VI. ARISTOPHANES

1. Aristophanes and the War

Greek tragedy is more somber than the Elizabethan, because it seldom employs that principle of comic relief by which, through a humorous interruption of the tragical, the auditor’s tolerance for tragedy is increased. The Greek playwright preferred to keep his tragic drama on a persistently high plane, and relegated comedy to a “satyr” play which carried no serious import, but allowed the excited emotions of the audience to subside into humor and ease. In the course of time the comic drama declared its independence of tragedy, and a day was allotted to it, at the Dionysian festivals, when the entire program consisted of three or four comedies, written by different authors, played in succession, and competing for a separate prize.

Comedy, like oratory, had its first Greek bloom in Sicily. About 484 there came to Syracuse from Cos a philosopher, physician, poet, and dramatist, Epicharmus, who expounded Pythagoras, Heracleitus, and rationalism in thirty-five comedies, of which only occasional quotations remain. Twelve years after Epicharmus’ arrival in Sicily the Athenian archon allowed its first chorus to comedy. The new art developed rapidly under the stimulus of democracy and freedom, and became the principal medium, in Athens, of moral and political satire. The wide license of speech permitted to comedy was a tradition of the Dionysian phallic procession. The abuse of this freedom led in 440 to a law against personal attacks in comedy; but this prohibition was repealed three years later, and full freedom of criticism and abuse continued even during the Peloponnesian War. The Greek comedy took the place, as political critic, of a free press in modern democracies.

We hear of many comic dramatists before Aristophanes, and the great Rabelais of antiquity even condescended to praise some of them when the smoke of his battles with them had cleared away. Cratinus was the mouthpiece of Cimon, and made rabid war against Pericles, whom he called “the squill-headed God Almighty”;¹²⁶ merciful time has spared us the necessity of reading him. Another forerunner was Pherecrates, who, about 420, satirized, in The Wild Men, those Athenians who professed to dislike civilization and to long for a “return to nature”: so old are the brave innovations of our youth. The ablest competitor of Aristophanes was Eupolis; they at first co-operated, then quarreled and parted, after which they satirized each other vigorously, but still agreed in attacking the democratic party. If comedy throughout the fifth century was hostile to democracy, it was partly because poets like money and the aristocracy was rich, but chiefly because the function of Greek comedy was to amuse with criticism, and the democratic party was in power. Since the leader of the democracy, Pericles, was sympathetic to new ideas like the emancipation of woman and the development of a rationalist philosophy, the comic dramatists ranged themselves, with suspicious unanimity, against all forms of radicalism, and called for a return to the ways and reputed morals of the “Men of Marathon.” Aristophanes became the voice of this reaction, as Socrates and Euripides were the protagonists of the new ideas. The conflict between religion and philosophy captured the comic stage.

Aristophanes had some excuse for liking aristocracy, since he came of a cultured and prosperous family, and appears to have owned land in Aegina. His very name was a patent of nobility, meaning “the best made manifest.” Born about 450, he was in the springtime of life when Athens and Sparta began that war which was to be a bitter theme of his plays. The Spartan invasion of Attica compelled him to abandon his country estate and come to live in Athens. He disliked city life, and resented the sudden demand upon him to hate Megarians, Corinthians, and Spartans; he denounced this conflict of Greek killing Greek, and called, in play after play, for peace.

After the death of Pericles in 429 supreme power in Athens passed into the hands of the rich tanner, Cleon, who represented those commercial interests that wanted a “knock-out blow”—i.e., the utter destruction of Sparta as a competitor for the mastery of Greece. In a lost play, The Babylonians (426), Aristophanes subjected Cleon and his policies to such stinging ridicule that the burly strategos prosecuted him for treason, and had him fined. Two years later Aristophanes revenged himself by presenting The Knights. Its leading character was Demos (i.e., the People), whose major-domo was called the Tanner; everyone understood the transparent allegory, including Cleon, who saw the play. The satire was so sharp that no actor would play the part of the Tanner for fear of political misfortune, whereupon Aristophanes took the role himself. Nicias (the name of the superstitious leader of the oligarchic faction) announces that an oracle has told him that the next ruler of Demos’ house will be a sausage-seller. Such a huckster comes along, and the slaves hail him as “Chief that shall be of our glorious Athens!” “Prithee,” says the Sausage-Seller, “let me go wash my tripes . . . you make a fool of me.” But one Demosthenes assures him that he has just the qualifications for ruling the people—is he not a rascal, and free from all education? The Tanner, fearing that he is to be deposed, protests his services and his loyalty to Demos; no one except the harlots, he urges, has done so much for Demos as he. There is the usual Aristophanic burlesque: the Sausage-Seller belabors the Tanner with tripe, and primes himself for an oratorical contest in the Assembly by eating garlic. A contest in adulation ensues, to see which of the candidates can praise Demos the more lavishly, and “deserve better of Demos and his belly.” The rivals bring a feast of good things and lay them before Demos like a platter of pre-election promises. The Sausage-Seller proposes that as a test of their honesty each candidate’s locker shall be searched. In the Tanner’s locker a heap of succulent dainties is found, in particular a massive cake, from which he has cut only a tiny slice for Demos (a reference to a current charge that Cleon had embezzled state funds). The Tanner is dismissed, and the Sausage-Seller becomes the ruler of Demos’ house.

