Four Plays (Aristophanes - paperback)

Author: Aristophanes

ISBN: 9781324091561

Binding: paperback

Section: Literature of the Ancient World

Included works: Clouds, Birds, Lysistrata, and Women of the Assembly

The citizens of ancient Athens enjoyed a freedom of speech as broad as our own. This freedom, parrhesia, the right to say what one pleased, how and when one pleased, and to whom, had no more fervent champion than the brilliant fifth-century comic playwright Aristophanes. He ridiculed the great and the good of the city, showing up their hypocrisy and arrogance in ways that went far beyond the standards of good taste, securing the ire (and sometimes the retaliation) of his powerful targets.