literary life as have come down to us are all connected with one or other
of the several plays, and will be found alluded to in the special
Introductions prefixed to these. He died about 380 B.C.--the best and
central years of his life and work thus coinciding with the great
national period of stress and struggle, the Peloponnesian War, 431-404
B.C. He continued to produce plays for the Athenian stage for the long
period of thirty-seven years; though only eleven Comedies, out of a
reputed total of forty, have survived.

A word or two as to existing translations of Aristophanes. These, the
English ones at any rate, leave much to be desired; indeed it is not too
much to say that there is no version of our Author in the language which
gives the general reader anything like an adequate notion of these Plays.
We speak of prose renderings. Aristophanes has been far more fortunate in
his verse translators--Mitchell, who published four Comedies in this form
in 1822, old-fashioned, but still helpful, Hookham Frere, five plays
(1871), both scholarly and spirited, and last but not least, Mr. Bickley
Rogers, whose excellent versions have appeared at intervals since 1867.
But from their very nature these cannot afford anything like an exact
idea of the 'ipsissima verba' of the Comedies, while all slur over or
omit altogether passages in any way 'risqué.' There remains only our old
friend 'Bohn' ("The Comedies of Aristophanes; a literal Translation by W.
J. Hickie"), and what stuff 'Bohn' is! By very dint of downright
literalness--though not, by-the-bye, always downright accuracy--any true
notion of the Author's meaning is quite obscured. The letter kills the
spirit.

The French prose versions are very good. That by C. Poyard (in the series
of "Chefs-d'oeuvre des Littératures Anciennes") combines scholarly
precision with an easy, racy, vernacular style in a way that seems