Dalla derisione della rusticitas all’idealizzazione. Campagna e campagnoli attici nei frammenti dell’archaia

Abstract

Country people have been brought on stage quite often by Ancient Greek Comedy playwrights. Nevertheless, scholars have mostly analysed Aristophanes’ use of farmers and the idealisation of countryside in his comedies. Too little attention has been given to these themes in other comic poets’ fragments of the archaia. The aim of this paper is to discuss those fragments in which the country people and the idealised representation of the countryside occur. The analysis of this material leads to a rather interesting conclusion. It appears that the politicisation of country people and the idealisation of Attic countryside were popular topics in the comedies staged during the Archidamian War (431-421 BC). It is demonstrated not only by Aristophanes’ first comedies (Acharnians, Farmers, and Peace), but also by some fragmentary ones of Cratinus, Pherecrates, and Eupolis. This was due to Pericles’ Sitzkrieg strategy, which forced country people to move into Athens with the discomfort of that condition. Country people, wishing to move back to their beloved countryside, became a political symbol of the struggling for the peace with the Spartans. Yet, if one considers the whole fragmentary corpus of Ancient Greek Comedy playwrights, country people are usually mocked as bumpkins, without any political hint.