The Knights

The Knights (Greek Hippeis, also called The Horsemen) is a comedy by Aristophanes, performed at the Lenaea of 424 BC, where it won first prize. It is the first play that Aristophanes produced in his own name, and it is a violent attack on the politician Cleon. Cleon appears under the disguise of Paphlagon, a newly bought slave who has taken over the household of his old master Demos (“the People”). Two of Demos’ other slaves find an oracle saying that Paphlagon will be overthrown by a sausage-seller, a man even more shameless than he. With the help of a chorus of Athenian cavalrymen (the “knights” of the title, men rich enough to keep a horse), the Sausage-Seller beats Paphlagon in two contests of flattery, the second held before Demos himself. In the end the Sausage-Seller gives his name as Agoracritus and restores Demos to the glory of his youth (lines 1321–1334).

Date and Historical Background

The Knights (or The Horsemen) was first performed at the Lenaea of 424 BC. The ancient introduction (hypothesis) to the play records that it won first prize, with Cratinus’ Satyrs second and a play by Aristomenes third. The play itself shows that this was Aristophanes’ first production in his own name: in the parabasis the Chorus says that the poet had long hesitated to ask for a chorus for himself, because he knew how hard comedy is: many suitors court the Muse, but she favours few (lines 507–520). Earlier plays of his had been produced by others.

The enmity with Cleon had begun earlier. In the Acharnians, produced at the Lenaea the year before, the hero says that Cleon dragged him before the Council because of “last year’s comedy” and slandered him there (Acharnians 377–382), and the poet makes a point of speaking now, before foreigners are present, so that Cleon cannot accuse him of slandering the city in their hearing (Acharnians 502–506). In The Knights Cleon is attacked as the man who rules the city by flattery and informing. The play keeps reminding the audience of Pylos, where the Athenians had won a victory over the Spartans in 425: Paphlagon claims the credit for it, saying that he went to Pylos and brought the Spartans back (lines 742–743), and the Sausage-Seller answers by pointing to the Pylos shields hung up with their handles on, which can still be seized by his enemies (lines 843–859).

Cleon is named only once in the whole play, in a song of the Chorus: “Sweetest light of day it will be for those here now and those who come hereafter, if Cleon perishes” (lines 973–976). Elsewhere the character is called Paphlagon. The name suggests the region Paphlagonia, from which slaves were bought, and the Greek verb paphlazein, “to boil over, to splutter”: when Paphlagon is raging at the Sausage-Seller, the Chorus remarks that the man is “paphlazei”, boiling over (lines 919–920). In Clouds Aristophanes looks back on the play and says that he struck Cleon, then at the height of his power, in the belly, and did not jump on him when he was down (Clouds 549–550). He also complains there that Eupolis twisted his Knights into the Maricas (Clouds 553–554).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Demos, an elderly Athenian from the Pnyx, an allegorical figure for the Athenian people
• Two slaves of Demos, who by the manuscript tradition are named Demosthenes (a real general of the Peloponnesian War) and Nicias (a real politician and general); the names are not spoken in the play, and a Nicias is mentioned once as a politician the Sausage-Seller will throw into confusion (line 358)
• Paphlagon, a tanner and newly bought slave who now rules the household of Demos, a thinly veiled version of Cleon
• The Sausage-Seller, who gives his name as Agoracritus at the end (lines 1257–1259)
• The Chorus of Knights (cavalrymen)
• The Thirty Years’ Truces (Spondai), who appear at the end as silent young women

Setting

The play is set outside the house of Demos in Athens. Demos is called “Demos of the Pnyx” (lines 42–43), the Pnyx being the hill where the Athenians held their assemblies, and the Sausage-Seller is met there on his way to the market (lines 146–150).

Summary of Knights

Prologue

Two slaves of Demos run out howling and cursing the newly bought Paphlagon: may the gods destroy that evil slave together with his schemes (lines 1–2). After some exchanges they turn to the audience and ask them to show by their faces whether they enjoy the words and the action (lines 37–39), and one of them explains the situation (lines 40–72).

