Deus ex machina in Aristofane? In margine all’interpretazione di Aristofane, Pluto 1171–1209

The article proposes a new dramaturgical reading of Aristophanes’ Plutus in the light of the problematic vv . 1171–1209, where we observe a narrative caesura between v . 1186 and v . 1188. The comedy, represented by aA389/88 BC . In these years Thrasybulus of Styria successfully carried out military operations to restore alliances with the Greek cities of Asia. These new treaties began to bring to Athens new tributes with the consequence that new money also began to enter in the city. This is a different historical, social and economic context rather than that of 408 B.C. in which a ›first‹ Plutus seems to have gone on stage. The analysis is conducted taking into account the indications that come from the stage instructions: on this basis it is proposed to interpret that Zeus Soter appears as deus ex machina between v. 1186 and v. 1188 . The purpose is surely parodic but at the same time lets the comedy to conclude differently. after Plutus’s recovery from blindness, any ›honest‹ fellow had become rich, but many others were unsatisfied or unhappy, even the gods and zeus, because no ›good‹ man, no longer needing to ask for wealth, brought anymore offerings into the temples. The sudden and unexpected arrival of Zeus is verbally declared by Chremylus and seems to be indubitable. Only his dreadful appearance can explain the unexpected strange final, where both the general situation and the protagonist’s intention suddendly change. Just after v. 1188, Plutus is no more a living being, but a votive statue; the young man must return to knock the door of the old mistress being in a state of necessity, and all the personages accept to take part to the final sacrificial procession that leads Plutus’s statue into the opisthodomus of Athena’s temple, organized by Chremylus. This installation has nothing to do with the creation of a new cult of the god of richness but on the contrary guarantees the return to a previous social, political and financial order of the polis with Plutus installed in the Parthenon’s opisthodomus to protect the city’s treasure. An ironic intent is to be grasped in the argumentative process of the reductio ad absurdum of the entire plot . An unexpected political optimism, paratragedy united to Euripidean parody, irony and metatheatre seem to be fundamental ingredients of this last comedy of Aristophanes.