The Knights

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The Knights

Sketch of Aristophanes
Written by Aristophanes
Chorus knights
Characters Demosthenes
Nicias
Agoracritus (Sausage Seller)
Cleon
Demos
Setting First outside Demos' house and then at the Pnyx at Athens
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Aristophanes' comedy Knights (Greek: Ἱππεῖς Hippeîs) took the prize at the Lenaia festival in 424 BCE. The play is above all else an unbridled attack on Cleon, who was one of the most important political figures in Athens 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.

[edit] Plot

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The play is set outside the house of an old man named Demos (Greek for "The citizen-body" or "The People") and 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 and Demosthenes, 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.

[edit] Translations

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Surviving plays by Aristophanes
The Acharnians | The Knights | The Clouds | The Wasps | Peace | The Birds | Lysistrata | Thesmophoriazusae | The Frogs | Ecclesiazusae | Plutus
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