by Aristophanes
The Complete Works of
ARISTOPHANES
(c. 446 BC–386 BC)
Contents
The Translations
THE ACHARNIANS
THE KNIGHTS
THE CLOUDS
THE WASPS
PEACE
THE BIRDS
LYSISTRATA
THE WOMEN CELEBRATING THE THESMOPHORIA
THE FROGS
THE ASSEMBLYWOMEN
WEALTH
The Greek Texts
LIST OF GREEK TEXTS
The Biographies
INTRODUCTION TO ARISTOPHANES by John Williams White
ARISTOPHANES by T. W. Lumb
© Delphi Classics 2013
Version 1
The Complete Works of
ARISTOPHANES
By Delphi Classics, 2013
The Translations
Aristophanes’ birthplace — Athens
THE ACHARNIANS
Anonymous translation for the Athenian Society, London, 1912
This is the earliest of Aristophanes’ eleven extant plays, which was produced in 425 BC, winning first place at the Lenaia festival. One of the lesser festivals of Athens, the Lenaia dramatic competition, which was held in honour of Dionysus, took place in Athens in the month of Gamelion, approximately corresponding to January. The play is notable for its yearning demands for an end to the Peloponnesian War and for Aristophanes’ spirited response to the attacks he suffered for his previous play, now lost, The Babylonians. The demagogue politician Cleon had reviled the last play as a slander against the Athenian polis and so Aristophanes used The Acharnians to refute Cleon’s accusations and to withstand political intimidation.
The Peloponnesian War was already into its sixth year when The Acharnians was produced. The Spartans and their allies had been invading Attica each year, burning and looting farm property in order to provoke the Athenians into a land battle that they could not 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. The war had already resulted in daily privations for Athens, with starvation and plague, and yet democratic Athens continued to be guided by the pro-war faction led by politicians like Cleon. Aristophanes’ earlier play, The Babylonians, had depicted the cities of the Athenian League as slaves grinding at a mill and it had been performed at the City Dionysia in the presence of foreigners. Cleon had subsequently prosecuted the playwright for slandering the polis. Aristophanes was already planning his revenge when The Acharnians was produced and it includes veiled references that he would have much greater revenge on the politician in his next play, The Knights. The Acharnians captures the genuine hunger for peace felt by the Athenians at a time when the city was suffering from hardships of an unrelenting war with no end within sight.
The play concerns the middle-aged Athenian Assembly man Dikaiopolis, who is tired of the war and miraculously obtains a private peace treaty with The Spartans, allowing him to enjoy the benefits of peace, in spite of opposition and envy from his fellow Athenians. Among his opponents are the play’s chorus, a mob of aged farmers and charcoal burners from Acharnae, who are tough veterans of past wars and have grown to hate the Spartans for destroying their farms and so despise anyone who talks peace.
The Structure of Old Comedy
The structural elements of a typical Aristophanic comedy can be summarised as follows:
prologue - an introductory scene with a dialogue and/or soliloquy addressed to the audience, expressed in iambic trimeter and explaining the situation that is to be resolved in the play;
parodos - the arrival of the chorus, dancing and singing, sometimes followed by a choreographed skirmish with one or more actors, often expressed in long lines of tetrameters;
symmetrical scenes - passages featuring songs and declaimed verses in long lines of tetrameters, arranged symmetrically in two sections such that each half resembles the other in meter and line length; the agon and parabasis can be considered specific instances of symmetrical scenes:
parabasis - verses through which the Chorus addresses the audience directly, firstly in the middle of the play and again near the end (see the section below Parabasis);
agon - a formal debate that decides the outcome of the play, typically in anapestic tetrameter, though iambs are sometimes used to delineate inferior arguments;
episodes - sections of dialogue in iambic trimeter, often in a succession of scenes featuring minor characters towards the end of a play;
songs (‘strophes’/’antistrophes’ or ‘odes’/’antodes’) - often in symmetrical pairs where each half has the same meter and number of lines as the other, used as transitions between other structural elements, or between scenes while actors change costume, and often commenting on the action;
exodus - the departure of the Chorus and the actors, in song and dance celebrating the hero’s victory and sometimes celebrating a symbolic marriage.
