The Acharnians
The tipsy god: sculpture by Michelangelo.
The Dramatis Personae in ancient comedy depends on interpretation of textual evidence.[1] This list is based on Alan Sommerstein's translation.[2]
Written byAristophanes
Chorusold men of Acharnae
Characters
  • Dikaiopolis
  • Crier
  • Amphitheus an immortal
  • Ambassador lately returned from Persian court
  • Pseudartabas The Great King's Eye
  • Theorus ambassador to Thrace
  • Daughter to Dikaiopolis
  • Cephisophon Euripides' leading actor
  • Euripides the tragic poet
  • Lamachus the general
  • A Megarian
  • Two daughters to the Megarian
  • Informer
  • A Boeotian
  • Nicarchus another informer
  • A servant of Lamachus
  • Farmer
  • Best Man
  • Two messengers

Silent Roles

  • Reconciliation divine woman
  • The Executive Committee or Prytanis
  • Scythian Policeman
  • Second ambassador
  • Two 'eunuchs'
  • Odomantian soldiers
  • Wife to Dikaiopolis
  • Boeotian pipe band
  • Eel
  • Bridesmaid
  • Two dancing girls
  • The Archon basileus
  • Citizens, slaves, revellers, Lamachus' friends etc.
Setting1.Pnyx at Athens
2.Street outside the houses of Dikaiopolis, Euripides and Lamachus

The Acharnians or Acharnians[3] (Ancient Greek: Ἀχαρνεῖς Akharneîs; Attic: Ἀχαρνῆς) is the third play — and the earliest of the eleven surviving plays — by the Athenian playwright Aristophanes. It was produced in 425 BC on behalf of the young dramatist by an associate, Callistratus, and it won first place at the Lenaia festival.

The Acharnians is about an Athenian citizen, Dikaiopolis, who miraculously obtains a private peace treaty with the Spartans and enjoys the benefits of peace in spite of opposition from some of his fellow Athenians. The play is notable for its absurd humour, its imaginative appeal for an end to the Peloponnesian War, and for the author's spirited response to condemnations of his previous play, The Babylonians, by politicians such as Cleon, who had reviled it as a slander against the Athenian polis. In The Acharnians, Aristophanes reveals his resolve not to yield to attempts at political intimidation.

Along with the other surviving plays of Aristophanes, The Acharnians is one of the few – and oldest – surviving examples of a highly satirical genre of drama known as Old Comedy.

Plot

The play begins with Dikaiopolis sitting all alone on the Pnyx (the hill where the Athenian Assembly or ecclesia regularly meets to discuss matters of state). He is middle-aged, he looks bored and frustrated and soon he begins to vent his thoughts and feelings to the audience. He reveals his weariness with the Peloponnesian War, his longing to go home to his village, his impatience with the ecclesia for its failure to start on time and his resolve to heckle speakers who won't debate an end to the war. Soon some citizens do arrive, all pushing and shoving to get the best seats, and then the day's business begins.

A series of important speakers addresses the assembly but the subject is not peace and, true to his earlier promise, Dikaiopolis comments loudly on their appearance and probable motives. First of all there is the ambassador who has returned from the Persian court after many years, complaining of the lavish hospitality he has had to endure from his Persian hosts; then there is the Persian grandee, The Eye of the Great King, Pseudartabas, sporting a gigantic eye and mumbling gibberish, accompanied by some eunuchs who turn out to be a disreputable pair of effete Athenians in disguise; next is the ambassador recently returned from Thrace, blaming the icy conditions in the north for his long stay there at the public's expense; and lastly there is the rabble of Odomantians who are presented as elite mercenaries willing to fight for Athens but who hungrily steal the protagonist's lunch. Peace is not discussed. It is in the ecclesia, however, that Dikaiopolis meets Amphitheus, a man who claims to be the immortal great-great-grandson of Triptolemus and Demeter and who claims, moreover, that he can obtain peace with the Spartans privately. Dikaiopolis accepts his claims, and he pays him eight drachmas to bring him a private peace, which in fact Amphitheus manages to do.

