Wealth and Acharnians

Aristophanes and Menander have been respectively niched as authors of Old Comedy and New Comedy. This volume demonstrates the different visions of these two playwrights in three seminal plays.

In his Wealth, Aristophanes - the indisputable master of satire - asks questions about wealth, its virtues and its ills as well as why the gods distribute it so randomly.

Aristophanes' Acharnians is perhaps his most overtly political play where he seeks peace even more fiercely than in any of his other plays, including his Peace. Dikaopolis (Just City) has obtained a peace treaty signed by the Spartans. Cleon accused the playwright for being anti-Athenian and for dishonoring the city.

Menander's The Grouch (Dyskolos, ie the Difficult man) is a specimen of a totally different type of Comedy. It is one that brings the eye of the audience into a house where common, mundane things take place, a radically different sight to that of Aristophanes, who takes the eye for a promenade through the marketplace and the tavern, where men talk freely and full-throatedly about the government, the laws and the politics of the city.