23 Famous Quotes by Aristophanes
- (Present)
Also Known As:
Aristophanes.
Professions:
Information:
About Aristophanes
Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his 40 plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are used to define the genre. Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy, Aristophanes has been said to recreate 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 contributing to the trial and execution of Socrates although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher. His second play, The Babylonians, was denounced by the demagogue 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 the Chorus in that play, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all."
Meton: With the straight ruler I set to work to make the circle
four-cornered.
Geometry
Quotes, by Aristophanes , Source: concerning the problem of squaring the circle
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Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before,
Advanced a stage or two upon that road
Which you must travel in the steps they trod.
Death
Quotes, by Aristophanes , Source: Fragment (II), translation by Cumberland
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Ye children of man! whose life is a span
Protracted with sorrow from day to day,
Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous,
Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay.
Man
Quotes, by Aristophanes , Source: Birds, translation by John Hookham Frere
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They love, they hate, but cannot do without him.
Character
Quotes, by Aristophanes , Source: see Plutarch's "Life of Alcibiades" (Langhorne's translation)
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Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a Centaur, a
Part, or a Wolf, or a Bull?
Clouds
Quotes, by Aristophanes , Source: Clouds, (Gerard's translation)
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Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.
Miscellaneous
Quotes, by Aristophanes
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