Some people pride themselves on finding fart jokes and cock jokes unfunny. "It's the lowest form of humor!" they scoff, then try to direct you to something more sophisticated and mature. Well, it is refreshing to learn that fart jokes and cock jokes are precisely where Western humor began, and were good enough, indeed the specialty of, one of the greatest comic playwrights who ever lived. If elevated wit mixed with incisive social criticism are what you want, go read Bernard Shaw. If you want co...

Several years ago I resolved to read all existing ancient Greek drama. I have read all the surviving plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Now I have read all of Aristophanes too. Only Euripides and Menander to go and my pledge will be fulfilled.These five plays are all very good. The Birds is utterly tremendous, perhaps my favourite of Aristophanes' plays with the exception of The Frogs. The outcome of this work is rather shocking, no less than the overthrow of the gods, but the individual scenes a...

Well, that was enlightening. If you're someone who is concerned that Ancient Greece was all Oedipal complexes and gouged out eyeballs and such you'll be very relieved to read the plays of Aristophanes. Aristophanes isn't afraid of a dirty joke or scatological references or employing enormous fake phalluses as stage props. I know more about the personal grooming habits of the Ancient Greek women than I probably *needed* to know. I almost typed WANTED to know but then I realized that if someone ha...

These plays are hilarious!

A political satire on the imperialistic dreams that had led the Athenians to undertake their ill-fated expedition of 415 bce to conquer Syracuse in Sicily. Peisthetaerus is so disgusted with his city’s bureaucracy that he persuades the birds to join him in building a new city that will be suspended in between heaven and earth; it is named Nephelokokkygia, translatable as “Cloud-cuckoo-land.” The city is built, and Peisthetaerus and his bird comrades must then fend off the undesirable humans who

Birds is amazing. I honestly couldn't believe it when I read it.

Just read The Birds.

Was hoping, but not truly expecting, these would be funny plays. "The Birds" exceeded my hopes. Sitting outside by a swimming pool in Florida, surrounded by young adults on hedonism pilgrimages and even younger Spring Break'ers, I was the one laughing out loud. Oxford Classics editor Stephen Halliwell used different translators' versions of the four plays in this volume; this "Birds" was by Nan Dunbar, from 1995, and it made the play read as though it had been written two weeks ago.I read "Lysis...

This volume contains translations of Birds, Lysistrata, Assembly-women and Wealth, by Stephen Halliwell. Below follows my discussion of one of the four plays, Lysistrata.Lysistrata is one of the most well-known of the Greek comedies by Aristophanes, written in the spring of 411 BC - in the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian War. In the same year in Athens aristocrats overthrew the radical democratic government in a coup. Lysistrata is the third of Aristophanes' pacifist anti-war pieces, the sto...

Of Aristophanes’ intact plays, here survive the two worst. First, The Assemblywomen, which begins as an improved riff upon Women at the Thesmophoria and Lysistrata before abruptly – past the middle section – shifting into a different, hardly related collection of vaguely inspired ‘gags’. Some are funny; none complete the comic drama so carefully aligned in the play’s beginning. There is something sad about it. A kind of disintegration. The chorus were, at this period, fading from the Greek stage...

Fart jokes, philandering, sharp political satire, and the battle of the sexes circa 500 B.C. Aristophanes’ plays are all very witty and even quite brave considering how relentlessly he attacked Athens’ politicians and power players during this time, of which he was liable for slander. The common targets of Aristophanes’ irreverent lampooning are the city leaders, gluttons, soothsayers, priests, and notably the Gods. Some plays are better than others, with The Birds being the crowd favorite. The

Stephen Halliwell crafts accessible translations to Aristophanes' comedies, he is so skilled that he was able to make me laugh out loud to 2000 year old plays. In terms of my Classical Civillisation A-level and its topic on Greek drama, the introduction was extremely useful as it acted as both a revision guide and a source of new information. His explanatory notes are indispensable and gave the crucial context to each play simply. This book has provided me with my new favourite Ancient Greek pla...

I read this one straight after Halliwell's more scholarly translation of Clouds, Women of Themosphoria and Frogs. Whereas that focused on the verse and beauty of Artisophanes, Barratt and Somerstein have produced something designed to be performed: the rapid-fire comedy hits in a very modern way, helpful staging is included, and the translations are significantly briefer than Halliwell's. The loss is not insignificant - the plays are bawdy and light, with less gravitas and poetry, but on the oth...

Some Favorite Quotes: From the introduction to the Project Gutenberg version I read: the play appeals perhaps more than any other of our Author's productions to the modern reader. Sparkling wit, whimsical fancy, poetic charm, are of all ages, and can be appreciated as readily by ourselves as by an Athenian audience of two thousand years ago.Undoubtedly; words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven.

