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Aristophanes

Ch. 1 of 8
— CH. 1 · INTRODUCTION —

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Aristophanes

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  • Aristophanes wrote forty plays, yet only eleven survive virtually complete. They are the only full-length examples of Old Comedy to reach us from antiquity. This Ancient Greek comic playwright from Athens earned the titles "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy." His powers of ridicule were feared by influential contemporaries. Plato singled out his play The Clouds as slander that helped condemn Socrates to death. But who was the man behind these preposterous plots and explicit jokes? Why do scholars say he recreated the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author? And why, when so little of his life is recorded, do we read his comedies as windows onto a vanished city? The answers begin with the festivals where his plays first won their prizes.

  • The Theatre of Dionysus seated at least 10,000 people. Aristophanes's plays were performed there at the City Dionysia and the Lenaia, the great religious festivals of Athens, where they competed for prizes against other comic dramatists. At the City Dionysia, an elaborate series of lotteries reduced the voting judges to just five, a design meant to prevent prejudice and corruption. The day's program at that festival was crowded. Three tragedies and a satyr play came ahead of a comedy. The Chorus was essential to a play's success, recruited and funded by a choregus. This choregus was a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons. He could treat his expenditure on the Chorus as a civic duty and a public honour. Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters. He won first prize there with his next play, The Babylonians. He was also victorious at least three times at the Lenaia, with The Acharnians in 425, Knights in 424, and Frogs in 405. Frogs won the unique distinction of a repeat performance at a subsequent festival.

  • Cleon denounced The Babylonians as a slander against the Athenian polis. The play, now lost, had depicted the cities of the Delian League as slaves grinding at a mill, an embarrassment to Athenian authorities since foreign dignitaries usually attended the City Dionysia. Some influential citizens, Cleon among them, possibly took legal action against the author. The details of the trial are unrecorded. Speaking through the hero of his third play The Acharnians, staged at the Lenaia where there were few or no foreign dignitaries, the poet carefully distinguished the polis from the real targets of his wit. The Knights was the first of many plays Aristophanes directed himself, and it was full of anti-Cleon jokes. Through that play's Chorus he declared, "In my opinion, the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all." His satirical diatribes appear to have had no effect on Cleon's political career. A few weeks after the performance of The Knights, Cleon was elected to the prestigious board of ten generals. The caricatures of him continued up to and even beyond his death.

  • Aristophanes consistently espoused opposition to radical new influences in Athenian society, even as he boasted of his own originality as a dramatist. He caricatured leading figures in the arts, especially Euripides, whose influence on his own work he once grudgingly acknowledged. In politics he targeted the populist Cleon, and in philosophy and religion Socrates was his most obvious target. These caricatures seem to imply an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view leads to contradictions. The conservatism may instead reflect his audience. Many of the poorer citizens, typically the main supporters of demagogues like Cleon, may have spent the festival holiday on other pursuits, leaving an unrepresentative crowd. The production process points the same way. Aristophanes showed in The Knights that wealthy citizens might regard civic responsibilities as punishment imposed on them by populists. Since all dramatists depended on the generosity of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, the plays may simply voice that group. When his first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. His plays express pride in the older generation, the victors at Marathon, yet they are staunchly opposed to the war with Sparta and scathing toward its profiteers.

  • Philippus was his father and Zenodora his mother. Aristophanes was an Athenian citizen from the deme of Kydathenaion, part of the Attic tribe of Pandionis, and his family was assumed in antiquity to have connections with the island of Aegina. Beyond these few facts, little is known about his life, and his plays are the main source of biographical information. The convention of Old Comedy let the chorus speak on behalf of the author in an address called the parabasis, where some biographical facts appear. These facts relate almost entirely to his career as a dramatist. Comments in The Clouds suggest he can hardly have been more than 18 years old when The Banqueters was produced. Statements in The Clouds and Peace have been read as evidence that he was prematurely bald. His use of directors complicates this reliance on the plays. His first three plays were directed not by him but by Callistratus and Philoneides, an arrangement that seemed to suit him since he used the same directors in many later plays. Philoneides later directed The Frogs. An apparent self-reference might therefore point to a director instead. Aristophanes survived the Peloponnesian War, two oligarchic revolutions and two democratic restorations. He was probably appointed to the Council of Five Hundred for a year at the beginning of the fourth century.

