It won second prize at the City Dionysia where it was staged just a few days before the validation of Peace of Nicias, which promised to end the ten-year-old Peloponnesian War, in 421 BC.

Short summary: Trygaeus, a middle-aged Athenian, miraculously brings about a peaceful end to the Peloponnesian War, thereby earning the gratitude of farmers while bankrupting various tradesmen who had profited from the hostilities.

Detailed summary: Two slaves are frantically working outside an ordinary house in Athens, kneading unusually large lumps of dough and carrying them one by one into the stable.

We soon learn from their banter that it is not dough but excrement gathered from various sources—they are feeding a giant dung beetle that their crazy master has brought home from the Mount Etna region and on which he intends flying to a private audience with the gods.

This startling revelation is confirmed moments later by the sudden appearance of Trygaeus on the back of the dung beetle, rising above the house and hovering in an alarmingly unsteady manner.

He steadies the spirited beetle, he shouts comforting words to his children and he appeals to the audience not to distract his mount by farting or pooping any time in the next three days.

The Chorus sings lovingly of winter afternoons spent with friends in front of a kitchen fire in the countryside in times of peace when rain soaks into the newly sown fields and there is nothing to do but enjoy the good life.

The tone soon changes however as the Chorus recalls the regimental drill and the organizational stuff-ups that have been the bane of the ordinary civilian soldier's life until now and it contemplates in bitterness the officers who have been lions at home and mere foxes in the field.

The Spartans in response to this setback made repeated appeals for peace but these were dismissed by the Athenian Assembly under guidance by Cleon who wished instead to broaden the war with ambitious campaigns against Megara and Boeotia.

By this time, however, the Spartans were increasingly coming under the influence of the pro-war leader Brasidas, a daring general who encouraged and supported revolts among Athenian client states despite the armistice.

According to a character in Plutarch's Dinner-table Discussion[5] (written some 500 years after Peace was produced), Old Comedy needs commentators to explain its abstruse references in the same way that a banquet needs wine-waiters.

[6][7] Aristophanes' plays reveal a tender love of rural life and a nostalgia for simpler times[57] and they develop a vision of peace involving a return to the country and its routines.

[59] In spite of these mythical and religious contexts, political action emerges in this play as the decisive factor in human affairs – the gods are shown to be distant figures and mortals must therefore rely on their own initiative, as represented by the Chorus of Greeks working together to release Peace from captivity.

[60] The god Hermes delivers a speech blaming the Peloponnesian War on Pericles and Cleon (lines 603–48) and this was an argument that Aristophanes had already promoted in earlier plays (e.g.

Moreover, the militaristic verses borrowed from Homer by the son of Lamachus are a dramatic indication that war is deeply rooted in culture and that it still commands the imagination of a new generation.

Noteworthy variations in this play are found in the following elements: ἑκατὸν δὲ κύκλῳ κεφαλαὶ κολάκων οἰμωξομένων ἑλιχμῶντο :περὶ τὴν κεφαλήνThe standard critical edition of the Greek text (with commentary) is: S. Douglas Olson (ed.