WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’?

auTos t’ tpauTov utto KAecovos cnraOov

ETTiCTTapai 2ua tt)V Trepucn KcopcoAfav.
EiceAKuejas yap p’ es to pouAeuTtipiov
AiE^aAAe Kai yeuAri KarEyAcb-mje pou
KctKUKAo(36pEi kctttAuvev, wctt’ oAiyou -rravu
cnrcoAopqv poAuvoupaypovoupsvos.
Aristoph. Ach. 377-82.

T HESE famous lines refer, as the Scholiasts tell us, to

the attack made on Cleon in Aristophanes’ play, the
Babylonians, which was produced at the Great Dionysia
in 426 b.c., and to Cleon’s subsequent revenge. As may
be gathered from the second reference to the incident
in this play (502-3)
ou yap pe vuv ye 2aa(3aAeT KAecov oti
^evcov uapovToov ttiv ttoAiv kokcos Aeyco

the sting of the offence lay in its occurrence at the City

Dionysia when strangers were present. The Acharnians
was produced at the more domestic festival of the Lenaea.
Two questions with regard to these lines have been
hotly discussed, firstly what was the nature of Cleon’s
indictment, and secondly was it brought against Aristo¬
phanes himself or against Callistratus, in whose name the
Babylonians, like the Acharnians itself, was produced.1 The
first question has no bearing on the point I wish to raise
and it is generally agreed now that Cleon brought an
dcrayysAta before the Boule; we do not know the result of
his charge, but lines 381-2 suggest that after a hard fight
the defendant was acquitted. The £ev(as ypa<pii brought
by Cleon against Aristophanes, which is also mentioned
by the scholiast, has clearly nothing to do with this
occasion.
The second question is more important and has at any
rate a possible bearing on the question ‘Who played
Dicaeopolis?’ The problem, on which modern critics seem
1 Cf. Nubes, 530 ff.
 232 WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’?

