Staging Philosophy: Poverty in the Agon of Aristophanes’ Wealth

This article deals with the agon of Wealth, offering a reconsideration of Penia (Poverty). The first part tries to show that Aristophanes was consistently drawing from the comic model of philosophers for this personification. This makes Penia a negative character, preventing the audience from sympathizing with her reasons. The second part of the paper analyzes the evidence for a closer relation between Penia’s arguments and those of Socrates in Plato’s Republic (esp. Books 4 and 5).