This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Whether his target is the war between the sexes or his fellow playwright Euripides, Aristophanes is the most important Greek comic dramatist—and one of the greatest comic playwrights of all time. His writing—at once bawdy and delicate—brilliantly fuses serious political satire with pyrotechnical bombast, establishing the tradition of comedy as high art. His messages are as timely and relevant today as they were in ancient Greece, and his plays still provoke laughter—and thought. This volume features four celebrated masterpieces: Lysistrata, The Frogs, The Birds, and The Clouds, translated by three of the most distinguished translators and classicists of our time.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This glowingly exhibits Aristophanes' unbridled imagination and his unrivalled skill at making bellies dance with laughter. In his Clouds, he puts Socrates high into the ether because his Philosophy is ethereal and beyond the reach of mere mortals. It is, Aristophanes declares, about as useful as knowing which end of its anatomy, its mouth or its bum, a gnat farts. This then becomes a contest between Good Education" and "Bad Education" and which is more useful to us. In his Frogs, he travels in the other direction, to Hades' world, which is also beyond the reach of mere mortals. He goes down there to resurrect one of his stage colleagues. All three had died, Sophocles only days before he wrote the play. His TheBirds is a silly, playful thing where he lets his imagination roam wherever it wants. Athens is a mess of lawyers, of idiot politicians and of complicated, intrusive bureaucracy. After the debacle of the Sicilian Expedition the only thing an author of comedies could write was an airy fantasy. Life in Athens had become intolerable so his two ageing heroes leave this city and, with the aid of birds, found their own, up, midway between the ether of Socrates and the hypogeous world of Hades - a land which they called, "Land of the Cloudy Gum Cock".