The general politics of Aristophanes, as set forth in his plays, amount to the stock

denunciation of democracy, which, for him, is summed up in the personality of Cleon.

There is the usual representation of the masses as readily gulled by flattery, oracles
and cries of tyranny; the agitators bid against one another with promises of cheap food
and material comforts; the "classes" are represented by the knights, but there is no
positive to match this negative, and not even any definite system of reform is
shadowed. When Demos is boiled down, he appears simply restored to youth, with all
subsequent to the age of Marathon blotted out like a bad dream.

The most definite political topic in Aristophanes is naturally that which touches the
life-and-death struggle between the Athenian and Spartan leagues. He is the
spokesman of the peace party, and four of his plays are passionate and eloquent pleas
for peace. No one can doubt their sincerity; but here again we look in vain for any
lofty ideal of politics; nor is there any trace of the poet's having felt very deeply the
issues at stake in this war, while seldom does he betray any strong sympathies or
antipathies as regards the different types of Greek people drawn into this mortal
conflict. The speech in the Acharnians, where he makes Dicaeopolis give serious
political advice, minimizes the cause of the war to a quarrel over three harlots; but
here he takes care to add that he hates Lacedaemon, and longs for an earthquake to
level the proud city with the ground. It is significant that when Peace is drawn up
from the pit she is accompanied by Sport and Plenty; all the glories of peace, as
painted by Aristophanes, amount to creature comforts and joys, with freedom from the
troublesome burdens of war. Elsewhere, indeed, he is forever identifying all that is
good and true with a life of martial training and naval prowess; but it is the training
and prowess of the last generation.

Intermediate between political and social satire my be noted, as a topic of constant

recurrence in Aristophanes, the furor for forensic proceedings which transformed
Athens into a city of jurymen. This is treated as a part of democracy, and Cleon is the
rallying-point of the wasp-jurors. Social morality, as we have seen, also enters largely
into the matter of Greek comedy. If it were necessary to approve or condemn the
moral teachings of Aristophanes, it must be confessed it would be very difficult to
disentangle the poet's actual sentiments from the comic medium in which they are
conveyed, and from the wildness of the Dionysiac festival. But it is a great tribute to
his genius that Aristophanes, who disputes with Rabelais the preminence in
coarseness for the whole world's literature, whose highest appeals are to our animal
nature, who reforms his repentant jurymen into a life of utter dissoluteness, has
impressed half his readers from the days of St. Chrysostom downward as a sublime
moralist.

Some of those who admire him in this capacity are troubled by the circumstances that
Aristophanes should have attacked Socrates; but this is unintelligible enough when we
recognize that in morals, as in every other department, he was the antagonist of what
was new. The science of his age he presents as so much quackery, all its religious
inquiry he regards as atheism, its varying schools of philosophy are comprehended
under the idea of substituting grammatical subtleties for open-air gymnastics; the
whole new thought is lumped together and identified with laxity of morals and the
presumptuousness of youth. Then, so little open to moral impressions is Aristophanes,
in actual fact, that he selects from the band of prominent philosophers, as a personal
embodiment for his caricature, the one personage who, by common consent, is
allowed to have lived the purest and noblest life that the pre-Christian world ever saw.

In the plays of Aristophanes the whole panorama of Greek society passes before us,
each phase touched with the poet's inexhaustible humor. One play is opened with a
meeting of Parliament, and the whole machinery of government is presented in
caricature--president, ambassadors with high-sounding titles, luxurious envoys;
elsewhere a magistrate with his archers of the guard perform their functions, and the
punishment of the stocks and of scourging is administered on the stage. The
proceedings of the law courts are continually before us, and we are familiar with the
ways of the smooth-tongued advocates and the insolence of lawyer-youths. A
description is given of a night in the temple of Aesculapius--prototype of our modern
hospital--and one scene presents the secret mysteries of the women, while other
religious celebrations--bridal and funeral processions, thank-offerings and
consecrations--are constantly used to fill up the scenes.

