Aristophanes Aristophanes

Aristophanes' comic masterpiece of war and sex remains one of the greatest plays ever written. Led by the title character, the women of the warring city-states of Greece agree to withhold sexual favours with their husbands until they agree to cease fighting. The war of the sexes that ensues makes Lysistrata a bawdy comedy without peer in the history of theatre.

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Thesmophoriazusae was performed in Athens in 411 BCE, most likely at the City Dionysia, and is among the most brilliant of Aristophanes' eleven surviving comedies. It is the story of the crucial moment in a quarrel between the tragic playwright Euripides and Athens' women, who accuse him of slandering them in his plays and are holding a meeting at one of their secret festivals to set a penalty for his crimes. Thesmophoriazusae is a brilliantly inventive comedy, full of wild slapstick humor and devastating literary parody, and is a basic source for questions of gender and sexuality in late 5th-century Athens and for the popular reception of Euripidean tragedy. Austin and Olson offer a text based on a fresh examination of the papyri and manuscripts, and a detailed commentary covering a wide range of literary, historical, and philological issues. The introduction includes sections on the date and historical setting of the play; the Thesmophoria festival; Aristophanes' handling of Euripidean tragedy; staging; Thesmophoriazusae II; and the history of modern critical work on the text. All Greek in the introduction and commentary not cited for technical reasons is translated.

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