SOURCE: Spatz, Lois. “War and Peace: Acharnians (Akharnēs) and Peace (Eirēnē).” In Aristophanes, pp. 30-45. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978.

[In the following essay, Spatz traces the development of Dikaiopolis's character in the Acharnians, from a poor refugee to a triumphant, powerful individual.]

I SUMMARY OF ACHARNIANS

The Acharnians, which won first prize at the Lenaea of 425, reflects conditions in Athens during the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War. Pericles' war strategy was to defeat the enemy quickly by maintaining control of the seas without risking a land battle with the superior Spartan army. In effect, the area outside Athens was abandoned to the enemy. For the past six summers, all the farmers of Attica had retreated within the city walls to watch as the Spartan invaders ravaged their fields. They suffered as much from the expense and discomfort of city life as from the loss of their crops. But by 425 Pericles was dead, and unfortunately for the refugees, the war dragged on with no end in sight.

Dicaeopolis, the hero of the Acharnians, is just such a refugee. In the prologue the old farmer laments his changed life while he waits for the assembly to meet. His hopes for a serious discussion of peace are quickly smashed when Amphitheus is ejected from the meeting for raising the subject. Instead the citizens hear reports from freeloading ambassadors who waste time and public money in foreign courts. Disappointed and disgusted, Dicaeopolis allows Amphitheus to arrange a private thirty-year truce with Sparta. He receives his treaty in the form of a full wineskin. As the farmer prepares to celebrate, however, he is attacked by old men from the Athenian district of Acharnae. These once valiant warriors who have been dispossessed by the Spartans fiercely hate anyone who would negotiate with the enemy. Dicaeopolis forces them to stop stoning him by seizing a hostage. Once he has borrowed a costume and confidence from Euripides, he speaks with his head in a chopping block to persuade the Acharnians that his truce is sensible and patriotic. His arguments convince half the chorus, but the rest call out Lamachus, the general, to answer him. Although Lamachus is defeated, he refuses to concede and goes into his house vowing eternal war with Sparta. In revenge, Dicaeopolis announces that he will ban Lamachus from the market he is planning to open.

After the actors exit, the chorus performs the parabasis in which they defend the reputation of their poet, sing a hymn to the Muse of Acharnae, and describe the plight of old men harassed by lawsuits. Dicaeopolis then comes out to open his market. The episodes which follow illustrate his success. First he is able to buy the daughters of a starving Megarian for a bit of garlic and salt. Next he trades a despised Athenian informer for that most beloved of all delicacies—Boeotian eels. As Dicaeopolis cooks himself a lavish meal, the chorus looks on enviously. But the farmer refuses to share with them or with the poor cowherd and wedding guest who come to plead for a drop from his wineskin of peace. He relents and gives up a little to an excited bride just before two heralds arrive, one summoning Lamachus to war, the other inviting Dicaeopolis to a party. The two men trade insults as they prepare for their opposite destinations. After they leave, the chorus lampoons a sponsor who has refused them dinner. Then Lamachus is carried in wounded and groaning, while Dicaeopolis dances in supported by two courtesans. Cries of pleasure and pain alternate as one goes to the doctor and the other leads the chorus off singing a victory song because he has won a drinking prize.

II PUBLIC CONFLICT AND PRIVATE RESOLUTION

As he waits alone for the assembly to begin, Dicaeopolis, whose name means “Just City,” weighs the pleasures and pains of life as a refugee. The sorrows predominate—bad tragedy, bad music, bad government, and, worst of all, the Athenian marketplace crammed with sellers noisily hawking their wares. He looks toward his own generous fields, longing for peace, but complains that most citizens don't care enough about it to attend the assembly. In his soliloquy, Dicaeopolis introduces several themes and objects of satire. The contrast between war and peace, which Aristophanes identifies with pain and pleasure, is the major antithesis around which the play is structured. The satire attacks the corruption of politicians, the inefficiency of government, the degeneration of poetry, and the materialism of urban life.