Their master is Demos of the Pnyx, a bad-tempered, bean-chewing countryman of an old man, rather deaf (lines 40–43). At the previous new moon he bought a slave, a Paphlagonian tanner, the biggest rogue and slanderer there is (lines 43–45). The tanner studied the old man’s moods and flattered him with sweet talk: “Demos, go and bathe after you have tried one case; here, swallow this, eat that, take your three obols!” (lines 46–51). He snatches whatever the other slaves have prepared and serves it to the master as his own gift. As an example, one of the slaves had kneaded a Spartan barley-cake at Pylos, and Paphlagon ran round, stole it, and served it himself (lines 54–57). He drives the others away and stands by the table with a leather whip, chasing off the public speakers (lines 58–60). He chants oracles to Demos, and the old man goes into a prophetic trance (line 61). When Demos is softened up, Paphlagon slanders the other slaves to him, and they are whipped; then he runs round the household demanding bribes: “Do you see how Hylas is whipped because of me? Pay up or die today” (lines 62–70). Every escape is hopeless, for he sees everything: he has one leg at Pylos and the other in the Assembly (lines 74–79).

The slaves first think of death, by drinking bull’s blood like Themistocles (lines 80–84), and then decide that unmixed wine will at least help them find some good idea (lines 85–96). While Paphlagon snores in his leather, one of them steals the sacred oracle that he guards from everyone and the two read it by turns over their cups (lines 97–124). It says that the city will pass first to a tow-seller, then to a sheep-seller, who will rule until a still more disgusting man appears; then comes the tanner, a bellowing thief with a voice like Cycloborus; and the tanner will be destroyed by a sausage-seller (lines 125–144). The tow-seller and the sheep-seller stand for earlier leaders of the city. The slaves go out to the market to find the sausage-seller (lines 145–149).

A sausage-seller comes along as if sent by a god, carrying his tray. The slaves hail him as the saviour of the city and tell him that he will be great: he will rule the market, the harbours and the Pnyx, trample the Council, break the generals, and dine in the Prytaneum (lines 150–167). They bid him look out at the islands around the city and turn one eye to Caria and the other to Carthage (lines 168–176). He protests that he is nobody. They answer that this is exactly why he will be great: he is low-born, a rogue, bred in the market and shameless (lines 177–187). He objects that he has no education: “I do not even know music, except my letters, and those badly” (lines 188–189). The slaves answer that this is the only thing that could harm him, for demagoguery is no longer for a cultured and honest man, but for the ignorant and the foul (lines 190–193). They read him the oracle: when the tanning-eagle with hooked claws seizes the blood-drinking snake, the garlic-sauce of the Paphlagonians is lost, and the god grants great glory to the sellers of tripe; the snake is the sausage, and the tanning-eagle is Paphlagon (lines 197–210). He is still unsure how he can manage the People, but they tell him that it is simple: do what Paphlagon does, stir and mince everything together, and sweeten the People with little cook’s phrases (lines 211–216). A thousand knights hate Paphlagon, the slaves say, and will help, along with all decent citizens and every clever spectator, and the god (lines 225–229). They add, as a joke on the mask, that the mask-makers were too afraid to make a portrait of Paphlagon’s face, but that the audience is clever enough to know him anyway (lines 230–233). Then Paphlagon comes out of the house, threatening them (lines 234–239), and the Sausage-Seller runs away. One of the slaves calls on the Knights of Athens to help (lines 240–246).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

The Chorus of Knights rushes in, shouting to strike the man who has thrown the cavalry into confusion, “the tax-farmer, the gulf that swallows everything, this Charybdis of plunder” (lines 247–254). They are as angry with Paphlagon as the slaves are. Paphlagon calls on the old men of the jury courts, “brothers of the three obols”, to help him because he is being beaten by conspirators (lines 255–257). The slaves hearten the Sausage-Seller, who comes back, and the two begin a shouting-match, each threatening to out-shout, out-slander and out-steal the other (lines 273–302).

