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99-519: The name is derived from τρέφω trepho , "to nourish". Strabo and several inscriptions refer to him as Zeus Trephonios. Several other chthonic Zeuses are known from the Greek world, including Zeus Μειλίχιος Meilikhios ("honeyed" or "kindly" Zeus), and Zeus Χθόνιος Chthonios ("Zeus beneath-the-earth"), which were other names for Hades. Similar constructions are also found in the Roman world. For example,

198-500: A daimon , and Lebadaea lost its plague while gaining a popular oracle. The childless Xuthus in Euripides 's Ion consults Trophonius on his way to Delphi . Apollonius of Tyana , a legendary wise man and seer of Late Antiquity , once visited the shrine and found that, when it came to philosophy, Trophonius was a proponent of sound Pythagorean doctrines. Plutarch 's De Genio Socratis relates an elaborate dream-vision concerning

297-467: A boy when the events in The Symposium are supposed to have occurred and it is possible that his Aristophanes is in fact based on a reading of the plays. For example, conversation among the guests turns to the subject of Love and Aristophanes explains his notion of it in terms of an amusing allegory, a device he often uses in his plays. He is represented as suffering an attack of hiccups and this might be

396-518: A chair of Mnemosyne, where the priests of the shrine would record his ravings and compose an oracle out of them. "To descend into the cave of Trophonios" became a proverbial way of saying "to suffer a great fright". This saying is alluded to in Aristophanes ' Clouds . Several ancient philosophers, including Heraclides Ponticus , wrote commentaries on the cult of Trophonios that are now lost. Trophonios has been of interest to classical scholars because

495-504: A clever and discerning audience, yet he also declared that "other times" would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays. He sometimes boasts of his originality as a dramatist yet his plays consistently espouse opposition to radical new influences in Athenian society. He caricatured leading figures in the arts (notably Euripides , whose influence on his own work however he once grudgingly acknowledged), in politics (especially

594-520: A date can be assigned is his reference to the death in AD ;23 of Juba II , king of Maurousia ( Mauretania ), who is said to have died "just recently". He probably worked on the Geography for many years and revised it steadily, but not always consistently. It is an encyclopaedic chronicle and consists of political, economic, social, cultural, and geographic descriptions covering almost all of Europe and

693-728: A descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known during his lifetime. Although the Geographica was rarely used by contemporary writers, a multitude of copies survived throughout the Byzantine Empire . It first appeared in Western Europe in Rome as a Latin translation issued around 1469. The first printed edition was published in 1516 in Venice . Isaac Casaubon , classical scholar and editor of Greek texts, provided

792-442: A dramatist and the plays contain few clear and unambiguous clues about his personal beliefs or his private life. He was a comic poet in an age when it was conventional for a poet to assume the role of teacher ( didaskalos ), and though this specifically referred to his training of the chorus in rehearsal, it also covered his relationship with the audience as a commentator on significant issues. Aristophanes claimed to be writing for

891-609: A humorous reference to the crude physical jokes in his plays. He tells the other guests that he is quite happy to be thought amusing but he is wary of appearing ridiculous. This fear of being ridiculed is consistent with his declaration in The Knights that he embarked on the career of comic playwright warily after witnessing the public contempt and ridicule that other dramatists had incurred. Aristophanes survived The Peloponnesian War , two oligarchic revolutions and two democratic restorations; this has been interpreted as evidence that he

990-431: A parabasis have been defined and named by scholars but it is probable that Aristophanes' own understanding was less formal. The selection of elements can vary from play to play and it varies considerably within plays between first and second parabasis. The early plays ( The Acharnians to The Birds ) are fairly uniform in their approach however and the following elements of a parabasis can be found within them. The Wasps

1089-527: A permanent place in proletarian theatre and yet conservative, Prussian intellectuals interpreted Aristophanes as a satirical opponent of social reform. The avant-gardist stage-director Karolos Koun directed a version of The Birds under the Acropolis in 1959 that established a trend in modern Greek history of breaking taboos through the voice of Aristophanes. The plays have a significance that goes beyond their artistic function, as historical documents that open

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1188-525: A reference to "Trophonius" in the preface to his Daybreak , alluding to his labor in the "underground" of moral prejudices. Strabo Strabo ( / ˈ s t r eɪ b oʊ / ; Greek : Στράβων Strábōn ; 64 or 63 BC – c.  24 AD ) was a Greek geographer , philosopher , and historian who lived in Asia Minor during the transitional period of the Roman Republic into

