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Four Plays: The Clouds/The Birds/Lysistrata/The Frogs
Whether his target is the war between the sexes or his fellow playwright Euripides, Aristophanes is the most important Greek comic dramatist—and one of the greatest comic playwrights of all time. His writing—at once bawdy and delicate—brilliantly fuses serious political satire with pyrotechnical bombast, establishing the tradition of comedy as high art. His messages are as timely and relevant today as they were in ancient Greece, and his plays still provoke laughter—and thought.
This volume features four celebrated Lysistrata, The Frogs, The Birds, and The Clouds , translated by three of the most distinguished translators and classicists of our time.
This volume features four celebrated Lysistrata, The Frogs, The Birds, and The Clouds , translated by three of the most distinguished translators and classicists of our time.
624 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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About the author
Aristophanes
1,850books710followersAristophanes (Greek: Αιστοφάνης; 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."
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."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 116 reviews
February 7, 2018
I don't want the Greeks brought to me, I want to be brought to the Greeks. If you modernise so much, and add all sorts of bits of your own invention, just to make a potentially "performable" play for a modern audience, what is left? I want the strangeness, the oddness, the Otherness....that is the whole point for me of reading this sort of thing...
January 2, 2015
I don't always love Aristophanes; he can really cram the obscure contemporary references into his stuff, which makes it sortof impossible to get the jokes. But he makes a lot of fart jokes, too, and those are timeless.
In order, the best of these plays:
1) Lysistrata, by a long shot. The most original of Aristophanes' ideas, and the most timeless: as recently as 2012, feminists sarcastically suggested a Lysistrata when the Republicans accidentally launched an ill-fated war on birth control. The story is that Athenian women conspire with Spartans to deny sex to their husbands until they end the war. That idea is simple, funny and filthy. (This is, depending on your translation, the first time dildos are mentioned in literature.)
2) The Birds, which I like to imagine animated in the Yellow Submarine style. Clean and well thought out.
3) Clouds, relevant because it's about Socrates, whom we know, and because it includes the best of Aristophanes' fart jokes - which is saying something since, as noted above, Aristophanes really likes fart jokes.
4) Frogs, which is mainly an argument between Aeschylus and Euripides about who's the best dramatist. (The play up til that climactic confrontation, which describes Dionysos disguised as Herakles journeying to the underworld to find a great poet, is faintly amusing but largely forgettable.) Aristophanes leaves Sophocles out, claiming that he's too dignified to bother with the whole charade (although one has to imagine that, however sweetly it's explained away, his absence has to betray Aristophanes' judgment). This was a lot of fun for me - and it's getting the most time here because I'm reading it right now, and realizing as I do that I never really reviewed the rest of them; I've done my best to write capsule reviews of those, but they're not what I'm thinking of at this moment. Anyway, I can't see the attraction for anyone who isn't pretty invested in both Aeschylus and Euripides. It contains what amounts to scholarly comparison of the metres of both poets; at times it sounds like a grad thesis.
Aeschylus appears to come out the winner here, but it does seems like all the best lines go to Euripides. Maybe this is just my own prejudice coloring my interpretation; I like Aeschylus, but I like the enfant terrible, tricky and rebellious Euripides better. To me, Aeschylus comes out pretty stodgy.
Aristophanes is aiming at, and concludes with, a more serious question for his time: should the politician Alcibiades be followed? Aeschylus says yes, Euripides says no. This is during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Greece. Alcibiades, a politician with an amazing capacity for joining whichever side happened to be winning - he had switched from Athens to Sparta to Persia back to Athens - would soon be exiled after some disastrous naval losses. (And Athens will, y'know, lose this war.) Aristophanes didn't know this yet (if I have the dates right here), but Euripides was right.
In order, the best of these plays:
1) Lysistrata, by a long shot. The most original of Aristophanes' ideas, and the most timeless: as recently as 2012, feminists sarcastically suggested a Lysistrata when the Republicans accidentally launched an ill-fated war on birth control. The story is that Athenian women conspire with Spartans to deny sex to their husbands until they end the war. That idea is simple, funny and filthy. (This is, depending on your translation, the first time dildos are mentioned in literature.)
2) The Birds, which I like to imagine animated in the Yellow Submarine style. Clean and well thought out.
3) Clouds, relevant because it's about Socrates, whom we know, and because it includes the best of Aristophanes' fart jokes - which is saying something since, as noted above, Aristophanes really likes fart jokes.
4) Frogs, which is mainly an argument between Aeschylus and Euripides about who's the best dramatist. (The play up til that climactic confrontation, which describes Dionysos disguised as Herakles journeying to the underworld to find a great poet, is faintly amusing but largely forgettable.) Aristophanes leaves Sophocles out, claiming that he's too dignified to bother with the whole charade (although one has to imagine that, however sweetly it's explained away, his absence has to betray Aristophanes' judgment). This was a lot of fun for me - and it's getting the most time here because I'm reading it right now, and realizing as I do that I never really reviewed the rest of them; I've done my best to write capsule reviews of those, but they're not what I'm thinking of at this moment. Anyway, I can't see the attraction for anyone who isn't pretty invested in both Aeschylus and Euripides. It contains what amounts to scholarly comparison of the metres of both poets; at times it sounds like a grad thesis.
Aeschylus appears to come out the winner here, but it does seems like all the best lines go to Euripides. Maybe this is just my own prejudice coloring my interpretation; I like Aeschylus, but I like the enfant terrible, tricky and rebellious Euripides better. To me, Aeschylus comes out pretty stodgy.
Aeschylus: The poet should cover up scandal, and not let anyone see it.This judgment by the Chorus seems about accurate:
Euripides: You ought to make the people talk like people!
One [Aeschylus] is a wrestler strong and tough;And at the last, after Aeschylus has beaten Euripides, line for line, Dionysos says:
quick the other one [Euripides], deft in defensive throws and the back-heel stuff.
One of them's a great poet, I like the other one.I'm going to go ahead and decide Aristophanes secretly agrees with me: Euripides is more fun. (Note: the text really doesn't support my conclusion.)
