Among extant Greek comedies, the Frogs is unique for the light it throws on classical Greek attitudes to tragedy and to literature in general. Sir Kenneth Dover's edition, with a full introduction and extensive commentary, has been the most comprehensive edition available, drawing together the relevant scholarship that has accumulated on the subject. The general purpose and character of the abridged version remains the same: to provide a helpful guide on a difficult author for students who wish to translate the play, or need to interpret it for performance. In this edition, nothing relevant to the performance of the play on stage has been sacrificed although information on manuscripts and discussion of the history of the text have been pared to the minimum, and arguments on controversial points have been abbreviated. Where relevant, conclucions reached in the original edition have been changed in the light of work done by others since 1993. The inclusion of a vocabulary should reduce the need for students to have a recourse to a lexicon.

The transmission of literature in writing began in the Greek world with poetry; the publication of laws and regulations came later, and prose literature last, about 500 BC. This book examines the stages by which prose was turned into the sophisticated art-form practised in the fourth century BC, in particular by Plato and Demosthenes. An attempt is made to determine the linguistic conventions which can reasonably be attributed, on the analogy of other cultures, to unwritten narrative and oratory. The extent to which `content' and `form' can be separated is considered, and the stylistic choices which constitute form are treated as determining the relationship (e.g. of authority or familiarity) between creator and receiver and the balance sought by the creator between innovation and deference to the receiver's expectations.

This new abridged edition of Aristophanes' Frogs provides the students with the text of the play and includes a detailed commentary and full introduction. Sir Kenneth Dover has now abridged the acclaimed edition which he first produced in 1993 and added a vocabulary which eliminates the need for recourse to a lexicon. The result is an edition which fits much more closely the needs of students.

A brilliant new commentary on one of the most famous comedies from ancient Greece, Aristophanes' Frogs. Edited by one of the world's leading scholars on Aristophanes, the book includes the complete Greek text, a comprehensive introduction, and a full and lively commentary covering just about every point of interest in this richly rewarding and entertaining play. It also offers help with translation. A must for all serious students of Aristophanes.

During the second half of the fifth century BC, oratory was an essential skill for a successful politician. This art of persuasive speaking was one of several subjects which sophists, lesser philosophers (with whom Socrates was often identified), offered at a price. Aristophanes' Clouds, performed in its original version in 423 BC, is a witty and merciless satire at the expense of Socrates, which ridicules features ascribed by the man in the street to Socrates and sophistic teaching. Dover's standard edition of the Clouds is now made available in paperback. In punctuating the text and writing the commentary, he has endeavoured to act as a modern 'producer' of the play, in order to bring across the full effect of the drama to the reader. The full introduction, which covers all aspects of Aristophanes' play, from the playwright himself to the manuscript tradition of the text, is followed by Dover's text and apparatus criticus. This is supplemented by a detailed and lively commentary, addenda, and indexes.