First agon

The Sausage-Seller reminds Paphlagon of his tanner’s past (lines 316–333), and the two argue over who should speak first (lines 335–345). Paphlagon boasts that after gulping a measure of wine he will throw the generals at Pylos into confusion; the Sausage-Seller answers that after a meal of tripe he will throttle the orators and stir up Nicias (lines 355–358). Demosthenes and the Chorus urge him on (lines 375–395). Paphlagon’s weapon is the denunciation. The Sausage-Seller answers that he knows Paphlagon took ten talents at Potidaea (line 438), and that he has twenty charges of avoiding military service against him and more than a thousand of theft (lines 443–444). The Chorus calls the Sausage-Seller the saviour of the city and praises the way he has outdone the man in words (lines 457–460). Paphlagon claims that he has long known about the scheme, accuses the Sausage-Seller of secret dealings with Sparta, and says that he will go straight to the Council and denounce all the conspirators, for their oaths with the Medes and the king and their dealings with Boeotia (lines 465–479). The Sausage-Seller sets down his tripe and knives and prepares to follow (lines 488–489); oil is rubbed on his neck so that he can slip out of the slanders (lines 490–491), and the slave sends him off with the advice to bite, slander, eat the crests of his enemy and come back with the wattles in his mouth (lines 495–497).

Parabasis

Left alone, the Chorus steps forward and speaks for the poet (lines 498–610). They bid farewell to the Sausage-Seller and ask the audience to listen to their anapaests (lines 498–506). Had one of the old comic poets tried to make them listen to his verses, he would not easily have persuaded them, but this poet deserves it, because he hates the same people they do and has the courage to face the storm. He is surprised that people ask why he has not asked for a chorus for himself before now; he asks them to know that this was not folly, but because he thought comedy the hardest task of all: many court her, but she favours very few (lines 507–520). He also saw how the earlier poets were abandoned by the people as they grew old: Magnes, who had set up many trophies over rival choruses, and who was thrown out when his hair went grey because he no longer had any wit (lines 520–530); Cratinus, who once flowed like a river through the plains, and who now goes about in his old age, a faded garland, dry from thirst, and ought to be drinking in the Prytaneum (lines 526–536); and Crates, who had to bear the audience’s anger and rough treatment, though he sent them home fed on cheap but witty fare, and who alone held out, sometimes falling and sometimes not (lines 537–540). The Chorus asks the audience to greet this poet, who has now taken the helm himself, with loud applause at the Lenaean festival (lines 541–550).

The Chorus then sings a hymn to Poseidon, lord of horses, who delights in the neighing of horses and the swift triremes, and in the young men who drive them (lines 551–564). The next passage praises the earlier Athenians, men worthy of the land and of the sacred robe, who never counted their enemy and never gave way: if one fell, he wiped off the dust, denied that he had fallen, and wrestled again (lines 565–576). Unlike the generals of today, who will not fight unless they are given front seats and free meals, the knights ask to defend the city and its gods for nothing; they ask only that, when peace comes, the city not begrudge them their long hair and their grooming (lines 573–580). A second hymn calls on Pallas Athena, protector of the city, to come as the ally of the Knights (lines 581–594). Finally the Chorus praises the horses themselves: when the Athenians once invaded Corinth, the horses jumped into the transports as if they were men, buying drinking-cups and onions (lines 595–610). Praising the horses is also a way for the knights to praise themselves.

Second agon

The Sausage-Seller returns from the Council and tells the story of his victory (lines 611–682). When he reached the Council, Paphlagon was already inside, thundering against the knights and talking of plots, and the whole Council was filled with his lies and was staring grimly at him (lines 625–631). The Sausage-Seller prayed to the market where he had grown up for a ready tongue and a shameless voice, and as he did so a man on his right farted, which he took for a good omen (lines 634–639). He burst in and announced good news: since the war began, he had never seen anchovies so cheap (lines 642–645). The Council crowned him for the good news, and he told them, as a secret, to seize all the bowls of the craftsmen so that they could buy plenty of anchovies at an obol (lines 646–651). Paphlagon, guessing what pleased them most, proposed a sacrifice of a hundred oxen to the goddess for the good news; the Sausage-Seller outbid him with two hundred and proposed to promise the huntress goddess a thousand goats if sprats fell to a hundred an obol (lines 652–662). The Council went over to him; Paphlagon, in a rage, was dragged out by the prytaneis and the archers. When he begged for a moment because a herald had come from Sparta about a truce, the Council shouted with one voice that they had no need of truces now that anchovies were cheap and the war could go on (lines 663–675). The Sausage-Seller then bought up all the coriander and leeks in the market and gave them away free to those with anchovies, and the Council ended by praising him loudly (lines 676–682).