Aristophanes is aiming at, and concludes with, a more serious question for his time: should the politician Alcibiades be followed? Aeschylus says yes, Euripides says no. This is during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Greece. Alcibiades, a politician with an amazing capacity for joining whichever side happened to be winning - he had switched from Athens to Sparta to Persia back to Athens - would soon be exiled after some disastrous naval losses. (And Athens will, y'know, lose this war.) Aristophanes didn't know this yet (if I have the dates right here), but Euripides was right.
June 7, 2016
Although such evidence is hardly scientific, I can’t help but think that Aristophanes’s continuing enjoyability of more than two millennia shows something essential about human nature. It’s really incredible, when you think about it. Ancient Athenians, living in a different political system, with an entirely different conception of the world and their place within it, with different customs and rituals, different sexual mores, and far inferior technologies—in short, a set of cultural and environmental circumstances entirely distinct from my own—found the same things funny as do I. That’s either a remarkable testament to some core features of human psychology, or a remarkable coincidence.
Indeed, so familiar does Aristophanes often seem, that it was often difficult for me to believe he was an Ancient Athenian. Much of his humor is as direct and alive as something I might find if I turned on my television. (At least, I think so; but I can’t be sure, considering how long it’s been since I turned the thing on.) But maybe all this goes to show is that, no matter who you are or where and when you live, fart jokes are funny.
On second thought, I will temper the above claims about universality, as Aristophanes’s plays are chock-full of contemporary references that cause the modern reader to scratch his head. Aristophanes spends a lot of time mocking his fellow citizens, and often the jokes lose their effect when one isn’t acquainted with the person being mocked. (We have Plato’s dialogues to thank for saving Aristophanes’s jokes at Socrates’s expense.) And the footnotes hardly help in this regard; in fact, I’m not sure any flat joke was ever saved by an informative footnote.
But for all the provincial references and coarse humor, a startlingly alive portrait of Athenian life does emerge from these plays. Unlike, say, Shakespeare’s comedies, I cannot but help imagine the actors surrounded by bearded Greeks, crippled with laughter, while the actors duly inserted pauses between their lines to let the noise die down. These plays scream out for audience participation; they almost demand raucous shouting from the sidelines. In their best moments, you may even imagine that you, too, are among the shouting fans. With a winking Socrates on your right, and a brooding Euripides on your left, you may add your chuckle to the laughter that echoes through the ages.
Indeed, so familiar does Aristophanes often seem, that it was often difficult for me to believe he was an Ancient Athenian. Much of his humor is as direct and alive as something I might find if I turned on my television. (At least, I think so; but I can’t be sure, considering how long it’s been since I turned the thing on.) But maybe all this goes to show is that, no matter who you are or where and when you live, fart jokes are funny.
On second thought, I will temper the above claims about universality, as Aristophanes’s plays are chock-full of contemporary references that cause the modern reader to scratch his head. Aristophanes spends a lot of time mocking his fellow citizens, and often the jokes lose their effect when one isn’t acquainted with the person being mocked. (We have Plato’s dialogues to thank for saving Aristophanes’s jokes at Socrates’s expense.) And the footnotes hardly help in this regard; in fact, I’m not sure any flat joke was ever saved by an informative footnote.
But for all the provincial references and coarse humor, a startlingly alive portrait of Athenian life does emerge from these plays. Unlike, say, Shakespeare’s comedies, I cannot but help imagine the actors surrounded by bearded Greeks, crippled with laughter, while the actors duly inserted pauses between their lines to let the noise die down. These plays scream out for audience participation; they almost demand raucous shouting from the sidelines. In their best moments, you may even imagine that you, too, are among the shouting fans. With a winking Socrates on your right, and a brooding Euripides on your left, you may add your chuckle to the laughter that echoes through the ages.
April 29, 2018
I read this alongside Dudley Pitt's translation with the same title, because it includes The Clouds instead of Ladies' Day. It's my first foray into Aristophanes, whom I heard about and read fragments of his plays for decades, and he's turned out to be one of those cases when reading them late had its benefits, namely having a better grasp of the historical context for his plays set round the Peloponnesian War.
My favourite of the four classic comedies was Lysistrata. My edition's translation made it funnier still by choosing to render the Spartan characters speaking with a Scottish accent. I don't know if others would find it funny, but for me it was an extra dose of hilarity, and it made sense because if I'm not mistaken in the original Greek their native Lakonian accent is present to differentiate them from the Athenians, but it's not evident in most translations into English.
I also loved The Birds, though all those bird names lost me. I don't know half of those feathered species! Very informative to see the Greeks delving into writing their own version of the utopia/dystopia stories the likes of Animal Farm we have these days, and with not very different concerns at the core.
My favourite of the four classic comedies was Lysistrata. My edition's translation made it funnier still by choosing to render the Spartan characters speaking with a Scottish accent. I don't know if others would find it funny, but for me it was an extra dose of hilarity, and it made sense because if I'm not mistaken in the original Greek their native Lakonian accent is present to differentiate them from the Athenians, but it's not evident in most translations into English.
I also loved The Birds, though all those bird names lost me. I don't know half of those feathered species! Very informative to see the Greeks delving into writing their own version of the utopia/dystopia stories the likes of Animal Farm we have these days, and with not very different concerns at the core.
November 11, 2022
'we must give up the pleasure of - the prick.'
[women shudder and start to leave]
god i love aristophanes.
[women shudder and start to leave]
god i love aristophanes.
August 29, 2024
Read the birds in a module with @snailbusfield
don’t normally like reading plays but I enjoyed these
don’t normally like reading plays but I enjoyed these
January 27, 2018
Reading Greek tragedy and then reading Greek comedy is quite the experience. It's sort of like attending a symphony and then half way through being magically transported to a middle school boys' locker room where scatological humor and sexual jokes run wild. Some of it is so over the top (incessant farting and fart jokes in The Clouds) but other jokes are pretty dang funny. For example, The Lysistrata, where the Greek women go to heroic lengths to successfully end the Peloponnesian War by withholding all sexual favors from their Athenian or Spartan husbands, who hobble around with painful erections from not having had sex for so long.
