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Aristophanes
Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comedy playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete....
' comedy Knights (Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
: Hippeīs) took the prize at the Lenaia
Lenaia

The Lenaia was an annual festival with a dramatic competition but one of the lesser festivals of Athens and Ionia in ancient Greece. The Lenaia took place in the month of Gamelion, roughly corresponding to January....
 festival in 424 BCE. The play is above all else an unbridled attack on Cleon
Cleon

Cleon was an Athens statesman and a Strategos during the Peloponnesian War. He was the first prominent representative of the commercial class in Athenian politics, although he was an aristocrat himself....
, who was one of the most important political figures in Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
 in the late 420s BCE and who was a personal enemy of the poet. Two years earlier, Cleon had prosecuted Aristophanes for "slandering Athens" (in his play "The Babylonians"). Aristophanes was convicted of the charge.






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Aristophanes
Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comedy playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete....
' comedy Knights (Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
: Hippeīs) took the prize at the Lenaia
Lenaia

The Lenaia was an annual festival with a dramatic competition but one of the lesser festivals of Athens and Ionia in ancient Greece. The Lenaia took place in the month of Gamelion, roughly corresponding to January....
 festival in 424 BCE. The play is above all else an unbridled attack on Cleon
Cleon

Cleon was an Athens statesman and a Strategos during the Peloponnesian War. He was the first prominent representative of the commercial class in Athenian politics, although he was an aristocrat himself....
, who was one of the most important political figures in Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
 in the late 420s BCE and who was a personal enemy of the poet. Two years earlier, Cleon had prosecuted Aristophanes for "slandering Athens" (in his play "The Babylonians"). Aristophanes was convicted of the charge. "Knights" is also a strident attack on the politics of the day, particularly the ease with which Democracy could be corrupted.

Plot

The play is set outside the house of an old man named Demos
Demos

Demos may refer to:* Glossary_of_rhetorical_terms#Demos, a rhetorical term for the population of an ancient Greek state** Deme or Demoi, the term for an ancient subdivision of Attica, Greece...
 (Greek for "The citizen-body" or "The People") who represents the government. Opposite the door of that house is a rock which will later be used to represent the Pnyx, the meeting place of the Legislative Assembly. Demos is a fool, and the action begins with two anonymous slaves perhaps to be identified somehow with Nicias
Nicias

Nicias or Nikias was an Ancient Athens politician and general during the period of the Peloponnesian War. Nicias was a member of the Athenian aristocracy because he had inherited a large fortune from his father, which was invested into the silver mines around Attica's Mt....
 and Demosthenes
Demosthenes (general)

Demosthenes , son of Alcisthenes, was an Athens general during the Peloponnesian War.He first appears in history in 426 BC in an invasion of Aetolia....
, two prominent Athenian generals, who complain about how Demos' new slave, the Paphlogonian, is running the household. The Paphlagonian -- who patently stands in for Cleon -- has been terrorizing the other slaves, while fawning over (and systematically bilking) Demos. The slaves are desperate to discover a way to be rid of him, and when they raid his secret collection of oracles, discover that he is fated to be replaced by a Sausage-Seller. By chance, a Sausage-Seller comes along at exactly this point, but is initially reluctant to become involved in politics, since he is crude and ignorant, and barely knows how to read. The slaves, however, explain that these are perfect qualifications for prominence in contemporary Athenian politics -- it is only unfortunate that he knows how to read at all -- and he ultimately agrees to help them. The Paphlagonian, of course, is reluctant to be displaced. But the Sausage-Seller finds support in the chorus of Knights (aristocratic Athenian young men), who declare their unequivocal hostility to the Paphlagonian and everything he stands for.

Most of the play consists of a long series of contests, in which the Sausage-Seller and the Paphlagonian each try to show that they will serve their master The People better than their rival can or has. Ultimately, Demos realizes that he has been cheated by the Paphlagonian, and chooses the Sausage-Seller as his new steward, while the Paphlogonian is driven out to the city's gates, where he is to take over the Sausage-Seller's old job and spend his time quarreling with prostitutes and selling donkey- and dog-meat. At the very end of the play, moreover, it abruptly emerges both that Demos is much less of a fool than he has pretended to be, and that the Sausage-Seller is not only an even greater rascal than the Paphlagonian, but also his new master's savior. Demos is accordingly restored to how he was in his youth, as Athens returns to its lost golden age.

Translations

  • John Hookham Frere
    John Hookham Frere

    John Hookham Frere , was an England diplomat and author.He was born in London. His father, John Frere, a gentleman of a good Suffolk family, had been educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and would have been senior wrangler in 1763 but for the redoubtable competition of William Paley; his mother, daughter of John Hookham, a rich London mer...
    , 1839 - verse
  • William James Hickie, 1853 - prose,
  • Benjamin B. Rogers, 1924 - verse
  • Arthur S. Way
    Arthur S. Way

    Arthur Sanders Way was an English people classical scholar and poet, born at Dorking. He was educated at Kingswood School, Bath, Somerset, and at Queen's College , Melbourne, where he was afterward fellow....
    , 1934 - verse
  • Eugene O'Neill, Jr. - prose:
  • George Theodoridis -prose full text