Aristophanes (ca. 446 BC - 385 BC)
Biographical note
Aristophanes was a Greek comic poet, famous for writing plays, especially comedies such as The Birds for the two Athenian festivals: the Dionisia and the Lenea. Many of his plays were political, and he is known to have been prosecuted for Athenian law's equivalent of libel more than once. A famous comedy, The Frogs, was given the unprecedented honor of a second perfomance.
He appears in Plato's Symposium, giving a humorous mythical account of the origin of Love. The Clouds pokes fun at famous figures, notably Socrates, and may have contributed to the common conception of the philosopher as a Sophist. Lysistrata was written during the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta and presents a pacifist theme in a comical manner: the women of the two states deprive their husbands of sex until they stop fighting. This play was later illustrated at length by Pablo Picasso
Works
- The Eleven Comedies
- The Acharnians [ read | download ]
- The Birds [ read | download ]
- The Clouds [ read | download ]
- The Ecclesiazusae [ read | download ]
- The Frogs [ read | download ]
- Lysistrata [ read | download ]
- The Knights [ read | download ]
- Peace [ read | download ]
- Plutus [ read | download ]
- The Thesmophoriazusae [ read | download ]
- The Wasps [ read | download ]
