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
taste actors should
An actor should refine public taste.
adversity grace trying
One must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace.
art fees
There's no art where there's no fee.
father men age
Do not bandy words with your father, nor treat him as a dotard, nor reproach the old man, who has cherished you, with his age.
best-friend travel two
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.
witty political politics
Under every stone lurks a politician.
friendship wall war
Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.
impossible poet
These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: can't live with them, or without them!
voice language attributes
[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.
war winning men
[Y]ou [man] are fool enough, it seems, to dare to war with [woman=] me, when for your faithful ally you might win me easily.
mind mouths
Open your mind before your mouth
atheist believe religion
Surely you do not believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
dream race darkness
Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream.
soon-enough matter stout
Calonice: My dear Lysistrata, just what is this matter you've summoned us women to consider.What's up? Something big? Lysistrata: Very big. Calonice: (interested) Is it stout too? Lysistrata: (smiling) Yes, indeed -- both big and stout. Calonice: What? And the women still haven't come? Lysistrata: It's not what you suppose; they'd come soon enough for that.