Acharnians

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Card 1 & 2

  • "My heart has drunk deep the cup of woe" - tradgic parody
  • "it really warmed my heart - when Cleon coughed up his thirty grand" - Aristophanes rivalry with Cleon
  • "dodging the red rope" - used to usher Boule to Acropolis
  • "I'm gazing at the countryside and longing for peace" - peace = fertility, prosperity, countryside = festivals
  • "we didn't even know the word 'buy'" - no need for money before war - trading
  • "Ah, here they are at last - at midday! And look at them! Just like I said - fighting for the best places" -  Boule don't care about peace or that people are suffering - war is giving them authority and money
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Card 3

  • "Amphiteus" - 'doubly divine' 
  • "My ancestor and namesake was the son of Demeter and Triptolemus" - implausable - can only trace family back 4 generations - only 120 years 
  • "the gods have commisioned me to make peace with the spartans" - arrested -  Boule do not want peace
  • "He only wanted to make peace so we can hang up our sheilds on the wall were they belong" - war becoming outdated - too long
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Card 4 & 5

  • "We processed up the Caster valley very slowly in shaded coaches and we actually had to lie down in them" - making out as if they have worked for thier money 
  • "I certainly had it good then, sleeping among the rubish on the city walls"- Athens in poverty - money taken by polititians and generals
  • "Can't you see your envoys are making fools of you?"
  • "With us it's how many bugger you and how many you ****" -  making fun of Persians
  • "******** on the Golden hills for eight months" - mispronounciation
  • Kings Eye - visual comedy - giant eye mask - makes him unable to see 
  • Pseudartabas - 'fake excellence' - facade
  • Speaks goobledegoke - trying to be foreign - Athenians dont know difference
  • "I verily believe they are Greeks!" - ambassabor lying - expaditions not acheiveing anything
  • "The Council hereby invite the Great King Eye to dinner in the City Mansion" - fooled or choosing not to notice
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Card 6, 7 & 8

  • Theorus - follower of Cleon
  • "I was ... drinking with Sitacles" - lying
  • "he was scratching graffiti on the walls saying 'Athens is ****'"
  • "Two drachmas for that lot and not a willy between them" 
  • "The Odimantians are pillaging my vegetables - Put down that garlic"
  • 5 years - smells of pitch and shipbuilding - smells of war
  • 10 years - too much acid - diplomatic missions
  • 30 years - ambrosia and nectar
  • "Holy Dionysia" - transports him to his farm
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Card 9

  • Pardos
  • "It's our duty to the city to arrest this man" - have fought at Marathon - don't believe in making peace with Sparta
  • "our legs have gone all heavy and our calves are stiff and sore" - too old to pose serious threat
  • "They have trampled on our vineyards" - archidamian invasions
  • "Speak fair! Speak fair!" - call for silence - unaware he is defending himself 
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Card 10, 11 & 12

  • "make sure the phalus is erect"
  • "like the beauty you are, with that sour look an your face"
  • "he'll be a lucky man that marries you and producuces a brood of little pussycats"
  • "Wife, you watch me from the roof"
  • Agon
  • "just let me talk about my peace treaty. Was I right to make it?"
  • "I'm wiling to speak with my head on the block" - 1st idea
  • "I will kill your nearest and dearest. I am hold holding them as hostages" - threatens to stab basket of coals - Acharnians are coal-miners
  • "I'm not going to wrap myself in fancy words" - unlike politicians 
  • "They just love it when some fast talker flatters Athens" - people too easily fooled by politicians
  • "made all sorts of trumped up charges, spewed out a current of sewege - I very nearly drowned in the flood of filth" - A speaking through D to defend himself - claims Cleon is a liar
  • "let me dress up to look really wrecthed and down-trodden" - trying to evoke sympathy
  • "We dont mind if you use Hieronymus hair as an invisibility hat" - poet - known for long hair
  • "I think I should go and see Euriphedes"
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Card 13

