Aristophanes and the Voice of Athenian Conservatism

In the latter part of the 5th century B.C., through the early 4th century, Aristophanes wrote a series of comedies that featured strong political commentary. In plays such as The Acharnians and The Clouds, Aristophanes reflects the woes of Athenian society, and introduces fanciful, outlandish solutions. At the heart of this, one can see a stinging critique of Athenian society and government, hand in hand with a longing for the past times of security and prosperity, forming the basis of Aristophanes’ conservative political message.
The attempt to understand Aristophanes must begin with an examination of the Athens into which he was born. Approximately forty years before Aristophanes’ birth, Athens had won her legendary victory at Marathon, and by 479 B.C., had led the Greek coalition (along with Sparta) to victory against Persia. In the aftermath of the Persian war, Athens became both wealthy and powerful on the basis of her leadership of the Delian League. Thus, it is into Athens at the height of her influence and opulence that Aristophanes was born around 450. Though doubtless, a great time to be an Athenian, by 431, this same fortune led Athens inexorably into war with her former ally, now rival, Sparta. It is during the war years that Aristophanes begins his career as writer of comedies.
In The Acharnians, produced in 425 (6 years into the Peloponnesian war) deals with the futility of the war with Sparta, and Athens’ inability to make peace. The protagonist, a farmer named Dikaiopolis, expresses his discontent with the current state of affairs: “I’m fed up with the city and just craving to get back to my village. Ah! My village. We had none of this ‘Coal for sale’, nor oil or vinegar either; we’d never even heard the word ‘for sale’. Everything we needed we produced ourselves, and sails we didn’t need, ‘cause we hadn’t any boats.” (Acharnians, Act I, Scene I). This statement reflects not only the preference for rural existence over urban, but the mistrust of Athens’ market economy over her former self-reliance and isolation. This theme of nostalgia continues, along with the critique of Athens’ reliance on mercenaries to fight her land battles, as “The Odomantian Army” is introduced to the assembly:
Theorus: These are excellent light infantry, and for two drachmas a day they will overrun the whole of Boeotia for you.
Dikaiopolis: Two drachmas for that lot, with not a whole prick between them! The oarsmen who saved Athens from the Medes would have something to say about that. [Some of the SOLDIERS pounce on his lunch-basket and begin to help themselves to the contents.] Mr. Chairman, I must protest. These Odomantians are pillaging my salad. [To one of the SOLDIERS] Put that garlic down, it’s mine!
In this, Aristophanes reflects the perils of putting the defense of Athens into the hands of foreigners, both in its cost to the treasury, and the threat of pillage felt by the Athenians. Again, the reference to “the oarsmen who saved Athens from the Medes” invokes the memory of the height of Athens’ triumph, and the navy that was her pride, while ironically ignoring the fact that it was that selfsame focus on naval resources which put the polis in need of mercenaries.
Not only were Athens’ military and fiscal policies subject to Aristophanes’ stinging wit, but also her intellectual and moral life, as exemplified in the debate between Philosophy and Sophistry in his play, The Clouds:
SOPHISTRY: I may be called Mere Sophistry, but I’ll chop you down to size. I’ll refute you.
PHILOSOPHY: Refute me? How?
SOPHISTRY: With unconventionality. With ultramodernity. With unorthodox ideas.
PHILOSOPHY: For whose present vogue we are indebted to this audience of imbeciles and asses.
Aristophanes is unambiguous in regards to his feelings about the school of sophistry. He labels its’ proponents “asses”, while painting a picture of an Athens so compromised in its values as to provide ample opportunities for their success.
SOPHISTRY: Shower me with gold! Look, don’t you see I welcome your abuse?
PHILOSOPHY: Welcome it, monster? In my day we would have cringed with shame.
SOPHISTRY: Whereas now we’re flattered. Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.
PHILOSOPHY: Repulsive Whippersnapper!
SOPHISTRY: Disgusting Fogy!
PHILOSOPHY: Because of you the schools of Athens stand deserted; one whole generation chaffers in the streets, gaping and idle. Mark my words: someday this city shall learn what you have made her men: effeminates and fools.
Again, the glorification of generations past, and contempt for the “new logic” form the basis of Aristophanes’ message here. It is the success of the sophists, and their students, both in winning key government positions, and in making Athens into a state obsessed with litigation which Aristophanes credits with the decline in Athenian morality. The Philosophy/Sophistry debate in The Clouds goes on to define the difference between the old values and the new:
PHILOSOPHY: Gentlemen, I propose to speak of the Old Education, as it flourished once beneath my tutelage, when Homespun Honesty, Plainspeaking, and Truth were still honored and practiced, and throughout the schools of Athens the regime of the three D’s – DISCIPLINE, DECORUM, ad DUTY – enjoyed unchallenged supremacy.
…these were the precepts on which I bred a generation of heroes, the men who fought at Marathon.
…Turn your back upon his blandishments of vice, the rotten law courts and the cheap, corrupting softness of the baths. Choose instead the Old, the Philosophical Education. Follow me and from my lips acquire the virtues of a man: - A sense of shame, that decency and innocence of mind that shrinks from doing wrong. To feel the true man’s blaze of anger when his honor is provoked. Deference toward one’s elders; respect for one’s father and mother. To preserve intact, unsullied by disgrace or stained with wrong, that image of Manliness and Modesty by which alone you live. Purity: - to avoid the brothels and the low, salacious leer of prostituted love – which, being bought, corrupts your manhood and destroys your name. Toward your father scrupulous obedience; to honor his declining years who spent his prime in rearing you. Not to call him Dotard or Fogy-
…But follow my opponent here…you shall learn to make a mockery of all morality, systematically confounding good with evil and evil with good…
(The Clouds, pp. 97-101)
Again, the specter of glory won at Marathon is held in example as to why the older system was a better one. The great list of values which Aristophanes attributes to Philosophy, or the “Old Learning”, are placed in diametric opposition to the qualities he ascribes to sophistry. The Athens portrayed in The Clouds is one in which the old ways, despite any preference they may enjoy in the author’s portrayal, cannot succeed against the immoral “new logic”. As a resolution, the school of sophistry, though successful in its aim of dominating the courts and the assembly, inspires outrage in the common man to the extent that his only solution is violence: the school is burned down, and what is essentially a riot ends the play.
The political message underlying Aristophanes’ plays is neither unfamiliar, nor unpredictable: things used to be better. What becomes the point for further discussion is the question he leaves us with: what do we do now? The answers he provides are definitively comedic, be they a “private truce” to alleviate the toils of war, or getting rid of Sokrates in revenge for a ruined morality (which some, apparently, didn’t think was a joke). Aristophanes was, perhaps, challenging his fellow citizens to arrive at a realistic course of action and lead Athens back to her former glory.