The Clouds is interesting in its depiction of Socrates as the worst kind of sophist imaginable. Of course, this is a comedic roast of Socrates, but it does make you wonder--and there is scholarly debate about this--what role The Clouds might have played in the public's misperception of Socrates "making the worse argument appear better" and his subsequent trial and execution.
The Clouds is interesting in its depiction of Socrates as the worst kind of sophist imaginable. Of course, this is a comedic roast of Socrates, but it does make you wonder--and there is scholarly debate about this--what role The Clouds might have played in the public's misperception of Socrates "making the worse argument appear better" and his subsequent trial and execution.
January 30, 2019
Although I am a student of classical antiquity, and studied classical Greek in college, I have never been able to work up more than an academic interest in Aristophanes. While I can see the importance of his work - both as a social commentary on the Athens of the fifth-century BCE, and as a cornerstone of the comedic tradition in Western drama - I have never truly been able to ENJOY his plays. I was surprised therefore, by how much I liked the production of The Frogs that I recently saw performed here in NY by the Greek Cultural Center (good job, George!). Concluding that comedy is far more difficult to convey by text alone than is tragedy, as it relies upon the visual and auditory components of the play to a greater degree, I decided to dig out one of my old college books, and give the "comic master" another try.
My project met with the predictable mixed results. While my appreciation of The Frogs (translated in this collection by Richmond Lattimore) was noticeably greater this time around, I still found myself mostly indifferent to the three other works in this anthology. While it is certainly interesting to read another perspective on the famed Socrates (and there is some debate as to how Aristophanes intended his parody to be taken), my greatest enjoyment of The Clouds was in reading William Arrowsmith's commentary on his various decisions as translator. The same holds true of The Birds, also translated by Arrowsmith, which despite its status as the playwright's masterpiece, has always struck me as somewhat dreary. As for Lysistrata, here translated by Douglass Parker, although I have read it many times over the years, I never fail to find its portrayal of women extremely creepy.
All of which is to say: Aristophanes is not for me... Still, no student of classical Greek literature and history can afford to ignore so celebrated an author. For this reason, and because I find Aristophanes fascinating, even when I do not enjoy him, I recommend these works (and this translation) to all...
My project met with the predictable mixed results. While my appreciation of The Frogs (translated in this collection by Richmond Lattimore) was noticeably greater this time around, I still found myself mostly indifferent to the three other works in this anthology. While it is certainly interesting to read another perspective on the famed Socrates (and there is some debate as to how Aristophanes intended his parody to be taken), my greatest enjoyment of The Clouds was in reading William Arrowsmith's commentary on his various decisions as translator. The same holds true of The Birds, also translated by Arrowsmith, which despite its status as the playwright's masterpiece, has always struck me as somewhat dreary. As for Lysistrata, here translated by Douglass Parker, although I have read it many times over the years, I never fail to find its portrayal of women extremely creepy.
All of which is to say: Aristophanes is not for me... Still, no student of classical Greek literature and history can afford to ignore so celebrated an author. For this reason, and because I find Aristophanes fascinating, even when I do not enjoy him, I recommend these works (and this translation) to all...
July 13, 2020
I have the two-volume edition, which for some reason isn't on ŷ. But Arrowsmith's collection is excellent, although you would need another translation to read along with it. One of these days ...
December 10, 2017
Out of the four plays contained here, I liked Lysistrata the best. I might read other translations of that particular play too. The Clouds was meh, and The Birds was actually not as bad as I thought from reading the description of it. But The Frogs was lost to me, probably because it's mainly about the technical styles of Euripides and Aeschylus—both of whom I read, like YEARS ago.
December 25, 2014
lysistrata is one of the classic texts of world literature. the others are cool, too, as author is nothing if not worthy of one's attention.
December 4, 2024
I should have read Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War" before these comedies, as Aristophanes was writing during the thick of it and it would have probably added some useful context. Oh well; the plays were still enjoyable.
And another thing: the problem with reading comedic works translated from other languages, let alone those written over a millennia ago, is that much of it cannot be appreciated without spending every other line having the joke explained to you in the translator's notes. You'll be checking in a lot of time with the notes unless you're a scholar of Greek antiquity.
THAT SAID: These plays can still be appreciated. "The Clouds" is 50% fart jokes/50% making fun of Socrates, both timeless topics. "The Birds" is chock full of the same types of grifters that plague society today. "Lysistrata" repeated itself at the exact same time as I was reading it, through pure coincidence. And my favorite play of the bunch, "The Frogs", will be enjoyable to anyone who has read and enjoyed any of the famous Greek Tragedies. Aeschylus and Euripides crapping all over each other in Hades in an effort to get reincarnated to save the sorry state of literature was pretty hilarious.
And another thing: the problem with reading comedic works translated from other languages, let alone those written over a millennia ago, is that much of it cannot be appreciated without spending every other line having the joke explained to you in the translator's notes. You'll be checking in a lot of time with the notes unless you're a scholar of Greek antiquity.
THAT SAID: These plays can still be appreciated. "The Clouds" is 50% fart jokes/50% making fun of Socrates, both timeless topics. "The Birds" is chock full of the same types of grifters that plague society today. "Lysistrata" repeated itself at the exact same time as I was reading it, through pure coincidence. And my favorite play of the bunch, "The Frogs", will be enjoyable to anyone who has read and enjoyed any of the famous Greek Tragedies. Aeschylus and Euripides crapping all over each other in Hades in an effort to get reincarnated to save the sorry state of literature was pretty hilarious.
December 18, 2022
yassss invented comedy 🙌😂😂
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March 12, 2013I'll just use this Book review to get something down for my future reference for all the Aristophanes plays I have so far read. At this stage, I've read most of the famous ones apart from the Clouds, Pace and the Thesmophoriozusae (both of which I think I might read in the Greek, cause i got a good copy of both Peace and the clouds with a commentary and Thesmophoriozousae is on my syllabus) and I've left the poorer, more transitional plays till last (Wealth, Eccleziazousae) as well as the Acharnians.
