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REVISION: Aristophanes/ Biography

See also: Old Comedy, Dionysia, and Lenaia

The earlier years.

An Athenian citizen, Aristophanes came from the deme of Kydathenaion. His father was Philippus from the Attic phyle (clan) of Pandionis and his mother was Zenodora. His family was believed to have owned property on the island of Aegina. Little is known about Aristophanes' life, his plays being the main source of biographical information. Aristophanes was probably born around or soon after the middle of the 5th century BC, since he refers to himself as a "virgin, not having the legal age for maternity", when he recall his stage debut at a very young age in 427 BC. Aristophanes made his stage debut almost simultaneously with Eupolis, who remained his fiercest competitor in the following years; at least in one case they accused each other of plagiarism.

From debut to the Peace of Nicias (427 BC - 421 BC).

In 427 BC Aristophanes' brought on stage his first play, Banqueters that was directed by Callistratus and won the first prize. The chorus of the play consisted of participants in a festival at Heracles' Sanctuary and the plot showed a contrast between two extremely different sons of a father: one brought up in good old customs, and a lecherous one who had gone to school with the sophists.

In the next year 426 BC, Babylonians were performed at the Dionysia and probably got the second prize. They marked Aristophanes' first major attack against politician demagogue Cleon, who sued Aristophanes before the Athenian council, accusing him of having insulted Athens and its officials in this play.The Babylonians of the title were the chorus of the play, consisting of marked foreign slaves, in which even Dionysus himself apparently appeared and was brought into trouble by Athenian demagogues. However, the trial brought by Cleon was neither successful nor intimidated Aristophanes, who continued attacking him in the other comedies in the following years. Banqueters and Babylonians are surviving only in fragments and citations by later Greek authors and scholars.

In 425 BC, Aristophanes obtained his first victory at the Lenaia with Acharnians, the oldest surviving play, in which the creatively active hero Dikaiopolis embodied the longing for an end of the Peloponnesian War, that was a widespread desire among the Attic population.

In 424 BC at the Lenaia, Aristophanes won again with Knights, that represents Aristophanes' sharpest attack against Cleon. Aristophanes depicted him as the loud-mouthed slave Paphlagon, who loses a fierce struggle for the favour of his master, Demos (The People) against an even more demagogic Sausage-Seller who, in the end, undergoes a miraculous transformation and restores Demos to his youthful vigor.

Men celebrating a ceremony for grape harvesting

In the following year, 423 BC, Aristophanes came forward with Clouds, where Socrates, as the protagonist, was depicted as the man of corrupting influence, exactly as the new education of the Sophists. A further attack was also brought against Cleon one more time. Despite the strong attacks of Aristophanes and his mocking at Socrates and Cleon, Clouds placed only third at the Dionysia of 423 BC; an attempted revision of the play was apparently never brought to the stage. However, this second version survived in the manuscript in its entirety and this is the text that we can still read today.

Despite this defeat, Aristophanes put on stage two plays at the Lenaia of the following year 422 BC: Proagon and Wasps. Proagon, performed under Philonides' name, brought Euripides to the stage and won first prize. The extant Wasps won second prize and satirized the obsessive litigiousness of contemporary Athenians. They represent the contrast between a Cleon-supporting father (Philocleon) with his Cleon-despising son (Bdelicleon): the plot ends with the defeat of Philocleon, who gets drunk and dances with the chorus in the end. The conflict of Aristophanes against Cleon ended when this last one finally fell in the Battle of Amphipolis in 422 BC.

Mid-years of the Peloponnesian War: (421 BC - 411 BC).

Aristophanes also achieved the second place at the Dionysia of 421 BC (shortly before the conclusion of the Peace of Nicias) with Peace. In this comedy he first ventured into a truly fantastic plot (at least in his surviving plays): the protagonist Trygaios, a farmer, rides a giant dung beetle to the heavens, frees the goddess of Peace from her captivity by the war god Polemos and brings her back to Earth.

This phase of Aristophanes’ career probably also includes two lost plays, Georgoi (424-422 BC) and Holkades (Lenaia 423 BC). Like Acharnians and Peace, Georgoi dealt with the longing of the rural Athenian population for an end of the Peloponnesian War. Holkades ("Cargo Ships"— the title suggests a fantastically designed chorus) appears to have depicted Athenians and Spartans together lamenting their suffering caused by the war.

Women at the fountainhouse

The years between 420 BC and 412 BC seem to include other lost plays. Anagyros may have dealt with a story similar to Euripides' Hippolytus (fragment 53 is a parody of Euripides' Hippolytus 219). Horai ridicules the cults of foreign gods, and they were apparently expelled from the city as non-Athenians. Heroes featured local heroes of Attica as the chorus, urging adherence to the old religious customs.

