Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Ecclesiazusae (Or Women In Council)
    The Ecclesiazusae (Or Women In Council)
    The Ecclesiazusae (Or Women In Council)
    Ebook59 pages54 minutes

    The Ecclesiazusae (Or Women In Council)

    By Aristophanes

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The 'Ecclesiazusae, or Women in Council,' was not produced till twenty years after the preceding play, the 'Thesmophoriazusae' (at the Great Dionysia of 392 B.C.), but is conveniently classed with it as being also largely levelled against the fair sex. "It is a broad, but very amusing, satire upon those ideal republics, founded upon communistic principles, of which Plato's well-known treatise [‘The Republic’] is the best example.—From the introduction to ‘The Ecclesiazusae’ by Aristophanes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2014
    ISBN9781420935707
    The Ecclesiazusae (Or Women In Council)
    Author

    Aristophanes

    Often referred to as the father of comedy, Aristophanes was an ancient Greek comedic playwright who was active in ancient Athens during the fourth century BCE, both during and after the Peloponnesian War. His surviving plays collectively represent most of the extant examples of the genre known as Old Comedy and serve as a foundation for future dramatic comedy in Western dramatic literature. Aristophanes’ works are most notable for their political satire, and he often ridiculed public figures, including, most famously, Socrates, in his play The Clouds. Aristophanes is also recognized for his realistic representations of daily life in Athens, and his works provide an important source to understand the social reality of life in Ancient Greece. Aristophanes died sometime after 386 BCE of unknown causes.

    Read more from Aristophanes

    Related authors

    Related to The Ecclesiazusae (Or Women In Council)

    Related ebooks

    Performing Arts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Missing The Point

      Oct 26, 2023

      ● REALLY, YOU’D THINK THEY MIGHT have learned the lesson by now, the opera apparat: don’t show off, keep your head down, everything will probably be fine. Alternatively, make like the late unlamented chief exec of ENO, wave your arms around and shout

      3 min read

    • Article

      1887 Vrc Derby

      Sep 30, 2021

      1887 Vrc Derby
      7 min read

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      You Only Need Two Bricks

      Sep 23, 2022

      We sat in front of a blazing fire in the hearth of the tiny hunting cabin. The chimney drew well as long as the door was kept slightly open, like Lem Putt advised, to get the draft just right. We were sipping a most wonderfully aged 56-year-old Caber

      5 min read

    • Article

      Press Ganged!

      May 1, 2020

      Press Ganged!
      3 min read

    • Article

      I’ve Seen The Light

      Aug 10, 2018

      I’ve Seen The Light
      9 min read

    • Article

      What Ray Charles Says

      Mar 1, 2024

      The nighttime is the right time to be with the one you love, says Ray,but according to Hamlet, it’s when “churchyards yawn and hell itselfbreathes out contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood,”says Hamlet, “and do such bitter business as

      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken

      Feb 4, 2019

      What she wanted was a kind of greatness that women were not allowed. The post ‘Bowlaway’: Featured Fiction from Elizabeth McCracken appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      How White Supremacists Used Mardi Gras to Enforce Racial Division

      Aug 4, 2020

      The stage is arranged, the Ku-Klux pageant begins. On March 4, 1867, a Monday at 10 am, 2,000 firemen jostle left and right into parade columns on Canal Street, near the levee of the river. Their costume is full dress uniform. Marshals from the Firem

      5 min read

    • Article

      Islands In The (late-summer) Sun

      Sep 14, 2022

      THE holidaymakers and temporary residents have returned from whence they came. The pavements are clear of pedestrians, the streets of cars and the harbour of yachts. There is room in Casey’s Bar to swing dozens of cats and I didn’t have to queue when

      2 min read

    • Article

      It’s Not For Kids

      Nov 24, 2022

      It’s Not For Kids
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Air You Breathe

      Aug 20, 2018

      The Air You Breathe
      23 min read

    • Article

      John Ashbery

      Mar 15, 2019

      He could understand the things at home.—Wallace Stevens, “Things of August” Scribbled on the expansive mist, the desireof many dwindles to usand our “activities,” wholesomeor otherwise. Soon it becomes apparentthat neither they nor I have any prise o

      4 min read

    • Article

      Spellcheck

      Jan 1, 2019

      Whose history I do not know. I do know I’ve been e-upbraided for my fast and loose spelling of Woden, the god whose last worshipper must have slipped under the sod during the medieval period, somewhere in the 10th century—imagine those bog-soaked des

      5 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Dec 1, 2021

      The light from the full moon lent a silky, glacial sheen to the towering front of the cloud, which stretched off to the horizon in both directions. I stood transfixed as it made its way down the street toward me at a little over the town’s speed limi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      Until The Sea Closed Over Us And The Light Was Gone

      Jul 1, 2020

      —Dante, Canto XXVI But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning—El Paso Although it was really last summer’s song,all this summer Despacito played on as slower then I turned myself to gazeupon Juarez. The summer everything hurts my eyes, a dozen

      6 min read

    • Article

      Bard In The Woods

      Nov 30, 2020

      Bard In The Woods
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Devil’s Taxi

