1. Vox populi

I begin with the phrase vox populi vox dei: The voice of the people is the voice of God. In a classic work from the 1960s, Walter Ullmann associates the phrase with what he dubs the “ascending” theory of political power, according to which power ascends from below to whoever rules in the polity so that the ruler or rulers express the voice of God by listening to the voice of the people. Ullmann distinguishes the ascending theory of power from the “descending” theory whereby power descends directly from God above to those who rule.Footnote ¹⁶ In both theories, power derives from God and his laws control the exercise of political power. The difference is simply that God employs a different vessel to communicate his laws. Though the descending theory of power, or the divine right of kings theory (as it is commonly referred to), dominated the thought of the Middle Ages, Ullmann writes about the spread of the ascending theory from the second half of the thirteenth century on. The ascending theory foreshadows democratic theory where legitimate rule depends for its legitimacy on the voice of those who are ruled.

Aristotle dominates this part of Ullmann's story, leading Ullmann to refer to the “Aristotelian avalanche” underlying the ascending theory. He explores the changes in medieval political life that “prepar[ed] the soil for the receptivity of Aristotelian ideas [so] that the manifestations of a practical medieval populism became historically significant.”Footnote ¹⁷ After detailing the social transformations that enabled this conceptual revolution, such that the “people” (albeit inadequately defined) rather than the singular ruler determined the nature of political life, Ullman concludes: “In vital respects Aristotle provided the theory for what was observed in practice.”Footnote ¹⁸ Aristotle's pervasive influence on the theoretical basis for the ascending theory comes from his affirmation of “man's reasoning power” by which “the laws of nature were to be expressed” through and transformed into “a common will.”Footnote ¹⁹ Ullmann may be shoehorning Aristotle into language that applies more properly to the world of medieval Europe, but the underlying notion that laws and communal decision-making came from below, the “populism” that marked this perspective, captures the alternative orientation to the descending theory. Not the king but the people through their communal decision-making, according to the ascending theory, expressed and implemented the natural laws discovered through their reason.

There is, however, at least one significant difference that Ullmann slides over as he connects the Aristotle of the Middle Ages and the Aristotle of ancient Greece. The collective body of the people about whom Ullmann's Aristotle speaks used their reasoning power to discover and express laws that came from God. Thus, vox populi vox dei. The politai (or citizens) of Aristotle's polity were by nature political animals because they possessed logos (reason/speech), debating the just and the unjust, the expedient and the inexpedient, without the voice of a divine being speaking through their reason.Footnote ²⁰ This difference is critical for the development of democratic theory out of the ascending theory of power. With the emergence of social contract theory as a reaction against the descending theory, the connection with the voice of God as the justification for the power of the people fades or remains behind the scenes. Individual reasoning and subjectivity replace the uniform voice of God, and the voice of the people transforms into the aggregation of opinions, not the articulation of an objective statement of God's laws or moral truths. Not only is the voice of the people no longer necessarily attached to those moral laws of the universe accessible to humans through their reason; it is no longer necessarily attached to the reason on which Aristotle (and Ullmann) rely to define the distinctiveness of the human community.

As Walter Lippmann wrote in the early twentieth century, “Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.”Footnote ²¹ In the democratic theory that dominates today's discourse, the vox populi has become detached from that divine voice or the voice of a superior other, morphing from the vox dei to the vox of the people in the aggregate without any assessment of the rationality or justice of the beliefs and commitments that constitute it. Once the vox is dissociated from an objectively accessible moral law decreed by God's natural laws or the Aristotelian logos, the challenge surfaces as to how to determine its content, discern its sources, and train that voice so it benefits the political whole.

