Ancient Greece’s Legacy for Liberty: The Comedy of Politics

This is not to say that tragedies never commented on current events; we’ve seen, for example, how Euripides’ Trojan Women and Helen commented on events in the Peloponnesian War.² But Greek comedy weighed in much more directly on the issues of the day, without the need to disguise them in Homeric trappings. While gods and epic heroes did sometimes make appearances in comedy, they did so in a modern setting, intervening in ongoing Athenian political and social controversies.

The most celebrated Greek comic playwright, and the only one from whom any complete plays survive, is Aristophanes (c. 446‐​c. 386 BCE).³ Although Aristophanes drew on many sources for his humor – ranging from literary debates over the comparative merits of different tragedians, to the less high‐​minded old standbys of sex and other bodily functions – his focus was nearly always political satire. He appears to have had a particular animus against the politician Kleon, whom he mercilessly pummeled in play after play, most prominently in Knights (where the dishonest politician Paphlagon is a transparent proxy for Kleon) and in Wasps (where the protagonist Bdelykleon, or “Kleon‐​hater,” triumphs over the misguided Philokleon, or “Kleon‐​lover”).

Aristophanes is often described as a social conservative. The term is perhaps an odd one to apply to an author who poked fun at the Greek gods, reveled in obscene jokes, mocked militarism, and flirted with feminism. But he did display a certain class snobbery – never tiring for example, of reminding audiences of Kleon’s background as a leather tanner. Aristophanes also targeted intellectual innovators like Socrates (in Clouds) and Euripides (in Thesmophoriazousai and especially Frogs), whose ideas he regarded as serving to undermine traditional values.⁴

The ending of Clouds, with its call to burn down Socrates’ “Thinkatorium” with Socrates still inside it, may be put down to comic exaggeration; but in light of Socrates’ eventual fate the lines have an unsettling ring, and Socrates himself seems to have regarded the play as a contributing factor in his own trial and execution.⁵

It seems doubtful, though, that Aristophanes would have approved of the prosecution of Socrates. In his play Ploutos, he presents a negative portrait of those self‐​appointed guardians of public morals who bring charges against those they disapprove of rather than practicing a live‐​and‐​let‐​live policy of tolerance:

The citizens who prosecuted Socrates appear to have been just the sort of busybodies that Aristophanes here condemns – though, to be sure, Aristophanes can arguably be faulted for contributing to a social atmosphere that made Socrates’ condemnation more likely, whether or not he would have personally approved of it.

But despite Aristophanes’ partial complicity with the forces of reaction, his plays contain much for a libertarian to celebrate. He’s hostile to politicians generally, not just Kleon:

He’s also skeptical of the extravagant promises that politicians offer on behalf of their proposals:

And he expresses his exasperation with bureaucratic micromanagement; in the Birds, when an official messenger from Athens arrives at the newly founded celestial utopia of Cloudcuckooland to announce a decree that “[t]he Cloudcuckoolanders shall use / the same weights, measures, and decrees / as do the Olophyxians,” he is told to “[r]emove yourself and your bloody decrees.”⁹

Contrary to the widespread view that jurors, being unconstrained by judges’ instructions or rules of evidence, were the true masters of Athens, Aristophanes has his protagonist Bdelykleon, in the Wasps, argue that jurors, far from being masters, are actually the slaves of Athens’ political elite:

But perhaps the most libertarian aspect of Aristophanes’ plays is their critique of war – as we’ll see in my next post.

1. Aeschylus’s Persians, produced in 472 BCE, dealt with the Greek victory over the invading Persian fleet at Salamis just eight years earlier. Two of the lost tragedies of Phrynicus are likewise known to have dramatized events from the Greco‐​Persian wars; one of them evidently depicted a Greek defeat and was consequently banned from the stage. (Yes, Athens had mostly unfettered free speech; but recall that Athenian drama was publicly funded.)
2. See part 14 of this series.
3. We also possess one almost‐​complete play, the Dyskolos, by the later comic playwright Menander (c. 342‐​c. 290 BCE); but the Greek comedy of Menander’s day – often called “New Comedy” by contrast with Aristophanes’ “Old Comedy” – had grown less politically topical, perhaps in part because Athens was no longer a self‐​governing democracy, and a culture of public criticism was consequently no longer encouraged. Roman comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence mainly – and prudently – followed Menander’s rather than Aristophanes’ model.
4. In his 1872 book The Birth of Tragedy, sections 10–14 , Friedrich Nietzsche defends the critique of Euripides in Aristophanes’ Frogs.
5. Plato, Apology 19b‐​c.

6. Aristophanes, Ploutos 906–924; in Aristophanes, The Complete Plays: The New Translations, trans. Paul Roche (New York: New American Library, 2005), pp. 704–05. There are very few accurate translations of Aristophanes; older translators censor the obscenities, while modern translators can’t resist the tendency to update the jokes by introducing anachronisms. Roche doesn’t censor (indeed he sometimes introduces obscenities not in the original!), but he is no exception to the anachronism temptation; however, he is at least one of the less egregious offenders in this regard, and his translations have the advantage of all being available in a single volume. Hence my choice of Roche for my Aristophanes citations.

   The busybody’s characterization of a live‐​and‐​let‐​live policy as “a sheep’s life, dull with complacency” resembles Plutarch’s description of Pyrrhus: “When Pyrrhus had thus retired into Epirus, and left Macedonia, he had a fair occasion given him by fortune to enjoy himself in quiet, and to govern his own kingdom in peace. But he was persuaded, that neither to annoy others, nor to be annoyed by them, was a life insufferably languishing and tedious.” Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus 13.1; in John and William Langhorne, trans., Plutarch’s Lives, Translated From the Original Greek, vol. 3 (Worcester, MA: Isaiah Thomas Jr., 1804), p. 14.

7. Ploutos 567–570; Roche translation, op. cit., p. 692.
8. Aristophanes, Assemblywomen 823–828; Roche translation, op. cit., p. 647.
9. Aristophanes, Birds 1040–1044; Roche translation, op. cit., pp. 385–386.
10. Aristophanes, Wasps 650–668; Roche translation, op. cit., pp. 232–233.