  • Araros, a son of Aristophanes, was also a comic poet. He could have been heavily involved in producing his father's play Wealth II in 388. Araros is also thought to have staged the posthumous performances of the now lost plays Aeolosicon II and Cocalus, and the last of these possibly won the prize at the City Dionysia in 387. A second son, Philippus, was twice victorious at the Lenaia and could have directed some of Eubulus's comedies. A third son was called either Nicostratus or Philetaerus. A man by the latter name appears in the catalogue of Lenaia victors with two victories, the first probably in the late 370s. The career of Aristophanes itself spanned a transformation of his city. By the time his last play was produced, around 386 BC, Athens had been defeated in war and its empire dismantled. It had changed from the political to the intellectual centre of Greece. His own work evolved with it, from Old Comedy until, in his last surviving play Wealth II, it more closely resembled New Comedy.

  • Fantasy in Old Comedy is unrestricted, and impossibilities are ignored. Situations develop logically to absurd conclusions, an approach echoed later in the works of Lewis Carroll and Eugène Ionesco. The crazy costume worn by Dionysus in The Frogs is typical. He wears a woman's saffron-coloured tunic because effeminacy is an aspect of his divinity, buskin boots because he is interested in reviving tragedy, and a lion skin cape because, like Heracles, his mission leads him into Hades. The Aristophanic hero is independent-minded and self-reliant, with something of the ingenuity of Homer's Odysseus and the shrewdness of the farmer idealized in Hesiod's Works and Days. Dikaiopolis in The Acharnians contrives a private peace treaty with the Spartans. Bdelucleon in The Wasps turns his own house into a private law court to keep his jury-addicted father at home. Trygaeus in Peace flies to Olympus on a giant dung beetle to obtain an end to the Peloponnesian War. Pisthetairus in Birds sets off to found a colony and becomes ruler of the bird kingdom. The numerous surprises were managed with only three principal actors. A fourth, often the leader of the chorus, was permitted to deliver short speeches. Imagery may be the most important feature of the language. In The Knights the ears of a character with selective hearing are represented as parasols that open and close.

  • Sophocles and Euripides died near the end of the Peloponnesian War, and the art of tragedy thereafter ceased to develop. Comedy continued to evolve after the defeat of Athens, perhaps because in Aristophanes it had a master craftsman who lived long enough to usher it into a new age. The orator Quintilian believed the charm and grandeur of the Attic dialect made Old Comedy a model for orators to study, inferior only to the works of Homer. A revival of interest in the Attic dialect may explain the recovery and circulation of his plays during the fourth and fifth centuries AD, the reason they survive today. The Clouds was awarded third, or last, place after its original performance, and the surviving text is a later draft he intended to be read rather than acted. Latin translations by Andreas Divus, published in Venice in 1528, circulated widely throughout Renaissance Europe. Racine drew Les Plaideurs in 1668 from The Wasps. Goethe adapted a short play, Die Vögel, from The Birds for performance in Weimar. The plays have appealed to opposite sides. Anatoly Lunacharsky, first Commissar of Enlightenment for the USSR in 1917, declared the ancient dramatist would have a permanent place in proletarian theatre. In 1959 the stage-director Karolos Koun directed a version of The Birds under the Acropolis, breaking taboos through the voice of Aristophanes.

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Common questions

Who was Aristophanes the Greek playwright?

Aristophanes was an Ancient Greek comic playwright from Athens, known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy." He wrote forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete, and his surviving works are the most valued examples of the genre called Old Comedy.

How many plays did Aristophanes write and how many survive?

Aristophanes wrote forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete. They are the only full-length examples of Old Comedy to have survived from antiquity, making them centrally important to modern understanding of the genre.

Why did Aristophanes attack Cleon in his plays?

Aristophanes savaged the populist politician Cleon repeatedly after Cleon denounced his play The Babylonians as a slander against the Athenian polis. The satire had no effect on Cleon's career, who was elected to the board of ten generals a few weeks after The Knights, a play full of anti-Cleon jokes.

