Aristophanes: Difference between revisions

|georg=Aristophanēs, is, Akk. em u. ēn, m. ([[Ἀριστοφάνης]]), I) der geistreichste u. witzigste Dichter der alten [[Komödie]], »der ungezogene [[Liebling]] der Grazien«, wahrsch. [[von]] [[Geburt]] [[ein]] Athener, geb 444, gest. 380 v. Chr., Cic. de legg. 2, 37. Hor. [[sat]]. 1, 4, 1. – Dav.: a) Aristophanēus (od. -nīus), a, um, aristophanëisch, [[des]] [[Aristophanes]], [[anapaestus]], Cic.: [[metrum]], Gramm. – b) Aristophanicus, a, um, aristophanisch, Hier. in lesai 15, 54, 11. – II) [[ein]] berühmter [[Grammatiker]] aus Byzanz, [[Schüler]] [[des]] [[Eratosthenes]], [[Lehrer]] [[des]] Kritikers [[Aristarchus]], Cic. de or. 3, 132. – III) [[Aristophanes]] Mallotes, [[ein]] [[Schriftsteller]] [[über]] Landwirtschaft, Varr. r. r. 1, 1, 8.

}}

Aristophanes (/ˌærɪˈstɒfəniːz/; Ancient Greek: [[Ἀριστοφάνης]], pronounced; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion (Latin: Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. These provide the most valuable examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are used to define it, along with fragments from dozens of lost plays by Aristophanes and his contemporaries.

Aristophanes' second play, The Babylonians (now lost), was denounced by Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis. It is possible that the case was argued in court, but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights, the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through that play's Chorus, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all."

===Surviving plays===

Most of these are traditionally referred to by abbreviations of their ''Latin'' titles; Latin remains a customary language of scholarship in classical studies.