Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
London, Penguin, 1973. 255 p. 19 cm.
Description
Writing at a time of political and social crisis in Athens, Aristophanes (c. 447-c. 385 BC) was an eloquent, yet bawdy, challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. In Lysistrata and The Acharnians, two pleas for an end to the long war between Athens and Sparta, a band of women and a lone peasant respectively defeat the political establishment. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged. For this edition Alan Sommerstein has completely revised his translation of the three plays, bringing out the full nuances of Aristophanes' ribald humour and intricate word play, with a new introduction explaining the historical and cultural background to the plays. Book jacket.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member crazyjerseygirl
Of these three plays I have to date only read Lysistrata. The play has everything, sex, politics and raunchy jokes. Be sure to get a good translation, but more on that later. If you are anti-war I highly suggest it, moreso if you are a woman!
LibraryThing member Unreachableshelf
Rather free translations that are not for those who want a literal rendering from the Greek, but which communicate the comedy to the modern reader. Frequently the literal Greek is explained in a footnote. This volume contains my favorite translation of the Lysistrata that I ever came across in a
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Classics course while earning my Latin B.A. Show Less
LibraryThing member Pencils
I liked these three plays, where each main character takes extreme action, with either brilliant or disastrous results.
Dikaiopolis in The Archanians acts against lazy and corrupt politicians, who prolong war for personal gain and glory, by declaring his own peace;
Strepsiades in The Clouds tries to
Lysistrata in Lysistrata organises a sex strike to force men to end the war between Athens and Sparta.
The plays abound with jokes about farts, genitals and sex - it's easy to see why Aristophanes is either described as 'bawdy' or 'crude' (sample: Calonice: ... is it a big thing? / Lysistrata: a very big thing. / Calonice: very big and very meaty). Fun for a bunch o' drunk Ancient Greeks in a theatre somewhere.
Dikaiopolis in The Archanians acts against lazy and corrupt politicians, who prolong war for personal gain and glory, by declaring his own peace;
Strepsiades in The Clouds tries to
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manipulate the legal system by learning the art of argument from Socrates; Lysistrata in Lysistrata organises a sex strike to force men to end the war between Athens and Sparta.
The plays abound with jokes about farts, genitals and sex - it's easy to see why Aristophanes is either described as 'bawdy' or 'crude' (sample: Calonice: ... is it a big thing? / Lysistrata: a very big thing. / Calonice: very big and very meaty). Fun for a bunch o' drunk Ancient Greeks in a theatre somewhere.
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LibraryThing member jddunn
I read this for a history class freshman year of college. Don't remember much now except that it was bawdy and hilarious and sort of shocked me into fascination with the ancient world and the Greeks and how eerily modern they were. I'll re-read it someday and probably get more of the jokes than I
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did at 18. Show Less
LibraryThing member chriszodrow
Hilarious and bawdy.
LibraryThing member saturnloft
This book contains 3 plays: The Acharnians, a play dealing with the conflict between Athens and Sparta and the need for resolution;
Clouds, a black comedy that mercilessly skewers Socrates and his school of philosophy; & Lysistrata, the raunchy classic in which the women of Greece refuse to grant
Anyone trying to translate the plays of Aristophanes has his work cut out for him. Puns are hard to convey from one language to another, and these plays are chock-full of them. Not to mention a host of inside jokes regarding politicians, other playwrights, and notable figures. Not to mention a Greek truckload of phallological and scatological humor (Seriously, the Farrelly brothers have nothing on Aristophanes).
Despite these difficulties, Alan Somerstein does an admirable job with his translation and the notes are extremely helpful in clarifying some of the more obscure jokes. The only thing I really had trouble with is when the Spartans & Megarians take on Scottish accents. It just did not work for me.
Clouds, a black comedy that mercilessly skewers Socrates and his school of philosophy; & Lysistrata, the raunchy classic in which the women of Greece refuse to grant
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any sexual favors until their men end the Peloponnesian War.Anyone trying to translate the plays of Aristophanes has his work cut out for him. Puns are hard to convey from one language to another, and these plays are chock-full of them. Not to mention a host of inside jokes regarding politicians, other playwrights, and notable figures. Not to mention a Greek truckload of phallological and scatological humor (Seriously, the Farrelly brothers have nothing on Aristophanes).