What did Aristophanes have to do with the death of Socrates?

Plato singled out Aristophanes's play The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and condemning to death of Socrates, who was the most obvious target of the play. Other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher, and it is not clear the plays were truly instrumental in his execution.

Where were Aristophanes's plays performed?

Aristophanes's plays were performed at the religious festivals of Athens, mostly the City Dionysia and the Lenaia, where they competed for prizes against other comic dramatists. The Theatre of Dionysus seated at least 10,000 people.

What prizes did Aristophanes win?

Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with The Banqueters and first prize there with The Babylonians. He was victorious at least three times at the Lenaia, with The Acharnians in 425, Knights in 424, and Frogs in 405, the last of which earned a repeat performance.

How did Aristophanes influence later writers and theatre?

Latin translations of Aristophanes by Andreas Divus, published in Venice in 1528, spread through Renaissance Europe. Racine drew Les Plaideurs from The Wasps in 1668, and Goethe adapted Die Vögel from The Birds for Weimar.

All sources

109 references cited across the entry

  1. 1BookCambridge English Pronouncing DictionaryJones, Daniel et al. — Cambridge UP — 2006
  2. 2BookAristophanes in Performance 421 BC – AD 2007: Peace, Birds and FrogsEdith Hall et al. — Legenda — 2007
  3. 3Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol. 1Ebenezer Cobham Brewer
  4. 4Plato, The Apology of Socrates (in Greek), edited by John Burnet; section 19c
  5. 5BookLysistrata, The Acharnians, The CloudsPenguin Books — 1973
  6. 6BookAristophanis Comoediae, Tomus 1Oxford Classical Texts
  7. 7Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Clouds, pp. 520–525
  8. 8Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Clouds, pp. 560–562
  9. 10Andrewes, Antony. Greek Society. Pelican Books, 1981, pp. 247–248
  10. 11Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A. H. Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Books 1975, p. 9 footnote
  11. 12Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, The Knights lines 911–925
  12. 13Rennie, W. The Acharnians of Aristophanes, Edward Arnold (London, 1909), p. 7 (reproduced by Bibliolife)
  13. 16Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A. H. Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Books 1975, pp. 13–14
  14. 17"Greek Drama" P. Levi in The Oxford History of the Classical World J. Boardman, J. Griffin, O. Murray (eds), Oxford University Press 1986, p. 177
  15. 19D. Welsh, IG ii2 2343, Philonides and Aristophanes' Banqueters, Classical Quarterly 33 (1983)
  16. 20Knights 512–514
  17. 21Clouds 530–533
  18. 22Ian Storey, General Introduction, in Clouds, Wasps, Birds By Aristophanes, Peter Meineck (translator), Hackett Publishing 1998, p. xiii
  19. 23MacDowell (1971), p. 124
  20. 26Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, The Clouds lines 528–32
  21. 27Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds Alan Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Classics 1975, p. 9
  22. 29MacDowell (1978), p. 299
  23. 30Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Clouds 540–545, Peace 767–774
  24. 31IG II2 2325. 58
  25. 32Aristophanes, testimonium 1, lines 54–56, in Kassel-Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci vol. III.2 (Berlin 1984), p. 4.
  26. 33Aristophanes, Κώκαλος, testimonium iii, in Kassel-Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci vol. III.2 (Berlin 1984), p. 201.
  27. 34IG II2 2318. 196
  28. 35Eubulus, testimonium 4, in Kassel-Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci vol. V (Berlin 1986), p. 188.
  29. 36Clouds Peter Meineck (translator) and Ian Storey (Introduction), Hackett Publishing 2000, p. xviii
  30. 37IG II2 2325. 143 (just after Anaxandrides and just before Eubulus)
