Category Archives: Culture

The 15^th of March may just seem like just another day to the modern world. Yet in ancient Rome, the day was crucial. It was the date of the Ides of March, when several religious festivals were celebrated, and it went on to become infamous as the day that Julius Caesar was assassinated. Considering this, it’s perhaps natural that the day has become associated with ill-omens and bad luck in modern times.

The Ides was a day that occurred every month in the Roman calendar, and fell either on the 13^th or 15^th day of our calendar. The date was determined by the full moon, and the Ides of March fell on the 15^th. The Romans had a very unusual way of counting dates. The dates were calculated based on distance the from specific days: the Kalends, the Nones and the Ides. The Kalends were at the start of every month, and the Nones happened on day 5 or 7 of a month. An example of Roman dating is as follows: the 13^th would have been known as two days before the Ides of March. 

The Ides were held to be sacred to Jupiter, the supreme deity in the Roman pantheon. It was also associated with the festival of Anna Perenna. This deity was the embodiment of the cycle of the year. Many historians believe that the day was once the New Year in Rome. The Anna Perenna festival was marked by feasting, drinking, games, and gladiatorial games.

Like many Roman carnivals, the Anna Perenna festival was a time when celebrants could subvert traditional power relations between social classes and gender roles; people were allowed to speak freely about sex and politics. The Ides of March was also the first day of a week-long celebration of the Anatolian Mother Goddess Cybele and her consort Attis.

Other sources state that the Ides of March was the day on which the Mamuralia was held. This was a day that saw an old man dressed in animal skins beaten. It is possible that this was related to some ancient scapegoating ceremony, or some forgotten New Year ceremony. As you can see, Roman religion was very dynamic; it evolved, especially during the Imperial era, when foreign customs and gods became popular. Yet as the Empire was Christianized, the Ides lost their religious significance.

On the Ides of March one of the most infamous political assassinations of all time took place. Julius Caesar, one of history’s greatest generals and the dictator of Rome, was warned not to go to the Senate House, as his life was in danger. In many sources, he ignored the prophesy of a seer. As he took his seat in the Senate House, Caesar was attacked by up to 60 conspirators who wanted to restore the Republic. They stabbed him multiple times, and Caesar died before a statue of his great rival and enemy Pompey.  The conspirators led by Brutus and Cassius may have selected the Ides of March because it was an auspicious day, and they knew that many poor people, who were sympathetic to Caesar, were outside the city at gladiatorial games. The assassination of the dictator set the stage for a civil war and the collapse of the Roman Republic.

For many centuries the Ides of March has been seen as unlucky and even dangerous. In the ancient world, the day was not seen as inauspicious; people looked forward to it as a day of rituals and fun. Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar contains a memorable scene where a soothsayer tells the title character to ‘beware the Ides of March’. This line became very popular and is much quoted, and led to the belief that the Ides of March was unlucky. In modern popular culture, the Ides of March has become a by-word for ominous events and bad luck.  

The Ides of March was a very important festival in the Roman calendar. It was associated with a number of religious festivals in the Roman Republic and Empire.  The day was often marked by festivals and fun. It became notorious because it was the day when Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.  The day has since become synonymous with misfortune in modern times, but was viewed as a day of celebration in the ancient world.

So, there is no reason to believe that the Ides of March are unluckier than any other day, after all!

Balsdon, John Percy Vyvian Dacre. “The Ides of March.” Historia: Zeitschrift fur Alte Geschichte (1958): 80-94.

Horsfall, N., 1974. The Ides of March: some new problems. Greece & Rome, 21(2), pp.191-199.

Ladies and gentlemen, let’s talk about Sparta.

This is historically a favorite topic of conversation when it comes to the cultures and civilizations of Ancient Greece, and its popularity seems like kind of a no-brainer. After all, who isn’t at least a tiny bit fascinated by a race of warrior men who were notorious for eating, breathing, and sleeping battle?

Today, however, we’re going to take a slightly different approach to this conversation. After a brief examination of the Spartan civilization in general, and a quick look at the lives of the men for context, we’re going to shift our focus and take a look at the tough-as-nails backbone of Sparta: its women!