The Wasps (422) continues the satire on democracy in a milder and weaker vein; the chorus is composed of idle citizens—dressed as wasps—who seek to make an obol or two every day by serving as jurymen, in order that they may, by listening to “sycophants” and levying confiscatory fines, vote the money of the rich into the coffers of the state and the pockets of the poor. But Aristophanes’ ruling interest in these early plays is to ridicule war and promote peace. The hero of The Acharnians (425) is Diceopolis (“Honest Citizen”), a farmer who complains that his land has been devastated by armies, so that he can no longer live by squeezing wine from his vineyards. He sees no reason for war, and is clear that he himself has no quarrel with the Spartans. Tired of waiting for the generals or the politicians to make peace, he signs a personal treaty with the Lacedaemonians; and when a chorus of war-patriotic neighbors denounces him he replies:

Well, the very Spartans even, I’ve my doubts and scruples whether

They’ve been totally to blame, in every instance, altogether.

Chorus. Not to blame in every instance? Villain, vagabond, how dare ye,

Talking treason to our faces, to suppose that we will spare ye?

He agrees to let them kill him if he cannot prove that Athens is as much to blame for the war as Sparta. His head is laid upon a chopping block, and he begins his argument. Presently an Athenian general enters, defeated, blustering, and profane; the Chorus is disgusted with him, and releases Diceopolis, who pleases all by selling a wine called Peace. It was a play of considerable audacity, possible only among a people trained to hear the other side. Taking advantage of the parabasis or digression in which the custom of comedy allowed the author to address the audience through the chorus or one of the characters, Aristophanes explained his function as a comic gadfly among the Athenians:

Never since our poet presented comedies has he praised himself upon the stage. . . . But he maintains that he has done you much that is good. If you no longer allow yourselves to be too much hoodwinked by strangers or seduced by flattery, if in politics you are no longer the ninnies you once were, it is thanks to him. Formerly, when delegates from other cities wanted to deceive you, they had but to style you “the people crowned with violets”; at the word “violets” you at once sat erect on the tips of your bums. Or if, to tickle your vanity, some one spoke of “rich and sleek Athens,” he would get all, because he spoke of you as he would have of anchovies in oil. In cautioning you against such wiles, the poet has done you great service.¹²⁷

In The Peace (421) the poet was triumphant: Cleon was dead, and Nicias was about to sign for Athens a treaty pledging peace and friendship with Sparta for fifty years. But a few years later hostilities were resumed; and in 411 Aristophanes, abandoning hope in his fellow citizens, invited the women of Greece to end the bloodshed. As the Lysistrata opens, the ladies of Athens, while their men are still asleep, gather at dawn in council near the Acropolis. They agree to withhold the comforts of love from their spouses until these come to terms with the enemy; and they send an embassy to the women of Sparta to invite their co-operation in this novel campaign for peace. The men, awake at last, call to the women to come home; when these refuse, the men besiege them, but the attackers are repulsed with pails of hot water and torrents of speech. Lysistrata (“Dissolver of Armies”) reads the men a lesson:

During the wars of old we bore with you. . . . But we observed you carefully; and oftentimes, when we were at home, we used to hear that you had decided some matter badly. When we inquired about it, the men would answer, “What’s that to you? Be silent.” And we asked, “How is it, husband, that you men manage these affairs so foolishly?”

The leader of the men answers that women must keep out of public matter? because they cannot manage the treasury. (As they debate, some of the women steal away to their husbands, muttering Aristophanic excuses.) Lysistrata replies, “Why not? The wives have long had the management of their husbands’ purses, to the great advantage of both.” She argues so well that the men are finally persuaded to call a conference of the warring states. When the delegates are gathered, Lysistrata arranges that they shall have all the wine they can drink. Soon they are in a happy mood, and the long-delayed treaty is signed. The chorus ends the play with a paean to peace.