The rules of the competition did not prevent a playwright arranging and adjusting these elements to suit his own wishes. For example, in The Acharnians there is no formal agon whereas in The Clouds there are two agons.
An ancient bust of the playwright
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
THE ACHARNIANS
The Pnyx is a hill in central Athens, where the Athenians gathered to host their popular assemblies, thus making the hill one of the earliest and most important sites in the creation of democracy. ‘The Acharnians’ opens at this location.
INTRODUCTION
This is the first of the series of three Comedies— ‘The Acharnians,’ ‘Peace’ and ‘Lysistrata’ — produced at intervals of years, the sixth, tenth and twenty-first of the Peloponnesian War, and impressing on the Athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the consequent ruin of industry and, above all, agriculture, and the urgency of asking Peace. In date it is the earliest play brought out by the author in his own name and his first work of serious importance. It was acted at the Lenaean Festival, in January, 426 B.C., and gained the first prize, Cratinus being second.
Its diatribes against the War and fierce criticism of the general policy of the War party so enraged Cleon that, as already mentioned, he endeavoured to ruin the author, who in ‘The Knights’ retorted by a direct and savage personal attack on the leader of the democracy. The plot is of the simplest. Dicaeopolis, an Athenian citizen, but a native of Acharnae, one of the agricultural demes and one which had especially suffered in the Lacedaemonian invasions, sick and tired of the ill-success and miseries of the War, makes up his mind, if he fails to induce the people to adopt his policy of “peace at any price,” to conclude a private and particular peace of his own to cover himself, his family, and his estate. The Athenians, momentarily elated by victory and over-persuaded by the demagogues of the day — Cleon and his henchmen, refuse to hear of such a thing as coming to terms. Accordingly Dicaeopolis dispatches an envoy to Sparta on his own account, who comes back presently with a selection of specimen treaties in his pocket. The old man tastes and tries, special terms are arranged, and the play concludes with a riotous and uproarious rustic feast in honour of the blessings of Peace and Plenty. Incidentally excellent fun is poked at Euripides and his dramatic methods, which supply matter for so much witty badinage in several others of our author’s pieces.
Other specially comi
c incidents are: the scene where the two young daughters of the famished Megarian are sold in the market at Athens as sucking-pigs — a scene in which the convenient similarity of the Greek words signifying a pig and the ‘pudendum muliebre’ respectively is utilized in a whole string of ingenious and suggestive ‘double entendres’ and ludicrous jokes; another where the Informer, or Market-Spy, is packed up in a crate as crockery and carried off home by the Boeotian buyer.
The drama takes its title from the Chorus, composed of old men of
Acharnae.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
DICAEOPOLIS.
HERALD.
AMPHITHEUS.
AMBASSADORS.
PSEUDARTABAS.
THEORUS.
WIFE OF DICAEOPOLIS.
DAUGHTER OF DICAEOPOLIS.
EURIPIDES.
CEPHISOPHON, servant of Euripides.
LAMACHUS.
ATTENDANT OF LAMACHUS.
A MEGARIAN.
MAIDENS, daughters of the Megarian.
A BOEOTIAN.
NICARCHUS.
A HUSBANDMAN.
A BRIDESMAID.
AN INFORMER.
MESSENGERS.
CHORUS OF ACHARNIAN ELDERS.
SCENE: The Athenian Ecclesia on the Pnyx; afterwards Dicaeopolis’ house in the country.
