The Frogs and Other Plays

Aristophanes, often referred to as “The Father of Comedy”, is an ancient Greek poet and playwright who is credited with helping to create the art of satire and irony. Of the over forty plays Aristophanes wrote during his lifetime only eleven survive to this day of which five are collected together here in this volume.“The Wasps” is a play which satirizes the Athenian general Cleon, a popular contemporary demagogue, and the Athenian courts which empower him. “The Thesmophoriazusae” depicts a gathering of women at an annual festival as they plan to enact their revenge upon Euripides for his unflattering depiction of their sex. “The Frogs” relates the journey of the god Dionysus to the underworld, who wishes to improve the state of Athenian tragedy by bringing Euripides back from the dead. In “The Clouds” we find a lampoon of contemporary Athenian intellectuals, most notably Socrates. Lastly in “Plutus”, Aristophanes employs the god of wealth, Plutus, to satirize the political economics of Athenian society. This edition follows the prose translations of The Athenian Society and includes a biographical afterword.