athens is often praised for its democracy, but these lines show that there was some difficulty in making the system work. Attendance at the Assembly was sometimes so bad that a rope covered with red paint was stretched out and carried across the Agora towards the Pnyx, to round up citizens who were loitering for shopping or gossip; anyone found to be smeared with red paint was fined.⁵ It sounds a desperate method of obtaining a quorum. Here the emphasis is on lateness rather than absenteeism, but another passage in which Lamakhos is said to have been elected by ‘three cuckoos’ (598) certainly implies a low attendance. Of course Aristophanes is satirically exaggerating the dilatoriness and apathy. Nevertheless the audience would have thought these passages pointless, rather than funny, if there had not been at least a small degree of truth in them, and so they are important historical evidence for the unwillingness of some Athenians to participate actively in their democracy.

Eventually the Prytaneis and other citizens do arrive, and the meeting begins. Most of it is taken up by the reports of envoys. The usual translation ‘ambassadors’ may mislead a modern reader. Greek envoys did not reside abroad on a long-term basis. They were sent to a foreign state to conduct particular negotiations, and as soon as those negotiations were finished they returned home and their appointment as envoys ended. In many cases this would take only a few days. Often three men would be sent together on a mission, sometimes a larger number. They were appointed by vote in the Assembly; and they received pay, which was intended not as salary but simply to cover the cost of their transport and subsistence on the journey.

In Akharnians the Athenian envoys who are reporting on their return from foreign parts consist of one group (probably three men, though the number is not specified in the text) who have been to the King of Persia, and one man, Theoros, who has been to the King of Thrace. Both have been enjoying a thoroughly luxurious time, although they try to make out that it was full of hardship.

ENVOY.
You sent us to His Majesty the King
Drawing two drachmas' stipend every day,
When Euthymenes was Arkhon.
DIKAIOPOLIS.
Oh, those drachmas!
ENVOY.
And we were quite worn out with travelling
Across Kaystrian plains, as under awnings
We lay on cushions in the carriages;
It was killing.
DIKAIOPOLIS.
I meanwhile was safe and sound:
I lay in rubbish by the battlements!(6)
ENVOY.
And then our hosts kept forcing us to drink
From crystal glasses and from golden cups
Sweet undiluted wine.
DIKAIOPOLIS.
Oh rugged Athens,
Look how these envoys are deriding you!

(Akharnians 65-76)

Euthymenes was Arkhon in 437/6, so that (if anyone in the audience bothers to calculate) these envoys have been away from Athens for eleven years. That is a ridiculous notion, but it is clear that Aristophanes thinks that some recent envoys are vulnerable to the gibe that they have been spinning out an enjoyable jaunt at public expense.⁷ He is exaggerating, but no doubt it was true that some envoys were well entertained by the potentates to whom they were sent, and enjoyed the opportunity to see foreign parts without having to pay the cost of travel themselves.

Theoros, who is shown reporting back from Thrace, was a real person, and is the object of jokes in later plays. So perhaps it is true that in 426 bc Theoros did go as an envoy to Thrace, and some other men to Persia, even though there is no other evidence of Athenian envoys going to Thrace or Persia in that year. But the reports which they make to the Assembly in the play cannot be more than comic distortions of their real reports: in historical fact the envoys to Persia certainly did not take eleven years, but merely a longer time than Aristophanes thought necessary; they did not bring with them the Persian official called the King's Eye,⁸ but probably mentioned him in their report; and likewise Theoros may have spoken about, but not actually brought, some Odomantian soldiers.

Both missions are represented in the play as being (and may well have been in historical fact) attempts to obtain support for Athens in the war, in the form of gold from Persia and troops from Thrace. But both attempts are futile: the gold is not forthcoming, and the troops will do more eating than fighting. So the Assembly's time is wasted, and it never gets around to considering how peace can be made, which is what Dikaiopolis wants it to do. Throughout this scene Dikaiopolis represents the sensible point of view, pointing out what is wrong with the envoys and their reports. He is patriotic: his concern is not only for himself, but for the city of Athens, which he apostrophizes twice (27, 75), and for the sailors who preserve it (162-3). What he wants is a peace treaty for Athens, and the Prytaneis, when they arrest ‘a man who wished to make a treaty for us and hang up our shields’, are wronging the Assembly, not just Dikaiopolis (56-8).

This man, Dikaiopolis' only ally, is a character named Amphitheos. His status is not adequately explained; it may involve some joke which was clear to the Athenian audience but is obscure to us. He claims to be not human but immortal, descended from another Amphitheos who was a son of Demeter. The gods have entrusted to him the task of making a treaty with Sparta, but he cannot do so because the Prytaneis have given him no money for travel expenses. Obviously part of the joke is that a god is hampered by the same kinds of problem as a human envoy. But we never hear elsewhere of a god called Amphitheos; one would expect the gods' messenger to be Hermes or Iris (both of whom appear in other plays of Aristophanes). There was, however, at least one Athenian man named Amphitheos, which probably means ‘descended on both sides from gods’; it has even been argued that he and Aristophanes belonged to the same circle of friends, although the evidence for that does not amount to much.⁹ It seems that Aristophanes has invented a god, and as a joke has named him after a contemporary Athenian who happened to have a divine-sounding name. There may have been some further point to the joke, but it has not been convincingly identified.¹⁰

Dikaiopolis, despairing of getting the Assembly to make peace, provides money for Amphitheos to become his own personal envoy. He is to travel to Sparta and make a separate treaty just for Dikaiopolis and his family. At this point the play moves from a real problem to a fantastic solution. In real life it would be impossible for one family to make peace while the rest of Athens remained at war. But in the play Amphitheos goes off and returns in about five minutes (the distance between Athens and Sparta is over a hundred miles) bringing three sample treaties for Dikaiopolis to try. The treaties (the Greek word means more literally ‘libations’) are in the form of wine. Dikaiopolis tastes the five-year one and the ten-year one, but likes the thirty-year one best. He takes it, drinks it, and is immediately at peace; and off he goes to hold his own private celebration of the rural Dionysia.

EURIPIDES AND TELEPHOS

But his celebration is rudely interrupted by the chorus of Akharnians, who threaten to stone him to death for the crime of making peace with the Spartans. Amphitheos has already fled, and Dikaiopolis is now totally isolated. He has to defend himself, but his methods of doing so are surprising. First he threatens to kill a hostage belonging to the Akharnians; the hostage turns out to be some charcoal (produce of Akharnai). Next he undertakes to speak in his defence with his head on a chopping-block, so that he may be executed immediately if the defence is unconvincing; and he brings out a block for this purpose. Finally he dresses as a beggar to evoke pity; but the ragged clothes he dons are those worn by the tragic hero Telephos, which he procures from Euripides. It will have been clear to the more intelligent spectators from the start, and to the stupidest by the end, that all three devices are tragic ones, taken from Euripides' Telephos and given a comic twist.

Quotation and parody of tragedy are common in Aristophanes' plays.¹¹ Earlier dramatists had presented comic versions of traditional myths, probably drawing them from Homer and other narrative poetry; but Aristophanes is doing something different. He is making comic use of tragedy because tragedy is part of Athenian life. Any contemporary tragedian is considered good for a laugh; in his very first speech Dikaiopolis makes a sarcastic comment on a tragedian named Theognis, to whom he prefers Aeschylus (who had died thirty years before). But the most mockable tragedian of all is Euripides.

Euripides was now in his fifties and had been writing plays for thirty years. Most of his plays which now survive were written in the later part of his life, but evidently by the time of Akharnians he was already regarded as the leading innovator in the tragic genre. Aristophanes brings him into the play as one of the characters, but it is his style of tragedy, not his personality, which is the comic target. Although, for some reason which we do not know, it was considered funny to refer to his mother as a greengrocer,¹² there is no other indication that Aristophanes had any knowledge of him as a person. He simply gives to his character ‘Euripides’ the personality and life-style which he considers comically appropriate for the author of tragedies like Oineus, Phoinix, and Telephos.

Telephos had been performed in 438 bc. No complete text survives, but it is possible to reconstruct some of its action from various sources of information: there are some fragments of papyrus copies of the play, and later writers sometimes refer to the story or quote individual lines.¹³ To these sources we can add Aristophanes' parodies, not only in Akharnians but also in Women at the Thesmophoria, and at several points a scholiast, who no doubt had a copy of Telephos before him, tells us that a particular line of Akharnians is a quotation from Telephos, or that it is a parody of a line of Telephos (and he gives us the original line). There is some risk of circularity, if one reconstructs the tragedy from the comic parody and then remarks that the comic parody keeps very close to the tragedy, and some modern scholars have treated more of Akharnians as parody than the evidence justifies. But with due caution it is possible to summarize the play.¹⁴

Telephos was a son of Herakles by a woman named Auge. He was born on Mount Parthenion in Arkadia; but, after being exposed to die and subsequently rescued, he somehow reached Mysia in Asia Minor, where he was reunited with his mother, was brought up, and eventually became king. Some time afterwards a Greek army invaded Mysia, and Telephos, leading the resistance, was wounded by Achilles before the Greeks withdrew. The wound failed to heal, and when Telephos consulted an oracle he was told ‘The wounder will heal it’. So he travelled to Greece, disguised as a beggar, to seek a cure. This was the point at which Euripides' play began: one of the longest of the papyrus fragments contains the opening lines, in which Telephos, just arrived at Argos, hails the Peloponnese, in which he was born, at the start of what must have been a typical Euripidean prologue, reeling off information about earlier events for the benefit of the audience.

TELEPHOS.
O fatherland, which Pelops marked as his,
Hail! and thou, Pan, who tread'st Arkadia's
Storm-battered crag, from whence I claim descent.
For Auge, child of Aleos, bore me
In secret to Tirynthian Herakles;
I know Parthenion mount, where Eileithyia
Ended my mother's pangs and I was born.
I suffered much, but I'll cut short my tale.
I reached the Mysian plain, and there I found
My mother, and I settled. Power was given
To me by Mysian Teuthras. I was named
Telephos by the Mysian citizens,
Because my life was stablished far away.(15)
Though Greek, I ruled barbarians, labouring
With many soldiers, till Akhaian troops
Came ranging over all the Mysian plains …

(Telephos fr. 102)

There the papyrus breaks off, but Telephos must have gone on to tell the audience about his wound and the oracle, explaining that he had now come in disguise to enemy territory to seek a cure, and including somewhere the two lines which Aristophanes borrows for Akharnians 440-1. The contrast between appearance and fact makes them characteristic of Euripides.

I have to seem a beggar …,
Be who I am, but not appear to be.

(Telephos fr. 104)

In due course Agamemnon and other Greeks arrived and a discussion began, perhaps on a proposal to invade Mysia again and avenge the defeat inflicted on the Greeks by Telephos. Telephos, in his disguise, intervened, and we have a quotation of three lines in which he insists on speaking.

Agamemnon, even if someone held an axe
And were about to wield it on my neck,
I'll not be silent, but reply what's right.

(Telephos fr. 113)

Probably at this point he uttered a deliberately ambiguous wish, intending to convince the Greeks that he was no friend of Telephos, while not actually wishing himself any harm.¹⁶

Success to me; to Telephos—what I wish!

(Telephos fr. 114)

Permitted to speak, he delivered a lengthy justification of Telephos (that is, of himself), who after all had only been fighting in defence of his own people of Mysia. It began with these words:

Do not resent it, topmost men of Greece,
If I, a beggar, speak to noblemen.

(Telephos fr. 109)

Also from Telephos, the scholiast tells us, and probably from the same speech, came words which we find in Akharnians 540 and 543, and finally those in 555-6.

                                                                                And do we think
That Telephos would not?

(Telephos fr. 118)

After that speech the Greeks somehow discovered that the beggar was Telephos himself in disguise. In danger of being killed on the spot as an enemy, Telephos seized Agamemnon's infant son Orestes and rushed to the altar holding him as a hostage; he threatened to kill the baby if the sanctuary was infringed. The upshot was negotiation and agreement. The Greeks agreed to allow Telephos' wound to be healed, in accordance with the oracle, and ‘the wounder’ having power to do this was found to be not Achilles himself but his spear: it inflicted the wound, and filings from it, applied to the wound, healed it. In return Telephos agreed to guide the Greek forces to Troy, with which he was familiar, in their expedition to recover Helen. The longest papyrus fragment of the play, which must belong near the end, contains part of a choral song about Telephos' forthcoming guidance of the Greek fleet, and some dialogue between Achilles and Odysseus about preparations for the expedition. Although formally a tragedy, the play seems to have had a happy ending.

It is obvious that the principal point of similarity between the situation in Telephos and the situation in Akharnians is that in both plays the hero has to make a speech arguing against the continuation of a war, and maintaining that not all the wrong is on the enemy's side. Dikaiopolis urging the Akharnians, and the Athenians in general, that the war against Sparta is not justified can be compared to Telephos urging the Greeks that the war against Telephos and the Mysians is not justified. No doubt this is what first gave Aristophanes the idea of introducing Telephos into his play; and the speech in which Dikaiopolis makes his plea (497-556) is logically fundamental to the parody, since without it there would be no reason for making him imitate Telephos rather than any other character. That speech will be discussed later; but before it is reached Aristophanes prepares for it by the earlier allusions to Telephos. As early as line 8 there is a short quotation from Telephos, ‘a fitting deed for Greece’.¹⁷ Then there is the passage where Dikaiopolis protects himself against the Akharnians' attack by threatening to kill a hostage who turns out to be charcoal, a grotesque parody of Telephos' seizure of the baby Orestes. That is followed by his offer to speak with his head on a block. Presumably this is a reminiscence of Telephos' insistence on saying what is right even if threatened with execution; but whereas Telephos' remark appears to have been just an effective piece of rhetoric, in Dikaiopolis' case the Akharnians take up his offer and tell him to bring out a block, and so he does (358-67). Here Aristophanes is making fun of tragic speech by carrying out literally what in the tragedy is only rhetorical or metaphorical.

Dikaiopolis' next step in imitation of Telephos is to dress himself in ragged clothes.¹⁸ Evidently the miserable dress of some of Euripides' characters, especially Telephos, was notorious. We can infer that in earlier tragedy it had been customary for the actors to be formally or even grandly dressed, and when Euripides took a step towards realism by putting wretched clothes on a character who was in a wretched situation, that was a startling innovation. Therefore dressing in rags makes Dikaiopolis look like a Euripidean hero, and a Mysian cup and other accessories make him look like Telephos specifically. But this is only a superficial resemblance between the two characters, since Dikaiopolis does not have the same motive as Telephos for wearing rags. Telephos needed to disguise himself in order to avoid recognition by the Greek commanders; a beggar's dress was a good disguise because it was normal for a beggar to wander from place to place and a stranger so dressed would be less likely to provoke questions about who he was and where he came from. But Dikaiopolis, though he does speak of taking in the chorus at one point (443), never seriously pretends to be anyone but himself. So for him the rags are not a disguise. They are a device for arousing the Akharnians' pity. They are also a means of acquiring skill at speaking, for it is comically assumed that when he is dressed like a Euripidean character he becomes able to speak like one (444-7).

To get the rags, Aristophanes has had the brilliant idea of making Dikaiopolis go to visit Euripides in person. This episode is not essential for the story (Dikaiopolis might just have put on any rags he happened to have), but it makes an excellent comic scene. Euripides is brought on wearing rags himself, and he has a vast stock of rags belonging to different characters, who are named one after another until he reaches the particular one, Telephos, whose rags Dikaiopolis desires. The notion that each character has distinctive rags, stored separately in Euripides' house, is absurd, and is an effective comic device for mocking the use of miserable dress in his tragedies.

Did Aristophanes expect the audience to recognize all his allusions to tragedy? When the hostage and the block are introduced, neither Euripides nor Telephos has yet been mentioned. It was thirteen years since Telephos was performed; indeed Dikaiopolis later calls it ‘that old play’ (415). Aristophanes himself may have had access to a written copy of it, so that he could check the details, but that was certainly not true of most of the spectators. It is improbable that many of them could have taken all the points of parody, without even being told initially which play was being parodied, if they had not in some way had their memories of Telephos refreshed in the years between 438 and 425. Possibly it had been performed at local festivals at Peiraieus or Eleusis or elsewhere; possibly the most distinctive parts of it had been held up to ridicule in other comedies and so had already become familiar material for jokes. But another possibility is that most of the audience just laughed at the comic presentation of tragic style in a broad sense, and only a minority was familiar enough with Telephos to appreciate all the details.¹⁹

THE CAUSES OF THE WAR

Now Dikaiopolis is ready to make his speech in defence of the Spartans and of his decision to make peace with them. He has brought out the chopping-block over which he offered to speak. He has procured and donned the tragic rags which will arouse pity and inspire him with tragic language. At line 496 the chorus calls on him to speak—and immediately most of the preparations are forgotten. His speech is addressed not to the chorus, but to the audience; he makes no attempt to conceal his identity; though still wearing the rags, he does not ask for pity;²⁰ there are a few quotations from Telephos, but most of the speech is not in tragic language; and the block is never mentioned again. It is characteristic of Aristophanes to abandon a joke without ceremony as soon as it has served its turn.²¹ Now the tone is suddenly changed.

