About the work
Wealth is Aristophanes' last fully surviving play and the last he staged himself. An earlier version from 408 BC is lost; only the revised version of 388 BC, updated to reflect contemporary circumstances, survives.
Plot
After consulting the oracle at Delphi, the poor but honest Chremylus meets a blind beggar who turns out to be Plutus, the god of wealth. Chremylus has him healed at the sanctuary of Asclepius, restoring his sight, after which Plutus begins distributing wealth deliberately to the virtuous instead of at random. The goddess Penia, Poverty, tries in vain to argue that poverty keeps people industrious and virtuous, and is finally driven away.
Cultural significance
By turning from grand politics to private and social questions, Wealth marks the shift from Old to Middle Comedy. It survives in more manuscripts than any other Aristophanes play, and in 1531 Hans Sachs produced one of the earliest modern German adaptations of an ancient drama based on it.