The Chorus celebrates his victory (lines 683–690). Paphlagon bursts in, blustering, and the two quarrel again (lines 691–727). Both then appeal to Demos, who comes out of the house (lines 728–733). Paphlagon says the Sausage-Seller and his young friends are tormenting him because he loves Demos. The Sausage-Seller replies that many good men have wanted to serve Demos for years but cannot because of Paphlagon, and that Demos is like a boy with his lovers, turning away the honest ones and giving himself to lamp-sellers, cobblers and tanners (lines 734–740). Paphlagon says he serves Demos well, since he took the generals at Pylos and brought back the Spartans (lines 741–743); the Sausage-Seller says he stole a pot from a workshop (lines 744–745). Paphlagon demands an Assembly to decide who is better disposed toward Demos, and Demos agrees to sit only on the Pnyx (lines 746–751).

The contest begins with oaths. Paphlagon prays to Athena that he may be struck down if he does not serve the people best, and the Sausage-Seller prays that he may be cut up and boiled if he does not love Demos best (lines 763–772). Paphlagon claims credit for the money he has brought to the treasury by torture and threats (lines 773–776). The Sausage-Seller does not care for that, he says, and will do better by stealing bread from others to set before Demos. He then produces a cushion that he has sewn so that Demos may sit softly on the rocks of the Pnyx and not rub the muscles that rowed at Salamis (lines 777–785). Demos is pleased and asks whether he is descended from Harmodius (lines 786–787).

The speeches grow more serious. The Sausage-Seller accuses Paphlagon of having kept Demos penned up for eight years in the city’s towers and crannies instead of letting him go back to his fields, of refusing the peace offers of the Spartans, and of driving the envoys out of the city (lines 792–796). Paphlagon answers that this is to let Demos rule all the Greeks, as an oracle says he will, if he waits (lines 797–800). The Sausage-Seller answers that Paphlagon only wants to keep stealing and taking bribes from the allied cities, while Demos, blinded by war and need, does not see it; and if Demos were ever to go home in peace, eat his porridge and see the good things he has been robbed of, he would turn on Paphlagon with his vote (lines 801–809). Paphlagon is enraged that he is slandered when he has done more for Athens than Themistocles did. The Sausage-Seller cries out to the city of Argos: Paphlagon dares to compare himself to Themistocles, who found the city half empty and filled it, who made Piraeus part of the city, and who gave the people new fish while taking away none of the old, while Paphlagon would make the citizens small by walling them in and delivering oracles (lines 810–819). Demos at this point realises how long he has been fooled (line 822).

The quarrel then turns coarse. The Sausage-Seller says that Paphlagon swallows the stalks of the public accounts and has taken more than forty minas in bribes from Mytilene (lines 824–835). The Chorus tells him to press the advantage. Paphlagon boasts of the Pylos shields; the Sausage-Seller points out that he had them dedicated with their handles still on, so that if Demos ever tried to punish him, his friends the tanners, honey-sellers and cheese-sellers could seize the shields at night and cut off the city’s grain (lines 843–857). Demos is alarmed and sees how often he has been tricked (lines 858–859). The Sausage-Seller gives Demos a pair of shoes and a tunic for the winter, and Demos says that Themistocles never thought of anything like this tunic, not even the Piraeus (lines 868–886). Paphlagon boasts that he stopped a certain kind of men by striking the name of Gryttus from the lists; the Sausage-Seller says he did it from jealousy, to stop them from becoming public speakers (lines 876–880). The two then bring wraps and potions: Paphlagon puts a tanned hide round Demos, which stinks, and the Sausage-Seller says it was meant to suffocate him, as before when Paphlagon raised the price of silphium so that the jurors, eating it, would kill each other with their wind (lines 890–898). The two trade offers of food, ointments and wipes (lines 904–911), and the Chorus remarks that the man is boiling over (lines 919–922). Paphlagon threatens to make the Sausage-Seller a trierarch with a rotten ship and to have him listed among the rich; the Sausage-Seller wishes that he may be eating squid when he must speak in the Assembly, and choke on them (lines 912–940).