      Oct 6, 2022

      The Devil’s Taxi
      26 min read

    • Article

      Do Not Go Gently

      Nov 26, 2020

      WHO SAYS OPERA has no socially useful purpose? Why, it is only a few years since a Miami judge decimated crime simply by promising to make felons sit through Rigoletto with him in his chambers. And piping Mozart into bus shelters here has proved mass

      3 min read

    • Article

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work

      Dec 15, 2018

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work
      6 min read

    • Article

      Holy Belt And Braces

      Apr 13, 2023

      Flotsam and jetsam Sam Llewellyn writes nautical thrillers, edits The Marine Quarterly, and is perpetually patching up a 30ft ketch: samllewellyn.com Well, here we are, time to launch again. Antifouling on, everything varnishable varnished, survey su

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      “the possibility of joy in the face of death” —Georges Bataille Couldn’t get “I” nor “we” to settle down, stay unresolved in time in crisp white burial shirts could do bouts of theatrical weeping weary though exacting avant garde gestures of the carp

      4 min read

    • Article

      Press-ganged!

      Jun 13, 2019

      Press-ganged!
      3 min read

    • Article

      If Sheep COULD FLY…

      Aug 3, 2022

      If Sheep COULD FLY…
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Ecclesiazusae (Or Women In Council)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Ecclesiazusae (Or Women In Council) - Aristophanes

      THE ECCLESIAZUSAE

      (OR WOMEN IN COUNCIL)

      BY ARISTOPHANES

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2762-7

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-3570-7

      This edition copyright © 2011

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      THE ECCLESIAZUSAE

      INTRODUCTION

      The 'Ecclesiazusae, or Women in Council,' was not produced till twenty years after the preceding play, the 'Thesmophoriazusae' (at the Great Dionysia of 392 B.C.), but is conveniently classed with it as being also largely levelled against the fair sex. It is a broad, but very amusing, satire upon those ideal republics, founded upon communistic principles, of which Plato's well-known treatise is the best example. His 'Republic' had been written, and probably delivered in the form of oral lectures at Athens, only two or three years before, and had no doubt excited a considerable sensation. But many of its most startling principles had long ago been ventilated in the Schools.

      Like the 'Lysistrata,' the play is a picture of woman's ascendancy in the State, and the topsy-turvy consequences resulting from such a reversal of ordinary conditions. The women of Athens, under the leadership of the wise Praxagora, resolve to reform the constitution. To this end they don men's clothes, and taking seats in the Assembly on the Pnyx, command a majority of votes and carry a series of revolutionary proposals—that the government be vested in a committee of women, and further, that property and women be henceforth held in common. The main part of the comedy deals with the many amusing difficulties that arise inevitably from this new state of affairs, the community of women above all necessitating special safeguarding clauses to secure the rights of the less attractive members of the sex to the service of the younger and handsomer men. Community of goods again, private property being abolished, calls for a regulation whereby all citizens are to dine at the public expense in the various public halls of the city, the particular place of each being determined by lot; and the drama winds up with one of these feasts, the elaborate menu of which is given in burlesque, and with the jubilations of the women over their triumph.

      This comedy appears to labour under the very same faults as the 'Peace.' The introduction, the secret assembly of the women, their rehearsal of their parts as men, the description of the popular assembly, are all handled in the most masterly manner; but towards the middle the action stands still. Nothing remains but the representation of the perplexities and confusion which arise from the new arrangements, especially in connection with the community of women, and from the prescribed equality of rights in love both for the old and ugly and for the young and beautiful. These perplexities are pleasant enough, but they turn too much on a repetition of the same joke.

      We learn from the text of the play itself that the 'Ecclesiazusae' was drawn by lot for first representation among the comedies offered for competition at the Festival, the Author making a special appeal to his audience not to let themselves be influenced unfavourably by the circumstance; but whether the play was successful in gaining a prize is not recorded.

      DRAMATIS PERSONAE

      PRAXAGORA.

      BLEPYRUS, husband of Praxagora.

      WOMEN.

      A MAN.

      CHREMES.

      TWO CITIZENS.

      HERALD.

      AN OLD MAN.

      A GIRL.

      A YOUNG MAN.

      THREE OLD WOMEN.

      A SERVANT MAID.

      HER MASTER.

      CHORUS OF WOMEN.

      SCENE: Before a house in a Public Square at Athens; a lamp is burning over the door. Time: a little after midnight.

      THE ECCLESIAZUSAE

      (Or Women In Council)

      PRAXAGORA (enters carrying a lamp in her hand). Oh! thou shining light of my earthenware lamp, from this high spot shalt thou look abroad. Oh! lamp, I will tell thee thine origin and thy future; 'tis the rapid whirl of the potter's wheel that has lent thee thy shape, and thy wick counterfeits the glory of the sun;{1} mayst thou send the agreed signal flashing afar! In thee alone do we confide, and thou art worthy, for thou art near us when we practise the various postures in which Aphrodité delights upon our couches, and none dream even in the midst of her sports of seeking to avoid thine eye that watches our swaying bodies. Thou alone shinest into the depths of our most secret charms, and with thy flame dost singe the hairy growth of our privates. If we open some cellar stored with

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1