to be about equally divided,1 cannot be fully discussed

here, but I can feel no doubt myself that it was Aristo¬
phanes and not Callistratus who was indicted. The main
reasons are two. First, there is no hint either in text
or scholia that it was Callistratus, and the scholium on
377 expressly mentions Aristophanes: ‘he is referring to
the Babylonians. For Aristophanes produced the play
before the Acharnians and in it slandered many per¬
sons. For he lampooned (6KcopcpAr|CTe) the officials, whether
elected by vote or by lot, as well as Cleon in the presence
of strangers. ... For this reason Cleon was annoyed and
prosecuted him for misdemeanour (eypdyoro ccutov dAnciccs)
towards the citizens, on the ground that his behaviour
was an act of insolence against the people and the Boule.’
This is perfectly definite, and the only piece of evidence
which can be quoted on the other side is that on which
Romer2 takes his stand, an alternative scholium on 654,
which states that it was not Aristophanes, but Callistratus
who had property as a cleruch in Aegina. But this, even
if it were true, and it is a flat contradiction of what is said
in the first scholium, is very remote from the question of
the prosecution. Secondly, E. Capps3 has shown that in
the fourth century the victors’ lists were headed vikcci iroiri-
tcov, Victories of the poets’, not of the producers (AiAccaKd-
Acov), and that the regular formula, where the poet was not
the producer, was, e.g., ’Aptcrro<pdvr|s eAiAa^s Aid KaAAicnpd-
tou. There is no good reason to suppose that the custom
was not the same in the fifth century, and that means that
the authorship of the Babylonians was not a green-room
secret, but perfectly well known to the audience and
acknowledged in the victors’ list. Cleon’s natural course,
then, would be to prosecute Aristophanes, though he
might conceivably have included Callistratus in the indict¬
ment, much as the editor of a magazine is regarded as
jointly responsible for a libel made by a contributor.
But there is a third and very interesting question raised
See Starkie, Acharnians, Excursus v, p. 248. 2 Arist. Stud., pp. 121 ff.
3 American Journal of Philology, xxviii, pp. 190 ff.
 WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’? 233
by the lines in both passages quoted, which has not re¬
ceived nearly so much attention: what is the meaning of
the use of the first person singular? There are three
possible explanations: (1) that the actor ‘breaks off’ and
speaks these lines in the person of the poet. This is sug¬
gested by the scholia on both passages, 376 cbs cnro tou upoa-
gottou toO TToiTyroO 6 Aoyos and 501 cbs ek tou ttoititou touto.
(2) That Aristophanes was himself playing the part of
Dicaeopolis and speaks here in his own person. This was
tentatively suggested by Merry on 377 and supported by
the statement that ‘the scholia assert that Aristophanes
himself acted the principal part in the Babylonians', an
assertion of which I regret that I can find no trace. It is
also put forward rather hesitatingly by Starkie. (3) That
the part of Dicaeopolis was played by Callistratus. This
suggestion was made by Von Ranke and Schrader, but
even Rennie, the most ardent recent supporter of the
Callistratus view of the trial, speaks of it as a ‘desperate
theory’. Certainly all who believe that it was Aristophanes
whom Cleon prosecuted will agree with him.
The solution lies between the first two alternatives. Did
then the actor of the part of Dicaeopolis ‘break off’ and
speak in the person of the poet? It was, of course, a
familiar practice that the chorus in the parabasis proper
should speak of the personal affairs of the poet, yet even so
they usually refer to him in the third person either as the
‘teacher’ or ‘producer’1 or as the ‘poet’.2 It is only rarely,
even in the parabasis, that we find the first person in
obvious reference to the poet. The Acharnians supplies
an example in 659-64; up to this point the references
all through the parabasis have been to 6 AiMctkocAos or 6
Troir|Tr|S, but now the chorus (or coryphaeus) clearly takes
on the person of the poet: ‘Therefore let Cleon try all his
tricks and build up his plots against me. For the right
and the good are on my side (to yap eu per’ epou Kai to
Akatov £uppayov ecrrai).’ The poet (or, as others would say,
1 AiMctkocAos Ach. 628, Pax. 738, KGopwAoAiAacrKaAos Eq. 507, Pax. 737.
2 Trotr|Tr)s Ach. 633, 644, 654, Eq. 509, 548, Vesp. 1016, 1049.
4185 H h
 234 WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’?
the producer, Callistratus), is here clearly speaking by the
mouth of his chorus. A similar but more striking instance
occurs in the Peace (759-73)- Here again in the earlier
part of the chorus the ‘producer’ is referred to in the
normal way in the third person, but in these last lines,
including the irvlyos, the phraseology is consistently in the
first person, and the reference to Aristophanes is made
certain by the allusion to ‘the bald-head’ in 771. The
only parabasis in which the first person is used consis¬
tently all through is that in the Clouds (518-62). This
passage, which is written in the Eupolidean metre, first
used by Eupolis in the Maricas in 421 b.c., undoubtedly
belongs to the revised version of the Clouds, which in all
probability was never put on the stage. It is possible, as
Starkie suggests, that Aristophanes substituted in the later
version an address by himself to the audience in the place
of the parabasis spoken by the chorus. This would be a
complete innovation, but is not inconceivable.
That the chorus in the parabasis should speak in the
person of the poet is one thing; it is only an extension of
the normal habit of speaking about the poet in the third
person. That one of the actors in the drama should do
so in the course of the dramatic dialogue, and that twice
in one play and in neither case with any sort of prepara¬
tion for the ‘lapse’, is much more surprising. The only
parallel which has been quoted is a line from the
Perialges of the comic Plato (fr. 107 Koch), which by a
curious coincidence also refers to a contest with Cleon:
os TrpcoTcc pev KAecovi TroAepov r)papr)v.

Porson supposed this line to come from the parabasis;

Cobet1 objected that trimeters are never used in the para¬
basis ; Koch points out that the words might be a portion
of a trochaic tetrameter. But even so they could only occur
in the eTnppqpa or av-re-n-ippripa, which do not usually deal
with matters personal to the poet. They must, I think,
be attributed to a person in the drama and probably to

1 Obs. Crit. in Plat. com. reliquias, 169.

 WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’? 235

Perialges himself. They may form a parallel to Dicaeo¬

polis’ words in the Acharnians, as Koch thinks, or they
may, as Cobet supposes, be spoken by the imaginary
character Perialges ‘ as he tells of his political sufferings in
vainly opposing the rashness of the demagogues’. With¬
out the context it is impossible to form a conclusion, but
it is certainly not justifiable with Rennie to quote the line
as ‘a clear instance’, where there is a ‘break in the illu¬
sion’ and the poet speaks directly to the audience.
There remains the third possibility that Aristophanes
himself was acting the part of Dicaeopolis, that the
audience, or many of them, were aware of it, and that
in these two places in the play he, as it were, threw off
the mask and addressed the assembly in his own person.
That the poet, whether in tragedy or comedy, occasion¬
ally acted a part is well established. Indeed, as Haigh
points out,1 as long as there was only a single actor, that
actor was the poet. And when a second and later a third
actor were introduced, there is no reason why the poet
should not still have taken one of the parts. The Life of
Aeschylus seems to suggest that he did this in his earlier
plays. Sophocles is said to have played the harp in the
Thamyris and exhibited his skill with the ball in the
Nausicaa, though on neither of these occasions need he
have .had a speaking part, and it is said in the Life that
he ‘abandoned the playing of a part by the poet owing to
the weakness of his voice’. So in comedy Cratinus is
mentioned as a ‘dancer’, which suggests that he acted in
his own plays, and Crates is said to have acted for Cra¬
tinus. What is far more important for our purpose is the
statement in the Life of Aristophanes, which is sup¬
ported, though not so fully, in the second argument to
the Knights, that in that play ‘when none of the costu¬
miers dared to make a mask for Cleon, owing to their
excessive fear of his tyrannical ways, nor did any actor
venture to act the part, Aristophanes acted it himself
(2u’ eocutoO), smearing his face with red paint’. Haigh2
1 Attic Theatre3, p. 227. 2 Ibid., p. 228, n. 4.
 236 WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’?

