The Greek Classics: Aristophanes-Eleven Plays

by Aristophanes, James H. Ford (Editor)

Aristophanes wrote about 40 comedies. The 11 presented here survive. Renowned as a satirical wit, his comedies are almost modern in their irreverent look at society. No subject was too elevated for his critical insight & sharp barbs. He poked fun at pomposity. His bawdy humor still irks some moralists.
The Knights 424 BCE Attacks the political leader Cleon's war policy.
The Acharnians 426 Satirizes the war & makes fun of Euripides.
Peace 422 The same theme enlarging on peace's blessings.
Lysistrata 411 A burlesque conspiracy by women to force peace.
The Clouds 423 Satirizes Sokrates, Sophists & the New Education.
The Wasps 422 Makes fun of Athenian litigiousness.
The Birds 414 Describes a new & improved city, Cloudcuckootown.
The Frogs 405 A satire on Euripides & the New Tragedy.
The Thesmophoriazusae 412 Another literary satire of Euripides.
The Ecclesiazusae 392 Pokes fun at utopias like Plato's Republic.
Plutus 408 & 388 A whimsical allegory more than a regular comedy.
These plays were satire's foundation. Using humor to make political & philosophical points against persons & institutions too powerful for direct attack, they exemplify the witty ingenuity of the Greeks.

Genres: Classics, Plays, Drama, Fiction, Literature, Poetry, Ancient

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 389

About the author

Aristophanes (Greek: Αριστοφάνης; c. 446 – c. 386 BC) was an Ancient Greek comic playwright from Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. These provide the most valuable examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are used to define it, along with fragments from dozens of lost plays by Aristophanes and his contemporaries.
Also known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates, although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher.
Aristophanes' second play, The Babylonians (now lost), 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 and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights, the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through that play's Chorus, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all."

Reviews

[Nathan Jerpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a review of the Bantam edition from the 80s, which contains all eleven surviving plays with translations by -

B. B. Rogers (1829-1919) x 4
R. H. Webb (1882-1952) x 3
Jack Lindsay (1900-1990) x 2
Moses Hadas (1900-1966) x 2 (also the editor)

First off, GR friends help me out here, where can I find more poetry like this? I've never seen anything like it. Does Aristophanes have any heirs in English? The editor cites Rogers as the first English translator who does him justice, but as far as I can tell all four of them are wizards. The verse is exuberant. It overflows with puns and metaphor and potty humor that is totally top-shelf. The meter often dazzles in a way that makes things even funnier.

Imagine a pair of iambic sixteen syllable monsters that are expected to rhyme. The first line ends unexpectedly on an unusual note and there's no way that circuitous second can make it back around to the end without collapsing, can it? Let alone rhyming with the first and it's a stretch but hey! he pulls it off, what a relief. But here's the next actor riposting with a couplet of his own and wham! that pops too, back and forth each one wilder than the one before it and it's like a dirty neverending limerick, pure madness. You probably can't tell where Aristophanes ends and the translation begins unless you have Greek, but I really don't care. At this point I'm more interested in the overall reading experience than any slavish fidelity to the original.

That said I think most readers will benefit by having the right groundwork before they tackle this. I first tried it a couple of years ago and I had to put it back and regroup. As with Aesychlus, Sophocles, etc. some knowledge of Greek mythology helps, however a bit of background in 5th century Athenian politics also plays a large role as these comedies are more topical than what you'll find in Greek tragedy. The Peleponnesian War is a frequent theme, and many statesmen of the day are called out to be lampooned by the comic master. If you need a brushup I can recommend Freeman's Egypt Greece and Rome as well as The Life of Greece by Durant, which is an oldie but goodie.

Poetry aside the premises of these plays are ingenious and hilarious. In The Acharnians Dicheapolis is so tired of war with Sparta that he decides to go propose his own private peace with the enemy. In Birds we have the sky fortress Cloudcuckooland causing trouble as it gets in the way of the smoke that rises up for sacrifices to Olympus. Plus it has talking birds. Lysistrata is probably the funniest and baudiest of all, based on the simple premise that the war will end if all the women band together in a promise to withhold sex from their husbands.

So again, where can I find more poetry like this? The hunt is on. In the meantime there is a newer collection of these eleven plays translated by -

Paul Roche (1916-2007)

which I am looking forward to. He seems to take more liberties with the text, but as I found his translation of Aesychlus' Oresteia to be downright thunderous, I am willing to trust him.


24 October 2014 -

Just finished the new translations by Paul Roche of all 11 plays. A disappointment overall. The language is more modern than Rogers et al, but I don't think that's the problem. The jokes don't pop and sparkle like I'd hoped. Roche here seems to have sacrificed rhythm for clarity.

I did however benefit from the numerous annotations in this edition. Without them I could have died without knowing that Miletus was once famous for exporting leather dildoes.



2 June 2015 -

Reread of the Bantam armed with Pickard-Cambridge's Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy. Better feel now for the anaepestic choruses and parabases, and how Dionysius has an attack of diarrhea when he goes down to Hades.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Norii
In comedia "Norii", Strepsiades, inglodat in datorii in special din cauza pasiunii fiului sau Phidippides pentru cai si cursele de cai, se hotaraste sa se duca la Socrate in Ganditoriu (Thoughtery) sa invete cum sa produca argumente false pentru a reusi sa scape de creditori. Atat Strepsiades cat si fiul sau ajung sa invete cum e cu argumentarea falsa, incat pana la urma ajung sa isi certe unul cu celalalt (Phidippides gasind un argument la intrebarea - Daca este ok ca fiul sa isi bata tatal) si Strepsiades infurit da foc la Ganditoriu cu Socrate in el cu tot.

Aristofan are o pozitie ironica vis-a-vis de filozofie si de diversele jocuri de cuvinte reprezentate de diversele argumente. Socrate este pus intr-o lumina mai mult decat haioasa. Cand Strepsiades intra in Ganditoriu, este dus de discipol la marele Socrate suspendat intr-un cos.


S: Socrates! my little Socrates!

So: Mortal, what do you want with me?

S: First, what are you doing up there? Tell me, I beseech you.

