The most controversial of Aristophanes plays, it is a brilliant caricature of the philosopher Socrates, seen as a wily sophist who teaches men to cheat through cunning argument. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. 'Lysistrata and Other Plays ' includes THE CLOUDS. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged.įor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. In Lysistrata a band of women tap into the awesome power of sex in order to end a war. The Achanians is a plea for peace set against the background of the long war with Sparta. Writing at the time of political and social crisis in Athens, Aristophanes was an eloquent yet bawdy challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. The nearest equivalent to Lysistrata's divided Chorus is found in the earliest of the surviving plays, The Acharnians, where the Chorus very. Three plays by the comedian of Ancient Greece Lysistrata tells the Commissioner that war is a concern of women because women have sacrificed greatly for itwomen have given their husbands and their sons to the effort. A doubling of the role of the Chorus occurs in two other middle-period plays, The Frogs and Thesmophoriazusae, but in each of those plays the two Choruses appear consecutively and not simultaneously.

Lysistrata and other plays