The Eleven Comedies, Volume 2

In Short

This second volume gathers six plays—The Wasps, The Birds, The Frogs, The Thesmophoria-zusae, The Ecclesiazusae, and Plutus—which represent the pinnacle of Old Comedy. Through wild, fantastical plots, the author skewers the Athenian passion for lawsuits, the vanity of philosophers, the theater, and the shifting tides of democracy. These plays have survived for millennia not merely as historical artifacts, but as masterclasses in irony and farce, proving that while institutions may change, the ridiculous nature of those who inhabit them remains constant.

The Story

The collection opens with The Wasps, where a son attempts to cure his father of a peculiar, all-consuming addiction: sitting as a juror in the Athenian courts. The old man’s desperate efforts to escape his domestic prison to find a trial are met with slapstick physical comedy, eventually leading to a compromise that is as absurd as it is revelatory. Following this, The Birds takes the reader to the skies, where two fed-up citizens flee their litigious homeland to convince the birds to build a city in the clouds. By blockading the gods and demanding tribute, the birds seize control of the cosmos, turning the world upside down in a display of radical ambition.

In The Frogs, the god Dionysus, despairing of the quality of contemporary playwrights, descends into the underworld to bring the great tragedian Euripides back to life. He finds himself embroiled in a chaotic literary contest between Euripides and Aeschylus, forcing the god to decide which poet is more useful to a struggling city. The humor then pivots to the domestic in The Thesmophoria-zusae, where Euripides’ relative disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate a secret female festival. His goal is to protect the playwright from the women’s righteous anger, only to find himself trapped in a cross-dressing farce that highlights the playwright’s infamous reputation for misogyny.

The focus shifts to political reform in The Ecclesiazusae, where the women of Athens, tired of the men’s incompetence, don fake beards and infiltrate the Assembly. They successfully vote to hand over the reins of government to the female citizenry, promising a new era of communal property and shared leisure—though the reality proves far more complicated than the theory. Finally, Plutus offers a moralizing fable about the god of wealth. When the god is cured of his blindness and begins to distribute his favor only to the virtuous, the entire social order crumbles. The play explores the uncomfortable paradox that if everyone were suddenly rich and honest, the fundamental engines of labor and ambition would grind to a halt. Throughout these works, the arc is consistent: the characters attempt to solve a grand, systemic problem with a single, radical, and often nonsensical stroke, only to be forced to grapple with the messy, human consequences of their "solution."

How It Unfolds

The impulse for escape Each play begins with a character driven to the brink by the realities of Athenian life, whether it is the endless grind of the law courts or the decay of public virtue. This frustration serves as the catalyst for the protagonist to abandon logic entirely in favor of a transformative, often impossible, plan.

The descent into chaos Once the plan is in motion—be it building a city in the clouds or infiltrating a women-only festival—the narrative spirals into a series of improbable obstacles. The playwright utilizes the chorus, constant verbal sparring, and slapstick physical altercations to heighten the absurdity as the protagonist drifts further from their original goal.

The confrontation of contradictions The climax of each play arrives when the protagonist’s scheme inevitably brushes against reality, revealing the hypocrisy or irony of their initial premise. The resolution rarely offers a neat moral, instead leaving the audience to laugh at the realization that the "fix" was merely a different version of the original problem.

The People

Philocleon, the protagonist of The Wasps, is a man defined by his devotion to the state’s judicial machinery, valuing the power of a jury vote over his own family's well-being. His son, Bdelycleon, acts as the voice of a frustrated generation trying to restrain a father whose identity is tethered to the very system that is draining the city’s resources.

In The Birds, Pisthetaerus and Euelpides are cynical refugees from the "litigious" world of Athens. Pisthetaerus stands out as a master manipulator who successfully weaponizes the birds' natural power, eventually becoming a god-like figure who loses his humanity along the way. Dionysus, the protagonist of The Frogs, serves as a bridge between the mortal and divine; he is a cowardly, fashion-conscious deity who is surprisingly relatable in his desire for a "good play," even as he is mocked for his vanity.

Finally, figures like the women of The Ecclesiazusae—led by the resourceful Praxagora—and the impoverished Chremylus in Plutus represent the common citizen. Praxagora is a sharp, pragmatic leader who understands that power is a matter of performance and logistics. Chremylus is a more conflicted figure, forced to reckon with the moral weight of having the power to distribute wealth, demonstrating that even when the "right" people finally gain what they deserve, human nature remains profoundly stubborn and flawed.

In Its Own Voice

The playwright frequently uses dialogue to highlight the absurdity of the characters' obsessions, such as this observation regarding the Athenian obsession with litigation:

"The crickets only chirrup among the fig-trees for a month or two, whereas the Athenians spend their whole lives in chanting forth judgments from their law courts."

The political satire is equally biting, particularly when characters reflect on the futility of trying to reform a broken society:

"The cure of a disease, so inveterate and so widespread in Athens, is a difficult task and of too great importance for the scope of Comedy."

The wit also extends to the literary feuds of the day, as seen in the immortal mockery of a playwright's repetitive style:

"I have plenty of other prologues: 'Oeneus in the fields one day...' Aeschylus: '...lost his little bottle.'"

What It's Really About

These plays are meditations on the instability of power and the limits of individual agency within a democracy. The author repeatedly asks whether the systems we create—courts, government, or even the arts—serve the people or merely provide a playground for the greedy and the vain. There is a deep, underlying cynicism regarding the "public good," which the characters almost always interpret as their own personal advancement. By placing gods and mortals on the same stage, the plays question the source of authority and suggest that, in a world driven by hunger and ego, the pursuit of a utopia is always, inevitably, a farce.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy dark humor, political satire, and the feeling of witnessing a timeless argument will find much to admire here. The language is sharp, and the wit is surprisingly modern; the frustrations voiced by the characters—about corrupt officials, performative activists, and the erosion of common sense—will resonate with anyone who follows the news today.

However, the experience is not without its hurdles. The plays are deeply rooted in the specific political and social history of Athens, and some readers may find the barrage of references to now-obscure figures and local scandals daunting. The humor, while often brilliant, can also be coarse, relying on bodily functions and sexual innuendo that were hallmarks of the era’s "Old Comedy" but may feel jarring to a modern sensibility. Furthermore, the attitudes toward women and slaves reflect the period’s prevailing prejudices, which are woven into the fabric of the satire. Despite these challenges, the core of the work—its ability to puncture the pomposity of the powerful and find comedy in the darkest of human impulses—remains intact. It is a demanding, rewarding read that leaves you with the uncomfortable, yet oddly comforting, realization that our modern anxieties have been echoed on the stage for over two thousand years.