changing with the course of the war 43 



who is resolved not to part with cash for what can be produced on the 

 farm. 



But, whatever policy may seem best adapted to achieve their pur- 

 pose, the purpose itself is clearly and consistently marked. The desire of 

 the war-time farmers is simply to return to their farms 1 and to resume 

 the life of toil and plenty, varied by occasional festivals, that had been 

 interrupted by the war. They long to escape from the abominations 

 of the crowding and unhealthiness prevailing in the city. Once they 

 get back to their old surroundings, all will be well. Time and labour 

 will even repair the damages caused by the enemy. No misgivings 

 suggest that a change of circumstances may be found to have robbed 

 Attic country life of some of its charm. Nothing like the loss of the 

 empire, the fall of Athens, and the deadly depression of economic and 

 political life, is foreboded : they face the sequel with undisturbed faith 

 in the stability of the existing "system. Nor indeed until the Sicilian 

 disaster (413 BC) was there much to cause uneasiness. So we find the 

 same spirit illustrated in the Peace (421 BC), which may be regarded 

 as driving home the lesson of the Acharnians. The agricultural interests 

 are now represented as solidly in favour of the peace of Nicias, unsatis- 

 factory though it soon proved to be. While other interests are slack, 

 indifferent or even hostile, farmers are whole-hearted 2 in determination 

 to end the war and go home. Trygaeus their leader, according to the 

 Greek sketch of the plot an elderly rustic, describes himself 3 as a 

 'skilled vine-dresser, one who is no informer or fomenter of troubles 

 (lawsuits).' Needless to say, he carries his point, and the farmers march 

 off triumphant 4 to their farms, eager to take up the old easygoing life 

 once more. We must not take our comic poet too literally, but we have 

 no reason to doubt that feelings such as he depicts in this play did 

 prevail, and perhaps widely. And, though the peace was insincere, and 

 warfare never really ceased, the immunity of Attica from invasion for 

 several years gave time for agriculture to revive. When Agis occupied 

 Deceleia in the winter of 413, his marauders would find on the Attic 

 farms all manner of improvements and new plantations to destroy. 

 And the destruction of the fruits of a laborious revival is to be reckoned 

 among the depressing influences that weighed upon falling and despe- 

 rate Athens. It was surely at work in the year 411, when Aristophanes 

 was preaching a policy of concord at home and sympathetic treatment 

 of the Allies in order to save the shaken empire. In the Lysistrata he 

 represents the mad war-fury of the Greek states as due to the misguided 

 men, whom the women coerce by privation into willingness for peace. 

 This is strung up into a passionate longing, so that neither 5 of the 



1 Pax 551-70, 1127 foil; cf fragm 100, 107, 109, 294, 387, Kock. 



2 Pax 509-11. 3 Pax 190. 4 Pax 551-70, 1318-24. 5 Lysistr 1173-4- 