  31. 38Symposium 221B; Plato Vol.3, Loeb Classical Library (1975), p. 236
  32. 39Sommerstein, Alan (ed). Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds. Penguin Books, 1973, p. 10
  33. 41The Symposium (English translation) Benjamin Jowett (scroll half way down).
  34. 42Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Knights lines 507–550
  35. 43Barrett (2003) p. 15Barrett — 2003
  36. 44Quintilian 10.1.65–66 10.1.61
  37. 45Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Clouds lines 553–554
  38. 46Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Knights lines 519–540
  39. 47MacDowell (1978), p. 21
  40. 49MacDowell (1978), p. 17
  41. 50MacDowell (1978), p. 13
  42. 51Sommerstein, Alan (ed). Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds. Penguin Classics 1973, p. 37
  43. 52L. P. E. Parker, The Songs of Aristophanes, Oxford, 1997, p. 36
  44. 53Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 2, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Frogs lines 1032–1038
  45. 54Greek Drama, Peter Levi, in The Oxford History of the Classical World edited by J. Boardman, J. Griffin and O. Murray, Oxford University Press 1986, p. 175
  46. 55MacDowell (1978) p. 27
  47. 58Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Knights lines 1347–1348;
  48. 59The Frogs lines 902–904
  49. 60Aristophanes: Wasps Douglas MacDowell, Oxford University Press 1978, p. 12
  50. 61Clouds Peter Meineck (translator) and Ian Storey (Introduction), Hackett Publishing 2000, p. viii
  51. 62Aristophanes: Wasps Douglas MacDowell (ed.), Oxford University Press 1971, p. 207 note 546–630
  52. 63Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A. Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1975, p. 27
  53. 64Aristophanes: Wasps Douglas MacDowell, Oxford University Press 1978, p. 261
  54. 65Aristophanes: Wasps Douglas MacDowell (ed), Oxford University Press 1978, p. 27
  55. 66Aristophanes: Wasps Douglas M. MacDowell, Oxford University Press 1978, note 1283 p. 298
  56. 68Aristophanes: Wasps Douglas MacDowell (ed), Oxford University Press 1978, pp. 298–299
  57. 70Comedy E. Handley in 'The Cambridge History of Classical Literature I', P. Easterling, R. MacGregor Walker Knox, E. Kenney (eds), p. 360
  58. 71"Greek Drama" Peter Levi, in The Oxford History of the Classical World J. Boardman, J. Griffin and O. Murray (eds), Oxford University Press 1986, p. 176
  59. 72E. W. Handley, 'Comedy' in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek Literature, P. E. Easterling and Bernard Knox (eds), Cambridge University Press (1985), p. 400
  60. 73Clouds lines 560–562
  61. 75BookCloudsAristophanes — Hackett Publishing — 2000
  62. 76BookAristophanes in Performance 421 BC – AD 2007: Peace, Birds and FrogsEdith Hall and Amanda Wrigley — Legenda — 2007
  63. 77Politics and Aristophanes: watchword Caution! by Gonda Van Steen in 'The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre' Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton (eds), Cambridge University Press 2007,
  64. 78e.g. Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A. Sommerstein, Penguin Classics 1975, p. 37
  65. 79"W. S. Gilbert: A Mid-Victorian Aristophanes" in W. S. Gilbert: A Century of Scholarship and Commentary, John Bush Jones (ed), New York University Press 1970
  66. 80Birds, l.1447–1448; quotation as translated in Macmillan Dictionary of Political Quotations
  67. 81Note on Oedipus Tyrannus by Mrs Shelley, quoted in Shelley: Poetical Works Thomas Hutchinson (ed), Oxford University Press 1970, p. 410
  68. 82GREEN, ROBERT A. “Aristophanes, Rameau and ‘Platée.’” Cambridge Opera Journal, vol. 23, no. 1/2, 2011, pp. 1–26. JSTOR, Accessed 6 Oct. 2024.
  69. 83Plays, Radio and Film; Ralph Vaughan Williams List of WorksThe Ralph Vaughan Williams Society
  70. 84BookSprechen Sie Attisch? : Moderne Konversation in altegriechischer Umgangssprache, nach den besten attischen AutorenE. Joannides — C.A. Kochs Verlagsbuchhandlung (H. Ehlers) — 1902