DIKAIOPOLIS.
Do not resent it, men of the audience,
If I, a beggar, speak to Athenians
Concerning Athens in a comedy.(22)
For even comedy knows what is right,
And what I'll say, though startling, will be right.
For this time Kleon won't accuse me of
Abusing Athens when foreigners are here.
We're by ourselves; it's the Lenaion contest;
No foreigners are here yet, for the tribute
And allies from the cities have not come.

(Akharnians 497-506)

Here Dikaiopolis states very clearly that this speech is going to be different from most comic speeches.²³ He is going to criticize Athens, and his criticisms, though they may arouse resentment, will be justified. He alludes for the second time to the fuss made by Kleon about Babylonians last year, and asserts that this time criticism of Athens should be accepted because there are no foreigners in the audience at the Lenaia.²⁴ Aristophanes has made it as plain as he can that the rest of this speech will have some serious content. However frivolous comedy may be, there are some occasions when it says something serious and true, and this speech is going to be one of them. And it goes on to give an account of how the war began: trivial disputes concerning the small city of Megara were allowed to escalate, and the Athenians took up an unduly stubborn attitude to a reasonable Spartan request.

Although it has such a careful and explicit introduction, some modern critics have refused to accept that the speech has any serious content, and insist that it is no more than a joke. It has been maintained that ‘the speech is parody from start to finish. We cannot with confidence take it seriously.’²⁵ This dichotomy is unsound, because it is of course possible for serious points to be made by means of a parody. But in the present instance it is not true that the speech is parody from start to finish. It is true, of course, that the spectators are expected to recollect Euripides' scene in which Telephos, disguised as a beggar, argued that the Mysians were not responsible for the war against the Greeks. To emphasize the similarity Aristophanes has made Dikaiopolis put on rags like Telephos and then begin his speech with almost the same words.

Do not resent it, topmost men of Greece,
If I, a beggar, speak to noblemen …

(Telephos fr. 109)

Do not resent it, men of the audience,
If I, a beggar, speak to Athenians …

(Akharnians 497-8)

But how much more of Dikaiopolis' speech is taken from Euripides? I believe that the extent of the borrowing has been overestimated. The evidence is of three kinds.

1. The scholia on Akharnians tell us that certain lines are taken from Euripides, either exactly or with only slight alteration. These are (besides 497-8): the first half of 540 (‘You'll say “It should not have.”’), the second half of 543 (‘Far from that!’), and part of 555-6 (‘And do we think that Telephos would not?’). The scholia do not say that any other part of the speech is a quotation. The scholiast, whoever he was (probably a Hellenistic commentator), obviously had a copy of Euripides' play in front of him, and if he checked through the speeches of Telephos and Dikaiopolis carefully enough to notice that such an ordinary phrase as ‘Far from that!’ was common to both of them, it is unlikely that he missed any other quotations. However, one must acknowledge the possibility that not all his notes have got copied out into the surviving medieval manuscripts.

2. A few words used in the early part of the speech are used also in the early part of Women at the Thesmophoria 466-519, the speech in defence of Euripides made by his Relative disguised as a woman. These are: the first half of 504 (‘We're by ourselves’), the verb of 509 (‘I hate’), and part of 514 (‘Why do we blame … for this?’). Perhaps the reason is that in both places Aristophanes is quoting from Telephos.²⁶ But it is not certainly so; the words are all common, and the similarity of the situations and arguments in the two speeches (urging the abandonment of hostility towards an old enemy) could have led Aristophanes to use similar wording in both places without even realizing that he was doing so.

3. The word used for a ship in 541 is poetic, and since the phrase (‘voyaging in his bark’) seems out of place in the logic of Dikaiopolis' argument, it has been inferred that it is quoted from Telephos.²⁷

These quotations do not amount to a great deal. It is misleading to say that the whole of Dikaiopolis' speech is a parody of Euripides. What Aristophanes has done is to put the speech into the setting of Telephos' speech by dressing Dikaiopolis in Telephos' costume, and by putting a few words from Telephos' speech at the beginning, at the end, and in one sentence or so in between. That is enough to suggest the general similarity between the two, in that each is arguing against war before a hostile audience. But the specific arguments used in the central part of the speech are not the same. Although we do not know what Telephos' arguments were, obviously he cannot have talked about sycophants denouncing Megarian shawls, and a prostitute named Simaitha, and Perikles' decree, and so on. It is not plausible to say that those things have been put in for the sake of imitating Euripides.

But some people say that they have been put in for the sake of imitating Herodotos. At the beginning of Book 1, Herodotos says that according to the Persians it was the Phoenicians who were responsible for the origin of the conflict between the Greeks and the barbarians, because they kidnapped Io, daughter of the King of Argos; then some Greeks kidnapped Europa, daughter of the King of Tyre, and others kidnapped Medea, daughter of the King of Kolkhis; and in a later generation Paris carried off Helen, which led to the Trojan War. It has frequently been said that this part of Herodotos is parodied by Aristophanes in lines 524-9.²⁸ But I cannot find any good reason for believing that. I do not know whether Herodotos' book was published before or after the performance of Akharnians; opinions differ about its date. But even if it was before, it is most unlikely that many Athenians were familiar enough with it to be able to recognize a parody of one particular part of it unless Aristophanes had given very obvious signals indeed to warn them that a parody of Herodotos was coming. But in fact there are no such signals. Dikaiopolis does not mention the name of Herodotos; nor does he mention the Persians or the Phoenicians or the Trojans or any of the other people who occur in Herodotos' opening pages. He mentions three prostitutes, but that would hardly have made the Athenians think of all those daughters of kings. Above all, Dikaiopolis does not use any Herodotean vocabulary or turns of phrase.²⁹ Whereas the beginning and end of the speech do quote a few words from Euripides, the middle does not quote any words from Herodotos. There is really nothing in the speech which bears any resemblance to Herodotos at all.

So it is not plausible to maintain that the material in this speech has been put there by Aristophanes just for the sake of making amusing parodies. Although he uses a light touch for most of the speech, deliberately mentioning homely or vulgar items such as cucumbers and prostitutes, nevertheless he does expect his audience to accept that the Peloponnesian War resulted from the series of events which he recounts. It has been claimed that ‘his account of the war's origins, so elaborately prepared for, turns out to be utterly preposterous’.³⁰ But this is not so. We should compare it with Thucydides' account of the events which led to the war. Here are two extracts from Thucydides.

Among others who came forward and made various complaints of their own were the Megarians; they pointed out a considerable number of disagreements, and in particular that they were excluded from harbours in the Athenian Empire and from the Athenian Agora, in contravention of the treaty.

(Thucydides 1.67.4)

On a later visit to the Athenians, [the Spartans] told them to withdraw from Poteidaia and to let Aigina be independent; and most emphatically and plainly they declared that there would not be war if the Athenians annulled the decree about the Megarians, in which they were forbidden to use the harbours in the Athenian Empire and the Athenian Agora. But the Athenians neither accepted the other demands nor annulled the decree, accusing the Megarians of cultivating sacred and unowned land and of receiving runaway slaves.

(Thucydides 1.139.1-2)

Dikaiopolis' account is more detailed.

Some men of ours—and I don't say the city;
Remember this, that I don't say the city,
But just some johnny-rascals, mis-struck coins,
Disfranchised, and mis-minted, and mis-foreign,
Were sycophants: ‘From Megara, those shawls!’
Wherever they saw a cucumber or hare
Or piglet or garlic or some lumps of salt,
Those were ‘Megarian’ and were sold that day.
Now that was just a little local matter;
But a prostitute, Simaitha, was stolen away
From Megara by some young men, kottabos-drunk.(31)
So the Megarians, garlic-puffed(32) with pain,
Stole two of Aspasia's prostitutes instead.
From that beginning, then, the war broke out
All over Greece, because of those three strumpets.
Then in anger Perikles the Olympian
Lightened and thundered and confounded Greece
And made laws in the style of drinking-songs:
‘Megarians banned on land, in the Agora,
And on the sea and on the continent.’
Then the Megarians, starving step by step,
Entreated the Spartans to get the decree reversed,
The one resulting from the strumpet-girls;
But we refused, though they asked us many times;
And after that arose the clatter of shields.

