Epops: Come let me see, what shall the name be for our city? [...] Euelpides: Hence, from the clouds, and these meteoric regions, some all-swelling n… - Aristophanes

This is the first of the series of three Comedies — 'The Acharnians,' 'Peace' and 'Lysistrata' — produced at intervals of years, the sixth, tenth and twenty-first of the Peloponnesian War, and impressing on the Athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the consequent ruin of industry and, above all, agriculture, and the urgency of asking Peace.

The trickiest thing is the nature of man, apparent in everything.

After all, one of Aristophanes’ chief aims was to make humor of important dimensions of human life and society, while at the same time encouraging his audience to think about them in ways discouraged, or even forbidden, outside the comic theater. The issue of freedom of speech and thought (especially religious and moral thought) is especially relevant to Aristophanes’ plays, and it is important to bear in mind that one of the hallmarks of Aristophanic comedy is to encourage us to question the status quo.