Using the Past as a Legislative Argument: Time, Age and Rhetoric in Aristophanes’ Acharnians

BUIS, EMILIANO JERÓNIMO

New Haven (Connecticut), ESTADOS UNIDOS

Otro; VI Annual Yale Classics Graduate Student Colloquium "The Use and Abuse of the Past in Classical Antiquity"; 2003

Yale University

Political organization in Classical Athens was consolidated around the existence of an essential equality framework which stood at the very basis of the democratic system. The consent and approval of new legislation, as well as how these provisions were used by citizens when faced to a dispute, constituted for Athenians people an exercise of active participation in everyday legal discussions. Amateurism is considered one of the main characteristics of Athenian justice, as opposed to the presence of experts in Roman Law. Interesting testimonies confirm that a number of legislative proposals were born through different sources and responding to quite different interests. In this sense, literature would become during the V and IV Centuries an effective way of expressing civic views and suggest changes in the pólis’ legal background. A good example of this could be actually represented by philosophical or political treaties: in the Republic, for instance, Plato imagines his own Magnesia, where we are constantly faced to clear arguments intended to reflect critically on Athenian legal reality and rely on the convenience of introducing amendments.  Our purpose here is to work on a passage of Aristophanes’ Acharnians. This comedy, represented in 425 b.C., is mainly focused on the problems of war. However, it is possible to identify in its content a programmatic intention. In vv. 676-718, we find a short discourse describing a common practice in contemporary trials: young litigants taking poor elders in court. Old people, who are indiscriminately accused and prosecuted, do not understand how justice works and their lack of abilities put them very far from being granted the possibility of a fair trial. These verses are studied here through the use of rhetorical techniques in order to see how the author includes arguments on time and age with the intention of making his point: references to Marathon and a continuous comparison between past and present stand as his strategies of persuasion. The audience is therefore witnessing the logical defense of the speaker’s point of view. The analysis takes us to the conclusion that Aristophanes does not only present a severe plaint against the new phenomonen of new eductation and corrupted youth, as he will discuss in his following dramas. He’s also incorporating arguments related to time with the intention of using comedy, a political and popular spectacle, to propose legal changes in the functionning of tribunals.