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.
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