Aristophanes
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- I.A The most distinguished comic poet of Greece, from Lindus, on the island of Rhodes, a contemporary of Socrates, Hor. S. 1, 4, 1.—Hence,
- B Derivv.,
- 1 Ări-stŏphănēus or -īus, a, um, adj., Aristophanean: anapaestus Aristophanius, Cic. Or. 56, 190: metrum, Serv. Centim. p. 1818 P.—
- 2 Ăristŏphănĭcus, a, um, adj., the same, Hier. ad Isa. l. 15, c. 54, v. 11.—
- II A distinguished grammarian of Byzantium, pupil of Eratosthenes, and teacher of the critic Aristarchus, Cic. de Or. 3, 33, 132; id. Fin. 5, 19, 50; id. Att. 16, 11.
- 1. uit Athene, tijdgenoot v. Socrates; hij was de belangrijkste dichter v.d. oude Att. komedie (ca. 452—388 v. Chr.); — adj. Aristophanēus en -nīus, a, um;
- 2. uit Byzantium (ca. 257—180 v. Chr.), bibliothecaris v.h. Museion in Alexandrië, beroemd filoloog, grammaticus en criticus, grondlegger v.d. lexicografie, leermeester v. Aristarchus.
(Ἀριστοφάνης). (1) The greatest writer of Greek comedy. He lived at Athens, B.C. 444-388. His father, Philippus, is said to have been not a native Athenian, but a settler from Rhodes or Egypt, who afterwards acquired citizenship. However this may be, the demagogue Cleon, whose displeasure Aristophanes had incurred, tried to call in question his right to the citizenship. His first comedy appeared in B.C. 427, but was not performed under his own name because of his youth; and several more of his plays were brought upon the stage by Callistratus and Philonides, till in 424 he brought out The Knights in his own person. Forty-four of his plays were known to antiquity, though four of them were considered doubtful. Of these we possess eleven, the only complete Greek comedies which have survived, besides the titles and numerous fragments of twenty-six others. The eleven are: (1) The Acharnians (Ἀχαρνεῖς), which gained him the victory over Cratinus and Eupolis, B.C. 425, written during the great Peloponnesian War to induce the Athenians to make peace.
(2) The Knights (Ἱππεῖς) mentioned above, B.C. 424, also crowned with the first prize, and aimed directly against the demagogue Cleon.
(3) The Clouds (Νεφέλαι), B.C. 423, his most famous and, in his own opinion, his most successful piece, though when played it only won the third prize. We have it now in a second, and apparently unfinished, edition. It is directed against the pernicious influence of the Sophists, as the representative of whom Socrates is attacked.
(4) The Wasps (Σφῆκες), brought out in B.C. 422, and, like the two following, rewarded with the second prize; it is a satire upon the Athenian passion for lawsuits.
(5) The Peace (Εἰρήνη), of the year B.C. 421, recommending the conclusion of peace.
(6) The Birds (Ὄρνιθες), acted in B.C. 414, and exposing the romantic hopes built on the expedition to Sicily. This is unquestionably the happiest production of the poet's genius, and is marked by a careful reserve in the employment of dramatic resource.
(7) The Lysistraté (Λυσιστράτη), B.C. 411, a Women's Conspiracy to bring about peace; the last of the strictly political plays.
(8) Thesmophoriazusae (Θεσμοφοριάζουσαι), probably to be dated B.C. 410. It is written against Euripides's dislike of women, for which the women who are celebrating the Thesmophoria drag him to justice.
(9) The Frogs (Βάτραχοι), which was acted in B.C. 405, and won the first prize. It is a piece sparkling with genius, on the decay of tragic art, the blame of which is laid on Euripides, then recently deceased.
(10) Ecclesiazusae (Ἐκκλησιάζουσαι), or The National Assembly of Women, B.C. 392. It is levelled against the vain attempts to restore the Athenian state by cut-and-dried constitutions.
(11) Plutus (Πλοῦτος), or The God of Wealth. The blind god is restored to sight, and better times are brought about. This play was acted first in B.C. 408, then in 388 in a revised form suitable to the time, and dispensing with chorus and parabasis. This play marks the transition to the Middle Comedy. See Comoedia.