The assault on the government begins as soon as the assembly convenes. The citizens refuse even to hear the word “peace.” Amphitheus is kicked out when he claims that the gods have sent him to negotiate with Sparta, and Dicaeopolis himself is shouted down as he tries to support him. Instead, the assembly is eager for reports from diplomats sent to exotic lands to get funds and supplies for war. The government is revealed as slow, stupid, and corrupt. Ambassadors have spent eleven years feasting in Persia while poor soldiers and sailors endure all the hardships of war. Even so, the ambassadors have not accomplished their task. The King's Great Eye attends the assembly wearing a mask with one large eye and bearing a name, Shambyses (Douglass Parker's translation), to imply duplicity. Through double-talk he avoids promising that the Great King will lend Athens gold, and his eunuchs turn out to be more Athenians on the take. The scene lampoons the Persians for the ostentatious size and wealth of their empire, for their inability to speak Greek, and for their vicious policy of dangling money before Athens and Sparta without committing themselves to help either side. But it is clear that most Athenians are gullible and that certain men are clever enough to profit from it.

When these swindlers go off to dine at public expense, they are replaced by another group. Their excuses for lingering in Thrace satirize Athens' barbarian allies who inhabit a frozen wasteland and who worship and emulate everything Athenian. The shortsighted ambassadors have brought back a troop of Odomantians, the most bloodthirsty of Thracians, whose fierceness is manifest in their enormous, redtipped phalluses. Although they have been hired to attack Boeotia, they attack Dicaeopolis instead as the terrified citizens stand by helplessly. The reality behind the comic exaggeration is clear. The Athenians were so fearful that their ally Sitacles would keep for himself what he captured for Athens that they eventually stopped sending aid to his troops. Moreover, mercenaries could easily turn on Athens, as occurred later in the war in Boeotia.

The scene also dramatizes how powerless the individual is against the government. But this is comedy where the hero will not allow himself to be silenced and oppressed. Dicaeopolis has already sent the ejected Amphitheus to Sparta to arrange a private peace. He returns with three truces in wineskins for Dicaeopolis to choose from. This identification of wine and peace connects Dionysus, the god of the festival, directly with the action and runs throughout the entire play. It arises from the fact that the Greek word for treaty, sponde, is the same as the word for the libation performed with wine. Once Dicaeopolis has selected the thirty-year vintage, all the delights associated with the vineyard—freedom, fertility, power, and pleasure—become the delights of peace. The chorus personifies peace as a nubile maiden, the companion of Aphrodite and Eros, who inhabits flourishing fields. When Dicaeopolis invokes Phales, the spirit of the phallus, as his drinking companion at the rural Dionysia, he describes the playful violence of sex. War, on the other hand, is personified as a destructive drunkard who brutally beats men and burns vines. But his representative, General Lamachus, is defeated by a vine stake, the instrument of peace, and Dicaeopolis earns the victory song for conquerors by winning a drinking bout at the feast for blessing the new wine.

Dicaeopolis barely has time to enjoy his thirty-year vintage when the chorus of poor old farmers and charcoal sellers from Acharnae rushes into the orchestra singing the parodus. As members of a valiant generation who defeated Persia, and as citizens whose vines have been devastated by Sparta, they are rabid opponents of peace. Thus in fury they have roused their feeble bodies to search for the traitor. When they catch Dicaeopolis peacefully celebrating a country feast of Dionysus, they angrily pelt him with stones. But Dicaeopolis seizes a hostage, a basket of coals, to force them to hear his defense. The old men yield immediately, for that basket, containing their only means of livelihood, is like a beloved fellow demesman to them. In fact, the coals are the Acharnians, fierce, sputtering, and always threatening violence. Once the men have been convinced by Dicaeopolis, however, the coals are converted to peaceful, life-sustaining purposes: they are used by Dicaeopolis for cooking epicurean delights.

When Dicaeopolis seizes the basket of coals, he initiates a parody of Euripides' tragedy Telephus.¹ That hero used a threat to the infant Orestes to force the leaders of the Trojan War to hear his arguments against fighting for the sake of a woman. Now, with tragic bravado, Dicaeopolis stakes his life on his ability to persuade the Acharnians that their war is equally senseless. Once the chorus stops stoning him, he goes to the house of Euripides to borrow the ragged costume of Telephus to arouse the pity and interest of his judges. Euripides' slave announces that the tragedian is at home and not at home; his mind is off gathering verses while his body is making a tragedy. Euripides finally agrees to be rolled out on the ekkyklema and impatiently offers help. Dicaeopolis wants more than the tattered robe of Telephus, however; first he begs a hat, then a staff, a broken cup, a pot, and finally some herbs. Euripides' lame protests are defeated by Dicaeopolis' persistence. The tragedian is rolled back indoors complaining that Dicaeopolis has destroyed his plays by removing all the special effects.