These plays, it seems, seem to rely on either a generally good series of slapstick scenarios or a particularly good agon. The fantasy element that seems to be present in all of them, the wild scenarios etc., don't really hold up on their own. In descending order:
5.The Knights. This is basically one long agon. It's quite boring because this agon is usually not much more than a shouting match with a few puns thrown in for good measure (two parabases as well...). I think as an attack on Cleon it must have been very successful and the expectation of an attack on Cleon ever since Aristophanes' trial for his representation of the Athenian Empire in the Banqueters, was probably part of the reason why this was also one of Aristophanes' most successful plays. Apparently Eupolis wrote part of it (scholia mention this? i can't remember) and that he might be behind the inclusion of a second parabasis. i noticed some stylistic differences (i can't remember where) but this might have been the result of it being an early play in Aristophanes' oeuvre.
4.The Birds. This one is all about this complex fantasy of two normal Athenians taking over the universe by blockading Olympus from the smell of sacrifice with a kingdom in the sky. A lot of the oneliners about Athenian public figures feel a little out of place and I was basically pretty disappointed. Apparently the chorus song is quite clever in this one and there's that commentary that picks up on all the different bird songs Aristophanes uses (apparently a prodigious number) and maybe i'll have to look into this, when i've got time to read the Greek.
3.Lysistrata. This is the first in the group i really enjoyed. The play has excellent slapstick scenes involving the naked elderly having shouting matches, uses the comic costumes' phallus to good measure and has an interesting central conceit of a sex strike. Lysistrata is a particularly admirable and adept comic protagonist but is harder in general to construe exactly what if anything Aristophanes is saying about gender relations. One area this play fails in is the continual use of the same cliched innuendoes (I've definitely seen the peeling ones elsewhere) but it seems to avoid cliched dramatic scenario (as Aristophanes tends to also point as in the beginning of the Frogs). The ending is also (as is common) slightly weak, just fairly tying everything together in a rather business like manner.
2.The Wasps. Excellent take on Athenian politics particularly with the bathetic allegory of cleon's prosecution of Lamis as a dog prosecuting another dog. This is where the fantastic elements of Aristophanic humor seem most funny, the way Philocleon tries to escape his house etc. The change in narrative direction following the second act does not feel like such a detriment to the play, it just moves the comedy in a natural direction into the antagonism of young versus old and the symposium jokes seem good for the stage.
1.The Frogs. Maybe my favourite of the plays (maybe just cause it references tragedians that I like)and the only one i've read in Greek. The agon is spectacular, probably Aristophanes' greatest achievement in his poetry and the use of Dionysus and the chorus as intermediaries was additionally clever. The earlier scenes on their katabasis to the underworld are pretty quality for their slapstick and the religious undertones of ecstatic mystery cult particularly in the second chorus provide a little extra interest. The Frog chorus is again probably aristophanes' greatest (at least of those i've read) even if it might not have had the frogs on stage and the ending puts a nice end to the agon.
These plays, it seems, seem to rely on either a generally good series of slapstick scenarios or a particularly good agon. The fantasy element that seems to be present in all of them, the wild scenarios etc., don't really hold up on their own. In descending order:
5.The Knights. This is basically one long agon. It's quite boring because this agon is usually not much more than a shouting match with a few puns thrown in for good measure (two parabases as well...). I think as an attack on Cleon it must have been very successful and the expectation of an attack on Cleon ever since Aristophanes' trial for his representation of the Athenian Empire in the Banqueters, was probably part of the reason why this was also one of Aristophanes' most successful plays. Apparently Eupolis wrote part of it (scholia mention this? i can't remember) and that he might be behind the inclusion of a second parabasis. i noticed some stylistic differences (i can't remember where) but this might have been the result of it being an early play in Aristophanes' oeuvre.
4.The Birds. This one is all about this complex fantasy of two normal Athenians taking over the universe by blockading Olympus from the smell of sacrifice with a kingdom in the sky. A lot of the oneliners about Athenian public figures feel a little out of place and I was basically pretty disappointed. Apparently the chorus song is quite clever in this one and there's that commentary that picks up on all the different bird songs Aristophanes uses (apparently a prodigious number) and maybe i'll have to look into this, when i've got time to read the Greek.
3.Lysistrata. This is the first in the group i really enjoyed. The play has excellent slapstick scenes involving the naked elderly having shouting matches, uses the comic costumes' phallus to good measure and has an interesting central conceit of a sex strike. Lysistrata is a particularly admirable and adept comic protagonist but is harder in general to construe exactly what if anything Aristophanes is saying about gender relations. One area this play fails in is the continual use of the same cliched innuendoes (I've definitely seen the peeling ones elsewhere) but it seems to avoid cliched dramatic scenario (as Aristophanes tends to also point as in the beginning of the Frogs). The ending is also (as is common) slightly weak, just fairly tying everything together in a rather business like manner.
2.The Wasps. Excellent take on Athenian politics particularly with the bathetic allegory of cleon's prosecution of Lamis as a dog prosecuting another dog. This is where the fantastic elements of Aristophanic humor seem most funny, the way Philocleon tries to escape his house etc. The change in narrative direction following the second act does not feel like such a detriment to the play, it just moves the comedy in a natural direction into the antagonism of young versus old and the symposium jokes seem good for the stage.
1.The Frogs. Maybe my favourite of the plays (maybe just cause it references tragedians that I like)and the only one i've read in Greek. The agon is spectacular, probably Aristophanes' greatest achievement in his poetry and the use of Dionysus and the chorus as intermediaries was additionally clever. The earlier scenes on their katabasis to the underworld are pretty quality for their slapstick and the religious undertones of ecstatic mystery cult particularly in the second chorus provide a little extra interest. The Frog chorus is again probably aristophanes' greatest (at least of those i've read) even if it might not have had the frogs on stage and the ending puts a nice end to the agon.