This is where the challenge of populism comes into play today, with the modern demagogue claiming to ventriloquize the vox populi, but aiming to fill the vacuum left when God and logos disappear. Aristophanes makes no claims about ventriloquizing the people, but seeks through comedy to play the role of the medieval God by infusing the populace of democratic Athens with the understandings that ought to guide their political actions. The crowd in the Aristophanic comedy begins as a unified body with a single misguided goal. Aristophanes's self-appointed task is to become the “divine” vox behind that crowd educating them. So tamed and educated, the crowd then can give voice in their assemblies to the wisdom he has taught.

When decisions were made in the Athenian ekklēsia, the phrase “It seems best to the people” (dēmōi dokei) affirmed the people's vote. That locution, however, does not ensure that what seems best as voted on by the people is indeed best. The verb dokein is related to the noun doxa, opinion, not knowledge or wisdom. Plato's Gorgias, for example, highlights this problem when Gorgias praises the power of rhetoric to persuade the assembled many (plēthē, 452e) and then argues that the trained orator would be far more persuasive among the mass of people (en plēthēi, 456c) than any craftsman with knowledge of his craft. Similarly, Plato sets the Symposium in the home of the tragic poet Agathon who is celebrating his victory at the theater of Dionysus. Socrates explains to his companion that he had avoided the earlier festivities “fearing the crowd [ochlon]” (174a), but he gladly attends the intimate dinner at Agathon's home. In a brief interchange with Agathon before the playwright's speech in praise of eros, Socrates undermines Agathon's victory before the many. He is certain that Agathon cares more about success with a few thoughtful men than before the many (tōn pollōn, 194c). For Plato's Socrates the many, subject to manipulation by the orators and playwrights, care only for what seems best and in their democratic assemblies make decisions without the knowledge of what is best. Unlike Aristophanes, Plato's Socrates aims to educate through private conversations, not through performances before the crowds. Those who find fault with the many, the plēthos, the ochlos, however, as Aristophanes presents it, fail to recognize the power of laughter to educate.Footnote ²²

Aristotle tries to address the adequacy of decisions made by the many who may not be wise, who have no “voice” informing them of what ought to be, by investigating the so-called theory of “wisdom of the many,” whereby “the many [tous pollous] of whom none is individually an excellent man, nevertheless can when joined together be better—not as individuals but altogether.”Footnote ²³ Thus, through aggregation of individual views, Aristotle considers the possibility of a good outcome given the absence of a prior voice informing the crowd of what is best. Although Aristotle—as he often does—leaves the question hanging, his investigation expresses the concern with the opposition between what appears best to the many and what is best when there is no voice to inform the many of what ought to be. Jeremy Waldron has tried to rework Aristotle's theory of the wisdom of the many by suggesting that we think of the Aristotelian “many” gathered in the assembly (or any democratic congregation) as engaging in deliberation rather than simply aggregating preferences.Footnote ²⁴ But even with the move from aggregation to deliberation, Waldron's revisioning of Aristotle illustrates the challenges posed by a lack of the theological and moral grounding that the medieval phrase vox populi vox dei with its underlying assertion that the voice of the people is imbued with the voice of God.

The modern world faces the challenge of demagogues in democratic societies competing to be the source of that vox. The demos in Athens (as today) left on its own to discern what seems best was subject to the manipulation of the skillful orators and demagogues Plato criticized. His Socrates preferred intimate conversations to speeches before the many as the way to infuse his interlocutors with a concern with what is best. Aristophanes does not retreat into the private realm. He enters the fray, competing through his comedy to become the voice that informs the decisions of the many, that tames the crowd and educates it to express what is best. He is the one who, in the medieval world of the ascending theory, would serve as God, giving the populace the voice to express what is best for the city—and indeed all of Greece—while they benefit themselves. He challenges demagogic orators like Cleon. In the fantasy of his own comedy, he is the victor and the crowds he creates sing his songs, enact what is best (as he sees it), so that they can enjoy a life of peace and bodily pleasures to which their natures move them.

I turn to Aristophanes's first comedy, performed in 425 BCE, the Acharnians. In this work he explores the potential for taming and educating the crowd that constitutes the comedy's Chorus—as well as the crowd attending the Dionysiac festival at which the comedy was performed. His voice onstage is to go beyond the stage, though, so that he can become the voice underlying the political decisions made in the ekklēsia. Aristophanes exposes the folly of the Chorus's initial claim to act in the public interest, motivated as they are by private desires, while also mocking those desires that lack the nobility they would like to ascribe to themselves. He does so as the god who creates them as a character in his play and then, in a late choral ode, in his own voice when he speaks directly to the many attending the theater. Eager to replace unscrupulous orators like Cleon, Aristophanes structures his comedy to suggest the potential comedy has to reorient the voice of the crowd so that it will defend what is best and not only what seems best when it votes in the democratic assembly. This voice he gives to the many does not express the moral dictates of the divine being of the medieval vox populi vox dei, but rather directs them to policies that allow for sexual and gustatorial gratification. After all, Aristophanes writes a comedy.

2. The Acharnians

As with several Aristophanic comedies written and performed during the Peloponnesian War, the Acharnians Footnote ²⁵ is unabashedly an antiwar diatribe, highlighting all the delights the Athenians have abandoned because of what Aristophanes portrays as their mindless concern with honor and expansionist ambitions. The Chorus of the Acharnians does not represent the entire city; it is a collection of individuals hailing from a coal-producing deme outside Athens, but they are motivated by a common and deep hatred of the Spartans with whom the Athenians are at war.Footnote ²⁶ As the comedy proceeds, though, their longing for tasty food and lots of sex (not to mention financial security) comes to prevail over their hostility to the Spartans and the desire for revenge. Revenge, the desire for “justice,” and the defense of the city yield to the more pressing desires of the flesh. This does not offend Aristophanes, but he seeks to teach that to satisfy their more compelling desires, they must seek peace.

Dikaiopolis (whose name means “just city”) introduces the comedy. He is anxiously waiting for the Athenian citizens to arrive for a meeting of the ekklēsia. Previously he had been frustrated in his efforts to address the body of citizens, eager as he is to argue for peace with Sparta. When the assembly finally convenes, it ignores Dikaiopolis's concerns, instead criticizing current political leaders and attending to possible alliances with Persia and Thracian mercenaries before adjourning without discussing peace. Relief for Dikaiopolis, though, comes with the appearance of a certain Amphitheus offering for sale a sampling of treaties with Sparta. A mob-like Chorus of Acharnians, however, are pursuing Amphitheus, threatening to stone him to death, angry that he brings treaties from the Spartans, the enemies who have trampled their vineyards. After Dikaiopolis buys a thirty-year treaty, the Acharnians turn their anger against him. But Dikaiopolis, with the thirty-year treaty in hand, prepares to delight in the sweet smell of nectar and the ambrosia that he can enjoy now that he has secured peace for himself (197). Courtesy of his treaty, he can return to the country, leaving the city and its assemblies behind in order to enjoy his own rural Dionysiac festival. Amphitheus, the treaty salesman, flees as the stone-wielding Chorus advance and appear on stage.

From the discordant language of the choral ode that follows, we must imagine the members of the Chorus racing helter-skelter across the stage in pursuit of the man who dares to sell treaties, entreating everyone—including the audience—to search for this man, “for the sake of the city [tēi polēi gar axion]” (205). The Acharnians comprising the Chorus are old men and hindered (they admit) by the “wretchedness of [their] years” (209–10). So encumbered they do not catch the treaty salesman, but they explain their anger. Taking on the mantle of patriotic defenders of their homeland, they had initially claimed that they were chasing Amphitheus “for the sake of the city,” but now they shout that they will make war upon the man who makes peace with the detestable enemy who has ruined their property, their estates, their land (227). From a defense of the city, the crowd changes focus to revenge for harms they have suffered. Dikaiopolis, seeking the pleasures of a quiet country life, cares neither about public welfare nor revenge. He recognizes that to satisfy his bodily desires, he must make peace with the city Athens has defined as its enemy. He shows no passion for revenge; who needs revenge or an overwrought patriotism to be happy? It provides neither luscious young girls nor delicious meals. As the Chorus rants against the treaty maker, their language becomes violent, affirming that they will never tire of throwing stones at Dikaiopolis for his willingness to treat with the Spartans.