  71. 85BookἎρ' ἀττικίζεις; – Sprechen Sie Attisch? Moderne Konversation in altgriechischer UmgangsspracheE. Joannides — Buske — 2012
  72. 86BookDo You Speak Attic Greek?E. Joannides — Aristophanic Cloud Publishing — 2025
  73. 87On Translating Aristophanes: Ends and Means, Alan H. Sommerstein, Greece & Rome, Oct. 1973, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Oct. 1973), pp. 140–154 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical
  74. 88Transposing Aristophanes: The Theory and Practice of Translating Aristophanic Lyric, James Robson, Second Series, Vol. 59, No. 2 (October 2012), pp. 214–244 Published by: Cambridge University Press on
  75. 89Greek SocietyAntony Andrewes — Pelican Books — 1981
  76. 90Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1Aristophanes — Oxford University Press — 1906
  77. 91BookThe Frogs and Other PlaysDavid Barrett — Penguin Books — 1964
  78. 92BookThe Birds and Other PlaysPenguin Classics — 2003
  79. 93BookAristophanes and Athenian Society of the Early Fourth Century B.C.Ephraim David — Brill — 1984
  80. 94BookAristophanic ComedyK. J. Dover — University of California Press — 1970a
  81. 95BookAristophanes, The CloudsK. J. Dover — Oxford University Press — 1970b
  82. 96JournalAristophanes' comic poeticsAnthony T. Edwards — 1991
  83. 97BookThe Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman ComedyMichael Fontaine et al. — Oxford University Press — 2014
  84. 98BookAristophanes in Performance 421 BC – AD 2007: Peace, Birds and FrogsEdith Hall et al. — Legenda (Oxford) — 2007
  85. 99The Cambridge History of Classical Literature: Greek LiteratureE. Handley — Cambridge University Press — 1985
  86. 100Poetae Comici GraeciRudolf Kassel et al. — De Gruyter (Berlin) — 1984
  87. 101PlatoW. R. M. Lamb — Loeb Classical Library — 1975
  88. 102The Oxford History of the Classical WorldP. Levi — Oxford University Press — 1986
  89. 103BookAristofane e la coscienza feliceDonato Loscalzo — Edizioni dell'Orso — 2010
  90. 104BookWaspsDouglas M. MacDowell — Oxford University Press — 1978
  91. 105BookThe Clouds: An Annotated TranslationMarie C. Marianetti — University Press of America — 1997
  92. 106The Songs of AristophanesL. P. E. Parker — Oxford University Press — 1997
  93. 107Aristophanes' Old-and-new ComedyKenneth J. Reckford — UNC Press — 1987
  94. 108The Acharnians of AristophanesW. Rennie — Edward Arnold (reproduced by Bibliolife) — 1909
  95. 109AristophanesRalph Rosen — University of Pennsylvania Press (Penn Greek Drama Series) — 1999
  96. 110BookEncyclopedia of Greek and Roman MythologyLuke Roman et al. — Infobase Publishing — 2010
  97. 111BookBrill's Companion to the Reception of AristophanesNiall Slater — Brill — 2016
  98. 112Aristophanes and the Definition of ComedyM. S. Silk — Oxford University Press — 2002
  99. 113BookAristophanes the Democrat: The Politics of Satirical Comedy During the Peloponnesian WarKeith Sidwell — Cambridge University Press — 2009
  100. 114Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The CloudsAlan Somerstein — Penguin Books — 1973
  101. 115Clouds, Wasps, Birds By AristophanesIan Storey — Hackett Publishing — 1998
  102. 116BookThe Facts on File Companion to Classical DramaJohn E. Thorburn — Infobase Publishing — 2005
  103. 117The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman TheatreGonda Van Steen — Cambridge University Press — 2007
  104. 118Classical QuarterlyD. Welsh — 1983
  105. 119BookThe Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic ComedyJeffrey Henderson, Professor of Classics at University of Southern California — Oxford University Press — 1991
  106. 120BookAristophanes: A StudyGilbert Murray — Oxford University Press — 1933
  107. 121BookAristophanes and the Carnival of GenresCharles Platter — JHUP — 2006
  108. 122BookAristophanes and WomenL. K. Taaffe — Routledge — 1993
  109. 123BookAristophanesRobert Glenn Ussher — Clarendon Press — 1979

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