|
Lysistrata
''Lysistrata'' ( or ; Attic Greek: , ''Lysistrátē'', "Army Disbander") is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC. It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War between Greek city states by denying all the men of the land any sex, which was the only thing they truly and deeply desired. Lysistrata persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society. Additionally, its dramatic structure represents a shift from the conventions of Old Comedy, a trend typical of the author's career. It was produced in the same year as the ''Thesmophoriazusae'', another play with a focus on gender-based issues, just two years after Athens' catastrophi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of 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 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 powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' play ''The Clouds'' as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates, although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher. Aristophanes' second play, ''T ... [...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] |
Peace (play)
''Peace'' ( grc-gre, Εἰρήνη ''Eirḗnē'') is an Athenian Old Comedy written and produced by the Greek playwright Aristophanes. It won second prize at the City Dionysia where it was staged just a few days before the validation of Peace of Nicias, which promised to end the ten-year-old Peloponnesian War, in 421 BC. The play is notable for its joyous anticipation of peace and for its celebration of a return to an idyllic life in the countryside. However, it also sounds a note of caution, there is bitterness in the acknowledgment of lost opportunities, and the ending is not happy for everyone. As in all of Aristophanes' plays, the jokes are numerous, the action is wildly absurd and the satire is savage. Cleon, the pro-war populist leader of Athens, is once again a target for the author's wit, even though he had died in the Battle of Amphipolis just a few months earlier. Plot Short summary: Trygaeus, a middle-aged Athenian, miraculously brings about a peaceful end to the Pelopon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Comedy
Old Comedy (''archaia'') is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians.Mastromarco (1994) p.12 The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with their daring political commentary and abundance of sexual innuendo, effectively define the genre today. Origins and history The Greek word for comedy (''kōmōidía'') derives from the words for 'revel' and 'song' (''kōmos'' and ''ōdē'') and according to Aristotle comic drama actually developed from song. The first official comedy at the City Dionysia was not staged until 487/6 BC, by which time tragedy had already been long established there. The first comedy at the Lenaia was staged later still, only about 20 years before the performance there of ''The Acharnians'', the first of Aristophanes' surviving plays. According to Aristotle, comedy was slow to gain official acceptance because nobody took it seriously, yet only 60 years after c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sex Strike
A sex strike (sex boycott), or more formally known as Lysistratic nonaction, is a method of nonviolent resistance in which one or more persons refrain from or refuse sex with partners until policy or social demands are met. It is a form of temporary sexual abstinence. Sex strikes have been used to protest many issues, from war to gang violence to policies. The effectiveness of sex strikes is contested. Historical Ancient Greece The most famous example of a sex strike in the arts is the Greek playwright Aristophanes' work ''Lysistrata'', an anti-war comedy. The female characters in the play, led by the eponymous Lysistrata, withhold sex from their husbands as part of their strategy to secure peace and end the Peloponnesian War. Nigeria Among the Igbo people of Nigeria, in pre-colonial times, the community of women periodically formed themselves into a Council, a kind of women's trade union. This was headed by the Agba Ekwe, 'the favoured one of the goddess Idemili and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thesmophoriazusae
''Thesmophoriazusae'' ( grc-gre, Θεσμοφοριάζουσαι; ''Thesmophoriazousai'', meaning ''Women Celebrating the Festival of the Thesmophoria''), or ''Women at the Thesmophoria'' (sometimes also called ''The Poet and the Women''), is one of eleven surviving plays by Aristophanes. It was first produced in , probably at the City Dionysia. The play's focuses include the subversive role of women in a male-dominated society; the vanity of contemporary poets, such as the tragic playwrights Euripides and Agathon; and the shameless, enterprising vulgarity of an ordinary Athenian, as represented in this play by the protagonist, Mnesilochus. The work is also notable for Aristophanes' free adaptation of key structural elements of Old Comedy and for the absence of the anti-populist and anti-war comments that pepper his earlier work. It was produced in the same year as '' Lysistrata'', another play with sexual themes. How ''Thesmophoriazusae'' fared in the City Dionysia drama comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (21 August 187216 March 1898) was an English illustrator and author. His black ink drawings were influenced by Japanese woodcuts, and depicted the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler. Beardsley's contribution to the development of the Art Nouveau and poster styles was significant despite his early death from tuberculosis. He is one of the important Modern Style figures. Early life, education, and early career Beardsley was born in Brighton, Sussex, England, on 21 August 1872 and christened on 24 October 1872. His father, Vincent Paul Beardsley (1839–1909), was the son of a Clerkenwell jeweler; Vincent had no trade himself (partly owing to inherited tuberculosis, from which his own father had died aged only 40), and relied on a private income from an inheritance that he received from his maternal grandfather, a property developer, when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the Greek world. The war remained undecided for a long time until the decisive intervention of the Persian Empire in support of Sparta. Led by Lysander, the Spartan fleet built with Persian subsidies finally defeated Athens and started a period of Spartan hegemony over Greece. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. The first phase (431–421 BC) was named the Ten Years War, or the Archidamian War, after the Spartan king Archidamus II, who launched several invasions of Attica with the full hoplite army of the Peloponnesian League, the alliance network dominated by Sparta. However, the Long Walls of Athens rendered this strategy ineffective, while the superior navy of the Delian League (Athens' alliance) raided the Peloponnesian coast to trigger rebellions within Sparta. The precarious Peace of Nicias ... [...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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athenian Coup Of 411 BC
The Athenian coup of 411 BC was the result of a revolution that took place during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The coup overthrew the democratic government of ancient Athens and replaced it with a short-lived oligarchy known as the Four Hundred. In the wake of the financial crisis caused by the failed Sicilian Expedition of the Athenian military in 413 BC, some high-status Athenian men, who had disliked the broad-based democracy of the city-state for a long time, sought to establish an oligarchy of the elite. They believed that they could manage foreign, fiscal, and war policies better than the existing government. The movement toward oligarchy was led by a number of prominent and wealthy Athenians, who held positions of power in the Athenian army at Samos in coordination with Alcibiades. Background By the time of the Peloponnesian War, the democracy in Athens was approximately 100 years old. Most of the upper class accepted this form of government, while ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Korybantes
According to Greek mythology, the Korybantes or Corybantes (also Corybants) (; grc-gre, Κορύβαντες) were the armed and crested dancers who worshipped the Phrygian goddess Cybele with drumming and dancing. They are also called the ''Kurbantes'' in Phrygia. Etymology The name ''Korybantes'' is of uncertain etymology. Edzard Johan Furnée and R. S. P. Beekes have suggested a Pre-Greek origin. Others refer the name to *κορυβή (''korybé''), the Macedonian version of κορυφή (''koryphé'') "crown, top, mountain peak", explaining their association with mountains, particularly Olympus. Family The Korybantes were the offspring of Apollo and the Muse Thalia or Rhytia (Rhetia).Strabo, ''Geographica'10.3.19 One account attests the parentage to Zeus and the Muse Calliope, or of Helios and Athena, or lastly, of Cronus. Cretan counterparts The Kuretes or Kouretes () (see ''Ecstatics'' below) were nine dancers who venerated Rhea, the Cretan counterpart of Cybe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_-_Thucydides.jpg "Click for more on -> Peloponnesian War")
.png "Click for more on -> Korybantes")