Aristophanes' Wasps was produced in Athens in 422 BCE. Like other Aristophanic comedies, it is a satire on Athenian society and democratic institutions, in this case focusing on the legal system and its supposed manipulation for personal ends by corrupt democratic leaders.
This critical edition of the play includes the full Greek text, detailed commentary notes, and an extensive introduction. It represents a thorough re-evaluation of the play, providing a wealth of insights and advances in our understanding of the work and related topics since the last full scholarly commentary by Douglas...

Athenian comic drama was written for performance at festivals honouring the god Dionysos. Through dramatic action and open discourse, poets sought to engage their rivals and impress the audience, all in an effort to obtain victory in the competitions. This book uses that competitive performance context as an interpretive framework within which to understand the thematic interests shaping the plots and poetic quality of Aristophanes' plays in particular, and of Old Comedy in general. Studying five individual plays from the Aristophanic corpus as well as fragments of other comic poets, it...