In this play, Socrates is depicted as a sophist who runs the Phrontisterion (meaning ‘the Thinkery’ or ‘the Think Shop’), a place where he teaches his students the art of ‘speaking well’.Įngraving of a scene from Aristophanes’ Old Comedy play ‘The Clouds’ in which two of the characters speak while Socrates hangs in a basket in the air. For example, in The Clouds, written in 423 BC, Aristophanes pokes fun at the philosopher Socrates. The comic plays of Aristophanes, it may be mentioned, were not limited to the Peloponnesian War. A Strike at Socrates, Aeschylus, and Euripides ( Public Domain ) In Aristophanes’ play ‘Lysistrata,’ the women of Greece withhold sex to encourage an end to the Peloponnesian War. The plan was for the women to refuse to have sex with their husbands and lovers until a peace treaty was struck between the two warring sides. In another play, Lysistrata (meaning ‘Army Disbander’), written in 411 BC, the women of Greece are persuaded by the eponymous character to help end the Peloponnesian War. For example, The Knights, which won first place at the Lenaia festival in 424 BC, is a caricature of Cleon, a prominent Athenian statesman and general during the Peloponnesian War.
Aristophanes Takes on WarĪristophanes was writing during a period of time when Athens was engaged in the Peloponnesian War, and some of his plays addressed the issues of this war directly. Little is known about the life of the famous playwright. Portrait of Aristophanes based on a bust. It has been pointed out, however, that the comedic writer was almost certainly educated in Athens, and was perhaps even a disciple of the sophist Prodicus of Ceos. For example, implicit references in later plays suggest that Aristophanes was born around 446 or 448 BC, and that he was possibly the son of a man named Philippos, who lived on the island of Aegina. Moreover, much of the information we have about this playwright only comes from references to his life inserted within his plays.
Much less is known about Aristophanes as a person as compared to the plays he wrote. Whilst it is certain that there were numerous playwrights who wrote comedy, the best-known of these is Aristophanes, a man sometimes referred to as the ‘Father of Comedy.’ The Mysterious Figure Behind the Plays Old Comedy may be dated back to around 450 BC, when democracy was established in Athens by Pericles. Greek comedy has been divided by the Alexandrian grammarians into three periods – Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. In the theater of Ancient Greece, one of the three main dramatic forms was comedy (the other two being tragedy and satyr plays).
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