Aristophanes

We know little of Aristophanes’ biography, and most of what we do know comes from his plays themselves. He was born in Kydathenaion, a deme or subdivision of Classical Athens, some fifty years after the Athenian statesman Cleisthenes (b. 570 BC) implemented sweeping democratic reform in the city-state. His father, a landowning citizen of Athens, was named Philippus. Aristophanes produced his first play, The Banqueters, in 427 BC, and would go on to write some forty plays over the course of his career in comedy, some of which we have in their entirety, many of which we have only in fragments. His plays were staged during Athenian drama competitions like those held during the City Dionysia and Lenaia, where they garnered prizes and fame for their robust, high-spirited poetry and incisive satirical wit. The most famous of Aristophanes’ surviving plays include The Clouds (completed in 417 BC), The Birds (414 BC), Lysistrata (411 BC), and The Frogs (405 BC). Aristophanes’ satire—scathing but born of a deep love for Athens—targets, among other things, warmongering politicians like the demagogue Cleon, who zealously supported the Peloponnesian War effort (see The Knights), intellectual charlatanism, and the blustery pomposity of the tragic spirit. His most famous victim is perhaps the great philosopher Socrates, whom Aristophanes presents in The Clouds as a myopic dope, a mere sophist, and an obnoxious corrupter of Athenian values. Indeed, Socrates’s student Plato would later blame Aristophanes for contributing to Socrates’ trial, conviction, and execution at the hands of the Athenian state in 399 BC. Aristophanes is remembered today as the greatest comic playwright of antiquity, and many readers would argue that he is the greatest comic playwright of all time, surpassing even Shakespeare and Moliere.