Text Access

Aristophanes. The Birds and Other Plays. Trans. Alan H. Sommerstein and David Barrett. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 2003. Print.

Readings Journal Entries

Duly employing critical thinking, nuance, the whole nine yards, where on the political spectrum

do you feel inclined to locate the ideological perspective informing the satire in Aristophanes' Knights? Explain your choice. What, in other words, does the play seem to be trying to say about democracy generally? About the 420s Athenian democracy specifically? OPTIONAL: What do you feel most needs to be clarified/explained/addressed with regard to this reading?

Preliminary Remarks

This play can be thought of as an extended riff on the following topoi:

The flattery or pros kharin legein topos (" 'They' do no more than flatter you; My words are serious and true." Listening to them, you demean yourselves; listening to me, you deonstrate good sense")
The corruption topos (" 'They' seek to soften you up and to take advantage of you with promises; I, to treat you with the dignity you deserve. Man up and listen to me")
The demophilia topos, the charge, frequently encountered, that "So-And-So says he loves you, but really doesn't." In this play, that is comically recast as slave-politcians courting Thepeople in an openly sexual fashion.
- As if the take-away message were that "Cleon and his like say they love you, though all they really want to do is try to take advantage of you" — compare the business top of p. 87, "SAUSAGE-SELLER: Whenever anyone in the assembly talked like this ... 'Thepeople, I love you' " etc.

It satirizes assembly persuasion as a kind of flattery/pandering, the Greek word for which is kolakeia. Demosthenes, the 300s-era orator and politician, openly refers to such politicking as kolakeia, as does the Demosthenes character (not the Demosthenes you read earlier) in a our play.

It also satirizes what is technically termed captatio benevolentiae, efforts by speakers to establish a good rapport with audiences and to curry favor; the play explicitly states that more or less explicitly near the end, in a passage showing the Sausage-Seller telling Thepeople what he was like and what he used to do prior to rejuvenation (p. 87, same passage as noted above).

It is as well transparent satire directed at Cleon, the current prostates tou demou (unofficial leader of the democracy). Cleon, notorious for mercilessly prosecuting "enemies of the people," had earlier gone after Aristophanes for satirizing the demos of Athens in front of foreigners; we perhaps may, then, view this play as Aristophanes' revenge.

Cleon represents a new development in Athenian politics: the non-aristocratic (though wealthy) political leader. A successful leather merchant, Cleon was very popular with the demos, but despised as a vulgar parvenu by more aristocratic and conservative elements.

In our play, Cleon-Paphagonian is the very embodiment of polupragmosune, impertinent meddlesomeness as the earmark of the unworthy up-and-comer. But what of the dramatic setting: democratic Athens in the 420s BCE? Does Aristophanes' Knights present a utopian or dystopian vision of Athenian democracy?

Play Facts

Playwright: Aristophanes (ca. 445-380s)
Produced at Athens, January of 424 BCE
Political situation: Peloponnesian War going well!
- Cleon as general has just captured a number of Spartiates, elite Spartan citizen-soldiers, and is holding them prisoner at Athens
- This gives a tremendous negotiating advantage to Athens
- It also greatly enhances the prestige of Cleon
Genre: Old Comedy
- elaborate poetic structure
- political topicality
- personal abuse
- sexual and scatological obscenity

Characters, Dramatic Situation, Topical References

Since this is political satire, the relation between the internal dramatic situation (the vehicle of satire) to external actualities (what is being satirized) needs to be understood.

