Saturday, November 18, 2023

The People of Aristophanes by Victor Ehrenberg

The book was fine, but ultimately I found the title misleading.  As expected, the book used the extant works of Aristophanes to uncover truths about Athenian society during his lifetime.

But Ehrenberg's citations from Aristophanes' works represented a small minority of his sources.  Most of his sources were in fact from the writings of many others, including Thucydides, Euripides, Plato, Plutarch, etc.  

In fact, there were so many citations by Euripides that I think this book could have equally included his name in its title.

Anyhow, no harm, no foul.  Despite its misleading title, the book did instruct me on Athenian society, politics, economics and culture from the late 5th century to the late 4th, a time period that I could stand to learn more about.

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