Customer Reviews
Classic translations of a comic genius - By: Jon Chambers, 11 May 2008 
Few comic writers pre-date Aristophanes. But few, if any, resonate more strongly with us. His comic traits - wit, absurd, satire - are precisely those features that prove popular today.
One reason why this Penguin edition excels is that its English catches the mischievous & fantastic spirit of the originals so unfailingly. Although this edition first appeared as long ago as 1978 & despite lacking Greek-alphabet annotation - an absence that may deter the more classical Classicist - it more than compensates with its inspired translations & illuminating introductions & commentaries.
There are actually two translators at workin this volume - AH Sommerstein & David Barrett. The first's strength is putting the comediesin their social-historical context. The latter's forte is a no-nonsense, pragmatic approach best exemplified, perhaps,in his excellent prefatory essay. He acknowledges that we'll probably never fully understand several of Aristophanes' jokes made at the expense of lesser-known named individuals (like Smicythionin The Assemblywomen). But rather than despair, he prefers to see these ancient joke-butts as allegorical & representing 'facets of ourselves, isolated expressly to be ridiculed'.
And what of the plays on offer? The best known, The Birds, isin several ways the least typical: it is apolitical; there's no Cleon-baiting; there's very little that's topical. But alongside the odd groan-inducing pun, there's even some lyric poetry from the chorus - the very core (caw caw) of these Old Comedy competition plays: 'Set free the notes of the hallowed songs/That pour divinely from you, lamenting/Itys, our dead son,/Your tawny throat throbbing with liquid music...'. It isn't really lyric verse that Aristophanes is renowned for so much as comic invention, of course. Although,in Barrett's opinion, The Assemblywomen is structurally the weakest of these plays, it is probably the most effective & the funniestin performance. And like the others, it illuminates aspects of ordinary Athenian life otherwise unrecorded for posterity. We learn that pole-cats, rather than modern, domesticated cats, were given the job of catching mice around the house; that chick-peas were served as 'nibbles' with wine; & much else.
At its best, the Penguin Classics imprint brings what could be arcane & scholarly material to a wider audience. Aristophanes, a comic genius for anyone who knows how to laugh, deserves such an audience. Here is comedyin all its variety - wit, wordplay, slapstick, visual & bawdy humour - conveyed with a freshness & vigourin translations that transcend the millennia.
Classics Must Buy - By: , 21 Jan 2002 For any one studying Classical Civilisations, this book is an excellent example of a Greek comedy works by Aristophanes. Beware the comedyin this play is very difficult to understand, it no bedtime read. I look forward to reading his other books.
