Aristophanes Clouds (Clarendon Paperbacks) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198143958 ISBN 13: 9780198143956

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA, 1989

Synopsis

During the second half of the fifth century BC, oratory was an essential skill for a successful politician. This art of persuasive speaking was one of several subjects which sophists, lesser philosophers (with whom Socrates was often identified), offered at a price. Aristophanes' Clouds, performed in its original version in 423 BC, is a witty and merciless satire at the expense of Socrates, which ridicules features ascribed by the man in the street to Socrates and sophistic teaching. Dover's standard edition of the Clouds is now made available in paperback. In punctuating the text and writing the commentary, he has endeavoured to act as a modern 'producer' of the play, in order to bring across the full effect of the drama to the reader. The full introduction, which covers all aspects of Aristophanes' play, from the playwright himself to the manuscript tradition of the text, is followed by Dover's text and apparatus criticus. This is supplemented by a detailed and lively commentary, addenda, and indexes.

About this title

Review

'a work of unusual excellence and an indispensable tool for all who are interested in understanding Aristophanes' Hermathena

'a splendid book, easily the best edition of a play of Aristophanes yet to appear in this country' Classical Review

'at last we have a major edition and a splendid commentary remarkable both for its learning and its conciseness' American Journal of Philology

About the Author

ARISTOPHANES, the most famous comic dramatist of ancient Greece, was born an Athenian citizen in about 445 B.C. Forty-four plays have been attributed to Aristophanes; eleven of these have survived. His plays are the only extant representatives of Greek Old Comedy, a dramatic form whose conventions made it inevitable that the author would comment on the political and social issues of fifth-century Athens. This Aristophanes did so well that Plato, asked by the tyrant of Syracuse for an analysis of Athenians, sent a copy of Aristophanes' plays in reply.
    
His earliest play, the Banqueters, won the second prize in 427 B.C. when the dramatist must have been less than eighteen years old, since, as he notes in the Clouds (423), he was too young to produce it in his own name. Another early play, the Babylonians, criticized the demagogue Cleon, who responded by subjecting Aristophanes to legal persecution, and as the author charges in the Acharnians, Cleon had "slanged, and lied, and slandered and betongued me . . . till I well nigh was done to death." Nevertheless, in the Knights (424), he renewed his attack on the popular Athenian leader and won first prize in that year's contest. Plutus (388) was the last of the author's plays to be produced in his lifetime.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0198143958
• ISBN 13: 9780198143956
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416