SOURCE: Strauss, Leo. “The Other Plays: The Acharnians.” In Socrates and Aristophanes, pp. 57-79. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.

[In the following essay, Strauss offers a detailed analysis of the Acharnians.]

The Acharnians begins, like the Clouds, with a soliloquy by an oldish rustic who gives vent to his discomfort; but in the Acharnians the soliloquy takes place not indoors but in public, and it concerns matters that are not merely private but also public. Regarding the Clouds, one may doubt whether the oldish rustic Strepsiades or Socrates is the chief character; regarding the Acharnians, there can be no doubt that the oldish rustic Dikaiopolis is the chief character. Dikaiopolis has come to the Pnyx, as is his wont, very early. He is the very first to arrive, long before the Assembly begins, while the other citizens and even the magistrates, in their indifference to the concerns of the city, linger elsewhere and arrive only at the last moment. He is the only Athenian for whom the Assembly can not begin soon enough. Compelled by the war to live in town, he longs for his village where he produced everything he needed; he loathes the town where he has to buy everything. While waiting for the beginning of the Assembly he passes his time by doing a great variety of things, among them yawning and writing. At the beginning of the play we find him engaged in attempting to count the very few pleasures—exactly four—that he had in town, whereas he had there innumerable pains. He succeeds in enumerating a political pleasure, a Music pain, a Music pleasure, and another Music pain. We learn from his enumeration that he loves Aeschylus. After having mentioned his second pain he turns not to his third pleasure but to his third pain, his present pain—a pain so great and so intense that it prevents him from even completing his enumeration of his four pleasures. His present pain is connected with the war, the source of his innumerable pains. Compared with these pains, even the pains that he derived from bad poetry or music might well appear to him to have been pleasures; to say nothing of the fact that bad poetry or music, by virtue of being laughable, affords some pleasure. The political pleasure that he felt was caused by Kleon's having been heavily fined, thanks to the knights; it is possible that this event occurred in a comedy, rather than in life. Surely Dikaiopolis is as little an average rustic as Strepsiades; he is an unusually Music rustic. It is because he loves the Muses that he loathes war more than the average rustic. Loathing the war wholeheartedly, he has come to today's Assembly resolved to do everything he can in favor of peace. His private woes—in contradistinction to Strepsiades'—can not be removed except by political action, or his private pleasures can not be obtained except by benefiting the city.

Dikaiopolis finds wholly unexpected and even miraculous support. The first speaker in the Assembly, Amphitheos, and only he, has been charged by the gods to treat with the Spartans about peace; although he is an Athenian citizen he is not a human being (cf. 46 and 57), but himself an immortal. He needs the assistance of the Assembly because the magistrates have declined to supply him with funds for travel to Sparta. The gods obviously wish the Athenians to show their earnest desire for peace (without such earnestness they do not deserve peace, or there will be no genuine peace); and the clearest proof that men wish something earnestly is that they are prepared to spend money for it. Surely, the peace must be negotiated between the Athenians and the Spartans; if an immortal is to negotiate for the Athenians, he must himself be an Athenian, and he must travel to Sparta like an Athenian, i.e., he needs money for travel; but being an immortal, Amphitheos, as he says, has no travel money. The Athenians do not pay the slightest attention to the will of the gods. Against Dikaiopolis' protest, Amphitheos is silenced by the police. Dikaiopolis' pain is increased when the Assembly, far from discussing peace with Sparta, turns to alliances with barbarians against Sparta. The Athenians who had been sent to the king of Persia as ambassadors years ago have finally come back. One of them gives an account of the unheard-of things they have experienced abroad and of the efforts they have made on behalf of the city. To Dikaiopolis' disgust, the ambassador is unaware of the shocking contrast between their experiences and the simultaneous experiences of the bulk of the Athenians, between the wartime austerity in Athens and their own leisurely progress to the Persian court in the utmost comfort, being wined and dined—to say nothing of the even grander progress of the Persian king to his privy. The Athenian ambassadors introduce the Persian ambassador, the king's Eye. He has an immense eye in the midst of his forehead. It is not an Aristophanean character who understood “the king's Eye” to mean a man who is almost nothing but an eye; the poet himself presents the king's Eye as a Big Eye. The poet himself does what Strepsiades does: He understands things too literally; generally speaking, he achieves some of his comical effects by Strepsiadizing, by making himself more stupid than he is. Or, to state this from the point of view of Socrates—of a man whose fundamental defect induces him, among other things, to regard the imitation as prior to the imitated—Strepsiades is a comedian (Clouds 296). Dikaiopolis' strong loathing of Persian bombast and Athenian boasting, as well as of everything tending to perpetuate the war—perhaps co-operating with his ignorance of the Persian tongue and Persian gestures, and the Persian's ignorance of the Greek tongue and Greek gestures—make him certain that the whole embassy from the Persian king is a gross fraud perpetrated by the Athenian ambassadors. But so great is the Athenians' addiction to the war that Dikaiopolis' apparent unmasking of the Persian ambassadors is not even noticed by the Assembly. His patience has now reached its limit. He decides on an enormous and grand deed. He pays Amphitheos the money required for the journey to Sparta and back out of his own pocket, so that the immortal citizen can bring a truce for him alone, i.e., for him, his wife, and his children. He knows that he acts according to the will of the gods and that peace is best for the city as a whole, i.e., that his action is just; the city that prefers war to peace is unjust. He must act for the good of the city against the will of the city. Yet, since he can not force the city to make peace, the most he can do, in order to be just, is to make peace for himself alone. Amphitheos, who alone has been charged by the gods to make peace with Sparta, is to make that peace for Dikaiopolis alone (52, 131). The superhuman and the private conspire against the city.