Dikaiopolis celebrates his private peace with a private celebration of the Rural Dionysia, beginning with a small parade outside his own house. He and his household, however, are immediately set upon by a mob of aged farmers and charcoal burners from Acharnae – tough veterans of past wars who hate the Spartans for destroying their farms and who hate anyone who talks peace. They are not amenable to rational argument, so Dikaiopolis grabs a hostage and a sword and demands the old men leave him alone. The hostage is a basket of Acharnian charcoal, but the old men have a sentimental spot for anything from Acharnia (or maybe they are simply caught up in the drama of the moment), and they agree to leave Dikaiopolis in peace if only he will spare the charcoal. The importance of both the charcoal and the tool that Dikaiopolis holds hostage is that one of the primary sources of revenue for that region was the manufacturing and selling of charcoal. This is further justification for the dissenters' exaggerated response. He surrenders the hostage, but he now wants more than just to be left alone in peace: he desperately wants the old men to believe in the justice of his cause. He even says that he is willing to speak with his head on a chopping block, if only they will hear him out, and yet he knows how unpredictable his fellow citizens can be: he says he hasn't forgotten how Cleon dragged him into court over "last year's play."

This mention of trouble with Cleon over a play indicates that Dikaiopolis represents Aristophanes (or possibly his producer, Callistratus),[4] and maybe the author is in fact the actor behind the mask.[5] After gaining the chorus's permission for an anti-war speech, Dikaiopolis/Aristophanes decides he needs some special help with it, and he goes next door to the house of Euripides, an author renowned for his clever arguments. As it turns out, however, he merely goes there to borrow a costume from one of his tragedies, Telephus, in which the hero disguises himself as a beggar. Thus attired as a tragic hero disguised as a beggar, and with his head on the chopping block, Dikaiopolis/Telephus/the beggar/Aristophanes explains to the Chorus his reasons for opposing the war. The war all started, he argues, because of the abduction of three courtesans, and it is continued by profiteers for personal gain. Half the Chorus is won over by this argument, the other half isn't.

A fight breaks out between Acharnians for and Acharnians against Dikaiopolis/Telephus/the beggar/Aristophanes, and it only ends when the Athenian general Lamachus (who also happens to live next door) emerges from his house and imposes himself vaingloriously on the fray. Order is restored, and the general is then questioned by the hero about the reason why he personally supports the war against Sparta. Is it out of his sense of duty, or because he gets paid? This time the whole Chorus is won over by the arguments of Dikaiopolis. Dikaiopolis and Lamachus retire to their separate houses, and there then follows a parabasis in which the Chorus first lavishes exaggerated praise upon the author and next laments the ill treatment that old men like themselves suffer at the hands of slick lawyers in these fast times.

Dikaiopolis returns to the stage and sets up a private market where he and the enemies of Athens can trade peacefully. Various minor characters come and go in farcical circumstances. A starving Megarian trades his famished daughters, disguised as piglets, for garlic and salt (products in which Megara had abounded in pre-war days). Then an informer or sycophant tries to confiscate the piglets as enemy contraband before he is driven off by Dikaiopolis. (Note that piglets meant also female genitals).[6] Next, a Boeotian arrives with birds and eels for sale. Dikaiopolis has nothing to trade that the Boeotian could want, but he cleverly manages to interest him in a commodity that is rare in Boeotia – an Athenian sycophant. Another sycophant happens to arrive at that very moment, and he tries to confiscate the birds and eels, but instead he is packed in straw like a piece of pottery and carried off back home by the Boeotian.

Some other visitors come and go before two heralds arrive, one calling Lamachus to war, the other calling Dikaiopolis to a dinner party. The two men go as summoned and return soon after: Lamachus, in pain from injuries sustained in battle and with a soldier at each arm propping him up; Dikaiopolis, merrily drunk and with a dancing girl on each arm. Dikaiopolis clamors cheerfully for a wine skin – a prize awarded to him in a drinking competition – and then everyone exits in general celebrations (except Lamachus, who exits in pain).