(Akharnians 515-39)

The sequence of events which Dikaiopolis presents may be transposed into more pedestrian language as follows. First, some disreputable Athenians hampered the sale of Megarian goods in Attica by constant accusations that some law or regulation was being infringed (515-22). It is unlikely that there was an otherwise unknown decree, passed earlier than the well-known one, that excluded Megarian goods specifically. More probably customs duties were payable by law on all goods imported to Attica from any source, and Megarian farmers and weavers, who lived so near that they could easily slip into Attica by land, had been in the habit of bringing their products across the frontier and selling them without paying the duties. Suddenly some people started trying to enforce the law; but Dikaiopolis regards the accusers as unreasonable and disreputable, and therefore calls them sycophants and not proper citizens.³³

Next, according to Dikaiopolis, some young Athenians, when drunk, carried off from Megara a girl called Simaitha. The Megarians were annoyed, and in retaliation some of them carried off from Attica two girls in whom Aspasia (mistress of Perikles) was interested. Presumably all three girls were slaves. Dikaiopolis makes the incidents sound like kidnapping. But in affairs of love ‘steal’ does not have to imply the use of physical force, and if the two girls belonging to Aspasia were merely inveigled away, it may be possible to identify this incident with ‘receiving runaway slaves’ in Thucydides 1.139.2. In any case it may be included among the ‘considerable number of disagreements’ mentioned in Thucydides 1.67.4; that is a perfectly good phrase for what Dikaiopolis describes in 515-27.

Then Perikles, indignant on Aspasia's behalf, proposed the decree excluding Megarians from the Agora and from harbours in the Athenian Empire; the Megarians and the Spartans several times asked the Athenians to rescind the decree, but the Athenians refused, and so the war began (530-9). ‘Perikles the Olympian lightened and thundered’ means that he behaved as if he were Zeus, controlling the whole universe,³⁴ and ‘in the style of drinking-songs’ is a reference to songs that list numerous items; the implication is that the decree was very sweeping and comprehensive. The ‘many times’ that the Megarians and the Spartans asked the Athenians to rescind the decree cannot all be identified exactly, but there need not have been more than three occasions: perhaps one direct approach by the Megarians to the Athenians, the Spartan request recorded in Thucydides 1.139.1, and the final one mentioned in Thucydides 1.139.3. So nothing in this part of Dikaiopolis' speech conflicts significantly with Thucydides' summary of the events concerning the Megarian decree.

Dikaiopolis clearly means to say that the Athenians' refusal to annul the decree was the thing which caused the Spartans to declare war. Thucydides too makes clear that this was what the Spartans said: ‘they declared that there would not be war if the Athenians annulled the decree about the Megarians’ (1.139.1). Now, it is well known that Thucydides considered that ‘the truest cause’ of the war was not the Megarian decree, but Spartan fear of the growth of Athenian power; in his view the decree was merely the catalyst which precipitated the real cause. But Dikaiopolis too says something which is not very different from that. In 540 he points out that the incidents which he has been describing may be thought an inadequate reason for fighting; but he goes on to say that if the Athenians had had similar provocation, if some Spartan had taken not some slaves, nor all the produce imported from some ally, but merely one little dog from Seriphos (one of the least important places in the Athenian Empire), the Athenians would have reacted with even more military and naval fuss. That is as much as to say that the reason for the Spartans' declaration of war was really that they were sensitive to Athenian encroachment on their own sphere of influence.

So Dikaiopolis' account of the outbreak of war, though expressed in a manner suitable to comedy, is not inconsistent with the account given by Thucydides;³⁵ it is not illogical or incredible; and I see no reason why it should not be essentially true. Of course it does not tell us everything. In particular, Aspasia's loss of her two girls may not have been the only reason why Perikles proposed the Megarian decree; he may have had a strategic or political reason too. Nevertheless it must be admitted that modern scholars have had great difficulty in discovering a strategic or political reason, and have not succeeded in reaching general agreement about what it was.³⁶ Aristophanes' suggestion, that Perikles was induced by a personal motive to take an action for which the strategic and political justification was weak, therefore deserves serious consideration.

That all this is meant to be taken seriously, as a convincing argument, is confirmed by what happens afterwards. Neither the chorus of Akharnians nor any other character contradicts what Dikaiopolis has said. In other plays we find a debate, in which two speakers present opposite sides of a case, one refuting the other; but in this play Aristophanes does not present any opposite view for consideration. What happens is that the chorus splits into two halves, one half accepting what Dikaiopolis has said, the other half annoyed at it.

SEMICHORUS A.
Do you, a beggar, dare speak so of us
And blame us for some wretched sycophant?
SEMICHORUS B.
Yes, by Poseidon! Every single thing
He says is right, and none of it's untrue.
SEMICHORUS A.
And if it's right, was he the man to say it?

(Akharnians 558-62)

Line 562 is clearly an admission that what Dikaiopolis said was in fact right. Subsequently, after the scene with Lamakhos, the whole chorus gives a verdict at the beginning of the parabasis: ‘This man is victorious with what he has said, and he's now winning over the people concerning his treaty’ (626-7). That is an assertion that Dikaiopolis convinces not just other characters in the play, but the people—that is, the people of Athens who are the audience in the theatre. It is the kind of pronouncement which is intended to assist its own fulfilment. Aristophanes in effect says ‘You all believe now that the war is a mistake and it is right to make peace’, and he hopes that will help to make the spectators think they do believe it.

LAMAKHOS

Those members of the chorus who still favour war call for Lamakhos, who immediately appears fully armed, having a helmet with a big crest of feathers and a shield bearing a terrifying portrayal of a Gorgon. Lamakhos, like Theoros earlier in the play, was a real man, not fictional, and held military office in the tribe to which Akharnai belonged. His career cannot be fully reconstructed, but we have some information about it. We first hear of him on a naval expedition led by Perikles to the Black Sea around 436 bc, when he was put in command of thirteen ships.³⁷ He may then have been only in his twenties, for in Akharnians, about ten years later, it is still possible for Dikaiopolis to call him young (601) and make a sexual joke which implies that he is young and good-looking (592). In 424 he again commanded a naval force in the Black Sea.³⁸ Later he was one of the commanders of the great expedition to Sicily, where he was killed fighting in 414, and after his death he was remembered as a brave soldier.³⁹

What position he held at the time of Akharnians is not quite clear. In 593 he calls himself a general (strategos). But in 1073 he receives orders from the generals, which implies that he is not a general himself but holds a subordinate rank, probably as a taxiarch. Attempts to explain away the inconsistency are not altogether successful. 593 may not be dismissed as a quotation from tragedy which need not be taken literally.⁴⁰ Nor is it satisfactory to say that in 1073 Lamakhos is a general receiving a request from his fellow-generals;⁴¹ for in 1079-83 he makes no protest that his colleagues have taken a decision in his absence to give him an unpleasant task without consulting him, but accepts without question that he must obey the orders of his superiors. So it seems better to adopt the suggestion that he was a taxiarch when Akharnians was written, but was elected a general shortly before the performance, either at a by-election or at the regular election of generals for the next year; Aristophanes then, for the sake of topicality, made a last-minute alteration in the script to introduce the word ‘general’ in 593, but found it impracticable to rewrite 1073-83 at that late stage.⁴²

In any case, whether Lamakhos was a general or a taxiarch, it does not seem that he can have made a financial profit from his military office. There is in fact no clear evidence that generals or taxiarchs were paid at all in this period.⁴³ Yet Dikaiopolis proceeds to accuse Lamakhos of making money from office, contrasting him with himself and the old Akharnians of the chorus.

LAMAKHOS.
Do you, a beggar, speak so of the general?
DIKAIOPOLIS.
Am I a beggar?
LAMAKHOS.
Well, what are you, then?
DIKAIOPOLIS.
True citizen, not a keen-on-office-ite,
But, since the war began, a soldier-ite.
You're, since the war began, a salary-ite.
LAMAKHOS.
I was elected—
DIKAIOPOLIS.
By three cuckoos, yes!
That's why I got so sick and made a treaty,
Seeing grey-haired men serving in the ranks,
While young men such as you had scuttled off:
Some towards Thrace, drawing three drachmas' pay …

.....

LAMAKHOS.
They were elected.
DIKAIOPOLIS.
What's the reason, then,
That you somehow all keep on drawing pay,
While none of these men do? Marilades,
Have you served as an envoy, though you're grey?
He nodded ‘no’; yet he's a sober worker.
Drakyllos? Prinides? Euphorides?
Have you seen Ekbatana or Khaonia?
They answer ‘no’. But Koisyra's son has,
And Lamakhos.(44)

(Akharnians 593-602, 607-14)

This passage is not about Lamakhos' election to the generalship or to any military office. The point is that, whereas Dikaiopolis and other grey-haired men performed military service, younger men such as Lamakhos got away to places where no fighting was going on, by being elected as envoys to Thrace or Ekbatana (in Persia) or Khaonia (in Epirus).

