Reading group for Aristophanes

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hello everyone,

I’m here to ask whether there’s interest for a common reading of an Aristophanes play. I haven’t taken part of any other such group here, although I assume that an intelligent thing to do would be to split the text in chunks and spread them over periods of time, and discuss them in the meantime.

I had thought about Birds, but naturally the choice is not fixed.

Miguel.

2

I’d be interested in that. And Birds would be a good choice for me.

3

I think I would be interested. I’m trying to refresh my Greek, and have always wanted to read more drama.

4

I’m in.

5

I’d like to join a reading project, but I doubt I’ll find time for several. If this one gets going, I’ll join (De Corona hasn’t really got going, not yet anyway…). The one play by Aristophanes I’d particularly like to read is Clouds.

6

I havent really been around for a few days but I started reading De Corona last week and have found it tough going compared with Alcestis which I read quite quickly a month or so ago. Its also much harder than the Odyssey which is my other greek reading project. Perhaps its not harder but the rhetorical style takes some getting used to and as I have mostly read Tragedy some (prose) usages are unfamiliar. Anyway I am reading De Corona and do have a few questions which I will pose in a new thread. So far though I have found most of my questions answered in the Yunis and Goodwin commentaries.

So apologies that this post is probably in the wrong place. I would like to read the Birds especially as I have Dunbar, but I think I will be too preoccupied with Demosthenes in the next few weeks.

7

Alright, so one week has passed and we can get this going. I took a look at the text, and maybe we could read ~300 verses, that will get us to the parodos. That seems like a nice breaking spot. We can post here if any difficulties/comments etc arise, and then in a week from now we can read ahead.

8

So just to confirm…this reading group is for Aristophanes’ Birds? Also, what text is everyone using? I have only read Greek prose so this will be a new experience.

9

Yes, Birds, since that seemed to be the majority consensus (sorry Paul!). I personally will be reading it from Nan Dunbar’s 1994 edition with commentary, but the text itself can be found, for example, on Perseus.

10

This will be beyond me. But in translations I own of Aristophanes, many of them highly praise the notes–if not the translation–of 19/20th century classicist Benjamin Bickley Rogers.

He edited, annotated and translation a six volume edition of Aristophanes, the third volume contains “The Birds” and “The Peace”. “The Birds” is in the second half the text, beginning page 273 of PDF:
https://archive.org/details/ComediesOfAristophanesV.3

All six volumes in these scans by Ohio State University are of very high quality–much better than the scans on Google Books.