Figure 58 Bronze figurine of a Spartan girl; height 11.4 cm, ca. 520–500 BC. London, British Museum,
GR 1876.5–10.1 (Bronze 208).

Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

Socrates

Much of the humor in Aristophanes’ comedies, it is clear, is crude and ribald, but much of it, equally
clearly, is quite sophisticated and requires of the audience an intimate familiarity with details of the
wording of the dramas, by Euripides and by others, that Aristophanes parodies. Written texts of these
dramas were exceedingly rare and, in any event, the literacy rate in ancient Athens was much lower than it
is in modern Western countries, so that the audience’s familiarity was generally based on the single
performance that was given at the Dionysia, in some cases many years previously: Euripides’ Telephus,
for example, was produced in 438 BC, yet Aristophanes was still using it to raise laughs over a quarter of
a century later. This testifies to the importance of Euripidean drama in the lives of the Athenians at the
time of the Peloponnesian War and to the ability of that audience to appreciate the intellectual finesse of
Aristophanes’ parodies. We today are able to appreciate Aristophanes’ humor in some instances because
we possess written copies of the works that he parodies and we can compare in leisurely fashion original
and caricature side by side.

In several cases the originals are no longer extant – that is the case, for instance, with Euripides’