Thesmophoriazusae: the least political play of Aristophanes?

Abstract

Thesmophoriazusae is one of the plays less studied by the critics, especially if we consider that Lisistrata -- a play which was performed in the same year as the aforementioned (411 a.C) -- was studied plenty, for example.The parodies of Euripidean plays in this comedy made the critics think that this comedy was one of the lesser important works of Aristophanes, considered merely a bunch of jokes about Euripides. Yet more recent studies, like the one of Zeitlin (1981), started to point to other possibilities of interpretation of the comedy in such a way that it was possible to understand that the Thesmophoriazusae is not as superficial as it seems at the first sight. Slater (2002), for example, think that he female assembly in the play is a key to a different interpretation of the play; as being a possible reference to the repression that the Athenians suffered in the crisis of 411. My goal, therefore, is -- based on the discussion of the problems to date this play -- to explore some passages which possibly mention historic facts and make a comparison between these passages and the representation of the female assembly in the lines 295ff.