This is the first of the series of three Comedies--'The Acharnians,'
'Peace' and 'Lysistrata'--produced at intervals of years, the sixth,
tenth and twenty-first of the Peloponnesian War, and impressing on the
Athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the
scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the
consequent ruin of industry and, above all, agriculture, and the urgency
of asking Peace. In date it is the earliest play brought out by the
author in his own name and his first work of serious importance. It was
acted at the Lenaean Festival, in January, 426 B.C., and gained the
first prize, Cratinus being second.
Its diatribes against the War and fierce criticism of the general policy
of the War party so enraged Cleon that, as already mentioned, he
endeavoured to ruin the author, who in 'The Knights' retorted by a
direct and savage personal attack on the leader of the democracy.
The plot is of the simplest. Dicaeopolis, an Athenian citizen, but a
native of Acharnae, one of the agricultural demes and one which had
especially suffered in the Lacedaemonian invasions, sick and tired of
the ill-success and miseries of the War, makes up his mind, if he fails
to induce the people to adopt his policy of "peace at any price," to
conclude a private and particular peace of his own to cover himself, his
family, and his estate. The Athenians, momentarily elated by victory and
over-persuaded by the demagogues of the day--Cleon and his henchmen,
refuse to hear of such a thing as coming to terms. Accordingly
Dicaeopolis dispatches an envoy to Sparta on his own account, who comes
back presently with a selection of specimen treaties in his pocket. The
old man tastes and tries, special terms are arranged, and the play
concludes with a riotous and uproarious rustic feast in honour of the
blessings of Peace and Plenty.
Incidentally excellent fun is poked at Euripides and his dramatic
methods, which supply matter for so much witty badinage in several
others of our author's pieces.
Other specially comic incidents are: the scene where the two young
daughters of the famished Megarian are sold in the market at Athens as
suck(l)ing-pigs--a scene in which the convenient similarity of the Greek
words signifying a pig and the 'pudendum muliebre' respectively is
utilized in a whole string of ingenious and suggestive 'double
entendres' and ludicrous jokes; another where the Informer, or
Market-Spy, is packed up in a crate as crockery and carried off home by
the Boeotian buyer.
The drama takes its title from the Chorus, composed of old men of
Acharnae.