Outstanding Academic Title, Choice
Aside from the well-known plays of Aristophanes, many of the comedies of ancient Greece are known only through fragments and references written in Greek. Now a group of distinguished scholars brings these nearly lost works to modern readers with lively English translations of the surviving texts.
The Birth of Comedy brings together a wealth of information on the first three generations of Western comedy. The translations, presented in chronological order, are based on the universally praised scholarly edition in Greek, Poetae Comici Graeci, by R. Kassel and C. A. Austin. Additional chapters contain translations of texts relating to comedy at dramatic festivals, staging, audience, and ancient writers on comedy. The main text is supplemented by an introduction assessing the fragments' contributions to the political, social, and theatrical history of classical Athens and more than forty illustrations of comic scenes, costumes, and masks. A glossary of komoidoumenoi--the ancient word for "people mentioned in comedies"--provides background information on the most notorious comic victims. A full index includes not only authors, play titles, and persons mentioned, but themes from the whole Greek comic sphere (including politics, literature and philosophy, celebrities and social scandals, cookery and wine, sex, and wealth).
"The Birth of Comedy is a singularly ambitious and very welcome work."--Times Literary Supplement
"This book is a landmark."--Bryn Mawr Classical Review
"An essential resource for anyone who wants to inquire into what is known of Athenian comedy beyond the surviving plays of Aristophanes and Menander."--New England Classical Journal
"A unique resource for the serious study of comedy, this book is vast in scope and of incalculable value for those who do not read Greek."--Choice
"Scholarly and academic in both approach and scope, this is a valuable resource for anyone interested in or researching not only Ancient Greek comedy but also the history of comic plays, theatre, and drama."--Reference Reviews
Jeffrey Rusten is a professor of classics at Cornell University. Jeffrey Henderson is the William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature at Boston University. David Konstan is a professor of classics at New York University. Ralph Rosen is the Vartan Gregorian Professor of the Humanities and Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Niall W. Slater is the Dobbs Professor of Latin and Greek at Emory University.