CLASSICSFROGS AND OTHER PLAYS
ARISTOPHANES was born, probably in Athens, c. 447–445 BC and died between 386 and 380 BC. Not much is known about his life, although there is a sympathetic portrait of him in Plato’s Symposium. Early in his career, during the 420s, he was prosecuted for attacks on the prominent politician Cleon, but later, in 405, he was awarded public honours for promoting Athenian unity in Frogs. Aristophanes wrote forty plays in all. Of these the eleven surviving plays are Acharnians (425), Knights (424), Clouds (423), Wasps (422), Peace (421), Birds (414), Lysistrata (411), Women at the Thesmophoria (411), Frogs (405), Assemblywomen (c. 392) and Wealth (388).
DAVID BARRETT (1914–98) was born in London where he attended the City of London School, having already learnt Greek by the age of ten. He studied Classics at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and then worked at the British Museum Library where he developed a particular interest in the Finnish collection. After the Second World War he became a lecturer in English at Helsinki University. Over the years he translated many classic Finnish texts and was later made a Knight, first class, of the Order of the White Rose of Finland. On his return to England in 1965 he joined the staff of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. He was quite well versed in over thirty languages, some of them little known, and at the Department of Oriental Books he specialized in Georgian and Armenian books and manuscripts. As well as the plays in the present volume David Barrett’s translations of The Birds and The Assemblywomen are also published by Penguin Classics.
SHOMIT DUTTA was educated at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, University College, Oxford, King’s College, London, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He has taught classics at various schools and universities. Besides working as a freelance arts reviewer, he has published a translation of Sophocles’ Ajax and a volume of Greek tragedy for Penguin Classics.