More than any other of Aristophanes’ plays, Frogs was centred upon Athens and it is the worry for the city’s political, military and social problems that made it so successful. The play’s main concern, revealed in the parabasis, is the prominence of ‘rascals’ and ‘knaves’ who now inhabit the assembly. Frogs suggests that these men are not as ‘honest, capable [and] patriotic’ as they should be, but inefficient and corrupt. The advice to the audience is to trust and support the ‘men of good birth and breeding’ as they are desperately ‘needed by the nation’, otherwise, Athens ‘will come to grief’. This idea is reiterated several times throughout the play, most memorably in comparison with Athenian coinage. The metaphor asserts that the ‘loyal kinsmen’, such as

Alchibiades are the ‘noble silver drachma’ of the city and should be recalled to replace the ‘newcomers’ who are likened to ‘shoddy silver-plated coppers, inferior to their ‘well-schooled’ counterparts. This favouring of the long-standing traditions is also seen in the contest (agon) between Aeschylus and Euripides; perhaps the older tragic poet armed with ‘words of might’ is better equipped to ‘save the City’ than the contemporary, more comic Euripides, whose only weapon is a ‘sword of wit’.

Frogs emphasised the need for strong leadership, suggesting in the parabasis that those ‘misguided souls’ who participated in the oligarchic coup should be restored as ‘full citizens with all [their] rights’. There is the implication that these flawed leaders are preferable to the present politicians, such as Cleophon and Cleigenes who are taunted with accusations of dishonesty – ‘he makes up detergents that won’t even lather / For he mixes in ashes to make them go farther’ and, more damningly, not being of pure Athenian birth – ‘when once translated from the Thracian’. Special wrath, though, is reserved for the ‘shrewd politician’, Thermenes, one of the leaders at Arginusae who sanctioned the execution of the other commanders. In Wasps, he is referred to as a ‘buskin’, used in this context to denote

Some topics in this essay:
, Aeschylus Euripides, Thracian’ Special, Indeed Cartledge, Aeschylus Athens, City Dionysia, Cleophon Cleigenes, Sparta Frogs, Athens Frogs, Greece Dionysiac, frogs successful, ‘save city’, idea reiterated, aeschylus euripides, throughout play,