So (pompously): I am traversing the air and contemplating the sun [...] I have to suspend my brain and mingle the subtle essence of my mind with this air, which is of the like nature, in order clearly to penetrate the things of heaven

In plus, la un moment dat the Chorus-leader il numeste pe Socrate great high-priest of subtle nonsense

Piesa de fata este extrem de utila pentru orice se simte intimidat de filozofia lui Platon (asa ca mine), unde Socrate este personajul principal, prezent in multe dialoguri. Aristofan ia in derandere toata aceasta filozofie, toata aceasta joaca cu cuvintele, incercand sa o foloseasca pentru niste scopuri concrete, pamantene (scaparea de datorii prin folosirea unor rationamente false menite sa ii incurce pe creditori).
In plus am avut ocazia sa intru in viata de zi cu zi a omului de rand din Grecia antica. Strepsiades este un taran nu foarte bogat, care sa casatoreste bine cu o nevasta obisnuita cu luxul. Fiul sau este pasionat de cai si de cursele de cai, motiv pentru care Strepsiades ajunge sa se indatoreze de foarte multi bani (plus ca trebuia sa ii asigure nevestei un trai cu care aceasta era obisnuita).

Norii sunt:
So: They are the Clouds of heaven, great goddesses of the lazy; to them we owe all, thoughts, speeches, trickery, roguery, boasting, lies, sagacity
Strep: Ah! that was why, as I listened to them, my mind spread out its wings; it burns to babble about trifles, to maintain worthless arguments, to voice its petty reasons, to contradict, to tease some opponent


all these idlers whom the Clouds provide a living for, because they sing them in their verses

Cearta finala dintre Phidippides si tatal sau este amuzanta iar argumentele fiului de ce ar trebui sa isi bata tatal, pornind de la argumentele tatalui de ce fiul este batut cand este mic dovedeste ca totusi invataturile lui Socrate au avut efect.

5 stele pentru invataturile care se pot extrage din carte, pentru faptul ca e distractiva, bine scrisa, intr-un ritm alert. In afara de asta, as reciti-o si maine din nou. Mi-a placut mult de tot.

PS: Oare de aici vine expresia " a fi cu capul in nori"?????

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection contains all eleven of Aristophanes' surviving comedies. Nowhere else are you likely to discover what the Athenian Man in the Street is thinking during the Peloponnesian War. At one point, in Plutus, we have a list of the things that the average Athenian craved the most. They included, in order: loaves, literature, sweets, honor, cheesecakes, manliness, dried figs, ambition, barley meal, command, and pea soup.

The two main themes that run across the comedies are a strong desire for peace (The Acharnians and Peace) and women taking over because the men have made such a hash of things (Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae). Socrates is taken down a peg in The Clouds; and we learn that making all good men wealthy can have untoward side-effects in Plutus. We hear men, women, gods, servants, housebreakers, scroungers, and even birds speak their minds.

I wish there were more current translations in this collection, which was first published in 1962, but, unfortunately, that is not likely in today's book-publishing environment. Still, the collection is edited by Moses Hadas, one of the great classicists of yesteryear. And old translations can be just as readable as newer ones, even if the language is more archaic.

If you have any interest in ancient Greece, this is a collection you must own and dip into from time to time, if for no other reason than to remind you that the men and women of Periclean Athens were human beings, just like you and me.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I have not read all the plays contained in the book, I thought I would start a review page and add each play's review as I go. Aristophanes (henceforth 'A') wrote what is called 'Old Comedy' in Ancient Greece. He lived at the time of Socrates. If you like modern day Monty-Python, you will like A. His comedy is very frequent in dialogue, often juvenile, and sex or 'potty' related. Greek plays usually have 'choruses' where a group of people would turn to the audience and sing, usually foreshadowing events to come or even making a speech to the audience or the judges on the playwright's behalf. Actors were always male even if the character was female, and wore masks. A's plays are usually of satire on prominent figures in Greece, such as Socrates himself in 'The Clouds'. Hero-type characters also walked on stilts, towering over the audience (this is important to know while you're reading A, or Shakespeare, that reading a play is only half the intended experience: it is supposed to be a PLAY, so while you read you must imagine the stage and the visual, auditory presentation, the actors moving back and forth speaking their lines, exiting stage, etc).

'The Frogs'
This play I thought was OK, perhaps 3 stars out of 5. The main plot is that the characters (a man and his slave - hilarious duo!) complain that all the great Greek poets have died, and they must go down to Hades and ask him in the Underworld if they can have one back (Euripides or Aeschylus). The first half of the play is great, traditional A comedy which is like a modern Monty-Python style. In this part the main characters get ready for the journey. The second half contains the descent into the Underworld where a lot of Frogs are singing, and a debate between Aeschylus and Euripides on who was the better playwright (ie. who should be chosen to return to Earth). This section the comedy drops a bit and (I imagine if staged) would be more a spectacle part of the play (singing, dancing, flashyness, etc). Overall 3/5, which is an averaged of 4/5 for first half and 2/5 of last half.

'The Clouds'
This play is good, 4/5 stars. It maintains A comedy throughout (note English versions today are heavily censored and reduce or eliminate many of the original sex and potty jokes). The main plot is the main character's son and wife have put the family in debt and the father wishes to learn from the Sophists, Socrates included, in order to manipulate the creditors into relieving their debts. The play is basically a 'roast' of Socrates, portraying him as an atheist, an odd fellow, and as part of the Sophists which he historically was not. There is also some discussion of whether Socrates' portrayal as a teacher and radicalizer of the young (which was true in many ways) contributed to his indictment and later execution via hemlock in his famous 'Trial' as described in Plato's Apology. Choruses speak to the audience, especially the judges to attempt to receive a higher judgement prize on the play (it ended up being awarded 3rd place). The most interesting dialogue in the play is the ubiquitous and timeless debate of ethics, how should I live: between the traditional/conservative old ways of virtue, chastity, honour, moderation, etc., and the new ways where often youth rebel from the old ways and wish to live life unlimited, riotous, and hedonistic. The irony is the father himself abandons traditional values by sending his son to learn manipulation, a dishonourable trait, and the son in-turn betrays his father, causing the father to return back to traditional values and find a way to repay his debts (honourably).

[Marquise · Rating 5 out of 5]

By far, my favourite Classical comedian.

[Elentarri · Rating 4 out of 5]

NOTE:  This review refers specifically to Aristophanes:  The Complete Plays:  a New Translation by Paul Roche , published by New American Library in 2005 [ISBN: 9780451214096]

I haven't read any other translations and can't read the original Greek versions, but (in my opinion) Paul Roche has provided a perfectly legible and understandable translation of all Aristophanes' plays currently available to us.

The Athenian, comic playwright Aristophanes was born c. 446 and died c. 386 BC.  He is generally described as “the father of comedy” and “the greatest ancient comic writer.”   Aristophanes wrote 40 plays, of which only 11 survive complete to this day.  Aristophanes avidly displays his opposition to war (the current politics of the day), as well as his dislike certain politicians, in the majority of his plays.  The majority of comedy in these plays derives from sexual and scatological humour (some things just don't change in 2500 years 🙄).