Dikaiopolis reappears following the Chorus's song of vengeance, and they hear him envision all the delights that will accompany his private peace. Bidding adieu to the life of a soldier, he colorfully (indeed, crudely) anticipates fulfilling the sexual fantasies that the six years of war have denied him. The Chorus, though, still filled with anger arising from the focus on revenge, continues to affirm their desire to destroy him, shouting: “This is the one, here he is / Throw [the stones], throw, throw, throw / Strike, strike the wretch” (280–82). Repeated words capture the intensity of the crowd's fury. When Dikaiopolis meekly asks these “most ancient men” (286) why they want to destroy him, the Chorus refuses to listen. They call him loathsome, disgusting, and a traitor to the fatherland (patridos, 289). Caught up in the rhetoric of their common anger, they again portray themselves as defenders of the fatherland. As the comedy progresses, concern for the fatherland recedes before a concern with protecting their property and ultimately the same delights Dikaiopolis has acquired for himself with his thirty-year treaty.

Dikaiopolis with his private treaty stands outside the city, acting as an impartial observer not bound by the Chorus's professed vengeful patriotism. As he sensibly explains, the Spartans alone were not the cause (aitious) of the “affair, the disturbance” (pragmatōn) between the two cities (310). Dikaiopolis, for sure, is an absurd comic character, but the words Aristophanes gives him suggest a reasonableness lacking in the crazed and angry crowd. The Athenians share the blame for the war, Dikaiopolis claims, since they harmed the Spartans in many ways before war broke out. Though he assures the Chorus that he too “violently” hates the Spartans, he nevertheless recognizes the complex causes of the war and questions the value of assigning blame and seeking revenge. Reasonableness belongs to the comic character who is not guided by a thoughtless patriotism. Though focused on his own desires for bodily pleasures in much the same way as the Chorus will show themselves to be, he exists at this point in the comedy apart from the crowd. He sees beyond his city to what unites all men—bodies in pursuit of pleasure—and what is necessary to enjoy their gratification.

Still, the Chorus continues to portray itself as the defenders of the city and the justice of revenge. Calling Dikaiopolis's analysis of the causes of the war “dreadful” and “heart-troubling” (315), they threaten him with death unless he can persuade them that the Athenians are even partially responsible for the war and the destruction of their property. Yet, consistent with the inconsistency of comedy, while they insist on being persuaded, they also refuse to listen to him. Such is the illogic of crowds in Aristophanes's comedy. Nevertheless, despite the threats, Dikaiopolis dares to speak, earning the Chorus's judgment that he is a complete evildoer who deserves a terrible death by stoning. And so, after asking him to persuade them and yet refusing to listen to him, they chant: “You shall die now” (324). Efforts to assuage the crowd's anger only turn that anger against the speaker rather than Sparta as he becomes the object of their fury.

This being a comedy, Dikaiopolis is not stoned to death. Instead, he takes hostage a basket of coal, a commodity dear to the economic heart of the Acharnians. When Dikaiopolis threatens to “kill” the coal (whatever that may mean), the crowd whimpers and cowers in fear that they will be destroyed, and forgive Dikaiopolis for whatever he had said on behalf of the enemies of Athens. Now they ask him to speak “what seems best to you” (soi dokei) (338). Terrified about the fate of their beloved coal, the Chorus listens. What was perfidy a moment earlier becomes irrelevant. This fickle crowd is guided by its attachment to that by which they live, not by the noble love of the city as they initially claimed, or even by their revenge-based anger.

Free to say what seems best to him, Dikaiopolis chastises the Chorus for refusing to hear him speak on behalf of the Spartans and complains about the crowd's thumos, the spirited anger that provoked them to throw stones at him, but he also brings democratic practices into his defense. Driven by their passions, he tells them, they were unwilling to listen “equal to equal” (354). Though they claim to defend Athens, they reject a central institution of its democratic regime—a regime of equality and of free speech. Central to the practices of Athenian democracy were isēgoria (the equal opportunity to speak in the ekklēsia) and parrhēsia (freedom of speech).Footnote ²⁷ Though bred in a regime where the opportunity to speak freely among citizens was a treasured and defining characteristic, neither the crowd that came to the assembly at the very beginning of the comedy nor the one that threatens Dikaiopolis with stoning in the midst of the play's action allows Dikaiopolis the opportunity to speak. Claiming to act on behalf of their city, one that does no wrong and could not be responsible even in part for the destructive war with Sparta, the crowd as the supposed defenders of Athens do not value or practice what makes Athens worthy of defense. In their anger—not unlike the crowds of the contemporary world—they forget the principles underlying what they claim to protect. Instead, they speak and act for themselves, unwilling to hear how their perceptions of what is in their interest and the interest of the city might be mistaken. Unwilling to engage in the deliberations that are supposed to be part of the democratic assembly, they fail to learn how a concern with a shared good, peace, might serve their own interests more fully. Now that Dikaiopolis holds hostage that bucket of coal, they long to hear whatever he thinks, or (as they phrase it) whatever will save the life of their beloved coal.

Following the comic logic of the play, Dikaiopolis decides that to be a more effective speaker, he must clothe himself in beggar's rags. This ploy creates the opportunity for Aristophanes to distinguish between the crowd of the Chorus and the crowd of citizens watching the comedy—and in doing so to appeal to the vanity of the theatergoers. Flattering the theatergoers, Aristophanes has Dikaiopolis tell them that they will have the wisdom to see beneath the disguise. Unlike the ignorant Chorus whom Dikaiopolis dismisses as a bunch of foolish men (ēlithous, 440–44), they will know (eidenai) who he is. So too will the audience know the Aristophanes who is behind the action and words spoken on the comic stage. Dikaiopolis—and therewith Aristophanes—praises the audience for its ability to distinguish between fantasy and what is real. The Chorus lacks any such faculty and requires the lessons Aristophanes is to force upon them. Lest the crowd that is the audience become ridiculous like the crowd that threatens Dikaiopolis, the audience-crowd will do well to listen to the Aristophanes they know to be behind the action and words of the comedy.

Once attired in the rags of a beggar, Dikaiopolis is ready to speak on behalf of the Spartans. Reassuring his own spirit (thumos), he tells himself: “Prepare to say whatever seems best to you [soi dokēi]” (487). He articulates his understanding of what seems best as opposed to the demos, the plēthos, whether it be those gathered in the assembly or the theater or those who threatened him with stoning. The Chorus urging him on emphasizes his singularity, how he stands against the crowd: “You intend to speak in opposition to all” (493). At this point Aristophanes himself enters. Taking advantage of the imaginative possibilities of comedy, he has Dikaiopolis transform himself into two people—Dikaiopolis and Aristophanes the author of the comedy—and he, one man as two, speaks directly to the crowd in the theater. This double man tells both the Chorus on stage and the audience in the theater that comedy knows what is just (dikaion) and as a result he will speak what is amazing (deinon) as well as just (dikaia, 500–501). Through the voice of Dikaiopolis (the “just city”), he spends many lines explaining the complicated causes of the Peloponnesian War, alluding to the Megarian Decree, Aspasia's prostitutes, the conflicts that the Athenians refused to resolve before resorting to war, all in support of Dikaiopolis's contention that the Athenians by their decisions in the ekklēsia are partially to blame for the suffering of the Acharnians. The crowd, eager for the simplicity of revenge, has ignored the complexity of causes. By turning the crowd away from simplistic views that appeal to them, Aristophanes thereby helps them avoid their misguided actions.

