Penia e ptocheia in Aristoph., Plut. 532-554: una distinzione sofistica o una classificazione sociale?

[Machine translation] The passage from Aristophanes' Pluto in which the debate between Penia and Ptocheia is staged, respectively the personification of poverty and misery, is not simply a comic stunt to enrich the plot of the play, but a deliberate choice by the poet to reaffirm the distinction between the poverty of those who work and can therefore support themselves with dignity and the misery of those who do not exercise a profession capable of guaranteeing them the bare minimum for a decent life; a distinction that, very clear in Pericles' speech in honor of fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian War, it must have faded in the early fourth century after the Athenian defeat in the same conflict.