Authors

Greek

Aristophanes

Aristophanes is the only comic playwright of ancient Athens whose works have survived, and his eleven extant plays — including The Clouds, The Birds, Lysistrata, and The Frogs — are the primary documents of Old Comedy. His plays combine spectacular theatrical fantasy (a cloud-cuckoo utopia, a peace treaty arranged by the women of Greece by withholding sex from their husbands) with savage political satire aimed at contemporary Athenian politicians, intellectuals, and playwrights, including Socrates and Euripides. His influence on subsequent comic tradition is impossible to overstate.