Aristophanes's speech in the voice of Dikaiopolis divides the Chorus, one half still calling Dikaiopolis a disgusting beggar for saying such vile things in support of the Spartans, the other admitting that all that he says is true. Faced with the complexity of the real causes of the war (at least according to Aristophanes) and the even greater uncertainty about the meaning of justice, neither half speaks for the whole demos. Lacking a unified goal—whether to kill the traitor or recognize the justice of his speech—they are thrown into a state of confusion. That confusion within the Chorus continues until the general Lamachus appears and is asked by both Dikaiopolis and the bested half of the Chorus to use his resources to help each of them. This scene concludes with both Dikaiopolis and Lamachus leaving the stage and the Chorus reunited, but now acknowledging that Dikaiopolis has persuaded the people (ton dēmon, 626). The Chorus has revised its view of the treaties. Victory lies with Dikaiopolis. The Chorus no longer threatens to stone him to death. It has been tamed.

3. The Comic Poet Speaks to the Crowd

As often happens in Aristophanes's comedies, the Chorus standing alone on stage abandons its role in the story to speak directly to the audience in defense of and in the voice of the author of the comedy in which they are a character. The defense Aristophanes offers is a critique of the demos who, acting just as the Chorus of old men do, fail to see the benefits that would be theirs were they to listen to what Aristophanes (as Dikaiopolis) advises. Dikaiopolis had been threatened with stoning on stage; analogously Aristophanes had been threatened with slander by the political leader Cleon. Aristophanes praises the audience as wise and able to see beyond external appearances, just as Dikaiopolis had praised it for being able to see beyond the beggar's rags to his true self. Speaking through the Chorus, he criticizes the Athenians (the city and the demos) as being too quick to make judgments; they are arrogant, they are hubristic toward the comic poet. They (whom a moment ago he had praised as wise) are like the Chorus of the Acharnians ready to throw stones at those they dislike: unwilling to listen to their speeches, to follow the principles of isēgoria and parrhēsia, to engage in deliberation to the expedient and the inexpedient, the just and the unjust. For such an unreflective demos, the comic poet, Aristophanes tells them, is the cause of many good things. Specifically, the poet has protected them from being deceived by the contrived and novel speeches they hear in the ekklēsia; he has taught them to resist the orators’ flattery. He also protects them from being deceived by the shiny offerings and flattering words of ambassadors from abroad. It is he, the comic poet, who can save the city from itself, who can prevent the crowd of citizens from becoming the crazed stone-throwing Acharnians he has presented on stage. Were they to act as the stone throwers, they too might become the ridiculous objects of the city's laughter. As Dikaiopolis has said moments before, the comic poet teaches just things, dikaia (500–501, 661–62), while pouring disdain on the old, flustered coal-loving men.

Aristophanes portrays himself as the cause (aitios, 641) of such benefits. He has educated the demos within cities as to how they are to be governed democratically (tous dēmous en tais polesin deixas hōs dēmokratountai, 642). Having portrayed a crowd that rejected honest deliberation on stage when they initially denied Dikaiopolis the treasured democratic practice of parrhēsia, Aristophanes through the Chorus suggests that the demos, lacking the guidance of the poet but speaking for the city when they assert in their assembly what seems best, are simply a fickle crowd subject to the cunning and flattering words of manipulative speakers. They do not know what is best, what is just. They do not see what is hidden by the disguises with which men can readily attire themselves just as Dikaiopolis had tried to do with his beggar's rags.

This part of the Chorus's song defending their creator/teacher from the slander of Cleon concludes by reiterating the importance of the poet for the city. Aristophanes again insists that it is the poet writing his comedies who says just things (ta dikaia, 655), thereby ensuring that the city flourishes. He does so “not by flattery nor bribery nor deception nor evildoing but teaching what is best” (657–58), which he does by revealing the Athenians to themselves on stage. With his admirable courage, the comedian protects the crowd/the demos from itself, draining the anger that led them to attack the peace seeker.

