Knights

It is a cold day and the crowd are restless. They have sat through two comedies of dubious quality. Even through their cushions they can feel the cold of the marble reaching for their posteriors. The weak sun has been falling to the west for a few hours. Since the start of the war there has been precious little to laugh about and even at this festival there are just the three performance, rather than the usual five. Despite the discomfort the audience stay in place awaiting Aristophanes, the returning champion. Last year had been a triumph and there are rumours circulating around the tavernas that he has something even more spectacular for this year.

Aristophanes. Adapted from this site.

There were two major festivals with drama in ancient Athens. The City Dionysia was held the tenth day of Elaphebolion, roughly around the end of March, with tragedies following over the next three days and then a day of comedy before the winners of the competitions were announced. This festival would have coincided with the start of the sailing season and so, while it was a festival for the Athenians, foreigners would have been present as Aristophanes found out. His play the Babylionians attacked the magistrates of Athens and provoked one, Cleon, into putting Aristophanes on trial for his life for defaming the state in front of foreigners.

The other festival was the Lenaea, held on the twelfth day of Gamelion, around mid-January. This was pretty much the depths of winter and so it was a time when outsiders would not be expected in Athens. Following his experience at the hands of Cleon, Aristophanes’ next two plays were both performed at the Lenaea. In 425 he won first prize with the play Acharnians. In it he argued against the war and during the play the lead character puts his life on the line to argue for making peace with the Spartans. If Acharnians was a defence of his position then Knights was the attack. The scene is finally erected and the chorus in place. Even from the back row there is a vague sense of unease. Their costumes are plain with only a perfunctory nod to the notion of them being knights. Compared to the extravagance of the previous performances, the play is lacklustre. Yet rather than leading to disappointment, the atmosphere is more one of tension. It seems that some of the gossip in the taverns was right, Aristophanes hadn’t found a backer for his play and was having to fund it himself. What could possibly be in it that had scared people from supporting the champion?

The above is speculation, though it is based on fact. Traditionally the rich men of the city would provide the funds for the production of a play. Drama was performed within a religious festival and so it was a civic duty and, at least if you supported a good play, a prestigious public service. Aristophanes’ three earlier plays were produced by Callistratus, who also funded his later plays Birds and Lysistrata. Another known producer was Philonides, who is known to have funded Wasps in 422. Yet in 424 Aristophanes funded the play himself. He may have self-funded other plays, but no known record of this survives. This is the only play we know was paid for out of his own pocket. After winning the previous year, why did he do this? Was it because he wanted to take more glory for himself, or was it because he couldn’t find someone willing to pay for the play when they saw what was going to be?

The play starts with two servants of Demos, Nicias and Demosthenes, bewailing their fate at the hands of a new slave. They plot an escape while discussing masturbation. The tension eases. Despite appearances it seems that the play is celebrating the god Dionysos. In desperation they turn to wine for inspiration of ridding themselves of their pest.

If he were around today Dionysos would be the god of sex, drugs (or at least an excess of wine) and rock ‘n’ roll. He was said to be accompanied by the Maenads, wild women driven into a sexual frenzy by dance and alcohol. It is said that the rural Dionysia was partly preceded by a procession of a phallus, so reference to masturbation could be an echo of the ritual surrounding that. Or it could just be that Aristophanes knew his audience liked knob jokes.

Nicias and Demosthenes were both military leaders who served Athens. The people of Athens are represented by the old man Demos of the Pnyx. Demos was the Greek word for people and the Pnyx where they met. This might seem a bit surreal, but this was par for the course for Old Comedy. Aristophanes other plays included birds blockading the heavens and people sending out for peace treaties in a wineskin. Demos, in comparison, is rather a blunt point that Aristophanes is making, but Knights isn’t a subtle play.

There is a slight frission of danger building around the theatre. A couple of references have been made to ‘the Paphlagonian’, a tanner’s son. The references are obvious to everyone in the city. Though they don’t mention his name, he could only be Cleon.

