COMEDY

100 POLITICScitizens all insulted in considerable detail. Given the level of communalparticipation with Greek drama and huge attendance at the annualDionysia, Aristophanic dissent would have been widely broadcast. Thisresponsibility or function appears to have constituted part of the identityof the playwright, and textual evidence makes it clear that Aristophanesimagined himself as the conscience of the people, exposing corruptionand political mismanagement and ridiculing the offenders. As theChorus of The Acharnians says,He’ll carry on impeachingEvery abuse he sees, and give much valuable teaching,Making you wiser, happier men. There won’t be any diddlingOr flattery or bribes, or any other kind of fiddling,Nor will you drown in fulsome praises, such as all the restBestow on you: he thinks his job’s to teach you what is best.(Aristophanes, 1973:78)In all likelihood, this passage was written in response to events of theprevious year, when The Babylonians, a play now lost, resulted inAristophanes’ probable conviction for slandering the city in thepresence of foreigners. This is probably the first time that comedy claimsfor itself the privilege of licence, or of operating somewhere beyond thelaw.The nature of political commentary in Aristophanes tells us that hiswork was conceived as a deliberate intervention in affairs of state. Atthe beginning of his career, Athens was a powerful and democratic cityunder the leadership of the popular and charismatic Pericles (c. 495–429BC). Athens’s success threatened its neighbour Sparta, and in 431 BC,the two cities entered into wars that would last intermittently for twentysixyears and result in the eventual surrender and subjugation of Athensin 405 BC. Throughout this period, Aristophanes maintains consistentlypacifist sentiments and opposes the hardships and loss of freedomsbrought about by lengthy conflict. Towards the end of his career,condemnations and caricatures of politicians are coupled with a newnostalgia for pre-war Athens and a lament for the depletion of the idealsof democracy. In Frogs, written only a few months before the finalsurrender of the Athenians, the god Dionysus is found mourning therecent deaths of the tragic poets Euripides and Sophocles, and lamentingthe absence of good writers in Athens. With his servant Xanthias, hedisguises himself as Heracles and travels into Hades to recoverEuripides and return him to the upper world. In the underworld he