We might say that Aristophanes proposes that vox populi vox dei be “the voice of the people the voice of the comic poet.” The wisdom belonging to the people would come not from God or the gods—nor from what Aristophanes sees as the highly compromised deliberations in the ekklēsia—but from the theater. It would reside not in the angry crowd of Acharnians driven by revenge nor in the citizens who attend the assembly simply to get their daily obol; rather, it resides in the highly sophisticated performance of Aristophanic comedy. It is not the aggregated individuals who constitute the demos in the assembly, not the shifty, elegant orators addressing the citizenry, but the theatergoers taught by Aristophanes's comedies who ought to be the voice of the city. Aristophanes's voice does not express the platitudinous love of the fatherland of the stone-throwing Chorus; his voice is based on his understanding of human nature and how political life can attend to the needs of that nature by ensuring peace. He acknowledges the bodily desires and needs that drive human actions; these make humans comic characters fit for the comic stage. But he also recognizes that to satisfy those desires there must be peace. The concern for revenge and martial glory hinders human happiness and the achievement of what is right and just. The just city and the character Just City are peaceful and happy. The city at war is not. The stone-throwing, angry, vengeful, or even patriotic crowd, blaming others for the ravages of war, forfeit the enjoyment for which the body longs. In a panhellenic plea for peace, Aristophanes speaks not only to the Athenians; he speaks to all of Greece.

The Chorus as the voice of Aristophanes has released the Chorus as actor in his comedy to express their dissatisfaction with Athenian politics. Now they declaim against the city that has allowed the young orators with their fancy verbal tricks to make the feeble graybeards who compose the Chorus suffer. It is not only the Spartans who cause them pain. It is their fellow citizens. They who once fought nobly for the city at Marathon receive no respect. As young men drag them into court, the heroic glory that was theirs at Marathon is forgotten. Military fame is transient. Happiness, instead, depends on following the poet in his efforts to free the city from those who champion war.

While the Chorus now praise Aristophanes as their benefactor and lament their lost stature, Dikaiopolis has taken advantage of his thirty-year treaty to open a marketplace, welcoming goods and customers from across Greece. His agora demonstrates the desirability of a panhellenic free market. When the Chorus observes the exchange of goods in Dikaiopolis's marketplace, they stop reminiscing about the heroic deeds performed during their soldiering days at Marathon; now this crowd of old, toothless, feeble, worn-out, muttering, deaf (the miserable adjectives pile up) men gripe about their joyless lives, mourning the loss of the quotidian delights that war has denied them, but are now for sale in Dikaiopolis's market. They resent the indignities they suffer from the sycophants who fleece them out of their meagre savings (676–701). Age, they claim, has transformed them—but has it?

Earlier in the comedy, the Chorus called Dikaiopolis a traitor and threatened him with stoning because he had treated with the enemy, but when their private lives were threatened as Dikaiopolis held hostage that bucket of coal, they no longer defended the city, only their own livelihoods. And while earlier they had called Dikaiopolis wretched, loathsome, disgusting, seeing him engaged in trade and enjoying the pleasures the market offers, they call him a man who is blessedly happy (eudaimonei anthropos, 836), one whose plans have materialized and who profits with delight from his market (837–38). The Chorus even refers to him now as a thoughtful and a most wise man (ton phrominon andra ton hupersophon, 971). Whereas moments before they had gloried in their role as warriors at Marathon, now as the result of Aristophanes's comedy, they say “never will they welcome War into their homes” (971). Instead, they will welcome love, harmony, friendship, and reconciliation, and even admit that they envy Dikaiopolis's good counsel (tēs euboulias, 1008). Even more than his good counsel, though, they envy the feasting that his private treaty has afforded him (1009). The crowds streaming into Dikaiopolis's market are not an avenging angry mob; they are eager to enjoy the benefits of economic exchange that peace allows. This is what Aristophanes as the educator of the city aims to teach. It was not age that changed them; it was Aristophanes. By displaying the delights Dikaiopolis's peace affords, the poet has transformed the Chorus from vengeful, miserable old men to ones ready to enjoy life's pleasures, from stone throwers to peace lovers. Perhaps he hopes to have done the same for the crowd of theatergoers who as citizens of Athens will vote on war and peace as they decide on what seems best to the demos in the ekklēsia.