First, some context: Sparta itself was a Greek city-state that occupied what is today the southern region of Greece, and the state was known primarily for its dominant warrior culture. In fact, military might was so important to Spartan society that participation in the military was compulsory for all men—if for some reason a Spartan man could not be a soldier, he would not be considered a citizen and would not be given his basic rights (if, in fact, he ever made it to adulthood, as those too weak to be warriors were often killed off early).

Sparta eventually reached the height of its power after its defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, though they didn’t get to enjoy this dominance for very long—just a little over a hundred years later, the Spartans experienced a crushing defeat at the hands of Thebes and never fully recovered.

Living, Breathing, Killing Machines
To understand exactly how obsessed the Spartans were with battle, we have to take a look at their cultural practices, specifically those surrounding children and young boys. The pressure placed on Spartan citizens to be tough started early—specifically at the moment of birth. Though the worth of a child was often judged, in the ancient world, by his or her apparent strength, Sparta was the first culture to establish a state-sanctioned committee for determining the strength of newborns. After birth, the baby was brought before this committee, and if the child was deemed weak or deformed in any way, he was left to die on a mountainside.

Sounds harsh, right? (Not to mention horrific—though unfortunately we must remember that infanticide wasn’t so rare in the ancient world. Sparta just seems to be the first culture to institutionalize it). But this is just the beginning for a Spartan boy. At age seven, all boys would be taken from their families to begin their compulsory military training in a state-sponsored program called the Agoge. From age seven to age thirty, these boys would live communally, in particularly harsh barrack conditions (for example, the boys hardly got any food if they didn’t learn to steal it—a skill that was seen as useful during military campaigns—and they had to learn to steal it well. Though stealing food was encouraged, any boy caught stealing would be flogged within an inch of his life).

Through intense training, harsh hazing and humiliation (which was considered an incentive to train harder), and fierce competition among the men which was encouraged and enflamed by their own instructors, Spartan men were molded into living, breathing killing machines. At age twenty, they were considered fully grown soldiers, and became part of the army full-time until the age of thirty, at which point they were allowed to marry and start families. However, every Spartan male was considered on active duty until the ripe old age of sixty.

But enough about the men! Today we’re going to take a look at the ladies—and, though they’re not as often discussed, you can bet that they were just as tough (and frightening) as the men.

Like their male counterparts, female newborns were also brought before the state committee to be judged for apparent strength and vitality—though Spartan women weren’t warriors, they were still expected to be physically strong and healthy in order to survive the trials of childbirth and child-rearing, which were considered the most important tasks for a Spartan woman. In fact, men often chose to marry women that displayed great vitality and strength (and were often viciously criticized for choosing to marry petite or very thin, delicate women) so that their offspring would be strong. If this sounds to you like run-of-the-mill sexism (women are judged based on their child-bearing characteristics and are expected to focus wholly on that task), think again. While the Spartan attitude toward women definitely wouldn’t be acceptable to many in this age, it actually paved the way for Spartan women to be given more rights than women in any other culture at the time (and even some modern-day cultures).

For example, Spartan baby girls, unlike their Athenian counterparts, were given the same amount of food and care as baby boys, as the main goal was to ensure their strong development. Even as they aged, Spartan women were generally allowed to eat more than women of other ancient cultures, probably to compensate for their participation in strenuous physical sports like running, javelin throwing, and discus throwing (in which they were trained from the time they were seven).

It is also generally believed that all Spartan women received an education in poetry, music, dancing, and art—and there is evidence that many Spartan women were literate.

So, for the most part, Spartan women received an education comparable to that of the men, but unlike the men they weren’t forced to leave their families at the age of seven—in other words, women got a lot of the benefits of that education without the added stresses of communal living, harsh conditions, poor food quality, and the other general abuses that were supposed to make the men tougher.

Spartan women were also encouraged to get married at a later age than most—usually around nineteen or twenty—making marriage and childbirth generally safer and healthier for both mother and child. And, because of their many physical activities, they were allowed to wear notoriously short dresses that exposed their thighs—a fashion trend that seemed beyond radical to the rest of Ancient Greece.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Spartan women were given full citizenship rights. They were allowed to own and inherit their own property, and they were allowed to divorce their husbands without repercussions or societal vilification—and they were neither encouraged to nor prevented from re-marrying (they also kept full custody of their children).

