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Aristophanes (???st?f????, ca. 446 BCE – ca. 386 BCE), son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus,[2] was a prolific and much acclaimed, comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete. These, as well as fragments of some of his other plays, provide us with the only real example we have of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and they are in fact used to define the genre.[3] Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy.[4], Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. [5] His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries - although more than one satirical playwright[6] caricatured the philosopher Socrates, his student Plato[7][8] singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander contributing to his old mentor's trial and execution. The demagogue Cleon once prosecuted Aristophanes for slandering the Athenian polis with his second play 'The Babylonians' (now lost). Details of his trial and punishment are not recorded but Aristophanes wasn't intimidated and he replied with merciless caricatures of Cleon in his subsequent plays, especially The Knights. "In my opinion," he says through the Chorus in that play, "producing comedies is the hardest work of all." (??µ?d?d?das?a??a? e??a? ?a?ep?tat?? ????? ?p??t??)[9] We know less about Aristophanes than about his plays. In fact his plays are our main source of information about him. It was conventional in Old Comedy for the Chorus to speak on behalf of the author during an address called 'the parabasis' and thus some biographical facts can be got 'straight from the horse's mouth', so to speak. The plays however contain few clear and unambiguous clues about the kind of man Aristophanes might have been.[10] 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.[11] The writing of plays however was also a craft that could be handed down from father to son and it has been argued that Aristophanes produced plays mainly to entertain the audience and to win prestigious competitions.[12] Aristophanes claimed to be writing for a clever and discerning audience[13] yet he also declared that 'other times' would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays.[14] He sometimes boasts of his originality as a dramatist[15] 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 begrudgingly acknowledged),[16] in politics (especially 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.[17] The plays were written for production at the great dramatic festivals of Athens, the Lenaia and City Dionysia, where they were judged and awarded places relative to the works of other comic dramatists. An elaborate series of lotteries, designed to prevent prejudice or corruption, narrowed the voting judges to just five in number. These judges probably reflected the mood of the audiences[18] yet there is much uncertainty about the actual composition of those audiences.[19] They were certainly huge, with seating for at least 10 000 at the Theatre of Dionysus, but it is not certain that they amounted to a representative sample of the Athenian citizenry. The day's program at the City Dionysia for example was crowded, with three tragedies and a 'satyr' play ahead of the comedy and it is possible that many of the poorer citizens (typically the main supporters of demagogues like Cleon) occupied the festival holiday in other pursuits. Aristophanes however must not only have written with an audience in mind but also with regard for the production process. Throughout most of his career, the Chorus was essential to any 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 how populists such as Cleon could inflict such honours on wealthy citizens as punishment.[20]
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