This compilation of Aristophanes' complete existing plays starts with an introduction, which tells the reader something about Aristophanes, his plays, and the translation.  Each play also has an introductory section which provides brief summaries of the theme, the story, characters, context of the play, and any other pertinent information.  The book also includes extremely useful footnotes (!!!), as opposed to end notes, which makes it so much more pleasant to read without having to flip backwards and forwards.  It is also useful to remember that Aristophanes' plays were written in verse and that music and dance paralleled the words.  The plays themselves are generally entertaining and witty.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm doing a project where I'm discussing each of the surviving Greek plays in a Youtube video (at https://www.youtube.com/c/TheatreofPhil). I've completed my Aristophanes videos, which are linked at the end of each review below. My video about Aristophanes himself is at: https://youtu.be/ktdjsyJof1E.

Birds: This play is really a delight to read, even though much of it is difficult because a lot of the jokes rely on contemporary references to people or events. But the poetry is lively, with a great use of both end and internal rhyme--obviously, this version is in English translation, but from what the introduction said the author has tried to preserve Aristophanes' musical quality. In terms of the story, this is about a couple of Athenians who leave the city with its rules, regulations, and constant bickering over the legal system to try and find a utopian paradise. When they encounter a king who has transformed into a bird, they hit on the idea of a bird-city-state in the sky, which would exist between the earthly realm of humans and the Olympian realm of the gods, thus cutting off commerce between the two realms. They would starve the gods of sacrificial smoke, and end humanity's ability to call on the gods for help--and this position would allow the birds to take their "rightful" (according to the Athenian Pisthetaerus) place as the true rulers of existence. This plan works out remarkably well, though the city is repeatedly plagued by unwelcome guests either trying to swindle the birds in some way or trying to join them for opportunistic reasons.
https://youtu.be/WypMXjIemdg

Lysistrata: Perhaps the best known Greek comedy, Lysistrata is an excellent example of how cultural contexts matter for humor. The sexual innuendo and jokes about lust, penis size, blue balls, etc. still work for us today, but the deeper political satire that probably would have struck a 5th century BCE Athenian audience no longer plays. Aristophanes' original audience would have found it absurd that women could play a political role, taking over the acropolis, commandeering the treasury, dictating military decisions, etc. because in Athenian democracy women had no actual role. They were not citizens, could not speak in the assembly, could not sit on juries, could not own property, etc. So, the idea that a group of women could take over not just Athens but effectively all of Greece and assert their political will would be bizarre and potentially unsettling to Athenian men deeply invested in a stridently patriarchal culture.
https://youtu.be/gr8MrBrwHrg

Acharnians: A play about why peace is preferable over war, which was a fitting moral during the Peloponnesian War. Acharnians tells the story of a man named Dicaeopolis who gets tired of the war, which he believes was begun for foolish reasons anyway, and decides to sign his own peace treaty with the Spartans. So, Dicaeopolis gets peace, while the rest of the Athenians--primarily General Lamachus--still have to fight, and they don't get any of the benefits of Dicaeopolis' trade with the Megaran and Boeotian traders, both of whom come and trade pleasant commodities with Dicaeopolis. By the end of the play, the contrast is starkly illustrated when Lamachus is called back to war, where he gets injured, while Dicaeopolis has a lovely feast and two flute girls for company.
https://youtu.be/vOmcbG059-A

Knights: The introduction to this play says it is a play attacking Cleon, who came to power in Athens after Pericles died. And it definitely is that, as there are some clear references to Cleon, including a reference to the mask-makers refusal to make a mask resembling him. However, this also strikes me as a fundamentally anti-democratic play across the board, as much of the action revolved around the conflict between Paphlagon and the Sausageman over who can flatter, bribe, and lie to Demos most (a character named Demos, who also symbolically stands in for the citizenry of the Athenian polis). Neither Paphlagon nor the Sausageman deny this, in fact they repeatedly announce it as their strategy to win Demos over to their side, and Demos acknowledges that they're trying to trick him but that he will accept the gifts and services as long as it benefits him--which in fact is reminiscent of something Plato says in the Republic, about the demos being like a fickle young man who dallies with leaders until he gets bored with them.
https://youtu.be/7_XK1KEiD3k

Clouds: This is not one of my favorite Aristophanes plays, in large part because I tend to like to Sophists, which is the group this play largely attacks. Aristophanes is pretty conservative (which in ancient Athens meant he was skeptical of democracy and leaned more toward the old values of Homeric myth), and he opposed the new approach to education created by the Sophists--an approach based on rhetoric, which rejected the idea that truth is inherently more persuasive than untruth. In many ways, they were early postmodernists (which I also identify with). But basically, Clouds is about a man who wants to get out of the debts that his son has run up, so he decided to go to Socrates' school of Sophists (although Socrates was a bitter enemy of the Sophists, if Plato's account is accurate) and learn to persuade his creditors that he doesn't actually owe them any money. But the man is unable to retain the techniques, so he forces his son to go to the school. But when the son learns Sophistic rhetoric he turns it against his father to persuade the father that it's justified when his son beats him.
https://youtu.be/G_h_n8JtNQc

Wasps: Another anti-democratic play, Wasps centrally concerns the Athenians' love of trying legal cases. For most of us today, this isn't obviously anti-democratic because we don't really think of the judiciary as a principle arm of democracy, but for the Athenians it was. There was not a formal judicial apparatus with loads of precedent and set law and whathaveyou, cases were tried primarily on the basis of rhetoric and persuasion, where the defense and the prosecution would each make their case to a crowd of citizens, who would then vote on guilt or innocence--in other words, the process worked the same way that democratic decisions about military, economic, and other political matters were taken. In this play, not only does Bdelycleon persuade his father that judging for the state is wrong and slavish, Aristophanes also stages a satire of a court proceeding where one dog "sues" another for eating a block of cheese. It's a direct mockery of the Athenian judicial system that was such a central part of strengthening democratic and egalitarian principles like equality before the law, which were completely absent in most other parts of the ancient world.
https://youtu.be/-tBj67FwqgM

Peace: This play is really interested in things like farming, wine making, and feasting on hearty rustic fare--a prelude to the pastoral genre. The play tells of Trygaeus, who rides to Olympus on a giant flying dung beetle to find out why the gods are allowing so much war in Hellas. When he arrives, Hermes informs Trygaeus that War has buried Peace in the ground and the other gods have gone to the highest part of the sky so they won't have to bother with humanity. Trygaeus persuades Hermes to let him and the Chorus of farmers to dig Peace up, at which point she sends her two handmaids back to earth, one to be Trygaeus' bride (in a wedding that ends the play) and the other to go to the Attic council. Like Acharnians or Lysistrata, this is definitely an anti-war play, emphasizing the manifold benefits of peace over strife. Here, however, the focus is a rural one, claiming the benefits of things like farming, harvest festivals, delicious food, etc.
https://youtu.be/imgoqNsg4GA

