Dicaeopolis and the Heavenly Schism
Though wrapped in farce, Dicaeopolis’ speech in The Acharnians may be read as a veiled allegory for a primordial war in heaven—a fracture among divine powers whose quarrels echo down into the human world. Humanity, in this schema, is like the Megarians: mocked, exploited, and left to suffer—partly by powers beyond them, partly by their own refusal to rise or change. On one side stand the Athenians—figures of radiant order, devoted to justice and the liberation of the soul. Yet their path to freedom demands structure, discipline, and goodness, which to many may feel like chains. Opposing them are the Spartans, an austere power, akin to the fallen angels of old who mingled with mortals and begot giants. These powers offer false freedom through indulgence and forgetfulness, masking their oligarchic rule as liberation while the soul dims beneath the weight of sin. Into this celestial stalemate steps Dicaeopolis, himself an Athenian—yet neither crusader nor defector. He dares to break ranks, making a separate peace from a desire to end the destruction caused by the war. In recounting the trivial cause of the great conflict, he reveals how the highest wars are often born of petty offense, and how righteousness can ossify into injustice when it forgets the soul. By choosing peace with both the mocked and the mistaken, Dicaeopolis offers not a rejection of order, but a rebuke of its excess—a lonely act that may, in time, restore harmony among all.
DICAEOPOLIS
Do not be aggrieved with me, gentleman spectators, if, though a beggar, I am ready to address the Athenians about the city while making comedy. For even comedy knows about what’s right; and what I say will be shocking, but right. This time Cleon will not accuse me of defaming the city in the presence of foreigners; for we are by ourselves; it’s the Lenaean competition, and no foreigners are here yet; neither tribute nor troops have arrived from the allied cities. This time we are by ourselves, clean-hulled—for I count the resident foreigners as the bran of our populace.
Myself, I hate the Spartans vehemently; and may Poseidon, the god at Tainarum, send them an earthquake and shake all their houses down on them. For I too have had vines cut down. And yet I ask—for only friends are present for this speech—why do we blame the Spartans for this? For it was men of ours—I do not say the city, remember that, I do not say the city—but some trouble-making excuses for men, misminted, worthless, brummagem, and foreign-made, who began denouncing the Megarians’ little cloaks. If anywhere they spotted a cucumber or a bunny, or a piglet or some garlic or rock salt, this was “Megarian” and sold off the very same day. Now granted, this was trivial and strictly local.
But then some tipsy, cottabus-playing youths went to Megara and kidnapped the whore Simaetha. And then the Megarians, garlic-stung by their distress, in retaliation stole a couple of Aspasia’s whores, and from that the onset of war broke forth upon all the Greeks: from three sluts! And then in wrath Pericles, that Olympian, did lighten and thunder and stir up Greece, and started making laws worded like drinking songs, that Megarians should abide neither on land nor in market nor on sea nor on shore.
Whereupon the Megarians, starving by degrees, asked the Spartans to bring about a reversal of the decree in response to the sluts; but we refused, though they asked us many times. And then there was a clashing of the shields. Someone will say, “they shouldn’t have!” But tell me, what should they have?
Look, if some Spartan had denounced and sold a Seriphian puppy imported in a rowboat, would you have sat quietly by in your abodes? Far from it! No indeed: you’d have instantaneously dispatched three hundred ships; the city would fill with the hubbub of soldiers, clamor around the Colonnade reverberating, rations being measured out, wallets, oarloops, buyers of jars, garlic, olives, onions in nets, garlands, anchovies, piper girls, black eyes. And the dockyards would be full of oarspars being planed, thudding dowelpins, oarports being bored, pipes, bosuns, whistling and tooting. I know that’s what you’d have done: and do we reckon that Telephus wouldn’t? Then we’ve got no brains!