1287-431: A secret entrance only they knew about) for King Hyrieus of Boeotia . Using the secret entrance, they stole Hyrieus' fortune. The king was aware but did not know who the thief was; he laid a snare. Agamedes was trapped in it; Trophonius cut off his head so that Hyrieus would not know whose body it was. He was then immediately swallowed up by the earth and was turned into an immortal subterranean god. The cave of Trophonius

1386-467: A series of gods, including Cronus , Apollo , Zeus the king, Hera the Charioteer, and Demeter - Europa . At night, he would cast a ram into a pit sacred to Agamedes , drink from two rivers called Lethe and Mnemosyne , and then descend into a cave. Here, most consultees were frightened out of their wits, and forgot the experience entirely upon coming up. Afterward, the consultee would be seated upon

1485-522: A shrine at Lavinium in Lazio was dedicated to Aeneas under the title Iuppiter Indiges ( Jupiter in-the-earth). Trophonius was a son of Erginus , king of Minyan Orchomenus and brother of Agamedes . But Apollo is said to be his actual divine father. According to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo , he built Apollo's temple at the oracle at Delphi with Agamedes . Pindar relates how, once finished,

1584-455: A typical anapestic gallop, slows down to consider the revered poets Hesiod and Homer, then gallops off again to its comic conclusion at the expense of the unfortunate Pantocles. Such subtle variations in rhythm are common in the plays, allowing for serious points to be made while still whetting the audience's appetite for the next joke. Though to myself I often seem A bright chap and not awkward, None comes close to Amynias, Son of Sellos of

1683-445: A useful source of biographical information about Aristophanes, but its reliability is open to doubt. It purports to be a record of conversations at a dinner party at which both Aristophanes and Socrates are guests, held some seven years after the performance of The Clouds , the play in which Socrates was cruelly caricatured. One of the guests, Alcibiades , even quotes from the play when teasing Socrates over his appearance and yet there

1782-487: A valuable source of information on the ancient world of his day, especially when this information is corroborated by other sources. He travelled extensively, as he says: "Westward I have journeyed to the parts of Etruria opposite Sardinia; towards the south from the Euxine [Black Sea] to the borders of Ethiopia; and perhaps not one of those who have written geographies has visited more places than I have between those limits." It

1881-518: A very rocky mountain, called the Trojan mountain; beneath it there are caves, and near the caves and the river a village called Troy, an ancient settlement of the captive Trojans who had accompanied Menelaus and settled there. Strabo commented on volcanism ( effusive eruption ) which he observed at Katakekaumene (modern Kula , Western Turkey). Strabo's observations predated Pliny the Younger who witnessed

1980-498: A warmer and more vivid form of comedy than he could derive from readings of Terence and Plautus) adapted a short play Die Vögel from The Birds for performance in Weimar. Aristophanes has appealed to both conservatives and radicals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries— Anatoly Lunacharsky , first Commissar of Enlightenment for the USSR in 1917, declared that the ancient dramatist would have

2079-569: Is "... pro-Roman throughout the Geography. But while he acknowledges and even praises Roman ascendancy in the political and military sphere, he also makes a significant effort to establish Greek primacy over Rome in other contexts." In Europe , Strabo was the first to connect the Danube (which he called Danouios) and the Istros – with the change of names occurring at "the cataracts," the modern Iron Gates on

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2178-412: Is an address to the audience by the chorus or chorus leader while the actors leave or have left the stage. In this role, the chorus is sometimes out of character, as the author's voice, and sometimes in character, although these capacities are often difficult to distinguish. Generally the parabasis occurs somewhere in the middle of a play and often there is a second parabasis towards the end. The elements of

2277-519: Is composed in eupolidean meter rather than in anapests and the second parabasis includes a kommation but it lacks strophe, antistrophe and antepirrhema ( The Clouds lines 1113–1130). The second parabasis in The Acharnians lines 971–999 can be considered a hybrid parabasis/song (i.e. the declaimed sections are merely continuations of the strophe and antistrophe) and, unlike the typical parabasis, it seems to comment on actions that occur on stage during

2376-453: Is no indication of any ill-feeling between Socrates and Aristophanes. Plato's Aristophanes is in fact a genial character and this has been interpreted as evidence of Plato's own friendship with him (their friendship appears to be corroborated by an epitaph for Aristophanes, reputedly written by Plato, in which the playwright's soul is compared to an eternal shrine for the Graces ). Plato was only