dismisses this statement and says that the story arose from
a misunderstanding of the phrase KaOiriai to Ap&ua 2a’ ecxutoO
in the second argument, which means that the Knights
was produced by Aristophanes in his own name, not Aide
KocAAioTpcrrou or Aid OiAcoviAou. It must certainly be ad¬
mitted that At eocutoO UTreKpivorro is an odd expression for
he acted the part himself5, but the whole account seems
to me to be too circumstantial to be so easily dismissed.
No doubt the statement that no actor ventured to take
the part might have been invented, but the assertion that
no costumier dared make the mask, and that Aristo¬
phanes in consequence had to smear his face with red, is,
I think, too explicit and too gratuitous to have been in¬
vented. After all, as has been seen, there was nothing in
tradition against the poet’s playing a part, but much for
it. The practice was no doubt dying out towards the end
of the fifth century, but Aristophanes may well have kept
to it in some of his earlier plays. And if he played Cleon
in the Knights in 424 b.g., why should he not have played
Dicaeopolis in the previous year? The suggestion is in
no way fantastic, and it provides a satisfactory explana¬
tion for these two passages in the first person which is not
forthcoming on any other view.
. Now the supposition that Aristophanes was himself play¬
ing the part of Dicaeopolis would be strongly confirmed
if it were possible to show that, apart from these two
crucial passages, there were other places in the play which
tend in the same direction, or whose point would be
greatly enhanced if the supposition were true. It can, I
believe, be shown that there are such.
And first as to the name of the chief character, Aikociotto-
Ais; what is its meaning and what its appropriateness to
the play? It is usually1 taken to mean ‘The Just Citizen5.
The name is not unsuited for a character who maintains
throughout the play that while he is truly patriotic, he
wishes also to do justice to Athens’ enemies; ‘for even
comedy knows justice5 (500). All through the play, too,
1 e.g. Starkie, note on 377.
 WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’? 1237

there is a harping on ‘justice’ usually in close connexion

with Dicaeopolis himself. In the next line to that just
quoted he says, ‘I shall speak things strange, but just’;
earlier in the play (317) he offers to speak with his head
on the block ‘if I do not speak justly’, and the semichorus,
just after the great ‘pacifist’ speech, comments (561), ‘All
he says is just and none of it is a lie’. So in the parabasis
(645) in an exactly parallel phrase, ‘the poet’ is said to
have ‘dared to speak justice among the Athenians’, and
the chorus (661) claims that ‘justice will be on my side’.
Yet even so the appropriateness of the name is not so
apparent as those of ‘the shifty man’, Strepsiades, ‘the
persuasive man’, Peisthetaerus, the ‘optimist’, Euelpides,
or the ‘hater’ and ‘lover’ of Cleon, Bdelycleon and Philo-
cleon. And does the word Aikouo-ttoAis naturally mean ‘the
just citizen’? When words of this termination are applied
to people or things, the -ttoAis part of the compound usually
represents the object of the first half. Thus in the com¬
mon word <piA6ttoAis, ‘a lover of his city’, to which Aristo¬
phanes coins a complement puaoiroAis, ‘a hater of his city’
(Vesp. 411). So, too, cnroAis is ‘a man without a city’ or, in
a famous line of Sophocles (Ant. 370), ‘a man unworthy of
his city’, with its contrasted counterpart vyiTroAis, ‘high
in one’s city’. Again in Aesch. Cho. 75 &p<pi7rToAis dvayicn
is the ‘necessity which besets a city’ in a blockade. On the
other hand, the Greek for ‘citizen of a small city’, which is
nearer in idea to AikcuottoAis as ‘the just citizen’, is piKpo-
ttoAittis (Aristoph. Eq. 817). In the simpler and more
straightforward sense the terminations in -iroAis are applied
not to persons, but to states; priTpoTroAis is ‘the mother-
city’, and neyccAoTToAis is applied by Pindar both to Athens
(Pyth.vii. 1) and to Syracuse (Pyth. ii. 1). AikociottoAis, then,
ought to mean ‘a just city’, and so it is used by Pindar—
of Aegina (Pyth. viii. 31). Now Aristophanes had an
estate in Aegina, as the Scholiast tells us in explanation
of 652-4: ‘It is for this cause that the Lacedaemonians are
crying for peace and asking you to give back Aegina;
they care not for the island; it is that they may kidnap
 238 WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’?