After Amphitheos leaves, the Assembly is addressed by the Athenian ambassadors to King Sitalkes, who introduce the troops sent in support of Athens by that ally. While Dikaiopolis never believes that the Persian king would send gold to the Athenians, he is but too certain that the Thracian king has sent mercenaries for gold, at atrociously high pay, for these murderous and thievish fellows are a menace to every Athenian. Fortunately he observes, or rather invents, an omen which, by putting an end to the meeting of the Assembly, prevents a decision in favor of the Thracians' pay. As the contrast between his failure regarding the Persian embassy and his success regarding the Thracian embassy shows, fraud can not be fought by the truth, but only by fraud. The Assembly is barely dissolved when Amphitheos returns from Sparta; he has performed his mission with the speed of an immortal. Dispatch and secrecy are indispensable for the success of treason, as Machiavelli would say. Since he made the journey within such a short time, he must have netted considerable savings from his travel funds; he does not return the surplus to Dikaiopolis, who indeed does not even ask for it. It is not necessary to assume that Amphitheos is greedy for money, since he is in a great hurry because he is being pursued by some old Acharnians. Dikaiopolis does not pay attention to the dangers threatening Amphitheos. He is only interested in the treaties that Amphitheos brought back. With characteristic literalness—spondai means both truce and libations—and sensuality he chooses the truce that smells best and tastes best, i.e., that runs for the greatest number of years. Freed from the war, he will celebrate the rural Dionysia. Amphitheos however must run away from the Acharnians who pursue him. He is never seen or heard of again. Amphitheos' action is kept completely separate from the main action of the play; Amphitheos is a Euripidean deus ex machina, or rather the comic equivalent thereof. His speed is equal to his fear. He will not benefit from Dikaiopolis' truce. The only benefit that he himself derives from his philanthropic action is the possession of the travel funds.

The Acharnians do not find Amphitheos. They mistake Dikaiopolis for Amphitheos. The mistake is inevitable: Dikaiopolis and no one else celebrates the Dionysia in the country. The mistake is in fact no mistake at all, for the crime that arouses their patriotic indignation was in the first place committed by Dikaiopolis, and its fruits are enjoyed only by him. Dikaiopolis has then to face the Acharnians. Amphitheos' action proves to be only the necessary condition for Dikaiopolis' private peace, and not its sufficient condition. He must remove his private woes by private and, in addition, purely human action. The alleged crime against gods and men for which the Acharnians pursue him is treason; he has made peace for himself alone, with utter disregard of the city, by negotiating privately with the city's hated enemy; his pursuers act on behalf of the city; they embody the spirit of the city: They are old men, Marathon fighters, the most passionate haters in Athens of the Spartans, from whom they have suffered more than did any other part of the city; accordingly they hate Dikaiopolis even more than they hate Kleon. (Dikaiopolis too hates Kleon; Dikaiopolis and the Acharnians belong to the same political party; their opposition is not located on the political plane.) The Acharnians remind us of the Just Speech. Accordingly, Dikaiopolis—in spite of his name—reminds us of the Unjust Speech. Surely Dikaiopolis has in common with Strepsiades that he puts his family above the city. Yet while Strepsiades turns against the city's laws, or at least some of them, Dikaiopolis turns against the city's war; and while Strepsiades acts against the will of the gods, Dikaiopolis acts in agreement with it. Accordingly, while the Clouds is a playful presentation of the issue of father-beating, the Acharnians is a playful presentation of the much more political, grave, and explosive issue of treason; and whereas the father-beating is only partly successful, the treason is entirely successful.

Dikaiopolis is not conscious of any guilt. He has simply forgotten the city. Besides, he had the gods on his side in making peace with Sparta for himself and his family. The family is more powerfully present in the Acharnians than in the Clouds; there are no quarrels within Dikaiopolis' family. Dikaiopolis is less unerotic than Strepsiades. The Acharnians find him engaged in sacrificing and praying to Dionysos; without knowing it, he thus may gain the help of that god against the Acharnians. Dionysos is a god of sex, but not of the family; in his phallic song Dikaiopolis lovingly and jubilantly calls the god's companion adulterer and pederast, and he praises the pleasure of lying with a young slave girl in the woods. The Acharnians refuse to listen to anything Dikaiopolis might say in justification of his truce; his treason being manifest, there is nothing for them to do but to punish him with death. Realizing that the Acharnians will not permit him to say anything in favor of the Spartans, he first tries to defend his truce with the Spartans without any regard to its being a truce with the Spartans. He implies that not every private truce is defensible or decent, wholly regardless of who and of what character the enemy is; perhaps he means that in order to be decent a private truce must not be made from cowardice (from preferring slavery to fighting), or must be authorized by the gods. Dikaiopolis shows by deed that he is not a coward, yet he never justifies his action by referring to Amphitheos' commission; he never even mentions Amphitheos to the Acharnians or to anybody else: Even the Acharnians might not have believed the story. More simply, if peace is good and war is bad, it does not seem to make a difference who and of what character the enemy is. Yet can peace be better than war against an absolutely unjust enemy? Dikaiopolis is therefore driven to assert that the Spartans are not absolutely unjust, that not all injustices have been committed by the Spartans or that some injustice has been done to the Spartans. The Acharnians are still more incensed by Dikaiopolis' boldness, not to say impudence, in defending the enemy. Yet he goes still further. He almost demands that he be given the opportunity to prove the justice of his case in a court of law; he surely demands that he should be permitted to state his case with his head on the executioner's block. The Acharnians now can no longer restrain themselves. In this most desperate situation Dikaiopolis stops them by convincing them that he has as hostages for his life their very best friends, i.e., that he completely controls their sources of livelihood. Thereupon the Acharnians permit him not only to live but to say anything he pleases in favor of his Spartan friends: They who were such passionate enemies of the Spartans because of the damage the Spartans had done to their property cease to be passionate enemies of the Spartans when their passion appears to them to lead to complete destruction of their property; in other words, they who regarded the betrayal of the fatherland as a heinous crime, which they must capitally punish on the spot, would rather tolerate betrayal of the fatherland than betrayal of the sources of their livelihood (340, 290). Dikaiopolis has succeeded in convincing the fire-eating Marathon fighters that there is a higher good than the fatherland. He has stopped them and disarmed them. He could have sent them away. But he is a just man; he uses his stranglehold on them not to escape punishment for a capital crime but only to get a hearing for his side of the case. In spite or because of his victory, he is going to state the case for the Spartans with his head on the executioner's block, with the understanding that he will be executed if he does not convince the Acharnians of the justice of the Spartans. His justice—the justice of his apparent act of treason—stands or falls by the injustice of the Athenians' war against Sparta, or by the justice of the Spartans' war against Athens. It is not sufficient that the Athenians become inclined to peace because they are tired of the war; they must first come to acknowledge their war guilt; they must free themselves from their conceited patriotism. Only then can Dikaiopolis' peace be secure. But the fact that his action is just does not prove that it is legal; he settles illegally the question of whether the injustice of a city's war entitles a citizen to withdraw from that war. Still, Dikaiopolis' action against the will of the city in favor of his family succeeds because it develops into a public demonstration and thus shows a way to the city; whereas Strepsiades' action against the will of the city in favor of his family fails because it does not show a way to the city.

