Luke Spiegel
Nov. 24
Classics 150 Paper
Final Draft
Aristophanes’ Identity
Who was Aristophanes and what did he stand for? Most people know him as a
comedic playwright, named the father of comedy. It is also known that he founded the
genre ‘old comedy’ which existed in 5th century Greece. Old comedy was known for its
political satire, and although eleven of his plays are still intact, it is unclear to say exactly
what he stood for because of the vast variety of issues that he covered and how scat-
tered his views were. He was neither a conservative nor a liberal. His plays can be split
up into three topics: war, gender roles, and the changing political and social landscapes
of Athens. In most of his plays, Aristophanes calls for an end to war, which is believable
because his plays were written during, or just after, the Peloponnesian war. Some of his
plays focused on the roles of women and society, and they often flipped the script on
how women were perceived. Yet, other plays focused on challenging the changing so-
cial and political aspects of Athenian life, including new ways of thinking in terms of sci-
ence and philosophy and the way the government was run. After reading all of his
eleven plays, you can only say that Aristophanes was an anti-war feminist who was
conservative when it came social and political aspects of Athenian life.
Although Aristophanes as a whole is hard to get a grasp on, no one challenges
the fact that he did not support war in the slightest. Of his eleven plays that survived, six
were either based on, or included aspects about the Peloponnesian war. Three plays,
The Acharnians, Peace, and The Birds, are Aristophanes’s main pieces on his attack of
the war. In 425 BC Aristophanes wrote The Acharnians, his earliest remaining play. The
play was written six years into the Peloponnesian war. In the play, Dikaiopolis opposes
the war and is able to gain a private peace with Sparta so that he doesn’t have to fight
anymore. The Acharnians, who hate the Spartans, threaten Dikaiopolis because he isn’t
fighting anymore. Dikaiopolis talks to the Chorus of the Acharnians and is able to con-
vince half of them that peace is necessary. Along comes General Lamachus and
Dikaipolis asks him if the war is over greed. Lamachus does not deny this claim, and the
Acharnian chorus is won over. In the end, Dikaiopolis is invited to a dinner party with his
