The Acharnians

While reading the Acharnians there were a few things that appeared to be too contemporary for the time of Aristophanes. In the play I noticed that they talked about graffiti and how somebody had scribbled “Athen’s is sexy”. And also on lines 1015-1016 when the chorus say “He’s as skilled as any professional cook- a cordon bleu DIY-er”. To make sure I did a little research on wikipedia and found that Le Cordon Bleu was invented 1578 by a group of French knights. While the concept of DIY was not introduced until around the 1960’s. Both long after Aristophanes wrote the plays, I think that this has something to do with the way the play has been translated and I think it is really interesting how the translator has involved some contemporary concepts into the translation. I think that possibly there were elements similar to this in the original version, but the translator may have chosen to interpret it in a much more modern way, maybe to help the reader understand the text a little better.

Also, toward the end of the play I found that Dikaiopolis mocking Lamachus to be very interesting. I think that the contrast between them emphasizes the difference in nature