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Aristophanes: Comedies
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Aristophanes, judged in antiquity to be the foremost poet of the ‘old’ Attic comedy, was the son of one Philippos, of the urban deme Kydathenaion. He was born ca. 447/6 and died probably between 386 and 380. Aside from his theatrical career little is known about his life. By his twenties his hair had thinned or receded enough that he could be called bald; early in the fourth century he served as a councillor; and he had two sons, Araros and Philippos, both of whom had careers as comic poets in the mid-fourth century. In his dialogue Symposion, Plato portrays Aristophanes as being at home among the social and intellectual elite of Athens, but the historical veracity of this portrayal is uncertain.
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Complete your day with Aristophanes' latest comedy being performed at The Theatre of Dionysos, located on the south side of the Acropolis. Dear traveler, please stay awhile, there is much to see!
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ARISTOPHANES, the son of Philippus, was probably an Athenian, born about 444 B.C. He was a lover of pleasure and of society, and is introduced as one of the brilliant revellers in Plato's Banquet. He won a prize with his first comedy in 427 B.C., soon after the opening of the Peloponnesian war, when he was still a lad under age. He continued to exhibit comedies over a period of 40 years; it is said that he produced 54, of which 11 only survive. He left three sons, all comic poets: and he died about 380 B.C., when Athens had lost all political importance, and all her great men except Plato and his followers.
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It was under the mighty genius of Aristophanes that the old Attic comedy received its fullest development. Dignified by the acquisition of a chorus of masked actors, and of scenery and machinery, and by a corresponding literary elaboration and elegance of style, comedy ... remained true both to its origin and to the purposes of its introduction into the free imperial city. It borrowed much from tragedy, but it retained the Phallic abandonment of the old rural festivals, the license of word and gesture, and the audacious directness of personal invective. These characteristics are not features peculiar to Aristophanes. He was twitted by some of the older comic poets with having degenerated from the full freedom of the art through a tendency to refinement, and he took credit to himself for having superseded the time-honored can can and the stale practical joking of his predecessors by a nobler kind of mirth. But in boldness, as he likewise boasted, he had no peer; and the shafts of his wit, though dipped in wine-lees and at times feathered from very obscene fowl, flew at high game.
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Wealth (388 BCE) is Aristophanes' latest surviving comedy. Plutus, the god of wealth, is blind, which explains why riches are inappropriately distributed in the world. But when Wealth regains his sight in the story, attempts at redistribution create social chaos. Wealth clearly belongs to the less political, more cosmopolitan "comedy of manners" of the 300s BCE
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Socrates is not known to have written anything and is best known from the dialogues of Plato, but before Plato he, was an object of ridicule as a sophist in Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds. Both Plato and Xenophon wrote about Socrates' defense at his trial in separate works called Apology.
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