The Eleven Comedies, Volume 1 eBook

‘The Acharnians’:  426 B.C.—­sixth year of the War.  Insists on the miseries consequent on the War, especially affecting the rural population, as represented by the Acharnian Dicaeopolis and his fellow demesmen.  Incidentally makes fun of the tragedian Euripides.

‘Peace’:  422 B.C.—­tenth year of the War.  Further insists on the same theme, and enlarges on the blessings of Peace.  The hero Trygaeus flies to Olympus, mounted on a beetle, to bring back the goddess Peace to earth.

    ‘Lysistrata’:  411 B.C.—­twenty-first year of the War.  A burlesque
    conspiracy entered into by the confederated women of Hellas, led by
    Lysistrata the Athenian, to compel the men to conclude peace.

    ‘The Clouds’:  423 B.C.—­satirizes Socrates, the ‘Sophists,’ and the
    ‘New Education.’

    ‘The Wasps’:  422 B.C.  Makes fun of the Athenian passion for
    litigation, and the unsatisfactory organization of the Courts. 
    Contains the incident of the mock trial of the thievish house-dog.

‘The Birds’:  414 B.C.  Euelpides and Pisthetaerus, disgusted with the state of things at Athens, build a new and improved city, Cloud-cuckoo-town, in the kingdom of the birds.  Some see an allusion to the Sicilian expedition, and Alcibiades’ Utopian schemes.

‘The Frogs’:  405 B.C.  A satire on Euripides and the ‘New Tragedy.’  Dionysus, patron of the Drama, dissatisfied with the contemporary condition of the Art, goes down to Hades to bring back to earth a poet of the older and worthier school.

‘The Thesmophoriazusae’:  412 B.C.  Another literary satire; Euripides, summoned as a notorious defamer of women to defend himself before the dames of Athens assembled in solemn conclave at the Thesmophoria, or festival of Demeter and Persephone, induces his father-in-law, Mnesilochus, to dress up in women’s clothes, penetrate thus disguised into the assemblage, and plead the poet’s cause, but with scant success.

‘The Ecclesiazusae’:  392 B.C.  Pokes fun at the ideal Utopias, such as Plato’s ‘Republic,’ based on sweeping social and economic changes, greatly in vogue with the Sophists of the day.  The women of the city disguise themselves as men, slip into the Public Assembly and secure a majority of votes.  They then pass a series of decrees providing for community of goods and community of women, which produce, particularly the latter, a number of embarrassing and diverting consequences.

‘Plutus’:  408 and 388 B.C.  A whimsical allegory more than a regular comedy.  Plutus, the god of wealth, has been blinded by Zeus; discovered in the guise of a ragged beggarman and succoured by Chremylus, an old man who has ruined himself by generosity to his friends, he is restored to sight by Aesculapius.  He duly rewards Chremylus, and henceforth apportions this world’s goods among mankind on juster principles—­enriching the just, but condemning the unjust to poverty.

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