Aristophanes was a Greek comic playwright and poet who wrote 40 plays in his lifetime during the 5th century B.C.E. 11 of those plays have been preserved and are still performed today. He is known by many as the "Father of Comedy" from this era, and often included many different elements in his plays, including fantastical scenarios, sexual frankness, satirical critique, and physical comedy. His plays include The Clouds, The Wasps, The Birds, Lysistrata, The Women at the Thesmophoria Festival, and The Frogs.
Born in Athens at some point between 450 and 445, Aristophanes came from a wealthy family and was well-educated in Athenian literature and philosophy. When he was 17, he began submitting his plays to dramatic competitions. His plays belong to the Greek tradition of Old Comedy. His primary way of satirizing events was by making the actions of people in elevated positions seem ridiculous and poorly thought out. He often wrote plays that reflected the political realities of Athens. In The Knights, he wrote a character that was meant to stand in for an Athenian leader. The character is an avaricious slave to a rather unintelligent master, who represents the Athenian people. The play was well-received, even though it included a scathing critique of the government.
Aristophanes' plays, though comedic and ridiculous, were always a comment on the political realities of the time in which they were written. During a pre-war conflict between Sparta and Athens, Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata, a satire about the unnecessariness of war. Then, after the Peloponnesian War and the plague, Aristophanes wrote The Frogs, about Dionysus traveling to the underworld to bring Euripides back from the dead to write a tragedy. After the war ended, Athens had lost some of its spirit, and New Comedy, which was more conservative and less bawdy or vivacious, replaced Old Comedy. Aristophanes died in Athens around 386 BC.