In general, because the men were so often away at war, the women were fully in charge of the household and general city business. Thanks to the large population of slaves (called Helots) that took care of domestic tasks and labor, the women were actually more likely to be involved in government, agriculture, city planning, and the like.

When it comes to awesome facts about Spartan women, however, my personal favorite is a seemingly small detail—but one that, to me, speaks volumes.

In Spartan culture, nearly all men and women were buried in unmarked graves—there were only two classes of people who were deemed worthy of graves that displayed their names, in glory: men who had died in battle, and women who had died in childbirth.

This small detail shows that childbirth—that all important female task—was considered a trial akin to battle, and that to die in childbirth endowed a woman with as much glory and honor as a man who had given his all and sacrificed his own life for the sake of battle.

It’s definitely too much of a stretch to claim that Sparta enjoyed any kind of “equality” between the sexes—but if that doesn’t prove the extreme respect that Sparta had for its ladies, then I don’t know what does.

Who was Salome Alexandra? Arguably, she was the most misunderstood queen in history. A warrior and successful administrator, much of her life is mysterious and unclear.

Josephus Flavius (37-c.100 CE), our main source for Salome, tells us nothing of her background. A Dead Sea Scroll fragment (4Q322) mentions her by her Hebrew name “Shlomzion” (Peace of Zion) without further details. Even the date of her birth is controversial. Kenneth Atkinson, a noted scholar who has written a great deal about Salome, places her birth at 141 BCE which would have made her 29 years old at the time of her marriage to Alexander Jannaeus. He would have been 14 or 16; even in an age of early marriages, this disparity would have been shocking.

Jannaeus’ father, John Hyrcanus (r.154-134 BCE) probably chose her for his son, as Atkinson says, “to groom him to be a functional member of the royal family”, as he was not expected to rule. Only after the unforeseen death of his older brothers, Aristobulus I (r.104-03 BCE) and Antigonus, did Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE) inherit the throne.

Although some scholars maintain that Alexandra came from a pious Jewish family of Pharisees, this is unlikely, as her husband slaughtered 800 Pharisees during his reign. Despite this, there can be no doubt that she favored the Pharisee sect. The Pharisees were a socio-religious movement in Judea during the time of the Second Temple (146BCE-70CE). After the destruction of the Temple in 70CE, their beliefs became the basis for Rabbinic Judaism. Primary among these beliefs was the acceptance of the Oral Law, or oral interpretation of the Torah, as equally important as the Written or Mosaic Law. This was a view that the more elite Sadducees or priestly class disputed, only accepting the Written Law. Josephus tells us that the Pharisees “ascribe everything to Fate or to God,” and “only the souls of good men pass into other bodies, while the souls of bad men [are] subjected to eternal punishment”. The Sadducees on the other hand, “deny Fate altogether,” as they also deny the permanence of the soul. Salome apparently favored the Pharisees even early on in her marriage, although her father-in-law John Hyrcanus I and husband Alexander Jannaeus favored the Sadducees.

Our sources, particularly Rabbinic ones, bestow high praise upon Salome. Atkinson says, “there are some passages in the Talmud that say that during her husband’s reign, she protected Pharisees and hid Pharisees from his wrath.” One of the leading Pharisees, Rabbi Shimon Ben Shetach (120-40 BCE) made frequent visits to the palace after her husband’s death, and apparently they became quite close. So close, in fact, that the Talmud claims that he was her brother although this is disputed. Nevertheless, after Jannaeus’ death, they were closely associated, and once she came to power, she supported Shimon’s Pharasaic reforms. These included revising the marriage law to be more favorable to women with a “ketubah” (formal marriage contract), as well as the reorganization of the Sanhedrin, which became a supreme court for the administration of religious matters and justice. The Pharisees now became the ruling class for all religious matters, with the appointment of her older son Hyrcanus II as high priest who was totally supportive of the Pharisees.

Another aspect on her life is her role as a warrior queen. Having endured her husband’s penchant for incessant warfare for 27 years, she was summoned to the site of Alexander Jannaeus’ last campaign against the Nabateans at Ragaba in 76 BCE. While there, Jannaeus whom we are told was “afflicted with a quartan ague (fever) …He died…after reigning 27 years.” Josephus tells us that on his deathbed, Jannaeus:

“…left his throne to his wife Alexandra, confident that the Jews would most readily submit to her, since by her freedom from any trace of his brutality, and constant opposition to his excesses, she had gained the goodwill of the people.”

