Read this if you…
- hate Bureaucrats and Litigators
- like the clouds and lysistrata
Skip this if you…
- haven't read Clouds or Lysistrata to decide if you even like Aristophanes
The 
Take
Pretty fun concept to be addicted to litigation. The trial of the dog was best part
The lineage through Wasps
- The Oresteia by Aeschylus. Wasps built on it. - *Wasps* is a sustained parody of Aeschylus, and it lands sharpest with the *Oresteia* fresh in mind - Philocleon's dog-trial restructures the *Eumenides* courtroom; the night-watch prologue echoes *Agamemnon*; Bdelycleon forcing a new cloak on his father mirrors the Furies changing their robes after the verdict - Read the trilogy first and you'll catch the jokes Aristophanes built straight on top of it
Depicted in Art
Greek title page reading 'Aristophanous komodiai ennea' — the first printed edition of Aristophanes' nine comedies, with Peace listed among them, in Venetian Greek type.
Aldus Manutius (printer); Markos Mousouros (editor), 1498
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.
The stone semicircle of seats and orchestra of the Theatre of Dionysus on the south slope of the Acropolis, the actual ancient venue where Peace took second prize at the Dionysia of 421 BC.
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'.
Engraved marble bust of the comic poet Aristophanes
Recommended Editions
Jeffrey Henderson
Harvard University Press · 1998
Henderson's Loeb is the scholarly Aristophanes, facing-page Greek with notes that actually explain the Athenian courtroom jokes Wasps depends on. Nothing else gets you that close to the original.
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Notable Quotes
Why, this class of old men, if irritated, becomes as terrible as a swarm of wasps. They carry below their loins the sharpest of stings, with which to prick their foes; they shout and leap and their stings burn like so many sparks.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, 1844–1900: "Aristophanes—that transfiguring, complementary genius, for whose sake one pardons all Hellenism for having existed."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet & dramatist, 1749–1832: "der ungezogne Liebling der Grazien — the spoiled darling of the Graces."
- Quintilian, Roman rhetorician, c. 35–c. 100 CE: "Old comedy … preserves intact the true grace of Attic diction. Of its writers the best are Aristophanes, Eupolis and Cratinus."
- Cicero, Roman orator & statesman, 106–43 BCE: "facetissimus poeta veteris comoediae — the wittiest poet of the Old Comedy."
- Plato, Greek philosopher, c. 428–348 BCE: "The Graces, seeking a shrine that would not fall, found the soul of Aristophanes."
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