Thesmophoriazusae: This is one of Aristophanes' more overtly metatheatrical/metadramatic plays, with Euripides as a main character. The women of the Thesmophora (a religious festival) decide to put Euripides on trial--or more accurately, decide how to punish him because they start from the assumption that he's guilty--for defaming the female gender, as well as for questioning the gods. Euripides finds out about this trial and sends his cousin Mnesilochus under cover as a woman to speak on his behalf. The scene where Euripides dresses Mnesilochus is one of the most striking metatheatrical moments because it is an act of costuming. Then when Mnesilochus inevitably gets caught, he tries to get Euripides to rescue him by playing various roles from Euripides' plays.
https://youtu.be/wpNkBBClTOo

Frogs: Another metatheatrical play, Frogs is about Dionysus' journey into the underworld to retrieve Euripides and bring the dramatist back to life to save the sanctity of tragedy. Interestingly, even the journey itself is metatheatrical, with several instances where Dionysus and his servant switch clothes alternately pretending to be Heracles. But the real metatheatre begins once Dionysus arrives in the underworld, where he learns that the greatest poet gets a special seat at Pluto's side, and that seat is contested between Aeschylus (who has held the seat since his death) and the recently deceased Euripides who now challenges for it. It's decided that Dionysus will judge a contest between the two to determine who is the better poet, and each dramatist makes his case for the superiority of his own work and the deficiency of the other. Euripides largely critiques Aeschylus' linguistic complexity and simplistic morality, while Aeschylus attacks his rival's low diction and promotion of immoral characters despite the consequent erosion of Athenian virtues. Euripides stands for truth, Aeschylus for virtue.
https://youtu.be/w7xN8EjGvBg

Ecclesiazusae: This late play is a rather tawdry and squalid affair compared to the wit and humor of many of Aristophanes' earlier plays. Much of the humor is rather low scatological or sexual humor, often leaving more of a bad taste than an admiration for Aristophanes' inventiveness. That being said, the play is interesting because of its comprehensive attack on democracy through the guise of women sneaking into the ekklesia (the citizen's government) and voting themselves complete power over the Athenian state, which they then turn into a kind of dystopian version of communism/a commune, where the main problem seems to center on young men being made to have sex with old, ugly women. However, Aristophanes' critiques of democracy are also more pointed than this because he attacks the decision-making of the ekklesia by having characters claim they must be drunk to pass some of the laws, or by pointing to quick changes in laws or how bad laws were enthusiastically adopted until it became clear how bad they were.
https://youtu.be/uLl7iXP7gZM

Plutus: The introduction in this edition claims this is the only surviving example of Middle Comedy, and it's definitely a departure from all of Aristophanes' other plays--to the point where one wouldn't really think it's an Aristophanes play. Plutus is the god of wealth, but he's been blinded by Zeus, which is why he so often bestows fortune on the corrupt and the unjust rather than the honest and just. But when Chremylos and his slave Cario (an early version of the wise slave figure who appears in New Comedy and Roman comedy) find the god they decide to restore his sight if he'll reward the honest and impoverish the corrupt. They decide to take Plutus to Asclepius' temple, but before they can go they debate Poverty who claims that she's the reason people work and produce the good everyone needs to live. This debate strikes me along the same lines as medieval allegories like Everyman, Mankind, or Wit and Science. Then when Plutus' sight is restored, he distributes wealth to the just and poverty to the wicked, and the remainder of the play is spent with good people coming to praise the god and bad people coming to complain. The other group that comes to complain are the gods, either in their own personages (Hermes comes) or through their priests, because people are no longer sacrificing to the gods to bring them wealth.
https://youtu.be/DT0Sm7-kB2o

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like to think of Old Comedy as something like Monty Python and New Comedy as more Three's Company. Aristophanes is our best evidence of the former type: emphasis on topical political debate, direct attacks on persons in the polis, an uncensored scatological and sexual interest, handling of unreal and mythological settings and characters.

The most abiding interest here is protest against the Peloponnesian War, which shows up in all eleven plays in one way or another. Other interests are the distribution of wealth (Ecclesiazusae and Plutus), developments in arts & learning (Clouds and Frogs), law (Wasps), gender and the rights of women (Thesmophoriazusae, Lysistrata, Ecclesiazusae), and the establishment of a utopia of sorts (Birds).

Plenty might be said about these texts individually. Aristophanes is kinda a crotchety jerk: too pious, too patriotic, too intolerant of difference. He has a roll call of standard victims to abuse, such as cowards in battle, political informants, demagogues, other playwrights, philosophers and rhetoricians, persons of whose sexual practices he disapproves, stereotypical foreigners, and so on.

One of the most salient things for me--and this occurs while reading Plato, too--is the relentless reference to texts that no longer exist--these plays are in a sense an inventory of loss, so much that was burned in the warfare against which Aristophanes lodged his unsuccessful protests, whether it was the Spartans or the Persians or the Romans or the Christians or the Nazis. Whoever burned up all the ancient works--fuck those guys.

[Combeferre · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't pretend to love Aristophanes' plays, but I do find them entertaining at times. However, my issue with this book is the translation specifically. Roche leaves out lines for no apparent reason, and mangles many of the jokes. Maybe this is just my bias as an American, but his choice to make the accented characters speak in Cockney is jarring at best. He occasionally translates sections well, but half of THOSE are followed by a footnote crediting the translation to Henderson of the Loeb editions. His footnotes on historical context are often wrong, expounding anecdotes from his youth or giving incorrect history. The redeeming quality of this version is that it collects all of Aristophanes' plays and is available for a good price. That's it.

[Linniegayl · Rating 1 out of 5]

I got through about four plays in this book and just had to stop. It's not that the comedies of Aristophanes aren't working for me, it's that I hate this more modern translation. Seriously, "bongo drums?" I just couldn't continue with this book. I've discovered I can download the out-of-copyright Loeb versions of the plays, and will stick with those.

[L.M.E · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think there will always be something slightly crazy and slightly unnerving about the bizarre plots of Ancient play-writers. Only 11 of 40 of Aristophanes (c.450-c.386 BC.) plays surviving wholly, and while they’re all influential in comedic scripts, it shows how interesting they must’ve been for the audiences since there were so many - and for that many to have been preserved is incredible.

