Ecclesiazusae, probably produced in 391 BC, is at once a typically Aristophanic fantasy of gender inversion, obscenity and farce, the earliest surviving work in the western Utopian tradition, and the source of a blueprint for a communist society on which Plato may well have drawn in his Republic. This edition attempts to set the play, more closely than has usually been done, against the background of Athens at the time of its production, when she has just spurned what proved to be her last opportunity to escape from a war she had not the resources to fight, and to define the details of staging as precisely as the text will allow.
Alan H. Sommerstein is Professor of Greek and Director of the Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception, University of Nottingham, editor of 9 previous Arisophanes volumes in the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts series (198096) and of Aeschylus Eumenides (Cambridge, 1989); author of Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari, 1996); co-editor of Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (Bari, 1993) and several other multi-author volumes.
240pp.; (1998) cl 707 3 £35 / $59.99, pb 708 1 £16.50 / $28 (reprint under consideration)
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Preface INTRODUCTION Select Bibliography PARALLEL GREEK TEXT AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION COMMENTARY |
SOME COMMENTS BY REVIEWERS
"This is a stimulating and definitive book, useful to anyone teaching or studying the Ecclesiazusae in Greek or English." London Association of Classical Teachers
"This volume fully measures up to the impressive earlier volumes in the series. Sommerstein (Univ. of Nottingham UK) has carefully examined the scholarly literature of the play, including its textual tradition, and his very usefuyl introduction will be helpful ... This reviewer takes pleasure in giving an enthusiastic welcome to this penultimate volume of the Aristophanic editions. Most useful for graduate students and researchers." Choice, September 1999
"All in all, this book is a great source of knowledge and will be very helpful for anyone who studies Ecclesiazusae." CR
"For an overall series of the entire corpus, including critical text, commentary, translation, and full introduction, all subsumed to one man's intelligent analysis and wide-ranging scholarship, Sommerstein stands triumphantly alone.." "Aristophanes is lucky to have so devoted, erudite, and witty a modern celebrant." Scholia
RELATED BOOKS
See under ARISTOPHANES in this series. The final volume WEALTH will include the INDEXES to all the volumes of Aristophanes' plays and is expected sometime in the year 2001.
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