The Frogs Themes

In Aristophanes’s The Frogs, Dionysus (the god of theater) strongly believes that the comic playwrights currently living in Athens simply don’t compare to the famous tragedian Euripides, who recently died. Dionysus thinks Euripides and the older generation of tragedians taught Athenians how to live virtuously and be good citizens. In this way, Dionysus’s rejection of contemporary comic playwrights reflects his (and Aristophanes’s) disdain for contemporary Athenian culture, which he considers debased and degraded—and which…

In The Frogs, Aristophanes suggests that poetry—and art in general—is more than a mere source of entertainment. Not long after Dionysus and Xanthias arrive in Hades, the audience learns that recently deceased tragedians Euripides and Aeschylus are engaged in an impassioned dispute over which poet will lay claim to a coveted chair in Pluto’s great hall. To settle their dispute, Euripides and Aeschylus compete in a contest to prove which poet writes “weightier”…

At the time of The Frogs’s first performance in 405 B.C.E., Athens was embroiled in a bitter war against Sparta and was on the verge of collapse. Sparta held Athens under siege, preventing Athenians from leaving the city, and Athens was quickly losing the support of its most important allies. Indeed, the following year, Athens would surrender to Sparta, thus beginning an era of Spartan control over Ancient Greece. In The Frogs, Aristophanes…

Though Dionysus is a god, he is portrayed in The Frogs as “effeminate,” incompetent, and cowardly—he repeatedly soils himself at the first sign of danger, for instance, and he’s more than willing to sacrifice Xanthias if it means sparing his own life. To mask his cowardice and other shortcomings, Dionysus dons a robe and lion skin—a costume he’s assembled to disguise himself as his half-brother, the divine hero Heracles. Of course, the costume doesn’t…