The parody performs several functions. First of all, it ridicules the intellectual pretensions of both the dramatists and the patrons of drama. When the old country bumpkin manages to filch most of the prop room, he deflates the arrogance of the tragedian and his slave. But the pretensions of tragedy are targets as well. The grand paradoxes of human limitation and potential are reduced to such ridiculous antinomies as “at home and not at home.” The audience's catharsis comes not from character or action but from the pitiful costumes and props or the ekkyklema's grim spectacle. Yet Dicaeopolis intends to use these very devices to appeal to his audience. In addition, as Dicaeopolis puts on the clothes, he assumes the mannerisms of the tragic hero. He punctuates his speeches with tragic exclamations like: “Oh Zeus! Oh my Soul! Oh wretched me!” More important, he has drunk down Euripides (l. 486). That is, he has absorbed the rhetorical skills needed to win his case and has assumed a grandeur which elevates both him and his subject. A veritable Telephus, he heroically approaches his captors.

In the agon, Dicaeopolis pleads his case from a chopping block, the low comic or kitchen equivalent of a noose, for he will die a traitor if he cannot win. Addressing the spectators as well as the chorus, he states his impeccable credentials as a Sparta-hater whose vines have also been cut. But, instead of blaming the Spartans for all the trouble, he acknowledges that they have legitimate complaints against the Athenians. His analysis of the causes of the war belongs to the world of comedy. It parodies the mythology of the Trojan War (the subject of Telephus' plea) as well as Herodotus' introduction to his Histories. When the Megarians kidnapped two whores from the house of Pericles' mistress, Pericles excluded Megara from the markets of Athens and her empire. On behalf of the starving Megarians, the Spartans began the fighting. Dicaeopolis accuses both sides of overreacting and then senselessly delighting in the preparations for war. By identifying Megara, the victim of a real economic boycott, as the chief source of comic contention, Aristophanes develops the themes of the crassness of the Athenian marketplace and the deprivation that war necessitates.

Half the chorus is persuaded by this mixture of nonsense and serious criticism. Its leader congratulates Dicaeopolis, but the unconvinced call on Lamachus to come out and defend the war, just as Achilles was summoned to debate Telephus. The real Lamachus was elected general several times, participated in the peace negotiations of 421, and was killed in battle in 414 while sharing the command of the Sicilian expedition. Aristophanes probably chose him to represent the supporters of the war because his name contains the word for battle (machē). Here he portrays the braggart soldier, armed head to toe, wearing a fearful crested helmet, and bearing a Gorgon's shield. Although Lamachus threatens and insults, the old farmer again deflates his superior's pretensions by reducing the symbols of his greatness. Terrified by his costume, Dicaeopolis first literally disarms the general of his shield, and then borrows a feather from his helmet (“from the braggart bird?” Dicaeopolis asks) to help him vomit up his fright. Later, when Lamachus is wounded, the loss of his gorgon and great plume symbolizes his defeat. In the grandiloquent language of tragedy, the warrior relates their loss to his own death. The rustic also outwits the general with his brash accusation that the young and rich take the soft jobs for good pay while the poor old citizens fight the war. This argument convinces the chorus, but not Lamachus, who retreats into his house swearing eternal war with Sparta while Dicaeopolis exits after barring the warrior from the market he is about to open.

Now that the actors have withdrawn through the doors in the scene building, the chorus is alone in the orchestra and comes forward to perform the parabasis, their direct address to the audience. In the anapests, or parabasis proper, the leader defends the poet against charges that he has slandered the city and its people. Thus, although there are no direct references to the drama, the poet has placed himself in the same position as his hero, for both must prove their honesty, courage, and patriotism to a hostile audience. Dicaeopolis has already identified himself with Aristophanes by referring to Cleon's attack for slander. (ll. 377-82) and by setting the chopping-block scene at the Lenaea (ll. 502-4). By extension, the audience is drawn into the drama to share the role of his Acharnian judges. The chorus initiates this by asking them for help in finding the traitors. Dicaeopolis then pleads with the Acharnians as if they were the entire Athenian citizenry gathered together at the festival of Dionysus (ll. 505-7). Later, while awaiting Lamachus, the part of the chorus that remains unconvinced appeals for help from any general or soldier in the audience. In the parabasis, the leader develops the relation. He proves how much the poet's frankness has enlarged the reputation of Athens and increased the chances for peace by impressing the allies, the Persians, and even the enemy with the value of free speech and the strength of democracy. Once the entire chorus has been persuaded by Dicaeopolis, the spectators can transfer their goodwill from him to the poet. Aristophanes has been clever enough to flatter the citizens for their liberality while proving his honesty at their expense.