Although Josephus was correct in the last part of the statement, he was quite mistaken if he thought she would meekly ascend to the throne. Josephus’ account has been disputed by Atkinson, who claims that Jannaeus was actually in Jerusalem when he died. Nevertheless, both ancient sources agree that Alexandra was with the troops at Ragaba with her general Diagos, leading the troops to victory. She also doubled the size of the army, added a large mercenary force, and fortified towns in the hinterland with forts and castles. Alexandra dispatched an army to Damascus on the grounds that Ptolemy was meddling there. Although that campaign was unsuccessful, it put him on notice that she was not to be trifled with. In fact, she kept the peace by skillful negotiations with Judea’s enemies and construction of strategic strongholds. Three of those, Alexandrium, Hyrcania and Macherus kept the trade routes to Judea open to commerce. She also kept the powerful Armenian King Tigranes at bay and expelled him from the region, a feat the later occupation by the Romans could not accomplish. So, besides making Judea strong, she also inspired a healthy respect in foreign rulers.           

During her nine year reign (76-67 BCE), Salome Alexandra proved herself to be an outstanding administrator, bringing peace and prosperity to Judea. She completely reversed her late husband’s hostile policy towards the Pharisees and brought them into her government. Although Josephus displays his antipathy to female rulers by stating, “But while she ruled others, the Pharisees ruled her”.

She also promoted female education with Shimon Ben Shetach’s approval, and in another Dead Sea scroll (called Hosea Pesher A) the writer lauds an unprecedented period of prosperity that clearly took place during her reign. The Talmud preserves that acknowledgment by stating that during her rule, rain fell only on Sabbath nights, so that laborers would not lose pay if the rains came during the work week. In addition, the fertility of the soil was so great that grains of wheat grew as large as kidney beans, oats as large as olives, and lentils as large as gold coins.

A controversial fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls of the now-lost Book of Nahum casts aspersions on Salome Alexandra. It describes the wickedness of her husband Alexander Jannaeus’ reign as the “Lion of Wrath,” and then says that after his death a “harlot” ruled Jerusalem, which became a “bloody city”. Lawrence Schiffman, a noted Dead Sea Scrolls scholar believes that the “harlot” refers not to Salome but to the Pharisees, the hated enemies of the Qumran sect that penned the scroll. Perhaps the only blot that can be leveled against Salome Alexandra’s is her treatment of her sons. She seemed to be unable to quell the sibling rivalry between her sons Hyrcanus and Aristobulus for the succession. She appointed Hyrcanus High Priest and heir, which incited his younger brother Aristobulus to attack him in Jerusalem. They fought, and Hyrcanus abdicated after 3 months. Then 2 years later, he tried to retake the throne of his brother. To settle this dispute a third party was called in – the Romans. The Roman general and consul Pompey conquered Judea in 63 BC. This effectively ended the Hasmonean dynasty that had lasted for 100 years.

Salome Alexandra reigned for nine years. She died in 76 BCE. We do not know how she died, as Josephus only mentions that “the queen had fallen into a dangerous distemper” and was “sickened”. There can be no doubt, however, that she was an amazing woman for her time, or indeed any time. Having been placed into an arranged marriage with a husband many years her junior from a dysfunctional family, she overcame the stigma of his murderous reign to set her own course as a female ruler in a culture in which only males were considered competent to rule. Yet, her piety, shrewdness, and diplomacy earned Salome Alexandra the loyalty of her people, and that of the religious and secular classes alike. Little wonder she was styled “Shelomzion ha Malka” the Queen for the Peace of Zion: a title that she rightfully earned.

Carthage is most often thought of in the context of Rome; “Carthage must be destroyed!” Part of the reason for this is that Rome really did manage to destroy Carthage, and survivorship bias is what it is: we don’t have a ton of records from Carthage, so we don’t know a lot about it.

But Carthage’s conflicts & connections with its neighbors across the-sea predate Rome by a fair margin.

The oldest record of siege engines comes from the Assyrians, and Carthage learned about it from their eastern territories, which used to belong to Assyria. So Carthage is actually responsible for most siege warfare in the ancient Mediterranean.