After they have seen that Dikaiopolis is an honest man, the Acharnians, as one might have expected, recover their open hostility to him; they are now anxious that he undergo his quasi-trial. But he is not yet ready for it. He is not yet able to speak to the Acharnians. He reveals his situation to the audience, or to us, in a soliloquy. He will not go back on his promise to speak bravely and frankly in favor of the Spartans, the enemy, but he is not eager to die. He has many fears; he knows that he is one against many, not to say against all;¹ against him the Acharnians (old rustics, Marathon fighters) and Kleon are united; he is much more exposed than Socrates. And, in contradistinction to Socrates, he is unable or unwilling to win his case by hook or by crook. He must reveal his thought on a most dangerous subject to his fellow citizens without any cleverness or disguise; he must reveal himself; he must strip. Hitherto we knew him only as an oldish rustic, if a particularly Music rustic, an Attic Hesiod, as it were. Now he reveals himself as the comic poet Aristophanes himself. In other words, Aristophanes first comes to sight as something lower than he is, in the disguise of an oldish rustic. Among the many things that Dikaiopolis admits fearing, we may then count without hesitation the danger that the Acharnians will not receive the first prize. Dikaiopolis' danger is so great, not only because of his justice and the unpopular character of his cause, but also because he can not use his only power—that of the comic poet—against men filled to overflowing with righteous indignation. What he needs is something that the comic poet is unable to provide: He must arouse his mortal enemies' compassion. Only by appearing as a man who is not provocative, fearless, or fear-inspiring, but most pitiable, fearful, or submissive can he who fears to die act fearlessly. Despite his immense courage, he needs, as the Acharnians see, a most clever and complete disguise, but they do not see that the disguise must not reveal his cleverness; under no circumstances must he appear to the Acharnians to be clever. Even the disguise of a rustic is no longer sufficient; he needs a still lower disguise; he must go beyond Strepsiadizing. In order to be able to endure his ordeal, he needs such a disguise as only that tragic poet who is a past master in arousing compassion can provide. However much he loves Aeschylus, he now needs the help of Euripides. Without knowing or revealing it, he, the lover of peace, who puts the household above the city, was all the time in sympathy with Euripides or the Unjust Speech (or Pheidippides), rather than with the Just Speech (or Strepsiades) or the Marathon fighter Aeschylus, who praises Ares and Lamachos, Dikaiopolis' chief antagonist.² Strepsiades' cause becomes publicly defensible through Socrates' art and thus destroys itself; Dikaiopolis' cause becomes publicly defensible through Euripides' art and thus preserves itself. Considerable parts of the Acharnians are parodies of Euripidean tragedy; but just like the other characteristics of the Aristophanean comedy, his parodies of tragedies too have their noncomic meaning. This is shown by the mere fact that each parody performs a necessary function within the particular comedy in which it occurs. Surely in the present case the parody of Euripides indicates that Aristophanes is in need of Euripides or “depends” on him in a manner that is comically reflected in Dikaiopolis' need for Euripides.

Dikaiopolis' going to Euripides resembles Strepsiades' going to Socrates. Just as Strepsiades first meets a pupil of Socrates through whom he receives the first inkling of Socrates' wisdom, Dikaiopolis first meets a servant of Euripides through whom he receives an inkling of Euripides' wisdom; according to Euripides' servant, a man himself is his body rather than the mind (cf. Clouds 1275-76). But Dikaiopolis does not commit the solecism committed by Strepsiades in the corresponding scene: Although he is in much greater danger than Strepsiades, he does not pray to the gods. This difference is not sufficiently explained by the fact that Euripides is much easier of access than Socrates. Euripides' easiness of access contrasts with its alleged “impossibility” (402, 408); Dikaiopolis can easily convince Euripides that what Euripides asserts to be impossible is in fact possible, for Euripides himself is a master of rendering possible the impossible by the deus ex machina: Euripides himself is the deus ex machina. Yet, while Socrates descends to Strepsiades, Euripides does not descend: Tragedy must not mingle with comedy; tragedy can not incorporate verses from comedies, whereas comedy may—nay, must—incorporate verses from tragedy. Comedy is essentially preceded by tragedy. In contradistinction to Strepsiades, Dikaiopolis does not introduce himself by adding his father's name to his own.

Dikaiopolis asks Euripides for the rags and six other accoutrements of his most pitiable and beggarly hero, who was at the same time a clever speaker, on the ground that he needs them to save his life. Euripides grants his request without making any serious difficulty. Speaking as one clever dramatist to another, Dikaiopolis can afford to disregard entirely the dramatic illusion: The beggar's outfit is not meant to deceive the audience, but only the chorus, which, while pretending to consist of old Acharnians, must only pretend to see in him a most pitiable man in mortal danger at its hands. The comic poet can not go further in urging his audience not to take him seriously but to laugh with him about him. Yet this extreme self-depreciation is not indeed the most compassion-arousing, but the most laughable or most lowly disguise. Comedy itself is the most effective disguise of wisdom. The parody of a tragic hero in filthy rags is a still better disguise than that tragic hero himself. In other words, in pretending to take the majority of the citizens (the audience consisting chiefly of genuine “Acharnians”) into his confidence against a tiny minority (the chorus consisting of the alleged Acharnians), he in fact conspires with a wise minority in the audience against the large majority.