For the rest of the parabasis the chorus returns to the role of Archarnians to describe their plight as old men confounded by lawsuits that leave them humiliated, speechless, and bankrupt. This section, in effect, identifies them, and, by extension, the spectators, with the powerless Dicaeopolis of the prologue. Now that they see themselves in his position, they can take vicarious pleasure in his success although (or perhaps because) he refuses to share it.

III PEACE AND PROSPERITY

As the chorus completes the parabasis, Dicaeopolis emerges to open his market and announces the rules. In place of the Athenian market overseer, he introduces a three-pronged whip, a substitution representing the arbitrary rules which oppress the poor. Like Pericles, Dicaeopolis has decreed that his own enemy, Lamachus, be excluded from the market. But he also bans informers, loudmouths, and troublemakers, so that, according to a later ode, one can trade there undisturbed even by bad poets (ll. 836-59). The chorus is so enthusiastic that Douglass Parker thinks it was singing directly to the audience, and attempting to attract them as customers to the market.²

Two episodes illustrate the increasing commercial success of Dicaeopolis. In the first, a starving Megarian tries to sell his two daughters as sacrificial piglets. The very outrageousness of the ruse transforms the Megarian's desperation into comedy. The humor also depends on the double meaning of the word choiros—pig and vagina—which associates peace with good food and sex. The bargaining is full of puns and obscenities as the men examine the girls' bodies and discuss their impending sacrifice to Aphrodite. After the choral ode, a rich merchant arrives from Boeotia with a stock of gastronomic treats. Now Dicaepolis can fill up on his beloved Boeotian eels of which the war had deprived him. Again the humor arises from an outlandish act. When the Boeotian wants to be paid with something uniquely Athenian, Dicaeopolis satisfies him with an informer whom he wraps up like a vase produced and packaged for export. Dicaeopolis has proved his skill as a salesman, for he has exchanged a detestable product for a prized delicacy. In addition, he has outsmarted the Boeotians whose gluttony and dull wits were proverbial.

His prosperity convinces the chorus that they have all had enough of war. They now know peace can bestow everything good, even the erotic pleasures of youth. The episode which follows indicates that Dicaeopolis has convinced others as well. The poor blind farmer and the wedding guest who beg for a drop of his peace wine represent a society ready to renounce war. The fact that Dicaeopolis shares his peace with the bridegroom who has been drafted symbolizes the triumph of the life-force celebrated in comedy. When he prescribes how the bride should apply the balm, he connects peace with Phales, and, thus, with Dionysus himself.

But another facet of Dicaeopolis' victory is illustrated in the same episode. While the chorus looks on enviously, he prepares a sumptuous meal for his family and taunts his hungry observers. Nor will he share his peace with the ruined farmer, or the gift-bearing wedding guest. He bestows his gift on the bride only because he sympathizes with her sexual needs, not because of any altruistic principle. The chorus reacts to his selfishness in a lampoon at the end of the episode (ll. 1150-72) when they pray that the sponsor who cheated them out of dinner be forced to watch a feast cooked and not be allowed to share it.

In the same episode, Dicaeopolis is personally invited to the Feast of the New Wine by a priest of Dionysus, while Lamachus is summoned to guard the borders against invasion. Here and in the final episode the defeat of the general and the forces of war is reflected in the imagery. The two neighbors make their preparations and live out their different destinies side by side, but in tones which underline the contrast between war and peace. The foods they prepare represent the deprivations of war (that is, onions and salt meat) as opposed to the prosperity of peace (that is, thrushes and pigeons). As Lamachus gathers together the weapons of death (spear, round-buckler), his neighbor calls for objects which look similar but are life-sustaining (skewer, round cheesecake). The general grandly puts on full armor, but Dicaeopolis boasts that his drinking cup is all he needs. And he is right. In the final episode, a vine stake wounds the general, and victory in a drinking contest turns the reveler into a hero.