  • "His mind is not at home"
  • "he himself is at home, with his feet up, writing a play" - Euriphides is lazy
  • "I'll have myself wheeled out: I'm to busy to get down" - wheeled out on trolley - visual comedy
  • "What sayest thou?" - joke that tragic playwright always talk and think is tragic register
  • "Now I know why you put so many cripples in your plays" - legs are redundant - doesnt use them
  • "ill-starred Oeneus?" - driven from his kingdom by his nephews
  • "Blind Phoenix?" - Blinded by his father after his partner claimed Phoenix had attacked her; had only refused her advances
  • "lame Bellerophon?"- fell from Pegasus while trying to fly to heaven
  • "Telephus" - pretends to be a beggar to win Clytemnestra's sympathy while seeking the weapon that Achilles wounded him with - takes Orestes hostage when Odyseus suspects him - cured in exchange for leading Greeks to Troy
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Card 14

  • 'For I this day must seem a beggar - be who I am, but not appear to be' 
  • "Mysian felt cap"
  • O be thou best; and as for Telephus, may he get all that I desire for him' - quote from Eurphides
  • "Now, to be a real beggar, I need a walking stick"
  • "quit these marble halls"
  • "give me a wicker basket- one that's had a hole burnt into it" 
  • "Need I have none, yet I desire to have it"
  • "Know thou annoyest me, and go from hence!" 
  • "O be thou blest' as thou mother was" - quote
  • "a little drinking cup, chipped at the rim"
  • "Vexer! You're a fine one to talk" 
  • "A little cooking pot, with a hole in it, stuffed with a sponge"
  • "thou't rob of a whole damn tragedy" - D stealing ideas from plays 
  • "cast off lettuce leaves"
  • "I've lost my life's work!" 
  • "give me some chevril, 'inherited from her who gave thee birth'"- mother was a greengrocer
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Card 15

  • "this time Cleon can's smear me with the charge of slandering the city in the presence of foreigners; it's only the Lenaea"
  • "I've had my vines chopped down as well"
  • "some Athenians, mind you, not Athens, not the City - but a bunch of good-for-nothing individuals"
  • "some young roisters got drunk, went to Megara and kidnapped their tart Simaethea, and this raised the Megarians hackles and they stole two of Aspasia's tarts"
  • Pericles 'threw Greece into turmoil, passing laws written like drinking songs"
  • "No megarian shall be on land or sea; let our market henchforth be Megarian free"
  • "Suppose some Spartan had 'sailed forth his bark and denounced and sold a puppy-dog"
  • You'd have launched a fleet of three-hundred instantly
  • Argument between first and second half of chorus; second chorus agree with Dik and defend him; win 
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Card 16

  • "Whence came the cry of battle cry that I heard?" - uses homeric register to mock him; old fashioned
  • "O, mighty hero Lamachus!" - mock adoration
  • 'Please take away that horrid face [...] put on the ground, face down [...] Now if you cold give me a plume from your helmet"
  • "Can you take hold of my head, so that I can be sick?"
  • "You're baby feather? [...] what bird does it come from? A boastard, perhaps?"
  • "ever since the war started, you've been in the pay queue"
  • "that's why I made peace - when I saw grey-headed men in the ranks while strong men like you skived off"
  • "Tell me, Malrilades, you've been grey for many years, have you ever been ambassador?" 
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Card 17

  • Parabasis
  • "He's never used his parabasis to say that he is clever" - irony
  • "He's been accused of writing comedies which with insults to the people and city did abound" - Cleon hauled him in front of the Boule for writing an inappropriate play
  • "He makes much better people of whomever he reviles"
  • Claims Spartan king asked wheter he mwould speak harshly of sparta of Athens - credits himself with wide influence 
  • Claims Sparta always ask for Aegina in treaties so that they can keep him 
  • "So let Cleon contrive what he will against me"- direct threat 
  • "a cowardly fag who's promiscuosly queer" - direct insult 
  • "You let the younger sort on fearful charges haul us into court" - Athens does not look after veterans
  • "We sob and weep and tell our friends 'That last few bob I'd saved to buy a coffin - it must go, thanks to this trial, to pay the fine I owe"
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Card 18

  • Within these barriers the Pelopenisains may trade, all of them, and the Megarians and Boetiansto, but only if they trade with me - and not with Lamachus" 
  • "Which wuid ye rather - be sold as slaves or strave tae death?" - prefer prostitution to going home - Megarians starving and poor
  • "I'll kit yee oot and say I've brought porkers to sell" - 'pork' can mean female genitalia
  • "I'll will bet ye a block of salt flavoured with thyme that this is what a' Greeks call pork"
  • "That word 'figs' sure makes them hit the high note"
  • "for this one, a bunch o' garlic, and for the ither, if ya wuid, twa pints o' salt" - used to sell these to athens - desperate
  •  "if I cuid ainley sell my wife and my mither as easily" - dishounorable - emphasises state of megara 
  • "I denounce these pigs as a contraband of war"
  • "What a plaugue o them ye have here in Athens" - informers seen as pests 
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Card 19

