Sorrows and Joys of Dicaepolis: Aristophanes’ Acharnians 1–16

Abstract

First sixteen verses of Aristophanes’ Acharnians pose many questions to their commentator. Scholars had various conjectures concerning events that had provoked strong emotions of Dicaeopolis, about his ways of describing the emotions as well as about the comic effects of the passage. The article deals with the most controversial of these questions. It is argued that the prologue reproduces tragic structure and parodies tragic language. E.g., in v. 1, a particular syntactic construction is used that transforms Dicaeopolis’ tragic exclamation into a comic one. The events mentioned by Dicaeopolis belong to the sphere of the theatre. E. g., the first story is about Cleon vomiting out five talents (vv. 5–8) is explained as an allusion to the comedy produced not long before the Acharnians. Combining linguistic and historical analysis in other cases as well makes it possible to throw some light on the facts alluded to in the play as well as on Dicaeopolis’s reactions to them.