November 7, 2017
I accidentally chose the wrong four plays on ŷ, as I read Four COMEDIES of Aristophanes, not Four Plays. But two of those comedies were Lysistrata and The Frogs so I'll go with it anyway. These plays are full of ribaldry and off color jokes, not really Safe For Work. As with most plays they really need to be seen performed instead of read, as there is much physical comedy involved. Also would help to be an Athenian from 5th century B.C. Greece, as these were written during the Peloponnesian War and contain many topical references to local places, persons, and events. Also there are many jokes and especially puns which do not translate at all well from the Ancient Greek. The plays I read were all anti-war pieces, all contained much sexual reference, and all contained blatant insult to Euripides, who apparently had an ongoing feud with Aristophanes.
The translators do their best with varied success. All are rendered into American English with the jokes altered to make them more understandable. As these plays were written for Athenians all the foreigners represented speak with noticeable accents, usually uneducated or effeminate, and the Spartans, Athens main enemy, is treated particularly harshly.
Lysistrata
The women of Athens go on strike to end the war. They withhold sex from their men until they declare peace, also occupying the treasury so the soldiers cannot be paid. Much wordplay and physical representations of phalluses and female genitalia as the men of Athens and Sparta are forced to end the war as they cannot continue fighting due to their engorged phalluses. The women are not spared, as Lysistrata has trouble keeping her women in line because they too are extremely horny. The Spartans in this piece are portrayed as country bumpkins and speak like Brer Rabbit from Uncle Remus.
The Frogs
Dionysus goes to Hades to collect the best playwright to bring back to Athens because all the good speakers are dead. Dionysus convinces Pluto to let him judge a competition between the best two available, Euripides (recently deceased) and Aeschylus. They start a kind of rap battle, where Aeschylus is accused of being wordy and pedantic, with all his works being about Heroes and Gods and ungrounded ideals, while Euripides is accused of being bucolic and base, his plays dealing with more mortal problems. Dionysus picks a winner to go home and increase the morale of the Athenians during a period where they are being hard pressed by the Spartans.
The Congresswomen
The women of Athens disguise themselves as men and go to the Assembly and vote themselves into power to end war. They set up a Utopian communist rule with free housing, free food, and free love. The problems that result are played out as some men are against sharing their goods, and mostly by a group of hideous hags who accost a handsome young man demanding their share of free love. Some discussion of economic theory and a lot of sex jokes.
The Acharnians
An old farmer conscripted to sentry duty on the walls of Athens decides he wants to go home. He returns to his farm and declares it a neutral territory with a free market open to all except politicians. The police come to collect him and he goes to see his buddy Euripides to borrow some props and lift some parts from his plays to confound the police. Euripides is again treated badly, shown as a lazy hoarder who is ill tempered and can't be bothered to get up off his couch. People from other nations come to the new market and the farmer becomes rich collecting more food than he can eat and a bag full of underaged girls. While he spends his time surrounded by food, fortune, and dancing girls the soldiers are shown to be going off to the frozen frontier to sleep on the ground and eat hard tack.
The translators do their best with varied success. All are rendered into American English with the jokes altered to make them more understandable. As these plays were written for Athenians all the foreigners represented speak with noticeable accents, usually uneducated or effeminate, and the Spartans, Athens main enemy, is treated particularly harshly.
Lysistrata
The women of Athens go on strike to end the war. They withhold sex from their men until they declare peace, also occupying the treasury so the soldiers cannot be paid. Much wordplay and physical representations of phalluses and female genitalia as the men of Athens and Sparta are forced to end the war as they cannot continue fighting due to their engorged phalluses. The women are not spared, as Lysistrata has trouble keeping her women in line because they too are extremely horny. The Spartans in this piece are portrayed as country bumpkins and speak like Brer Rabbit from Uncle Remus.
The Frogs
Dionysus goes to Hades to collect the best playwright to bring back to Athens because all the good speakers are dead. Dionysus convinces Pluto to let him judge a competition between the best two available, Euripides (recently deceased) and Aeschylus. They start a kind of rap battle, where Aeschylus is accused of being wordy and pedantic, with all his works being about Heroes and Gods and ungrounded ideals, while Euripides is accused of being bucolic and base, his plays dealing with more mortal problems. Dionysus picks a winner to go home and increase the morale of the Athenians during a period where they are being hard pressed by the Spartans.
The Congresswomen
The women of Athens disguise themselves as men and go to the Assembly and vote themselves into power to end war. They set up a Utopian communist rule with free housing, free food, and free love. The problems that result are played out as some men are against sharing their goods, and mostly by a group of hideous hags who accost a handsome young man demanding their share of free love. Some discussion of economic theory and a lot of sex jokes.
The Acharnians
An old farmer conscripted to sentry duty on the walls of Athens decides he wants to go home. He returns to his farm and declares it a neutral territory with a free market open to all except politicians. The police come to collect him and he goes to see his buddy Euripides to borrow some props and lift some parts from his plays to confound the police. Euripides is again treated badly, shown as a lazy hoarder who is ill tempered and can't be bothered to get up off his couch. People from other nations come to the new market and the farmer becomes rich collecting more food than he can eat and a bag full of underaged girls. While he spends his time surrounded by food, fortune, and dancing girls the soldiers are shown to be going off to the frozen frontier to sleep on the ground and eat hard tack.
October 13, 2024
I'm manipulated to believe Greeks are best manipulators out there.
August 10, 2018
Okay you guys, you can call it dorky, and that's fine, but I really love Aristophanes. And not because I get to say things like "oh I really love Aristophanes," but admittedly, that is part of the fun. Because I feel like when you find a good translation of anything (in this case William Arrowsmith knocks it out of the park all the way around on the first two plays), you feel like you've learned a magic trick. Greek plays from 400 BC are supposed to be hard, right? Turns out when you have somebody giving you a good run down of what was said, and why, and who should care, they really are funny, and entertaining, and a good way to spend some time.
I didn't read the Lysistrata in this volume, having read it in another anthology awhile back, but I will absolutely vouch for the other three plays ("The Frogs" is translated by Richard Lattimore). These guys know their Greek well enough to make the jokes pertinent and timely, despite the historical gap. They help you understand what the play is about, without necessarily bogging you down in a word for word translation. And a younger me would've balked at this, but for an average person like myself, this volume is perfect. I don't need to know every single declension, every single obscure reference to one of Aristophanes' friends who weren't ever famous anyway. I'm not gonna get a lot of the jokes, or the word plays, because I'm way out of the time period and language. What I do get is the feeling, the goal, the story, and I can't stress this enough, the laughs. I rarely laugh at books but I sent at least four picture messages to people about these plays. (Which is probably something I shouldn't brag about.)
