Aristophanes
Aristophanes was a comic writer who lived between 450 and 385 BC and composed about forty plays in his lifetime. His plays were all comedies, which usually addressed very serious political and social issues in a direct and crude manner, which, like much of today's comedy, is what made them funny for the audience to watch and appreciate. Many of the comedies would even go as far as mocking members of the audience or making personal attacks upon contemporary political personalities. Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” is no exception to this crude comedy, ridiculing what he thinks is the absurdity of the Peloponnesian War. The comedy is a brilliantly constructed piece with an extremely profound underlying message encouraging a Panhellenic society. He does not see the point of the battles within the country and wishes a unification of the city-states. Therefore through his work he wishes to enlighten the people of Greece.
In order to understand the meaning behind Aristophanes’ play, some background history of the events leading up to the war is needed. There are three important occurrences, which ultimately led to the outbreak. It all started when Epidamnus (a colony of Corcyra) became involved in a political struggle. Democratic factions had taken control of the colony’s government and forced the aristocrats out of power. In retaliation for this action the aristocrats joined with barbaric forces and attacked the city and its surrounding areas. Seeking help, the colony sent a request to Corcyra, its motherland, for military intervention. Corcyra however refused to help the Epidamnians in their political struggle, and so the colony went to the city-state of Corinth for assistance. Being itself distantly related to the people of this colony, the Corinthians sent ships to suppress the violence. This move greatly displeased the Corcyraeans who saw the Corinthians as interfering with their affairs. So in turn, they sent their own ships to intercept the Corinthians. To counter the Corinthian action, the Corcyraeans made an alliance with Athens (who had a very bitter relationship with Corinth). Acting according to a duty to protect the Epidamnians and possibly just to stand up to the Athenians, the Corinthian fleet attacked the Corcyraeans anyway. The resulting engagement was won decisively by Corcyraeans because of the Athenian support. This act further embitte...
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...hough some of the women were weakened, it was the support of others that helped them overcome their cravings. This gives us a reference to the good that comes out of a united group.
Aristophanes using more comical examples putting light on the stupidities of this war. In a scene involving Myrrhine and her husband, Myrrhine puts her husband through torture…
“I’m dead: the woman’s worn me all away. She’s gone and left me with an anguished pulse. What shall I put thee in (O woe!) Since into something thou must go, Poor little lad… he pines and peeks. Our lovely girl has proved a curse.” (Lysistrata, P. 319)
This is all a comical twist, which appeals to the audience. Whether they realize it or not, they are being exposed to the faults of the war. Aristophanes is able to get his message across to a lot of people and in turn the word is spread.
Aristophanes’ play serves a greater purpose than a mere comical work. He addresses his views on the Peloponnesian War. He expresses his resentment of the war and pokes fun at how illogical it truly is. Through this comedy he is able to reach the public crowd and spread his views.
In Sophocles play, Antigone, the reader explores many aspects of a Greek tragedy. In this play, a complex family follows a series of mishaps after hearing from a “seer.” After the family thinks they have overcome the worst, they then endure two brothers fighting over both of their rightful places on the throne. In the end, both of them die, but one, Eteocles, was buried a king, and the other, Polynices was left to be untouched a “traitor.” Their sister, Antigone, feels it is her rightful to disobey her uncle, Creon, who sets a decree that declares Policies was to be left unburied. She called this “the doom reserved for enemies marches on the ones we love the most” (Fagles 1984, 59).
Throughout Aristophanes’ “Clouds” there is a constant battle between old and new. It makes itself apparent in the Just and Unjust speech as well as between father and son. Ultimately, Pheidippides, whom would be considered ‘new’, triumphs over the old Strepsiades, his father. This is analogous to the Just and Unjust speech. In this debate, Just speech represents the old traditions and mores of Greece while the contrasting Unjust speech is considered to be newfangled and cynical towards the old. While the defeat of Just speech by Unjust speech does not render Pheidippides the ability to overcome Strepsiades, it is a parallel that may be compared with many other instances in Mythology and real life.
The book written by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, contains two controversial debates between distinguished speakers of Athens. The two corresponding sides produce convincing arguments which can be taken as if produced as an honest opinion or out of self-interest. The two debates must be analyzed separately in order to conclude which one and which side was speaking out of honest opinion or self-interest, as well as which speakers are similar to each other in their approach to the situation.
Aside from all the prodigious number of Greek tragedies in history, stands a collection of Greek comedies which serve as humorous relief from the powerful overtone of the tragedy. These comedies were meant to ease the severity and seriousness sometimes associated with the Greek society. The ideas portrayed in the comedies, compared to the tragedies, were ridiculously far-fetched; however, although abnormal, these views are certainly worthy of attention. Throughout his comedy, The Clouds, Aristophanes, along with his frequent use of toilet humor, ridicules aspects of Greek culture when he destroys tradition by denouncing the importance of the gods' influence on the actions of mortals, and he unknowingly parallels Greek society with today's. Aristophanes also defiantly misrepresents an icon like Socrates as comical, atheistic, and consumed by ideas of self interest, which is contradictory to the Socrates seen in Plato's Apology or Phaedo.
In Sophocles' most famous Theban play consisting of two parts, "Oedipus the King" and "Antigone", both parts are necessary in understanding some of the things that happened around them, and what type of man had raised Antigone. She is the main character in the play of “Antigone”.
Even though usually these people from the sounds of it were usually just swept under a rug, or that the camp would clean its act up when the state or others came to check on it isn’t. From the way that the book put it sounds like no one really started to question the methods of the camp until they were brought to light by the civil rights movement. Even then it took someone who knew someone there or someone who spent time there, for them to even hear about it. When it did make the headlines in was used to break the “Restless Race-Mixers” who wanted to put an end to segregation laws. This came as a shock to me and to think that our country put basically innocent people in facility that had for decades had been used on criminal that had committed murdered, rape, and other crimes, not protesting. Then for them to be stripped of all their dignity a face punish that was meant to break them. While yes, this punish didn’t match that, that was used on the convicts and no hands per se were laid upon them; they still face a form of torture. This was wrong and to think that this didn’t make the government question these methods, is a flaw from our past that we have to deal
The causes of the Peloponnesian War proved to be too great between the tension-filled stubborn Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta. As Thucydides says in Karl Walling’s article, “Never had so many human beings been exiled, or so much human blood been shed” (4). The three phases of the war, which again, are the Archidamian war, the Sicilian Expedition and the Decelean war, show the events that followed the causes of the war, while also showing the forthcoming detrimental effects that eventually consumed both Athens and eventually Sparta effectively reshaping Greece.
The play takes place during the Peloponnesian War and details a woman of the name Lysistrata. Lysistrata has concocted a plan to end the war through the unrecognized influence of women. She arranges a meeting between the wives of the men fighting for Sparta, Thebes, and other surrounding areas. In this meeting, Lysistrata plays on the women’s emotions regarding their “children’s fathers” going “endlessly off soldiering afar in this plodding war” and promptly states that Greece will be “saved by women” through their refraining “from every depth of love.” The women quickly refuse, exclaiming that they would rather “let the war proceed”, before being convinced that a “sex strike” is within the best interests of Greece. Thusly, a battle of the sexes ensues with the “Chorus of Old Women” proving to be the winners. The attempts to arrest the women are thwarted, leaving the men speculating “how this ferocity [could] be tamed.” Lysistrata continues to berate the men, detailing her silence though “well all the while [Lysistrata] knew” of the politics of war. She commands the men to “hold tongue” and “listen while [the women] show the way to recover the nation.” She compares the repair of Greece to the tasks daily preformed by women, those “trivial tricks of the household, domestic analogies of threads, skeins and spools”, in order to “unwind such political problems.” The men retreat, pride intact but slowly
In his account, he discusses the precursors to the war, including the 30 years truce and revolutions, such as the stasis in Corcyra. When looking at wars, the primary focus is normally the fighting itself, such as what we see in World War II. However, it is important to look at the anatomy of war, meaning what effect the war has on the people who are experiencing it first hand, and the consequences that the conflict has on the rest of the world. Therefore, in this essay I shall discuss, drawing directly from Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, how the civilians reacted to the war, their involvement and socio-economic factors. Furthermore, the first section of my essay shall focus on the direct effect of war on the people, regarding the plague, and violence and hopelessness that was experienced.
“Lysistrata,” written following the trouncing of Athenian forces in Sicily in 413 BC, harkens back to this time of war. As is traditional in Athenian theater, males in drag played all of the female parts. This ritual increases the play’s absurdity. The play begins with the streets empty as the men are at war. The women speak to each other of both emotional and sexual starvation. They both
“Lysistrata” is a tale which is centered around an Athenian woman named Lysistrata and her comrades who have taken control of the Acropolis in Athens. Lysistrata explains to the old men how the women have seized the Acropolis to keep men from using the money to make war and to keep dishonest officials from stealing the money. The opening scene of “Lysistrata” enacts the stereotypical and traditional characterization of women in Greece and also distances Lysistrata from this overused expression, housewife character. The audience is met with a woman, Lysistrata, who is furious with the other women from her country because they have not come to discuss war with her. The basic premise of the play is, Lysistrata coming up with a plan to put an end to the Peloponnesian War which is currently being fought by the men. After rounding up the women, she encourages them to withhold sex until the men agree to stop fighting. The women are difficult to convince, although eventually they agree to the plan. Lysistrata also tells the women if they are beaten, they may give in, since sex which results from violence will not please the men. Finally, all the women join Lysistrata in taking an oath to withhold sex from their mates. As a result of the women refraining from pleasing their husbands until they stop fighting the war, the play revolves around a battle of the sexes. The battle between the women and men is the literal conflict of the play. The war being fought between the men is a figurative used to lure the reader to the actual conflict of the play which is the battle between men and women.
... convey deeper themes of life and death, the struggles between power and class structure and also the societal differences between men and women. Aristophanes uses humor to hook his audience into his play, and then undermines the surface humor with much bigger thematic issues. If this play had simply been about women withholding sex for other reasons such as wanting more money for shopping or other frivolous ideas it would not then be considered a satiric comedy. Satire requires more than physical humor. An issue must be raised such as the life and death theme that is seen in the war in Lysistrata, and a solution must then be made. Aristophanes created the women in the beginning to be bickering, unintelligent, and self-centered people. But in the end it was their idea and compromise that ended the war.
Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is a political remark. In Athens, Greece, around 411 BC, women were not independent. Patriarchal domination was inconceivable in a time where there appeared to be insufficient social transformations or civic manifestations, in regards to the treatment or views towards women, in which were set forth by men. Midway through the play there is a confrontation between Lysistrata and the Magistrate.
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