THE ACHARNIANS
DICAEOPOLIS (alone). What cares have not gnawed at my heart and how few have been the pleasures in my life! Four, to be exact, while my troubles have been as countless as the grains of sand on the shore! Let me see of what value to me have been these few pleasures? Ah! I remember that I was delighted in soul when Cleon had to disgorge those five talents; I was in ecstasy and I love the Knights for this deed; ‘it is an honour to Greece.’ But the day when I was impatiently awaiting a piece by Aeschylus, what tragic despair it caused me when the herald called, “Theognis, introduce your Chorus!” Just imagine how this blow struck straight at my heart! On the other hand, what joy Dexitheus caused me at the musical competition, when he played a Boeotian melody on the lyre! But this year by contrast! Oh! what deadly torture to hear Chaeris perform the prelude in the Orthian mode! — Never, however, since I began to bathe, has the dust hurt my eyes as it does to-day. Still it is the day of assembly; all should be here at daybreak, and yet the Pnyx is still deserted. They are gossiping in the market-place, slipping hither and thither to avoid the vermilioned rope. The Prytanes even do not come; they will be late, but when they come they will push and fight each other for a seat in the front row. They will never trouble themselves with the question of peace. Oh! Athens! Athens! As for myself, I do not fail to come here before all the rest, and now, finding myself alone, I groan, yawn, stretch, break wind, and know not what to do; I make sketches in the dust, pull out my loose hairs, muse, think of my fields, long for peace, curse town life and regret my dear country home, which never told me to ‘buy fuel, vinegar or oil’; there the word ‘buy,’ which cuts me in two, was unknown; I harvested everything at will. Therefore I have come to the assembly fully prepared to bawl, interrupt and abuse the speakers, if they talk of aught but peace. But here come the Prytanes, and high time too, for it is midday! As I foretold, hah! is it not so? They are pushing and fighting for the front seats.
HERALD. Move on up, move on, move on, to get within the consecrated area.
AMPHITHEUS. Has anyone spoken yet?
HERALD. Who asks to speak?
AMPHITHEUS. I do.
HERALD. Your name?
AMPHITHEUS. Amphitheus.
HERALD. You are no man.
AMPHITHEUS. No! I am an immortal! Amphitheus was the son of Ceres and Triptolemus; of him was born Celeus. Celeus wedded Phaencreté, my grandmother, whose son was Lucinus, and, being born of him, I am an immortal; it is to me alone that the gods have entrusted the duty of treating with the Lacedaemonians. But, citizens, though I am immortal, I am dying of hunger; the Prytanes give me naught.
A PRYTANIS. Guards!
AMPHITHEUS. Oh, Triptolemus and Ceres, do ye thus forsake your own blood?
DICAEOPOLIS. Prytanes, in expelling this citizen, you are offering an outrage to the Assembly. He only desired to secure peace for us and to sheathe the sword.
PRYTANIS. Sit down and keep silence!
DICAEOPOLIS. No, by Apollo, will I not, unless you are going to discuss the question of peace.
HERALD. The ambassadors, who are returned from the Court of the King!
DICAEOPOLIS. Of what King? I am sick of all those fine birds, the peacock ambassadors and their swagger.
HERALD. Silence!
DICAEOPOLIS. Oh! oh! by Ecbatana, what assumption!
AN AMBASSADOR. During the archonship of Euthymenes, you sent us to the
Great King on a salary of two drachmae per diem.
DICAEOPOLIS. Ah! those poor drachmae!
AMBASSADOR. We suffered horribly on the plains of the Caÿster, sleeping under a tent, stretched deliciously on fine chariots, half dead with weariness.
DICAEOPOLIS. And I was very much at ease, lying on the straw along the battlements!
AMBASSADOR. Everywhere we were well received and forced to drink delicious wine out of golden or crystal flagons….
DICAEOPOLIS. Oh, city of Cranaus, thy ambassadors are laughing at thee!
AMBASSADOR. For great feeders and heavy drinkers are alone esteemed as men by the barbarians.
DICAEOPOLIS. Just as here in Athens, we only esteem the most drunken debauchees.
AMBASSADOR. At the end of the fourth year we reached the King’s Court, but he had left with his whole army to ease himself, and for the space of eight months he was thus easing himself in midst of the golden mountains.
DICAEOPOLIS. And how long was he replacing his dress?
AMBASSADOR. The whole period of a full moon; after which he returned to his palace; then he entertained us and had us served with oxen roasted whole in an oven.