After he has left Euripides' halls, Dikaiopolis returns to his role. Inasmuch as he is now a beggar, yet through what he says in his speech pretends to be more than a beggar, he resembles the Unjust Speech as the latter was in the good old times (Clouds 921-22). He trembles again at his great task: His trembling heart must speak in favor of the Spartans, with him in danger of losing his head, but at his command it ceases to tremble. The Acharnians, however, regard his hard-won intrepidity as sheer impudence. He addresses his speech not to the chorus but to the audience, and he speaks in the capacity not of a comic poet disguised as a beggar but of both a beggar and a comic poet. That is to say, his speech is not entirely jocular. He addresses the city regarding the city. He had tried to do this in the Assembly, where he appeared as a simple rustic, but there he utterly failed; he succeeds in doing it as comic poet. He apologizes for addressing the city regarding the city in a comedy: A single man can not oppose the whole city except most humbly, for there is an enormous contrast between the puniness of the individual (367) and the grandeur of the city and of that for which the city stands, the just things. Yet it may happen that the city despises the just things and that the latter thus become in their way as lowly as the comedy, or that only the comedy can safely say the just things. He warns his audience that what he is going to say will be harsh but just. It is just, not only by what it says, but also by the manner in which it says it: Dikaiopolis-Aristophanes can not be accused by Kleon of speaking ill of the city in the presence of strangers, for the Acharnians is performed on the Lenaian festival where only Athenians—citizens or metics—are present. His hatred of the Spartans is, of course, second to no man's, for his property too has been damaged by them (he thus denies implicitly that he is a beggar); but the Spartans are not the cause of all our evils. Above all, the Spartans are not responsible for the war. God forbid that Dikaiopolis should say that the Athenians, the city of Athens, started the war. Just as Plato's Socrates distinguishes between the unblamable laws and the blameworthy human administration of the laws, Dikaiopolis distinguishes between the unblamable city and the blameworthy human administration of the city. To mention only the main example, some silly Athenian youths had kidnaped a Megarian strumpet, whereupon the Megarians, in their anger, kidnaped two strumpets belonging to Aspasia, whereupon Perikles saw fit to vindicate the honor of that foreign female by causing his Megarian decree to be passed. The Megarians, reduced to extremities, asked the Spartans to induce the Athenians to repeal that decree but “we”—i.e., the city—refused to repeal it. This meant war, for Sparta had to help her unjustly attacked ally, Megara, just as Athens would have helped any of her unjustly attacked allies. After having slyly appealed to an anti-Periklean prejudice, Dikaiopolis then unmistakably asserts that not Perikles but Athens, only Athens, is responsible for the war, and that the Spartans are wholly guiltless: Only because the city's war is altogether unjust is his private peace altogether just. In the Assembly he had not even hinted at the Athenians' war guilt, although one could say that Amphitheos' or the gods' action implies that the Athenians must take the initiative toward peace because the Athenians started the war. However this may be, Dikaiopolis' peace is now an accomplished fact, and he must defend it in the best publicly defensible manner. This means that his public defense does not necessarily reveal his view of the origin of the war or the true motive of his private peace.

Dikaiopolis' well-prepared speech has a resounding success: He convinces one-half of the Acharnians. It matters little that the other half is angrier than ever (his having said just things against the city makes matters not better but worse for him); for treason ceases to be treason when the city is split into two: Dikaiopolis now has powerful defenders; the Acharnians still opposed to him must now kill the other Acharnians before they can kill him. By successfully withstanding the first assault of what is in fact an alliance, he enables himself to split the alliance. The Acharnians, whom he failed to persuade but who are now seriously threatened, call Lamachos, the war spirit incarnate, to their help. Dikaiopolis would be lost if Lamachos and the hostile half of the Acharnians were to join forces. He can not possibly win Lamachos over to his side; he must therefore try to arouse enmity between the Acharnians and Lamachos. He must deny a common ground to the Acharnians and Lamachos; he must find a common ground between the Acharnians and himself. There is no common ground between him and the still-hostile Acharnians regarding the responsibility for the war. He therefore buries his accusation of the city in silence and worse than silence. Instead he takes issue with Lamachos' accusing him of being a beggar. He who had not hesitated when it suited him to describe himself as a beggar (497) can not now be a beggar (and still less a comic poet), for Acharnians have nothing in common with beggars. He now describes himself as a respectable citizen—just a plain citizen like all other plain citizens, a citizen soldier, and no brass like Lamachos. The only defense left to Lamachos³ is that he and his like were duly elected to their high position by the demos, which amounts to saying that by blaming Lamachos and the like one blames the demos. Dikaiopolis can not meet this defense, but he turns the tables by emphasizing the fact that having been elected by the demos does not mean living like the demos and therewith truly belonging to the demos. While his appeal to anti-Periklean resentment had been only partly successful, his appeal to anti-brass resentment is entirely successful, for the large majority does not belong to the brass. When he suggests that he made his private peace not because of Athens' war guilt but because of his indignation over the privileges enjoyed by these war profiteers—prior to the war they were good-for-nothings and beggars; during the war they are given lucrative assignments behind the fighting lines—and the suffering of the common people—in peace hardworking honest citizens, during the war grayhaired, underpaid, and underfed fighters bossed around by fellows who could be their sons—all Acharnians come over to his side. Even Lamachos' indication that Dikaiopolis' argument is an attack on democracy is of no avail to him, for democracy means—does it not?—that everything should be for the demos. The justice of the war remains controversial; the unjust distribution of the burdens of the war is an unbeatable argument: Even those Acharnians who, from hatred of the Spartans or simple patriotism, could not bear to hear of Athens' war guilt, are won over by the appeal to their envy. No one trained by Socrates could have done better than, or even as well as, Dikaiopolis. Armed with Euripides' devices and political shrewdness one can overcome the superior force of the city much better than with the support of the Clouds and of Socrates' forensic rhetoric.

Lamachos leaves, declaring that he will go on waging war with the Spartans and all their allies at all times, in all places, with all branches of the armed services, and with all might. Dikaiopolis, however, invites all foreign enemies of the city to come to trade with him, i.e., to sell him their merchandise, but not with Lamachos. This is quite surprising, not because beggars do not have the wherewithal to buy (for we know already that Dikaiopolis is not a beggar), but since, as he made clear in his initial soliloquy, a major reason why he loathed life in town and therefore longed for peace was precisely that in town he had to buy everything, whereas in the country or in peace he did not buy anything. A yet greater surprise is about to come. The chorus tells us that Dikaiopolis is victorious in the debate and that he persuades the demos regarding his truce. This action of the demos, and it alone, makes his peace secure. We expect the next step to be the formal transformation of his private truce into a public truce. This precisely had been his initial desire: to have peace, public peace, so that he can stop buying things. Now he has overcome all obstacles to the fulfillment of his heart's desire. But now he has ceased to desire at all “public peace and no buying.” Dikaiopolis turns away not only from the badly managed city but from the city simply. This striking change can not be explained by the fact that he alone has borne the cost of the private truce, for the converted demos will gladly reimburse him. We are compelled to explain the self-contradiction by the fact that he plays a variety of roles (Music rustic, comic poet, comic poet disguised as a beggar, beggar, plain citizen soldier); the two incompatible positions regarding buying belong to different roles. This compels us indeed to wonder who is the true Dikaiopolis, or who is Dikaiopolis himself. There can be no doubt as to Dikaiopolis' playing a variety of roles; at least one of these roles was assumed by him openly, if in the privacy of Euripides' house, before our eyes. With a comparatively slight exaggeration one may say that in the Acharnians, in contrast to the Clouds, everything takes place in the open; for Dikaiopolis' action, in contrast to Strepsiades' (or Socrates'), requires the support of the public: To defraud one's creditors (as distinguished from the canceling of debts through legal or revolutionary action) is not publicly defensible, whereas peacemaking is. Accordingly, there is no action during the parabasis of the Acharnians, whereas in the Clouds both Strepsiades' and Pheidippides' indoor instruction takes place during the parabaseis. For in the Acharnians, in contrast to the Clouds, the action is completed prior to the parabasis: Dikaiopolis has achieved all that he wants; he is no longer in any danger and is therefore no longer in need of any disguise or concealment; after the parabasis, and only then, can he show himself, i.e., his true motive in making his private peace. Accordingly, the action of the Clouds is almost completely separated from the action of the audience; the only action that is expected from the audience of the Clouds will follow the conclusion of the play, namely, the awarding or not awarding of the prize to the play as play. In the Acharnians, however, the action of the play depends decisively on the action of the audience, for Dikaiopolis needs the support of the audience for the security of his private peace: The destruction of the dramatic illusion (as in the open assumption by Dikaiopolis of a dramatic role) is part of the dramatic illusion. This is connected with the fact that in the Acharnians the chief actor is the comic poet himself.

