Aristophanes: Peace

In Peace, produced in 421 B.C., Aristophanes celebrates in anticipation the conclusion, after ten years, of the great war with Sparta. Peace, we are made to see, is within the grasp of the Greek peoples; let them make one final effort, and all difficulties and dangers will evaporate in the joys of feasting and rustic leisure. The substantial addition in this second edition are eighteen pages of addenda to the Notes and Bibliography. Alan H Sommerstein is Professor of Greek and Director of the Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception, University of Nottingham; editor of the Aristophanes volumes in the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts series and of Aeschylus Eumenides (Cambridge, 1989); author of Aeschylean Tragedy (Bari, 1996) and of Greek Drama and Dramatists (London, 2002); co-editor of Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (Bari, 1993), Shards from Kolonos: Studies in Sophoclean Fragments (Bari, forthcoming) and several other multi-author volumes. He is coordinating a collaborative edition of selected fragmentary plays of Sophocles for this series.