In the opinion of the ancients, Aristophanes holds a middle place between Cratinus and Eupolis, being neither so rough as the former nor so mild as the latter, but combining the severity of the one with the grace of the other. What was thought of him in his own time is evident from Plato's Symposium, where he is numbered among the noblest of men; and an epigram attributed to that philosopher says that the Graces, looking for an enduring shrine, found it in the soul of Aristophanes. He unites understanding, feeling, and fancy in a degree possessed by few poets of antiquity. His keen glance penetrates the many evils of his time and their most hidden causes; his scorn for all that is base, and his patriotic spirit, burning to bring back the grand days of Marathon, urge him on, without respect of persons or regard for self, to drag the faults he sees into daylight, and lash them with stinging sarcasm; while his inexhaustible fancy invents ever new and original materials, which he manipulates with perfect mastery of language and technical skill. If his jokes are often coarse and actually indecent, the fact must be imputed to the character of the Old Comedy and the licentiousness of the Dionysiac festival, during which the plays were acted. No literature has anything to compare with these comedies. Ancient scholars, recognizing their great importance, bestowed infinite pains in commenting on them, and valuable relics of their writings are enshrined in the existing collections of scholia.
The principal MS. of Aristophanes is that of Ravenna, which contains the eleven extant plays. Next in importance is the Codex Venetus Marcianus of nearly the same date, but which lacks the Acharnians, Thesmophoriazusae, Ecclesiazusae, and Lysistraté. Both of these are probably derived from one Alexandrian archetype. The editio princeps of Aristophanes is that of Aldus (Venice, 1498), containing nine plays, to which Junta added two more (1515). The ed. of Invernizzi-Beck contains a collation of the Ravenna MS. Other editions are those of Bekker (1829); Dindorf (5th ed. 1869); Meineke (1860); Blaydes (1886); Holden (5th ed. 1887). Eng. trans. of eight plays by Rudd (1867); of five plays by Frere (1871). There is a complete concordance by Dunbar (1883).
(2) Aristophanes the Grammarian (or Scholar) of Byzantium, born about B.C. 260, went in his early youth to Alexandria, and was there a pupil of Zenodotus and Callimachus. On the death of Apollonius of Rhodes, Aristophanes, when past his sixtieth year, was appointed to be chief librarian, and died at the age of seventy-seven. His fame was eclipsed by that of his pupil Aristarchus, but he still passed for one of the ablest grammarians and critics of antiquity, distinguished by industry, learning, and sound judgment. In addition to the Homeric poems, which formed his favourite study, and of which he was the first to attempt a really critical text, he devoted his labours to Hesiod; the lyric poets, especially Alcaeus and Pindar; and the tragic and comic poets, Aristophanes and Menander in particular. The received introductions to the plays of the tragedians and Aristophanes are in their best parts derived from him. He was also the author of a large and much-quoted work of a lexicographical character, considerable fragments of which still survive. See Homerus; Textual Criticism.
- mentions Lepreus: Paus. 5.5.3
Aristophanes, judged in antiquity to be the foremost poet of the ‘old’ Attic comedy, was the son of one Philippos, of the urban deme Kydathenaion. He was born ca. 447/6 and died probably between 386 and 380. Aside from his theatrical career little is known about his life. By his twenties his hair had thinned or receded enough that he could be called bald; early in the fourth century he served as a councillor; and he had two sons, Araros and Philippos, both of whom had careers as comic poets in the mid-fourth century. In his dialogue Symposion, Plato portrays Aristophanes as being at home among the social and intellectual elite of Athens, but the historical veracity of this portrayal is uncertain.
Aristophanes’ first comedy was produced in 427 and his last in 386 or later. At least once he produced a comedy in the theater at Eleusis. Forty-four comedies ascribed to him were known to Alexandrian scholars (four of these they thought spurious); from the Alexandrian edition(s) eleven complete comedies and some 1000 brief fragments of the lost comedies survive. In competition Aristophanes won at least six first prizes and four second prizes, and only two last-place finishes are attested. After his victory with Frogsin 405, the people voted him an honorific crown of sacred olive for the advice he had given in the parabasis and decreed that the play should have the unique honor of being performed a second time. Aristophanes’ eleven extant plays are: Acharnians (Lenaea 425), Knights (Lenaia 424), Clouds (Dionysia 423; the surviving version is an incomplete and never-staged revision dating from 419-17), Wasps (Lenaea 422), Peace (Dionysia 421), Birds (Dionysia 414), Lysistrata (Lenaea 411), Women at the Thesmophoria (Dionysia 411), Frogs (Lenaea 405), Ecclesiazusae (ca. 391), Plutus (388).
Aristophanes’ early career was enlivened by a four-year legal and political battle with his fellow-demesman, Cleon, who from ca. 428 until his death in 422 was the most influential politician in Athens. Attacked in Aristophanes’ play Babylonians (Dionysia 426), Cleon unsuccessfully denounced the poet to the council for having slandered the magistrates, councillors and the people of Athens in the presence of foreigners. In Acharnians the following year, Aristophanes both defended his critique and announced that he was preparing a new attack on Cleon in his next year's play, Knights. That play, which savagely caricatured Cleon and bitterly condemned his public career, inaugurated a novel type of political comedy, which singled out the new-style popular politicians like Cleon for portrayal as dishonest ‘demagogues’ and which has deeply influenced the verdict of posterity about this period of Athenian history. After Knights, Cleon again tried to prosecute Aristophanes (on what charge is unclear), and this time the case was settled out of court. Evidently Aristophanes promised to mitigate subsequent attacks, but the attacks continued nevertheless in both Cloudsand Wasps, where the poet boasted about his failure to live up to his agreement.
