The Acharnians

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The Acharn is the title of a comedy by Aristophanes ; First performance was 425 BC. Chr. In Lenaea .

action

Dikaiopolis, an Attic farmer, is tired of the Peloponnesian War, which has been going on for six years. Since the people's assembly does not want to know anything about his peace plans, he concludes - through a "peace wine" - 30 years of private peace with Sparta . The Acharnians - residents of a demo who live mainly from the charcoal trade - want to lynch Dikaiopolis for his betrayal, but the shrewd farmer can convince them of his plan because he borrows all sorts of props from the tragedy poet Euripides and thus the power of words of his hero. While Dikaiopolis can now enjoy the comforts of its peace, which - to put it bluntly - are expressed in wine, women and festive joys, his adversary Lamachos, a staunch militarist, returns badly shaken from the war that continued for the rest of Athens.

construction

The Acharner combines a number of peculiarities of the Greek comedy and of course the Aristophanic in particular: an extremely loose structure in which the fictional plot is repeatedly broken, a lot of crude fun (for example Dikaiopolis two young girls are sold as pigs), swipes at the Athenian politics and personal mockery of two particularly popular victims of Aristophanes: Kleon (who probably quoted the poet a year earlier for his "Babylonians" for defaming the polis before the council) and Euripides , who was acting here for the first time within the preserved pieces Figure appears.

Euripides achieved greater significance as a character in the comedies " Die Frauen am Thesmophorenfest " and " Die Fösche ". In addition to “ Der Frieden ” and “ Lysistrate ”, the “Acharner” is one of Aristophane's “peace comedies”. In all three pieces the author expresses the demand for peace for Athens, which is repeatedly involved in warfare against Sparta, which, however, must not be identified with pacifism in a modern sense.

In the "Acharnern", but also, for example. In “ The Knights ” the author professes to military values ​​and virtues, and war itself is not yet synonymous with evil. The Persian Wars are often cited as an example of an honorable war. It is about the very specific situation of the war against Sparta at the time of the performance, which Aristophanes sees as an unnecessary burden on the rural population, who are particularly suffering from the war, and as a daring adventure of the mighty.

Translations

  • Aristophanes, Christoph Martin Wieland: The Acharner or the peace of the Dikåopolis. Translated from the Greek, commissioned by Anton Doll, Vienna 1813.
  • Woldemor Ribbeck: The Acharns of Aristophanes. Printed and published by BG Teubner, Leipzig 1864.

literature

  • Koen Vanhaegendoren: The representation of the peace in the Acharnern and in the peace of Aristophanes: stylistic investigations (= Münsteraner contributions to classical philology , volume 3), Lit, Münster 1996, ISBN 3-8258-2986-3 (Dissertation Universität Hamburg 1996, 172 Sides, 24 cm).