This edition includes (as stated in the description):
-The Acharnians
-The Birds
-The Clouds
-Ecclesiazusae
-The Frogs
-The Knights
-Lysistrata
-Peace
-Plutus
-Thesmophoriazusae
-The Wasps

Not all of which I read to the extent I remember them thoroughly.

My favourite was Lysistrata, where women from many places but mostly Athens, decided to collide and deny their husbands sex in an attempt to calm them down - it didn’t completely work. Aristophanes’ phrases are translated in such a way you can’t really stop laughing at them, especially if you’re immature like I am while reading Ancient Greek playwriting. I wish I could see this performed.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, at first I was thinking of only giving this two stars, but it did grow on me. Other reviewers have commented on the weakness of the translation, and as they are familiar with Greek and I am not, I tend to defer to them. The main problem I had was Hadas' insisting on picking translations that rhymed, which may retain the sound of an original Greek play but sacrifices the meaning and context - in general the rhyming comes out sounding very amateurish also, although some of the translations are better than others. Hadas' introductions to each play are infuriatingly short, and there are no footnotes or other efforts to explain either the meaning or the translations to the casual reader.

There were some plays here I enjoyed in spite of these problems, however. Particularly "Lysistrata," "Birds" and "Plutus" were quite enjoyable, and some of the others were interesting in broadening my understanding of what the author thought, putting these into better perspective. The famous "Lysistrata," for example, in which the women of Sparta and Athens go on a sex strike to end a war, has led some readers to believe Aristophanes was an early feminist - but "Thesmophoriazusae" and especially "Ecclesiazusae" will put that misconception to rest. He was something of a pacifist, however, and people ending wars is a recurring theme. The "Birds" is a sort of Utopian fantasy - but simultaneously a parody of Athenian democracy - in which a couple of self-exiled Athenians establish an ideal city in the sky, peopled mostly by avian citizens. Hadas comments that "Plutus" was particularly popular in the Byzantine period because it required little comment for context, and this applies here also - it is easy to understand without the information Hadas does not supply. The god of Wealth is encountered on the road and captured by two well-meaning farmers, who restore his sight so that Wealth may be shared among the good people, but human weaknesses bring this ideal situation down.

The main advantage of this volume is that it cheaply collects all of these classic dramas in one place. In order to read them, however, one would need an expensive non-fiction book on Aristophanes and/or Greek drama to supplement this.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aristophanes is the founder of dramatic comedy in Europe. His marks can be seen very clearly on Shakespeare, Moliére, and many other dramatists. It is his style that dominates writing for modern comedy revues and television shows such as "Saturday Night Live". Aristophanes was the great master of parody, sexual innuendo and slapstick who first showed us how to use gross buffoonery for public entertainment.
Unfortunately, Aristophanes was extremely topical which makes it difficult for a modern reader to enjoy his work. Instead of quickly laughing and moving forward, one has to read the notes to find out who is being parodied and what it is about the person or persons that has made Aristophanes so cross.
One quickly realizes that Aristophanes felt that the Peloponnesian War was a great error and that he was furious with those who he considered responsible for it. He is also highly critical of Euripides and Socrates two cultural figures that are greatly admired today. While it is not difficult to see Aristophanes rage, it is in most cases rather difficult to understand the point that he is trying to make.
I do not recommend reading all of the eleven plays by Aristophanes which have survived. However, it my view there are two that offer great amusement and which can be enjoyed without constantly consulting the footnotes: Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae. Lysistrata which is still occasionally performed tells the story of how the women of Athens conduct a sex striker in order to bring an end to the Peloponnesian War. In Ecclesiazusae the women of Athens seize control of the government and institute a communist regime. Not only is private property abolished but sexual relations are abolished. A man has the right to have sexual relations with any woman in the polis provided that he sleeps with all those that are uglier than the object of his desire first.
Those who do not enjoy filthy humour and are willing to struggle with footnotes might read The Birds and the Clouds instead in order to sample Aristophanes.

[Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are two strains of comedy: the comedy of situations and stories, and the comedy of satire which lampoons people and institutions. The first strains comes down to us from the New Comedy of Menander and the Roman playwrights through Shakespeare to the TV sitcoms of today. The second strain comes from Aristophanes and descends directly to the political comedy of Jon Stewart. As political comedy is often topical and ephemeral, reading the satires of earlier eras can be daunting and more work than fun. Reading political satire which is 2500 years old can be impossible.

After I completed my traversal of all the Greek Tragedies I turned to the works of Aristophanes in another translation and was soon stumped. Since then I have been looking for an edition that would have enough annotations to let me in on the jokes and to give me an inkling of why Aristophanes is revered as the greatest of the comic authors.

The volume is what I was looking for. Copious notes on obscure historical figures and references to the works of other playwrights being parodied really give the laymen a good feel for the anarchic brain of Aristophanes as well as a great sense of how these pieces must have played in the theater.

Reading the comedies is still more work that reading the tragedies, but if you are willing to do the work, this edition is very rewarding.

[Dmk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this edition of aristophanes plays, introduction (to Aristophanes and to each individual play) are informative enough to let you understan play but not too long. Plays are in order of them being made and every play is full of really informative footnotes.

But not all Aristophanes plays are good and maybe collection of his best known plays would suffice.

[Josh]

(This review is written after reading The Acharnians, The Knights, The Clouds, and The Wasps. I’ll read the rest after a break.)

These plays are guilty pleasures, but awfully important ones. Sure, you can analyze the elements of Old Comedy and how Aristophanes puts them to use, but it feels like you are spending more time analyzing the nice frame a painting is in, instead of the actual painting itself. The The Wasps and Old Comedy section on the Wikipedia page for The Wasps is so far from the joy and humor of everything about the play and its author to a frightening and almost pitiful extent. Its existence saddens me. The idea that this sort of extreme analyzation brings one any closer to the entity once known as The Wasps couldn't be more wrong.

It’s a shame that Aristophanes is not more widely read (I have not spotted a single Barnes & Noble in the state of Arizona that sells any plays by the man. Getting these plays—which were not for school!—involved a long trip to the lonely top floor of the Phoenix Burton Barr library to check them out). I believe it is more beautiful and important to know that people found poop jokes, dick jokes, and general nonsense to be entertainment twenty-five centuries ago, than anything any disconnected metaphysician had to say about the nature of the universe and human consciousness twenty-five centuries ago.

These plays are funny. The fact that human civilization is able to laugh— however guiltily it may be— at the same antics for over two and a half millennia, is important. In some shape or form. I can’t quite pin it down, but it feels comforting in a vague way. Maybe it makes us feel less lonely. This is beyond my scope.


Here are my thoughts on…


…The Acharnians

Aristophanes balances the seriousness of his politics (or, anti-politics) perfectly with the absurd.