The contrast between war and peace in the final episodes is further emphasized by the contrast between the comic and the tragic style. The herald who summons Lamachus to duty introduces the parody of tragic diction and rhythms.³ Lamachus himself laments his assignment in the grand style, arms himself with heroic bravado, and then bewails his defeat with the eloquence and emotion of a tragic hero. The description of his fall is delivered by a messenger in the typically tragic manner. But his passion is rendered ludicrous by the comic actions which Dicaeopolis performs at the same time.

IV THE MEANING OF THE VICTORY

It is difficult to prove that Acharnians is dramatizing the position of a peace party. Although peace and the poor farmer triumph in the play, war was a fact of life in the ancient world, and there was no serious peace movement in Athens at this early date because neither side had gained or suffered enough. The justice of the Peloponnesian War as a whole is not seriously questioned. Its origins are reduced to nonsense in Dicaeopolis' plea. Only the Megarian Decree is taken seriously as a major cause (although Thucydides barely mentions it). Its importance here is thematic rather than political. War takes away the basic joys of life. The starving Megarian demonstrates how far one will go for garlic and salt. Nor does the character of the warmonger bear much resemblance to the historical general, Lamachus. Instead, he is a stock comic figure, the braggart soldier, whose affectations are revealed by the coward. Moreover, when Dicaeopolis concludes his private peace, he keeps it to himself and his family. Thus, the play does not offer any serious political indictment or provide a patriotic model.

The hardship of war is only one of the problems of real life that the comedy selects for exaggeration and distortion. Dicaeopolis and the Acharnians are old and poor whereas Lamachus and the men who monopolize the safe jobs and control all the money are young and strong. The decrepitude, powerlessness, and sense of loss which old age inevitably brings are all dramatized here. So too is the bitterness of poverty—from Dicaeopolis' opening complaints about the noisy market to the visits of the Megarian and the blind cowherd. The government, which victimizes in the name of protection, oppresses the citizenry at all levels, from the most crucial aspects of public affairs (the scene at the assembly) to the common occurrences of daily life (references to lawsuits and informers).

But comedy takes real life and distorts it to deprive it, for the moment at least, of the seriousness that human beings attach to it. The comic situation may derive from facts, but Aristophanes' theatrical translation of them is sheer fantasy. Poor, old, and powerless Dicaeopolis manages to get control over all the forces that restrain him, including old age itself, as is proved by his ability to satisfy the girls while drunk. The Persian and Thracian foreigners, the Megarian piglets, and the informer packed up like a vessel with its mouth stopped are transformed by means of sight gags, dialect jokes, puns, and parodies into metaphors that create a new reality and dispel the threats of the old.⁴ The audience is unable to take the comedy itself seriously because actors and chorus move in and out of the drama, often speaking directly to the spectators. The poet even interrupts the action just for the sake of developing a joke such as the piglet / vagina pun or the resemblance of the Great Eye of Persia to the eye painted on Greek ships. Dover suggests that the disruption of the dramatic illusion, which he calls “discontinuity of characterization,” provides great freedom for the characters to say whatever they please. Thoughts which would puzzle or anger if expressed in real life or realistic drama, erupt in the comic dialogue without evoking the expected response.⁵

Freedom is really the key word in Old Comedy. The hero of the Acharnians finds himself in a dismal situation—poor, old, repressed, and cheated. But Dicaeopolis rises above individual opponents, society, and even forces of nature. The dramatic structure is unified not by the laws of probability and necessity but by the theme of the hero's self-assertion.⁶ One by one, Dicaeopolis defeats all the forces which would destroy his physical and psychological well-being. He turns aside the violence of the government and the Acharnians. He defeats the intellectual pretensions of the poets and bravado of the generals. He sets up his own market where he himself becomes the salesman he once despised. The episodes which illustrate his growing success demonstrate a further element of self-assertion. Dicaeopolis has succeeded for himself alone, with no thought of public weal or private pity. By the end, he has become the individual par excellence, the reverse of the poor powerless farmer of the prologue and, indeed, hardly different from the powers that once held him down. He uses force to drive the undesirables out of his market, profits from the starving Megarian, and flaunts his goods before the envious chorus and unhappy general.

