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    The Acharnians
    The Acharnians
    The Acharnians
    Ebook90 pages48 minutes

    The Acharnians

    By Aristophanes

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    About this ebook

    Aristophanes was one of the Ancient Greeks' most famous playwrights, and some of his works survived to the modern day, including this one.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles River Editors
    Release dateMar 22, 2018
    ISBN9781508013105
    The Acharnians
    Author

    Aristophanes

    Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete.

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      Book preview

      The Acharnians - Aristophanes

      THE ACHARNIANS

      ………………

      Aristophanes

      WAXKEEP PUBLISHING

      Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please show the author some love.

      This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2015 by Aristophanes

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      SCENE: The Athenian Ecclesia on the Pnyx; afterwards Dicaeopolis’ house in the country.

      The Acharnians

      By

      Aristophanes

      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 comic incidents are: the scene where the two young daughters of the famished Megarian are sold in the market at Athens as suck(l)ing-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.

      ………………

      DICAEOPOLIS(1) (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

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