'Peace': 422 B.C.--tenth year of the War. Further insists on the same
theme, and enlarges on the blessings of Peace. The hero Trygaeus
flies to Olympus, mounted on a beetle, to bring back the goddess
Peace to earth.

'Lysistrata': 411 B.C.--twenty-first year of the War. A burlesque
conspiracy entered into by the confederated women of Hellas, led by
Lysistrata the Athenian, to compel the men to conclude peace.


'The Clouds': 423 B.C.--satirizes Socrates, the 'Sophists,' and the
'New Education.'

'The Wasps': 422 B.C. Makes fun of the Athenian passion for
litigation, and the unsatisfactory organization of the Courts.
Contains the incident of the mock trial of the thievish house-dog.

'The Birds': 414 B.C. Euelpides and Pisthetaerus, disgusted with the
state of things at Athens, build a new and improved city,
Cloud-cuckoo-town, in the kingdom of the birds. Some see an allusion
to the Sicilian expedition, and Alcibiades' Utopian schemes.

'The Frogs': 405 B.C. A satire on Euripides and the 'New Tragedy.'
Dionysus, patron of the Drama, dissatisfied with the contemporary
condition of the Art, goes down to Hades to bring back to earth a
poet of the older and worthier school.

'The Thesmophoriazusae': 412 B.C. Another literary satire; Euripides,
summoned as a notorious defamer of women to defend himself before the