Illustration: Silver Stater from Knossos, Crete. c. 425 BCE.

"Alcibiades and Pericles on Olympus; Aristophanes' Peace" (Chapter 8: pages 139-153).

by Michael Vickers, in Pericles on Stage: Political Comedy in Aristophanes' Early Plays. (Univ. Texas Press, 1997) ANDY TOMASELLO, reporter.

Peace is very much concerned with the developments before the ratification of a treaty between Athens and Sparta in 421 BCE, and takes the form of a patriotic appeal to an Alcibiades who was bitterly opposed to talk of peace to change his view. To this end, Aristophanes uses various characters to reflect different aspects of Alcibiades' personality, notably Trygaeus, who is slowly transformed into an incredibly more responsible and civic-minded individual.

"The Flight of the Dung Beetle" (Chapter 7: pages 140-156)

by Thomas K. Hubbard in The Mask of Comedy: Aristophanes and the Inertextual Parabasis (Cornell Univ. Press, 1991)

With the death of Cleon near Amphipolis in the summer of 422 and the ensuing prospects for a peace accord, Aristophanes abandons the self-questioning and alienated pose of the Clouds and the Wasps to reaffirm his solidarity with the Athenian public in a collective celebration of peace and the Peace.

More than any other Aristophanic hero, Trygaeus embodies the average Athenian and at the same time the spirit of Comedy itself.

"Beetle, Bell, Goldfinch, and Weasel in Aristophanes' Peace" SARAH FINE, reporter

by E. K. Borthwick, in The Classical Review, New Ser., Vol. 18, No. 2. (Jun., 1968), pp. 134-139.

Full Text on-line at JSTOR.ORG (contains a bunch of untranslated Greek).

Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-840X%28196806%292%3A18%3A2%3C134%3ABBGAWI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R