Peace (play) - Peace and Old Comedy

Peace and Old Comedy

Peace is structured according to the conventions of Old Comedy. Variations from those conventions may be due to an historical trend towards New Comedy, corruption of the text and/or a unique dramatic effect that the poet intended. Noteworthy variations in this play are found in the following elements:

• Agon: A conventional agon is a debate that decides or reflects the outcome of the play, comprising a 'symmetrical scene' with a pair of songs and a pair of declaimed or spoken passages, typically in long lines of anapests. There is no such agon in this play nor is there an antagonist to represent a pro-war viewpoint, apart from War, a monstrosity incapable of eloquence. However, Old Comedy is rich in symmetrical scenes and sometimes these can resemble an agon. There is a symmetrical scene in lines 346-425 (song-dialogue-song-dialogue) in which Trygaeus argues with Hermes and eventually wins his support. The dialogue however is in iambic trimeter, conventionally the rhythm of ordinary speech. Moreover, the song's metrical form is repeated much later in a second antistrophe (583-97), indicating that Aristophanes was aiming at something other than an agon.
• Parabasis: A conventional parabasis is an address to the audience by the Chorus and it includes a symmetrical scene (song-speech-song-speech). Typically there are two such addresses, in the middle and near the end of a play. Peace follows convention except that the speeches have been omitted from the symmetrical scene in the first parabasis (lines 729-816) and it includes several lines (752-59) that were copied almost verbatim from the first parabasis in The Wasps ( The Wasps 1030-37). The repetition of these lines need not indicate a problem with the text; it could instead indicate the poet's satisfaction with them. They describe Cleon as a disgusting gorgon-like phenomenon in language that matches sound and sense e.g.

ἑκατὸν δὲ κύκλῳ κεφαλαὶ κολάκων οἰμωξομένων ἑλιχμῶντο

περὶ τὴν κεφαλήν (Wasps 1033-4, Peace 756-7):

"a hundred heads of doomed stooges circled and licked around his head"

The sound of something revolting is captured in the original Greek by the repetition of the harsh k sound, including a repetition of the word for 'head'.

• Dactylic rhythm: The metrical rhythms of Old Comedy are typically iambic, trochaic and anapestic. Peace however includes two scenes that are predominantly dactylic in rhythm, one featuring the oracle-monger Hierocles (1052–1126) and the other featuring the epic-singing son of Lamachus (1270–97). In both scenes, the use of dactyls allows for Homer-like utterances generally signifying martial and oracular bombast.
• Parodos: A parodos is the entry of the Chorus, conventionally a spectacular occasion for music and choreography. Often it includes trochaic rhythms to signify the mood of an irascible Chorus in search of trouble (as for example in The Acharnians and The Knights). In Peace the rhythm is trochaic but the Chorus enters joyfully and its only argument with the protagonist is over its inability to stop dancing (299-345), an inventive use of a conventional parados.