As we have already stated, the parabasis of the Acharnians has a very different function from the parabasis of the Clouds. In the Clouds no one except the chorus of Clouds speaks for Aristophanes. In the Acharnians, however, Dikaiopolis speaks for Aristophanes (377-79, 502-3), and the chorus of Acharnians are Dikaiopolis' deadly enemies. They must first be converted by Dikaiopolis to his cause before they can speak, as they must in the parabasis, on behalf of the poet. That conversion was consummated immediately before the parabasis. After having stripped, i.e., ceased to pretend that they are old Acharnians, the chorus chants the praises of Aristophanes' excellence. This praise has become necessary because he has been calumniated by Kleon as a man who treats the city comically and insults the demos. His reply shows that Kleon's action had some foundation. He makes the chorus assert on his behalf that he has done great service to the Athenians by combating their vanity or boastfulness and thus preventing their being fooled by the flatteries of foreigners. Boastfulness is a vice that comedy hits and hurts more directly than any other vice.⁴ Comedy would be powerless against righteous indignation if righteous indignation were not always on the verge of turning into boastfulness. Aristophanes also taught the Athenians to treat their subject cities justly. Therefore these foreigners now come to Athens full of eagerness to see that most excellent poet who had dared to say the just things among the Athenians. The poet shows by deed that one way of debunking boasters is to outboast them. His boasting reaches its peak when he makes the chorus assert that the fame of the poet's daring reached the very king of Persia—the center of the greatest pomp and pompousness—who thereupon predicted the Athenians' victory in the war on the ground that they possess not only the superior navy but also this poet who, by rebuking them as severely as he does, proves to be the best adviser. The poet thus tacitly suggests that the Persian king will not ally himself with Sparta, that Athens' prospects in the war are excellent, and hence that it would be foolish for the city to make peace now. Aristophanes' excellence is also the reason why the Spartans are anxious for a peace through which they would get hold of the poet. The Spartans show silently what the king of Persia showed by speech: The man most important for Athens' well-being is Aristophanes. The poet tacitly warns his fellow citizens against making peace with Sparta under the condition mentioned, i.e., the only one under which peace can be obtained now, for they need him badly because he treats the just things comically. The poet has given two most powerful reasons why he does not attempt to transform his private peace into a public peace. Comical treatment of the just things is necessary to the extent to which the city does not tolerate the blame of its injustice; the only safe treatment of this dangerous subject is a comical one. In other words, the noncomical teaching of the just things is in danger of becoming boastful. In addition, the poet will lead the Athenians to bliss by teaching the best things: He teaches the best things by his comical treatment of the just things (like his comical treatment of the rights and wrongs of the origin of the Peloponnesian War in the Acharnians). The best things are then not simply the just things. Nevertheless, both the good and the just are Aristophanes' allies, while his enemy is Kleon above everything and everyone else—Kleon who is both bad and unjust (664), whom the Acharnians had hated from the beginning, and whom they now hate even more.

In the parabasis proper of the Clouds, Aristophanes rebukes the Athenians, i.e., the city (525-26), in his own name. In the corresponding part of the Acharnians he limits himself to replying to those who rebuked him; if he rebukes anyone there, it is Kleon. This is in accordance with all that went before (515-16), especially with the fact that in his role as Dikaipolis he has won the city over to his side. He leaves the rebuke of the city in the parabasis of the Acharnians to the Acharnians speaking of their own concern as distinguished from the poet's concern. He thus brings out the profound difference between himself and the Acharnians⁵ and therefore also between his understanding of his peace and the Acharnians' understanding of it. As he has made abundantly clear, the city is much more in need of him than he is of the city. The Acharnians too have great merit about the city, but through services in the past: They are old citizens and nothing else; they are the very men who fought at Marathon two generations ago. Hence they are useless to the city now and are treated accordingly by the city. Whereas Dikaiopolis can take care of himself, the Acharnians depend on the city. Whereas Dikaiopolis only played the beggar, the Acharnians are truly beggars. The true character of the Acharnians thus revealed to them and by them explains their action against Dikaiopolis. It also explains why they, and not Dikaiopolis, blame the city: The city neglects its best citizens, i.e., its oldest citizens. Their very Muse is Acharnian and nothing but Acharnian; it is not Aristophanes' Muse. Her effect reminds them of what goes on in the kitchen when a most savory meat is prepared. They purpose a law to prevent old, slow, decrepit men like themselves from being at the mercy of young, clever, and glib speakers in the law courts: Old men ought to plead only against old men and young men against young; that is to say, those by nature weaker should be protected by the law against those who are by nature stronger; the law should establish equality, not by disregarding natural inequality, but by considering it. The Acharnians obviously do not care whether what they say about their decrepitude detracts from the glory of Dikaiopolis' victory: Their fight against Dikaiopolis was their last fight; their indignation was weakened throughout by their old age; they could be persuaded because they were not angry young men.

