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Δικαιόπολις

μή μοι φθονήσητʼ ἄνδρες οἱ θεώμενοι,

εἰ πτωχὸς ὢν ἔπειτʼ ἐν Ἀθηναίοις λέγειν

μέλλω περὶ τῆς πόλεως, τρυγῳδίαν ποιῶν.

τὸ γὰρ δίκαιον οἶδε καὶ τρυγῳδία.
500

ἐγὼ δὲ λέξω δεινὰ μὲν δίκαια δέ.

οὐ γάρ με νῦν γε διαβαλεῖ Κλέων ὅτι

ξένων παρόντων τὴν πόλιν κακῶς λέγω.

αὐτοὶ γάρ ἐσμεν οὑπὶ Ληναίῳ τʼ ἀγών,

κοὔπω ξένοι πάρεισιν· οὔτε γὰρ φόροι
505

ἥκουσιν οὔτʼ ἐκ τῶν πόλεων οἱ ξύμμαχοι·

ἀλλʼ ἐσμὲν αὐτοὶ νῦν γε περιεπτισμένοι·

τοὺς γὰρ μετοίκους ἄχυρα τῶν ἀστῶν λέγω.

ἐγὼ δὲ μισῶ μὲν Λακεδαιμονίους σφόδρα,

καὐτοῖς ὁ Ποσειδῶν οὑπὶ Ταινάρῳ θεὸς
510

σείσας ἅπασιν ἐμβάλοι τὰς οἰκίας·

κἀμοὶ γάρ ἐστʼ ἀμπέλια διακεκομμένα.

ἀτὰρ φίλοι γὰρ οἱ παρόντες ἐν λόγῳ,

τί ταῦτα τοὺς Λάκωνας αἰτιώμεθα;

ἡμῶν γὰρ ἄνδρες, κοὐχὶ τὴν πόλιν λέγω,
515

μέμνησθε τοῦθʼ ὅτι οὐχὶ τὴν πόλιν λέγω,

ἀλλʼ ἀνδράρια μοχθηρά, παρακεκομμένα,

ἄτιμα καὶ παράσημα καὶ παράξενα,

ἐσυκοφάντει Μεγαρέων τὰ χλανίσκια·

κεἴ που σίκυον ἴδοιεν ἢ λαγῴδιον
520

ἢ χοιρίδιον ἢ σκόροδον ἢ χόνδρους ἅλας,

ταῦτʼ ἦν Μεγαρικὰ κἀπέπρατʼ αὐθημερόν.

καὶ ταῦτα μὲν δὴ σμικρὰ κἀπιχώρια,

πόρνην δὲ Σιμαίθαν ἰόντες Μεγαράδε

νεανίαι κλέπτουσι μεθυσοκότταβοι·
525

κᾆθʼ οἱ Μεγαρῆς ὀδύναις πεφυσιγγωμένοι

ἀντεξέκλεψαν Ἀσπασίας πόρνα δύο·

κἀντεῦθεν ἀρχὴ τοῦ πολέμου κατερράγη

Ἕλλησι πᾶσιν ἐκ τριῶν λαικαστριῶν.

ἐντεῦθεν ὀργῇ Περικλέης οὑλύμπιος
530

ἤστραπτʼ ἐβρόντα ξυνεκύκα τὴν Ἑλλάδα,

ἐτίθει νόμους ὥσπερ σκόλια γεγραμμένους,

ὡς χρὴ Μεγαρέας μήτε γῇ μήτʼ ἐν ἀγορᾷ

μήτʼ ἐν θαλάττῃ μήτʼ ἐν οὐρανῷ μένειν.

ἐντεῦθεν οἱ Μεγαρῆς, ὅτε δὴ ʼπείνων βάδην,
535

Λακεδαιμονίων ἐδέοντο τὸ ψήφισμʼ ὅπως

μεταστραφείη τὸ διὰ τὰς λαικαστρίας·

κοὐκ ἠθέλομεν ἡμεῖς δεομένων πολλάκις.

κἀντεῦθεν ἤδη πάταγος ἦν τῶν ἀσπίδων.

ἐρεῖ τις, οὐ χρῆν· ἀλλὰ τί ἐχρῆν, εἴπατε.
540

Acharnians. Aristophanes. ed. F. W. Hall, ed. William M. Geldart. Oxford. 1906.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Ἀχαρνῆς (Greek) (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 1. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.)

Translations (2)

Acharnians (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Anonymous; Liveright, 192?). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.) — 496 focus

DICAEOPOLIS

Spectators, be not angered if, although I am a beggar, I dare in a Comedy to speak before the people of Athens of the public weal; Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right. I shall not please, but I shall say what is true. Besides, Cleon shall not be able to accuse me of attacking Athens before strangers;¹ we are by ourselves at the festival of the Lenaea; the period when our allies send us their tribute and their soldiers is not yet. Here is only the pure wheat without chaff; as to the resident strangers settled among us, they and the citizens are one, like the straw and the ear.