Historical background

The Peloponnesian War was already into its sixth year when The Acharnians was produced. The Spartans and their allies had been invading Attica every year, burning, looting and vandalizing farm property with unusual ferocity in order to provoke the Athenians into a land battle that they couldn't win. The Athenians always remained behind their city walls until the enemy returned home, whereupon they would march out to wreak revenge on their pro-Spartan neighbours – Megara in particular. It was a war of attrition, it had already resulted in daily privations, in starvation and plague, and yet democratic Athens continued to be guided by the pro-war faction led by Cleon and exemplified by tough-minded militarists such as Lamachus. Meanwhile, Aristophanes had been engaged in a personal yet very public battle with Cleon. His earlier play, The Babylonians, had depicted the cities of the Athenian League as slaves grinding at a mill[7] and it had been performed at the City Dionysia in the presence of foreigners. Cleon had subsequently prosecuted him for slandering the polis — or possibly the producer, Callistratus, was prosecuted instead.[8] Aristophanes was already planning his revenge when The Acharnians was produced and it includes hints[9] that he would carve Cleon up in his next play, The Knights.

Some significant events leading up to the play:

Old Comedy was a highly topical form of drama and the audience was expected to be familiar with the various people named or alluded to in the play. Here is a short, selective list of identities named in the play:

Discussion

The Peloponnesian War and Aristophanes' personal battle with the pro-war populist, Cleon, are the two most important issues that underlie the play.

Athens at war

The Spartans were the dominant military power on the Greek mainland, and consequently Athenians were reluctant to venture on foot far from the safety of their own city walls. Most Athenians had lived in rural settlements up until then.[59] The Acharnians reflects this reluctant transition from rural to urban life. While sitting on the Pnyx, Dikaiopolis gazes longingly at the countryside and expresses his wish to return to his village.[60] Similarly, the old Acharnians sing lovingly of their farms,[61] they express hatred of the enemy for destroying their vines,[62] and they regard the Athenian agora as a place crowded with people that are best avoided.[63] Athens was the dominant maritime power in the Mediterranean however and its citizens could travel by sea with relative ease. Thus, the ambassadors who return from Persia and Thrace are resented by Dikaiopolis because he has been living roughly as a sentry on the battlements while they have been enjoying themselves abroad.[64] Privileged individuals such as Lamachas and Coesura are able to get out of Athens when times become difficult, and in this they are likened to slops that are emptied from an urban household.[65] Thus, the real enemies are not the Megarian and Boeotian farmers, with whom Dikaiopolis is happy to trade, nor even the Spartans, who were simply acting to protect their Megarian allies.[66] Instead, the real enemies are the "wicked little men of a counterfeit kind"[67] who have forced Dikaiopolis into an overcrowded urban existence.

The causes of the war are explained by Dikaiopolis in a manner that is partly comic and partly serious. His criticisms of Pericles and The Megarian Decree appear to be genuine, but he seems to be satirizing the historian Herodotus when he blames the war on the kidnapping of three prostitutes[68] (Herodotus cites the kidnappings of Io, Europa, Medea and Helen as the cause of hostilities between Greeks and Asiatics). The Acharnians in fact features two passages that allude to the work of Herodotus:[69] Dikaiopolis' account of the kidnapping of three women, and the Athenian ambassador's account of his travels in Persia.

Aristophanes versus Cleon

Aristophanes, or his producer Callistratus, was prosecuted by Cleon for slandering the polis with his previous play, The Babylonians. That play had been produced for the City Dionysia, a festival held early in spring when the seas were navigable and the city was crowded with foreigners. The audience of The Acharnians however is reminded that this particular play has been produced for the Lenaia, a winter festival which few foreigners attend.[70] The author moreover assures us that the real target of this play is not the polis but rather "wicked little men of a counterfeit kind". These scruples are enunciated by Dikaiopolis as if he were the author or producer. He subsequently presents the anti-war argument with his head on a chopping block, a humorous reference to the danger that the satirist puts himself in when he impugns the motives of influential men like Cleon.

The Acharnians and Old Comedy

Like other plays by Aristophanes, The Acharnians generally obeys the conventions of Old Comedy. The following dramatic elements contain variations from convention:

Other points of interest:

Standard edition

The standard scholarly edition of the play is S. Douglas Olson (ed.), Aristophanes: Acharnians (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Performances

