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O City of Kranaos! Athenian Identity in Aristophanes’ Acharnians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2006

John Whitehorne
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Extract

Defining national identity is an ongoing and open-ended process, which is pursued constantly and competitively through every available medium. Identity can be defined by what we have to say about ourselves as a group, or about individuals who seem to embody characteristics considered either desirable or undesirable for the group as a whole. It is defined too by what we have to say about others, because at the same time we are thereby defining ourselves. It is also defined by what others have to say - or choose to leave unsaid - about us. Further definitions are also created when, as is often the case, a national group also finds itself a subgroup of a wider linguistic entity. English and Scots, Americans and Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, metropolitan and colonial French, Chileans and Argentinians - the modern list is almost endless, just as it was in ancient Greece with its plethora of rival city states, all speaking a common language yet all with their own distinct political traditions, systems of coinage, dialects, and social structures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , April 2005 , pp. 34 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2005

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References

1 E.g., it is said that when Sir Edmund Hillary got back to base camp from the ascent of Everest, his first words to the climbing leader George Lowe were, ‘Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.’ Some fifty years later this laconic and self-deprecating understatement remains a quintessential definition of New Zealand national identity, in the same way that the parting words of Scott's companion, Titus Oates, have struck a chord with the English since Edwardian times.

2 Acharnians, Hypothesis, 32-4 (OCT).

3 E.g., Pericles’ Funeral Speech (Thuc. 2.35-46: 431/0 BC), Pseudo-Xenophon, Ath. Pol. (the “Old Oligarch’: datable early 420s BC?), Theseus’ speech in Eur., Supp. 395-462 (c. 422 BC).

4 See Rehm, Rush, Greek Tragic Theatre (London and NY, 1992), ch.lGoogle Scholar; Connor, W. R., ‘City Dionysia and Athenian democracy’, Classica et Mediaevalia 40 (1989), 7–32 Google Scholar (also published as Connor, W. R. et al., Aspects of Athenian Democracy [Copenhagen, 1990]Google Scholar, same pagination); Goldhill, S., ‘The Great Dionysia and civic ideology’, JHS 107 (1987), 58-76Google Scholar (fuller version in Winkler, J. J. and Zeitlin, F. I., (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysus [Princeton, 1990], 97–129)Google Scholar.

5 Henderson, J., ed. and tr., Aristophanes I. Acharnians, Knights (Loeb Classical Library, Harvard and London, 1998), 9–12, esp. 10Google Scholar.

6 See Kannicht, R., ‘Aristophanes redivivus: iiber die Aktualitat der Achamer’, Dioniso 5 (1971), 573-91, esp. 579Google Scholar; N. W. later, ‘Space, character and transformation and transvaluation in the Acharnians’, in Sommerstein, A. H., Halliwell, S. et al. (eds.), Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (Bari, 1993), 397–416 Google Scholar, esp. 398-402. H. Van Steen, G. A., ‘Aspects of ‘public performance’, in Aristophanes’ Acharnians ’, AC 63 (1994), 211-24Google Scholar.

7 See Olson, S. D. (ed.), Aristophanes Acharnians (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar, note on Acharnians 75.

8 Berger-Doer, G., Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC) VI. 1 (Zurich and Munich, 1992), 108-9 s.vGoogle Scholar. ‘Kranaos I.’ The identity of the figure remains very uncertain.

9 On the rough nature of the Acharnian mountain-men, and their women, see Whitehead, D., The Denies of Attica 508/7 to ca. 250 B.C. (Princeton, 1986), 397–400 Google Scholar.

10 For the rural Dionysia see D. Whitehead (n. 9), 212-22; Cole, S. G., ‘Procession and celebration at the Dionysia’, in Scodel, R. (ed.), Theater and Society in the Classical World (Ann Arbor, 1993), 25–38 Google Scholar; Habash, M., ‘Two Dionysiac festivals in Acharnians ’, AJP 116 (1995), 559-77Google Scholar. esp. 560-7.

11 Colvin, S., Dialect in Aristophanes (Oxford, 1999), 307 Google Scholar.

12 See Olson (n. 7), note on Acharnians 872-3.

13 There are analogous Hollywood, German, French, and Soviet celluloid military stereotypes.

14 The view of Bowie, E. L., “Who is Dicaeopolis?’, JHS 108 (1988), 183-5Google Scholar, that Dikaiopolis represents Aristophanes’ comic rival Eupolis, has been rebutted by Parker, L. P. E., ‘Eupolis or Dicaeopolis?’, JHS 111 (1991), 203-8Google Scholar. To identify Dikaiopolis completely with Aristophanes (as Van Steen [n. 6], 213) seems mistaken.

15 Summary in Olson (n. 7), note on Acharnians, 1018 ff., and MacDowell, D. M., Aristophanes and Athens (Oxford, 1995), 67-9Google Scholar.

16 PA 3425; see MacDowell, D. M., ‘The nature of Aristophanes’ Akharnians’, G&R n.s. 30 (1983), 143-62Google Scholar, esp. 158-60, and Aristophanes and Athens (Oxford, 1995), 76, and Olson (n. 7), note on Acharnians 1028.

17 For an alternative reading of the scene, see my ‘Derketes’ poor little bullocks (Aristophanes, Ach. 1018-1036)’, Mnemosyne 55 (2002), 203-8.

18 Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days 441-7, who gives precise instructions about the optimum age for a ploughman (40 years) and daily payment in kind (a quartered loaf of 8 pieces: for discussion of what this was see West, M. L. (ed.), Hesiod. Works and Days [Oxford, 1978]Google Scholar, notes on 441 and 442).

19 I follow the view of Carey, C., ‘The purpose of Aristophanes’ Acharnians ’, RhM 136 (1993), 245-63Google Scholar, that the Acharnians was meant not as a serious plea for peace so much as an escapist fantasy. This, I believe, was one of the reasons for its success.

20 See further Bowie, A. M., Aristophanes. Myth, Ritual and Comedy (Cambridge, 1993), 39–44 Google Scholar.

21 Whitehead (n. 9), 397, calculates that the Acharnians made up 44% of their tribe, VI Oineis, and 4.4% of the total citizen population.

22 There are a number of lost Old Comedy plays entitled after demes or demesmen in general, or particular named demes, (see Whitehead [n. 9], 329), probably reflecting the rustic origins of early Attic comedy.

23 This is an expanded version of a paper originally presented at the AULLA 32 Congress in Wellington and the Australasian Society of Classical Studies XXV Conference in Bendigo. I am grateful to my colleagues on both occasions for their helpful comments and suggestions.