¹ ‘Who is Dicaeopolis?’, JHS cviii (1988) 183–5.

² On εὔκλεια in Hipp., see, in particular, Knox, B. M. W., ‘The Hippolytus of Euripides’, YCS xiii (1952) 3–31Google Scholar (reprinted in Knox, , Word and action [Baltimore and London 1979]Google Scholar and Segal, (ed.), Oxford readings in Greek tragedy [Oxford 1983]Google Scholar) and R. P. Winnington-Ingram, ‘Hippolytus: a study in causation’, Entretiens Hardt vi: Euripides 169–91.

The cross-references in Ach. are of extreme simplicity compared with the evolving redefinitions of εὔκλεια (and other terms) with which Euripides' audience had to grapple.

³ διὰ τὴν πέρυσι κωμῳδίαν: τοὺς Βαβυλωνίους λέγει. τούτους γὰρ πρὸ τῶν Ἀχαρνέων Ἀριστοφάνης ἐδίδαξεν, ἐν οἶς πολλοὺς κακῶς εἶπεν. ἐκωμῴδησε γὰρ τάς τε κληρωτὰς καὶ χειροτονητὰς ἀρχὰς καὶ Κλέωνα, παρόντων τῶν ξένων. καθῆκε γαρ δρᾶμα τοὺς Βαβυλωνίους <ἐν> τῇ τῶν Διονυσίων ἑορτῇ, ἥτις ἐν τῳ ἔαρι ἐπιτελεῖται, ἐν ᾦ ἔφερον τοὺς φόρους οἰ σύμμαχοι. κσὶ διὰ τοῦτο ὀργισθεὶς ὁ Κλέων ἐγράψστο αὐτὸν ἀδικίας εἱς τοὺς πολίτας, ὡς εἱς ὕβριν τοῦ δήμου καὶ τῆς βουλῆς ταῦτα πεποιηκότα, καὶ ξενίας δὲ αὐτὸν ἐγράψατο καὶ εἱς ἀγῶνα ἐνέβαλεν. τὰ δὲ Λήναια ἐν τῷ μετοπώρῳ ἤγετο, ἐν οἶς οὐ παρῆσαν οἱ ξένοι, ὄτε τὸ δρᾶμα τοῦτο, οἱ Ἀχαρνεῖς ἐδιδάσκετο. RΕΓ (and the Triclinian L).

Scholia in Aristophanis Acharnenses ed. Wilson, N. G. (Groningen 1975) 59–60Google Scholar. The author of the note slips up in placing the Lenaea ἐν τῷ μετοττώρῳ, but this is his only demonstrable mistake, and it does not affect his argument. Aristophanes returns to the attack on τὰς χειροτονητὰς ἀρχὰς in his treatment of Lamachus in Ach.

⁴ ‘Tragedy and politics in Aristophanes' Acharnians’, JHS cviii (1988) 33–47.

⁵ On the date of Τσξίαρχοι see Kassel-Austin ad loc. Wilamowitz dated the play to 427, but Handley (PCA lxxix [1982] 24–5) would bring it down to within a year of 415. Ἀστράτευτοι (Eup. fr. 35 K-A) shares a joke about Peisander's cowardice with Birds 1556 (414). According to schol. ΝΕγ on the same line, Aristophanes attacked Peisander in Babylonians in 426 (Ar. fr. 84 K-A). If this is true, it is the earliest reference to him in a securely-dated play. Other dated references to him are: Peace 395 and Eupolis 195 K-A (both of 421), Phrynichus 21 K-A (414, like Birds) and Lys. 490–1 (411). Reference to Peisander in a play earlier than 425 cannot be ruled out, but mentions of him become noticeably more frequent from the late 420s until his disappearance from the scene in 411. P. Geissler (Chronologie der altattischen Komödie) dates Ἀστράτευτοι to 424–3. and other plays which mention Peisander to 420–19 (Hermippus, Ἀρτοπώλιδες 4 K-A) and 416–11 (Plato, πείσανδρος 102–113 K-A). See now Storey, I. C. (Phoenix xliv [1990] 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁶ Aristophanes and the comic hero (Cambridge, Mass. 1964). On Acharnians, see in particular Chap. III. Cf. K. J. Dover, Aristophanic comedy 87–88, Foley, op. cit. (n.3) 45–6.