We should therefore draw a distinction between two topics which Aristophanes includes in his satirical presentation of Lamakhos. One is the accusation that Lamakhos, like Theoros and others, has made financial gains and avoided campaigns by getting himself appointments as an envoy. Although he invokes democracy (618) and justifies himself by claiming to have been elected (598), Dikaiopolis brushes the claim aside with scorn: ‘By three cuckoos’. Envoys were elected by voting in the Assembly, and here once again, as at the beginning of the play, Aristophanes is suggesting that the Assembly's decisions do not represent the true interests and wishes of the Athenian people, because many of them do not attend it. Consequently lucrative and enjoyable appointments as envoys go to unscrupulous office-seekers, and not to other men who are deserving, such as an old man in the chorus who is ‘a sober worker’ (611). The whole passage is scornful, not jocular, and no doubt Aristophanes means it to be taken seriously. Yet it is not really very convincing. Citizens who did not bother to attend the Assembly had only themselves to blame if they did not like its decisions. And it was to the advantage of the Athenian people that important posts should not be held by nonentities, on the system of Buggins's turn, but by capable men. Aristophanes has made the mistake of thinking that the job of an envoy is as easy as it looks, so that anyone could do it.

The other charge against Lamakhos, which we should keep separate, is that as a military officer he behaves in a conceited and pompous manner. We have no means of knowing how far Aristophanes has exaggerated this, and how far Lamakhos actually did boom and swagger in real life; perhaps he did boom and swagger a little, and Aristophanes has made the most of it. But this, unlike the accusation of exploiting appointment as an envoy, is not a serious political criticism, but is due rather to dramatic requirement. The play needed to have a character, and not merely the chorus, standing for war, in opposition to Dikaiopolis; and that character had to be made to look foolish. For this dramatic purpose, three things made Lamakhos particularly suitable. First, his name happened actually to mean ‘great fighter’ and could be used to make a comic jingle with the word for ‘fight’ (269-70, 1071). Secondly, he was the general or taxiarch of the particular tribe (Oineis) to which the deme of Akharnai belonged. And thirdly, there was his Gorgon shield. Aristophanes has a good deal of fun with the fact that Lamakhos' shield is decorated with a terrifying picture of a Gorgon's face, and his helmet with large plumes. These must have been well-known features of Lamakhos' armour in real life. Plumes and Gorgons were in fact common, but presumably Lamakhos' were bigger and fiercer-looking than anyone else's. Aristophanes has combined these facts and a bombastic manner to produce a personification of militarism.

TRADERS AND SYCOPHANTS

Lamakhos declares his determination to carry on the war, and Dikaiopolis proclaims that all Peloponnesians, Megarians, and Boiotians may trade with him, but not with Lamakhos. After the parabasis⁴⁵ Dikaiopolis marks out his own Agora for this purpose, and soon two traders arrive. Both come from enemy states, but neither is presented as unfavourably as Lamakhos or the Athenian envoys earlier in the play.

The first to arrive is a man from Megara with his two little daughters.⁴⁶ In real life, we must remember, the Megarians not only were on the enemy side but were widely regarded as being responsible for starting the war. In an Athenian play we might expect a Megarian to be treated in a thoroughly hostile manner; we might expect the Athenian audience to laugh gleefully at his starvation and other sufferings. But what we find is just the opposite: the audience is encouraged to sympathize with the Megarian and regard him as a friend. When he appears, his first words are a greeting to the Agora.

MEGARIAN.
Hail, Athens' Agora, that Megarians love!
By the god of friendship, I missed you like a mother!

(Akharnians 729-30)

Is this just cupboard love, and does the Megarian love the Athenian market because he can exploit Athenian customers and make a profit out of them? No, that is not the right interpretation, because Aristophanes has not put in any words to hint at that. He could very easily have done so. He does in fact do something like that in Birds 37-8, for example, where a character comments that Athens is ‘great and prosperous, open to everyone—for paying fines’. Aristophanes could have given Akharnians 730 a similar twist in its tail, but he has not. The Megarian does not say ‘I missed you, a place open to everyone—for making profits’; he says ‘By the god of friendship, I missed you’, which puts his motive in a favourable light.

The Megarian and his daughters are starving after six years of war;⁴⁷ and because he has nothing else to offer in the market, he decides to sell the two little girls disguised as pigs, and they willingly agree.

MEGARIAN.
Which would you rather do, be sold or starve?
GIRLS.
Be sold, be sold!
MEGARIAN.
I say so too. But who'd be such a fool
As to buy you, an obvious waste of money?
But still, I've got a Megarian device:
I'll dress you up and say I've brought some pigs.

(Akharnians 734-9)

When Dikaiopolis reappears, he at first thinks that the ‘pigs’ look quite human (774), but eventually accepts that they really are pigs and agrees to buy them (811-12).⁴⁸ The humour of this scene comes partly from the comic dressing-up, and partly from elaboration of a sexual pun on the word for ‘pig’.⁴⁹ But there is also a serious element in it, which comes to the fore when the plight of people in Megara is described.

DIKAIOPOLIS.
What else are you doing in Megara?
MEGARIAN.
What we do.
When I was starting on my journey here,
The Probouloi were trying hard to find
The quickest way to get our city—ruined!
DIKAIOPOLIS.
Your troubles will soon be ended then.
MEGARIAN.
That's right.
DIKAIOPOLIS.
What else at Megara? What's the price of grain?
MEGARIAN.
With us it's like the dear gods—very dear!
DIKAIOPOLIS.
You've brought salt?
MEGARIAN.
You yourselves control it, don't you?
DIKAIOPOLIS.
Or garlic, then?
MEGARIAN.
What garlic! You yourselves,
Whenever you invade, are like field-mice:
You dig out every clove of it with sticks.

(Akharnians 753-63)

Salt and garlic were the two best-known products of Megara, but Athenian invasions have caused so much destruction that not even those are now being produced. The Megarian therefore has nothing; but Dikaiopolis is not gloating, nor is the Athenian audience encouraged to do so. The jokes here are sardonic comments made by the Megarian, not at him: ‘the quickest way to get our city—ruined!’, ‘like the dear gods—very dear!’ He blames not only the Athenians but also the Megarian government. In the first half of the play, especially in the opening speech, we heard about the troubles Dikaiopolis and other Athenians were having because of the war, and much of the blame for them was put on officials, the Prytaneis. Now in the second half of the play, in the opening scene after the parabasis, we hear about the troubles the Megarians are having because of the war, and the blame for them is put on Megarian officials, the Probouloi. There is a clear parallelism here, suggesting that countrymen on both sides should make common cause against incompetent leaders. It is quite unconvincing to suggest (as some have) that the audience is expected to sympathize with Dikaiopolis but laugh at the plight of the Megarian. Their hardships are presented as being essentially similar, though the lines about the Athenians taking the Megarians' salt and garlic do suggest that the Megarians are even worse off than the Athenians, and that the Athenians ought not to be so hard on them. Dikaiopolis does in fact agree to buy the ‘pigs’, and defends the Megarian when a sycophant tries to accuse him.⁵⁰

The second trader is a Boiotian from Thebes. He too is from an enemy state, but his situation is just the opposite of the Megarian's. Boiotia has more good agricultural land, and consequently the Boiotian brings with him a wide range of foodstuffs, with delicacies such as eels from Lake Kopais which were not available in Athens in wartime. Dikaiopolis is delighted with them; his only problem is to find anything to offer in exchange which the Boiotian does not already have. The comic solution to the problem is a sycophant: that is a thing produced in Athens and nowhere else!

It is convenient to use ‘sycophant’ to translate sykophantes, but the meaning differs from the usual sense of ‘sycophant’ in modern English. The Greek word is a disparaging term for a prosecutor.⁵¹ In Athens, for most kinds of offence against the state or the community, there was no publicly appointed prosecutor. Instead anyone who wished (or, for some offences, any Athenian citizen who wished) could prosecute in a public case. Some men no doubt brought such cases simply from public spirit, wishing to see justice done; some to improve their own reputation as orators or politicians; some as a means of injuring a personal or political opponent. And for some kinds of prosecution, perhaps because they concerned offences which were more liable than others to be ignored, an extra incentive was provided by giving a financial reward to the prosecutor if he won the case. One of these kinds of prosecution was phasis (literally ‘showing’ or ‘revealing’),⁵² which could be used against goods wrongfully imported, because they came from an enemy state or had been brought in without payment of customs duty. Anyone who wished could point out the offending goods to bystanders in the market and to the appropriate officials. If the accused trader was found guilty, the goods were confiscated and sold; half the proceeds was retained by the state and half was given to the successful prosecutor. That was his incentive to take action.

