A native Athenian, Aristophanes was a political and intellectual gadfly whose dramas offer some of the best reflections of the period’s controversies and preoccupations.

We know very little about Aristophanes’ life and personality, but a great deal about his times as reflected in his plays (11 of his more than 40 works have survived). Aristophanes provides us with our only surviving examples of Greek Old Comedy, the raucous, profane, and intellectually daring dramatic form that, along with choral tragedy, was the great achievement of Attic drama during the fifth century b.c. If Aristophanes cannot be credited with the actual invention of stage comedy, he is the earliest practitioner whose plays have survived intact. With its perennially relevant antiwar and gender themes, Lysistrata speaks to modern audiences more forcefully than any other of the playwright’s remark-able comedies, making it one of the most frequently produced Greek dramas and the most famous of Aristophanes’ plays. It is owing to this background of intense feeling that the Lysistrata becomes not exactly a great comedy, but a great play, making its appeal not to laughter alone but also to deeper things than laughter. Aristophanes had more than once risked his civic rights and even his life in his battle for peace, and is now making his last appeal. The Lysistrata has behind it much suffering and a burning pity.

Lysistrata play