⁷ We do not, of course, know how the curiously ghostly prytaneis and assembly were represented on stage. The suggestion of MacDowell, D. M. (‘The nature of Aristophanes' Akhamians’, G&R xxx [1983] 147Google Scholar) that the audience were drafted in to play the part, is plausible (compare the use of the audience to represent the sinners in Hades at Frogs 274ff.), but I do not think it necessary (or likely) that Dicaeopolis actually sat ‘beside or among them’ during the scene. His description of the arrival of the assembly in his opening speech would have had to be imaginary. At 20, the Pnyx is empty; by 40 the rest of the assembly has arrived, and the belated prytaneis have to push their way to their seats in the front. One may wonder whether the whole assembly is not left to the imagination of the audience, so that, by a comic paradox, the citizens who treat Dicaeopolis as if he did not exist are themselves non-existent.

The dissolution of the assembly does, indeed, follow Dicaeopolis' announcement of a sign from Zeus, but with no apparent reference to him. He has now decided to make his private peace (130–1), and the disappearance of the assembly may be seen as the first sign that things are now going mysteriously right for him.

⁸ Op. cit. (n.4).

⁹ MacDowell (op. cit. [n.7] 148–54) analyses Dicaeopolis' speech at 497ff., and I agree with his main contentions. I would add that Dicaeopolis is made to use a common strategy of opponents of wars. A war has causes on two levels: an immediate casus belli and an underlying international problem which is far more serious, far harder to resolve, or even to formulate (τὴν ἀληθεοτάτην πρόφσσιν, ἀφανεστάτην δὲ λόγῳ … Thucydides i 23). The opponent's strategy consists in completely ignoring the underlying problem and concentrating on the immediate casus belli, which in isolation tends in any case to sound trivial, and which can be yet further belittled by rhetorical means. Compare Voltaire's famous judgment on the Seven Years' War: ‘Vous savez que ces deux nations sont en guerre pour quelques arpents de neige vers le Canada …’ (Candide, Chap. 23). A notorious example from real life is Neville Chamberlain's description of Czechoslovakia in 1938 as ‘a faraway country of which we know nothing’. The editor of this journal compares Andocides, On the Peace, and adduces the final chapter of A. J. P. Taylor's Origins of the second world war, which is entitled ‘War for Danzig’. The mixture of fantasy, parody and serious intent in this speech, so baffling to us, will have been disentangled instantaneously and without conscious effort by a contemporary audience.

¹⁰ ‘Well, the truth is, Ive taken a sort of fancy to you, Governor; and if you want the girl, I'm not so set on having her back home again but what I might be open to an arrangement. Regarded in the light of a young woman, she's a fine handsome girl. As a daughter she's not worth her keep; so I tell you straight. All I ask is my rights as a father; and youre the last man alive to expect me to let her go for nothing; for I can see youre one of the straight sort, Governor. Well, what's a five-pound note to you? and what's Eliza to me?’ Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, Act II.

¹¹ Attic pottery needs no comment. On the high quality of Phaleron whitebait (ἀφύαι) and general appreciation of them, see Athenaeus vii 285b-d.

¹² The point that Dicaeopolis operates by barter is observed by Foley (op cit. [n.4] 46, n.51), but even she is swayed by current orthodoxy to argue that because Dicaeopolis' Golden Age is not shared, it is in some sense ‘corrupt and perverted’. But there is no suggestion of anything of the kind in the text of the play. On the contrary, the chorus at 971ff. point him out to ‘the whole city’ as τὸν φρόνιμον ἄνδρα τὸν ὑπέρσοφον and look forward to enjoying that same Golden Age themselves, through their union with Δαλλσνή.

¹³ 816–7, 906–7, 947.

¹⁴ What exactly is the point of Dercetes' white clothes (1024) and of his repeated use of the dual of βοῦς, conspicuously placed at line-end and culminating in the oblique case in his exit-line (1022, 1027, 1031, 1036)? On the double function of the scenes of Dercetes and the wedding party, see Parker, L. P. E., CR xxxiii (1983) 11Google Scholar. On Dercetes, cf. MacDowell, op. cit. (n.7) 158–60.

¹⁵ It is important to dissociate what we know about the real Lamachus from the caricature in Achamians, which Aristophanes himself knew, at least later, to have been grossly unfair, as his subsequent mentions show (Thesm. 840–1, Frogs 1039). As the bête noire and complete antagonist of Dicaeopolis and the (converted) chorus, the character on whom Aristophanes has chosen to confer the name of Lamachus has to be young (because they are γέροντες, aristocratic (because they are ordinary folk), and a bragging sham (because they are honest veterans). A combination of some aspects of the real man's character, in parodie form (διάττυρος καὶ φιλοκίνδυνος ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι Plutarch, Alcibiades 18.1), with some current celebrity would account for the poet's choice. The neatest and most attractive historical solution both for Lamachus' rôle in the play as archetypal warmonger and for the fact that he is treated as στρατηγὄς before the elections for 425/424 is provided by Lewis, D. M., ‘Double representation in the strategia’, JHS lxxxi (1961) 119–20Google Scholar.