But rather than belabor the obvious point, I'd just say go pick this up. It's gotta be at every college bookstore anywhere. There are a few of the notes that aren't 100 percent useful; the kind that go "readers of Aristophanes' play 'Knights' will be familiar with this." But by faaaaar, these are the very tiny little Minderheit.
So, go get it. And remember, they're plays! They're supposed to be taken in in a couple hours. Enjoy them.
I didn't read the Lysistrata in this volume, having read it in another anthology awhile back, but I will absolutely vouch for the other three plays ("The Frogs" is translated by Richard Lattimore). These guys know their Greek well enough to make the jokes pertinent and timely, despite the historical gap. They help you understand what the play is about, without necessarily bogging you down in a word for word translation. And a younger me would've balked at this, but for an average person like myself, this volume is perfect. I don't need to know every single declension, every single obscure reference to one of Aristophanes' friends who weren't ever famous anyway. I'm not gonna get a lot of the jokes, or the word plays, because I'm way out of the time period and language. What I do get is the feeling, the goal, the story, and I can't stress this enough, the laughs. I rarely laugh at books but I sent at least four picture messages to people about these plays. (Which is probably something I shouldn't brag about.)
But rather than belabor the obvious point, I'd just say go pick this up. It's gotta be at every college bookstore anywhere. There are a few of the notes that aren't 100 percent useful; the kind that go "readers of Aristophanes' play 'Knights' will be familiar with this." But by faaaaar, these are the very tiny little Minderheit.
So, go get it. And remember, they're plays! They're supposed to be taken in in a couple hours. Enjoy them.
February 28, 2008
The thing which most impressed me about this book was that the plays are dialectically translated: that is, Roche not only follows the originals as literally as possible, he uses modern slang to capture the cultural connotations, double entendres, and dirty jokes of the Ancients in all their accurate glory. Bet you hadn’t realized that we’ve been making strap-on jibes for a long, long time, huh?
Of course, Lysistrata was my favorite play, and not just because it gives power to women in a way you don’t often see in literature. It’s sincere, hilarious, and bizarre. It captures the essence of human nature and the often precarious dealings between the sexes.
Second-favorite would be the last of the plays in the book, Plutus. The dichotomy of wealth and poverty is as ancient as humans itself, and I think it’s that very fact which makes this play, like Lysistrata, particularly accessible to modern readers.
The Frogs is too topical, I think. Just like watching an episode of the Daily Show probably wouldn’t be funny to someone 2,500 years from now, a play which deals this heavily with the politics and culture of Ancient Greece is unlikely to resonate strongly with a reader of our time. However, I concede that once I’ve read more Euripides and Aeschylus, this one will likely be more amusing to me.
If Frogs is hard to read, Parliament of Women (Ecclesiazusae) may be even worse. While it, too, can be applied to 20th-century social structures (Feminism and Communism, respectively), the jokes just aren’t that great. It tries too hard to be crass and shocking, and ends up just seeming silly. Overall, I’d say that the idea is sound, but the execution is lacking. This play could be really cool, were it remixed for a modern audience.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book. It’s a quick read, and offers a very fresh take on the Classics. Aristophanes could easily be called the Matt Groening or Seth MacFarlane of his generation, and while the politics may have changed, much of the humor has not.
Of course, Lysistrata was my favorite play, and not just because it gives power to women in a way you don’t often see in literature. It’s sincere, hilarious, and bizarre. It captures the essence of human nature and the often precarious dealings between the sexes.
Second-favorite would be the last of the plays in the book, Plutus. The dichotomy of wealth and poverty is as ancient as humans itself, and I think it’s that very fact which makes this play, like Lysistrata, particularly accessible to modern readers.
The Frogs is too topical, I think. Just like watching an episode of the Daily Show probably wouldn’t be funny to someone 2,500 years from now, a play which deals this heavily with the politics and culture of Ancient Greece is unlikely to resonate strongly with a reader of our time. However, I concede that once I’ve read more Euripides and Aeschylus, this one will likely be more amusing to me.
If Frogs is hard to read, Parliament of Women (Ecclesiazusae) may be even worse. While it, too, can be applied to 20th-century social structures (Feminism and Communism, respectively), the jokes just aren’t that great. It tries too hard to be crass and shocking, and ends up just seeming silly. Overall, I’d say that the idea is sound, but the execution is lacking. This play could be really cool, were it remixed for a modern audience.
Overall, I would definitely recommend this book. It’s a quick read, and offers a very fresh take on the Classics. Aristophanes could easily be called the Matt Groening or Seth MacFarlane of his generation, and while the politics may have changed, much of the humor has not.
June 8, 2016
There's really 4 works here, so 4 reviews there must be (from best to worse, IMHO):
Lysistrata 2 Thumbs Up
Brilliant, original (at ~2500 years old, it should be!) concept, and humorously executed. Athenian and Spartan women plot to withhold sex from the men to force an end to the disastrous and interminable Peloponnesian War. Great to see strong females at this early stage.
The Birds 1.5 Thumbs Up
Again, great concept. Athenians wish to escape litigious Athens and live the simpler life amongst the Birds. Instead they are unable to overcome their insuperable human instincts for advancement and ending creating a kingdom and, through wily machinations, wresting the scepter of heaven from Zeus. A little heavy on the slapstick for my taste. Would make for a good play what with the bird costumes and elaborate songs.
The Frogs 1 Thumb Up
The important bit of this is a contest in Hades between Euripides and Aeschylus to determine which was the greater poet, considering their message, style, philosophy, rhyme and meter. Poetry professors may love it; for me, it was a bit dry. Intelligent stuff, though, and I'm sure in Greek it must be trebly so.
The Clouds 2 Leather Phalli Way Down.