The growth of his power is accompanied by an increase in sexual allusion. Obscenity is, of course, ubiquitous in Acharnians as in other Old Comedies.⁷ In part, Dover points out, sex jokes and vulgar language “cap … or bring a passage to a climax, after which the prolonged laughter of the audience enables the subject to be broken off and a fresh line of dialogue to be started.”⁸ The emphasis on sex also punctures the serious man's assumption that his mind is the most important element in his life. Obscenity proclaims man's acceptance of his union with physical nature, symbolized by Dionysus. Moreover, it is a powerful means of self-assertion, since neither the real words nor instinctive actions are accepted in polite society. Dicaeopolis' sexuality develops from allusions, wishes, and insults through the purchase of the piglets and sympathy for the aroused bride up to its literal climax in the exodus when, drunk and potent, he leads two dancing girls away. Now his self-assertion is complete. He has triumphed not only over war and generals, but over sterile Old Age itself.

And what catharsis do the triumph and the comic reversal evoke? Does the audience emerge with a desire to change governments or policies because peace has been proved more fun than war? More likely, the drama seems to enable the citizens to take their institutions and ideas less seriously. By making Dicaeopolis become exactly what he has detested as an underdog, the comedy seems to demonstrate that certain conditions are in the nature of things. Thus, comic distortion leads the audience back to the acceptance of real life and the worship of all that Dionysus represents.

V VARIATIONS ON THE THEME: PEACE

By 421, when Peace was performed, conditions in Athens had changed. The opposing generals had both been killed the summer before at the battle of Amphipolis. Now that they could no longer sabotage efforts to end the war, prospects for peace increased. The peace party was growing in strength while Aristophanes was composing the play, and the treaty itself, the Peace of Nicias, was formally concluded only ten days after its performance. Von Daele suggests that it may have even affected the outcome of the negotiations.⁹ Indeed, Peace euphorically celebrates the end of the war with a subtle alteration in the spirit of Old Comedy. The play contains no agon. The formulaic fantasy emphasizes the heroic qualities of men, and the satire of states and individuals is gentle and good-natured. Above all, the invincible hero defeats war, not for himself alone, but for everyone, citizen and subject, friend and enemy. Unlike Dicaeopolis, he offers freedom, food, and sex to the whole Greek world in the grand finale which ends, like a Dionysiac comos, in a sacred marriage to the personification of peace.

Because the plot, characters, and even the parabasis resemble earlier plays, some scholars suspect that Peace was hastily composed to suit the fast-breaking events of that winter and spring.¹⁰ The hero, Trygaeus, whose name comes from the word “crop,” is a small farmer like the hero of Acharnians, Dicaeopolis. Thwarted in his attempts to promote peace through the system, Trygaeus also resolves to take matters into his own hands. Not by concluding a private truce, however. His fantasy is much grander. He is determined to get to Olympus to plead with Zeus himself. In a parody of a recent drama by Euripides, he soars up on a dung beetle, the comic equivalent of Pegasus, the winged horse whom the hero Bellerophon rode to heaven.¹¹ The beast's appetite for finely kneaded cakes of feces provides ample opportunity for scatalogical humor. His master's fear of the crane, tragedy's machine for ascents to Olympus, and his lyric declamations heighten the ludicrous disparity between the myth and its comic transformation. The two questers even get to heaven too late; Zeus and his Olympians have fled the noise of the war below, leaving Hermes behind, with War and Tumult in charge and Peace buried deep in the ground.

