The Wasps

The Wasps (Greek: Σφῆκες, Latinized: Sphekes, English: The Wasps) is a comedy by Aristophanes, the leading playwright of Old Comedy in ancient Greece. It was staged in 422 BCE and won second prize (some sources say second place) at the Athenian dramatic competition held during the Dionysia. The play takes its title from the chorus, a group of jurors dressed as wasps with stingers at their tails, symbolizing the aggressive bite of Athenian jurors. The plot revolves around a conflict of ideas between a father and his son. The father, Philocleon (whose name means "lover of Cleon"), is obsessed with serving as a juror. He spends day and night on the jurors' bench, happily earning the jury pay the city provides for deciding cases. His son, Bdelycleon (meaning "hater of Cleon"), believes his father is being exploited by politicians and resolves to keep him at home and cure him of his "jury mania." The father tries every means of escape, even hiding under a donkey's belly and slipping away along the wall, and a series of comic scenes ensues between father and son. In the end, father and son hold court at home, putting on "trial" a dog accused of stealing cheese; the absurd proceedings expose the arbitrariness and irrationality of Athenian judicial procedure. The father is then reformed by his son and turns to drinking and revelry, and the comedy ends in song, dance, and chaos. The play retains the parabasis, a feature peculiar to Old Comedy, in which the chorus addresses the audience directly with comments on current politics. The play satirizes the litigious culture of Athenian democracy and the manipulation of the people by demagogues, making it an important literary text for the study of Athenian judicial practice and democratic politics. This entry is a single volume in Luo Niansheng's translation collection Aristophanes: The Complete Comedies.