Aristophanes: Peace Through Laughter #shorts

Añadido: 2026-06-05

[00:00:00]He says, essentially, "Look, war is a tragic and miserable waste of time." He thinks that Socrates is essentially just another sophist. He can't tell any difference. To him, anybody that questions established tradition is an evil man, is a corruptor of the city.

[00:00:15]He's not able to distinguish between Socrates, who was profoundly opposed to the sophistic movement, and things like um Gorgias or um uh Thrasymachus, any of the great sophistic writers. So, anybody who questions the established order is, for Aristophanes, a dangerous man, and he's opposed to that. He also because he's writing during the war, and because he's at least reasonably compre- uh understanding of what's going on, he's very much a part of the peace party. He writes plays about peace. He writes plays about people that make their own separate peace with the Spartans. He says, essentially, "Look, war is a tragic and miserable waste of time. I don't want to write a a kind of sermon for you, because that doesn't persuade people as well as a comedy does. If I were to persuade you that war is an evil thing, that it's a waste of time, that we ought to withdraw from the Peloponnesian War insofar as it's possible." He does it by satire, by making fun of things he opposes. And much of his political drama is connected with the Peloponnesian War.

[00:01:18]Writing at a really kind of gruesome, macabre time in Athenian history.