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This book provides a new interpretation of the nature of Old Comedy and its place at the heart of Athenian democratic politics. Professor Sidwell argues that Aristophanes and his rivals belonged to opposing political groups, each with their own political agenda. Through disguised caricature and parody of their rivals' work, the poets expressed and fuelled the political conflict between their factions. Professor Sidwell rereads the principal texts of Aristophanes and the fragmented remains of the work of his rivals in the light of these arguments for the political foundations of the genre.

Recent scholarship has been paying more attention to the other poets of Old Comedy besides Aristophanes.' Not much has been made, though, of poetic rivalry itself, instanced in many insults traded between the poets. Nor has anyone questioned critically what poets were doing when they openly appropriated material from one another.2 Indeed, there is no trace of any discussion which takes seriously the reality of these borrowings without giving credence to the obviously biased view of the complainants that It is a great pleasure to dedicate to a friend a piece which both falls within two areas for which he has done so much (the salvaging and elucidation of the comic fragments and the study of the theatrical background of comedy) and is one of the first-fruits of an investigation which he has dispassionately fostered, despite the subversiveness of its thesis.In particular, of course, we have several parts of a new PCG, edited by Kassel and Austin (vols.

‘The issues surrounding Orestes’ purification are some of the most difficult in all of Aeschylus’ wrote A. L. Brown in 1982. Despite the appearance since then of an overall treatment of pollution and three editions of the play, there continue to be disagreements about the matter. In this paper I suggest that we may be better able to understand the treatment of purification if we focus on the importance of Orestes’ pollution to the particular version of the story constructed in Eumenides.