In The Frogs, during one of the chorus eruptions that commonly occur in Aristophanes' comedies, Athenian citizens are exhorted to be cautious about the extent of their freedom: in 406, on the occasion of the Battle of Arginusae , slaves who fought for the Athenian side were offered not only freedom, but also citizenship, an exceptional promise in Athenian political and social history, as in the Greek world in general, but which would not be strange in the societies of the Hellenistic era or the Roman Empire.
With an example taken from the Athenian participation in the Persian Wars, Aristophanes does not look favorably on the promise of the Arginusae, since “(…) it is shameful that those who once took part in a naval battle (the Arginusae) you will equip the Plateenses (sic), turning them from slaves into lords”[1]. Clearly, the allies of Plataea were of great relevance in the wars that the Athenians waged throughout the 5th century and, by virtue of that quality, they could be considered citizens.
On the other hand, the express and immediate granting of citizenship to slaves bordered on unfair when compared to the condemnation of the Athenian generals who were sanctioned for the same battle, from the probable point of view of the comic poet. The call for attention was directed, finally, to valuing good citizens and to beware of possible upstarts who, since the 1920s of the 5th century BC. They were the target of Aristophanes' attacks, starting with Cleon, the tanner.
However, in the previous example, the comment about the radical transformation of “slaves into lords” cannot be overlooked, considering their presence in most, if not all, of Aristophanes' work that we have seen until now. has arrived. Not without reason can the classical Athenian comedy, starring exclusively by Aristophanes due to the survival of his works, be considered the true democratic expression of the theater of the Attic polis.
In his works not only are the institutions of democracy portrayed, such as the assembly, litigation, courts or religious festivals of the polis, but also the culture of this society, including aspects of daily life and private life. It is a fairly accepted opinion that the private life of Athenian citizens could be the object of scrutiny by the public eye, and, from that perspective, the daily life that can be glimpsed in the comedies of Aristophanes provides significant coordinates for the analysis of the problems private and public with which the Athenian audience could identify.
The presence of slaves, their functions and the various interactions of the characters with them, citizens or not, are features of great interest in the comedies. If the Persian Wars meant the fight for the freedom of the allied Greeks against a monarchical master, the Persian Empire, with an opposite concept of politics constructed by the Greeks, the daily life of the Athenians had in its concept of freedom antithesis: the unfree, the slaves. The fight for freedom was reproduced daily in the classical polis. In the Athenian slave society, the dedication to the cultivation of citizen rights, and the continuous appreciation of freedom was carried out in the face of the possibility of moving to the opposite condition, slavery. I will proceed to review these everyday aspects that in classical Athenian comedy gain significance from the perspective of the valuation of freedom against slaves, the slaves of Aristophanes.