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Personalities in Aristophanes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

The Old Comedy, says Plutarch, is unsuitable for reading to a dinner-party taking their wine; it is ill regulated, violent, and sometimes indecent; moreover, it would require a commentator to explain the personal allusions and we should be in school again. These allusions are perhaps even more obscure to us; yet we read our Aristophanes, and what we have of Menander would not make us agree with Plutarch's decided preference for the New Comedy. And they have an interest of their own in giving us glimpses of some of the prominent figures in Athenian life and of the objects of public mockery or reprobation; for Aristophanes would make sure that his personal references were such as to secure applause, and most of them occur in the other comedians of the time.

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Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1940

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