2475-484: Is not known when he wrote Geographica , but he spent much time in the famous library in Alexandria taking notes from "the works of his predecessors". A first edition was published in 7 BC and a final edition no later than 23 AD, in what may have been the last year of Strabo's life. It took some time for Geographica to be recognized by scholars and to become a standard. Alexandria itself features extensively in

2574-431: Is proper,' he observes in continuation, ' to derive our explanations from things which are obvious, and in some measure of daily occurrences, such as deluges, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and sudden swellings of the land beneath the sea; for the last raise up the sea also, and when the same lands subside again, they occasion the sea to be let down. And it is not merely the small, but the large islands also, and not merely

2673-410: Is speaking to the "art" of flattery, and evidence points towards the fact that many of Aristophanes' plays were actually created with the intent to attack the view of rhetoric. The most noticeable attack can be seen in his play Banqueters, in which two brothers from different educational backgrounds argue over which education is better. One brother comes from a background of "old-fashioned" education while

2772-483: Is the original." Nevertheless, there are competent, respectable translations in many languages. Despite the fact that translations of Aristophanes may not be perfect, "the reception of Aristophanes has gained extraordinary momentum as a topic of academic interest in the last few years." Most of these are traditionally referred to by abbreviations of their Latin titles; Latin remains a customary language of scholarship in classical studies. The standard modern edition of

2871-456: Is thought to offer the best example of a conventional approach and the elements of a parabasis can be identified and located in that play as follows. Textual corruption is probably the reason for the absence of the antistrophe in the second parabasis. However, there are several variations from the ideal even within the early plays. For example, the parabasis proper in The Clouds (lines 518–562)

2970-455: Is useful to comprehend his plays in their historical and cultural context. The themes of Old Comedy included: The structural elements of a typical Aristophanic plot can be summarized as follows: The rules of competition did not prevent a playwright arranging and adjusting these elements to suit his particular needs. In The Acharnians and Peace , for example, there is no formal agon whereas in The Clouds there are two agons. The parabasis

3069-579: The Lenaia and City Dionysia , where they were judged and awarded prizes in competition with the works of other comic dramatists. An elaborate series of lotteries, designed to prevent prejudice and corruption, reduced the voting judges at the City Dionysia to just five. These judges probably reflected the mood of the audiences yet there is much uncertainty about the composition of those audiences. The theatres were certainly huge, with seating for at least 10,000 at

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3168-616: The Roman Empire . He is best known for his work Geographica ("Geography"), which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known during his lifetime. Additionally, Strabo authored historical works, but only fragments and quotations of these survive in the writings of other authors. Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus (in present-day Cappadocia ) in around 64   BC. His family had been involved in politics since at least

3267-544: The Aegean Sea. Around 25 BC, he sailed up the Nile until he reached Philae , after which point there is little record of his travels until AD 17. It is not known precisely when Strabo's Geography was written, though comments within the work itself place the finished version within the reign of Emperor Tiberius . Some place its first drafts around 7 BC, others around AD 17 or AD 18. The latest passage to which

3366-514: The Aristotelian Xenarchus and Tyrannion who preceded him in teaching Strabo, Athenodorus was a Stoic and almost certainly the source of Strabo's diversion from the philosophy of his former mentors. Moreover, from his own first-hand experience, Athenodorus provided Strabo with information about regions of the empire which Strabo would not otherwise have known about. Strabo is best known for his work Geographica ("Geography"), which presented

3465-661: The Attic dialect in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries AD. It is possible that Plato sent copies of the plays to Dionysius of Syracuse so that he might learn about Athenian life and government. Latin translations of the plays by Andreas Divus (Venice 1528) were circulated widely throughout Europe in the Renaissance and these were soon followed by translations and adaptations in modern languages. Racine , for example, drew Les Plaideurs (1668) from The Wasps . Goethe (who turned to Aristophanes for

3564-728: The Attic dialect is couched in verse and his plays can be appreciated for their poetic qualities. For Aristophanes' contemporaries the works of Homer and Hesiod formed the cornerstones of Hellenic history and culture. Thus poetry had a moral and social significance that made it an inevitable topic of comic satire. Aristophanes was very conscious of literary fashions and traditions and his plays feature numerous references to other poets. These include not only rival comic dramatists such as Eupolis and Hermippus and predecessors such as Magnes , Crates and Cratinus , but also tragedians, notably Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , all three of whom are mentioned in e.g. The Frogs . Aristophanes

