Saturday, April 06, 2024
Where Was Aristophanes?
Gilbert Murray (1866-1957), Aristophanes: A Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), p. 102:
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One cannot help wondering what Aristophanes was doing at the time of Socrates' trial in 399. Did he come forward as a witness to character, explaining how innocent had been the meaning of those twenty-four-year-old mockeries? Was he himself regarded by the extreme democrats as a suspicious character, whose support would do more harm than good? Or, again, was he away on garrison duty somewhere, and not in Athens at all? It is in cases like this that one feels the terrible incompleteness of the evidence from which we have to construct our understanding of ancient history.