I detest the Lacedaemonians with all my heart, and may Poseidon, the god of Taenarus,² cause an earthquake and overturn their dwellings! My vines also have been cut. But come (there are only friends who hear me), why accuse the Laconians of all our woes? Some men (I do not say the city, note particularly that I do not say the city), some wretches, lost in vices, bereft of honour, who were not even citizens of good stamp, but strangers, have accused the Megarians of introducing their produce fraudulently, and not a cucumber, a leveret, a suck[l]ing pig, a clove of garlic, a lump of salt was seen without its being said,
Halloa! these come from Megara ,
and their being instantly confiscated. Thus far the evil was not serious and we were the only sufferers. But now some young drunkards go to Megara and carry off the courtesan Simaetha; the Megarians, hurt to the quick, run off in turn with two harlots of the house of Aspasia; and so for three gay women Greece is set ablaze. Then Pericles, aflame with ire on his Olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to roll, upset Greece and passed an edict, which ran like the song,
That the Megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets and from the sea and from the continent.
³ Meanwhile the Megarians, who were beginning to die of hunger, begged the Lacedaemonians to bring about the abolition of the decree, of which those harlots were the cause; several times we refused their demand; and from that time there was horrible clatter of arms everywhere.

English (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) Experimental (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) — 496 focus

Dikaiopolis: Do not envy me, gentlemen who are watching,

Dikaiopolis: if, being poor, you then speak among the Athenians

Dikaiopolis: I am about to make a comedy about the city.

Dikaiopolis: for tragedy also knows what is just.

500

Dicaeopolis: But I will speak terrible things, but just ones.

Dicaeopolis: for he will not now slander me, Cleon, that

Dikaiopolis: while foreigners are present, I speak ill of the city.

Dikaiopolis: For we ourselves are [competitors] at the Lenaia, too,

Dikaiopolis: And they are not yet foreigners; for there are no taxes

505

Dikaiopolis: The allies have not come either from the cities;

Dicaeopolis: but we ourselves are now, at least, completely covered up;

Dikaiopolis: for I call the metics the chaff of the citizens.

Dicaeopolis: But I hate the Lacedaemonians very much,

Dikaiopolis: and Poseidon too is their god, the one at Taenarum.

510

Dicaeopolis: Shake and cast the houses upon all;

Dicaeopolis: For I too have vineyards cut down.

Dicaeopolis: but indeed, for those present in the speech are friends,

Dicaeopolis: Why do we blame the Lacedaemonians for these things?

Dicaeopolis: for, men of ours, I am not speaking of the city,

515

Dikaiopolis: Remember this, that I am not speaking about the city,

Dikaiopolis: but wretched little men, shaved smooth,

Dikaiopolis: "unhonored, unmarked, and strange,"

Dikaiopolis: He was acting as a sycophant against the Megarians' cloaks;

Dikaiopolis: and if they should see any cucumber or hare.

520

Dicaeopolis: either a little pig, or garlic, or barley groats with salt,

Dikaiopolis: These things were Megarian, and he was selling them on the same day.

Dikaiopolis: And these things, then, are small and rustic,

Dicaeopolis: 'Going to Megara, let's get a prostitute named Simaetha.'

Dikaiopolis: young men, drunkards, are stealing me;

525

Dikaiopolis: and then the Megarians, swollen with pains,

Dikaiopolis: They stole two of Aspasia's prostitutes;

Dicaeopolis: And from here too the beginning of the war was shattered.

Dikaiopolis: to all Greeks from three basket-weavers.

Dikaiopolis: from here, the Olympian Pericles is angry.

530

Dicaeopolis: The lightning flashed, the thunder crashed, and the whole of Greece was in a whirlwind,

Dikaiopolis: 'He was laying down laws like those written crookedly,'

Dicaeopolis: 'The Megarians must be banned both from the land and from the market.'

Dikaiopolis: neither in the sea nor in the sky shall he remain.

Dikaiopolis: from here the Megarians, when they were indeed starving, came on foot,

535

Dikaiopolis: 'The Spartans were asking for the decree that'

Dikaiopolis: turn the head for the sake of the flute-girls.

Dikaiopolis: And yet we did not wish, although they begged us often.

Dikaiopolis: And from here too there was already the clatter of shields.

Dicaeopolis: Someone will say, 'He should not have said it'; but what should he have said, tell me.

540

Commentary

Commentary (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) focus

526. mvp-tlg0019-tlg001-sanjaya-com-eng1-15

Line 526

κᾆθʼ οἱ Μεγαρῆς ὀδύναις πεφυσιγγωμένοι

The participle πεφυσιγγωμένοι (perfect middle/passive of πεφυσιγγώ) is a hapax legomenon in Aristophanes and a rare formation in the entire corpus, derived from the noun φῦσις (swelling) and the suffix -ιγ- (related to the root of ἴγμι, to swell). Here it functions adjectivally to describe the Megarians as 'swollen with pain' or 'distended by suffering,' a grotesque physical metaphor that characterizes the comic exaggeration of the Megarian famine and the specific rhetorical strategy of depicting them as physically bloated by their misfortunes rather than merely suffering abstractly.

528. mvp-tlg0019-tlg001-sanjaya-com-eng1-16

Line 528

κἀντεῦθεν ἀρχὴ τοῦ πολέμου κατερράγη

The phrase κατερράγη (aorist middle/passive of καταρράττω) is semantically and syntactically significant here; while the verb typically denotes 'breaking down' or 'crashing' in a physical sense (e.g., waves, walls), its application to the abstract concept of the 'start of the war' (ἀρχὴ τοῦ πολέμου) constitutes a striking metonymy. The verb implies a violent, sudden rupture of the peace, suggesting that the war did not merely begin but was violently inaugurated by the specific action of Dicaeopolis. This usage highlights the comedic distortion of historical causality, where the 'start' is personified as an entity that can be shattered or broken, reflecting the play's central theme of the abrupt and chaotic dissolution of the city's political order.

Aristophanes Acharnians 496

ed. F. W. Hall, ed. William M. Geldart

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