3663-519: The Bigwig Clan, a man I once saw Dine with rich Leogorus. Now as poor as Antiphon, He lives on apples and pomegranates Yet he got himself appointed Ambassador to Pharsalus , Way up there in Thessaly , Home of the poor Penestes: Happy to be where everyone Is as penniless as he is! It can be argued that the most important feature of the language of the plays is imagery, particularly

3762-552: The Euxine [Black Sea] was so great, that its bed must be gradually raised, while the rivers still continued to pour in an undiminished quantity of water. He therefore conceived that, originally, when the Euxine was an inland sea, its level had by this means become so much elevated that it burst its barrier near Byzantium, and formed a communication with the Propontis [Sea of Marmara], and this partial drainage had already, he supposed, converted

3861-474: The Mediterranean and Near East, especially for scholarly purposes, was popular during this era and was facilitated by the relative peace enjoyed throughout the reign of Augustus (27 BC – AD 14). He moved to Rome in 44 BC, and stayed there, studying and writing, until at least 31 BC. In 29 BC, on his way to Corinth (where Augustus was at the time), he visited the island of Gyaros in

3960-592: The Mediterranean: Britain and Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, Germania, the Alps, Italy, Greece, Northern Black Sea region, Anatolia, Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa. The Geography is the only extant work providing information about both Greek and Roman peoples and countries during the reign of Augustus. On the presumption that "recently" means within a year, Strabo stopped writing that year or

4059-649: The Romanian/Serbian border. In India , a country he never visited, Strabo described small flying reptiles that were long with snake-like bodies and bat-like wings (this description matches the Indian flying lizard Draco dussumieri ), winged scorpions, and other mythical creatures along with those that were actually factual. Other historians, such as Herodotus , Aristotle , and Flavius Josephus , mentioned similar creatures. Charles Lyell , in his Principles of Geology , wrote of Strabo: He notices, amongst others,

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4158-550: The Theatre of Dionysus. The day's program at the City Dionysia for example was crowded, with three tragedies and a satyr play ahead of a comedy, but it is possible that many of the poorer citizens (typically the main supporters of demagogues like Cleon) occupied the festival holiday with other pursuits. The conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of the dominant group in an unrepresentative audience. The production process might also have influenced

4257-504: The address. An understanding of Old Comedy conventions such as the parabasis is necessary for a proper understanding of Aristophanes' plays; on the other hand, a sensitive appreciation of the plays is necessary for a proper understanding of the conventions. The tragic dramatists Sophocles and Euripides died near the end of the Peloponnesian War, and the art of tragedy thereafter ceased to develop, yet comedy continued to evolve after

4356-514: The age of 21, Strabo moved to Rome, where he studied philosophy with the Peripatetic Xenarchus , a highly respected tutor in Augustus's court. Despite Xenarchus's Aristotelian leanings, Strabo later gives evidence to have formed his own Stoic inclinations. In Rome, he also learned grammar under the rich and famous scholar Tyrannion of Amisus . Although Tyrannion was also a Peripatetic, he

4455-748: The caricatures of him continued up to and even beyond his death. In the absence of clear biographical facts about Aristophanes, scholars make educated guesses based on interpretation of the language in the plays. Inscriptions and summaries or comments by Hellenistic and Byzantine scholars can also provide useful clues. We know from a combination of these sources, and especially from comments in The Knights and The Clouds , that Aristophanes' first three plays were not directed by him; they were instead directed by Callistratus and Philoneides, an arrangement that seemed to suit Aristophanes since he appears to have used these same directors in many later plays as well (Philoneides for example later directed The Frogs and he

4554-408: The charm and grandeur of the Attic dialect made Old Comedy an example for orators to study and follow, and he considered it inferior in these respects only to the works of Homer. A revival of interest in the Attic dialect may have been responsible for the recovery and circulation of Aristophanes' plays during the fourth and fifth centuries AD, resulting in their survival today. In Aristophanes' plays,

4653-476: The controversy over The Babylonians or a subsequent controversy over The Knights . It has been inferred from statements in The Clouds and Peace that Aristophanes was prematurely bald. Aristophanes was probably victorious at least once at the City Dionysia, with Babylonians in 427, and at least three times at the Lenaia, with The Acharnians in 425, Knights in 424, and Frogs in 405. Frogs in fact won

4752-520: The cosmos and the afterlife that was supposedly received at Trophonius' oracle. Pausanias , in his account of Boeotia ( 9.39 ), relates many details about the cult of Trophonius. Whoever desired to consult the oracle would live in a designated house for a period of days, bathing in the River Herkryna (also Erkina ), named after his daughter who was a childhood friend of Persephone 's, and living on sacrificial meat. He would then sacrifice, by day, to

