Play: Peace

Overview
Aristophanes' Peace, produced in 421 BCE, is a comic fantasia that celebrates the recovery of civic life through the restoration of peace. The play follows the rustic protagonist Trygaeus, a weary farmer, who mounts an improbable ascent to the heavens to retrieve the goddess Peace after she has been driven from the world by the forces of war. Combining broad physical comedy, ribald jokes, and sharp civic satire, the play praises the simple prosperity and communal pleasures that peace brings.

Plot
Trygaeus, exasperated by the endless Peloponnesian War and its ruinous effects on ordinary folk, decides to take matters into his own hands. With rustic companions and the support of a boisterous Chorus of countrymen, he fashions a fantastical flying device, a giant dung-beetle, and soars to Olympus to plead for Peace. Finding that Peace has been cast down and hidden away by the profiteers and by the martial gods, Trygaeus manages to negotiate her release and escorts her back to earth.
Back home, Peace's return is transformative: fields flourish, soldiers go back to their plows, commerce driven by war collapses, and a riotous banquet of reconciliation and abundance ends the play. The comedy mingles tactile stage business, absurd flights, pratfalls, and a mock-heroic rescue, with pointed ridicule of those who profit from conflict, while offering a hopeful, almost pastoral vision of what civic life could be without war.

Themes and tone
Peace contrasts the destructive greed of warmongers with the wholesome labor of farmers and craftsmen, presenting peace as the prerequisite for human flourishing. The play repeatedly imagines the mundane delights that war interrupts: the return to sowing and reaping, the simple joys of family and feast, and the recovery of trade for ordinary needs rather than military supply. Aristophanes frames these pleasures in exuberant, earthy humor, making the play feel at once political and intensely local.
The satire targets both public figures and systemic incentives that sustain war, skewering politicians, middlemen, and merchants who profit from bloodshed. Yet the tone never becomes purely bitter; laughter and celebration drive the conclusion, with Aristophanes offering optimism that civic sanity can be restored by common people acting with common sense.

Characters and comic devices
Trygaeus embodies the archetype of the shrewd, practical farmer whose common sense outwits both gods and demagogues. The Chorus of countrymen provides musical commentary and physical comedy, often representing collective, democratic impulses. Deities and stock comic types, charlatans, profiteers, and boisterous neighbors, are presented with exaggerated traits that invite ridicule rather than theological seriousness.
Aristophanes relies on theatrical spectacle, an implausible flight, grotesque visual jokes, bawdy wordplay, and parodic hymns, to keep the audience engaged while delivering pointed civic critique. The play's humor is intentionally earthy and immediate, meant to resonate with citizens who suffered the war's burdens.

Historical context and legacy
First performed around the time of the Peace of Nicias, the play both celebrates and satirically interrogates contemporary hopes for a lasting cessation of hostilities. Its optimistic resolution, where peace restores prosperity and common decency, struck a chord in a city weary of conflict. Peace has remained one of Aristophanes' most vivid political comedies, valued for its combination of imaginative stagecraft and a humane argument for the value of peace in civic life.