Complete Plays of Aristophanes

ARISTOPHANES, the most famous comic dramatist of ancient Greece, was born an Athenian citizen in about 445 B.C. Forty-four plays have been attributed to Aristophanes; eleven of these have survived. His plays are the only extant representatives of Greek Old Comedy, a dramatic form whose conventions made it inevitable that the author would comment on the political and social issues of fifth-century Athens. This Aristophanes did so well that Plato, asked by the tyrant of Syracuse for an analysis of Athenians, sent a copy of Aristophanes' plays in reply.

His earliest play, the Banqueters, won the second prize in 427 B.C. when the dramatist must have been less than eighteen years old, since, as he notes in the Clouds (423), he was too young to produce it in his own name. Another early play, the Babylonians, criticized the demagogue Cleon, who responded by subjecting Aristophanes to legal persecution, and as the author charges in the Acharnians, Cleon had "slanged, and lied, and slandered and betongued me . . . till I well nigh was done to death." Nevertheless, in the Knights (424), he renewed his attack on the popular Athenian leader and won first prize in that year's contest. Plutus (388) was the last of the author's plays to be produced in his lifetime.

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Title of ebook: Complete Plays of Aristophanes
ISBN: 9780553902594
parent-ISBN: 9780553213430
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 05-2006
Released online for download: 05-30-2006
Author of eBook: Aristophanes

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Complete Plays of Aristophanes

Chapter One

ACHARNIANS

THE ACHARNIANS was produced in 425 b.c., when Aristophanes was barely twenty, but in exuberant inventiveness, lyrical quality, serious political criticism, it is among Aristophanes' best plays. It won the first prize over Cratinus and Eupolis. The characteristic topsy-turvy fantasy upon which the play hinges is the notion that a man weary of an ill-considered war might make an individual peace with the enemy. Here Dicaeopolis makes such a peace with Sparta, but as he is about to celebrate the long-intermitted vintage festival he is attacked by a chorus of Acharnian charcoal burners who represent the war party and he wins a hearing by a parody of Euripides' Telephus. In a seriocomic speech he shows that the causes of the war were trifling, and wins over half the chorus, who are engaged in a violent agon by the other half. These call in the general Lamachus to assist them, but the general too is bested in argument, and the chorus, uniting on Dicaeopolis' side, deliver the poet's parabasis. Then Megarians and Boeotians bring in for sale the good things Athens has lacked. A herald summons Lamachus to a hard campaign, and another, Dicaeopolis to a wine party. Lamachus r ... read full excerpt from: Complete Plays of Aristophanes ebook

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Complete Plays of Aristophanes

Chapter One

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