Click Here to Download: https://ouo.io/FacjxPa Pericles on Stage By: Michael Vickers Publisher: University Of Texas Press Print ISBN: 9780292734937, 029273493X eText ISBN: 9780292746572, 0292746571 Copyright year: 1996 Format: EPUB Available from $ 25.00 USD SKU 9780292746572 Since the eighteenth century, classical scholars have generally agreed that the Greek playwright Aristophanes did not as a matter of course write political plays. Yet, according to an anonymous Life of Aristophanes, when Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse wanted to know about the government of Athens, Plato sent him a copy of Aristophanes' Clouds. In this boldly revisionist work, Michael Vickers convincingly argues that in his earlier plays, Aristophanes in fact commented on the day-to-day political concerns of Athenians. Vickers reads the first six of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays in a way that reveals the principal characters to be based in large part on Pericles and his ward Alcibiades. According to Vickers, the plays of Aristophanes—far from being nonpolitical—actually allow us to gauge the reaction of the Athenian public to the events that followed Pericles' death in 429 B.C., to the struggle for the political succession, and to the problems presented by Alcibiades' emergence as one of the most powerful figures in the state. This view of Aristophanes reaffirms the central role of allegory in his work and challenges all students of ancient Greece to rethink long-held assumptions about this important playwright. Additional ISBNs 9780292787278, 0292787278