A man walks onto the stage from behind the scene. ‘Cleon’ is making his entrance, but the theatre falls silent. Something is wrong. Unlike the other actors who all wear their gaudy masks, this person’s face is visible covered only by the stain of wine dregs. The actor is clearly Aristophanes himself.

‘The Paphlagonian’ is an insult to Cleon. It refers to a slave. It makes sense in the context of the play, the Paphlagonian like Nicias and Demothenes is a slave to the Demos. The use of Nicias and Demosthenes names shows they are Athenians, but to refer to Cleon as a Paphlagonian emphasises his lower birth. So too the references to the tanner’s son. Real men make their living from having people work their land. Tannery is trade and, with the use of urine in curing hides, not a particularly admired one. While technically you didn’t need to own land to be citizen in Athens, people were still aware of their places in the pecking order, and Cleon should have been one of the pecked rather than pecking.

Aristophanes’ entrance was probably a show-stopper. Traditionally drama was performed by actors wearing masks. The traditional masks seen in theatres today are drawn from tragedy and comedy. The masks could have had exaggerated features to emphasise who they were portraying. There is no reason why Aristophanes couldn’t have worn a mask to play Cleon, but it is said that he didn’t. The reason he performed in the play himself, it is said, is that no actor was brave enough to take on the role and subject Cleon to ridicule. By showing his face Aristophanes was openly defying Cleon. It is said he merely stained his face purple with wine to emphasise Cleon’s drunkenness.

In the front row of the audience a stonily faced Cleon looks impassively on. On the stage his parody is in full flow of abuse. Aristophanes is a surprisingly good mimic of Cleon’s bluster, but he appears to have met his match. The Sausage-Seller put his arm around Demos and proclaims to the crowd, “You see this poor Demos without a cloak and that at his age too! So little do you care for him, that in mid-winter you have not given him a garment with sleeves. Here, Demos, here is one, take it!” and with a flourish the cloak is turned inside out. What appeared to be somewhat plain and coarse cloak now shimmers in purple and gold.

As Cleon Aristophanes marches to the front and yells: “Must you have recourse to such jackanapes’ tricks to supplant me?”

The Sausage-seller waves his arms theatrically, “No, it’s your own tricks that I am borrowing, just as a drunken guest, when he has to take a crap, seizes some other man’s shoes.”

The hurling of insults at each other was an attack on Cleon’s place in the Agora. Aristophanes had argued that Cleon was using the war for his own political gain. He saw Cleon as an opportunist, a person of limited intelligence or loquacity but of unlimited ambition who was appealing to the basest instincts of the electorate. As long as the war continued Cleon assured his place at the centre of power. The Sausage-Seller is not the anti-Cleon, he is just like Cleon but even more brazen.

His aim was to highlight how Cleon was a man with no plan and no eloquence, and just enough intelligence to twist the public mood by a mix of bribes and smears of his opponents. Aristophanes was not the only prominent Athenian to face the wrath of Cleon’s crude political bullying, but it could not work without the will of the people to accept such behaviour. This section is therefore a challenge to the audience to think about their rôle in the decline of Athenian politics.

‘Cleon’ has been vanquished and now the Sausage-Seller is restoring peace to the city. The play has been a triumph but standing by the side of the stage Aristophanes looks even more sullen than Cleon. Now the message of the play, the possibility of peace is being offered to Demos, yet no-one is listening. They’re already repeating the row between Cleon and the Sausage-seller to each other. A resentful Aristophanes is left contemplating the bitter truth that even a comic Cleon can bawl out rational debate of the war.

The play won first prize, but as a call for peace it was a failure. Cleon knew his position of power could only be sustained as long as there was an enemy to face. He continued to manipulate the people into supporting the war that didn’t need to be fought until his death leading the Athenian force at Amphipolis in 422. His death led to a truce, but on considerably worse terms than they would have been. —–