Aristophanes
An Athenian citizen named Aristophanes came from the deme of Kydathenaion, which was part of the Attic tribe known as Pandionis. His father was Philippus and his mother was Zenodora. In antiquity, people assumed his family had connections with the island of Aegina. Very little is known about his actual life because his plays remain the main source of biographical information. It was conventional in Old Comedy for the chorus to speak on behalf of the author during an address called the parabasis. These facts relate almost entirely to his career as a dramatist rather than his private beliefs or personal life. He was a comic poet in an age when it was standard for the playwright to also serve as the play's director. The term didaskalos literally means teacher, referring primarily to his role in training the chorus in rehearsal. Perhaps this title also covered his relationship with the audience as a commentator on significant issues. Aristophanes claimed to be writing for a clever and discerning audience yet he also declared that other times would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays. He sometimes boasted of his originality as a dramatist while his plays consistently espoused opposition to radical new influences in Athenian society.
Aristophanes repeatedly savaged Cleon in his later plays but these satirical diatribes appear to have had no effect on Cleon's political career. A few weeks after the performance of The Knights, a play full of anti-Cleon jokes, Cleon was elected to the prestigious board of ten generals. Cleon also seems to have had no real power to limit or control Aristophanes because the caricatures of him continued up to and even beyond his death. His second play, The Babylonians, was denounced by Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. It is possible that the case was argued in court, but details of the trial are not recorded. Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights, which was the first of many plays that he directed himself. Plato singled out Aristophanes's play The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates. Other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher, yet Plato's account suggests unique blame fell upon Aristophanes. When Aristophanes's first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. By the time his last play was produced around 386 BC, Athens had been defeated in war and its empire had been dismantled.
The language of Aristophanes's plays was valued by ancient commentators as a model of the Attic dialect. The orator Quintilian believed that the charm and grandeur of the Attic dialect made Old Comedy an example for orators to study and follow. He considered it inferior in these respects only to the works of Homer. A revival of interest in the Attic dialect may have been responsible for the recovery and circulation of Aristophanes's plays during the fourth and fifth centuries AD. In Aristophanes's plays, the Attic dialect is couched in verse and his plays can be appreciated for their poetic qualities. There were three broad poetic forms: iambic dialogue, tetrameter verses and lyrics. It can be argued that the most important feature of the language of the plays is imagery, particularly the use of similes, metaphors and pictorial expressions. In The Knights, for example, the ears of a character with selective hearing are represented as parasols that open and close. In The Frogs, Aeschylus is said to compose verses in the manner of a horse rolling in a sandpit. Some plays feature revelations of human perfectibility that are poetic rather than religious in character. Aristophanes appears to have modeled his approach to language on that of Euripides so much so that the comic dramatist Cratinus labelled him a Euripidaristophanist addicted to hair-splitting niceties.
The structural elements of a typical Aristophanic play include the parabasis which is an address to the audience by the chorus or chorus leader while the actors leave or have left the stage. In this role, the chorus is sometimes out of character, as the author's voice, and sometimes in character. Generally the parabasis occurs somewhere in the middle of a play and often there is a second parabasis towards the end. The Wasps is thought to offer the best example of a conventional approach where the elements can be identified and located. Textual corruption is probably the reason for the absence of the antistrophe in the second parabasis. However, there are several variations from the ideal even within the early plays. For example, the parabasis proper in The Clouds lines 518, 562 is composed in eupolidean meter rather than in anapests. The action of an Aristophanic play obeyed a crazy logic of its own yet it always unfolded within a formal dramatic structure repeated with minor variations from one play to another. The rules of competition did not prevent a playwright arranging and adjusting these elements to suit his particular needs. Songs and addresses to the audience by the Chorus gave the actors hardly enough time off-stage to draw breath and prepare for changes in scene.
Aristophanes wrote forty plays of which eleven survive virtually complete. Most of these are traditionally referred to by abbreviations of their Latin titles because Latin remains a customary language of scholarship in classical studies. The Acharnians dates to 425 BC and The Knights to 424 BC. The Clouds has an original version from 423 BC but an incomplete revised version from 419 to 416 BC survives. Peace was first produced in 421 BC while The Birds appeared in 414 BC. Lysistrata dates to 411 BC and The Frogs to 405 BC. Wealth, the second version, appears in 388 BC. The standard modern edition of the fragments is Rudolf Kassel and Colin François Lloyd Austin's Poetae Comici Graeci III.2. Datable non-surviving plays include Banqueters from 427 BC and Babylonians from 426 BC. Undated non-surviving plays include Anagyrus, Frying-Pan Men, Daedalus, Danaids, Centaur, Heroes, Lemnian Women, Old Age, Peace second version, Phoenician Women, Polyidus, Seasons, Storks, Telmessians, Triphales, Thesmophoriazusae second version, and Women in Tents.
Latin translations of the plays by Andreas Divus were circulated widely throughout Europe in the Renaissance during Venice 1528. These were soon followed by translations and adaptations in modern languages. Racine drew Les Plaideurs from The Wasps in 1668. Goethe adapted a short play Die Vögel from The Birds for performance in Weimar. Aristophanes has appealed to both conservatives and radicals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Anatoly Lunacharsky declared that the ancient dramatist would have a permanent place in proletarian theatre yet conservative Prussian intellectuals interpreted Aristophanes as a satirical opponent of social reform. The avant-gardist stage-director Karolos Koun directed a version of The Birds under the Acropolis in 1959 that established a trend in modern Greek history of breaking taboos through the voice of Aristophanes. The romantic poet Percy Shelley wrote a comic lyrical drama called Swellfoot the Tyrant after he was reminded of the Chorus in The Frogs by a herd of pigs passing to market under his lodgings in San Giuliano Italy. Platée is a French comic opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau influenced by The Frogs. Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote The Wasps for a 1909 Cambridge University production of the play.
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Common questions
Who were the parents of Aristophanes?
Aristophanes was born to a father named Philippus and a mother named Zenodora. His family was from the deme of Kydathenaion within the Attic tribe known as Pandionis.
When did Aristophanes produce his first play The Banqueters?
The Banqueters dates to 427 BC according to records of non-surviving plays. This production occurred during the fourth year of the Peloponnesian War when Athens was an ambitious imperial power.
How many plays did Aristophanes write in total?
Aristophanes wrote forty plays of which eleven survive virtually complete. Most surviving works are traditionally referred to by abbreviations of their Latin titles because Latin remains a customary language of scholarship in classical studies.
What role did Aristophanes serve in his own productions?
He served as the director or didaskalos who trained the chorus in rehearsal. This title also covered his relationship with the audience as a commentator on significant issues.
Which play by Aristophanes contributed to the trial of Socrates?
Plato singled out The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates. Unique blame fell upon Aristophanes even though other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher.