ARISTOPHANES, NON-ATHENIAN DIALECT, AND INTER-POLEIS PEACE DURING THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

Abstract

Aristophanes’ political stance remains an elusive scholarly question. Is he broadly anti-war in his plays, is he against the Peloponnesian War specifically, or is he simply critiquing Athenian democracy? What, if anything, is he advocating for throughout his works? Using a synthesis of various theoretical frameworks about comedy, ethnicity, dialect, gender, and politics, this project analyses Aristophanes’ use of non-Attic dialects of Greek and non-Athenian characters as tools to envision a Panhellenic image of Athens during an era when tension between poleis was at an all-time high. Though he is not prescribing plots like private peace treaties and sex strikes as solutions to the Peloponnesian War, the rational, ethnically diverse elements of Acharnians and Lysistrata in particular served both to remind his audiences that Athens, Sparta and their allies had fostered harmonious alliances in the past, and to prompt them to believe in the possibility for peace in the future.