As the play concludes, the comedy contrasts line against line the delicacies Dikaiopolis enjoys with the deprivations the general Lamachus, still on the edge of battle, endures. Happy, blessed Dikaiopolis, the eudaimōn, relishes his life. Lamenting his, Lamachus describes himself as damned by the gods, a kakodaimōn, reduced to eating onions and rotten fish, while Dikaiopolis enjoys stuffed fig leaves, thrushes, and pigeon meat. And while Lamachus oils his military gear, Dikaiopolis pours honey on the foods spread before him (1099–1106). As the contrast between the pleasures of the thirty-year-treaty holder and the agonies of the general plays out before the Chorus, its members are fully persuaded to abandon their anger at the “traitor” and their desire for revenge. Enlightened by the comic poet who created them, the Chorus concludes the comedy by joyfully following Dikaiopolis off stage—presumably to the marketplace of bodily delights.

The Chorus at the beginning of the comedy claimed to attack the treaty seller and Dikaiopolis for the sake of the city; at the end, they abandon their specious devotion to the city when tempted by sensual pleasures. As decrepit old men, they fantasize about their glorious youth as fighters at Marathon, but such reminiscences are undercut by the lives they now live in a city where the youth with their oratorical flourishes hoodwink them out of their possessions. The Chorus comes to understand that the way of life they defended at Marathon no longer exists—if it ever did. Better to abandon the focus on military success and eat pigeon meat instead of rotten fish. Insofar as they might be the vox populi that will decide the weighty matters of war and peace, Aristophanes educates them through humor as to what their vox must accomplish. It is the poet (not God), through what he creates for the stage, who provides the grounding for what the Chorus must articulate when they give common expression to what seems best.

In the first known democratic regime, Aristophanes writes a play where the comic poet provides the wisdom that is to inform the voice of the demos. He claims to do so by persuading the crowd—both the Chorus and his audience—through his comedy. The art of the comic poet modulates the vox of the demos so that it can express good and just things. The deliberative assembly of the collective demos expressing what seems best failed Dikaiopolis as they bickered at the beginning of the comedy without addressing the key issues of the day; it is Aristophanes who ultimately saves him. But Aristophanes is not only Dikaiopolis's savior; he is the savior of all of Greece by teaching the crowd that what it desires comes with peace, not war.

Socrates in Plato's Republic introduces his proposal for a philosopher-ruler with the fear that it would be drowned in a sea of laughter. The immediate response by his interlocutor Glaucon is to agree as he, with comic exaggeration, imagines that a host of men would gather any weapon at hand ready to attack and do “amazing things” (473c–474a). Does Aristophanes imagine himself as the Comedian King who can rule as Plato's philosopher would?Footnote ²⁸ Aristophanes certainly offers as exalted a vision of the comic poet as Socrates does of his philosopher-ruler. This may be his greatest fantasy, greater than the dung beetle who flies to heaven, greater than the women who take over the assembly and the city, greater than the men who found a city among the birds. On the comic stage, Aristophanes can be the tamer of crowds, ending his play happily with peace and prosperity for all. The tragedy, of course, is that this is a fantasy, and while Aristophanes imagines such a role for himself, he also portrays the madness of the crowd driven by unthinking hatred, unwilling to listen to argument, focused on beastly and crude pleasures—unable to become the eudaimones, happy and blessed men, they would be if they were to express his voice in the self-ruling democracy of ancient Athens.