Aristophanis Comoediae

by Aristophanes

Aristophanis Comoediae
Title not held by The Wolf Law Library at the College of William & Mary.
Author	Aristophanes
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Published	Leipzig?:
Date	1710
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Volumes	volume set
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Lipsiensis: 1710.

Aristophanes was a celebrated poet and comic playwright who lived in ancient Athens during the latter half its Golden Age and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Little is known about Aristophanes’s life except from what is written in his plays, poetry, and other texts and from Plato’s dialogs which make reference to him. From Aristophane's play, Clouds, it is inferred that he was born around 450 B.C. at a time when Pericles was expanding Athens from a polis into an empire. In The Symposium Plato features Aristophanes as one of many famous guests at the home of Agathon the poet. He is portrayed as a jokester who is hung over from the previous evening and delights other guests with his sharp wit as well as his hiccups and sneezes. Yet it is clear that Plato held Aristophanes in high esteem. When Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse asked Plato for information regarding the culture and political institutions of Athens, Plato is said to have sent him Aristophanes's comedies.

Eleven of the forty plays attributed to Aristophanes exist today. The eleven surviving comedies are: The Acharnians (425 BC), The Knights (424 BC), The Clouds (419 BC - 416 BC), The Wasps (422 BC), Peace (421 BC), The Birds (414 BC), Lysistrata (411 BC), Thesmophoriazusae (411 BC), The Frogs (405 BC), Ecclesiazusae (392 BC), and Wealth (388 BC). Nine of the plays were written during the Peloponnesian War and their plots are grounded in the real battles and political strife that took place between Aristophanes's Athens and its oligarchic rival, Sparta.