Aristophanes
c. 446–c. 386 BCE · Ancient Greece
“Brekekekex koax koax!”
Peak-work percentile in the canon.
The lineage through Aristophanes
Drew From(5)
who shaped Aristophanes
The Frogs sends Dionysus to the underworld to judge a contest between the long-dead Aeschylus and the freshly-dead Euripides for the throne of tragedy. Aristophanes parodies Euripides without mercy — the fussy prologues, the talky realism, the boundary-pushing voice behind heroines like Medea. Euripides loses to Aeschylus, but the joke only lands because the audience could recite Medea from memory.
via The Oresteia
- Aristophanes resurrects Aeschylus to defend the Oresteia in person
- The Frogs' great poetry contest turns on it — Euripides cross-examines the trilogy's prologue word for word, and the play's torchlight finale mirrors the Oresteia's
- Reading Aeschylus first lets the joke land: you have to know the grandeur being put on trial to enjoy watching it defend itself
via The Histories
- Dikaiopolis's big speech is a direct send-up of the proem to Herodotus's Histories
- Where Herodotus blames the war between Greeks and Persians on abducted women — Io, Europa, Medea, Helen — Aristophanes blames the Peloponnesian War on a stolen prostitute and two of Aspasia's girls
- The joke only fully lands if you've read the solemn original it's mocking — go meet Herodotus first
- When Lysistrata recalls her husband telling her "war shall be the business of menfolk," she's echoing Hector's farewell to Andromache in Iliad 6
- Aristophanes takes Homer's most famous statement of separate spheres and detonates it — the women make war their business and end it
- Knowing the original line lands the joke: he's quoting the canon to overturn it
- The Theogony is the cosmogony The Birds is sending up — Aristophanes lifts Hesiod's primordial lineup (Chaos, Erebus, Night, Eros) and reshuffles it for laughs
- In the bird-chorus's parabasis, Hesiod's genealogy of the gods gets inverted so the birds come first and the Olympians arrive late
- Read Hesiod's solemn version first and the comic reversal snaps into focus
Inspired(1)
who Aristophanes shaped
- Aristophanes put Socrates on stage as a fraud — suspended in a basket, studying the heavens, teaching young men to argue wrong into right
- That caricature stuck for a generation, and it's why the historical Socrates ended up on trial
- The Clouds is the comedy that the Apology spends its opening pages trying to undo
Portraits
Tight head crop of the same Uffizi herm — cleaner framing of the standard Aristophanes portrait type, well suited to a thumbnail/likeness slot. Idealized Roman-tradition likeness.
A double-headed marble herm: Aristophanes facing one direction, Menander the other — the masters of Old and New Comedy joined back-to-back as a single sculptural object.
A bearded marble head of Aristophanes mounted on a herm, mouth slightly open as if mid-speech; inscribed in Greek 'Aristophanes, son of Philippides, the Athenian'.
Famous Quotes
“Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!”
“We women have the salvation of Greece in our hands.”
“Socrates: I walk on air and look down on the sun.”
“I am traversing the air and contemplating the sun.”
About Aristophanes
Ancient Greek comic playwright, the greatest representative of Old Comedy. His eleven surviving plays are bawdy, politically sharp satires of Athenian public life. Lysistrata, The Clouds, and The Frogs remain staples of the theatrical canon for their wit and fearless targeting of politicians, philosophers, and fellow playwrights.
Aristophanes, Ranked
According to 
Where to start with Aristophanes →
- 22The Clouds423 BCAristophanesHard·Quick·89 pagesInfluence68Popularity4Ancient GreeceComedyAncient Greek
- 121Wasps422 BCAristophanesHard·Quick·91 pagesInfluence25Popularity2Ancient GreeceComedyAncient Greek
- 126Lysistrata411 BCAristophanesHard·Quick·79 pagesInfluence66Popularity52Ancient GreeceComedyAncient Greek
- 136The Frogs405 BCAristophanesHard·Quick·114 pagesInfluence68Popularity4Ancient GreeceComedyAncient Greek
- 169The Acharnians425 BCAristophanesHard·Quick·75 pagesInfluence24Popularity2Ancient GreeceComedyAncient Greek
- 198The Birds414 BCAristophanesHard·Quick·104 pagesInfluence26Popularity3Ancient GreeceComedyAncient Greek
- 200Peace421 BCAristophanesHard·Quick·80 pagesInfluence24Popularity2Ancient GreeceComedyAncient Greek