Aristophanes was an Athenian comic playwright. He is read by academics because his works survived, and they survived thanks to the crude humor. He is totally misunderstood by modern academics because they could never accept the truth. The truth is that Aristophanes was a total reactionary just like us, and he used blunt words and scathing humor to ridicule the modernists of his time. Because of this, most translations are horrible, done by academics who are revolted by what they are translating. Luckily I found one decent translation done by Peter Meineck. It's
Aristophanes 1: Clouds, Wasps, Birds. And best of all, it has Aristophanes' best play which is "Clouds". Any member of this forum who reads "Clouds" will understand it far better than any academic in the world today because Aristophanes is directly presenting our viewpoint. Aristophanes had to fight censorship and had never ending conflict with the elite of his time. But luckily for him, he had an audience with a considerably higher IQ than any modern society has, so the popularity of his comedies saved him. I wish I could find translations of his other works that are this good, particularly Lysistrata which is brutally anti-feminist.
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