Aristophanes: The Clouds--An Annotated Translation

This new translation attempts to inform the general as well as the more specialized reader of what Aristophanes put on stage in 423 B.C. It remains more or less faithful to the original Greek, avoiding radical changes that would make the Clouds conform to linguistic "fads" at the very end of the twentieth century. The book includes an informative introduction about the author and the play, a chronological chart of the fifth century B.C., a selective bibliography for further reading and various notes that explain to the reader a diversity of religious, cultural, political and social beliefs and practices of the ancient peoples of Athens. This book also highlights Aristophanes' comic genius and emphasizes the diversity of themes and variety of subjects which the Clouds portrays as conceived by Aristophanes' unsurpassed comic imagination.