DICAEOPOLIS. Who ever saw an oxen baked in an oven? What a lie!
AMBASSADOR. On my honour, he also had us served with a bird three times as large as Cleonymus, and called the Boaster.
DICAEOPOLIS. And do we give you two drachmae, that you should treat us to all this humbug?
AMBASSADOR. We are bringing to you, Pseudartabas, the King’s Eye.
DICAEOPOLIS. I would a crow might pluck out thine with his beak, thou cursed ambassador!
HERALD. The King’s Eye!
DICAEOPOLIS. Eh! Great gods! Friend, with thy great eye, round like the hole through which the oarsman passes his sweep, you have the air of a galley doubling a cape to gain the port.
AMBASSADOR. Come, Pseudartabas, give forth the message for the Athenians with which you were charged by the Great King.
PSEUDARTABAS. Jartaman exarx ‘anapissonnai satra.
AMBASSADOR. Do you understand what he says?
DICAEOPOLIS. By Apollo, not I!
AMBASSADOR. He says, that the Great King will send you gold. Come, utter the word ‘gold’ louder and more distinctly.
DICAEOPOLIS. Thou shalt not have gold, thou gaping-arsed Ionian.
DICAEOPOLIS. Ah! may the gods forgive me, but that is clear enough.
AMBASSADOR. What does he say?
DICAEOPOLIS. That the Ionians are debauchees and idiots, if they expect to receive gold from the barbarians.
AMBASSADOR. Not so, he speaks of medimni of gold.
DICAEOPOLIS. What medimni? Thou art but a great braggart; but get your way, I will find out the truth by myself. Come now, answer me clearly, if you do not wish me to dye your skin red. Will the Great King send us gold? (Pseudartabas makes a negative sign.) Then our ambassadors are seeking to deceive us? (Pseudartabas signs affirmatively.) These fellows make signs like any Greek; I am sure that they are nothing but Athenians. Oh, ho! I recognize one of these eunuchs; it is Clisthenes, the son of Sibyrtius. Behold the effrontery of this shaven rump! How! great baboon, with such a beard do you seek to play the eunuch to us? And this other one? Is it not Straton
?
HERALD. Silence! Let all be seated. The Senate invites the King’s Eye to the Prytaneum.
DICAEOPOLIS. Is this not sufficient to drive one to hang oneself? Here I stand chilled to the bone, whilst the doors of the Prytaneum fly wide open to lodge such rascals. But I will do something great and bold. Where is Amphitheus? Come and speak with me.
AMPHITHEUS. Here I am.
DICAEOPOLIS. Take these eight drachmae and go and conclude a truce with the Lacedaemonians for me, my wife and my children; I leave you free, my dear citizens, to send out embassies and to stand gaping in the air.
HERALD. Bring in Theorus, who has returned from the Court of
Sitalces.
THEORUS. I am here.
DICAEOPOLIS. Another humbug!
THEORUS. We should not have remained long in Thrace….
DICAEOPOLIS. Forsooth, no, if you had not been well paid.
THEORUS. … If the country had not been covered with snow; the rivers were ice-bound at the time that Theognis brought out his tragedy here; during the whole of that time I was holding my own with Sitalces, cup in hand; and, in truth, he adored you to such a degree, that he wrote on the walls, “How beautiful are the Athenians!” His son, to whom we gave the freedom of the city, burned with desire to come here and eat chitterlings at the feast of the Apaturia; he prayed his father to come to the aid of his new country and Sitalces swore on his goblet that he would succour us with such a host that the Athenians would exclaim, “What a cloud of grasshoppers!”
DICAEOPOLIS. May I die if I believe a word of what you tell us! Excepting the grasshoppers, there is not a grain of truth in it all!
THEORUS. And he has sent you the most warlike soldiers of all Thrace.
DICAEOPOLIS. Now we shall begin to see clearly.
HERALD. Come hither, Thracians, whom Theorus brought.
DICAEOPOLIS. What plague have we here?