But perhaps the incentives given to volunteer prosecutors were too great. At any rate the system gave rise to a notorious nuisance. This was the man who made a practice of prosecuting without justification, either because he hoped to get the payment which fell due to a successful prosecutor, or because he hoped to blackmail the accused man into bribing him to drop the accusation. It was this kind of man who was called a sycophant, and sycophants are among Aristophanes' favourite targets. They appear on-stage in Akharnians, Birds, and Wealth, and are mentioned in other plays; the play performed at the Lenaia in 423, which may have been Merchant-ships, had an attack on sycophants as its main theme (according to Wasps 1037-42). Aristophanes presents sycophancy as if it were a regular, though disgraceful, profession, rather like prostitution. Probably the true situation was not so clear-cut. The term is subjective and opprobrious, not just factual. Many a defendant, even if guilty, would angrily call his accuser a sycophant, but no prosecutor would ever use the word of himself, and perhaps no prosecutor made a regular living by prosecution; how many found it a useful source of supplementary income, we cannot say.

THE PLEASURES OF PEACE

The delicious food which Dikaiopolis buys from the Boiotian is the first real advantage that he gets from making peace (for his celebration of the rural Dionysia was cut short by the Akharnians), but from this point on everything goes his way. He starts making preparations for a scrumptious feast. Presently a herald proclaims a drinking competition,⁵³ and a messenger invites Dikaiopolis to dine with the priest of Dionysos. While Lamakhos is called out for a military expedition, from which he later returns comically wailing about his injuries, Dikaiopolis wins the drinking contest and returns with two pretty girls. Thus he ends the play triumphant, in an orgy of food, drink, and sex.

Some critics have considered that Dikaiopolis here is totally selfish,⁵⁴ but this seems to be a false interpretation. Certainly he enjoys himself, but he does not wish to prevent other people from enjoying themselves too. In the early part of the play it is made quite clear that he wants the Assembly to make peace for Athens as a whole, and it is not until that has been found impossible that he takes steps to make a private peace. When he has his treaty, it is not he who refuses to share it with the Akharnians; it is the Akharnians who furiously condemn it. He does share it with the Peloponnesians, Megarians, and Boiotians, in the sense that he is willing to trade with them; he bans Lamakhos from his market, but does not explicitly ban other Athenians (623-5, 720-2). The question is: do other Athenians want peace? Gradually it begins to seem that they do. Already at the beginning of the parabasis the chorus says that he is winning over the people (626). After seeing the market in operation, the chorus declares ‘I shall never receive War into my home’ (979) and looks forward to life with Reconciliation. Then comes the herald proclaiming the drinking competition; the proclamation is addressed to people in general, not just to Dikaiopolis (1000-2).

Yet there are some individuals who are excluded. Besides Lamakhos, whose request to buy some food is rejected (959-70), there is a man named Derketes of Phyle, who wants peace because the Boiotians have raided his farm and taken his pair of oxen. Derketes must have been a real man, not a fictional character, but we know nothing else about him. Possibly he was a man who had spoken in favour of war, until he himself suffered some loss by it, and Aristophanes therefore considered that he deserved no sympathy.⁵⁵ In the play Derketes asks Dikaiopolis to anoint his eyes with peace, or to give him a drop of peace to take away (1028-34). (In the first half of the play peace is represented on-stage as wine, in the second half as ointment, probably olive-oil, reflecting the fact that the Spartan invasions destroyed vines and olive-trees.) Dikaiopolis refuses and sends Derketes away, and the chorus comments that it seems he will not share with anyone the pleasant thing which he has obtained by his treaty (1037-9). The point is that anyone wanting the advantages of peace must himself make the appropriate effort. The same point is immediately made again with another example: a bridegroom asks for a spoonful of peace, so that he may avoid military service and stay at home with his bride (1051-3). Again Dikaiopolis refuses, because the bridegroom merely displays laziness and lechery instead of taking active steps to bring the war to an end. But he relents when he gets a request from the bride; she does not deserve⁵⁶ to suffer from the war, because it is not within the power of a woman to make a peace treaty.

DIKAIOPOLIS AND ATHENS

Who is Dikaiopolis? It is easy to say that he is the chief character in the story, an old countryman who makes a private peace. But this answer is inadequate. He is indeed a character in the story, but before all else he is a comedian in the theatre.⁵⁷ When the play begins, he is an actor who comes and talks to the audience. He has no name (until 406, when a third of the play is already past), and for the first minute or two he says nothing about the story or his own part in it. Instead he chats about theatrical matters, giving his comments on some recent performances; he has been in the audience to watch them.⁵⁸ Even when he begins to describe the basic situation of the story, he continues talking to the audience until 42. After that the action of the play goes forward, but Dikaiopolis is in the theatre still: his longest speech of all is addressed to the audience (497-556), and even when speaking to another character he can imply that he and the audience should side together against the chorus.

I have to seem a beggar for today,
Be who I am, but not appear to be.
The audience must realize who I am,
Whereas the chorus must stand by like fools
For me to cock a snook with phrasicles.

(Akharnians 440-4)

He is not merely an actor; he is the narrator or compère. In his first speech he tells the spectators that the scene is on the Pnyx; they do not know that until he tells them. Later he says that he is going into his house in the country (202), and then that he is going to the house of Euripides (394); in each case that forthwith becomes the scene. Wherever he goes, the play goes; and if he does not say where he is, the scene is nowhere—or rather, it is back in the theatre.

The meeting of the Assembly provides an interesting illustration of the ambivalence of his role.⁵⁹ In this scene it seems clear that the Prytaneis are played by non-speaking actors who appear at 40, but there can hardly be a further crowd of actors to represent the ordinary citizens attending the meeting. Instead the speakers simply address the audience in the theatre, so that the citizens attending the play find that they are virtually playing the part of themselves attending the Assembly. Dikaiopolis then, as an ordinary citizen, must take a seat in or near the audience. He watches and listens to the speakers, but he soon begins to find the proceedings unsatisfactory, and when he grumbles loudly to his neighbours or jumps up to protest, the dramatic effect is that of a protest emanating from the audience. At 110 he becomes so discontented that he stands up, dismisses the envoy, and himself takes over the questioning of Pseudartabas. The proceedings in the real Assembly could not be taken over by one of the citizens in that manner. But this is not the real Assembly; it is a comedy, and Dikaiopolis is intervening on behalf of the audience in his capacity as compère. In fact he virtually is the comedy.

For even comedy knows what is right,
And what I'll say, though startling, will be right.

(Akharnians 500-1)

What comedy knows, Dikaiopolis says. Dikaiopolis and comedy are here regarded as identical, and with one voice they say what is right. At this point we should also consider Dikaiopolis' name. The audience is not expected to discover his character from his name; by the time his name is given (406) his character is already well established. Nevertheless, there his name is, and it is repeated at intervals through the play. Aristophanes will not have invented a name which was unsuitable for the character or inconsistent with it. What does the name mean, then? It is a compound of words meaning ‘just’ and ‘city’, but the form of the compound does not make clear the relationship between the two parts. It might mean ‘just towards the city’ or ‘having a just city’ or ‘making the city just’, and other similar compounds in Greek poetry do not enable us to make a confident choice among these possibilities.⁶⁰ Perhaps Aristophanes did not intend the audience to get a precise sense out of the name; it just gives a general impression that the man has something to do with right behaviour in public affairs.

Dikaiopolis, then, is closely identified with the citizens in the theatre and with doing what is right. Fundamental to the effectiveness of Akharnians is the contrast between his exceptional reality and the unreality of what he achieves. An actual Athenian takes off into fantasy. The point at which the fantasy begins is the appearance of Amphitheos. Amphitheos is a god who is ready to make a peace treaty with the Spartans, if only his travelling expenses are paid, but Dikaiopolis alone is willing to pay them. Peace is obtained as if by magic. Peace is wine; peace is olive-oil; peace enables Dikaiopolis to return home to the country, and to trade with anyone he wishes. Peace leads to pleasures of every kind—but only for the man who has made the effort to obtain it. Aristophanes is saying to each Athenian: ‘Suppose there were a heaven-sent opportunity to make peace at this moment, with just a little effort on your part. Would you be ready to forget the past and make the effort? See what the result would be if you did!’

Notes

1. Cf. S. D. Olson JHS 111 (1991) 200-3.

2. These passages make my view slightly different from that of M. M. Markle Ancient Society 21 (1990) 156-7.

3. Thucydides 2.21-2.

4. Pindar Nemean 2.16-17; cf. R. Osborne Demos: the discovery of classical Attika (Cambridge 1985) 188-9, D. Whitehead The Demes of Attica (Princeton 1986) 399-400, Bowie Aristophanes 39-42.