Undaunted by the dire warnings of Hermes, he hastens to dig her up, summoning the aid of the chorus of farmers and laborers who are ecstatic at the prospect of peace. They succeed in digging up not only the goddess herself, but her two beautiful companions Opora, “Harvest,” and Theoria, “Sacred Embassy,” the private and public gifts of Peace. Trygaeus is to marry the former, whereas the latter will be presented to the Athenian council. While he goes off to prepare the wedding feast, the chorus performs the parabasis. Then a series of episodic scenes demonstrates the hero's success. War profiteers who refuse to convert to peacetime industries are driven away. Grateful farmers enter to thank Trygaeus for restoring their livelihoods and their pleasures. The contrast between the simple delights of peace and the pain and propaganda of wartime also resembles Acharnians; again Lamachus appears as the symbol for the war party, despite the fact that he was one of the negotiators of the Peace of Nicias. The play ends with a joyously sensual wedding song, inviting all Greeks to share the promised benefits as well as the cakes. By the exodus, both the hero and the beast have surpassed their tragic models. The dung beetle has been harnessed to the chariot of Zeus, and Trygaeus has been truly apotheosized—made young again, wedded to a goddess with the promise of eternal fertility, and worshipped by all.

As the action progresses, the poet ridicules the pretense that war is a glorious endeavor. The scene on Olympus demolishes the epic vision that the gods value the heroics of men. The highest deities have become so disgusted by the human squabbles that they have fled heaven. War is personified as a gross blusterer whose vulgarity is symbolized by the noise and violence of his mortar and pestle. The supporters of the war are exposed as foolish politicians, greedy arms manufacturers, quack fortune-tellers, and ambitious soldiers. With typical comic distortion, Hermes explains that fear, honor, and self-interest, not political principles, have caused the war. Pericles began the whole thing by issuing the Megarian Decree to distract the people from blaming him for his friend Phidias' peculations. Once started, it could not be stopped, because of the same greed and ambition of rich and poor all over the Greek world.

The chorus of Peace is extremely friendly to Trygaeus and the city. It is made up of laborers and farmers from all over Greece who, instead of opposing the hero, slow him down at first by reacting too enthusiastically to his plan. Even those groups who are accused of shirking finally pull hard with the rest to haul Peace up. Moreover, neither they nor the actors engage in a real agon which might arouse rival parties by a debate, even humorous, of the pros and cons of peace. And the parabasis concentrates on poetry rather than politics. In the anapests, the chorus leader boasts of the poet's originality and public service. The emphasis on the courageous acts performed selflessly “for you and the isles” (ll. 759-60) subtly connects the poet with the hero of his play. The ode and antode, where lampoon is traditional, attack the new poets. The imagery picks up patterns from the rest of the play—monsters, gluttony, turds, stench, and tumult—but the targets are familiar and apolitical. Other choral odes, where one might expect particularized satire, instead contrast the pleasures of peace with the discomforts of war or attack hypocritical warmongers in general.

As Trygaeus defeats his enemies, Aristophanes emphatically establishes the meaning of his victory. Calling for help, the hero shouts, “Now the time has come for the song of Dates, sung while he masturbated at noon, ‘Oh how I enjoy myself, how I delight, how good I feel.’” (ll. 289-291). In contrast to the pain of war, well-remembered by the chorus of workers, peace offers pleasure, joy in the simple acts of life—sex, eating, creative work, and music. So the goddess gives “Harvest” as a wife to “Crop.” Thus pleasure and productivity are blended in all the references to marriage and farming. The language is full of double entendre, continually alluding to genitalia, the sex act, and its results. Public life too is directed toward joyous celebration. So “Sacred Embassy” replaces battle as the business of government when Theoria is presented to the entire council. She is undressed to be enjoyed in an exuberant extended metaphor of holiday games, complete with wrestling, riding, and racing. The obscenities contribute to the joie de vivre.

But the equation “peace is love” means more than public and private sex and fertility. It is extended to embrace the political concept of Panhellenism. Both the chorus and the hero alternately represent Athens and the entire Greek world. Hermes' analysis of the war focuses mainly on the plans and problems of the Athenian empire. Trygaeus sometimes seems limited to his own city. But from the beginning, he views himself as champion of all Greece (l. 93), and his call for help is addressed to the Hellenes at large (l. 292). Dover speculates that in the hauling scene the chorus has its back to the audience so that Trygaeus' summons seems to extend beyond the specifically Athenian “metics, [non-citizens who resided in Athens] foreigners, and islanders” (ll. 297-98) to the entire audience, nation, and even the world.¹² In fact, the spectators, representative of city and cosmos, have all participated in his quest, for they have held back their bowels until he could get the dung beetle off the ground. Once they have also helped with the digging, they are invited to share the benefits. Theoria is actually led to the members of the council, who were watching the performance from the front rows of the theater. When the characters make their offering to Peace, they scatter lustral water and barley on the audience. Trygaeus then prays that “Zeus mix us Hellenes again in the juice of friendship and harmony (ll. 996 ff.).” In the end, the final prayer for wealth and fertility is offered in the name of Hellenes (ll. 1320 ff.), and food and drink is shared with all as the wedding party marches off.

