id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
grbs-5071	Brock, R. W.	The Double Plot in Aristophanes’ Knights	1986	13	.pdf	application/pdf	6591	245	62	Throughout the opening scenes of the play Aristophanes stresses the low status from which the sausage-seller will rise to greatness (I 58f, 179ft) and which provides him with the essentials of his new 4 That the two slaves are politicians follows from 40ff, since they stand in the same relation to Demos as Cleon/Paphlagon, but the point is made with greater force if they are taken as leading contemporary politicians; otherwise the stress tends to fall on the villainous Paphlagonian (and on Agoracritus, who is a free man, not a slave). BROCK, R. W., The Double Plot in Aristophanes' Knights , Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 27:1 (1986:Spring) p.15 The Double Plot in Aristophanes' Knights R. W. Brock UNTIL RECENTLY scholars have tended-while welcoming Aris­ tophanes' Knights as evidence for the poet's hostility to Cleon­ to regard the dramatic structure of the play as unsatisfactory, and have criticised the ending in particular as tacked on arbitrarily.l Landfester's Die Ritter des Aristophanes represented a major advance, by tracing a coherent development throughout based on the thematic unity of the attempts of the sausage-seller, saviour of the demos, to oust the Paphlagonian, and on the need for Demos to recover his sovereignty and self-sufficiency.2 Even Landfester, however, was forced to concede the existence of what he termed paradox in the play, particularly in the placing of hope of salvation for the knights in this ne plus ultra of VUlgarity (44).3 I propose to re-examine these elements of inconsistency and to argue that they arise not from the postponed resolution of a single dilemma and the dissimulation of an irgendwie gottliches Wesen (Landfester 93), but from the opera- 1 M. LANDFESTER, Die Ritter des Aristophanes (Amsterdam 1967 [hereafter 'Land­ fester']) 10£, gives a summary of previous opinion; on the question of the ending see 83-89.	cache/grbs-5071.pdf	txt/grbs-5071.txt