the poet.5 (Even Rennie admits that this implies that

‘the poet in question’ had estates there, but he consist¬
ently maintains that the poet is Callistratus, not Aristo¬
phanes.) Is not AikcqottoAis, the famous Pindaric epithet,
besides its primary meaning, intended to suggest ‘the
Aeginetan’, just as a character called ’locrrecpavos would
inevitably be an Athenian? And if it is ‘the Aeginetan’,
then it is Aristophanes; the hero’s name was a clue to
his actor.
In the opening scene of the play Dicaeopolis to beguile
the time thinks over his recent joys and disappointments
(1-16). But all these joys and sorrows are dramatic, the
plays and scenes and poets and musicians whom he likes
and dislikes. That Aristophanes would not hesitate to put
such literary reminiscence and criticism into the mouth
of a bourgeois citizen is clear from the very unexpected
and inappropriate verbal knowledge of dithyrambs dis¬
played by Strepsiades (Nub. 335-9) and many other
instances. Aristophanes did not mind to what character
he assigned a literary ‘hit’, as long as he made it. But
how much more telling these lines would be if they were
spoken by Aristophanes and expressed his own dramatic
criticism? So again with the bitter jest at Theognis 6
vpuypos made by Dicaeopolis in an ‘aside’ in 139.
In the dialogue between Dicaeopolis and Euripides
there is a mysterious line (461). Dicaeopolis has asked
among his requirements of stage-properties for ‘a little
jug with a broken lip’—‘Take this and be gone,’ says
Euripides. ‘Know that you are a nuisance in the house.’
‘By heaven,’ replies Dicaeopolis, ‘you do not know what
evil you yourself are doing.’1 The scholiasts were evi¬
dently at a loss to find a meaning for Dicaeopolis’ retort
and made various futile suggestions; Aehret to pfi Aous,
‘you don’t know what harm you are doing by your re¬
fusal’ ; yap^opsvos poi toutcx, Af cov oe kockcos Asyoo, ‘you don’t
know what harm you are doing to yourself in giving me
1 outtco pcc AP otcr©’ oP outos epyc^Ei kock&. The line ought certainly to be
read straight on and not punctuated with Hall and Geldart after pa AP.
 WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’? 239
these properties, which I shall use against you’, a very
elaborate and feeble idea. An idea nearer the truth is
expressed in the explanation, ‘you don’t know how in¬
jurious you are in your tragedies and what harm you are
doing to the audiences’. Even if it be, as Merry supposes,
only a secondary meaning, this must be there, and once
more how immensely it gains in point if it is the real Aris¬
tophanes, in deadly earnest for a moment, speaking his
mind about the tragedies of Euripides.
And when Dicaeopolis has got his properties and lays
his head on the block and makes the great ‘pacifist’
speech for the Lacedaemonians, what a tremendous em¬
phasis it gives to it all if we have here the real Aristophanes
speaking out as one of the peace party: ‘But, since we are
all friends here—why do we blame the Lacedaemonians
for this?’ (513, 514). ‘I know you would have done this;
and do we not suppose Telephus (here, the Spartan) would
have done it too? There is no sense in us’ (555-6). When
one has once got the feeling that this is Aristophanes
speaking, it is hard to get it out of one’s head again.
We pass to the end of the play. Dicaeopolis in the drink¬
ing contest has ‘floored his sconce’ first (1203), and cries in
mockery of the wounded Lamachus (1224), ‘Bear me to the
judges, where is the king? Give me the wineskin’ (the oco-kos
Ktt|c719covtos which the herald had proclaimed as the prize
in 1002). The primary reference is no doubt to the
drinking-contest at the Anthesteria as represented in the
play; the judges are those of the contest. But all editors
unite in seeing a covert allusion to the judges in the
dramatic contest over whom at the Lenaea the Archon
Basileus presided. The principal actor then appeals to
the judges to give his poet the prize. How much more
thrilling if the principal actor is himself the poet! And
so he could pass off the stage confident in his victory and
singing the TijvsAAa kccAAivikos.
It cannot be claimed that any one of these pictures of
the poet on the stage amounts to proof, nor even that they
do collectively. Yet their cumulative force is not negligible.
240 WHO PLAYED ‘DICAEOPOLIS’?

A hypothesis that in the two main places may almost be

said to be the only solution, and greatly enhances and
once or twice almost clears up the meaning elsewhere,
which moreover gives a significance and coherence to the
whole play, cannot, I venture to think, be lightly put
aside. ‘Taking one consideration with another’ I believe
that Aristophanes himself played the part of Dicaeopolis,
and that the audience knew it.
CYRIL BAILEY.