Frogs Aristophanes Quotes

High thoughts must have high language.

better not bring up a lion inside your city, But if you must, then humour all his moods.

need a poet who can really write. Nowadays it seems like ‘many are gone, and those that live are bad’.12

In days when men were men (And you should have seen us then)

Have you ever been struck by a sudden desire for - soup?

Numai moartea nu cere daruri dintre zei.

Have you ever been struck by a sudden desire for—soup?

In the second half of the play he arbitrates a contest between the poets Aeschylus and Euripides for pre-eminence in the art of tragedy.

The Chorus of Eleusinian Initiates lead Dionysus and Aeschylus off in a torchlight procession recalling the inspirational finale of Aeschylus’ Oresteia.

In the first half of the play he is the anti-heroic and burlesque figure long familiar in comedy and satyr drama.

Frogs embraces two transcendent issues, the decline of Athens as a great power, as the long Peloponnesian War (431-404) approached its end, and the decline of tragedy as a great form of art, with the recent deaths of the last two preeminent tragedians.

Are you still afraid of me?" He touched her fallen hair with a butterfly's delicacy. She might not have noticed that touch, except that she noticed everything he did. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and met his gaze steadily. "Aristophanes said that boys throw stones at frogs in jest, but the frogs, they die in earnest. You're going to break my life into splinters, then move on without a second thought. Yes, my lord, you terrify me." He became very still. "Only things that are rigid can break. Perhaps your life needs to be splintered.

But even in this perilous situation, the popular leader Cleophon managed to persuade the Athenians to reject the chance of a negotiated peace offered by Sparta after Arginusae, so that it is hardly surprising that the Athenians responded so warmly to the parabasis of Frogs, where the Chorus aptly upbraids them for choosing as leaders and fighters not the best men but the worst, just as they have traded their gold and silver coinage for base metal (686-705, 717-37).

After all, one of Aristophanes’ chief aims was to make humor of important dimensions of human life and society, while at the same time encouraging his audience to think about them in ways discouraged, or even forbidden, outside the comic theater. The issue of freedom of speech and thought (especially religious and moral thought) is especially relevant to Aristophanes’ plays, and it is important to bear in mind that one of the hallmarks of Aristophanic comedy is to encourage us to question the status quo.

Aristophanes said that boys throw stones at frogs in jest, but the frogs, they die in earnest. You're going to break my life into splinters, then move on without a second thought. Yes, my lord, you terrify me.