4851-456: The defeat of Athens, and it is possible that it did so because, in Aristophanes, it had a master craftsman who lived long enough to help usher it into a new age. Indeed, according to one ancient source (Platonius, c. 9th century AD), one of Aristophanes's last plays, Aioliskon , had neither a parabasis nor any choral lyrics (making it a type of Middle Comedy), while Kolakos anticipated all

4950-461: The elements of New Comedy, including a rape and a recognition scene. Aristophanes seems to have had some appreciation of his formative role in the development of comedy, as indicated by his comment in Clouds that his audience would be judged by other times according to its reception of his plays. Clouds was awarded third (i.e. last) place after its original performance and the text that has come down to

5049-574: The eruption of Mount Vesuvius on 24 August AD 79 in Pompeii : …There are no trees here, but only the vineyards where they produce the Katakekaumene wines which are by no means inferior from any of the wines famous for their quality. The soil is covered with ashes, and black in colour as if the mountainous and rocky country was made up of fires. Some assume that these ashes were the result of thunderbolts and subterranean explosions, and do not doubt that

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5148-531: The explanation of Xanthus the Lydian, who said that the seas had once been more extensive, and that they had afterwards been partially dried up, as in his own time many lakes, rivers, and wells in Asia had failed during a season of drought. Treating this conjecture with merited disregard, Strabo passes on to the hypothesis of Strato , the natural philosopher, who had observed that the quantity of mud brought down by rivers into

5247-459: The family's support for Rome might have affected their position in the local community, and whether they might have been granted Roman citizenship as a reward. Strabo's life was characterized by extensive travels. He journeyed to Egypt and Kush , as far west as coastal Tuscany and as far south as Ethiopia in addition to his travels in Asia Minor and the time he spent in Rome . Travel throughout

5346-448: The first critical edition in 1587. Although Strabo cited the classical Greek astronomers Eratosthenes and Hipparchus , acknowledging their astronomical and mathematical efforts covering geography, he claimed that a descriptive approach was more practical, such that his works were designed for statesmen who were more anthropologically than numerically concerned with the character of countries and regions. As such, Geographica provides

5445-561: The hardest job of all." The English name Aristophanes comes from the Ancient Greek : Ἀριστοφάνης meaning ' one who appears best ' , from ἄριστος ( áristos , lit.   ' best ' ) and φανής ( phanḗs ) from the verb φαίνω , lit.   ' to appear ' . An Athenian citizen, Aristophanes came from the deme of Kydathenaion . His father was Philippus from the Attic clan ( phyle ) of Pandionis and his mother

5544-427: The hero of his third play The Acharnians (staged at the Lenaia , where there were few or no foreign dignitaries), the poet carefully distinguishes between the polis and the real targets of his acerbic wit: ἡμῶν γὰρ ἄνδρες, κοὐχὶ τὴν πόλιν λέγω, μέμνησθε τοῦθ᾽ ὅτι οὐχὶ τὴν πόλιν λέγω, ἀλλ᾽ ἀνδράρια μοχθηρά, παρακεκομμένα... People among us, and I don't mean the polis, Remember this – I don't mean

5643-632: The hot masses burst out from the ground as estimated by a logical reasoning. Such type of soil is very convenient for viniculture , just like the Katanasoil which is covered with ashes and where the best wines are still produced abundantly. Some writers concluded by looking at these places that there is a good reason for calling Dionysus by the name ("Phrygenes"). Aristophanes Aristophanes ( / ˌ ær ɪ ˈ s t ɒ f ə n iː z / ; Ancient Greek : Ἀριστοφάνης , pronounced [aristopʰánɛːs] ; c.  446  – c.  386 BC )

5742-529: The intellectual fashions of the period—the structure of his plays evolves from Old Comedy until, in his last surviving play, Wealth II , it more closely resembles New Comedy . However it is uncertain whether he led or merely responded to changes in audience expectations. Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters (now lost). He won first prize there with his next play, The Babylonians (also now lost). It

5841-630: The island of Aegina . Similarly, the hero in The Acharnians complains about Cleon "dragging me into court" over "last year's play." Comments made by the Chorus referring to Aristophanes in The Clouds have been interpreted as evidence that he can hardly have been more than 18 years old when his first play The Banqueters was produced. The second parabasis in Wasps appears to indicate that he reached some kind of temporary accommodation with Cleon following either

