The Funeral Oration and Democratic Ideology in The
Praise, Past and Ponytails: The Funeral Oration and Democratic Ideology in the Parabasis of Aristophanes’ Knights Abstract: In the parabasis of Knights, Aristophanes makes his chorus of aristocratic horsemen echo the democratic discourse in funeral orations in order to exhibit the hypocrisy of this social class. However, this attack upon the aristocracy is mainly a means of attacking the democratic leader Cleon, since the chorus tries to inscribe itself and its merits into the democratic past of the polis, thereby silencing the actual military merits of Cleon. Abstracto: En la parábasis de Los Caballeros, Aristófanes recurre al coro de caballeros aristocráticos para reproducir el discurso democrático de las oraciones fúnebres y así exponer la hipocresía de dicha clase social. Sin embargo, el ataque a la aristocracia sirve principalmente de herramienta para atacar al líder democrático Cleón, ya que el coro intenta inscribirse, junto con sus méritos, en el pasado democrático de la polis, silenciando así los incuestionables logros militares de Cleón. Keywords: Aristophanes, Chorus, Knights CV: Marcel Lysgaard Lech, Associate professor at University of Southern Denmark. PhD entitled The Dance of Fiction: Cognition and Choral Performance in Aristophanes’ Knights 247-610 at the university of Copenhagen in 2011. 1 Hippês or Knights was staged in 424 BC. As the title suggests, Aristophanes has for his chorus chosen the aristocracy, metonymically represented by the cavalry that in the comic (and to some extend elsewhere too) world represented a luxurious lifestyle and a cowardly manner of fighting.1 Nonetheless, the Athenians were, of course, not always loathing their cavalry; in fact the polis spend a vast amount of recourses on the corps,2 which did play a minor part in the defence of Attica and retaliation raids on the Peloponnese during the first decade of the hippic force’s reformation.
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