10

STAGE AND LAW COURT IN LATE FIFTH-CENTURY ATHENS

Euripides

Aristophanes

Socrates

Three Athenian contemporaries are the subject of this chapter: the tragic dramatist Euripides, the comic
poet Aristophanes, and the philosopher Socrates. The plays of Euripides were quite popular with
Athenian audiences but, at the same time, they created considerable controversy. Euripidean characters
are exceptionally articulate in their challenging of received notions and in their insistent demands that
society and even the gods adhere to a rational pattern of behavior. But Euripides’ tragedies are especially
characterized by their striking dramatization of irrational behavior on the part of both humans and gods,
and the incompatibility between reason and the apparently chaotic world in which his dramas unfold is a
major source of the dramatic tension that gripped (and still grips) his audiences. The popularity and the
controversial nature of Euripides’ tragedies made him a natural target for parody in the comedies of his
contemporary Aristophanes. Indeed, “Euripides” appears as a character in more than one of
Aristophanes’ plays; he is subjected to merciless ridicule along with other prominent Athenian
intellectual and political figures. One of those prominent figures is the philosopher Socrates, who is the
main object of abuse in Aristophanes’ comedy The Clouds. In this play, Socrates is portrayed as a godless
charlatan who uses his devious intelligence to swindle unsuspecting citizens. Aristophanes may not have
believed that Socrates was in fact an atheist, but his humorous portrayal of him as denying the existence of
the traditional gods contributed to a prejudice among his fellow citizens that undoubtedly influenced the
outcome of a trial to which Socrates was subjected. In 399 BC, for reasons that appear to have been at
least partly political, Socrates was prosecuted for impiety. The jury of 501 Athenian citizens, convinced
that Socrates was an enemy of their democratic values, voted to convict him and, on a separate vote,
condemned him to death.

Throughout  the second  half    of  the fifth   century BC  the Athenians   continued   to  celebrate   the

annual festival of the Dionysia by watching dramatic performances in the Theater of Dionysus on the
slope of the acropolis while the new buildings on the surface of the acropolis were rising up behind them.
Tragedies and satyr plays had formed part of the program of the Dionysia since the sixth century;
beginning in 486 BC the program also included performance of comedies. The master of this dramatic
form, and the only comic playwright of the fifth century whose works survive, was Aristophanes, a
slightly younger contemporary of Thucydides. Unlike tragedy and satyr play, which deal with the heroic
past, Attic comedy is set in contemporary Athens and pillories with brutally merciless wit the prominent
public figures of the day. We have 11 of the roughly 40 comedies that Aristophanes produced; those
eleven date from 425 to 388 BC, and thus provide fascinating evidence of the preoccupations of the
Athenians during and immediately after the Peloponnesian War.

Among the objects of Aristophanes’ ridicule are the leaders of the democratic government of Athens, who