Ch. 6. Memory and the Rhetoric of Soteria in Aristophanes' Assembly Women

Abstract

This paper presents a historicising reading of Aristophanes’ Assembly Women in the context of Athenian politics in 392/1. Aristophanes’ thematic engagement with memory and the rhetoric of σωτηρία (‘safety’, ‘preservation’, ‘salvation’) is a case study of ideological struggle over language in the politics of democratic Athens. The word evokes a long and tumultuous history of revolution in Athens stretching back to 411, when Athenian democracy first voted itself out of existence, as the assembly does in Assembly Women. Read from this perspective, Assembly Women is hardly less topical than Aristophanes’ fifth-century plays. On the contrary, history, memory, and the past were centrally topical in Athenian politics in late 390s Athens, and all may be illuminated by an integrated study of the contemporary evidence of comedy, oratory, and historiography. Published in Emily Baragwanath and Edith Foster, ed., Clio and Thalia. Attic Comedy and Historiography (HISTOS Supplement 6), p. 153-210.