Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Acharnians (Billson Translation)
    Acharnians (Billson Translation)
    Acharnians (Billson Translation)
    Audiobook1 hour

    Acharnians (Billson Translation)

    Written by Aristophanes

    Narrated by Expatriate

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Loaded with cryptic, nearly indecipherable inside jokes and double entendres, this early comedy of Aristophanes has a simple, anti-war premise that resounds down the centuries. On flimsy pretexts, greedy politicians have embroiled the nation of Athens in war after war after war. Dicæopolis is Everyman, an ordinary, plain-speaking citizen fed up with the bumbling, belligerence, and insincerity of the professional leaders. He decides on a whim to make a separate peace with Sparta all by himself, returning with a treaty good for thirty years. Envious of the good deal he has made and of the profit he sees from it, other Athenians try to buy packets of his peace from him, with no success. Puffed up with his own cleverness, Dicæopolis spends the final scenes of the play ridiculing the muscle-brained neanderthal General Lamachus for faux patriotism and comic chest-beating heroism.This translation is by Charles James Billson, who admits in his preface with obvious regret that the chilling effect of “modern Protestantism” had forced him to prune out the more risque and bawdy bits of Aristophanes’s lines, particularly most of the “Phallic Hymn.” He tries to make up for this unfortunate lack, however, by filling the play with rhyme patterns and slang borrowed from the “burlesque” halls of the 1880s, hoping to render the difficult Greek humor into the form of “a lively acting play.”( Expatriate)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibriVox
    Release dateAug 25, 2014
    Acharnians (Billson Translation)
    Author

    Aristophanes

    Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete.

    Related authors

    Related to Acharnians (Billson Translation)

    Related audiobooks

    Satire For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Thick as Thebans

      Mar 25, 2021

      Thick as Thebans
      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Odysseys

      Jan 2, 2018

      Odysseys come in all shapes and forms, from epic to personal.  Three recent odysseys range in time and theme from ancient to dystopian.  Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey launches from Homer’s epic, 2017 National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Un

      6 min read

    • Article

      Love’s Labour’s Found

      Dec 6, 2020

      From late summer 1592 until the end of the following year, the plague was rife in London, and to stop packed crowds from spreading infection, theatres were closed. William Shakespeare, who had just begun to make a name for himself as a playwright, tu

      7 min read

    • Article

      We Should All Be Reading Ancient Poetry Right Now

      Aug 2, 2018

      In 1942, the classicist Edith Hamilton acknowledged the “dark spots” which encroach upon the worlds of Greek myth. Reading ancient poetry today makes you realize how those dark spots have grown. They may be sinister, but like black holes, they suck y

      3 min read

    • Article

      Bard In The Woods

      Nov 30, 2020

      Bard In The Woods
      4 min read

    • Article

      General Ignorance

      Oct 12, 2018

      by nick scott The pages in this issue, until now, have been filled with stirring yarns of selfless valour and poignant accounts of the horrors of war, all peppered with liberal quivering of usually stiff upper lips. So shifting the mood to comedy her

      3 min read

    • Article

      General Ignorance

      Oct 23, 2017

      The pages in this issue, until now, have been filled with stirring yarns of selfless valour and poignant accounts of the horrors of war, all peppered with liberal quivering of usually stiff upper lips. So shifting the mood to comedy here skirts dange

      3 min read

    • Article

      Grandmasters: A Meeting Of Great Minds

      Feb 29, 2024

      CHESS IS, AMONG OTHER THINGS, A wargame. Indeed, its enduring popularity is only explicable by the fact that the wooden board and men are a simulacrum of the clash of flesh and blood. It is human to delight in re-enacting in symbolic form what we mos

      4 min read

    • Article

      Review: Chinese Soldiers Face Overwhelming Odds In Historical War Blockbuster 'Eight Hundred'

      Sep 18, 2020

      The second-highest in worldwide box office sales of 2020 (yes, that's like being the tallest in a room of short people), the Chinese war drama "The Eight Hundred" is the first Chinese feature to be shot entirely with Imax cameras. Unfortunately, beca

      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘War Is…’

      Dec 29, 2020

      ‘War Is…’
      4 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Oct 26, 2023

      Reviews
      8 min read

    • Article

      Shakespearean Echoes: Game of Thrones as History Play

      Jul 10, 2017

      HBO has come to dominate the 21st-century cultural landscape by producing the most spectacular history lesson on TV. The post Shakespearean Echoes: Game of Thrones as History Play appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Some Wars Are Just

      Nov 24, 2022

      Some Wars Are Just
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Greeks Aren’t Done with Us: Simon Critchley on Tragedy

      Nov 8, 2019

      “Tragedy is democracy turning itself into a spectacle,” and anyone with Twitter will concur with that observation of Critchley’s. The post The Greeks Aren’t Done with Us: Simon Critchley on Tragedy appeared first on The Millions.

      15 min read

    • Article

      Welcome

      Oct 1, 2020

      “It is one of the most celebrated tales of ancient history. A vast “Persian army is pitted against 300 Spartan warriors guarding a narrow pass, which they defend with every last drop of blood - inspiring their fellow Greeks to ultimate victory. Thank

      1 min read

    • Article

      Double Trouble In Chaotic Comedy

      Nov 25, 2021

      THE ARRIVAL OF THE Christmas season is a reminder that while the West End is the beating heart of British theatre, it is in what used to be called the “provinces” — now more delicately in arts-speak the “regions” — that most of the country experience

      3 min read

    • Article

      'Alone' Examines the Cinematic Appeal of the 'England Alone' World War II Scenario

      Sep 25, 2017

      The book's memoir framing-device gives author Michael Korda a measure of dramatic license, and he uses it to good effect. "Alone" is relentlessly involving reading, full of masterfully-drawn set pieces.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Rescued From Oblivion

      Dec 23, 2020

      Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece by Paul Cartledge Pan Macmillan, 336 pages, £25 Poor old Thebes. You’d think it would be enough to secure eternal fame as a city state to have produced some unique epic poetry and some of the earliest exam

      1 min read

    • Article

      How Asterix Conquered The World

      Dec 21, 2023

      How Asterix Conquered The World
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Acharnians (Billson Translation)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words