The second half of the play (719-end) shows how Dikaiopolis uses his victory or his peace; it reveals the end for which he has sought that peace. His first act is to open a market in front of his house in the country in order to trade with the enemies of the city. In accordance with the ambiguity of his truce, the market is both his private market and the market place, the agora. He surely acts as a sovereign. The first man who attends the market is a Megarian who is anxious to sell his two little girls; both father and daughters are starving as a consequence of the war, of Pericles' Megarian decree. Since no one will buy the poor girls, their father tries to sell them as little pigs for use in the mysteries; in order to be sold and thus to survive, the children are told by their father to behave like young pigs, and they obey him. Yet Dikaiopolis is incredulous; what he senses of the merchandise contained in a sack does not feel like pigs. But since the girls utter the sounds of young pigs, and since the Greek word for young pig has an obscene ambiguity, Dikaiopolis buys the girls as young pigs from their father in exchange for some salt and garlic; i.e., for things that in peacetime were exported by the Megarians. The war brings it about that the little daughters, to say nothing of his wife and mother, are less valuable to the Megarian than some salt and garlic; yet, while the young girls are sold as young pigs to Dikaiopolis, they will be fed and otherwise treated like poor girls by him, whereas they would surely starve to death if they stayed with their parents in Megara. The bargain is then not as beastly as it appears at first sight. Dikaiopolis is in his way, as his name so clearly indicates, a just man. But his justice is not free from ambiguity. The Megarian speaks of his children, his wife, and his city; Dikaiopolis does not speak of his children, his wife, and his city: He buys the Megarian's young pigs for himself alone; he uses his private market for his most private end. The bargain is consummated, thanks to the abstraction from what is revealed by sight and touch, as distinguished from hearing and words. This goes much beyond Dikaiopolis' tasting and smelling the spondai. Nor ought we to overlook the connection between the ambiguity of Dikaiopolis' truce, which is private and yet also in a sense public, and the ambiguity of the word publicly or decently designating a young pig and obscenely the female organ. The bargain is barely concluded when an informer arrives who tries to confiscate the merchandise imported by an enemy alien; for, lest we forget, Athens is still at war with Megara. But Dikaiopolis has him driven away by his market inspectors without any difficulty; he does not even take the trouble to explain to him that he and his farm are no longer at war.

The exhausted old Acharnians are now reduced to the status of mere spectators. They call Dikaiopolis blessed, with a view to the fact that he gathers the fruits of his peace while sitting in the market. Freed from the evils of war, he spends his time in the market, in the agora, like the products of the new education blamed by the Just Speech and praised by the Unjust Speech. But the market in which he sits, being his private market, is far superior to the market place proper; the unpleasant and hateworthy fellows who disgrace the agora are not admitted to Dikaiopolis' market. The central⁶ type of man that is excluded from Dikaiopolis' market consists of bad poets and musicians.

The second visitor to Dikaiopolis' market is a Theban accompanied by a servant and bad flute players whose music reminds Dikaiopolis of the noise made by wasps. The Thebans are not starved. The Theban has come to sell birds, fish, and many other kinds of beasts. He never calls Dikaiopolis by name, as the Megarian had done (823; cf. 959). Dikaiopolis is particularly thrilled by a certain kind of fish that, he says, is particularly welcome to comical choruses; but he does not promise that delicacy to the present chorus. In this scene both Dikaiopolis and the foreigner are silent about their families and cities; the increased “privacy” is a function of the transition from little girls to food. All equivalents that Dikaiopolis can offer in exchange for the Theban's merchandise are to be found abundantly in Thebes, except informers. Accordingly, an informer who tries to seize the enemy-alien merchandise is seized by Dikaiopolis, properly wrapped, and handed over to the Theban. Since what the Theban brought is so much more valuable to Dikaiopolis than what the Megarian brought, the Theban receives a much greater reward, not just salt and garlic, but a live informer, an outstanding informer or, which is the same thing, an informer adorned with a resounding name composed of Victory and Command. Or should we say that Dikaiopolis procures a luxurious dinner for himself by deception, just as Socrates procures a poor dinner for himself and his companions by petty theft? The chorus accompanies Dikaiopolis' action against the informer with hearty approval, which leads to a dialogue between the chorus and Dikaiopolis. The dialogue deals exclusively with the wrapping, transportation, and use (especially domestic use, for clearly he can no longer be of public use) of the informer; the dialogue is silent about the delicacies that Dikaiopolis received from the Theban: They are for the use of Dikaiopolis, not of the chorus. The progress in the revelation of Dikaiopolis' end is underlined by the fact that the chorus addresses the Theban, while it had not addressed the Megarian. The Theban and the Megarian are the only foreigners who come to Dikaiopolis' market (the Spartans do not come); they may be said to surround Dikaiopolis just as the Persians and Thracians surround the Athenian Assembly: The play moves from the world of boasting and savage barbarians (and their Athenian equivalents) to the world of peaceful Greek merchants of delicacies (and their Athenian customers).

We now come to the peak of Dikaiopolis' triumph. His chief antagonist, the war-loving Lamachos, sends his servant to Dikaiopolis to buy from him some of the enemy-alien delicacies. Dikaiopolis absolutely refuses to comply with that request: Lamachos must not have any share in the peace; Dikaiopolis has bought the delicacies for himself. This action of Dikaiopolis induces the Acharnians to draw the attention of the whole city to Dikaiopolis' supreme wisdom: Thanks to his peace he has good things of all kinds in abundance to sell; all good things come to him by themselves. This is only what one would expect: Peace brings all good things and war all evils. The Acharnians forswear all communion with War without any consideration for its justice or expediency. They wish that some eros would unite them with the beautiful woman Reconciliation, the playmate of Aphrodite and the Graces. While still conscious of their old age, they feel rejuvenated. The last flicker of their martial ardor had led them to persecute Dikaiopolis; thanks to their reconciliation with Dikaiopolis they now experience the last flicker of their amorous ardor; the eros for which they long, however, resembles a painted eros.

Next appears a herald, calling upon the people to celebrate the festival of the Pitchers according to ancestral custom by engaging in a drinking contest. This is no longer a merely private affair of Dikaiopolis', although he is the only Athenian who can celebrate the festival in peace. He in his turn calls upon his people to speed up the cooking and roasting of the things that he has bought from the Theban and to hand him the tools so that he can prepare his favorite dish. There follows again a dialogue between the chorus and Dikaiopolis. The Acharnians now express their admiration or envy not only of Dikaiopolis' wisdom, and in particular of his mastery of the arts of cooking and gourmandise, but above all of his present feasting, in which they do not participate: He uses his delicate skills only to take care of himself. They have learned to prefer to the city not only the necessities of life (326 ff.) but also the pleasant things as such. In return Dikaiopolis does not promise them more than that they will be spectators of the products of his art.

The fifth visitor is a farmer who is in a miserable state because the Boiotians (from one of whom Dikaiopolis had bought his delicacies) have taken away his oxen, his chief support. Dikaiopolis is the only man who can supply him with a cure for his ills, by giving him a small drop of his private peace. The apparent farmer Dikaiopolis does not have an ounce of compassion for this genuine farmer, as little as he has for the Acharnians; he treats him almost as badly as he had treated Lamachos: He “just is not in public service”; by making his private peace he has become in every respect a private man, a man living by himself for himself; he cures only himself; he does not give any part, however small, of his peace and its pleasures to anyone. Even the Acharnians now become aware of the unqualified selfishness of Dikaiopolis, who does not pay any attention to what they say about him and is concerned with nothing but the preparation of his delicious dinner for his own enjoyment alone. They tell him to his face that he will starve them to death; he does not even take the trouble to reply. Next comes a man sent by a bridegroom to get some small part of Dikaiopolis' peace in exchange for meat from the wedding meal, for he wishes to enjoy the pleasures of love instead of having to go to war. Dikaiopolis again refuses to help: He would not barter away or sell any part of his peace for any equivalent. Hitherto we could think that he would not give away any part of his peace to anyone without equivalent, or that he would not sell any part of it to such lovers of war as Lamachos; now we see that he is merciless in preserving his monopoly of peace (it is somewhat more literally a monopoly than the “monopoly of violence”). Yet he is not quite so bad. A bridesmaid who has come with the groom's man asks him for help in the name of the bride. He sends the bride a bit of his peace so that she will not be deprived of sexual pleasures in spite of the war, for being a woman she ought not to suffer for the war. Dikaiopolis' selfishness is then qualified only by compassion for lovesick women. This is cold comfort to the Acharnians, who remain speechless now as on no other comparable occasion.

The last scene opens with the successive arrivals of two messages, one sent by the generals to Lamachos to the effect that he should proceed forthwith to the frontier in order to prevent Boiotian marauders from entering Attica, the other sent by the priest of Dionysos to Dikaiopolis to the effect that he should proceed forthwith to the public banquet in celebration of the holiday: Everything, including dancing girls and other girls, is waiting for him; the only thing missing among the enumerated attractions is wine. While the war-loving Lamachos is most unhappy that he can not celebrate the festival, Dikaiopolis is most happy: Everything has gone exceedingly well for him. Each of the two antagonists prepares himself for his contest, the one for the contest with the enemy of Athens, the other for a drinking contest. Each gives the appropriate commands to his slave; Dikaiopolis' commands are parodies of Lamachos' commands; Lamachos thrice protests against Dikaiopolis' insolent mockery; he even threatens Dikaiopolis with criminal prosecution for cowardice or desertion. The leader of the chorus reveals the state of mind of the Marathon fighters, who are so much older than Dikaiopolis, by addressing only Lamachos with the observation that Lamachos goes away to freeze and be on guard, while the old (1129-30) husband and father Dikaiopolis is going away to drink and to sleep with a most attractive girl; he thus also underlines the shift that is taking place toward the end of the play from the pleasures of food to those of drink and sex,⁷ from pleasures that have no necessary relation to the pleasures of other human beings to pleasures that in different ways do have such a relation. From what we noted regarding Dikaiopolis' unpromising conduct, we are prepared for the fact that the chorus as a whole now calls on Zeus to destroy a poet who on an earlier occasion had failed to give the chorus a dinner. From the specifications of the chorus' curse we learn that that wicked poet Antimachos (whose name would fit Dikaiopolis as well) was a horseman. Yet nothing untoward can happen to Dikaiopolis in spite of the chorus' curse, which is based on some sound divination; the man in fact afflicted is Lamachos, as a tragic messenger now fittingly announces. For while the chorus chanted, Lamachos has fought with the enemy and Dikaiopolis has won the prize in the drinking contest. Lamachos now returns wounded, or at any rate disabled, and in pain, sure that he is about to die; whereas Dikaiopolis returns with a young girl on each side who by caressing him according to his specifications increases his desire to the highest point: The hero of war and the hero of peace reveal themselves almost literally as opposed to each other like death and life. The chorus celebrates Dikaiopolis' victory and carries him to the judges of the comedies, while he constantly reminds everyone that he has won the drinking contest and thus suggests that he should also be given the prize in the contest regarding the comedies; he reveals himself again as none other than the comic poet himself. But the chorus hears nothing from him about the dinner that he, being a just man, had never promised them.

The meaning of the Acharnians is indicated by Dikaiopolis' name: He is the just citizen, even the just city. Yet the most patriotic citizens, the Marathon fighters, persecute him as a most unjust citizen, as worse even than Kleon. No one can seriously maintain that Dikaiopolis proves his justice, his superiority to all others in justice, by refuting his persecutors, by pronouncing the just things; for the arguments by which he converts the Acharnians are not even comical equivalents of the just things, they are parodies of demagogic oratory. His injustice is shown by the use he makes of his rhetorical victory: By that victory he secures his private peace in order to enjoy it strictly for himself; he betrays not only the city but even his family in order to enjoy by himself the pleasures of the senses. When praising him in the second half of the play the Acharnians speak only of his strictly private bliss, as distinguished from any services he has rendered to others, to say nothing of the city. He acts along the lines of the Unjust Speech. He “makes use of nature” in complete disregard of the law. His “return to nature” must be properly understood. Whereas the alleged motive for his longing for peace was the necessity to buy things when living in town while in peacetime his land alone brought him everything he needed, his true motive is the impossibility of buying in wartime the delicacies produced by the enemy cities (36, 976); and he makes full use of every art that enhances his pleasures (1015-17). His use of art and imports makes him only a more perfect follower of the Unjust Speech. In order to see how this most unjust man can be, by virtue of his injustice, the justest of men, one must consider what he does to his opponents, the Acharnians. While he made them help him in securing his private peace, he does not give them any share in it or in its fruits. They do not derive any advantage from his action, just as they did not derive any advantage from persecuting him for his treason; except that by persecuting him they satisfied their impotent desire for revenge on the Spartans, or rather they believed that they acted as good citizens. But they also believe that they acted as good citizens by taking his side or by becoming his bodyguard. Still, while prior to their conversion they were full of hate and fear-inspiring, afterward they are objects of compassion: Through Dikaiopolis' action they cease to be boasters; they honestly admit their poverty and decrepitude. Whereas through that action Dikaiopolis becomes better off, the Acharnians become not indeed better off through it but better (650), gentler, juster. This must not for one moment obscure the fact that he tames them for his own interest alone, or that he treats them as, according to them, the young orators who make them ridiculous treat them (679-80); although in his case the old men do not realize their becoming ridiculous (442-44). If justice in the highest sense consists in making one's fellow citizens better men, and if boasting is the root of all evil, Dikaiopolis deserves his name. In other words, he is just because he does what the just city does—the just city too takes care only of itself, or does not meddle with other cities—as distinguished from what the city tells its members to do; he is entire and not merely a part; he is no longer a citizen. More precisely, in contrast to the Acharnians, who depend on the city but are no longer useful to the city, Dikaiopolis, who can take care of himself and takes care only of himself, is by the manner in which he takes care only of himself—i.e., by merely enjoying himself to the highest degree, by doing what his nature compels him to do—the greatest benefactor of the city; for who can doubt that the comic poet enjoyed himself to the highest degree in conceiving and elaborating his comedies? Yet this enjoyment necessarily communicates itself. Comedy, whose mother is laughter, gives birth to laughter. The comic poet's enjoyment is essentially social, although it is not simply political; it is akin in different ways to the enjoyment deriving from wine and from sex, rather than to the enjoyment deriving from food, however delicious. The enjoyments to which Dikaiopolis eventually turns are, apart from what they are in themselves, the comical equivalent of the enjoyment from comedies. By exciting the desire for these enjoyments of the senses, he makes his fellow citizens gay, desirous of living, hence desirous of peace (a common good), just. (Whether peace is expedient now is an entirely different question.) If this proves that he himself is just, it proves that his justice does not require the sacrifice of his life (cf. 357). To state it crudely, “tragedy dissolves life, but comedy makes it firm.”⁸

The ways of life of both Dikaiopolis and Socrates differ from the ways of life recommended by both the Just Speech and the Unjust Speech. Superficially the two former seem to be located between the two latter; in truth the two former belong to a different plane, to a higher plane, than the two latter. The Socratic way of life is simply unpolitical, whereas Dikaiopolis', transcending the city, benefits the city. Socrates fails to help rustics against the city; he can not take on the guise of a rustic; he can not bridge the gulf between himself and the rustics; his arrogance prevents him from taking on humble disguises. Socrates is continence incarnate; Dikaiopolis is the opposite. Yet Dikaiopolis' incontinence remains within the limits of normality;⁹ nor does he foster father-beating or incest.

No one can overhear the simple message that the Acharnians conveyed to every contemporary Athenian: Make peace as soon as it is expedient; put an end to that senseless slaughter and destruction as soon as it is feasible; this is not the Persian War. But one must add at once that this simple message is only a small part of the message of the play. The least that one would have to demand, if the Aristophanean comedy is to be understood in the light of its simple messages, is that these messages be understood in the poet's own terms. He asserts that he both teaches what is best for the city and especially the just things, and he makes his audience laugh. The question arises whether the serious and the ridiculous merely exist side by side or whether they are woven together, and, in the latter case, which of the two ingredients is predominant. The peculiar greatness of the Aristophanean comedy consists in its being the total comedy; the ridiculous is all-pervasive; the serious appears only in the guise of the ridiculous; the serious is integrated into the ridiculous. He frequently destroys the dramatic illusion, for the destruction of the dramatic illusion is ridiculous and may heighten the comical effect; yet he never destroys or even impairs the comical illusion. In the Acharnians he castigates the injustice or folly of the war by presenting especially Lamachos as ridiculous and as ridiculously defeated. Yet how can one present the defeat of the unjust by ridiculous means without making ridiculous the victory of the just man and the victorious just man himself? How can one present the just man without destroying the totally comical character of the comedy? Aristophanes solves the difficulty by presenting the victory of the just, or the movement from the ridiculous of injustice toward justice as a movement toward a ridiculous of a different kind. The victorious just man enjoys all sensual pleasures; he enjoys them frankly; he gives his enjoyment a frank, a wholly uninhibited expression; he says (and does) in public things that can not be said (and done) in public with propriety; he behaves ridiculously. He castigates injustice (Kleon, Perikles, and so on) by the use of gossip or slander; he praises justice with the help of obscenity; and he defeats the greatest powers that counteract these kinds of aischrologia by two other kinds, by the parody of tragedy and by blasphemy. Aischrologia of these four kinds is used by him in accordance with the requirements of the plot, which is in itself ridiculous because of its striking impossibility. For instance, the plot of the Clouds calls much more for blasphemy than for parody of tragedy and obscenity, whereas the opposite is obviously true of the Acharnians. Of the simple serious message one can say that it exists side by side with the ridiculous, but the full and sophisticated message is heard only if one takes the ridiculous as if it were serious, i.e., if one imitates the comic poet.

Notes

1. 493; cf. Plato Laches 185^a1-2.

2. Frogs 959, 976-77, 1021-27, 1040, 1063-64.

3. Thucydides is silent about Lamachos in his account of the war up to and including the time when the Acharnians was first performed.

4. Cf. 87, 109, 135, 373, 605.

5. In the Acharnians there is no parallel to the second parabasis of the Clouds, in which the chorus reveals the large agreement between the chorus' concern and the poet's concern.

6. Consider the three mentions of agora and the three proper names in 836-59.

7. Consider the contrast between 1000-2 and 1003-17 in the light of the sequel. Consider Frogs 739-40 in the light of the opposition, crucial for that play, between Dionysos and Herakles.

8. Cf. G. Kaibel, Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, p. 141b 1.48-50; see ibid., p. 66 1.13: in tragoedia fugienda vita, in comoedia capessenda exprimitur.

9. Cf. the silence on the comic poets in Clouds 1089-94. Goethe makes on the proper occasion the following remark: “[der Poet und der Prophet] sind von Einem Gott ergriffen und befeuert, der Poet aber vergeudet die ihm verliehene Gabe im Genuss, um Genuss hervorzubringen, Ehre, durch das Hervorgebrachte zu erlangen, allenfalls ein bequemes Leben.” Noten und Abhandlungen zum Divan, “Mahomet.”