Demos is now convinced. He calls the Sausage-Seller the best citizen he has known, tells Paphlagon that he has been taken in by his false love, and demands the ring back, for he will not be his steward any longer (lines 941–948). Paphlagon warns that someone even worse will appear. Demos looks at the ring and finds that the device on it is not his own: the Sausage-Seller reads it as a gull gaping on a rock and making speeches, and Demos says that Paphlagon was wearing not his own signet but one that suits Cleonymus (lines 949–958). He offers the stewardship to the Sausage-Seller, but Paphlagon begs first to be heard on the oracles, and each goes to fetch his own (lines 959–972). While they are away the Chorus sings that it will be the sweetest of days for those present and those to come, if Cleon perishes (lines 973–976), and that old men in the courts say that without him the city would lack two useful tools, a ladle and a stirring-spoon (lines 977–984). It adds that, according to his schoolfellows, as a boy he would tune his lyre only in the Dorian mode, and the music-teacher angrily sent him away, saying that the boy could learn no mode except the “Bribe-taking” one (lines 985–996).

The oracle contest follows (lines 997–1110). Paphlagon brings a whole chest of oracles, the Sausage-Seller has two lofts and a house full (lines 997–1002). Paphlagon’s are by Bacis, the Sausage-Seller’s by Bacis’ brother Glanis (lines 1003–1010 and 1035–1036). Paphlagon reads that Apollo bids the Erechtheid (Demos) to guard the sacred sharp-toothed dog that barks and shouts terribly on his behalf and will earn him a reward, though the jackdaws croak at it in hatred (lines 1015–1020); the dog, Paphlagon explains, is himself. The Sausage-Seller says that the dog is gnawing away the oracle like a door, and reads another: beware of the slave-stealing Cerberus, who fawns on you while you dine, and when you gape elsewhere swallows your meat and slips into the kitchen at night to lick the dishes and the islands (lines 1030–1034). Paphlagon reads that in holy Athens a woman will bear a lion who will fight the gnats for the People as if guarding his cubs, and Demos is to protect him with a wooden wall and iron towers (lines 1037–1040); the lion, he says, is himself (lines 1042–1043). The Sausage-Seller says the god means something else by the wall: that Demos is to bind him in the five-holed wooden stocks (lines 1045–1049). Paphlagon’s oracle about the Spartan prisoners (lines 1051–1057) and one about Pylos before Pylos (lines 1058–1062) are turned by the Sausage-Seller into jokes, the second about the bath-tubs that Paphlagon has seized. In a naval oracle that tells Demos to beware of the dog-fox, the Sausage-Seller says the fast ships are the swift triremes that Paphlagon keeps asking for to collect money (lines 1065–1077). The Sausage-Seller reads an oracle bidding Demos beware of “Cyllene”, a pun on the word for a crooked hand, and Paphlagon says that it means the hand of Diopeithes (lines 1080–1085). Both then offer oracles saying that Demos will become an eagle and rule all lands; the Sausage-Seller adds that he will judge at Ecbatana, eating pastry (lines 1086–1089). Both also report dreams of the goddess: Paphlagon dreamed that she poured wealth and health over Demos, the Sausage-Seller that she came with her owl and poured ambrosia over Demos and garlic-sauce over Paphlagon (lines 1090–1095). Demos declares that no one is wiser than Glanis and entrusts himself to the Sausage-Seller to be led like an old man and educated again (lines 1096–1099). Paphlagon offers barley, but Demos says he has often been deceived by him and by Thuphanes (lines 1100–1104).

The Chorus sings to Demos that he has a fine empire, since all men fear him as a tyrant, but that he is easily led, delights in flattery and gapes at whoever speaks, so that his mind is away from home (lines 1111–1120). Demos answers that he plays the fool on purpose: he wants to keep one thief as his champion, and when the man is full he lifts him up and strikes him (lines 1121–1130). He adds that he watches his thieves without seeming to look, and then makes them disgorge what they have stolen (lines 1141–1150).

