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Eupolis
Eupolis ( grc-gre, Εὔπολις; c. 446c. 411 BC) was an Athenian poet of the Old Comedy, who flourished during the time of the Peloponnesian War. Biography Nothing whatsoever is known of his personal history. His father was named Sosipolis. There are few sources on when he first appeared on the stage. A short history of Greek Comedy, written by an anonymous writer of antiquity, reports that Eupolis first produced in the year where Apollodorus was the Eponymous archon, which would be 430/429 BC. The same source claims Phrynichus also debuted that year. The Chronicon of Eusebius of Caesarea instead places his debut in 428–27 BC and adds that Aristophanes also started producing that year. This is the version preserved in the Latin translation by Jerome. But the Armenian translation places the event in 427/426 BC. Cyril of Alexandria placed the debut of Eupolis at some point between 428 and 424 BC, placing the debuts of Aristophanes and Plato the comic poet within the same p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eupolis
Eupolis ( grc-gre, Εὔπολις; c. 446c. 411 BC) was an Athenian poet of the Old Comedy, who flourished during the time of the Peloponnesian War. Biography Nothing whatsoever is known of his personal history. His father was named Sosipolis. There are few sources on when he first appeared on the stage. A short history of Greek Comedy, written by an anonymous writer of antiquity, reports that Eupolis first produced in the year where Apollodorus was the Eponymous archon, which would be 430/429 BC. The same source claims Phrynichus also debuted that year. The Chronicon of Eusebius of Caesarea instead places his debut in 428–27 BC and adds that Aristophanes also started producing that year. This is the version preserved in the Latin translation by Jerome. But the Armenian translation places the event in 427/426 BC. Cyril of Alexandria placed the debut of Eupolis at some point between 428 and 424 BC, placing the debuts of Aristophanes and Plato the comic poet within the same p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspasia
Aspasia (; grc-gre, Ἀσπασία ; after 428 BC) was a ''metic'' woman in Classical Athens. Born in Miletus, she moved to Athens and began a relationship with the statesman Pericles, with whom she had a son, Pericles the Younger. According to the traditional historical narrative, she worked as a courtesan and was tried for ''asebeia'' (impiety), though modern scholars have questioned the factual basis for either of these claims, which both derive from ancient comedy. Though Aspasia is one of the best-attested women from the Greco-Roman world, and the most important woman in the history of fifth-century Athens, almost nothing is certain about her life. Aspasia was portrayed in Old Comedy as a prostitute and madam, and in ancient philosophy as a teacher and rhetorician. She has continued to be a subject of both visual and literary artists until the present. From the twentieth century, she has been portrayed as both a sexualised and sexually liberated woman, and as a femin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek Comedy
Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and the satyr play). Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods: Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes; Middle Comedy is largely lost, i.e. preserved only in relatively short fragments by authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis; and New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his ''Poetics'' (c. 335 BC) that comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster. C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world. Periods The Alexandrine grammarians, and most likely Aristophanes of Byzantium in particular, seem to have been the first to d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyperbolus
Hyperbolus ( grc-gre, Ὑπέρβολος, ''Hyperbolos''; died 411 BC) was an Athenian politician active during the first half of the Peloponnesian war, coming to particular prominence after the death of Cleon. In 416 or 415 he was the last Athenian to be ostracised. Life A fragment of Theopompus suggests that Hyperbolus was the son of Chremes, but surviving ostraka prove that his father's name was actually Antiphanes. Some ancient sources claim that Hyperbolus was from a slave family, though the fact that his father had a Greek name makes this unlikely. Hyperbolus was a demagogue, and an allusion in Aristophanes' play ''The Knights'' suggests that he – like Cleon, another demagogue of the late fifth century – supported an ambitious Athenian foreign policy. The precise details of his political career are unknown, but he seems to have been a member of the boule and possibly a trierarch. Hyperbolus was a frequent target of the authors of Old Comedy. The first to satirise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Callias III
Callias ( el, Kαλλίας) was an ancient Athenian aristocrat and political figure. He was the son of Hipponicus and an unnamed woman (she later married Pericles), an Alcmaeonid and the third member of one of the most distinguished Athenian families to bear the name of Callias. He was regarded as infamous for his extravagance and profligacy. Historians sometimes designate him "Callias III" to distinguish him from his grandfather Callias II and from his grandfather's grandfather Callias ("Callias I"). Life Callias' family was unusually wealthy: the major part of their fortune came from the leasing of large numbers of slaves to the state-owned silver mines of Laurium. In return, the ''Calliai'' were paid a share of the mine proceeds, in silver. Accordingly, they were considered the richest family in Athens and quite possibly in all of Greece, and the head of the family was often simply referred to as "''ho plousios''" (Greek: "ὁ πλούσιος", "the wealthy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Knights
