Aristophanes: Cavalry

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Offering for the first time a student introduction to Aristophanes most explosive political satire, this volume is an essential guide to the context, themes and later reception of Cavalry. The ancient comedy is a fascinating insight into demagoguery and political rhetoric in classical Athens. These are subjects that resonate with a modern audience more now than ever before. Originally performed in 424 BCE, Cavalry was the first play Aristophanes directed himself and it was awarded first prize. It targets the Athenian demagogue, Cleon, who had risen to prominence since the death of Pericles and to pre-eminence after an audacious victory over Sparta in 425 BCE. In Cavalry, Aristophanes attacks Cleons popularity with the masses, but also criticises the democracy itself as guilty of gullibility, self-interest and political shortsightedness. As the play shows, the only hope of escape from the crisis is for Athens to find a leader even more popular Cleon. And who better to be more foul-mouthed, depraved and shameless than a sausage-seller, if only because he turns out in the end to have a good heart and a true love of traditional Athenian values

Reviews

"A novel approach to Classical Greek drama: the insights are original, showing that the rhetoric of praise and blame in epic extends into the multidimensional poetics of tragedy. Particularly illuminating is the author's demonstration that the discourse of women is poeticised in special ways that raise the level of humanism conveyed by tragedy." --Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University, USA

Author Bio

Robert Tordoff is Associate Professor of Ancient Greek, York University, Toronto, Canada.