---
node: aristophanes
type: person
slug: aristophanes
title: "Aristophanes"
lead: "Aristophanes (c. 446–c. 386 BC) was the master of Athenian Old Comedy; eleven of his some forty plays survive, the only complete Old Comedies we have. His satire spared no one — he attacked the demagogue Cleon by name on stage while Cleon led the state."
published: 2026-07-10
updated: 2026-07-10
image_file: aristophanes.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bust_of_Aristophanes.jpg"
image_author: "Alexander Mayatsky"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

## Who they were

Aristophanes (c. 446–c. 386 BC) was the master of Athenian Old Comedy. Of some forty plays, eleven survive — the only complete Old Comedies we have.

## What they did

His political satire granted no immunity to the powerful: in The Knights (424 BC) he attacked the demagogue Cleon by name on stage while Cleon led the state — a striking measure of the license of Athenian comic speech. Across the Peloponnesian War he wrote anti-war comedies — The Acharnians, Peace, and Lysistrata (411 BC), whose women's strike to end the war is his most famous plot. The Clouds (423 BC) caricatured Socrates as a sophist; Plato's Apology counts the caricature among the old slanders that doomed him. In The Frogs (405 BC), Dionysus judges Aeschylus against Euripides in Hades — comedy as literary criticism.

## Legacy

His later plays, Assemblywomen and Wealth, show Old Comedy softening toward the comedy of manners. His work remains the window onto democratic Athens laughing at itself — at its politicians, philosophers, poets, and wars — and a foundation of satirical comedy ever since.