Kind of a silly preconceived notion, but I didn't expect so much scatological humor from classical authors. Aristophanes likes to make full use of fart jokes and phalli (well, leather ones, on his actors, as was apparently not unusual among Old Comedy at the time). Classic or not, it doesn't really amuse me. Most importantly, he either grossly misunderstands or slanders Socrates (portraying him as a ridiculous charlatan and Sophist). Word on the street is that this play may have contributed to the trial and forced suicide of my man Socrates. Two thumbs down.
Lysistrata 2 Thumbs Up
Brilliant, original (at ~2500 years old, it should be!) concept, and humorously executed. Athenian and Spartan women plot to withhold sex from the men to force an end to the disastrous and interminable Peloponnesian War. Great to see strong females at this early stage.
The Birds 1.5 Thumbs Up
Again, great concept. Athenians wish to escape litigious Athens and live the simpler life amongst the Birds. Instead they are unable to overcome their insuperable human instincts for advancement and ending creating a kingdom and, through wily machinations, wresting the scepter of heaven from Zeus. A little heavy on the slapstick for my taste. Would make for a good play what with the bird costumes and elaborate songs.
The Frogs 1 Thumb Up
The important bit of this is a contest in Hades between Euripides and Aeschylus to determine which was the greater poet, considering their message, style, philosophy, rhyme and meter. Poetry professors may love it; for me, it was a bit dry. Intelligent stuff, though, and I'm sure in Greek it must be trebly so.
The Clouds 2 Leather Phalli Way Down.
Kind of a silly preconceived notion, but I didn't expect so much scatological humor from classical authors. Aristophanes likes to make full use of fart jokes and phalli (well, leather ones, on his actors, as was apparently not unusual among Old Comedy at the time). Classic or not, it doesn't really amuse me. Most importantly, he either grossly misunderstands or slanders Socrates (portraying him as a ridiculous charlatan and Sophist). Word on the street is that this play may have contributed to the trial and forced suicide of my man Socrates. Two thumbs down.
February 18, 2011
Four Plays by Aristophanes / 0-452-00717-8
This edition features wonderful translations of "The Clouds", "The Birds", "Lysistrata", and "The Frogs". The humor and satire is well-managed within the translation, particularly within (my favorite) "Lysistrata". The bantering dialogue within the play is hilarious from the exhortations of the women to their fellow sisters to abstain from sex with their men (regardless of their own strong, womanly desires) to the tongue-in-cheek dialogue between a teasing wife and her impatient husband, to the final division of land to be 'presented' in the form of a nude lady acting as a visual aid.
The four plays are described in this edition as follows:
THE CLOUDS: The most controversial of Aristophanes' plays, it is a brilliant caricature of the philosopher Socrates, seen as a wily sophist who teaches men to cheat through cunning argument.
THE BIRDS: This portrayal of a flawed utopia called Cloudcuckooland is an enchanting escape into the world of free-flying fantasy that explores the eternal dilemmas of man on earth.
LYSISTRATA: In the twenty-first year of the Peloponnesian War, the women of Athens and Sparta, tired of the incessant fighting between their men, resolve to withhold sex from their husbands until peace is settled.
THE FROGS: Visiting the underworld, the god Dionysus seeks the counsel of the dead tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides on how to bring good writing back to Athens. A fierce debate - full of scathing insults and literary satire - ensues between the two dramatists.
~ Ana Mardoll
This edition features wonderful translations of "The Clouds", "The Birds", "Lysistrata", and "The Frogs". The humor and satire is well-managed within the translation, particularly within (my favorite) "Lysistrata". The bantering dialogue within the play is hilarious from the exhortations of the women to their fellow sisters to abstain from sex with their men (regardless of their own strong, womanly desires) to the tongue-in-cheek dialogue between a teasing wife and her impatient husband, to the final division of land to be 'presented' in the form of a nude lady acting as a visual aid.
The four plays are described in this edition as follows:
THE CLOUDS: The most controversial of Aristophanes' plays, it is a brilliant caricature of the philosopher Socrates, seen as a wily sophist who teaches men to cheat through cunning argument.
THE BIRDS: This portrayal of a flawed utopia called Cloudcuckooland is an enchanting escape into the world of free-flying fantasy that explores the eternal dilemmas of man on earth.
LYSISTRATA: In the twenty-first year of the Peloponnesian War, the women of Athens and Sparta, tired of the incessant fighting between their men, resolve to withhold sex from their husbands until peace is settled.
THE FROGS: Visiting the underworld, the god Dionysus seeks the counsel of the dead tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides on how to bring good writing back to Athens. A fierce debate - full of scathing insults and literary satire - ensues between the two dramatists.
~ Ana Mardoll
August 28, 2010
I'm not sure I liked this translation very much. The translator took some very interesting liberties with the language, including giving the Spartans a markedly southern hick sort of drawl, and modernizing the language to the point of losing a sense that you're reading a Greek play written hundreds of years ago.
BUT, I loved how that worked with Lysistrata. It's a beautifully funny play to begin with, and the modern touches added an interesting element.
It's particularly relevant to me as I've been reading about the accomplishments of a woman named Leymah Gbowee and the movement she started in Liberia which brought about an end to revolution and the installation of the first female leader that country had seen, following almost the exact same premise as Lysistrata. If you're not familiar with it, look up a documentary called Pray The Devil Back to Hell. It's beautiful, and funny, and incredibly heartwarming.
BUT, I loved how that worked with Lysistrata. It's a beautifully funny play to begin with, and the modern touches added an interesting element.
It's particularly relevant to me as I've been reading about the accomplishments of a woman named Leymah Gbowee and the movement she started in Liberia which brought about an end to revolution and the installation of the first female leader that country had seen, following almost the exact same premise as Lysistrata. If you're not familiar with it, look up a documentary called Pray The Devil Back to Hell. It's beautiful, and funny, and incredibly heartwarming.
