Aristophanes, the Frogs

Aristophanes' comedy The Frogs is perhaps the most profound - and it is certainly by far the funniest - meditation on the meaning and significance of tragedy to have reached us from  ancient Greece. Staged shortly after the deaths of Sophocles and Euripides, and during the last years before the catastrophic conclusion of the Peloponnesian War, Aristophanes' brilliantly comic play asks what kinds of tragedy are most and least beneficial to the city and indeed whether the city can survive at all without tragedy. His answer is of continuing interest for our own reflections on the question of the survival of our studies, and of our society, in today's world.