Frogs (Classical Texts)

"Aristophanes' Frogs was produced in 405 BC, shortly after the deaths of the two great veteran Athenian tragic dramatists Euripides and Sophocles; it was restaged a year later, a few weeks before a starving Athens at last accepted defeat in the long Peloponnesian War. Dionysus, the god of drama, wine and joyful celebration, goes down to the underworld to bring his favourite poet, Euripides, back from the dead, and surprises both himself and the audience by bringing back instead Aeschylus, who had died fifty years before, with the mission of saving both Athens and Tragedy from ruin. The contest for the throne of tragedy between Euripides and Aeschylus is the earliest sustained piece of literary criticism in the Western tradition. This edition is the first to combine a reliable English translation of Frogs with a full explanatory commentary; it also includes a freshly constituted Greek text."--BOOK JACKET Among extant Greek comedies, the Frogs is unique for the light it throws on classical Greek attitudes to tragedy and to literature in general. It merits a much more extensive commentary than it has so far received, for the establishment of the text itself has rested for over a century on collations which were inadequate and inaccurate. At the same time, its most problematic passages have been the subject, in recent years, of more scholarly articles than those of any other Greek play. In this introduction, edition, and commentary, Sir Kenneth Dover presents the relevant data, arguments, and considerations as fully as can reasonably be done in one volume. Edited With Translation And Notes By Alan H. Sommerstein. Greek Text And Parallel English Translation. Oh! Thou shining light of my earthenware lamp, from this high spot shalt thou look abroad. The scene shows the house of HERACLES in the background.