Like other plays by Aristophanes, The Acharnians generally obeys the conventions of Old Comedy. The following dramatic elements contain variations from convention:
- Agon: Agons have a predictable poetic structure, with speeches in long lines of anapests framed within a pair of symmetrical songs (strophe and antistrophe). There is no such agon in this play. There is a heated argument between the protagonist and the Chorus in couplets of long trochaic verses framed by a strophe and antistrophe (303–334) but the main arguments for and against war are conducted in ordinary dialogue of iambic trimeter, including input from Lamachus as the antagonist.
- Parabasis: Here the first parabasis follows a conventional form (lines 626–701). However, the second parabasis (lines 971-99) is unusual. It can be interpreted as a conventional symmetrical scene[71] and yet it seems to be a hybrid parabasis/song without any clear distinction between the sung and declaimed sections.[72] Moreover, the Chorus in those lines seems to comment on action that occurs on stage during its address to the audience and this is unusual for a parabasis. A later passage (lines 1143–73) begins with a valediction to the actors, which typically clears the stage for a parabasis[73] and yet it has the form of a conventional song rather than a parabasis.
Other points of interest:
- A one-man parabasis: Dikaiopolis speaks about being prosecuted over 'last years' play as if he were the author himself.
- Self-mockery: Old Comedy is a highly topical form of satire directed at people known to the original audience. In this play, the author himself becomes a major target for the play's mock-heroic humour. He explicitly identifies himself with the protagonist Dikaiopolis and thus he also identifies himself with Telephus, a wounded hero who seeks help disguised as a beggar. It is in these combined roles that he adopts the voice of Herodotus, whose mythological/historical accounts of rape and counter-rape as the cause of war were considered hilarious by contemporaries.[74] In the parabasis proper, the Chorus praises the poet as the saviour of Athens. These jokes at his own expense are best understood in the context of his real-life quarrel with Cleon to whom he remains defiant in spite of his self-mockery.
- Possible interpolated lines: Lamachus is another victim of the play's humour but one of the jokes appears not to be by the author. There are eight lines (1181–88) that some editors omit from their translations of the play[75] in which Lamachus is described melodramatically commenting on his own death in a ditch. Lamachus died in the Sicilian Expedition when caught by the enemy on the wrong side of a ditch, many years after the play was produced.
