Friends, Lovers, Flatterers: Demophilic Courtship in Aristophanes' Knights

Abstract

The politician-as-lover conceit in Aristophanes' Knights presents a comic twist on the "demophilia topos," a strategy whereby speakers accuse opponents of seducing the dêmos with specious claims of affection. By sexualizing the topos, Aristophanes stages demophilic politics as pederastic courtship, foregrounding tensions between the eunoia ideal and kolakeia scare-image in city leadership. But Aristophanes does not stop there. Demos, a virtual pornos complicit in his leaders' efforts to con and "bugger" him, pursues self-interest no less passive-aggressively, cynically, or covertly than they do. Hence value-reversals suggesting stasis, along with a profoundly equivocal return to the "noble simplicity."