Our brave comedians spend much of their time fearlessly attacking politicians, to little or no effect. So did the comic playwright Aristophanes (5th century bc), but he also attacked his audience too if, when meeting in assembly as the dêmos (cf. dêmo-kratia, ‘people-power’), they were in his view too easily persuaded by politicians he hated, such as Cleon, to make bad decisions.
In one comedy (424 bc), Aristophanes imagined the Athenian state as a household, headed up by Dêmos (‘The People’).
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