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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). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the unappreciated joke at the start of philosopher Plato's "Symposium" dialogue that is meant as a phallic procession in honor of the god Dionysus. Topics covered include critic Joseph Cotter's suggestion to emend the text leading to a familiar accusation of homosexuality, and the personification of the erect phallus in Phales from playwright Aristophanes' "Acharnians." The author also suggests that at "Symposium" 172A the annual phallic procession is evoked by Glaucon.