  • Second Parabasis
  • 'He need never fight to buy things in the public Market Square, nor get his cloak all dirty jostling with the shoppers there' 
  • 'Like Cleonymus and Prepis, like the fatso and the queer' - C is greedy
  • 'Cratinus, whose coiffure looks so chase'
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Card 20

  • "And you, Theban poipers, take your bone pipes and let's hear 'The Dog's ****'" - terrible playing   
  • "Where are they from, the Chaeris Clan?" - second worst musicians in Greece 
  • "Boi Iolaus" - Theban nephew of Heracles
  • "Marjojoram, penny, doormats, lamp-wicks, ducks, jackdaws, francolins, coots, wrens, dabchicks - "
  • "this man has brought fowl weather to our market" - pun
  • "also geese, hares, foxes, moles, hedgehogs, cats, badgers, martens, otters, eels form lake Copais
  • "'O eldest of Copais fifty daughers'" - quote from Aescyhlus 
  • "My love, long lost, long yearned for, thou hast come!" - parody of Euripides - man rasing wife from the dead - eels haven't been seen since the start of the war
  • "I'm taking these in lieu of market tax" - unpopular concept
  • "I know, an informer!" - Athens has lots of them
  • "You are attempting to inport an enemy made lamp wick"
  • "This could be used to set fire to the docks" - trying to find any reason to be annoying
  • "I want to pack him up like china, so he wont break en route" 
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Card 21, 22 & 23

  • ''The dreaded warrior with the ox-hide shield bearing the Gorgon's head' - epic register
  • 'I wouldn't sell him anything if he gave me his shield'
  • "Inside a I go, 'to the beat of thushres' and blackbirds wings"
  • 'War will never be a guest at my parties'
  • 'He's ready for dinner and proud of his triumph: see there the proof of his prosperous life
  • 'Didn't you hear the  proclamation. Get the water to boil - get the spit turning - roast the hare and take it of - quick!'
  • 'A cordon bleu DIYer' - high quality
  • 'I'm surprised your not dressed in black' - sarcastic
  • 'I've wept for them till I cried my eyes out. Please, if you care for poor Decretes of Phyle, rub some peace in my eyes quickly'' - taking phrase literally
  • 'drip one little drop of peace into my reed stalk' - sexual - fertility
  • 'Sob off to Pitilus and Co'
  • 'He wants you to give him one ladleful of peace, in this flask, so that he wont have to go to war and can stay home and ****' 
  • ''I would like you to make sure that my bridegrooms ***** stays at home with me'
  • "She's a woman, she wasn't responsible for the war" - marriage central to comedy
  • 'anytime theyre preparing army lists, just rub this onto your bridegrooms *****' 
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Card 24 & 25

  • 'O war, O Battle, O Lamachus' - dramatic parody
  • 'You're to go immediatley,with all your troops and all your crests'
  • 'Ho for the Lamachobelicose Expeditionary Force!' - mocking
  • 'You're to come to dinner as soon as possible' - mockery of call up
  • 'Boy, bring me out my ration bag' - 'Boy, bring me out my dinner box'
  • "Which is nicer to eat: locusts or thrushes?"
  • 'Reflected in the bronse I spy...the face of an old man who's going to get prosecuted for cowardice' - 'Reflected on the cake I spy... an old man who's telling Lamachus Fitz-Gorgon to get stuffed!'
  • 'this is flat mockery in anyones book' - 'this a delicious cake in anyone's book'
  • 'take the sheild and lets be off. It's snowing. Its a wintery outlook' - 'Take my dinner, boy,. It's a party outlook'   
  • 'drunk Orestes' - origination of drinking alone - couldn't share communal cup because he had killed his mother
  • 'When crossing o'er a ditch; he dislocated his ankle, Broke his head upon a stone' - mock tragedy - not serious injury
  • 'Friends, hold my leg with kindly hands - ah, ah, it hurts, take care' - 'Girls, hold my ***** between you both - hold tight, my darlings - there!'  
  • 'Behold my empty jug and hail me champion' - to real Basileus in front row 
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