It’s a wonder on how fourth-wall breaking started to be considered a modern phenomena, and how any example of it appearing in ancient literature has to be pointed out as being some great anachronism of the universe. Fourth-wall breaking, including long speeches to the audiences were expected in Old Comedy. It’s just what they did.

The gag involving Dikaiopolis offering the Boeotian merchant an informant in a trade looks like to me an extremely early precursor to a modern racist joke, where the multi-cultural crew of a sinking ship (sometimes falling airplane) is instructed to throw off something they have too much of in their country, which punchlines with the member of a majority group tossing off a member of a minority group.

…The Knights

Oh boy, Aristophanes has axes to grind! The incessant, bordering-on-cruel harassment of political enemies in this play is humorous in its sheer overabundance— can one man really be that pissed off? This play requires the most necessary footnotes carrying historical tidbits for the play’s enjoyment, but it is still rewarding. To have seen this play performed with a steaming, enraged Cleon in the audience would have been priceless.

…The Clouds

Ah, a favorite topic of mine: the mockery of philosophers! This is the most immediately funny play I’ve yet read.

While “those crazy rebellious kids” is a universal and timeless predicament, some of the arguments and complaints brought up in this play fall into Blue and Orange Morality. It’s interesting seeing how different conservatism looked back in Ancient Greece compared to what it means in America, today. The argument to remain a follower of the “Good Reason” is tempting, when it means you get your very own girls and boys for your personal pleasures...

…The Wasps

This play reminded me of The Acharnians, in how in the former, one sets up a private marketplace on one’s home, free from the bumbling inefficient government’s intrusion, and how in the latter, a private court is set up on one’s home, free from the bumbling inefficient government’s intrusion. A wonderful cascade of nonsense falls after each alternative is set up— here, with a lawsuit of one dog on another (allegorical, of course), holding various inanimate kitchen utensils as witnesses. Unfortunately, without any sort of visual, the final third of the play is a little chaotic and hard to follow. I’ll try seeing if there is a good performance of this one floating around online.

Aristophanes arguments win a little too easily. Enemies give up, and the choruses (usually made out to be made up of stubborn straw men early on) are swayed to even their own disbelief halfway through each play. Aristophanes was probably a little over hopeful for the change he wanted to happen, knowing that history almost never followed the suggestions Aristophanes spoke so strongly about.

Speaking of unrelentless cruelty, Aristophanes has a running joke of constantly picking at Cleonymus (who apparently had made the mistake of dropping his shield and running away in fear in the middle of battle). It’s humorous to see how big of a deal Aristophanes is making of an event that seems rather tame to modern eyes, and how it can be brought up in the most irrelevant of situations mid-play. I look forward to seeing attacks on him in the remaining seven plays.

…The Translation

Oh dear. Aristophanes— as explained in Paul Roche’s introduction— is like the Shakespeare of Ancient Greece, when it comes to language creativity and manipulatioon. I’m always a sucker for translator’s woes and whines of their difficulties, but this is a special case. Aristophanes did coin the 171-letter whopper “Lopadotemakhoselakhogaleokranioleipsanodrimypotrimmatosilphio-
karabomelitokatakekhymenokikhlepikossyphophattoperisteralek-
tryonoptokephalliokigklopeleiolagōiosiraiobaphētraganopterýgōn” in his The Assembly Women, and credit must be given to any poor soul that dares attempt a crack at that one.

Paul Roche’s translation is one of those “written yesterday” translations, similar to the controversial Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf— but far, far worse. In The Acharnians, the word “frigging” is used. “Frigging.” Even though plenty of characters drop the F-bomb frequently… ”frigging.” I’m under the assumption that some creative (and very modern) cursing is necessary to fit in with the meter and rhyme (or as close as you can get in the English language), but in execution it’s just distracting. I’m sure the translation does replicate the initial feel and shock of the bawdiness of the plays for the modern reader, but at the same time it really does detract from the flow. Roche leaves in many obscure Ancient Greek references, with explanatory footnotes underneath. Which is fine! Perfectly fine! It's very questionable when he doesn't do this. In The Knights, the Athenians are accused of “humming pop songs while they sit by their Ouija boards.” (pg. 103). …what? I’m completely lost to what this could’ve been in the original. It would have been infinitely better to just leave whatever obscure ancient things were being mentioned by Aristophanes in, and just explain them at the bottom. Mentioning a board game invented in 1890 is absolutely bewildering. Roche is able to translate with humor intact (that is, if it isn’t new invented lines), and his plays are extremely readable, but at their worst, anachronistic and distracting. When translations are this easy and entertaining to read, I always begin to doubt the faithfulness to the source. Is the work I’m reading really the work of Aristophanes, or instead the work of some British guy? Who, sadly, passed away two years after this was published— the NYTimes obituary makes no mention of his work with Aristophanes, but does however comment on his repeated exploration of “the almost unbearable immediacy of the human experience,” an honor reserved for only a select deserving few in this world. This edition is definitely for lighter reading moreso than scholarly study— there aren't even line numbers. The best I can do is consult Wikipedia and other plot summaries to confirm that the Aristophanes I read is the same Aristophanes everyone else has read. Hurrah. But...it’d be nice to not have to worry.

[Robert Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have this anthology 5 stars mainly for the plays Lysistrata and Frogs, where Aristophanes gives women the power over men. Where Lysistrata is more of a comedic romp, Frogs is a little on the darker side. If you want to read some early comedic plays, this is the book to read.

[josé almeida · Rating 4 out of 5]

comprado para reler Lysistrata.
segue-se The Byrds

[Ekster Alven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gouden ster. Een genot, een van mijn favoriete boeken thans.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I appreciated most about this version of Aristophanes was the effort gone into the translation by Paul Roche. The Introduction briefly lays out Roche's difficulties in maintaining the subtilties from a polysyllabic language into one seldomly so. His attempt to faithfully translate the Greek results in a deliberate recreation of the assonance, consonance, alliteration and rhyme found in the original text. Roche's numerous footnotes help assure the reader that the spirit and content of the translation is faithful despite his use of modern colloquialisms (plus, I'm just a sucker for foonotes). For example, one of my favorite exchanges of this ancient Greek text...

_______

Cario, servant of Chremylus, confronting Plutus (the god of wealth) who is wandering blind and disguised:

CARIO: Look here,
are you going to let us know who you are
or must I use a little artificial stimulus?
Be quick about it,

PLUTUS: Go fuck yourself!

CARIO: [to CHREMYLUS:]: Did you gather who he said he is?

CHREMYLUS: He said it to you, not me,
and the way you approached him was rather rude and extremely
gauche.