As Trygaeus liberates the goddess, Aristophanes changes the connotations of the imagery to underline the effects of peace. At the beginning, earthly existence is a disgusting cluster of sights, sounds, tastes, and smells symbolized, of course, by the dung beetle's meal of feces. So long as Trygaeus is on earth with his beetle and Peace is buried deep within it, the characters and audience are befouled. Trygaeus' waste supplies food for his beetle, whereas we too are potential feeders whose very farts might stimulate its appetite. The earth itself is full of cesspools and privies. But the beetle's demand for finely minced cakes promises his ascent to higher things. Once Peace is hauled out of her pit, the beetle will eat ambrosia among the gods while the people savor fragrant fruits, wines, and epicurean delights. The entire earth becomes redolent with the sweet odors of fecundity. The bad-food smells now belong specifically to the soldiers' life; freedom from the draft is like perfume, but the soldiers' kit stinks of belched onions (ll. 526-29). The reversal of the scatological images reaches its zenith when Trygaeus relegates the grandiose weaponry of war to the broom closets and outhouses of the city. The noise and activity demanded for the kneading of cakes is also picked up and developed. The violent pounding in the mortar of war becomes the gentle mixing in the drink of friendship when the individual ingredients are joined together as Hellenes. The tumult and squabble of war, so noisy it disturbed the gods, is converted to the uncontrollable dance of joy by the diggers and then finally to the happy wedding song. These images emphasize that peace can transform human character, replacing selfish competition with cooperation and generosity. Hopefully, the audience will also be transformed through their participation in the euphoric action.

VI POSTSCRIPT: LYSISTRATA

Peace was within Athens' reach, in fact as well as fantasy, in 421. By 411, however, the war had been resumed, Athens' fleet had been destroyed, the empire was in revolt, and the Spartan army was occupying part of Attica itself. Now that an honorable peace seemed impossible. Aristophanes approached the theme with a more fantastic plot and more generalized satire than in the two earlier plays. Lysistrata contains very few topical allusions or attacks on individuals. Instead, its plot arises from the eternal battle between men and women, its diction employs the universal language of sex, and its humor depends more on situations and sight gags than on lampoons. The enemy is male chauvinism in general, and the warriors of both sides are exposed as weak husbands overpowered by women's wiles. Thus Aristophanes dramatizes the last hope that Athenians and Spartans are really brothers under their armor and that peace is as natural as marriage.

Notes

1. For a detailed study of parody in Aristophanes, see Peter Rau, Paratragodia: Untersuchung einer komischen Form des Aristophanes, Zetemata, No. 45 (Munich: Beck, 1967). He discusses Telephus on pp. 19-41.

2. Douglass Parker, trans., The Acharnians, The Mentor Greek Comedy (New York: New American Library, 1961), p. 118.

3. Lois Spatz, “Strophic Construction in Aristophanic Lyric” (Ph.D. Diss., Indiana University, 1968), pp. 20-55.

4. Weber discusses this function of comedy. See especially chapter 2, “The Tragic and Comic and the Problems of Civilization: An Interpretation of the Peace and the Birds.”

5. Pp. 59-65.

6. See Whitman's chapter [in Aristophanes and the Comic Hero] on the Acharnians and especially pp. 76-80 for a discussion of the way the structure demonstrates Dicaeopolis' growing heroism.

7. See Weber, chapter 3, “The Obscene Comic: A Look at Acharnians and Peace.” I was unable to obtain Jeffrey Henderson's The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976) but judge from the review by Oliver Taplin, Times Literary Supplement 30 Jan. 1976, p. 107, that the book treats the use of sex in a similar way.

8. P. 38.

9. Victor Coulon, ed., and Hilaire Van Daele, trans., Aristophane: Tome II, Les Guepes, La Paix, 5th ed. (Paris: Budé, 1964), pp. 88-89.

10. Whitman, pp. 104, 310, n. 1.

11. Rau, pp. 89-97.

12. P. 138.