Aristophanes the Democrat

Keith Sidwell is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies, University of Calgary. He has written on Greek drama, later Greek literature - including most recently Lucian: Chattering Courtesans and Other Sardonic Sketches (2004) - and on Neo-Latin writing and is a co-author of the Reading Greek and Reading Latin series, and author of Reading Medieval Latin (1995).

• Part I. Setting the Stage: 1. Getting to grips with the politics of Old Comedy; 2. Metacomedy and politics; 3. Metacomedy and caricature; Part II. The Poets' War: 4. Acharnians; 5. Metacomedy, caricature and politics from Knights to Peace; 6. Metacomedy, caricature and politics from Autolycus to Frogs; Conclusions and consequences: Appendix 1. The view from the Theatron; Appendix 2. Metacomedy and caricature in the surviving fourth century plays of Aristophanes; Appendix 3. Timeline and proposed relationships between comedies; Bibliography.