5940-412: The islands, but the continents, which can be lifted up together with the sea; and both large and small tracts may subside, for habitations and cities, like Bure, Bizona, and many others, have been engulfed by earthquakes.' Strabo commented on fossil formation mentioning Nummulite (quoted from Celâl Şengör ): One extraordinary thing which I saw at the pyramids must not be omitted. Heaps of stones from

6039-464: The last book of Geographica , which describes it as a thriving port city with a highly developed local economy. Strabo notes the city's many beautiful public parks, and its network of streets wide enough for chariots and horsemen. "Two of these are exceeding broad, over a plethron in breadth, and cut one another at right angles ... All the buildings are connected one with another, and these also with what are beyond it." Lawrence Kim observes that Strabo

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6138-672: The left side into marshy ground, and that, at last, the whole would be choked up with soil. So, it was argued, the Mediterranean had once opened a passage for itself by the Columns of Hercules into the Atlantic, and perhaps the abundance of sea-shells in Africa, near the Temple of Jupiter Ammon , might also be the deposit of some former inland sea, which had at length forced a passage and escaped. But Strabo rejects this theory as insufficient to account for all

6237-458: The legendary story of Typhon takes place in this region. Ksanthos adds that the king of this region was a man called Arimus. However, it is not reasonable to accept that the whole country was burned down at a time as a result of such an event rather than as a result of a fire bursting from underground whose source has now died out. Three pits are called "Physas" and separated by forty stadia from each other. Above these pits, there are hills formed by

6336-436: 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, The Babylonians (now lost),

6435-425: The main reasons why Aristophanes was so against the sophists came into existence from the requirements listed by the leaders of the organization. Money was essential, which meant that roughly all of the pupils studying with the sophists came from upper-class backgrounds and excluded the rest of the polis. Aristophanes believed that education and knowledge was a public service and that anything that excluded willing minds

6534-490: The marriage of the hero Pisthetairos to Zeus 's paramour in The Birds and the "recreation" of old Athens, crowned with roses, at the end of The Knights . It is widely believed that Aristophanes condemned rhetoric on both moral and political grounds. He states, "a speaker trained in the new rhetoric may use his talents to deceive the jury and bewilder his opponents so thoroughly that the trial loses all semblance of fairness" He

6633-493: The modern age was a subsequent draft that Aristophanes intended to be read rather than acted. The circulation of his plays in manuscript extended their influence beyond the original audience, over whom in fact they seem to have had little or no practical influence: they did not affect the career of Cleon , they failed to persuade the Athenians to pursue an honourable peace with Sparta and it is not clear that they were instrumental in

6732-518: The next (AD 24), at which time he is thought to have died. He was influenced by Homer , Hecataeus and Aristotle . The first of Strabo's major works, Historical Sketches ( Historica hypomnemata ), written while he was in Rome ( c.  20 BC ), is nearly completely lost. Meant to cover the history of the known world from the conquest of Greece by the Romans, Strabo quotes it himself and other classical authors mention that it existed, although

6831-542: The only surviving document is a fragment of papyrus now in the possession of the University of Milan (renumbered [Papyrus] 46). Strabo studied under several prominent teachers of various specialities throughout his early life at different stops during his Mediterranean travels. The first chapter of his education took place in Nysa (modern Sultanhisar , Turkey) under the master of rhetoric Aristodemus , who had formerly taught

6930-418: The oracle told the brothers to do whatsoever they wished for six days and, on the seventh, they would get their reward. They did and were found dead on the seventh day. Cicero mentions the same story, only shortening the number of days to three. The maxim by Menander, "those whom the gods love die young", may have come from this story. Alternatively, according to Pausanias they built a treasure chamber (with

7029-441: The other brother appears to be a product of the sophistic education The chorus was mainly used by Aristophanes as a defense against rhetoric and would often talk about topics such as the civic duty of those who were educated in classical teachings. In Aristophanes' opinion it was the job of those educated adults to protect the public from deception and to stand as a beacon of light for those who were more gullible than others. One of

7128-401: The phenomena, and he proposes one of his own, the profoundness of which modern geologists are only beginning to appreciate. 'It is not,' he says, 'because the lands covered by seas were originally at different altitudes, that the waters have risen, or subsided, or receded from some parts and inundated others. But the reason is, that the same land is sometimes raised up and sometimes depressed, and

7227-423: The plays can give us insights into the operettas. The plays are a source of famous sayings, such as "By words the mind is winged." Listed below are some of the many works influenced (more or less) by Aristophanes. Alan H. Sommerstein believes that although there are good translations of Aristophanes' comedies, none could be flawless, "for there is much truth in the paradox that the only really perfect translation

