The Nature of Aristophanes' Akharnians

The problem which in recent years has generally been regarded as the main problem about Akharnians is: has the play a political purpose? Fifty years ago, I suppose, no one doubted that the play did have two purposes. One was to entertain the audience and make them laugh. The other was a purpose of extreme seriousness, to persuade the audience that the Peloponnesian War, now in its sixth year, was a terrible mistake, and peace ought to be made as soon as possible. This view is associated especially with the name of Gilbert Murray, who in 1897 wrote, simply as a statement of fact, ‘It is political in its main purpose, and is directed against Cleon and Lamachus, as representing the war party’. In his later monograph on Aristophanes, he still holds this view; Akharnians is, he says, ‘a definite plea for peace’. But in 1938 A. W. Gomme published an important article on Aristophanes and politics, in which he maintains that the question ‘What were Aristophanes' political views?’ is not relevant to the interpretation and criticism of his plays, and that we cannot tell from Akharnians whether he was in favour of peace or not. That is a non-committal position, almost a defeatist one. But more recently two scholars have gone much further in opposing the old view that the play is a plea for peace. W. G. Forrest considers that no one could have made a plea for peace in Athens in 425 B.C.; at that date the Athenians, he thinks, were so fully engaged in the war that making peace was completely out of the question.