Product Description

Aristophanes (ca. 446-386 b.c.), one of the world's greatest comic dramatists, has been admired since antiquity for his iridescent wit and beguiling fantasy, exuberant language, and brilliant satire of the social, intellectual, and political life of Athens at its height. In this third volume of a new Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristophanes' plays, Jeffrey Henderson presents a freshly edited Greek text facing a lively, unexpurgated translation with full explanatory notes.

In Birds Aristophanes turns from the pointed political satire characteristic of earlier plays to a fantasy that soars literally into the air in search of a carefree world. Here the enterprising protagonists create a utopian counter-Athens, called Cloudcuckooland, ruled by birds. Lysistrata blends uninhibited comedy and an earnest call for peace. Lysistrata, our first comic heroine, organizes a panhellenic conjugal strike of young wives until their husbands end the war between Athens and Sparta. Athenian women again take center stage in Women at the Thesmophoria, this time to punish Euripides for portraying them as wicked. Parody of Euripides' plots enlivens this witty confrontation of the sexes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #262468 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

About the Author
Jeffrey Henderson is William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature at Boston University. He is General Editor of the Loeb Classical Library.

Customer Reviews

THE modern Aristophanes translation
Professor Henderson's new translations of Aristophanes are uncensored, readable, fresh, and ultimately extremely enjoyable. He captures how Aristophanes probably would write if he lived today, with frank yet poetic language that brings these comedic gems to light. I have heard Professor Henderson's translation of Women at the Thesmophoria read aloud; the only thing funnier--and raunchier--I have heard since then has been a reading of his translation of Assemblywomen. Somehow Aristophanes manages to entertain his audience with the lowest of humor while invoking serious intellectual themes. (Imagine if people like Adam Sandler had brains. . .)
N.B. This is not your grandmother's Greek theater! Aristophanes, particularly as rendered by Professor Henderson, will make you rethink your notion of the Classics as dull, snooty, Stoic dust-gatherers in the far corner of the libary.
Enjoy!

My daughter says...
I got this for my daughter (16). She says it was good and translated in a way that was easier to enjoy than the books that other students in her class used.