The Acharnians

About

The Acharnians (425 BCE) is the earliest surviving Aristophanes comedy and the first of his series of peace plays written during the Peloponnesian War: Dikaiopolis, tired of the war, makes a private peace treaty with Sparta, and the play follows the comic consequences as war profiteers and blustering generals demand he fight on. The play is notable for its metatheatrical elements — Dikaiopolis literally borrows a tragic costume from Euripides to make his argument more persuasive — and for the directness of its antiwar message, which Aristophanes delivers while the war itself was still ongoing.