Comoediae

"Aristophanes wrote most of his comedic masterpieces during the Peloponnesian wars, parodying the tumultuous politics and society of that time with trademark innuendoes and bawdy stagings and dialogue. [v. 1:] In these plays, Aristophanes brings every rhetorical stratagem into play to treat the reader to stories of one man's attempt to create a "war-free zone', the rescue of the imprisoned Peace on the back of a giant dung beetle, a satire of Euripides' sympathies for women, and the hustling and healing of a blind and destitute Wealth in order to redistribute the world's riches. [v. 3:] These plays contain, in turn, the sharpest political satire to be found in Aristophanes, a famous caricature of Socrates and the sophists, and the escapist fantasy of a city in the clouds."--Book jackets.