Lysistrata & Other Plays

The Acharnians/The Clouds/LysistrataWe women have the salvation of Greece in our handsWriting at a time of political and social crisis in Athens the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes was an eloquent yet bawdy challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. In Lysistrata and The Acharnians two pleas for an end to the long war between Athens and Sparta a band of women on a sex strike and a lone peasant respectively defeat the political establishment. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers Socrates in particular and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Alan H. Sommerstein About the Author Little is known about Aristophanes life (c. 445BC-c.386BC) but there is a portrait of him in Platos Symposium. His first comedy was produced when he was 20 and he wrote 40 plays in the course of his life.