We have again a surviving play in 414 BC, Birds, which won second prize at the Dionysia. It represents Aristophanes' perhaps most fairy-tale-like subject: the creation of a mighty bird kingdom by the Athenian Peisetairos, who thereby subjugates not only humans but also the gods. The play is likely Aristophanes' commentary on the "Cloud-Cuckoo-Land" plans of the contemporary Sicilian Expedition. At the Lenaia of the same year 414 BC, Amphiaraos was performed,that ridicules the religious practices of the sanctuary of Amphiaraos in Oropos.

From 411 BC, two plays survive: Lysistrata, probably performed at the Lenaia, and Thesmophoriazusae, likely performed at the Dionysia. Lysistrata stands in the political tradition of Acharnians and Peace. This time a woman, the "army-savior" Lysistrata, boldly takes the initiative and persuades her fellow women to take measures (including a sex strike) that could force the warring Spartan and Athenian men to make peace. Thesmophoriazusae is a play with a purely humorous subject. It is framed as a farce: Euripides' attempt to spy on the women he has so often mocked fails, and after a series of failed attempts to free his spy from their hands, he must ultimately come to terms with them. The parody of Euripides becomes the central theme here: many episodes of the comedy include the parodies of his tragedies (Telephus, Palamedes, Helena, Andromeda).

The war's last years: (410 BC - 405 BC).

Other lost comedies might have been put on stage between 410 BC and 406 BC; however, their date is uncertain.Triphales was probably staged shortly after 411 BC and Geras may have been performed shortly after 409 BC (if the "lot machine" refers to a new system introduced for assigning seats in the Bouleuterion in 410 BC). In Geras, elderly men are miraculously rejuvenated and subsequently overstep the bounds of decency. In 408 BC, the first version of Plutus was performed , which also dealt with the healing of the blind god of wealth Plutus . Around 408 BC or 407 BC Gerytades was produced, thematically close to The Frogs: a delegation of Athenian poets is sent to the underworld.

Aeschylus,Euripides and Sophokles

Perhaps in 407 BC or 406 BC the second version of Thesmophoriazusae was performed; it was in many respects different from the extant first version .

In 405 BC, Aristophanes enjoyed his greatest success in theatre with Frogs, in which the god of theater, Dionysus (along with his cheeky slave Xanthias), descends into the underworld to bring the recently deceased Euripides back to Earth. The civil theme of defending and restoring the Athenian traditional values is highly recalled by the chorus in the parabasis. Then a thrilling contest for the throne of best tragic poet takes place between Euripides and the old master Aeschylus. Hades announces the challenge and select Dionysus himself as the judge of it. After a fierce competition between the poets fighting with their tragedies, at last Aeschylus wins giving the best recommendation to Athens and Dionysus returns to the upper world with him.

The play, behind its purely literary subject, reflects the ominous situation in Athens in the final phase of the Peloponnesian War. It was so well-received that Aristophanes was awarded the highest civil honor in Athens:"a bough from the holy olive tree, which is considered the equivalent of a gold crown, for having said in The Frogs etc."

A new phase of comedy (393 BC - 387 BC).

A tribune in the Dyonisos' theatre in Athens.

The plays of this period show a well different structure and content: with the crisis of Athens (after its defeat with Sparta), the link between Aristophanes and the political life of the city changes: the extant plays do not include a parabasis any longer nor there is a direct dialogue between the poet and his public.

It was not until over a decade later that the next extant play was performed: Ecclesiazusae, whose dates range between 393 BC and 391 BC: this was Aristophanes' last major "women’s play." The protagonist Praxagora cleverly orchestrates a coup d'état, handing power to the women of Athens, who then attempt to introduce a form of material and sexual communism, the failure of which is already hinted at in the final scenes.

In 388 BC Aristophanes directed one of his plays for the last time, the second version of Plutus, which implements the fairy-tale idea that wealth could be more evenly distributed on Earth, and poverty eliminated, if only the god of wealth could see and thus give his favor to the right people. In 387 BC at the Dionysia, Aristophanes had his son Araros stage Kokalos, a mythical subject possibly modeled after Sophocles’ Kamiloi. In the play Minos while pursuing Daedalus meets his death in the Sicilian realm of Kokalos. Araros won the first prize at the Dionysia with this work. Perhaps already the following year 386 BC, Araros also staged a second version of Aristophanes' Aiolosikon, which apparently parodied and travestied Euripides' Aiolos.The lyrical choral verses preserved in the fragments probably belong to the first version of this play, which can no longer be precisely dated. The dating of most of the other lost plays, many of which have mythical subjects, remains uncertain: probably these were written later in Aristophanes' career, since plays of this kind became more common on the Attic stage around and after 400 BC.

In the early years of the 4th century, Aristophanes held the office of prytanis for his tribe Pandionis; he probably died over the age of seventy in the 380s. Two sons are certainly attested: Araros, who also wrote comedies, and Philippos, also a comic poet and director of Eubulus. The name of a third son is uncertain. Aristophanes often had his plays directed by others, especially in his early years: five times by Callistratus (Banqueters, Babylonioi, Acharnians, Birds, Lysistrata) and four times by Philonides (Proagon, Wasps, Amphiaraos, Frogs).

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References

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