[sidling up to PLUTUS all smiles:]

Good sir,
if straightforwardness and manners matter to you,
please tell us who you are.

PLUTUS: Fuck yourself-- you, too!
___________

A taste of Aristophanes comedic sensibilities, and a rather tame one at that. There's plenty of phallus pulling, ass jokes and other good-time crassness that even Andrew Dice Clay would consider good source material.

I never knew that 5th century Greece was such a bawdy place.


Other thoughts-

Ecclesiazusae (A Parliament of Women) a play about a communistic utopia that so acutley mirrors and parodies Plato's Republic that it calls into question the chronology of the ideas. The fact that the Republic would have to been published approximately 20 years after Aristophanes' play raises a chicken-or-the-egg situation. Did Plato build his philosophical ideas off of Aristophanes' comedy or were the issues such a common source of debate in 392 B.C. that both were responding to the current Athenian intellectual climate? An interesting question raised in the Oates & O'Neill edition and one to remember as I meander to Plato on the Great Books list.

Useful prayer before court...

HATECLEON, The Wasps:

O Lord Apollo, King, who's next my very door,
Deign to accept this novel ritual, King, for my father.
Cleanse the harshness and the hardness of his temper.
Sweeten his heart with the sweetness of a little honey
To deal with others more
Gently in everything,
And favor the accused rather than the accuser;
And let a tear drop for a pleader,
And abandon his bad temper
And draw the sting
Frin his anger.


*Note to self: get Athenian court waterclock as mentioned in The Wasps


In Lysistrata, is Aristophanes attempting to distance himself from Euripides' perceived misogyny (as mocked in his other plays) or is he simply laying the foundation to present Mnesilochus' mocking in Women at Thesmophoria Festival which was performed later in the same year 411 B.C?


If only Hitchcock could've done a version of Aristophanes' Birds.

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aristophanes is the great comic playwright of Ancient Greece, and set the standard and form of comedy in the Western World. Moreover, his plays are often cited in discussions of what ordinary life was like in the city of Athens in the times of Socrates. No less a figure than Plato accused Aristophanes' play The Clouds of contributing to the prosecution and death of Socrates. Aristophanes even appears in Plato's The Symposium as one of the guests. From The Birds we get the concept of Cloudcuckooland. His play Lysistrata was assigned me in high school (and I loved it by the way) but it was that Aristophanes was listed on 100 Significant books on Good Reading that gave me incentive to read the rest. In other words, yes, Aristophanes plays are one of those fundamental works any educated person should know--reason alone to become acquainted. But they're also fun--painless to read. Not stodgy--in fact often bawdy and inventive. In Peace his hero rides to Heaven--on a dung beetle. Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae are both anti-war and feminist--yes, really.

Or so it strikes me, although I'm sure there are scholars of the period who in a close analysis might find the misogyny of Ancient Greece peeking through--in say pointing out how women use sex and deception in Lysistrata to get their way. But what we have here is arguably Aristophanes greatest (certainly his most famous) play, with a strong female title protagonist, who leads women from warring states to form a sex strike to stop a war. What's not to love?

Well, yes, these plays feature topical satire that often does depend on the context of Athenian politics during the Peloponnesian War, so loads of annotations, footnotes is a good. So is a natural, flowing translation. (The first time I read Lysistrata, I found the way the translator gave the Spartan women a Scottish dialect rather bizarre.) But those two requirements aside, these are still capable of inspiring laughter.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the end of junior year in high school a number of us were taken on a field trip to the University of Chicago by, I think, Eric Edstrom, sponsor of my club, Tri-S (Social Science Society). At this point I had already had some contact with the university, having attended my first political demonstration there over a year before and having gone to a Phil Ochs concert on campus, not to mention innumerable visits to the Science and Industry Museum on its east end. The ersatz Gothic look and the wainscoted interiors were all very impressively collegiate. The students there seemed quite studious. The area bookstores were numerous. I imagined that a disproportionate fraction of them were Jewish which, to me, meant intellectual and that was a plus too. For some reason I've always very much wanted to please my father and marrying a leftist Jewish academic would, I was sure, meet with his approval, particularly if she led me along to a law degree and a career with the A.C.L.U.

In one of the area bookstores, perhaps the famous Coop, I picked up a used copy of Hadas' edition of Aristophanes' plays--a substantial paperback which seemed suited to the environment. I'd read Sophocles at this point and knew Aristophanes did comedy, but that was about it. While waiting for the group here and there I started perusing the thing, eyebrows raising. "Gosh, this is pornography!" I thought, somewhat embarrassed, somewhat excited, somewhat anxious to get home to get started.

I didn't go to Chicago. Instead I went to another school, Grinnell College, with a disproportionate fraction of Jews--and scholarly leftists too. I did, however, read all of Aristophanes--well, not the fragments (available from Loeb)--to discover he was not so much pornographic or erotic as bawdy, both scatologically and sexually.

[Cat Noe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of Nietzsche's recommendations. In a typically enigmatic passage, he mentions the fact that Plato kept a volume of Aristophanes beneath his pillow when he died, out of all the books he might have chosen. He said that perhaps, given the state of Greek society at the time, Plato needed his Aristophanes.

I've been spending too much time in Russia lately anyhow. Off to the library!

So far, some of the best comedy I've come across in ages. While it's definitely cruder than I'm typically amused by, the execution is so brilliant it had me laughing harder than I've laughed at anything in years, and that was just the first dozen or so pages.

Reading it more slowly than necessary, the better to enjoy the way a few pages have of brightening my day. Both Nietzsche and the translators of this volume have my eternal gratitude.

--------------

And two years later...
The duration of the reading speaks in favor of this book, rather than against it. Aristophanes has been firmly installed as one of my go-to comedians; he never fails to raise at least a chuckle, no matter my mood. The only pity is that, being dead, he's unlikely to produce much in the way of new material at this late date, and most things can only be read for the first time once.

I'll leave the volume as a solid five, though honestly there was a fair amount of variation between the plays. Frogs was obviously an instant favorite. Ecclesiazusae packed the hardest punch, if you've ever read the history of Athens. Lysistrata rather failed to catch my interest, so that was the low point of the venture. Birds too, can't really explain why, but I didn't like it as well as the rest. The humor is far more irreverent and bawdy than I typically prefer, but it melds well with the social and political commentary. Fantastically good reading.

[Andrea Rufo (Ann) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate ass humor so Aristophanes and I were at odds from the first fart. The last in the litany of Greek playwrights I am reading through, my friend Matt best captured how I felt about most of these plays when he called them "bawdy." I admit to blushing. I admit to feeling prudish. I admit to several re-reading of lines followed by "Oh my god!" and then quick glancing around the apartment to see if anyone had caught me reading this. No one had. I live alone.