7326-429: The polis – But wicked little men of a counterfeit kind.... Aristophanes repeatedly savages Cleon in his later plays. But these satirical diatribes appear to have had no effect on Cleon's political career—a few weeks after the performance of The Knights —a play full of anti-Cleon jokes—Cleon was elected to the prestigious board of ten generals. Cleon also seems to have had no real power to limit or control Aristophanes:

7425-566: The political conservatism of the plays may reflect the views of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, on whose generosity all dramatists depended for putting on their plays. When Aristophanes' first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious, imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. His plays often express pride in the achievement of the older generation (the victors at Marathon ) yet they are not jingoistic, and they are staunchly opposed to

7524-432: The populist Cleon ), and in philosophy/religion (where Socrates was the most obvious target). Such caricatures seem to imply that Aristophanes was an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view of him leads to contradictions. It has been argued that Aristophanes produced plays mainly to entertain the audience and to win prestigious competitions. His plays were written for production at the great dramatic festivals of Athens,

7623-406: The prize at the City Dionysia in 387. It appears that a second son, Philippus, was twice victorious at the Lenaia and he could have directed some of Eubulus ' comedies. A third son was called either Nicostratus or Philetaerus, and a man by the latter name appears in the catalogue of Lenaia victors with two victories, the first probably in the late 370s. Plato's The Symposium appears to be

7722-417: The quarries lie in front of the pyramids. Among these are found pieces which in shape and size resemble lentils. Some contain substances like grains half peeled. These, it is said, are the remnants of the workmen's food converted into stone; which is not probable. For at home in our country (Amaseia), there is a long hill in a plain, which abounds with pebbles of a porous stone, resembling lentils. The pebbles of

7821-642: The reign of Mithridates V . Strabo was related to Dorylaeus on his mother's side. Several other family members, including his paternal grandfather, had served Mithridates VI during the Mithridatic Wars . As the war drew to a close, Strabo's grandfather had turned several Pontic fortresses over to the Romans. Strabo wrote that "great promises were made in exchange for these services", and as Persian culture endured in Amaseia even after Mithridates and Tigranes were defeated, scholars have speculated about how

7920-685: The rivers of Lethe and Mnemosyne have close parallels with the Myth of Er at the end of Plato 's Republic , with a series of Orphic funerary inscriptions on gold leaves , and with several passages about Memory and forgetting in Hesiod 's Theogony . The Hellfire Club once constructed a "Cave of Trophonius" with obscene wall-paintings in which to conduct their revels. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard references "the cave of Trophonius" when discussing his childhood and later philosophical revelations in his work Either/Or . The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche makes

8019-401: The sea also is simultaneously raised and depressed so that it either overflows or returns into its own place again. We must, therefore, ascribe the cause to the ground, either to that ground which is under the sea, or to that which becomes flooded by it, but rather to that which lies beneath the sea, for this is more moveable, and, on account of its humidity, can be altered with great celerity. It

8118-449: The sea-shore and of rivers suggest somewhat of the same difficulty [respecting their origin]; some explanation may indeed be found in the motion [to which these are subject] in flowing waters, but the investigation of the above fact presents more difficulty. I have said elsewhere, that in sight of the pyramids, on the other side in Arabia, and near the stone quarries from which they are built, is

8217-610: The sons of the Roman general who had taken over Pontus. Aristodemus was the head of two schools of rhetoric and grammar, one in Nysa and one in Rhodes . The school in Nysa possessed a distinct intellectual curiosity in Homeric literature and the interpretation of the ancient Greek epics. Strabo was an admirer of Homer 's poetry, perhaps as a consequence of his time spent in Nysa with Aristodemus. At around

8316-416: The trial and execution of Socrates, whose death probably resulted from public animosity towards the philosopher's disgraced associates (such as Alcibiades ), exacerbated of course by his own intransigence during the trial. The plays, in manuscript form, have been put to some surprising uses—as indicated earlier , they were used in the study of rhetoric on the recommendation of Quintilian and by students of

8415-407: The unique distinction of a repeat performance at a subsequent festival. A son of Aristophanes, Araros, was also a comic poet and he could have been heavily involved in the production of his father's play Wealth II in 388. Araros is also thought to have been responsible for the posthumous performances of the now lost plays Aeolosicon II and Cocalus , and it is possible that the last of these won