5. Platon com. 82, schol. Akharnians 22, Polydeukes 8.104.

6. Some country people taking refuge in the town during the war could find no accommodation except in the guard-towers of the town walls (Horsemen 792-3, Thucydides 2.17.3). They would also have to perform sentry-duty against possible enemy attacks (Thucydides 2.13.6).

7. I cannot agree with Heath Political Comedy 37 n. 78 that the scene is pure fantasy. There is nothing entertaining (beyond fairy-story level) in a tale that some men rode in cushioned carriages and drank wine from golden cups. It becomes amusing satire only if it refers to real men who did something of this sort but would prefer to conceal it.

8. In the play the envoys do produce this official (not an Athenian in disguise). Cf. Dover Greek and the Greeks 293, C. C. Chiasson CP 79 (1984) 131-6.

9. IG 2² 2343; cf. S. Dow American Journal of Archaeology 73 (1969) 234-5. The inscription is twenty or thirty years later in date than Akharnians, and does not actually mention Aristophanes.

10. For a survey of different views see Lind Der Gerber Kleon 136-8.

11. On this subject in general see Rau Paratragodia, M. S. Silk in Tr.Com.Pol. 477-504.

12. For an interpretation of this joke in sexual terms see E. K. Borthwick Phoenix 48 (1994) 37-41.

13. All the fragments are assembled by C. Austin Nova Fragmenta Euripidea (Berlin 1968), and I use the numbering of that edition.

14. Cf. E. W. Handley and J. Rea The Telephus of Euripides (BICS Supplement 5, 1957), Rau Paratragodia 19-42, M. Heath CQ 37 (1987) 272-80.

15. The name Telephos is supposed to be derived from τηλου̑, ‘far away’.

16. I do not follow those editors who emend the text of schol. Akharnians 446 to convert the wish into a statement of fact.

17. But possibly this phrase was already in general use and is not intended as parody here; cf. Dover Greek and the Greeks 229.

18. This probably means one tattered piece of cloth used as a cloak. Cf. R. M. Harriott G&R 29 (1982) 40 n. 7.

19. Cf. R. M. Harriott BICS 9 (1962) 1-8. In general, on the reception of a parody by a reader or listener unfamiliar with the original work, see M. A. Rose Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-Modern (Cambridge 1993) 36-45.

20. In the next scene the rags evoke Lamakhos' contempt rather than pity, and so Dikaiopolis probably discards them at 595.

21. Recent critics have, to my mind, overstated the connections between Dikaiopolis' comic visit to Euripides and his largely serious speech about the causes of the war. See R. M. Harriott G&R 29 (1982) 35-41, H. P. Foley JHS 108 (1988) 33-47, N. R. E. Fisher G&R 40 (1993) 35-7.

22. The word used for comedy in lines 499-500 is not the usual [kōmodía] but the rarer [trugodía], ‘trygedy’. This may be intended to suggest a resemblance to tragedy; cf. O. Taplin CQ 33 (1983) 331-3, A. T. Edwards TAPA 121 (1991) 157-63.

23. I have discussed this speech in G&R 30 (1983) 148-55, and I repeat here some parts of that article. Some of my arguments have been criticized by C. Carey Rh.Mus. 136 (1993) 245-62; on the whole I am unconvinced by his objections, but I have modified my view in some details.

24. On the quarrel with Kleon see pp. 42-5; on the audience at the Lenaia see pp. 15-16.

25. W. G. Forrest Phoenix 17 (1963) 8-9. Much of Forrest's article is effectively demolished by de Ste. Croix Origins 369-70, but not the statement that the speech is parody, which is reiterated by N. R. E. Fisher G&R 40 (1993) 38.

26. Cf. Starkie Acharnians 106-8 (on lines 504 and 514).

27. σκάφος: Rennie Acharnians ad loc., Sommerstein Acharnians ad loc.

28. Herodotos 1.1-5; cf. Forrest Phoenix 17 (1963) 8, Rau Paratragodia 40, Dover Ar. Comedy 87, de Ste. Croix Origins 240, L. Edmunds YCS 26 (1980) 13, H.-J. Newiger YCS 26 (1980) 222.

29. D. Sansone ICS 10 (1985) 5-7 demurs at this statement, and observes that μὲν δή is very common in Herodotos. His observation is correct, but the phrase occurs elsewhere too and hardly seems distinctive enough to alert an audience to a parody.

30. Heath Political Comedy 17, followed by Carey Rh.Mus. 136 (1993) 257.

31. Kottabos was a game played at drinking-parties: each drinker, as he finished a cupful of wine, aimed the last drops from his cup at a target in the middle of the room. Here the meaning is that the young men had got through many cupfuls. R. Scaife GRBS 33 (1992) 25-35 argues that the game was associated with both love and war.

32. Fighting cocks were fed on garlic to make them pugnacious. The symbolic significance of garlic is discussed by E. Csapo Phoenix 47 (1993) 115-20.

33. Cf. de Ste. Croix Origins 383-6. On sycophants see pp. 74-5.

34. Whether the phrase refers also to Perikles' style of oratory is disputed. Cf. Dover Greek and the Greeks 297, N. O'Sullivan Alcidamas, Aristophanes and the Beginnings of Greek Stylistic Theory (Stuttgart 1992) 107-15.

35. Fisher G&R 40 (1993) 38 illogically asserts that it is not reconcilable with Thucydides' account because it omits some things which Thucydides mentions. Carey Rh.Mus. 136 (1993) 252-3 commits a similar error, failing to see that Dikaiopolis' and Thucydides' accounts are both likely to be incomplete, and that Perikles may have had more than one motive.

36. Cf. B. R. MacDonald Historia 32 (1983) 385-410, giving references to many other discussions.

37. Plutarch Perikles 20. This does not necessarily mean that he was a general (and therefore over thirty years old) at that date.

38. Thucydides 4.75.

39. Cf. Women at the Thesmophoria 841, Frogs 1039.

40. So Rennie Acharnians ad loc.; but the line contains the colloquial form ταυτί, and the metre infringes Porson's law.

41. So N. V. Dunbar CR 20 (1970) 269-70.

42. Cf. D. M. Lewis JHS 81 (1961) 120, M. V. Molitor CR 19 (1969) 141. …

43. The Old Oligarch ([Xenophon] Ath. Pol. 1.3) draws a contrast between the generalship and offices held for profit.

44. ‘Koisyra's son’ was Megakles, an aristocrat of the famous Alkmeonid family. (On problems in the historical genealogy see B. M. Lavelle GRBS 30 (1989) 503-13; on his reconstruction this Megakles was really the grandson of Koisyra.) Since he and Lamakhos are named after the mention of Ekbatana and Khaonia, I wonder if Megakles was one of the envoys who went to Persia in 426 … and Lamakhos went as an envoy to Khaonia in the same year.

45. On the parabasis see pp. 31-4. It is largely a digression from the main theme of the play. A. M. Bowie CQ 32 (1982) 27-40 tries to find connections, but they are not all convincing. See also Hubbard Mask 47-56.

46. I repeat here, with minor changes, a discussion of the Megarian which originally appeared in G&R 30 (1983) 156-8. A different view is taken by Carey Rh.Mus. 136 (1993) 248-9.

47. This scene shows the effect of the war, including the frequent Athenian invasions of the Megarid. It has nothing to do with the pre-war Megarian decree. Cf. de Ste. Croix Origins 237-9.

48. It is part of the joke that Dikaiopolis is taken in by the disguise. Bowie Aristophanes 33 takes it too seriously when he writes of ‘enslavement of Greeks by Greeks’.

49. For detailed exposition of the pun see Dover Ar. Comedy 63-5, L. Edmunds YCS 26 (1980) 17-18.

50. The statement of Dover Ar. Comedy 81 that Dikaiopolis drives the sycophant away ‘for interference with his well-being, not with the Megarian's’ is incorrect. Lines 819-20, 823-4, and 827 all show that the sycophant is accusing the Megarian, not Dikaiopolis. In 830 Dikaiopolis consoles and encourages the Megarian.

51. For recent discussion of sycophants in Athens see MacDowell Law 62-6, R. Osborne and D. Harvey in Nomos 83-121, S. C. Todd The Shape of Athenian Law (Oxford 1993) 92-4.

52. On phasis and the Aristophanic evidence for it, see MacDowell in Symposion 1990 (ed. M. Gagarin, Cologne 1991) 187-98.

53. On the Anthesteria see pp. 280-1. The drinking competition had presumably been in abeyance during the war because the destruction of vines had diminished the supply of wine.