Despite these difficulties, Alan Somerstein does an admirable job with his translation and the notes are extremely helpful in clarifying some of the more obscure jokes. The only thing I really had trouble with is when the Spartans & Megarians take on Scottish accents. It just did not work for me.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Devil_llama
These Greek comedies are perhaps not as well known as the Greek tragedies, but they have a lot to recommend them. These works combine the classical structure with a large helping of post-modernism (three millennia before post-modernism existed) and a trace of absurdism. Aristophanes alternates
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between mocking himself and his fellow playwrights, and mocking the pretensions of the Academy, the excesses of the government, and the very idea of war. His ideas come across as surprisingly modern in many ways, but a lot of that is because the issues we're facing today are really not that much different in some ways than the issues they were facing in the Greek empire. Sometimes works like this lead one to believe there truly is nothing new under the sun. Show Less
LibraryThing member Bruce_Deming
Humorous. The women are po'ed that the men keep going to war so decide to withhold sex from their men till they make peace and stay home. Bit melo dramatic.
LibraryThing member Salmondaze
Aristophanes is a great playwright but these plays are highly erratic, sort of all over the map, so I have to individually review each one.
The Acharnians (?) - I didn't get this one. At all. I'd give it an F but I feel utterly ill equipped to truly give it that. It just seems like main character
The Clouds (B) - I liked this play a lot better because I could see where Aristophanes was going. Clearly the representation of Socrates is about as unfair as it gets but satire was never meant to be fair. And honestly it's about as fair ultimately as Plato's portrayal of Socrates because as is generally thought later on Plato starting putting all his beliefs in Socrates' mouth even though Socrates himself likely didn't hold them.
Lysistrata (A+) - Save the best for last. I like this book's style. Lysistrata gets all the women to not have sex in order for peace. And it actually works! In that sense it's a very optimistic play, beautifully written, and eloquently stated in the mouths of all the characters. I can tell I'll have to read this play again in the future to get everything I missed, and that's definitely a good thing!
The Acharnians (?) - I didn't get this one. At all. I'd give it an F but I feel utterly ill equipped to truly give it that. It just seems like main character
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Dikaiopolis runs around with various sacks, girls, and thongs.The Clouds (B) - I liked this play a lot better because I could see where Aristophanes was going. Clearly the representation of Socrates is about as unfair as it gets but satire was never meant to be fair. And honestly it's about as fair ultimately as Plato's portrayal of Socrates because as is generally thought later on Plato starting putting all his beliefs in Socrates' mouth even though Socrates himself likely didn't hold them.
Lysistrata (A+) - Save the best for last. I like this book's style. Lysistrata gets all the women to not have sex in order for peace. And it actually works! In that sense it's a very optimistic play, beautifully written, and eloquently stated in the mouths of all the characters. I can tell I'll have to read this play again in the future to get everything I missed, and that's definitely a good thing!
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LibraryThing member VoodooYeager
Lysistrata is a rather funny tale of the women of Athens and Sparta coming together while their countries are at war. Determined to end their husbands' long stays away from home due to the war, these women board themselves up in the acropolis and refuse to "love" on their husbands until peace can
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be reached. The results are hilarious and create a witty battle of the sexes. Show Less
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Peace is a major theme of two of these plays. The Acharnians focuses on arguments against war among the men, while Lysistrata is a bawdy and demented fest of diatribes between women and men. When the women, led by the titular character, withhold their sex in their demand for peace the men seem to
The Acharnians is set during the Peloponnesian War during the sixth year of conflict between Athens and Sparta. In Aristophanes play the protagonist is a farmer named Dikaiopolis who has suffered as the war has progressed. The Athenian military faces pressure to escalate the conflict for revenge against Sparta, while Dikaiopolis wishes to negotiate peace for his family alone. Throughout the play, Dikaipolis must use his wit to thwart his militaristic opponents. Democracy is presented as a vehicle for militarism and it allows many of the Athenian politicians to rally supporters under the guise of cooperation. A buffoonish and arrogant general, Lamachus, is held up as an example of the militaristic attitude that Greek democracy often produced.
The play is filled with outrageous puns and wonderful wit that skewers the military and the Athenian aristocracy as peace is sought. There is even a brief section that pokes fun at the then successful tragic dramatist Euripides. However, this play is definitely one about the men who are in charge whether in Athens or Sparta; thus it is easy to contrast it with the approach taken in Lysistrata.
The name Lysistrata can be loosely translated as "she who disbands armies". That is behind both her mission and her leadership of the women of Athens who she encourages to withhold their sex from the men until peace can be brokered with Sparta. The play was produced more than a decade after The Acharnians and Athens had suffered a major blow when defeated in Syracuse with the loss of her navy. While they were recovering from that disaster the war continued with no end in sight (did I mention that these plays address very contemporary issues for those of us living in twenty-first century America?).
