Aristophanes (c. 446–c. 386 BCE) was an Athenian comic playwright, the chief surviving representative of Old Comedy. Eleven of his roughly forty plays survive, including The Clouds, The Wasps, The Birds, Lysistrata and The Frogs. Writing during the Peloponnesian War, he mocked politicians such as Cleon, intellectuals such as Socrates and the tragedian Euripides, and the war itself, combining fantasy, obscenity, lyric beauty and political satire.
This volume collects three of Aristophanes' comedies (contents vary by edition; a long-standing selection is The Acharnians, The Clouds and Lysistrata). The Acharnians (425 BCE), the earliest surviving comedy, is set in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War.
