Peace
By Aristophanes
3/5
()
About this ebook
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
The Frogs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aristophanes: Four Comedies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 1) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Harvard Classics: All 71 Volumes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Birds Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Complete Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLysistrata and Other Plays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yale Classics (Vol. 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClouds Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Birds: A Play Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lysistrata Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Birds and Other Plays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Clouds Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Thesmophoriazusae (Or The Women's Festival) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frogs Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lysistrata Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLysistrata and Other Plays (Translated with Annotations by The Athenian Society) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yale Classics (Vol. 1): Yale Required Reading Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLysistrata (Translated with Annotations by The Athenian Society) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Birds Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Wasps Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Frogs and Other Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related authors
Related to Peace
Related ebooks
Peace Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Aristophanes: The Complete Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAristophanes – The Complete Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPeace: "As I told you, this is his form of madness" Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Margali's Couch Pumpkin Classics, Vol. 2: Nightmares That Left a Film Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wasps Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMedea and Other Plays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Their Own Likeness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlcestis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frogs and Other Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Frogs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Three Theban Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Birds (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsParis Spleen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBull: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Birds Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFirst Project Gutenberg Collection of Edgar Allan Poe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Birds: A Play Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Plutus Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Theban Plays: Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus Rex, & Antigone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOedipus the King Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Realm Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Works of Frank Wedekind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Knights Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Complete Sophocles Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOedipus Trilogy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Troilus and Cressida, with line numbers Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Wasps: "Evil events from evil causes spring" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Clouds: "High thoughts must have high language" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ajax of Sophocles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Performing Arts For You
Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sisters Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hamlet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth (new classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Importance of Being Earnest: A Play Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Romeo and Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count Of Monte Cristo (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Town: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Dolls House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lucky Dog Lessons: From Renowned Expert Dog Trainer and Host of Lucky Dog: Reunions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Strange Loop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unsheltered: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Turned Upside Down: Finding the Gospel in Stranger Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Whale / A Bright New Boise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Peace
14 ratings1 review
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Trygaeus, a middle-aged Athenian, miraculously brings about a peaceful end to the Peloponnesian War,thereby earning the gratitude of farmers
He celebrates his triumph by marrying Harvest, a companion of Festival and Peace.....
Book preview
Peace - Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Peace
LONDON ∙ NEW YORK ∙ TORONTO ∙ SAO PAULO ∙ MOSCOW
PARIS ∙ MADRID ∙ BERLIN ∙ ROME ∙ MEXICO CITY ∙ MUMBAI ∙ SEOUL ∙ DOHA
TOKYO ∙ SYDNEY ∙ CAPE TOWN ∙ AUCKLAND ∙ BEIJING
New Edition
Published by Sovereign Classic
www.sovereignclassic.net
This Edition
First published in 2016
Copyright © 2016 Sovereign Classic
ISBN: 9781911535867
Contents
INTRODUCTION
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
INTRODUCTION
The ‘Peace’ was brought out four years after ‘The Acharnians’ (422 B.C.), when the War had already lasted ten years. The leading motive is the same as in the former play—the intense desire of the less excitable and more moderate-minded citizens for relief from the miseries of war.
Trygaeus, a rustic patriot, finding no help in men, resolves to ascend to heaven to expostulate personally with Zeus for allowing this wretched state of things to continue. With this object he has fed and trained a gigantic dung-beetle, which he mounts, and is carried, like Bellerophon on Pegasus, on an aerial journey. Eventually he reaches Olympus, only to find that the gods have gone elsewhere, and that the heavenly abode is occupied solely by the demon of War, who is busy pounding up the Greek States in a huge mortar. However, his benevolent purpose is not in vain; for learning from Hermes that the goddess Peace has been cast into a pit, where she is kept a fast prisoner, he calls upon the different peoples of Hellas to make a united effort and rescue her, and with their help drags her out and brings her back in triumph to earth. The play concludes with the restoration of the goddess to her ancient honours, the festivities of the rustic population and the nuptials of Trygaeus with Opora (Harvest), handmaiden of Peace, represented as a pretty courtesan.
Such references as there are to Cleon in this play are noteworthy. The great Demagogue was now dead, having fallen in the same action as the rival Spartan general, the renowned Brasidas, before Amphipolis, and whatever Aristophanes says here of his old enemy is conceived in the spirit of ‘de mortuis nil nisi bonum.’ In one scene Hermes is descanting on the evils which had nearly ruined Athens and declares that ‘The Tanner’ was the cause of them all. But Trygaeus interrupts him with the words:
Hold-say not so, good master Hermes; Let the man rest in peace where now he lies. He is no longer of our world, but yours.
Here surely we have a trait of magnanimity on the author’s part as admirable in its way as the wit and boldness of his former attacks had been in theirs.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
TRYGAEUS
TWO SERVANTS OF TRYGAEUS
MAIDENS, DAUGHTERS OF TRYGAEUS
HERMES
WAR
TUMULT
HIEROCLES, a Soothsayer
A SICKLE-MAKER
A CREST-MAKER
A TRUMPET-MAKER
A HELMET-MAKER
A SPEAR-MAKER
SON OF LAMACHUS
SON OF CLEONYMUS
CHORUS OF HUSBANDMEN
SCENE: A farmyard, two slaves busy beside a dungheap; afterwards, in Olympus.
FIRST SERVANT Quick, quick, bring the dung-beetle his cake.
SECOND SERVANT Coming, coming.
FIRST SERVANT Give it to him, and may it kill him!
SECOND SERVANT May he never eat a better.
FIRST SERVANT Now give him this other one kneaded up with ass’s dung.
SECOND SERVANT There! I’ve done that too.
FIRST SERVANT And where’s what you gave him just now; surely he can’t have devoured it yet!
SECOND SERVANT Indeed he has; he snatched it, rolled it between his feet and bolted it.
FIRST SERVANT Come, hurry up, knead up a lot and knead them stiffly.
SECOND SERVANT Oh, scavengers, help me in the name of the gods, if you do not wish to see me fall down choked.
FIRST SERVANT Come, come, another made from the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. ‘Twill be to the beetle’s taste; he likes it well ground.
SECOND SERVANT There! I am free at least from suspicion; none will accuse me of tasting what I mix.
FIRST SERVANT Faugh! come, now another! keep on mixing with all your might.
SECOND SERVANT I’ faith, no. I can stand this awful cesspool stench no longer, so I bring you the whole ill-smelling gear.
FIRST SERVANT Pitch it down the sewer sooner, and yourself with it.
SECOND SERVANT Maybe, one of you can tell me where I can buy a stopped-up nose, for there is no work more disgusting than to mix food for a beetle and to carry it to him. A pig or a dog will at least pounce upon our excrement without more ado, but this foul wretch affects the disdainful, the spoilt mistress, and