Aristophanes

Aristophanes (, in English, ca. 456 BC – ca. 386 BC), son of Philippus, was a Greek Old Comic dramatist. He is also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy. The place and exact date of his birth are unknown, but he was clearly a relatively young man in 427 BCE when his Banqueters took second place in the Theater of Dionysus. His family was from the deme of Kudathenaion (the same as that of the Athenian statesman Cleon, who rose to prominence after the death of Pericles. His obviously high level of literacy suggests that he was from a relatively wealthy family, although not apparently from a theatrical one. He wrote forty plays, eleven of which survive, which were performed at the City Dionysia and the Lenaia festivals. These plays are the only surviving complete examples of Old Attic Comedy, although extensive fragments of the work of his rough contemporaries Cratinus and Eupolis survive. Many of Aristophanes' plays were political, and often satirized well... full article at wikipedia