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The Knights / Peace / The Birds / The Assembly Women / Wealth

aristophanes alan h. sommerstein david b. barrett david brett

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The plays in this volume all contain Aristophanes' trademark bawdy comedy and dazzling verbal agility. In The Birds, two frustrated Athenians join the birds to build the utopian city of 'Much Cuckoo in the Clouds'. The Knights is a venomous satire on Cleon, a prominent Athenian demagogue, while The Assembly Women deals with the battle of the sexes as the women of Athens infiltrate the all-male Assembly in disguise. The lengthy conflict with Sparta is the subject of Peace, inspired by the hope of a settlement in 421 BC, and Wealth reflects on the economic catastrophe that hit Athens after the war.

335 pages, Paperback

First published July 27,1978

This edition

Format
335 pages, Paperback
Published
July 27, 1978 by Penguin Classics
ISBN
9780140443325
ASIN
0140443320
Language
English

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About the author

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aristophanes

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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."

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.4 / 5.0, 5 votes)
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gumrats
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I had never read Aristophanes, only seen his work performed (by students with a week's rehearsal), and the explosive surprise of his jokes is something that is very hard to contain on a page. The perfect plays to mess around with your friends with, if you're into that sort of thing.
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Koro-Drago
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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The Knights: 2/5. very confusing. Probably requires context I don't know.
Peace: 3/5. very weird. would probably be funnier performed. alas, I am only one person.
The Birds: 5/5. very funny, would read again.
The Assembly Women: 4.5. funny but kind of Diet Lysistrata. anyway Aristophanes says women>men.
Wealth: 3.5/5. funny satire but kind of confusing and boring. sorry.
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B3y0ndB1rthd4y
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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I picked this up just for The Assembly Women as part of my efforts to read through a list of the 100 most important plays throughout history. The Assembly Women was wonderfully bawdy and hilarious. I'll have to come back to this one again.
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Parasprite
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 1,2025
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Overall, most of them were more or less amusing but also very educational about contemporary times (including smelly Socrates). The notes and intros all are extremely useful, often even about the wordplays used and how the translators did in bringing those about in English (sometimes successfully, sometimes not). It's really nice to see how comedy doesn't change much, but this collection is not the best of Aristophanes' work.

The Knights:
Fun little competition games, but not much for plot.

Peace:
Crazy fun concept, hilarious beginning with perfect comedic timing(?).

The Birds:
Really absurd humour, I love it. The humongous amount of well-researched puns as well, you'd think Aristie was an ornithologist.

The Assembly Women:
As warned in the intro, the second half is not nearly as strong and completely all over the place, but I still got some chuckles out of it. Also, a modern translation should change the "In on the plot" joke - instead of "In on the pot", since it's about having multiple mistresses, it should be "In on the thot", a much more apt translation. Love all the slander jokes that need long footnotes. As jordana said, Lysistrata Lite.

Wealth:
Barely funny jokes, long and dull plot, everything just got more boring by the end.
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