ABSTRACT
Peace is a fundamental theme of Greek Old Comedy. It dominates three of Aristophanes' surviving plays, Akharnians, Peace and Lysistrata, where it is the main goal of the central characters and central to the interpretation of the play. The handling of peace also reflects specific aspects of peace-making in period after the Persian Wars and the place of reconciliation within it. For these reasons, it falls more easily to Greek Comedy to find the humour in peace and love than to promote international understanding. The likelihood that some of those responsible for the imminent Peace of Nikias were in the audience did not encourage any realistic or even human representation of peace-making, apart from the symbolic collective, and far from unified, rescue of the figure of Peace. The debates around peace in both Akharnians and Lysistrata are far more engaged with contemporary politics, which may be further reason why both plays have often been assessed in terms of political feasibility.