The play is famous for the roles given to women, particularly noteworthy since there is no evidence for women attending Athenian theater, and since it entailed the somewhat comic difficulty of having men, already in their phallic-oriented costumes, play the roles of the women. It is much more bawdy and extreme in its humor than The Archanians with the focus on the "battle of the sexes" centered at the Acropolis as a means used by the women, led by Lysistrata, to bring the men to their senses. The humor is magnified in the opening sections as the men who oppose them are old and perhaps a bit senile since the young men are all at war.
The pride of the old men is deeply wounded when Lysistrata declares that the women have assumed all civil authority and will henceforth provide for the safety and welfare of Athens. The magistrate cannot believe his ears when he hears Lysistrata say that the women have grown impatient with the incompetence of their husbands in matters that concern the commonweal. For rebuking the women, the magistrate receives potfuls of water poured on his head. When the ineffectual old men declare that they will never submit, the women answer that the old men are worthless and that all they have been able to do is legislate the city into trouble.
The women do have difficulties maintaining order within their ranks, but that just adds to the comedy. The result of this and further comic moments, including a riot surrounding the birth of a baby to one of the women, is a delight that transcends the centuries and overcomes many of the difficulties of translation. This has become my favorite play by Aristophanes.
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be at a significant disadvantage.The Acharnians is set during the Peloponnesian War during the sixth year of conflict between Athens and Sparta. In Aristophanes play the protagonist is a farmer named Dikaiopolis who has suffered as the war has progressed. The Athenian military faces pressure to escalate the conflict for revenge against Sparta, while Dikaiopolis wishes to negotiate peace for his family alone. Throughout the play, Dikaipolis must use his wit to thwart his militaristic opponents. Democracy is presented as a vehicle for militarism and it allows many of the Athenian politicians to rally supporters under the guise of cooperation. A buffoonish and arrogant general, Lamachus, is held up as an example of the militaristic attitude that Greek democracy often produced.
The play is filled with outrageous puns and wonderful wit that skewers the military and the Athenian aristocracy as peace is sought. There is even a brief section that pokes fun at the then successful tragic dramatist Euripides. However, this play is definitely one about the men who are in charge whether in Athens or Sparta; thus it is easy to contrast it with the approach taken in Lysistrata.
The name Lysistrata can be loosely translated as "she who disbands armies". That is behind both her mission and her leadership of the women of Athens who she encourages to withhold their sex from the men until peace can be brokered with Sparta. The play was produced more than a decade after The Acharnians and Athens had suffered a major blow when defeated in Syracuse with the loss of her navy. While they were recovering from that disaster the war continued with no end in sight (did I mention that these plays address very contemporary issues for those of us living in twenty-first century America?).
The play is famous for the roles given to women, particularly noteworthy since there is no evidence for women attending Athenian theater, and since it entailed the somewhat comic difficulty of having men, already in their phallic-oriented costumes, play the roles of the women. It is much more bawdy and extreme in its humor than The Archanians with the focus on the "battle of the sexes" centered at the Acropolis as a means used by the women, led by Lysistrata, to bring the men to their senses. The humor is magnified in the opening sections as the men who oppose them are old and perhaps a bit senile since the young men are all at war.
The pride of the old men is deeply wounded when Lysistrata declares that the women have assumed all civil authority and will henceforth provide for the safety and welfare of Athens. The magistrate cannot believe his ears when he hears Lysistrata say that the women have grown impatient with the incompetence of their husbands in matters that concern the commonweal. For rebuking the women, the magistrate receives potfuls of water poured on his head. When the ineffectual old men declare that they will never submit, the women answer that the old men are worthless and that all they have been able to do is legislate the city into trouble.
The women do have difficulties maintaining order within their ranks, but that just adds to the comedy. The result of this and further comic moments, including a riot surrounding the birth of a baby to one of the women, is a delight that transcends the centuries and overcomes many of the difficulties of translation. This has become my favorite play by Aristophanes.
Show Less
LibraryThing member charlie68
The more things change the more they stay the same, people laughed at the same things in Ancient Greece as we do.
Subjects
Language
Original language
Greek (Ancient)
Original publication date
c.447-385 B.C.
Physical description
255 p.; 19 cm
ISBN
0140442871 / 9780140442878