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Aristophanes, 1: The Acharnians/Peace/Celebrating Ladies/Wealth
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The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of the entire corpus of classical Greek tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. It is the only contemporary series of all the surviving work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander. Aristophanes wrote most of his comedic masterpieces during the Peloponnesian War, parodying the tumultuous politics and society of that time with trademark innuendoes and bawdy stagings and dialogue. In these plays, Aristophanes brings every rhetorical strategem into play to treat the reader to stories of one man's attempt to create a "war-free zone," the rescue of the imprisoned Peace on the back of a giant dung beetle, a satire of Euripides's sympathies for women, and the hustling and healing of a blind and destitute Wealth in order to redistribute the world's riches. Translations are by Jack Flavin ( Acharnians ), Fred Beake ( Peace ), David Slavitt ( Celebrating Ladies ), and Palmer Bovie ( Wealth ). The volume includes an introduction by Ralph Rosen, Professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Genres
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1,-0388
This edition
- Format
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336 pages, Hardcover
- Published
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January 29, 1998 by University of Pennsylvania Press
- ISBN
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9780812234565
- ASIN
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0812234561
- Language
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English
About the author
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Aristophanes (Greek: Αριστοφάνης; 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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