ARISTOPHANES Lysistrata

Lysistrata is the third and last of Aristophanes' peace plays. It is a dream of peace, of how the women could help to achieve an honourable settlement, conceived when Athens was going through its blackest, most desperate crisis since the Persian War. Though in modern times this is perhaps the most popular of his works, it has never before had an English translation that aims to be reliable in detail and that is fully annotated. The Greek text is based on a fuller body of evidence than any previous edition.
It is astonishing to think that this play was first performed 2,400 years ago, because of all Aristophanes great comedies, Lysistrata seems to speak most clearly to our own age. It could perhaps be described as the world's first and indeed still the world's feminist drama.

Alan H. Sommerstein is Professor of Greek and Director of the Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception, University of Nottingham, editor of the 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. (1990) cl 457 0 £35 / $59.99, pb 458 9 £16.50 / $28 (cl out of print)

CONTENTS     Preface References and abbreviations INTRODUCTORY NOTE Select bibliography to lysistrata Note on the text Sigla PARALLEL GREEK TEXT ENGLISH TRANSLATION NOTES

SOME COMMENTS BY REVIEWERS
"...Sommerstein's edition performs a valuable service, particularly to those with intelligence but little Greek, and the parallel publication of the plays will be eagerly awaited." G. & R.
"The scholarship and broad appeal of Sommerstein's Lysistrata will commend it to individuals and libraries alike." Classical World
"Libraries that own the Loeb parallel text series should purchase the entire set of Aristophanic comedies." Choice

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.