This comedy ridicules the disastrous Greek expedition to Sicily in 413 BC. More generally, The Birds is a rollicking commentary on man's eternal dissatisfaction with his lot; his habit of ignoring the divinities which shape his ends; is crowded, evil-breading cities; and his tendency to disturb the equilibrium of the universe, Pisthetaerus, with his irresistible rhetoric, is a forebear of the men who sell salvation or the world's goods with equal glibness and ease.

I throughly enjoyed this collection of plays. The introductions (at the beginning of the book and then one for each play) we interesting and mercifully short (usually, the scholars who compile these collections feel the need to write nearly as many pages explaining the works as the original author wrote for the works themselves). The humor is enjoyably crude and farcical and the metaphors highlighting problems with Athenian politics and economics are delightfully sarcastic.

It was really interesting, but also super weird. I feel bad rating it 4 stars because it's pretty impressive to have been written thousands of years ago and translated into English. But just because something is old doesn't mean it's necessarily the pinnacle of human achievement. I feel like some of the ancient literature we hail and worship was really just preserved by luck, and wasn't necessarily the best work of the civilization it came from...just me?

(*I only had to read "Birds" for class, but I have read Lysistrata before!)I didn't really enjoy this play. I usually don't find Aristophanes funny, but I did like Lysistrata which I read last year. I think I'll develop more insight when my prof explains why we read this play.

I laughed out loud when I read the Lysinastrata.

Birds is great, the plays about women even are still good. Theaterkino.

Only read Lysistrata.

The fact that these plays are likely to offend many if they were staged today, gives me more reason to enjoy and recommend it here!

What most people notice first about Aristophanes is the lewdness of his humour. After that his courage. In ‘The Assembly Women’, almost two and a half thousand years before Proudhon, Aristophanes has the women of Athens asserting a stringent proto-communism. ‘The Birds’ is another attack on theocentric government; while the most challenging aspect of ‘Lysistrata’ is, not the famous sex strike, but Aristophanes own obvious opposition to the war with Persia - on, what seem like, unashamedly pacifi...

Acharnians, Peace, Assemblywomen, Wealth. Acharnians is pretty good at times, probably the best peace play, although it's nothing like as good as stuff like the Frogs or the Thesmophoriozusae. Highlights include the first Euripides sketch extant and a pretty good assembly episode. Peace is substantially made up of thanksgiving songs (Peace of Nicias is basically being celebrated), apart from some okay stuff about using a dung-beetle to fly to heaven, this is obviously the weakest play extant.The...

It was refreshing to see such a different genre of comedy (so different from today's style of absurdist comedy). Also, very disorienting. I read this primarily for the Birds at a friend's recommendation (I tell stories about birds a fair bit), but learning about classical Greek comedic theatre was an eye opener. The introduction is very useful and well written.My experience of the comedic style:Everything, every subject of life is ridiculous (ridiculed and not worth taking seriously), but there

I very slowly tackled this one over the past month and while I was hoping to read all five plays, only The Knights and The Birds are the ones that held my interest. These two plays, especially The Birds, are incredibly witty and the humour translates well into modern day. They are also very scathing at times towards characters representing real people, usually politicians, of the day that Aristophanes truly disliked. He really enjoyed using this medium to target and ridicule his enemies. The int...

This volume wasn't as much fun as the others, especially in later plays as they moved toward New Comedy. There were a few good gaffes and some very clever ideas going on, but I wasn't really too excited. I didn't find 'Birds' to be that interesting, regardless of how recommended it is in literary circles in terms of famous Aristophanic plays. I thought 'Knights' was probably the best of the lot and I especially appreciated the dung beetle routine.All-in-all, you could probably skip this lot of p...

5 stars for Birds, which is hilariously mock-tragic and gloriously silly.5 stars for Lysistrata, which is much more ribald, but still is at least mock-serious and quite funny.3 stars for Assembly-Woman, which is a little too much slapstick and poop jokes. Maybe it's that Praxagora disappears for a while; she starts off as promising as Lysistrata but then sort of fades away.4 stars for Wealth, which has its good parts (Poverty's arguments, Wealth's overall wimpiness), but also has a little too mu...

Bought this for my Greek comedy course. I find I prefer Menander to Aristophanes, possibly because he is slightly easier to read! I do like the fantastical elements to Aristophanes' work but just sometimes feel it a bit hard going to read a whole play. (or in the case of my essay, as many as possible in a day :P) However, the translation is very good and I do think in performance it would be much more enjoyable.

only read The Birds. lemme tell you, Aristophanes is a heck of a lot more fun than Greek tragedies. it's funny to see that the human sense of humor has pretty much not changed at all in thousands of years.