That said, polities were usually conquered by internal betrayal due to class warfare, not effective sieges. What would often happen is that armies would ravage the countryside, which was effective at starving a city and forcing them to fight. Most members of a polity were farmers who lived beyond the city walls, not necessarily city-dwellers.

This is just one example, but both Carthage and the Greeks maintained colonies in Sicily, and tensions between the two groups were really high. Greek writers at the time were prone to calling the Carthaginians all sorts of nasty names for doing things during the war that, quite frankly, the Greeks themselves were known to do.

Tyrants of Syracuse by Jeff Champion is mostly focused on, well, the strongmen leaders who controlled the Sicilian city of Syracuse, but Syracuse itself was caught in the middle of battles between Athens, Sparta, Carthage, Epirus and Rome.

The Battle of Himera in 480 BCE crippled Carthaginian power in Sicily for decades, but the mass graves from the battle weren’t discovered until about 15 years ago.

People are prone to separating out Punic history, Carthaginian history, Phoenician history, and Caananite history in a way that is probably not terribly authentic to the realities of how the culture and politics of this group of people are interconnected through time. I discuss this further in my article about ancient identities, but if we’re comfortable calling Cleopatra “Egyptian” and Byzantium the “Eastern Roman Empire,” then, the mere fact that Carthage overtook Tyre and the other Phoenician city-states in terms of prestige doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a natural continuation of their leadership.

Yes, I believe that Carthage was founded by Dido, aka Elissa, a Tyrian princess because she was at the forefront of what was essentially a mass exodus of nobles objecting to the leadership of a king they didn’t like. But America was founded by dissidents as well, and American culture in some ways still very British — different, yes, but compared to France or Germany or China or Nigeria or Brazil? Not that different after all.

Carthage’s early years, before it became the ascendant Phoenician city-state, saw it acting as essentially just one more Tyrian colony; they definitely would have traded heavily with the mother city and its trading partners.

I once wrote an article on what I like to call “the Phoenician gap” that provides some insight into why American schoolchildren don’t learn about Phoenicia (tldr; a combination of “we avoid talking about Biblical history as much as humanly possible” and “Phoenicia isn’t one of our intellectual forebears”).

There’s even a handy map showing Carthaginian trade routes.

Tyre traded red/purple dye, simple foodstuffs like, well, milk and honey, and especially shipbuilding timber from the cedar forests of the Levant with Egypt. Carthaginian merchants traded with contemporary powers in Greece, Egypt, Phoenicia. Their trade networks reached to French regions like Corsica and Marseille.

In fact, Carthage signed treaties with folks like the Etruscans and Romans to agree on who was allowed to have exclusive trading rights in which regions.

Carthage’s military was mostly made up of Libyans, i.e. people from just a little bit to the south of Carthage. But there were also Gauls, Iberians, Italians, Phoenicians, and more. Broadly speaking, Carthage had a very diverse population, and played host to people from all around the Mediterranean. By virtue of being traders, they interacted with variety of other cultures — not just Rome.

Eleanor Konik professionally teaches pre-teens about ancient civilizations. In her downtime, she enjoys combining storytelling with her love of sharing obscure history and science. This article originally appeared on her site and newsletter, Eleanor’s Iceberg.

The Oresteia of Aeschylus is a truly remarkable work. It is the only surviving trilogy of plays from ancient Greece, and is amongst the earliest Greek tragedies that we still have – countless others were lost. Most importantly, it tells a compelling and powerful story with great artistry. Set between the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey, it revolves around the dark history of the mythical House of Atreus, and the establishment of the Greeks’ greatest legacy: democracy.

At the beginning of the first play in the trilogy, titled Agamemnon, much action has already taken place. We are presented with a watchman on the rooftop of the palace of Mycenae, ruled over by the descendants of Atreus. The King, Agamemnon, has been absent for years, fighting at Troy. The watchman ominously tells us that since he has been away, the house is not well run the way it used to be. He can’t reveal the details, as ‘an ox is treading on my tongue.’ The watchman then bears witness to far away signals, informing him that the fall of Troy has taken place: the king will be returning soon.

We are then told the mythic backstory of the play through choral odes; at the outset of the expedition against Troy, the Achaeans faced unfavourable winds at Aulis. The expedition was led by Menelaus, the slighted husband of Helen of Troy, and his brother, Agamemnon. In order to appease the goddess Artemis, and therefore calm the winds, Agamemnon chose to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigeneia. There has been much debate over who precisely is to blame for her death. Is Agamemnon responsible for his actions? Or did the goddess force his hand?

To Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, there is no ambiguity. She blames her husband for her daughter’s death, and awaits the opportunity for vengeance. With Troy having now fallen, she knows it’s only a matter of time before her husband returns to the palace, after a decade  of absence. Making matters worse, when Agamemnon does arrive, he is not alone. He has brought the famed Trojan princess Cassandra to the palace as his concubine.

Cassandra, of course, famously has the gift of prophecy. This is most strikingly illustrated upon her arrival at the House of Atreus. She foresees her own imminent death, as well as the dark history of the family. Despite some slight reservations on the king’s part, Clytemnestra is able to manipulate Agamemnon into a sense of security. Along with her lover Aegisthus (the cousin of Agamemnon), Clytemnestra murders both Agamemnon and Cassandra. The play ends with Clytemnestra triumphant, but the tale is far from over…

In the second play in the trilogy, Libation Bearers, many years have passed since the events of the first play. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, has grown to be a young man. Having been raised away from the palace, he must now seek out his mother, whom he has never known. Yet this is not to be a joyful reunion. He knows that she is responsible for his father’s death and is planning on murdering her in retribution. Orestes is trapped by the contradictory laws of his times: he is compelled to take vengeance on his father’s killer, yet he is naturally forbidden from murdering his own mother. The laws never anticipated family drama like this! 

Before any confrontation, however, he stops at the tomb of his father, and leaves a lock of his hair before departing. His sister Elektra, (in one of her many appearances in Greek tragedy) later arrives at the tomb. She sees the lock of hair, as well as a footprint, and from these deduces that her long-absent brother is alive. (Perhaps more plausibly, there is also a piece of clothing she made for her brother many years prior). This scene is somewhat infamous. Even to the ancients, it seemed like an improbable conclusion for someone to arrive at. The tragedian Euripides parodied the scene in his own version of the Libation Bearers story, simply titled Elektra.

Nevertheless, the two long-separated siblings eventually come to recognise each other in a moving scene, and plan to work together against Clytemnestra. They offer libations at their father’s tomb, and what follows seems to suggest that Agamemnon, although in Hades, still is able to exert some sort of will upon the mortal plane.

Soon after, Orestes is at last face-to-face with his mother. He is ready to strike, but hesitates at the crucial moment. His companion Pylades, however, spurs him on, (with his one speaking across the whole trilogy) and Orestes commits the deed. Upon killing Clytemnestra, however, something strange begins to happen to Orestes. He is assailed by the Furies, dark spirits of vengeance. He runs off in a frenzy.

Despite her death, Clytemnestra continues to influence the plot. She appears as a ghost near the opening of the Eumenides, the third and final play in the trilogy. She acts to rouse the sleeping Furies to action, demanding that they take vengeance for her death. The Furies initially seem reluctant to engage with her demands. This is, perhaps, Aeschylus’ way of characterising their age and long period of inactivity. Once awakened, however, they are hellbent on achieving their aims.

Meanwhile, Orestes has gone through a cleansing ritual with the god Apollo to expiate the spiritual uncleanliness (or miasma) that have infected him since killing his mother. Nevertheless, the Furies still torment him. The god Apollo takes Orestes’ side, and he and the Furies almost come to blows. The only way to resolve the competing claims over Orestes’ guilt is through what is essentially the world’s first courtroom drama. The goddess Athena acts as judge, and both sides make their case. It ultimately comes down to a vote. Orestes is narrowly exonerated: the votes come out equal, so to resolve the situation, Athena makes the final judgement. She rules in Orestes’ favour, and while the Furies initially resist the result, they are placated when they are promised a special role of honor in Athena’s new system of justice. The old system of vengeance and vendettas will be done away with, and instead decisions will be made through votes.

The subject of the Oresteia ultimately, then, is something much more than one family’s bloody history. It represents, in dramatic form, the birth of democracy. It is a profound and powerful set of plays that still resonates across the centuries.

