Aristophanes & Euripides

(Originally written June 6, 2016 in Book 26)

It's been nearly nine years since I've written in this particular journal. To the archivists (Ha!) I'm sorry for the lapse. I just didn't want to leave so much blank space in journal 26 on up and waste paper. But, I haven't been completely idle in nine years. Anyway, I've been primarily digitizing my journals recently; thus, I haven't studied much. Currently I'm midway through Salman Rushdie's Fury. It's a pretty riveting book and much newer than most of my reading this year.

As I state, primarily I've been working to bring my journals all into a comprehensive blog, tagged with numerous categories in case I ever want to research a topic. This way I can pull up my notes and move from there. Books 3, 4 and 5 have a lot of notes from 2006 on Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy and lo and behold, ten years later I'm reading it again, It's somewhat coincidental and definitely gives it a comical symmetry. Iv'e read the introduction which covers the PRe-Socratics and am now starting the part on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle Additionally, I'm reading my books from History of philosophy at Taylor (A History of Western Philosophy by W.T. Jones) to get a fuller depth of understanding. It is there I'll actually begin.

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones

Ch. 2 - Education by Violence

Aristophanes

Aristophanes held that democracy was destroying the state.

Aristophanes was a playwright during the violent chaos of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath. It is for this reason he so avidly opposed the unruliness and inefficiency of democracy.

He criticized the Athenian practice of paying people to be on the j tries because it led to lazy, incompetent and ignorant juries, making a travesty of justice.

Aristophanes used many of his plays to attack the mass democracy and the ills it foisted on Athens. But in Ecclesiazusae he offered a solution that anticipated Plato's Utopia and is akin to communism:
- land, money and private property became common to all
- no rich or poor
- women belong to all men in common
- "Athens will become nothing more than a single house, in which every thing will belong to everyone" (Jones, 51).

Euripides

Euripides (480-406 BC) was a playwright during the Peloponnesian War. Initially his plays were optimistic and patriotic to the Athenians, but after the brutal subjugation of the Melians by the Athenians his tone changed.

Euripides believed in a moral order which was a natural order. He used the gods and goddesses as an embodiment of that order, dishing out justice and punishment.

In his play Trojan Women  he points out the doubly futile nature of war. First, its consequences are greater than the spark which ignited the war in the first place. Second, ti generally does not achieve the desired ends.

The war caused Euripides to lose his faith in the natural order, the moral order and religion. This profound loss contrasted Euripides from an earlier generation. While they were sure and optimistic in light of the Pax Athenica, in spite of many flaws, Euripides was a product of the horrors of war.

Euripides clings to the Greek ideal of moderation, but taught by war, mourns its loss.