Originally adapted for the stage, Peter Meineck's revised translations achieve a level of fidelity appropriate for classroom use while managing to preserve the wit and energy that led The New Yorker to judge his Clouds The best Greek drama we've ever seen anywhere," and The Times Literary Supplement to describe his Wasps as "Hugely enjoyable and very, very funny. A general Introduction, introductions to the plays, and detailed notes on staging, history, religious practice and myth combine to make this a remarkably useful teaching text.

The era of Old Comedy (c. 485 c. 380 BCE), when theatrical comedy was created and established, is best known through the extant plays of Aristophanes, but there were many other poets whose comedies survive only in fragments. This new Loeb edition, the most extensive selection of the fragments available in English, presents the work of fifty-six poets, including Cratinus and Eupolis, the other members (along with Aristophanes) of the canonical Old Comic triad.

For each poet and play there is an introduction, brief notes, and select bibliography. Also included is a selection of ancient testimonia to Old Comedy, nearly one hundred unattributed fragments (both book and papyri), and descriptions of twenty-five vase-paintings illustrating Old Comic scenes. The texts are based on the monumental edition of Kassel and Austin, updated to reflect the latest scholarship.

The era of Old Comedy (c. 485 c. 380 BCE), when theatrical comedy was created and established, is best known through the extant plays of Aristophanes, but there were many other poets whose comedies survive only in fragments. This new Loeb edition, the most extensive selection of the fragments available in English, presents the work of fifty-six poets, including Cratinus and Eupolis, the other members (along with Aristophanes) of the canonical Old Comic triad.

For each poet and play there is an introduction, brief notes, and select bibliography. Also included is a selection of ancient testimonia to Old Comedy, nearly one hundred unattributed fragments (both book and papyri), and descriptions of twenty-five vase-paintings illustrating Old Comic scenes. The texts are based on the monumental edition of Kassel and Austin, updated to reflect the latest scholarship.

The era of Old Comedy (c. 485 c. 380 BCE), when theatrical comedy was created and established, is best known through the extant plays of Aristophanes, but there were many other poets whose comedies survive only in fragments. This new Loeb edition, the most extensive selection of the fragments available in English, presents the work of fifty-six poets, including Cratinus and Eupolis, the other members (along with Aristophanes) of the canonical Old Comic triad.

For each poet and play there is an introduction, brief notes, and select bibliography. Also included is a selection of ancient testimonia to Old Comedy, nearly one hundred unattributed fragments (both book and papyri), and descriptions of twenty-five vase-paintings illustrating Old Comic scenes. The texts are based on the monumental edition of Kassel and Austin, updated to reflect the latest scholarship.

This is the first volume dedicated to Aristophanes' comedy Peace that analyses the play for a student audience and assumes no knowledge of Greek. It launches a much-needed new series of books each discussing a comedy that survives from the ancient world. Six chapters highlight the play's context, themes, staging and legacy including its response to contemporary wartime politics and the possible staging options for flying. It is ideal for students, but helpful also for scholars wanting a quick introduction to the play. Peace was first performed in 421 BC, perhaps only days before the signing of a peace treaty that ended ten years of fighting between Athens and Sparta (the Archidamian War). Aristophanes celebrates this prospect with an imaginative fantasy involving his hero's flight on a gigantic dung-beetle to Olympus, the rescue of the goddess Peace from her imprisonment in a cave, and her return to a Greece weary of ten years of war. Like most of the poet's comedies, this play is heavy on fantasy and imagination, light on formal structure, being an exuberant farce that champions the opponents of War and celebrates the delights of the return to country life with its smells, food and drink, its many pleasures and none of the complications that war brings in its wake.

This is the first volume dedicated to Aristophanes' comedy Peace that analyses the play for a student audience and assumes no knowledge of Greek. It launches a much-needed new series of books each discussing a comedy that survives from the ancient world. Six chapters highlight the play's context, themes, staging and legacy including its response to contemporary wartime politics and the possible staging options for flying. It is ideal for students, but helpful also for scholars wanting a quick introduction to the play. Peace was first performed in 421 BC, perhaps only days before the signing of a peace treaty that ended ten years of fighting between Athens and Sparta (the Archidamian War). Aristophanes celebrates this prospect with an imaginative fantasy involving his hero's flight on a gigantic dung-beetle to Olympus, the rescue of the goddess Peace from her imprisonment in a cave, and her return to a Greece weary of ten years of war. Like most of the poet's comedies, this play is heavy on fantasy and imagination, light on formal structure, being an exuberant farce that champions the opponents of War and celebrates the delights of the return to country life with its smells, food and drink, its many pleasures and none of the complications that war brings in its wake.

Originally adapted for the stage, Peter Meineck's revised translations achieve a level of fidelity appropriate for classroom use while managing to preserve the wit and energy that led The New Yorker to judge his Clouds The best Greek drama we've ever seen anywhere," and The Times Literary Supplement to describe his Wasps as "Hugely enjoyable and very, very funny. A general Introduction, introductions to the plays, and detailed notes on staging, history, religious practice and myth combine to make this a remarkably useful teaching text.

Euripides' "Suppliant Women" is an unfairly neglected master work by the most controversial of the three great tragedians of Ancient Greece. It dramatises the story of one of the proudest moments in Athenian mythical history: the intervention of Theseus in support of international law to force the burial of the Argives who were killed during their attack on Thebes. But Euripides adds new characters to the story and presents the myth in a different and sometimes ambiguous light. A sense of uncertainty and undercutting pervades this play, which dramatises the sufferings of the innocent in war and then at the end foretells more war. As well as presenting a scene-by-scene analysis, this book will discuss the date and background of the play, whether people and events from contemporary Athens can be glimpsed in the drama; the problems of staging, and finally the story in later tradition.

Eupolis (fl. 429-411 BC) was one of the best-attested and most important of Aristophanes' rivals. He wrote the same sort of vigorous, topical, and often indecent comedy that we know from the surviving plays of Aristophanes. No complete play has survived, but more than 120 lines of his best-known comedy, Demoi (The Demes), are extant. This book provides a new translation of all the remaining fragments and an essay on each lost play, as well as discussions of Eupolis' career and the sort of comedy that this prizewinning poet created.