Character	Dramatic Personality	Topical Actuality
Demos (translated as "Thepeople" or "People" in your texts):	A kind of "Joe Average Athenian," he is an elderly householder living on the Pnyx, a hill in Athens.	The Athenian demos, the sovereign entity at Athens. The Pnyx was the regular meeting place of the the Athenian Assembly.
Paphlagonian:	Demos' slave, from Paphlagonia (in modern Asia Minor), he has displaced all the other slaves in his master's favor.	Cleon, a prosperous leather merchant (rich, but not noble) who is the current prostates tou demou, leader of the democracy. In capturing elite Spartan troops at Pylos, his popularity with the demos is riding high. His policies tend strongly to favor the demos. He is despised by the "old guard" at Athens.
Sausage-Seller:	An extremely vulgar and low-class street vender. His name turns out to be Agoracritus, "He Who Is Judged in the Market Place."	This character has no real-life counterpart. He's there to out-Paphlagon (i.e., out-Cleon) Paphlagon (i.e., Cleon), but also to educate Thepeople on the dangers of Cleon-like politicians.
Demosthenes:	Another one of Demos' slaves, and unhappy with the Paphlagonian.	One of the Athenian generals, mostly associated with sea-commands. (The orator of the 300s is a different person, though related to this Demosthenes.)
Nicias:	Yet another one of Demos' slaves, also unhappy with the Paphlagonian.	A well-regarded statesman and general, associated with the more conservative and aristocratic elements in Athenian politics.
Chorus of Knights:	Horse-mounted warriors, and enemies of the Paphlagonian.	Members of the second highest Solonian property class, the hippeis ("cavalry" or "knights"), they will tend to oppose democratic extremists.
Peacetreaties:	Naked girls.	Treaty or truce with Sparta to end the fighting.

Action and Political Allegory

The main character's name is Demos (from Greek ho demos, "Thepeople"), three of his "slaves" are obviously dramatized politicians (Demosthenes, Nicias, Cleon), ThePeople lives on the Assembly Hill (the Pnyx), and so on.

No surprise, then, that the action itself can be understood as an extended metaphor (an "allegory") rich in political reference, while metaphor very often gives way to political literality, as if to make sure no one misses the "joke."

Thus:

Athens itself is figured as a household (Thepeople as "householder"), a metaphor resonating with the ideas of ancient thinkers who regularly compared the city and its administration to a household either well or poorly run
Two politician-"slaves" seeking to displace the People's darling (i.e., Cleon-Paphlagon) bring in a new comer to beat the pest at his own game (flattery politics), yet also to "talk turkey" (to employ frank speech, parrhesia), as in the orator Demosthenes' speeches from the 300s
The process plays out as a legislative process. I.e.,
- First, Paphlagon and Sausage-Seller debate in the Council (the Boule), i.e., they participate the process of probouleuma, agenda formation
- Then, debate is brought before ThePeople sitting in "assembly" on the Pnyx, conducted as if a pederastic, i.e., sexual, courtship (politicians as lovers, erastai, Thepeople as a superannuated beloved, eromenos)
- The end result:
  - An old-new constitution (the "ancestral constitution, or patrios politeia) figured as a rejuvenated Demos, plus
  - Peace with Sparta (yeah!) figured as naked girls (i.e., an "attractive" choice)
  - Paphlagon himself defeated and discredited like a has-been politician

Additional Study Questions

Thus the question really becomes: WHAT IS THE PLAYWRIGHT TRYING TO SAY ABOUT PERSUASION-BASED DEMOCRACY?

What does it mean that politicians in this play are figured as lovers? what relationship does that hold to eros as a political emotion in
- The Harmodius-Aristogeiton myth?
- Eros as patriotism in the Periclean Funeral Oration (Thucydides 2.43.1)?
- Eros as a political-rhetorical style in Plato's Gorgias?
- Eros-politics as flattery/coddling/kolakeia?
Keeping in mind the "Old Oligarch's" characterization of democracy as almost a "slave-ocracy," what does it mean that Athenian politicians in Knights are figured as slaves, and that Thepeople (the demos) is figured as, in effect, a slave of slaves?
What does it mean that, as we find out in a passage somewhat more than half-way through (p. 78), Thepeople reveals that he sees himself as virtually swindling his politicians?
Is the political vision articuated at play's end really a better democracy, i.e., really democracy or really better?

[top]