Eirene (Peace)
A revisit to Aristophanes’ work

Who will still be alive
this summer? Who tomorrow?
Not even ol’ time knows,
let alone the star
of Epidaurus

Once again, Nations hit the deck
Won’t you hear my sweet strumming
from the rim of this pit,
stacked with corpses

Make a wish for Peace,
Won’t you, Miss Universe?
For every war of mine
is I against I
a Civil War through and through

 

Eirene is the celebration of a vanished agrarian world, a comic and unflappable argument, a feast of everyday men and women culled from the fumes of wartime, a shadow screen set ablaze amid the horror. Nikos Karathanos, Foivos Delivorias, and Angelos Triantafyllou are the principal accomplices in a new production, a new adaptation, a new response to madness with madness itself.

Aristophanes’ original comedy was first taught at the City Dionysia in 421 B.C., where it was honoured with the second prize. Written during a critical cusp in history, shortly before the validation of the Peace of Nicias, it stood as an expression of hope for seizing the hostilities of the ten-year-old Peloponnesian War – a hope that arose only after the deaths of the warmongering generals, the Athenian Cleon and the Spartan Brasidas, during the Battle of Amphipolis. The play captures the intense social fatigue of the war and addresses, with lyrical eloquence and the unmistakable Aristophanian sting, the irrational obsession with warfare and its harrowing repercussions on the daily lives, labour, and welfare of people. Aristophanes juxtaposes the violence and profiteering of warmongers with the fertility, eros, and collective prosperity fostered by peace. Despite its seemingly utopian resolution, the comedy refrains from being naïve, acknowledging the resistance, vested interests, and inertia that hinder the restoration of peace.

Eirene holds a pivotal place within Aristophanes’ entire oeuvre as the most conciliatory and optimistic among his political comedies. Though deeply rooted in the era that birthed it, it remains timeless, shedding light on a mechanism that has perpetuated itself to this day: the wars that keep protracting at the expense of the many and for the benefit of the few. The insistence of ordinary individuals on claiming peace, even in the face of blatant power, renders the work urgently relevant in a contemporary world where invasions, violence, threats, insecurity, and cynicism are repeatedly replayed as unavoidable reality.