Abundant space is devoted to caricaturing the different classes of society, whose

outward guise and varying manners do so much to make up the spectacle of life. Not
to speak of Spartans, Megarians, Boeotians, we have priests, sophists, poets,
astronomers, public commissioners, news-vendors, leather-sellers, sausage-sellers, the
opposing trades of sicklemen to represent the arts of peace; makers of crests, helmets,
spears, and trumpets, with soldiers, to represent war; slaves, informers, flute-girls,
artisans in general rising at cock-crow, and inn-keepers fleeced by travellers and
making their successors suffer. The merry war of the sexes is a constant topic with
Aristophanes, and no direct attacks on women are so sharp as the innocent self-
exposure which he puts in the mouths of the sex when they are supposed to be free
from the presence of men. All this is the social satire of the older comedy broadened
by the added machinery of the Attic type. It reaches a climax in the Birds, and the two
latest plays of Aristophanes, in which, avoiding party questions, he rests the idea of
his plot upon general satire, exaggerating to a degree that passes anything attempted in
regard to politics, and the whole becomes a genial mockery of human nature itself.
2

Satire is a mode of writing to reform human weaknesses through laughter and the satirist is the
man who is sensitive to the gap between what might be and what it is. In line with these,
Aristophanes, as a satirist of the classical times, satirizes both the social conditions and the
dominant literary traditions of his time in his Frogs. He criticizes the changing social class
structure through his representation of master/slave dichotomy and through a literary
competition between Euripides and Aeschylus; he compares and contrasts the old and new
literary traditions. Thus, this paper will discuss the use of social and literary satire by
Aristophanes in Frogs.

Aristophanes, the representative of Old Comedy, wrote the last of his surviving plays, Frogs
during the period of the Peloponnesian War. Frogs received the first prize and it was given the
right to be performed twice without any revisions by the author, which was an honorary incident
for Aristophanes.
The aim of this paper is to present the employment of satire by Aristophanes in Frogs which
contains a lot of discussion about the old and new tragedy as the satire of the contemporary
literary traditions along with the social satire that constitutes the grounds to build up the literary
satire.
The play opens with the discussion between Dionysos and his slave Xanthias on the way to
Heracles house. The relationship between the Dionysos the master and Xanthias the slave is
problematized in that Dionysos is constantly criticized by Xanthias although he is the master.
Aristophanes begins questioning the relationship between the master and slave even at the very
beginning of the play and the criticism of the social class structure that would be developed later
in the play begins. Moreover, there is another problem about the identity of Dionysos. He arrives
at the house of Heracles as almost disguised as Heracles bearing his emblems such as a lion
skin and a club, which entertains Heracles very much because he is confronting a parody of
himself (Dane, 1988,53).When the dialogue between Dionysos and Heracles begins,
Aristophanes directly states the reason of Dionysos visit. He wants to see Euripides, such is
the longing that devours my soul (Frogs 4261).
The criticism of the contemporary poets is directly put forward. After defining Euripides as
the clever rogue,Aristophanes criticizes the poets of new generation through the mouth of
Dionysos:

DIONYSOS:
Mere nubbins, with a silly gift of gab;
Shrill swallow choirs, murderers of Art!
One single play produced, and they are spent
Small piss-ants, fouling the bed of Tragedy!
What potent poet can you find today,
To father one full-bodied, ringing phrase? (Frogs 427)
He has so much discontent that no sooner he learns about the easiest way to Hades, Dionysos
and Xanthias go on their way immediately. Meanwhile, they have to cross the river with the
assistance of Charon, but Charon does not allow Xanthias on his boat, since he is a slave
according to Athenian law, for he did not participate in the naval battle, as he truthfully
admits and thus he is compelled to walk around the lake while carrying the luggage; it looks
as if the difference between free men and slaves will be as important in Hades as it is on earth
This is another example of social satire in that it criticizes the strictly class structured society.
Aristophanes, living in the class structured society of Athens, cannot stay away from the
consciousness of the necessity of some kind of social reformation to end up the class difference
and reshape the social structure. The issue of class is regarded to be so much natural that the
reflection of it in underworld as reflected in the play is presented as a parodic extension of this
idea.

Moreover, Frogs chorus is a satire on contemporary poetasters whose poems contained an

overflow of croaking or whose dramatic productions did not leave any other acoustic memory
than a monotonous and ill-sounding brekekekex [Frogs 432]. The many times repeated but
meaningless line of Brekekekex ko-ax ko-ax (Frogs432) creates both the comic and ironic
effect. It is ironic in that the traditional Chorus that is generally considered to comment on the
action of the play wisely now speaks unwisely. This can be taken as a reflection of the new
literary tradition, represented by the Chorus of Frogs, which will be criticized much by
Aristophanes later on in the play. Turning back to the Dionysos, the quest of Dionysos is itself
satirical and parodic.

Literary satire comes to the foreground in the play. It is decided by Pluto that Dionysos is to
choose who is better, Aeschylus or Euripides. This contest constitutes the agon part of the play
and shows also the originality of Aristophanes in that the comic agon is not in the beginning of
the play, as heretofore customary, but at the end (Solomos, 1974,211). It was decided that
there should be a single combat an attempt to decide an issue without full-scale battle. The
warlike language of the choral odes with which the contest is prefaced and interspersed turns
the setting into a field of battle and in some cases specifically indicates that a duel is envisaged
not only, of course, is the language warlike; it is frequently reminiscent of Homeric
epic (Harriott, 1986,113).

