ABSTRACT
The foray into the ancient Greeks begins with Aristophanes, who shows readers the comically pathetic struggles of old men trying to control the actions of others around them, particularly the actions of their offspring. This chapter explores the argument that intergenerational justice will always involve tension and conflict, and must therefore be grounded in an awareness of the social and temporal relations springing from human finitude. In Knights, Aristophanes represents the decay in Athenian politics with the near-destruction of an elderly man's Athenian household by the Paphlagonian slave. Aristophanes reiterates the intergenerational tensions in the battle scene between the Better and Worse Arguments about halfway through the play. Aristophanes also reminds us of one way of cultivating an awareness of these dynamics and frustrations: the theater. Aristophanes seems to counsel the impossible: removing ourselves from the problems of community, moving to an idealized pastoral life and leaving it all behind (or else burning it all down).
