Mythology is the body of myths and teachings that belong to the ancient people, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices.
It is now considered one of Aristophanes' most brilliant parodies of Athenian society, with a particular focus on the subversive role of women in a male-dominated society, the vanity of contemporary poets, such as the tragic playwrights Euripides and Agathon, and the shameless, enterprising vulgarity of an ordinary Athenian, as represented in this play by the protagonist, Mnesilochus.
Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace - a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes.
Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan war, 'Electra' recounts the tale of Electra and the vengeance that she and her brother Orestes take on their mother Clytemnestra and step father Aegisthus for the murder of their father, Agamemnon.
'The Trachinian Maidens' (also 'Women of Trachis' or 'The Trachiniae') is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles, in which Deianeira, the wife of Heracles, is distraught over her husband's neglect of her family.
Sophocles addresses themes of civil disobedience, fidelity, and love for family; and questions which law is greater: the gods' or man's-in this play that challenged many established mores of Ancient Greece.
Samuel Pepys was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man.
The play is notable for its absurd humour, its imaginative appeal for an end to the Peloponnesian War and for the author's spirited response to condemnations of his previous play, The Babylonians, by politicians such as Cleon, who had reviled it as a slander against the Athenian polis.
Unlike the author's other early plays, it includes no direct mention of the Peloponnesian War and there are few references to Athenian politics, and yet it was staged not long after the commencement of the Sicilian Expedition, an ambitious military campaign that had greatly increased Athenian commitment to the war effort.
