Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and are used to define it...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionPoet
children childhood age
Old age is but a second childhood.
truth-is foe
The truth is forced upon us, very quickly, by a foe.
childhood aging
The old are in a second childhood.
children wall war
You're mistaken; men of sense often learn much from their enemies. Prudence is the best safeguard. This principle cannot be learnt from a friend: but an enemy extorts it immediately. It is from their foes and not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war. And this lesson saves their children, their homes, and their properties.
study
How can I study from below, that which is above?
spring evil causes
Evil events from evil causes spring.
children poet masters
Children have a master to teach them, grown-ups have the poets.
care salary vote
You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along.
laughter laughing cracks
Shall I crack any of those old jokes, master, At which the audience never fail to laugh?
wine men ideas
Do you dare to accuse wine of clouding the reason? Quote me more marvelous effects than those of wine. Look! when a man drinks, he is rich, everything he touches succeeds, he gains lawsuits, is happy and helps his friends. Come, bring hither quick a flagon of wine, that I may soak my brain and get an ingenious idea.
wine men good-man
The love of wine is a good man's failing.
men debt owing
If a man owes me money, I never seem to forget. But if I do the owing, I somehow never remember.
blind guides
Do not take a blind guide.
air essence data
Only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level.