Aristophanes created influential portrayals of at least two other major contemporaries as well. In Clouds, the philosopher Socrates is made to stand for everything intellectually and socially threatening about the sophistic movement in Athens; in Apology, a re-creation of Socrates’ defense-speech at his capital trial in 399, Plato has the philosopher say that Aristophanes’ portrayal created a public prejudice against him that was more dangerous than his accusers’ actual charges. In Acharnians, Women at the Thesmophoriaand Frogs, Aristophanes portrayed Euripides and his tragic art as degenerate and as harmful to the polis, but at the same time he incorporated the sophisticated Euripidean spirit so thoroughly into his comic modes that his old rival, Cratinus, could coin the word ‘euripidaristophanizer’ to describe modish theatergoers. As in the case of Cleon (but not Socrates, who was lucky enough to have Plato and Xenophon to establish his good name for posterity), Aristophanes’ judgment on Euripides (especially in Frogs) has done much to establish his status among literary historians as a tragedian inferior to Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Aristophanes was a sharp observer of the social and political life of Athens, but his plays reveal no systematic or original political credos. In Acharniansand Lysistratathe sympathetic characters denounce the folly and greed of Athens’ wartime leaders and urge that more should be done to negotiate a peaceful settlement, but Birdssupports vigorous prosecution of the war-effort, particularly the expedition against Sicily. In Knightsand Waspsthe wickedness of popular leaders like Cleon is vehemently exposed, but at the same time the people are criticized for their ignorance and gullibility in following such leaders. On the whole, Aristophanes compares contemporary Athens, which he sees as being in decline, unfavorably with the Athens that had defeated the Persians and built a great empire, while at the same time he urges his countrymen to recapture the ideals, policies and leadership that had made Athens great. To judge from the kinds of people he satirizes and does not satirize, Aristophanes thought that democracy worked best when the ordinary citizens deferred to the well-born, wealthy and educated citizens, though he never suggests the adoption of an oligarchic arrangement to accomplish that goal.
Aristophanes reacted in a similar way to contemporary morality, education and the arts. Although he was fully a part of his own generation and thoroughly versed in its latest fashions, Aristophanes was also a nostalgic student of the past and thought that Athenian culture had been sounder, grander and stronger in the old days. In Cloudshe trenchantly skewers what was hidebound about the old education, and in Frogshe makes telling criticisms of Aeschylus’ tragic art, but we are meant to come away with the feeling that modern educators and artists, like their contemporaries, were not accomplishing what their counterparts in the good old days had accomplished.
As a playwright, Aristophanes was resourceful and ingenious in creating lively drama, especially in creating efficient devices (like Socrates’ Thinkery in Clouds or the House of Demos in Knights) for the expression and exploration of complex ideas. As a stylist, he is graceful, urbane, consistently witty and humorous, with a fine ear for speech (human or otherwise!) and a great gift for parody.
The best texts of Aristophanes’ plays are those being issued (with introductions and commentaries) by various authors from the Oxford University Press; A.H. Sommerstein's editions-in-progress from Aris & Phillips (with translations and notes) are also good; meanwhile, the Bude edition by V. Coulon is serviceable. For the fragments see R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci, vol. III.2 (Berlin/N.Y. 1984).
Arnott, P. Greek Scenic Conventions in the Fifth Century BC (Oxford 1962) Dover, K.J. Aristophanic Comedy (California 1972) Harriott, R.M. Aristophanes, Poet and Dramatist (Baltimore 1986) Hubbard, T.K. The Mask of Comedy. Aristophanes and the Intertextual Parabasis (Ithaca 1991) McLeish, K. The theater of Aristophanes (New York 1980) Pickard-Cambridge, A.W. The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, second ed. rev. by J. Gould and D.M. Lewis (Oxford 1968, 1988) Reckford, K.J. Aristophanes’ Old-And-New Comedy (Chapel Hill 1987) Sifakis, G.M. Parabasis and Animal Choruses (London 1971) Stone, L.M. Costume in Aristophanic Comedy (New York 1981) Walcot, Greek Drama in its Theatrical and Social Context (Cardiff 1976) Webster, T.B.L. Greek theater Production (London 1970) Whitman, C.H. Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge MA 1964) Jeffrey Henderson