January 18, 2016
These four plays (The Clouds, The Birds, Lysistrata, and The Frogs) translated by Arrowsmith, Lattimore and Parker are hilarious! Seriously, I thoroughly enjoyed the contemporary, somewhat irreverent language which helped bring to life the ways that Aristophanes was poking fun at his Greek forefathers and rivals. For example, the following excerpt is from "The Clouds:" "Sokrates. The boy's a born philosopher. Yes, sir, when he was just a mite of a shaver, so high, he used to make the cleverest things you ever saw. Why, there were dollhouses, sailboats, little pushcarts from scraps of leather, and the sweetest little frogs carved from fruit peel. He's a scholar, all right. So tutor him in your two logics - traditional Philosophical Logic and that flashy modern sophistic logic they call Immoral because it's so wonderfully wicked. In any case, if he can't master both logics, I insist that he learn the Immoral Kind of argument."
June 4, 2011
Did anyone else feel like these plays were really all over the place? I mean Cloudcuckoland? A bunch of women who withhold sex in an effort to take the city? The clouds vs/as the gods? Some parts were very amusing. I guess you can see where people get their appreciation for random humor after reading this. But honestly I really was not terribly impressed. Many of the jokes were frankly just confusing by the end of it all. Boloney anyone? Really how did that get in there? I also think perhaps the translator added a few things as (and pardon me for assuming to know) but it seems like some of the sayings were not very greek in style. They seemed a bit too modern to make sense with the work. Overall not what I was expecting from a series of plays that are so well referenced in literature. And this after reading the great Prometheus Bound. Aye! Not my style I am afraid.
December 17, 2011
I've never been a fan of broad comedy and low humor and Aristophanes doesn't get a pass from me because he's ancient. But for many years one of the assignments in my AP Lit class was for groups to choose a play from Aristophanes and the three extant tragic playwrights. Usually, the group that chose Aristophanes would do Lysistrata and those groups always had a great time with it. They especially loved that one of the props were the huge phalluses that the men wore. One year the group brought out a big zucchini and put a condom on it. I quipped at that point, "Wait a minute, the Greeks fought the Trojans, they didn't wear them." And I thought to myself, well, you don't ALWAYS think of the right thing to say only later.
August 26, 2015
This was my first time reading Aristophanes, and I have always heard he's a comedic genius, but I was blown away by how modern some of these jokes are. The obscure poking at his contemporary politicians and others were hard to understand, but the amount of wordplay and other jokes hold up well. Part of that may be the translation as they do preface the amount of jokes are updated to modern times, but even then it's remarkable how well they were able to turn his poetic stanzas to a modern ear and keep it viable to the original. The Birds was disappointing which is why I knocked this down to 4 stars, but it is important to read particularly in this collection in view of the fact it critiques the war as the others do to some degree or other as well.
January 21, 2016
I'm giving this 4 stars, not because I loved the book, but because I thought the edition was great, the notes very informative, the translation "true" in that you got the modern version of what the Greek might have been. As far as actual enjoyable reading, I'm not sure. I really liked The Clouds and I thought the exploration of sophistry was very astute. It felt true even now. The humor is a little out of reach for me (potty and sexual humor), but any different culture will have a different kind of humor, and we're talking about a different time and place here! I'm glad I got a sense of Greek comedy and a sense of the time period. It's a must-read for anyone reading classics, but beware!
August 2, 2013
*THE BIRDS only*
It's normally possible for me to read a translated work and at least try to forget the fact that I'm reading a piece of translation. In the case of this translation, however, almost every word drove the point home. That's not necessarily a bad thing, however; Arrowsmith's work calls attention to itself in a way that forced me to treat the text as more a scaffold for ideas than a piece of crafted language (he explains this in great detail - and with more eloquence than I can muster - in the introduction). As it turns out, those ideas are both profoundly interesting and mostly very funny. At some point, I should circle back and read the rest of these plays.
It's normally possible for me to read a translated work and at least try to forget the fact that I'm reading a piece of translation. In the case of this translation, however, almost every word drove the point home. That's not necessarily a bad thing, however; Arrowsmith's work calls attention to itself in a way that forced me to treat the text as more a scaffold for ideas than a piece of crafted language (he explains this in great detail - and with more eloquence than I can muster - in the introduction). As it turns out, those ideas are both profoundly interesting and mostly very funny. At some point, I should circle back and read the rest of these plays.
Read
November 6, 2014Three different translators have brought these ancient Greek plays into language modern enough for us to easily grasp their meaning. Lysistrata is probably the most popular: who can resist a storyline like this? The women of Athens are fed up. All the men seem to do is go to war, no fun for anyone. Deciding on direct action, they call in the women of Sparta and the Peleponnese, and suggest that steadfast withdrawing of sexual favours unless the men negotiate a peace is definitely the way to go. Very funny. As is Aristophanes� satire about Socrates, in The Clouds. Read them aloud to enjoy the verbal jousting.
-Alison
-Alison
August 13, 2007
Unstoppably funny. The Clouds is an old favorite and the Frogs a more recent discovery but Aristophanes is definitely my sense of humor; certainly, I find him much funnier than Menander, who is more a chore than anything else for me. How could I forget Lysistrata?!
This edition, in particular, is dear to me. I think that translation is especially good and, since first being exposed to it in college, I've met one of the still-living translators, Douglass Parker. Parker is as funny as you would expect.
This edition, in particular, is dear to me. I think that translation is especially good and, since first being exposed to it in college, I've met one of the still-living translators, Douglass Parker. Parker is as funny as you would expect.
July 12, 2017
This translation of Aristophanes is really readable and raunchy. I read The Clouds and The Birds. Will have to check out again to read Lysistrata, which I find cited pretty often. The butt stuff alone makes it worth a read.
Was surprised to find the satire of the Sophists leveled in The Clouds relevant to pseudo-scientific bloviation of our own time.
The introductions, commentary, and notes included in this edition were helpful. However, this translation is clear enough that you don't have to spend too much time in the notes to understand what's happening.
Was surprised to find the satire of the Sophists leveled in The Clouds relevant to pseudo-scientific bloviation of our own time.
The introductions, commentary, and notes included in this edition were helpful. However, this translation is clear enough that you don't have to spend too much time in the notes to understand what's happening.
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