8514-402: The use of similes, metaphors and pictorial expressions. In The Knights , for example, the ears of a character with selective hearing are represented as parasols that open and close. In The Frogs , Aeschylus is said to compose verses in the manner of a horse rolling in a sandpit. Some plays feature revelations of human perfectibility that are poetic rather than religious in character, such as

8613-564: The views expressed in the plays. Throughout most of Aristophanes' career, the Chorus was essential to a play's success and it was recruited and funded by a choregus , a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons . A choregus could regard his personal expenditure on the Chorus as a civic duty and a public honour, but Aristophanes showed in The Knights that wealthy citizens might regard civic responsibilities as punishment imposed on them by demagogues and populists like Cleon. Thus

8712-426: The war with Sparta. The plays are particularly scathing in criticism of war profiteers, among whom populists such as Cleon figure prominently. By the time his last play was produced (around 386 BC) Athens had been defeated in war, its empire had been dismantled and it had undergone a transformation from being the political to the intellectual centre of Greece. Aristophanes was part of this transformation and he shared in

8811-426: The window on life and politics in classical Athens , in which respect they are perhaps as important as the writings of Thucydides . The artistic influence of the plays is immeasurable. They have contributed to the history of European theatre and that history in turn shapes our understanding of the plays. Thus for example the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan can give us insights into Aristophanes' plays and similarly

8910-489: Was Zenodora. His family was believed to have owned property on the island of Aegina . Little is known about Aristophanes' life, his plays being the main source of biographical information. It was conventional in Old Comedy for the chorus to speak on behalf of the author during an address called the parabasis , where some biographical facts can usually be found. These facts, however, relate almost entirely to his career as

9009-409: Was also credited, perhaps wrongly, with directing The Wasps ). Aristophanes's use of directors complicates our reliance on the plays as sources of biographical information, because apparent self-references might have been made with reference to his directors instead. Thus, for example, a statement by the chorus in The Acharnians seems to indicate that the "poet" had a close, personal association with

9108-542: Was an Ancient Greek comic playwright from Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy . He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. 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

9207-403: Was denounced by Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis . It is possible that the case was argued in court, but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights , the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through that play's Chorus , "the author-director of comedies has

9306-400: Was more relevantly a respected authority on geography, a fact of some significance considering Strabo's future contributions to the field. The final noteworthy mentor to Strabo was Athenodorus Cananites , a philosopher who had spent his life since 44 BC in Rome forging relationships with the Roman elite. Athenodorus passed onto Strabo his philosophy, his knowledge and his contacts. Unlike

9405-527: Was not actively involved in politics, despite his highly political plays. He was probably appointed to the Council of Five Hundred for a year at the beginning of the fourth century, but such appointments were very common in democratic Athens . The language of Aristophanes' plays, and in Old Comedy generally, was valued by ancient commentators as a model of the Attic dialect . The orator Quintilian believed that

9504-528: Was not discovered again until the Lebadaeans suffered a plague and consulted the Delphic Oracle . The Pythia advised them that an unnamed hero was angry at being neglected, and that they should find his grave and offer him worship forthwith. Several unsuccessful searches followed, and the plague continued unabated until a shepherd boy followed a trail of bees into a hole in the ground. Instead of honey, he found

9603-509: Was nothing but an abomination. He concludes that all politicians that study rhetoric must have "doubtful citizenships, unspeakable morals, and too much arrogance". The plays of Aristophanes are among the defining examples of Old Comedy. Aristophanes' plays are also the only full-length Old Comedy plays that have survived from antiquity. Thus making them literally among the most defining elements, for defining Old Comedy... For this reason, an understanding of Old Comedy and Aristophanes' place in it

9702-563: Was the equal of these great tragedians in his subtle use of lyrics. He appears to have modelled his approach to language on that of Euripides in particular, so much so that the comic dramatist Cratinus labelled him a 'Euripidaristophanist' addicted to hair-splitting niceties. A full appreciation of Aristophanes' plays requires an understanding of the poetic forms he employed with virtuoso skill, and of their different rhythms and associations. There were three broad poetic forms: iambic dialogue, tetrameter verses and lyrics: The rhythm begins at

9801-484: Was usual for foreign dignitaries to attend the City Dionysia, and The Babylonians caused some embarrassment for the Athenian authorities since it depicted the cities of the Delian League as slaves grinding at a mill. Some influential citizens, notably Cleon , reviled the play as slander against the polis and possibly took legal action against the author. The details of the trial are unrecorded but, speaking through

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