Aristophanes was born in 448 BC and he died in 385 BC. He was an Athenian playwright who was and is considered to be one of the greatest writers of comedy in literary history. His plays have been performed through the centuries and have remained popular because of their wit, comic invention, and poetic language.
Aristophanes is believed to have been born in the deme, or township, of Cydathenaeum, in Athens, the son of one Philippos. He was presumably well educated, and he may have had property on the island of Aegina. He had three sons, Philippos, Araros, and Nikostratos, all of whom became comic poets.
Aristophanes was known for his conservatism. He favored rule by the aristocracy rather than democratic rule, and he preferred the established philosophical and theological ideas rather than the new ideas of the Sophists. However, although he opposed new ideas, Aristophanes did not distinguish between destructive and progressive ideas. His opposition to new ideas and reform was more emotional than intellectual.
Aristophanes wrote more than 40 plays; of these, only eleven have survived. His first three plays were produced under a pseudonym, or false name. One of these was The Acharnians, written in 425 BC. It is a plea for the end of the war with Sparta.
The Knights was written in 424 BC, and it is the first of Aristophanes' plays to be published under his own name. It is a devastating satire about the Athenian politician and military leader Cleon, champion of the democratic forces and leader of the war party. Written in 423 BC, The Clouds is a satire about the Greek philosopher Socrates, whose thorough analysis of established values Aristophanes thought was contrary to the interests of the state. In The Wasps, written in 422 BC, Aristophanes satirized the courts of justice of the day, and in The Peace, written only a year later in 421 BC, he again argued for peace between Athens and Sparta.
Written in 414 BC, The Birds ridicules the Athenian fondness for litigation, or law suits. Lysistrata is yet another satire on war in which women strike for peace by practicing celibacy. Lysistrata is his most famous work, and was written in 411 BC. Thesmorphoriazusae (411 BC) and The Frogs (405 BC) both include attacks on Euripides. Written in 393 BC, Ecclesiazusa is a satire on the idea of communal ownership of property, and Plutus, written in 388 BC, diminished to absurdity the concept of redistribution of wealth in Athens. These works, which are basically fantasies, were written in a form less strict than that of contemporary tragedy. They all include dialogue scenes, long choral sections, lyric passages, and a great deal of music and dance.
The plays of Aristophanes had a considerable
influence on English satire, most notably that of Ben Jonson in
the 17th century and Henry Fielding in the 18th century.
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