54. Dover Ar. Comedy 87-8, H.-J. Newiger YCS 26 (1980) 223-4, A. M. Bowie CQ 32 (1982) 40, H. P. Foley JHS 108 (1988) 45-6, N. R. E. Fisher G&R 40 (1993) 39-41. A contrary view is rightly taken by L. P. E. Parker JHS 111 (1991) 204-6; C. Carey Rh.Mus. 136 (1993) 250, with some reason, considers that Aristophanes is deliberately vague on the matter.

55. Cf. MacDowell G&R 30 (1983) 158-60.

56. I retain the manuscripts' reading ἀξία in 1062; cf. Dover Greek and the Greeks 302 n. 41.

57. Reckford Old-and-New 63-9 gives a similar analysis, but with more emphasis on Dikaiopolis as a clown.

58. On the question whether the incident concerning Kleon (5-8) was part of a play, see pp. 95-7.

59. Cf. N. W. Slater in Tr.Com.Pol. 397-401.

60. Cf. MacDowell G&R 30 (1983) 162 n. 37.

Abbreviations and Bibliography

ABSA: Annual of the British School at Athens

AJP: American Journal of Philology

Ar.Femmes: Aristophane: Les Femmes et la Cité = Les Cahiers de Fontenay 17 (Fontenay aux Roses 1979)

Ar.Hardt: Aristophane, ed. J. M. Bremer and E. W. Handley = Entretiens Hardt 38 (Geneva 1993)

BICS: Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies

C & M: Classica et Mediaevalia

CA: Classical Antiquity

CP: Classical Philology

CQ: Classical Quarterly

CR: Classical Review

Crux: Crux, essays presented to G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, ed. P. A. Cartledge and F. D. Harvey = History of Political Thought 6 (1985) issue 1/2

F.Gr.Hist.: Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, ed. F. Jacoby

G & R: Greece and Rome

GRBS: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies

HCT: A Historical Commentary on Thucydides by A. W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, and K. J. Dover (Oxford 1945-81)

HSCP: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology

ICS: Illinois Classical Studies

IG: Inscriptiones Graecae

JHS: Journal of Hellenic Studies

MC: Museum Criticum

ML: A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions, ed. R. Meiggs and D. M. Lewis (Oxford 1969)

Nomos: Nomos, essays in Athenian law, politics and society, ed. P. Cartledge, P. Millett, and S. Todd (Cambridge 1990)

Noth.Dion: Nothing to do with Dionysos?, ed. J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin (Princeton 1990)

P.Oxy.: Oxyrhynchus Papyri

Rh.Mus.: Rheinisches Museum für Philologie

TAPA: Transactions of the American Philological Association

Tr.Com.Pol.: Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis, ed. A. H. Sommerstein, S. Halliwell, J. Henderson, and B. Zimmerman (Bari 1993)

YCS: Yale Classical Studies

ZPE: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik

The following list of modern books is not a complete bibliography, but gives details of some works for which I use abbreviated references. Details of other works, cited only once or twice, are given in the footnotes.

Albini, Umberto. Interpretazioni teatrali (Florence 1972-81).

Bowie, A. M. Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy (Cambridge 1993).

Carrière, J. C. Le Carnaval et la politique (Paris 1979).

Cartledge, Paul. Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd (London 1990).

Cassio, Albio C. Commedia e partecipazione (Naples 1985).

———. Edition of Aristophanes Banchettanti (Pisa 1977).

Croiset, Maurice. Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens (trans. James Loeb, London 1909).

David, E. Aristophanes and Athenian Society of the early fourth century B. C. (Leiden 1984).

Dearden, C. W. The Stage of Aristophanes (London 1976).

Dover, K. J. Aristophanic Comedy (London 1972).

———. Greek and the Greeks (Oxford 1987).

———. Greek Popular Morality (Oxford 1974).

———. Editions of Aristophanes Clouds (Oxford 1968), Frogs (1993).

Ehrenberg, Victor. The People of Aristophanes (Oxford, 2nd edn. 1951).

Fisher, Raymond K. Aristophanes' Clouds: purpose and technique (Amsterdam 1984).

Harriott, Rosemary M. Aristophanes, poet and dramatist (London 1986).

Heath, Malcolm. Political Comedy in Aristophanes (Göttingen 1987).

Henderson, Jeffrey. The Maculate Muse (New Haven 1975; repr. with addenda, New York 1991).

———. Edition of Aristophanes Lysistrata (Oxford 1987).

Hofmann, Heinz. Mythos and Komödie (Hildesheim 1976).

Hubbard, Thomas K. The Mask of Comedy (Ithaca, NY, 1991).

Hugill, William M. Panhellenism in Aristophanes (Chicago 1936).

Kassell, R., and Austin, C. Poetae Comici Graeci (Berlin 1983-).

Kraus, Walther. Aristophanes' politische Komödien (Österreichische Akad. der Wiss., Phil.-hist. Klasse, Sitzungsberichte 453, 1985).

Lind, Hermann. Der Gerber Kleon in den ‘Rittern’ des Aristophanes (Frankfurt 1990).

MacDowell, Douglas M. The Law in Classical Athens (London 1978).

———. Edition of Aristophanes Wasps (Oxford 1971).

———. Edition of Demosthenes Against Meidias (Oxford 1990).

McLeish, Kenneth. The Theatre of Aristophanes (London 1980).

Marianetti, Marie C. Religion and Politics in Aristophanes' Clouds (Hildesheim 1992).

Mastromarco, Giuseppi. Storia di una commedia di Atene (Florence 1974).

Moulton, Carroll. Aristophanic Poetry (Göttingen 1981).

Murray, Gilbert. Aristophanes: A Study (Oxford 1933).

Newiger, Hans-Joachim. Metapher und Allegorie (Munich 1957).

O’Regan, Daphne E. Rhetoric, Comedy, and the Violence of Language in Aristophanes' Clouds (New York 1992).

Ostwald, Martin. From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty of Law (Berkeley 1986).

Paduano, Guido. Il giudice giudicato (Bologna 1974).

Perusino, Franca. Dalla commedia antica alla commedia di mezzo (Urbino 1987).

Pickard-Cambridge, Arthur W. Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (2nd edn. rev. T. B. L. Webster, Oxford 1962).

———. The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (2nd edn. rev. John Gould and D. M. Lewis, Oxford 1968, repr. with addenda 1988).

Platnauer, Maurice. Edition of Aristophanes Peace (Oxford 1964).

Rau, Peter. Paratragodia (Munich 1967).

Reckford, Kenneth J. Aristophanes' Old-and-New Comedy 1: Six Essays in Perspective (Chapel Hill 1987).

Rennie, W. Edition of Aristophanes Acharnians (London 1909).

Rogers, Benjamin B. Editions of Aristophanes Acharnians (London 1910), Knights (1910), Clouds (2nd edn. 1916), Wasps (2nd edn. 1915), Peace (2nd edn. 1913), Birds (1906), Lysistrata (1911), Thesmophoriazusae (1904), Frogs (2nd edn. 1919), Ecclesiazusae (1902), Plutus (1907).

Rothwell, Kenneth S. Politics and Persuasion in Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae (Leiden 1990).

Russo, Carlo Ferdinando. Aristophanes, an Author for the Stage (London 1994).

Ste. Croix, G. E. M. de. The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London 1972).

Sifakis, G. M. Parabasis and Animal Choruses (London 1971).

Sommerstein, Alan H. Editions of Aristophanes Acharnians (Warminster 1980), Knights (1981), Clouds (1982), Wasps (1983), Peace (1985), Birds (1987), Lysistrata (1990), Thesmophoriazusae (1994).

Stanford, W. B. Edition of Aristophanes Frogs (2nd edn., London 1963).

Starkie, W. J. M. Edition of Aristophanes Acharnians (London 1909).

Stone, Laura M. Costume in Aristophanic Poetry (Salem 1984).

Taaffe, Lauren K. Aristophanes and Women (London 1993).

Taillardat, Jean. Les Images d’Aristophane (2nd edn., Paris 1965).

Thiercy, Pascal. Aristophane: fiction et dramaturgie (Paris 1986).

Ussher, R. G. Edition of Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae (Oxford 1973).

Vetta, Massimo. Edition of Aristophanes Le Donne all’assemblea (Milan 1989).

Whitman, Cedric H. Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, Mass. 1964).

Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. Edition of Aristophanes Lysistrate (Berlin 1927).

Zanetto, Giuseppe. Edition of Aristophanes Gli Uccelli (Milan 1987).

Zannini Quirini, Bruno. Nephelokokkygia: la prospettiva mitica degli Uccelli di Aristofane (Rome 1987).

Zimmermann, Bernhard. Untersuchungen zur Form und dramatischen Technik der Aristophanischen Komödien (Königstein and Frankfurt, 1984-7).