The Knights

The Knights (Greek: Hippeîs, also rendered as The Horsemen) is the fourth of the eleven surviving comedies by the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed at the Lenaia in Athens in 424 BCE and won first prize, and it was also the first time he staged a play in his own name. The action takes place outside the house of Demos (meaning "the people") in Athens. The aged and befuddled master Demos is firmly controlled by a newly purchased slave nicknamed Paphlagon (a transparent allusion to the powerful politician Cleon), who uses flattery and denunciation to keep him in check. Two other slaves, Demosthenes and Nicias, unable to bear their suffering any longer, steal the oracle that Paphlagon has hidden away and learn that he will eventually be replaced by a "sausage seller." A sausage seller happens to pass by, and the two persuade him to compete for the master's favor. Then the chorus of Athenian knights (the "knights" of the title, wealthy upper-class citizens who kept horses) enters and launches an assault on Paphlagon. The sausage seller and Paphlagon then face each other in several rounds of contest—before the chorus, before the Council, and before Demos himself—to see who is more shameless, more sycophantic, and better at currying favor with the master. The sausage seller finally wins; Paphlagon is driven from power and reduced to selling sausages at the city gate. The sausage seller then "boils" Demos in a pot, and the old man is miraculously rejuvenated and restored to youth; he appears together with a young woman representing "Peace," and the play ends in a festive atmosphere. This play is Aristophanes' most direct and ferocious satire on Athenian democratic politics during the Peloponnesian War, aimed almost exclusively at Cleon, and consequently it has a small cast and a sharply aggressive tone. The Chinese translation is Luo Niansheng's classic version.