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Full Description
Since the eighteenth century, classical scholars have generally agreed that the Greek playwright Aristophanes did not as a matter of course write "political" plays. Yet, according to an anonymous Life of Aristophanes, when Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse wanted to know about the government of Athens, Plato sent him a copy of Aristophanes' Clouds.
In this boldly revisionist work, Michael Vickers convincingly argues that in his earlier plays, Aristophanes in fact commented on the day-to-day political concerns of Athenians. Vickers reads the first six of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays in a way that reveals the principal characters to be based in large part on Pericles and his ward Alcibiades.
According to Vickers, the plays of Aristophanes-far from being nonpolitical-actually allow us to gauge the reaction of the Athenian public to the events that followed Pericles' death in 429 B.C., to the struggle for the political succession, and to the problems presented by Alcibiades' emergence as one of the most powerful figures in the state. This view of Aristophanes reaffirms the central role of allegory in his work and challenges all students of ancient Greece to rethink long-held assumptions about this important playwright.
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction. Nicias, Lamachus, and Alcibiades: Political Allegory in Aristophanes
Chapter 1. Pericles and Alcibiades on Stage
Chapter 2. Pericles and Alcibiades at the Phrontistery: Aristophanes' Clouds I
Chapter 3. Pericles, Alcibiades, and the Generation Gap: Aristophanes' Clouds II
Chapter 4. Pericles on the Pnyx: Aristophanes' Acharnians I
Chapter 5. Pericles in the Agora: Aristophanes' Acharnians II
Chapter 6. Pericles, the Typhoon, and the Hurricane: Aristophanes' Knights
Chapter 7. Pericles, Alcibiades, the Law Courts, and the Symposium: Aristophanes' Wasps
Chapter 8. Alcibiades and Pericles on Olympus: Aristophanes' Peace
Chapter 9. Alcibiades at Sparta: Aristophanes' Birds I
Chapter 10. Pericles at Sparta: Aristophanes' Birds II
Conclusion
Appendix A: Posthumous Parody in Cratinus' Dionysalexandros
Appendix B: The Athenian Plague of 430-428 B.C.
Bibliography
General Index
Index Locorum
