Aristophanes (;. ; ) was an Ancient Greek comic playwright from Athens. He wrote forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete.; The majority of his surviving plays belong to the genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are considered its most valuable examples. Aristophanes's plays were performed at the religious festivals of Athens, mostly the City Dionysia and the Lenaia, and several of them won the first prize in their respective competitions.
Also known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes wrote plays that often dealt with real-life figures, including Euripides and Alcibiades, and contemporary events, such as the Peloponnesian War. He has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His plays are characterized by preposterous premises, explicit language, wordplays, and political satire. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes's play The Clouds as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates,Plato, The Apology of Socrates (in Greek), edited by John Burnet; section 19c although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher.
Aristophanes's 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."." "Knights" line 516
Biography
An Athenian citizen, Aristophanes came from the deme of Kydathenaion, which was part of the Attic tribe (phyle) of Pandionis. His father was Philippus; and his mother was Zenodora.; In antiquity, his family was assumed to have connections with the island of Aegina. Little is known about Aristophanes's life, his plays being the main source of biographical information. It was conventional in Old Comedy for the chorus to speak on behalf of the author during an address called the parabasis, where some biographical facts can usually be found. These facts, however, relate almost entirely to his career as a dramatist and the plays contain few clear and unambiguous clues about his personal beliefs or his private life. He was a comic poet in an age when it was conventional for the playwright to also serve as the play's director (didaskalos). The term literally means "teacher," referring primarily to his role in training the chorus in rehearsal, but perhaps also covered his relationship with the audience as a commentator on significant issues.
Aristophanes claimed to be writing for a clever and discerning audience,Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Clouds, pp. 520–525 yet he also declared that "other times" would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays.Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Clouds, pp. 560–562 He sometimes boasts of his originality as a dramatistWasps 1536–1537 Wikisource (original Greek), Clouds, pp. 545–548, Peace, pp. 739–758 yet his plays consistently espouse opposition to radical new influences in Athenian society. He caricatured leading figures in the arts (notably Euripides, whose influence on his own work however he once grudgingly acknowledged), in politics (especially the populist Cleon), and in philosophy/religion (where Socrates was the most obvious target). Such caricatures seem to imply that Aristophanes was an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view of him leads to contradictions.Andrewes, Antony. Greek Society. Pelican Books, 1981, pp. 247–248
It has been argued that Aristophanes produced plays mainly to entertain the audience and to win prestigious competitions.Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A. H. Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Books 1975, p. 9 footnote His plays were written for production at the great dramatic festivals of Athens, the Lenaia and City Dionysia, where they were judged and awarded prizes in competition with the works of other comic dramatists. An elaborate series of lotteries, designed to prevent prejudice and corruption, reduced the voting judges at the City Dionysia to just five. These judges probably reflected the mood of the audiences yet there is much uncertainty about the composition of those audiences. The theatres were certainly huge, with seating for at least 10,000 at the Theatre of Dionysus. The day's program at the City Dionysia for example was crowded, with three tragedies and a satyr play ahead of a comedy, but it is possible that many of the poorer citizens (typically the main supporters of demagogues like Cleon) occupied the festival holiday with other pursuits. The conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of the dominant group in an unrepresentative audience.
The production process might also have influenced the views expressed in the plays. Throughout most of Aristophanes's career, the Chorus was essential to a play's success and it was recruited and funded by a choregus, a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons. A choregus could regard his personal expenditure on the Chorus as a civic duty and a public honour, but Aristophanes showed in The Knights that wealthy citizens might regard civic responsibilities as punishment imposed on them by demagogues and populists like Cleon.Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, The Knights lines 911–925 Thus the political conservatism of the plays may reflect the views of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, on whose generosity all dramatists depended for putting on their plays.Rennie, W. The Acharnians of Aristophanes, Edward Arnold (London, 1909), p. 7 (reproduced by Bibliolife)
When Aristophanes's first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious, imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. His plays often express pride in the achievement of the older generation (the victors at Marathon)Wasps 1075–1101 Wikisource (original Greek), Knights 565–576Acharnians Wikisource (Greek Text) 692–700 yet they are not jingoistic, and they are staunchly opposed to the war with Sparta. The plays are particularly scathing in criticism of war profiteers, among whom populists such as Cleon figure prominently. By the time his last play was produced (around 386 BC) Athens had been defeated in war, its empire had been dismantled and it had undergone a transformation from being the political to the intellectual centre of Greece.Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds A. H. Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Books 1975, pp. 13–14 Aristophanes was part of this transformation and he shared in the intellectual fashions of the period—the structure of his plays evolves from Old Comedy until, in his last surviving play, Wealth II, it more closely resembles New Comedy. However it is uncertain whether he led or merely responded to changes in audience expectations.
Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters (now lost). He won first prize there with his next play, The Babylonians (also now lost). It was usual for foreign dignitaries to attend the City Dionysia, and The Babylonians caused some embarrassment for the Athenian authorities since it depicted the cities of the Delian League as slaves grinding at a mill."Greek Drama" P. Levi in The Oxford History of the Classical World J. Boardman, J. Griffin, O. Murray (eds), Oxford University Press 1986, p. 177 Some influential citizens, notably Cleon, reviled the play as slander against the polis and possibly took legal action against the author. The details of the trial are unrecorded but, speaking through the hero of his third play The Acharnians (staged at the Lenaia, where there were few or no foreign dignitaries), the poet carefully distinguishes between the polis and the real targets of his acerbic wit:
Aristophanes repeatedly savages Cleon in his later plays. But these satirical diatribes appear to have had no effect on Cleon's political career—a few weeks after the performance of The Knights—a play full of anti-Cleon jokes—Cleon was elected to the prestigious board of ten generals. Cleon also seems to have had no real power to limit or control Aristophanes: the caricatures of him continued up to and even beyond his death.
In the absence of clear biographical facts about Aristophanes, scholars make educated guesses based on interpretation of the language in the plays. Inscriptions and summaries or comments by Hellenistic and Byzantine scholars can also provide useful clues. We know from a combination of these sources,D. Welsh, IG ii2 2343, Philonides and Aristophanes' Banqueters, Classical Quarterly 33 (1983) and especially from comments in The KnightsKnights 512–514 and The Clouds,Clouds 530–533 that Aristophanes's first three plays were not directed by him; they were instead directed by Callistratus and Philoneides,Ian Storey, General Introduction, in Clouds, Wasps, Birds By Aristophanes, Peter Meineck (translator), Hackett Publishing 1998, p. xiii an arrangement that seemed to suit Aristophanes since he appears to have used these same directors in many later plays as well (Philoneides for example later directed The Frogs and he was also credited, perhaps wrongly, with directing The Wasps).MacDowell (1971), p. 124 Aristophanes's use of directors complicates our reliance on the plays as sources of biographical information, because apparent self-references might have been made with reference to his directors instead. Thus, for example, a statement by the chorus in The AcharniansThe Acharnians Wikisource (original Greek) lines 652–654 seems to indicate that the "poet" had a close, personal association with the island of Aegina. Similarly, the hero in The Acharnians complains about Cleon "dragging me into court" over "last year's play."The Acharnians Wikisource (original Greek) lines 377–382
Comments made by the Chorus referring to Aristophanes in The CloudsAristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, The Clouds lines 528–32 have been interpreted as evidence that he can hardly have been more than 18 years old when his first play The Banqueters was produced.Aristophanes: Lysistrata, The Acharnians, The Clouds Alan Sommerstein (ed), Penguin Classics 1975, p. 9 The second parabasis in WaspsWasps Wikisource (original Greek) lines 1265–1291 appears to indicate that he reached some kind of temporary accommodation with Cleon following either the controversy over The Babylonians or a subsequent controversy over The Knights.MacDowell (1978), p. 299 It has been inferred from statements in The Clouds and Peace that Aristophanes was prematurely bald.Aristophanis Comoediae Tomus 1, F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (eds), Oxford Classical Texts, Clouds 540–545, Peace 767–774