“Lawgivers from Hades: Demagogues, Politics, and Legal Issues in Eupolis’ Demoi”

BUIS, EMILIANO JERÓNIMO

Berlín

Congreso; XIII Congreso de la FIEC (Federación Internacional de Asociaciones de Estudios Clásicos); 2009

Mommsen-Gesellschaft y Humboldt-Universität Berlin

The general purpose of this paper, as a part of an ongoing post-doctoral project, is to evaluate the importance of legal references in Eupolis, one of Aristophanes’ contemporary “rivals” in the Athenian dramatic contests.Considering the specific knowledge on the practice of judicial activities that every Athenian possessed in the context of democratic participation, the aim of the ideas I am presenting here is to unveil the nature of two legal passages in Eupolis’ play Demoi, and to show in which ways the use of juridical allusions in might have also constituted for Eupolis an efficient humorous device. If this is the case, there could be a stronger evidence to suggest that law was taken and seen as a comic technique not only by Aristophanes himself, but –more significantly- by Old Comedy as a literary genre.