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Overview
Aristophanes of Athens (ca. 446386 BCE), one of the world's greatest comic dramatists, has been admired since antiquity for his iridescent wit and beguiling fantasy, exuberant language, and brilliant satire of the social, intellectual, and political life of Athens at its height. He wrote at least forty plays, of which eleven have survived complete. In this new Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristophanes, Jeffrey Henderson presents a freshly edited Greek text and a lively, unexpurgated translation with full explanatory notes.
Three plays are in Volume II of the new edition. Socrates' "Thinkery" is at the center of Clouds, which spoofs untraditional techniques for educating young men. Wasps satirizes Athenian enthusiasm for jury service and the law courts as well as the city's susceptibility to demagogues. In Peace, a rollicking attack on war-makers, the farmer-hero makes his famous trip to heaven on a dung beetle to discuss the issues with Zeus.
Editorials
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Jeffrey Henderson, who may fairly be considered the leading Aristophanic scholar in North America, has...provided us with both a useful text and idiomatic...translation. It is certainly a work that scholars may use with confidence and may recommend to their students for consultation and, yes, for help with translation...[I] found it more accurate for translation purposes than Henderson's Focus translation or Sommerstein's Penguin...I found Henderson's notes uniformly admirable, alerting us with all sorts of necessary information...Henderson has done a very great service in bringing both the text and the antique translations of Rogers up to date. This second volume in the Loeb lives up to the high standards of its predecessor, and we look forward to those to come.
— Richard Hamilton
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Jeffrey Henderson, who may fairly be considered the leading Aristophanic scholar in North America, has...provided us with both a useful text and idiomatic...translation. It is certainly a work that scholars may use with confidence and may recommend to their students for consultation and, yes, for help with translation...[I] found it more accurate for translation purposes than Henderson's Focus translation or Sommerstein's Penguin...I found Henderson's notes uniformly admirable, alerting us with all sorts of necessary information...Henderson has done a very great service in bringing both the text and the antique translations of Rogers up to date. This second volume in the Loeb lives up to the high standards of its predecessor, and we look forward to those to come.— Richard Hamilton