Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty 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 are used to define it...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionPoet
cat men tails
If I get clear of my debts, I care not though men call me bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventor of words, practised in lawsuits, a pettifogger, a rattle, a fox, a sharper, a knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an imposter, a rogue that deserves the cat-o-nine-tails, a blackguard, a twister, a licker-up of hashes; they call all this when they meet me, if they please, I care not.
kissing eggs shells
I would treat her like an egg, the shell of which we remove before eating it; I would take off her mask and then kiss her pretty face.
sex children husband
Lysistrata: Oh, Calonicé, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly...Calonicé: And they are quite right, upon my word!Lysistrata: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming.Calonicé: Oh, they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy you know, for a woman to leave the house. One is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep or washing the brat or feeding it.
phrases idle truce
A truce to idle phrases!
wind way fortune
Chorus of women: [...] Oh! my good, gallant Lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let you anger slacken; the wind of fortune blown our way.
believe hands wicked
It is right that the good should be happy, that the wicked and the impious on the other hand, should be miserable; that is a truth, I believe, which no one will gainsay.
childhood age old-age
Old age is second childhood.
wine men busy
When men drink wine they are rich, they are busy, they push lawsuits, they are happy, they are friends.
law athens idiot
An ancient tradition declares that every idiot blunder we pass into law will sooner or later redound to Athens' profit.
running courses prompts
Tis not for us to warn a wilful sinner; We stay him not, but let him run his course, Till by misfortunes rous'd, his conscience wakes, And prompts him to appease th' offended gods.
country men able
A man should be able to stand up under any disaster for his country's good.
crabs walks
You will never make the crab walk straight.
prayer wine pointless
Prayers without wine are perfectly pointless.
art triumph argument
To invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph is an art worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae.