Democracy and power of Demos in Aristophanes' "Knights"

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the political and ideological power relationships in Aristophanes’ Knights, the comedy which tackles the problems of a feeble democracy (literally ‘people power’), easily manipulated by demagogues, through an allegorical identification with a private house and its owner. Demos, an old Athenian, finds himself deprived of the government of his house by Paphlagon, a treacherous and overbearing slave, just as, in Aristophanes’ eyes, the Athenian people were currently stripped of their sovereignty by a demagogue having the unmistakable features of Cleon. Liberation from such slave-demagogue is only possible by replacing him with someone even worse, who adopts Paphlagon’s same weapons – flattery and slander – in an even more radical way. This paper fully investigates the rhetorical and discursive mechanisms triggered by the close agones between Paphlagon and his antagonist, which disclose the illusory nature of democracy. Moreover, it offers an in-depth analysis of the even more ambiguous and complex issue of the restoration of both family and state. As long as individual and social happiness – i.e. the final goal in Aristophanic comedies – is concerned, it would not be conceivable to rely on the worst of the two opponents. The dramatic action thus involves a radical transformation of Demos himself, who recovers his sovereignty thanks to a miraculous rejuvenation through a space-time shift that entails a return to the glorious past of Athens during the Persian wars.