He’s known as the ‘Father of Comedy.’ He is regarded as the greatest comedic dramatist of the ancient world, and his work is surprisingly interlinked with the history of philosophy. He even appears as a character in Plato’s Symposium, where he is shown as a genial figure who liked a good time. He is Aristophanes (c. 450-c. 388 BC), known for masterpieces such as the comic drama The Clouds. This was a satire on the morals, education, and philosophy of Athens in its Golden Age. In particular, it attacks the work of the Sophists and Socrates. Despite its levity, the play has a serious message about the dangers of speculative reasoning and challenging existing social norms.

Aristophanes was an Athenian citizen, and his family was quite affluent. We have few biographical sources for his life, yet we do know that he wrote approximately forty plays in verse. Only eleven of these have survived, such as Peace and Lysistrata. They are written in Attic Greek, and are the only surviving examples of what is known as ‘Old Comedy.’ He produced his plays at Dionysia and Lenasia, dramatic competitions held in honor of the god Dionysus. Aristophanes won the competitions several times, which were sponsored by the wealthy elite. His comedies are very episodic, and the humor is often crude yet satiric in nature. Aristophanes’ creative genius, however, is evident in his sparkling dialogue and his brilliant parodies.

Like many satirists, he was conservative in his outlook, and he attacked the dramatic changes that he saw in Athens in the fifth century BC.  Aristophanes wrote works that called for peace with Sparta during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), and he attacked philosophers such as the Sophists, whom he saw as subverting the social system with their ideas. Aristophanes’ work was rediscovered during the Renaissance, and has been enormously influential on western comedy drama and satire.

The Clouds was composed by Aristophanes for the Festival Dionysia (423 BC) but was not well-received. However, the work circulated in manuscript form and became influential. The plot concerns a spendthrift son, Pheidippides, being urged to go back to school at the insistence of his father. He wants his son to go to the ‘Thinkery’, a school where he can learn how to outwit his creditors. He refuses, so in desperation his father Strepsiades joins the school instead. The head of the school is Socrates, one of the founders of western philosophy.

The philosopher instructs Strepsiades that the gods do not exist, and exposes him to other radical ideas for the time. Socrates is shown as teaching the man how to make the weaker argument the stronger argument, and how to twist words to win a case, irrespective of its merits. This is known as sophistry, and was named after the philosophers and teachers, the Sophists. They taught a form of relativism, and how to use rhetoric to win arguments. Strepsiades eventually persuades his son to enrol in the Thinkery. The Chorus in the play warns Strepsiades against this, but it is ignored. The father believes that in the Thinkery his son will gain skills in sophistry, and that this can help him to outwit his creditors and avoid bankruptcy.

When two of Pheidippides’ creditors come looking for him, Strepsiades uses the sophistry taught to him by Socrates to baffle them. He claims that because the gods do not exist, he does not have to repay any debts. The Chorus again warns Strepsiades that sophistry and its relativism will one day leads to disaster. Suddenly a shocked Strepsiades appears, and he is being beaten by his son after the two had an argument over literature. The Chorus sings that this unfilial violence is a result of sophistry and the teachings of Socrates. Strepsiades comes to agree, and he and his slave attack and burn down the Thinkery.

Aristophanes’ play is a satire of the education provided by the Sophists and the teachings of Socrates. He shows their ideas as dangerous, as they do not respect the truth or the gods. This is demonstrated in the way that Strepsiades cheats his sons’ creditors, and when Pheidippides beats his father. These events would have shocked the conservative Athenian audience, as respect for contracts and one’s elders were seen as essential for society. Aristophanes was not just mocking the Sophists and thinkers such as Socrates, he was showing them as dangerous, and a threat to order and society.

In The Clouds, Aristophanes’ portrays Socrates as a Sophist. This was not actually true. It is in fact the opposite of how he was portrayed by his student Plato, who has Socrates arguing against the relativism and sophistry of thinkers such as Protagoras. Despite this, The Clouds is an example of how influential satire and comedy can be. In Plato’s Apology, it is claimed that Aristophanes’ work had contributed to the trial of Socrates and his death; Aristophanes’ portrayal of the philosopher turned many Athenians against him, and this led ultimately to his execution.

Despite this, Aristophanes’ plays is still funny, and its ideas are still relevant, even after 2500 years. His writing gives us another perspective on ancient Athens and is an important source on its history and culture. The influence of The Clouds on comic writing has been immense, and unlike others works, has always remained popular and critically acclaimed.