How The Acharnians drew on The Histories
A documented line of influence: Aristophanes demonstrably engaged Herodotus’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Histories
Herodotus · c. 430 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
The Acharnians
Aristophanes · 425 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
7/10
On The Acharnians’s page
- Dikaiopolis's big speech is a direct send-up of the proem to Herodotus's Histories
- Where Herodotus blames the war between Greeks and Persians on abducted women — Io, Europa, Medea, Helen — Aristophanes blames the Peloponnesian War on a stolen prostitute and two of Aspasia's girls
- The joke only fully lands if you've read the solemn original it's mocking — go meet Herodotus first
On The Histories’s page
- Within a handful of years, Herodotus's grand opening was famous enough for Aristophanes to parody it on the Athenian stage
- The Histories begins by tracing the Greek-Persian war to a chain of abducted women — Io, Europa, Medea, Helen
- In The Acharnians, Dikaiopolis swaps in stolen prostitutes — Simaetha, two of Aspasia's girls — to make the Peloponnesian War's causes look just as petty