IO INTRODUCTION
tastic. The people who, in fact, speak through comedy (we
shall try to prove it m detail m the following chapter) are the
people both on the stage and on the seats, the performers as
well as those who listen and look on.1 We, too, can hear the
people's voice if we listen to comedy. Here the reality of the
people is not displaced by the myth, sacred or rationalized, as
in tragedy, nor largely lost in the aloofness of the political
historian as with Thucydides or in the abstractions of philo-
sophy.2 In comedy it may be hidden, but it is never destroyed,
jThe play stands in between and blocks the view, but behind
md beyond the play is life, quiet or vivacious, above all and
unquestionably real. This is what we seek to uncover. We
shall not do justice, alas' to the poets as they deserve, either as
dramatic or as lyrical poets, or even as comedians. This follows
from the nature of the case, and once and for all, let me apolo-
gize to their memory and to the reader.
The importance of economic questions m comedy is well
understood. Some scholars have even tried to prove that
Aristophanes was an expert in economic theory, familiar with
the laws of modern political economy.'5 This is surely wrong.
Nobody, indeed, believes that the poet was himself an econo-
mist, but he is said to have known the laws of economic life,
most of which were not discovered before the nineteenth or
twentieth century.4 Did he, perhaps, study books on political
economy? Impossible. From the Porot of Xenophon we know
1 It is the unqualified closeness of Old Comedy to the real life of the people
that makes any comparison with modern musical comedy or with a Gilbert and
Sullivan opera so inappropriate Mr Punch is a nearer relation
a A friend, headmaster of a well-known Public School, wrote. clt seems to
me that it is an extremely good idea to turn from the literature in which Athens
is depicted as more than life size to comedy where her geese are ducks instead of
swans *
3 Cf besides R. Gonnard, Rev d'tconomu pohtiqne, 18 (1904), 53$", the
interesting book of the Italian economist G Nicosia, the only specific work on
the subject known to me The author aims more at economic theory than at
historical reality, but I agree with his statement that Aristophanes grants us l/a
mstone del momento economtco mile sfere della produzwne e del conmmo ' I was
unable to see a more recent book by the same author Anstofane e il pennero
politico greco (1939) —In a paper by Y Urbain, Les idles Iconomiques d'A
(L'Antiqmtf Class 8 (1939), 183*?), the poet is actually represented as engrossed
in certain economic theories and laws.
4 Cf. Urbain, 199 6La Mone de la valeur dtveloppte par cet auteur a It I
formulle — entre 1830 and 1870'