The last contest is one of service. Each of the two says that he has long been waiting to do Demos good (lines 1151–1158), and Demos has them start from the line, as in a race (lines 1159–1162). Paphlagon brings a barley-cake kneaded from the barley taken at Pylos, and the Sausage-Seller bread-scoops hollowed out by the goddess’s own ivory hand (lines 1166–1170). Paphlagon offers pea soup stirred by Pallas; the Sausage-Seller says that the goddess plainly watches over Demos, for she holds over him a pot full of broth (lines 1171–1176). Both credit their dishes to the goddess under her titles: Paphlagon’s slice of fish comes from Phobesistrate and his cake for the rowers from Gorgolopha, the Sausage-Seller’s boiled meat and tripe from Obrimopatra and his wine, mixed three to two, from Tritogeneia (lines 1177–1189). Paphlagon offers a slice of rich cake, and the Sausage-Seller the whole cake (lines 1190–1191). Paphlagon then says that the Sausage-Seller will have no hares to give, and the Sausage-Seller, in distress, says he must think of some trick (lines 1192–1194). He tells Paphlagon that envoys with purses of silver are approaching, and when Paphlagon runs off to look, he seizes the hares that Paphlagon had and offers them to Demos as his own. Paphlagon protests that the Sausage-Seller has stolen from him, and the Sausage-Seller answers that he, too, stole the men at Pylos (lines 1195–1201). Asked how he thought of taking them, the Sausage-Seller says that the idea was the goddess’s and the theft his; Demos sends Paphlagon away, saying that the thanks belong to the one who served the dish (lines 1202–1205).

The Sausage-Seller proposes that Demos should settle the matter by examining the two baskets in silence (lines 1207–1213). His own basket is empty, because he has brought everything to Demos; in Paphlagon’s is a huge cake from which he had given Demos only a small piece, as he has done before (lines 1214–1223). Paphlagon is exposed as a thief who has been cheating Demos, and answers that he stole for the good of the city (lines 1224–1226). The Sausage-Seller demands the wreath that Paphlagon had been given; Paphlagon refuses, saying that a Pythian oracle tells by whom alone he is to be defeated (lines 1227–1231). The Sausage-Seller tests the oracle by questioning him about his youth: he was schooled among the fists in the cookshops, learned to steal and swear falsely and to look the other way, and in his youth sold sausages, at the gates where salt fish is sold (lines 1235–1247). Paphlagon concludes that the oracle of the god is fulfilled and begs to be rolled inside (lines 1248–1249). He says goodbye to the wreath, which another will take, no more a thief than he, but perhaps more fortunate (lines 1250–1252), and the Sausage-Seller thanks Zeus Hellenios for the victory (line 1253). The Chorus congratulates him and asks to be made secretary of the lawsuits (lines 1254–1256). Demos asks the Sausage-Seller his name, and he replies that it is Agoracritus, because he was brought up in the market in lawsuits (lines 1257–1258). Demos then entrusts himself to Agoracritus and hands Paphlagon over to him, and the Sausage-Seller promises to serve him so well that no one in the city of Chenae will see a better man (lines 1259–1263).

Second parabasis

The Chorus sings a second, shorter parabasis (lines 1264–1315). It begins with a song that prays to Apollo on behalf of the hungry Thumantis (lines 1264–1273), and goes on to say that there is nothing shameful in abusing bad men (lines 1274–1275). The Chorus then attacks Ariphrades with obscene accusations about his habits (lines 1276–1289), and Cleonymus, whose gluttony the poet says he has investigated (lines 1290–1299). Finally it tells how the triremes held a meeting. The oldest of them said that someone had asked the city for a hundred ships to send against Carthage: the wretched citizen Hyperbolus. The ships found this unbearable, and one declared that she would sooner stay at home and be eaten by worms than serve under him; they would sit as suppliants in the Theseum or at the temple of the Solemn Goddesses, and let him sail alone in the troughs in which he sold lamps (lines 1300–1315).

Exodos (Exit Song)

The Sausage-Seller returns and calls for holy silence and for the courts to be closed, for the city has new good fortune and the theatre should sing a paean (lines 1316–1318). He has boiled Demos down and made him beautiful out of ugly (line 1321). Demos is living in the old Athens of the violet crown, as he did in the days when he dined with Aristides and Miltiades (lines 1322–1325). The gates open, and the Chorus calls on Athens to see her ruler: Demos comes out in the old fashion, his hair held with a golden cicada, scented not with the smell of lawsuits but of truces and myrrh (lines 1326–1332). The Chorus greets him as king of the Greeks, whose deeds are worthy of the city and of the trophy at Marathon (lines 1333–1334).

