If you have ever wondered where western humor comes from, read Aristophanes. This Greek playwright wrote many of the best Greek comedies of his day, and we are lucky enough to have eleven of his plays. In this election season, The Acharnians and The Knights are must reads!

I thought this was a very funny play! Oh my gosh. Imagine if, in modern times, a farmer up north in Minnesota made a private trade treaty with Canada to get around the tariffs - that's a little like what this play explores.

I love that he was exploring the treaties of different guaranteed peacetime lengths as if they were wine vintages.

I LOVE!!! the way Aristophanes brought in his fellow playwright Euripides as a CHARACTER in this and then had Dicaeopolis beg Euripides for clothing from one of his characters, while Euripides was just portrayed as this miserable old tragedian while getting asked for one more thing... just one more thing... just one more thing... oh mercy me I forgot just ONE more thing... oh gosh but this next thing, my plans will fall apart... oh gosh I need just ONE MORE thing... I was laughing my ass off through this entire sequence, absolutely brilliant. Euripides must've been rolling his eyes out of his head watching this at the Dionysia.
The modern equivalent of this is like, having a scene where the fictional character in a movie goes and finds a different, well-known REAL LIFE MOVIE DIRECTOR and begs him for some help based on the characters he was known for. A totally modern parody technique, done 2500 years ago.

This play did a great job showing parallels between Dicaeopolis and . Very powerful, really well done, amazing juxtaposition here.

The Megarian selling his daughters but dressed as pigs and everyone just going with it was GRIM but played off as a joke and, y'know, presumably all lived happily here! Selling the Athenian informer to the Boeotian was funny in the same way too.

This was so damn funny. Great play.

mah... non mi è piaciuta per niente, forse troppo arguta per il mio cervellino

ახლა ღრუბლებს ვკითხულობ და ის უფრო მომწონს.

A Good Edition of One of Aristophanes' Comedies.

Firstly, this book is free so it automatically gets at least two stars. Free books are great to expand one's knowledge. The story itself is witty and written with verve. You get a great understanding of what life was like in ancient Athens during the Peloponnesian Wars. Writers like Thucydides usually just focus on military aspects. This edition seems to be a good translation. There is one major drawback to this edition. While there are lots of footnotes, they are incredibly hard to follow at times. Nonetheless the footnotes can be insightful and help explain some difficult concepts. Overall, I recommend this edition. It's a good way of discovering the genre of ancient Greek comedy.

I didnt know the Classics could be so funny!

tot i que no m'ha fet gràcia, he d'admetre que és una molt bona crítica i l'ús de la sàtira chefkiss

I think that the premise of this play is very compelling, but Aristophanes doesn't take it anywhere particularly interesting or funny. I can see that this is one of his first plays (and his earliest extant play) because of this roughness. The thought that an ordinary citizen, Dikaiopolis, of Athens could secure a private peace treaty with Sparta during the first years of the Peloponnesian War is a funny one: what do his fellow Athenians think? And so on. But the play just doesn't really do anything with this funny idea.

Hehehehehehehehehehehhsahahahaa! Seriously. Read this. It's awesome!!!

The premise of this book is quite absurd: One citizen obtains a private peace treaty with the Spartan empire and enjoys the benefits of peace.

From what is know to us today, this book was Aristophanes' way of throwing oil on an ongoing fire: Cleon had attacked him for his prior works. And so in this work the author decided to make fun of Cleon.
Aristophanes' recipe for encroachment on freedom of speech: "Don't apologize, make it worse"?

Well, altogether I must say that this book is a fine read. I think it's pretty accessible. Especially if the book/translation you pick comes along with clarifying notes.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Aristophanes' The Acharnians!

Mi primera comedia y he acabado contento, buena crítica social, entretenido y en algunas ocasiones gracioso y el traductor ha hecho que los acentos que imita aristofanes sean un gallego y catalán y queda de maravilla. Tengo ganas de leer el resto de comedias

"The Acharnians" is the first of the war trilogy which leads to the more renowned play "Lysistrata". From my quick read (without checking all the footnotes to disentangle relationships or illusions), this play is a comic farce about a private property owner making a private peace during the War. It has some funny bits in it, but not very emotionally engaging.