''The Knights'' ( grc, Ἱππεῖς ''Hippeîs''; Attic: ) was the fourth play written by Aristophanes, who is considered the master of an ancient form of drama known as Old Comedy. The play is a satire on the social and political life of classical Athens during the Peloponnesian War, and in this respect it is typical of all the dramatist's early plays. It is unique, however, in the relatively small number of its characters, and this was due to its vitriolic preoccupation with one man, the pro-war populist Cleon. Cleon had prosecuted Aristophanes for slandering the polis with an earlier play, ''The Babylonians'' (426 BC), for which the young dramatist had promised revenge in ''The Acharnians'' (425 BC), and it was in ''The Knights'' (424 BC) that his revenge was exacted. ''The Knights'' won first prize at the Lenaia festival when it was produced in 424 BC. Plot ''The Knights'' is a satire on political and social life in 5th-century BC Athens. The characters are drawn from real ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Clouds
''The Clouds'' ( grc, Νεφέλαι ''Nephelai'') is a Greek comedy play written by the playwright Aristophanes. A lampooning of intellectual fashions in classical Athens, it was originally produced at the City Dionysia in 423BC and was not as well received as the author had hoped, coming last of the three plays competing at the festival that year. It was revised between 420 and 417BC and was thereafter circulated in manuscript form. No copy of the original production survives, and scholarly analysis indicates that the revised version is an incomplete form of Old Comedy. This incompleteness, however, is not obvious in translations and modern performances. Retrospectively, ''The Clouds'' can be considered the world's first extant "comedy of ideas" and is considered by literary critics to be among the finest examples of the genre. The play also, however, remains notorious for its caricature of Socrates and is mentioned in Plato's '' Apology'' as a contributor to the philosopher' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dionysia
The Dionysia (, , ; Greek: Διονύσια) was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia. The Dionysia actually consisted of two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which took place in different parts of the year. They were also an essential part of the Dionysian Mysteries. Rural Dionysia The Dionysia was originally a rural festival in Eleutherae, Attica ( – ''Dionysia ta kat' agrous''), probably celebrating the cultivation of vines. It was probably a very ancient festival, perhaps not originally associated with Dionysus. This "rural Dionysia" was held during the winter, in the month of Poseideon (the month straddling the winter solstice, i.e., Dec.-Jan.). The central event was the ''pompe'' (πομπή), the procession, in which ''phalloi'' (φαλ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme In Ancient Greece, a deme or ( grc, δῆμος, plural: demoi, δημοι) was a suburb or a subdivision of Athens and other city-states. Demes as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and ear ... Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comedy, comic playwright or comedy-writer of Classical Athens, ancient Athens and a poet of Ancient Greek comedy, Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. These provide the most valuable examples of a genre of comic drama known as Ancient Greek comedy, Old Comedy and are used to define it, along with fragments from dozens of lost plays by Aristophanes and his contemporaries. Also known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His pow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suda
The ''Suda'' or ''Souda'' (; grc-x-medieval, Σοῦδα, Soûda; la, Suidae Lexicon) is a large 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Soudas (Σούδας) or Souidas (Σουίδας). It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers. Title The derivation is probably from the Byzantine Greek word ''souda'', meaning "fortress" or "stronghold", with the alternate name, ''Suidas'', stemming from an error made by Eustathius, who mistook the title for the author's name. Paul Maas once ironized by suggesting that the title may be connected to the Latin verb ''suda'', the second-person singular imperative of ''sudāre'', meaning "to sweat", but Franz Dölger traced its origins back to Byzantine military lexicon (σοῦδα, "ditch, trench", then "fortress"). Silvio Giuse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pericles
Pericles (; grc-gre, Περικλῆς; c. 495 – 429 BC) was a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War, and was acclaimed by Thucydides, a contemporary historian, as "the first citizen of Athens".Thucydides, 2.65 Pericles turned the Delian League into an Athenian empire and led his countrymen during the first two years of the Peloponnesian War. The period during which he led Athens, roughly from 461 to 429 BC, is sometimes known as the "Age of Pericles", but the period thus denoted can include times as early as the Persian Wars or as late as the following century. Pericles promoted the arts and literature, and it is principally through his efforts that Athens acquired the reputation of being the educational and cultural center of the ancient Greek world. He started an ambitious project that generated most of the surviving stru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parabasis
In Greek comedy, the parabasis (plural parabases; grc, παράβασις, plural: ) is a point in the play when all of the actors leave the stage and the chorus is left to address the audience directly. The chorus partially or completely abandons its dramatic role, to step forward (parabasis) and talk to the audience on a topic completely irrelevant to the subject of the play. Structure A parabasis usually consists of three songs (S) alternating with three speeches (s) (or recitatives) in the order S-s-S-s-S-s. The first speech, or parabasis proper - generally in anapaest - often ends with a passage which is to be rattled off very quickly (theoretically in one breath - called a ''πνῖγος – pnigos''). Examples *In ''The Knights'', we find Aristophanes offers a survey of the Athenian comic tradition, thereby enhancing his own role: “if one of the old comic poets had tried to force us Knights to address the public in the parabasis he wouldn’t have got away with so lightl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