But getting past my nervous prudish ways, I also found myself constantly rethinking the plays from a modern day perspective. Several plays concern themselves with the evils of war, with specific jabs against war-hungry generals/politicians who are appear anti-peace because peace does not help them amass wealth or prestige - a theme I find in our present wars and past administration. In this way it's interesting to me how not difficult it was to imagine a modern version of these plays, or to relate to present day audiences (though the swinging phallus may have to go).

I am still working through three of the plays which present commentary on women in society. These I would love to see a modern feminist take on. They present complicated tropes: that women are more apt at promoting peace, even potentially more effective at governance, certainly adept at planning period. And whether presented in humor or not, these have the dual effect of commenting on men as a race and society which is itself useful. And yet at the same time, Aristophanes' women seem sex-crazed, manipulative, and present primarily for humor (the laughing at you kind), so that it is hard to take any commentary seriously, that is, if I can find what the commentary is meant to be.

[Jen Well-Steered · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I liked about it: The Birds, which is about two friends who get sick of living in Athens and convince a former king who now lives as a bird to build a whole bird city in the sky for them, is pretty good because it's not about arcane political machinations and you can imagine people today feeling the same. Lysistrata, which is about the women of Greece staging a sex strike in order to force an end to the Pelopennesian war, is also pretty funny, especially the scene where some of the ladies get horny and keep trying to make all these excuses for why they need to go home. Finally, Thesmophoriazusae or more easily pronounced The Parliament of Women, where the women go off to a festival by themselves. The playwright Euripides, worried they're talking about them behind his back, sends a friend in disguised as a woman to spy on them. Inside, he discovers a democracy, complete with voting, committees and action plans, debating how to punish Euripides for his negative portrayals of women in his plays. Of course the women quickly discover the cross-dresser and arrest him, only agreeing to release him when Euripides promises to stop treating them so horribly in his works.

What I didn't like about it: I read the Bantam Classics edition, which not only uses anachronistic words like hamburger, it also translates all the parts for foreigners into a weird form of Scots English. Not only that, it completely lacks footnotes, so when someone or something unfamiliar is mentioned, not that surprising in a 2000 year old book of plays, you either have to turn to Wikipedia to figure it out or just skip over that bit.

http://omnibrowbooks.blogspot.com

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aristophanes was the master of ancient Greek comedy writing between 427 BC and 388 BC. The first thing that struck me was the bawdy humor. I was also surprised at some of the radical ideas in his plays (even if he is ultimately warning against some of these trends). There are the anti-war sentiments of "Acharnians", "Peace" and "Lysistrata". (Aristophanes like his heir Swift was a conservative arguing against war because it disrupted traditional society and trade. Quite the opposite of our modern day neo-con chicken hawks). In both "Lysistrata" and "Ecclesiazusae" (my 2 favorites), woman take over the government of Athens in a coup. And "The Clouds" airs the concerns of sophists and skeptics, with Socrates ironically playing the Sophist, in order to argue for a return to traditional religion. Most of the plays contain cross-dressing and scatalogical humor worthy of Monty Python. My favorite though is "Lysistrata". While the men are away at war, the woman of Athens take over the treasury and declare that they are withholding all sex until their husbands cease their stupid and costly war. Phallus jokes abound throughout the play like today's Kevin Smith or Judd Apatow movie! Can you really go wrong with a feminist anti-war play from 411 BC with non-stop penis puns? No, you can not.

[Mario · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plays were great, but some of the translations were awful. I'm not entirely sure who gets the credit for my rating, so I'll just split the difference.

The most offending translations, I think, were from Mosas Hadas (it's hard to remember since there were eleven plays by 4 different translators -- (Rogers, Webb, Hadas, & Lindsay)), but I think Hadas, the editor of my particular edition, was the worst offender. All of them attempted to translate in verse, which I appreciate, but that requires the translators to make broader interpretations, some of which were more successful than others. I should have taken notes while reading, but the most memorable example is from Hadas' translation of Clouds: "Chewing tobacco, revival meetings, chatauquas, Hoopskirts, fascinators, antimacassars!" I defy anyone to read that line and think, 'Ah, good old Ancient Greece.'

The real problem is that, while I will walk away with the general idea of the plays, I will have to reread each one (with different translators) if I actually want to get a sense of the real 5th & 4th century Greece, and any thoughts about Ancient Greece I might entertain now are potentially fraught with error. I resent that.

[max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aristophanes is funny, sometimes outrageously so. In the Ecclesiazusae ("The Assemblywomen," a.k.a. "The Women of Parliament"), for example, a group of women sneak into the Athenian Assembly (Ecclesia) disguised as men and succeed in getting a measure passed that allows women to run the government. Men can sleep with any women they please as a part of this new regime, but they must sleep with an ugly women first. Aristophanes then plays this comic premise for all it's worth, and the result is hilarious.

As a classical Greek author, he is no less important than giants such as Sophocles, Thucydides or Plato. Many of his choral songs are among the most beautiful in Greek poetry. He is an extremely important source for a lot of information about Athenian daily life in the fifth century. War, politics, food, sex, litigation, literary criticism, and much else: you will find these subjects covered in detail in his plays. If you read him you will learn a lot more about the Greeks -- the Athenians in particular -- than you might otherwise acquire from schoolbook treatments.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

My puppet-show creating partner and I have been reading through several of these 2400-year old plays for source material for a new show. They are still quite entertaining after all this time. Aristophanes, like Shakespeare, can write great comic dialogue with lots of clever back-and-forth, usually in the first scene of his plays to warm up the audience. Then, he attacks the issue at hand, generally his problems with the Athenian government or with society in general. Whether he's inventing literary criticism (like in Frogs) or anti-war activism (like in Peace), he's able to do it with such amazing wit and cleverness live on stage in front of an audience he respects enough to understand what he's saying. If he were alive today, he'd probably be making the best and most beloved television and films that failed miserably with a broader audience.

[Rebecca Manor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Aristophanes, the father of comedy, is so much fun. He’s earthy to the point of crudeness, hilarious, and utterly human. I didn’t read the entirety of The Complete Plays of Aristophanes by I did read Birds, Clouds, Peace, and Frogs. It was the perfect selection to begin to encapsulate Aristophanes’ worldview as Frogs takes place in the underworld, Birds is a world created between Mount Olympus, home of the gods, and earth, while Peace is the story of one all-too-human hero who makes his way from earth to heaven (on the back of a dung beetle) in order to entreat the gods to end the wars that are ravishing Greece. Each play is unique in its own way and thoroughly entertaining. I would love to be able to time travel back to see the original productions of these works.