Demos thanks the Sausage-Seller for boiling him and asks what he used to be like. The Sausage-Seller tells him: whenever a speaker in the Assembly said, “Demos, I am your lover, I love you, I care for you and alone I plan for you,” Demos would preen and flap and toss his head, and the speaker would cheat him and go away; his ears would spread out like a sunshade and fold up again (lines 1335–1348). Demos is ashamed of his past mistakes, and the Sausage-Seller says that those who deceived him are to blame (lines 1349–1357). Asked what he would do with an advocate who tried to frighten the jurors into condemning a man, Demos says that he would lift him up and throw him into the pit with Hyperbolus hanging by the throat (lines 1358–1363). He then sets out his policy: the oarsmen will be paid in full on landing, the register of hoplites will not be altered for favours, and beardless youths will no longer loaf in the market and the perfume shops (lines 1364–1383). The Sausage-Seller gives him a folding stool and a boy to carry it (lines 1384–1386), and Demos says that he is restored to the ways of old (line 1387). The Sausage-Seller answers that he will say so when he receives the thirty-year truces, and he calls them out (lines 1388–1389). They come out as beautiful women. Demos is delighted and asks whether he may enjoy them at once, then asks how the Sausage-Seller got them; Paphlagon, he is told, had been keeping them indoors so that Demos would not have them (lines 1390–1393). The Sausage-Seller hands them over to be taken to the fields (lines 1394–1395).

Demos asks what punishment the man who did this to him is to suffer. The Sausage-Seller answers that it will be nothing great: he will take up the Sausage-Seller’s own trade, selling sausages alone at the city gates, mixing dog and donkey meat, getting drunk and quarrelling with prostitutes, and drinking the water from the baths (lines 1396–1401). Demos approves and invites the Sausage-Seller to dine in the Prytaneum, in the seat where that scoundrel used to sit (lines 1402–1405). Paphlagon is to be carried off to practise his new trade, so that the foreigners he once wronged can see him (lines 1407–1408).

A Brief Analysis

The political target is clear from the text. Demos is the Athenian people, easily fooled by flattery and by a succession of leaders who each promise to love him. Paphlagon is the last in a line of leaders whom the oracle lists as the tow-seller, the sheep-seller and the tanner (lines 125–144), each worse than the one before. The Sausage-Seller is told that he will be great precisely because he is low-born, ignorant and shameless (lines 177–193), and he wins by doing what Paphlagon does, in the Council and in the Assembly, but doing it better (lines 611–682, 763–1110). Demos, for his part, is shown as a man who says that his foolishness is deliberate and that he lets his favourites steal until they are full (lines 1121–1150).

The play ends not with a reform of the city’s politics but with a change in Demos himself. After the Sausage-Seller has won, he “boils down” the old man and he comes out young (lines 1321–1334), and the war is ended in the person of the Treaties (lines 1388–1395). The Chorus of Knights, who are rich men serving the city, present themselves in the parabasis as the heirs of the earlier Athenians who never counted their enemies and never gave way (lines 565–576), and as the men who are hated by the demagogues (lines 225–229).

The same parabasis also tells us about the poet’s view of his art. He presents himself as a late arrival who waited until he was ready (lines 507–520), and he reminds the audience how the great comic poets of the previous generation, Magnes, Cratinus and Crates, were dropped by the public when they grew old (lines 520–540). The play names many contemporary politicians and generals, among them Cleonymus, Hyperbolus, Ariphrades, Diopeithes and Thuphanes, and nearly all of its jokes are tied to the city of 424 BC.

The Knights Sources

Aristophanes, Knights (lines 1–1408), with the ancient hypothesis to the play for the festival, the archon’s year and the placing of the plays; Aristophanes, Acharnians 377–382 and 502–506 for Cleon’s attack on the poet; Aristophanes, Clouds 549–554 for the poet’s later comments on The Knights. An English translation of the play can be read on Perseus (The Knights).

See Also: Aristophanes, Athens, Sparta, Persians