¹⁶ ‘Portrait-masks in Aristophanes' in ΚΩΜΩΙΔΟΤΡΑΓΗΜΑΤΑ (Studies in honour of W. J. W. Koster), (Amsterdam 1967) 16–28, reprinted in Newiger, H.-J. (ed.), Aristophanes und die alte Komödie (Darmstadt 1975) 155–69Google Scholar.

¹⁷ The recognizability of a caricature depends far less on the distinctiveness of the victim's features and the accuracy of the portrayal than on how well known he or she is. Here, the analogy of the modern political cartoon, aptly adduced by Dover, repays further exploration. I think it can be observed that as a figure stays in the limelight cartoonists tend to develop a sort of short-hand image which resembles its model in detail less and less.

The art of personal caricature seems not to have been universally known and practised (see E. H. Gombrich, Art and illusion, Part Four, X), but evidence that it existed in the Athens of Aristophanes is to be found, in part, in this play. At 854, the chorus congratulate Dicaeopolis because οὐδ’ αὖθις αὖ σε σκώψεται Παύσων ὀ παμπόνηρος. The scholium vetus on 854 says that Pauson was a ζωγράφος πένης σκωπτολόγος. Both σκωπτολόγος and πένης look like deductions from the text of Aristophanes (cf. Thesm. 949 and Wealth 602), but the information that he was a visual artist cannot be so derived, and is confirmed by Aristotle (Poetics 1448a) who cites him as an artist who depicts people as ‘worse than they are’, the visual equivalent of Ήγήμων … <ὁ> τὰς παρῳδίας ποιήσας. We do not know what medium Pauson worked in, and there is, of course, absolutely no reason to connect him with theatrical masks. However, the fact that the art of caricature was practised makes the use of portrait-masks in comedy all the more plausible.

¹⁸ Op. cit. (n. 16) 22–23.

¹⁹ On the chronology of Eupolis' early career, see. K.-A. Testimonia 1, 2a and on 259,4.

²⁰ Breach of dramatic illusion deserves a full-scale literary study as an essential and distinctive part of Aristophanes' technique. For an interesting approach, see Chapman, G. A. H., ‘Some notes on dramatic illusion in Aristophanes’, AJP civ (1983) 1–23Google Scholar. Taplin, O. P. (‘Fifth-century tragedy and comedy: a synkrisis’, JHS cvi (1980) 163–74Google Scholar) gives the phenomenon its proper significance, and restores important distinctions which tend to be lost in some recent discussion. The subject is touched upon from a particular point of view by Bain, D., Actors and audience (Oxford 1977) 3–4Google Scholar, 87–89. Sifakis, G. M., Parabasis and animal choruses (London 1971) 3ffGoogle Scholar.) adopts a definition of ‘illusionist’ so artificially restricted as to obviate discussion. I use the familiar term, since it seems to me to be clear in the context, and also to point towards the more general fluidities and ambiguities of place and personality that distinguish aristophanic comedy both from Attic tragedy and from conventional post-renaissance drama. ‘Theatrical self-reference’ (Taplin, op. cit. 164) is strictly only a part of the phenomenon.

²¹ ‘Who played Dicaeopolis?’ Creek poetry and life: essays presented to Gilbert Murray (Oxford 1936) 231–40. It is important to note that Bailey's theory is that Aristophanes played the part of Dicaeopolis, not that the stage character is intended as a self-caricature. The long-running controversy about whether Aristophanes or Callistratus is the διδάσκαλος spoken of in the parabasis, and which of them was prosecuted by Cleon, does not seem to me significant for the literary and dramatic appreciation of the play. The idea that Callistratus (on the assumption that he was the διδάοκαλος) acted the part of Dicaeopolis goes back to the nineteenth century (see W. Rennie on 378ff.). Sutton, D. F. (LCM xiii (1988) 105–8Google Scholar) re-explores the idea that Aristophanes played Dicaeopolis, in the mistaken belief that it is a new one. He is corrected by Olson, S. Douglas (LCM xv (1990) 31–2Google Scholar), who traces it back to W. W. Merry.

²² Cf. Taplin, O. P., ‘Tragedy and trugedy’, CQ xxxiii (1983)Google Scholar