Konstantinos Karathanasis (Washington University in St Louis)
The relationship between politics and Aristophanic comedy has been a matter of debate. On the one hand, some scholars have ascribed to Aristophanes’ oeuvre a politically neutral outlook, arguing that references to contemporary politics were a convention of genre and that comedy had no real-life impact (Gomme 1938; Rosen 1988; Olson 2010). On the other hand, there have been arguments for a partisan outlook, which in turn was analyzed as either a conservative and anti-democratic (de Ste. Croix 1972; Cartledge 1990; Sommerstein 2014) or a liberal and pro-democratic one (Henderson 1990; Zumbrunnen 2004). At the same time, comic theater has been analyzed within the context of democratic institutions as a medium of civic education (Ober 1998; Harris 2005; Major 2013). In this paper, through an examination of Aristophanes’ commentary on Athenian public economics, I argue for a pro-democratic and educational outlook. Specifically, focusing on the Knights, I explore how Aristophanes’ preoccupation with political payments, like the dikastikon (court-pay), had an aim towards problematizing his audience with respect to their noxious effects.
My approach is informed by the latest research in behavioral economics, especially regarding the way the implementation of economic incentives in civic settings introduces market-oriented behaviors (Bowles and Polanía-Reyes 2012; Bowles 2016). In proper social science terminology, incentives appeal to our internal, utility-maximizing homo oeconomicus, and an excessive appeal to that aspect of our behavior has been shown to “crowd out” other motivational factors, like altruism. Social and political scientists have shown that this “crowding-out” phenomenon is corrosive for civic motivation (Ostrom 2000; Grant 2011; Sandel 2012), and it appears that Aristophanes is after this very same phenomenon, warning his fellow citizens about an onset of flagrant individualism while calling them back to their ancestral virtues.
In the Knights, old Demos (viz. Athenian citizens) is consistently portrayed as having an appetite for public payments (50-1, 715, 774, 798, 905, 1019, 1090-1, 1100-6, 1125-6, 1167-220, 1350-3), which are the means through which his Paphlagonian slave (viz. Kleon) exploits him. However, things are not as simple as they look. When the Chorus rebuke Demos for his gullibility, he retorts that he is purposefully rearing thieves as his stewards (viz. political leaders), because they eagerly provide his much-desired “daily pap” (viz. the three obols of court-pay) despite their eventual demise (1121-30). Accordingly, Aristophanes presents the self-interested calculation of material utility maximization induced by incentives as the beating heart of a corrupt political culture. In this regard, after Demos is rejuvenated at the end of the play, his new and altruistic steward, the Sausage-seller, points out that in the past Demos would vote for getting payments rather than building triremes (1350-3). Nevertheless, Demos’ new attitude favors public investments with long term utility, like the ship-building program of Themistokles earlier in the century. As a result, with regard to the contribution of comedy to the civic education of Athenians, it appears that in his Knights Aristophanes not only points at shortcoming of the political status quo but also offers advice towards their rectification.