It may also be claimed that these parts are almost mock-heroic. It is clear that the literary
contest is satirical, often approaching parody, but never arbitrary.
As a comedy of ideas Frogs immediately takes attention to the literary criticism. Euripides starts
the combat and begins to attack Aeschylus and to show off. It is possible that Aristophanes
may have disliked much of Euripides but he has no doubt about his merits and rightly regards
him as the only tragedian except Sophocles who is worth the trouble of comparing with the great
Aeschylus (Sinclair, 1973,307), yet it is also asserted in- between the lines he utters during the
contest about his talent as a great poet that Euripides distinctive quality is neither his
dramaturgy nor his lack of scruple but his capacity to produce original and striking sayings
(Harriott, 1986,107). Thus, he is the representative of novelty unlike traditional Aeschylus.
However, ironically enough again, not only Aeschylus words about Euripides but also
Euripides own style in contest are placed within the play as a real attack on
Euripides (Sinclair, 1973, 307).

It is clear that Frogs is such a rich play that it embodies not only literary but also social satire
blended with many comic elements and aims at contributing to the well-being of the society.
Aristophanes wants to restore the order in the society by satirizing the existing norms in the
society and by parodying the literary conventions. As a result, he becomes the representative of
the beginnings of literary criticism as well.
3Aristophanes, through Frogs,intends to ridicule follies of the Sophists as well as
their institution specially Euripides plays.By doing so he wants to modify the corrupt politics
and malpractice in the cultural life of the Athenian people.So the complete play moves
around local persons and problems. Such as Aeschylus and Euripides, as they are portrayed
in the Frogs, stand for the two successive ages which Athens has passed. Through their
logic and counter logic, Aristophanes depicts the contemporary society very artistically.
Euripides for example, before the verdict of Diagnosis claims:

I see no reason at all why I should withdraw. I happen to be better poet

It indicates that the people of the society were not respectful the judiciary. It also reminds
us the proverbs Empty vessel sounds much.He also says indicating Aeschylus
contribution:

All that rugged grandeur- it is all so uncultivated

This speech of Euripides toward Aeschylus proves that there was no respect to the
elderly people in the society.

Besides, there was no respect to the gods and goddess. Sometimes, most undignified terms
are used for Dionysus, the god of festival. He is called fatty by Caron, the boatman and the
later pushes him down as if the god were an ordinary man. From this behaviour we can well
understand how the lower class people like Caron misbehaved with the respectful person
even with Dionysus.
Again through the counter attack of Aeschylus to Euripides, the author shows us the moral
degradation of that society:

You allow your heroes to sing and dance like Cretans. You build your plots
round unsavory topics like incest and
In other place, Aeschylus describes his actress as erotic female
As a critic of his age, Aristophanesal ways attacks the new: new manners, new religions,
new philosophy and literature. He feels that everything new is likely to be unwise and
vicious. His plays are a protest against the degeneration of his age. He shows Euripides as
being deviated from religion through his own prayer:

Hail, Ether, my grazing ground! Hail, Pivot of my Tongue! Hail, Mind!Hail, Sentient Nostrils!
Inspire me with all that right answers, amen!
He also describes the mean tendency of not paying tax of the higher class society through
Aeschylus voice:

Well, nowadays you cannot get the wealthier classes to pay their naval-defence
contributions. They dress up in rags and tell you how poor they are.
Moreover, in the frogs there are other scenes such as whipping scene, the scene before
Plutos palace, where Dionysus is caricatured etc. which have lead some critics to conclude
Aristophanes satire on Dionysus and religion reveals the fact that the Athenian people had
no respect for the traditional gods and religion.
Besides, the dialogue between two slaves, Xanthias and Aeacus, contains almost all the
elements of social comedy. Xanthias describes that his master Dionysus does nothing but
game and drink when Aeacus thinks him to be quite the gentleman.They find life below
stairs is very much same and both agree that the most enjoyable thing for them is to
discuss their masters secrets.
While the two slaves are engaged in this interesting conversation, a noise outside attracts
their attention. Then they find it is only Aeschylus and Euripides quarreling. There is a
tremendous rivalry going on just among these dead people.

In fine, we can say that Aristophanes, in the Frogs, cover all sorts of social problems
prevalent in the Greek society. He wants to moderate whatever is vicious or ridiculous in the
society. So,Euripides frogs the underlying sprite of this comedy is essentially ethical and
social.

This paper is prepared for you by Talim Enam, BA (Hons), MA in English.

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