Translations

References

  1. ^ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds Alan Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1973, page 37
  2. ^ ibidem
  3. ^ Aristophanes. Acharnians. Knights. Ed. Jeffrey Henderson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
  4. ^ W.Rennie, The Acharnians of Aristophanes, Edward Arnold (London 1909), reproduced by Biolife, pages 12–15
  5. ^ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A.Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Classics 1975, p. 42
  6. ^ Ancient Greek Cults: A Guide – Page 71 – Google Books Result
  7. ^ 'Greek Drama' P.Levi in The Oxford History of the Classical World J.Boardman, J.Griffin, O.Murray (eds), Oxford University Press 1986, page 177
  8. ^ W.Rennie, The Acharnians of Aristophanes, Edward Arnold (London 1909), reproduced by Biolife, page 12-15
  9. ^ e.g. Acharnians lines 300-1
  10. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [1] line 530
  11. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [2] line527
  12. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [3] lines 703-12
  13. ^ Wasps line 947, Wikisource original Greek
  14. ^ Peace line 473, 1290; Thesmophoriazusae line 841; Frogs line 1031
  15. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [4] lines 6, 300
  16. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [5] line 705
  17. ^ lines 706-12
  18. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [6] lines 377, 659
  19. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [7] line 67
  20. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [8] line 88, 884
  21. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [9] line 846
  22. ^ Knights lines 1304, 1363; Clouds lines 551,557, 558, 623, 876,1065; Wasps line 1007:Wikisource [10]; Peace lines 681, 921, 1319; Thesmophoriazusae line 840; Frogs line 570
  23. ^ Clouds line 400; Wasps lines 42, 47, 418, 599, 1220, 1236 Wikisource:[11]
  24. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [12] line 710
  25. ^ Wasps line 592 Wikisource
  26. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [13] lines 1032, 1222
  27. ^ The Wasps line 1432 Wikisource
  28. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [14] line 10
  29. ^ Clouds line 1365; Birds line 807; Thesmophoriazusae line 134; Lysistrata line 188, Wikisource original Greek [15]; Frogs passim
  30. ^ Frogs lines 994, 1408, 1452
  31. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [16] line 11, 140
  32. ^ Thesmophoriazusae line 170
  33. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [17] line 1150
  34. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [18] line 118
  35. ^ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A.Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Classics 1975, page 240
  36. ^ Aristophanes:Wasps D.MacDowell (ed.), Oxford University press 1978, page 202
  37. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [19] line 887
  38. ^ Wasps lines 506, 1142 Wikisource [20]; Peace line 1008
  39. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [21] line 1002
  40. ^ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A.Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Classics 1975, page 244
  41. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [22] line855
  42. ^ Knights line 1266; Wasps lines 787, 1302, 1308, Wikisource
  43. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [23] line 854
  44. ^ Thesmophoriazusae line 949; Wealth II line 602
  45. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [24] line 386
  46. ^ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A.Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Classics 1975, page 243
  47. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [25] line 849
  48. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [26] line 1173
  49. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [27] line 614
  50. ^ Clouds line 800
  51. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [28] line 215
  52. ^ Aristophanes:Wasps D.MacDowell (ed.), Oxford University press 1978, page 286-7
  53. ^ Wasps line 1206, Wikisource
  54. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [29] lines 16, 866
  55. ^ Peace 951; Birds 857
  56. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [30] line 141
  57. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [31] line 744
  58. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [32] line 526
  59. ^ Thucydides 2.14 – 2.16.
  60. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [33] lines 32–36
  61. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [34] lines 995-99
  62. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [35] lines 225-32
  63. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [36] lines 836-59
  64. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [37] line 72
  65. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [38] line 614
  66. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [39] lines 535-56
  67. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [40] line 517
  68. ^ The Peloponnesian War Lawrence A.Tritle, Greenwood Publishing Group 2004, page 147-48
  69. ^ Herodotus and Greek History John Hart, Taylor and Francis 1982, page 174
  70. ^ Acharnians Wikisource [41] line 502-6
  71. ^ Aristophanes:Wasps Douglas M.MacDowell, Oxford University Press 1978, note 1283 page 298
  72. ^ Comedy E.Handley in 'The Cambridge History of Classical Literature I' P.Easterling, R. MacGregor Walker Knox, E.Kenney (eds), page 360
  73. ^ Aristophanes:Clouds K.J.Dover, Oxford University Press 1970, note 1113 page 165
  74. ^ Greek Historians O.Murray in 'The Oxford History of the Classical World' J.Boardman, J.Griffin, O.Murray (eds), Oxford University Press 1986, page 194
  75. ^ Aristophanes:Lysistrata, the Acharnians, The Clouds A.Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1975, page 244

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:


Surviving plays by Aristophanes
Authority control databases
Categories