ABSTRACT

Douglas Maurice Macdowell, who died on 16 January 2010, was one of the most distinguished students of Greek oratory, law and comedy of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In 1971 he published a commentary on Aristophanes' Wasps in a series for which Kenneth Dover was general editor. Fifth-century comedy is so inseparably embedded in its context that it cannot be read without constant recourse to its social and political environment. So Aristophanes also appealed to MacDowell's interest in Athenian history. As with oratory and law, the love of Aristophanes stayed with him throughout his career. It continued in a steady stream of articles and reviews over the years, to culminate in a monograph, Aristophanes and Athens. This book offers a reading of each of the surviving plays in chronological order.