About the work
Aristophanes' comedy was performed at the Lenaia festival in 405 BC and won first prize – a rare distinction that earned it a repeat performance at the City Dionysia. He wrote it shortly after the deaths of Euripides and, just before, Sophocles, at a time when Athens, deep in the Peloponnesian War, feared for its cultural future as much as its military one.
Plot
The god of theatre, Dionysus, disguised as Heracles and accompanied by his slave Xanthias, travels across the river Styx into the underworld to bring back the dead Euripides and save Athenian tragedy. There he is drawn into a contest between the rival poets Aeschylus and Euripides, who weigh their verses against each other for the seat of honour among tragedians. In the end Dionysus abandons his original plan and brings Aeschylus back to the world of the living instead.
Cultural significance
The Frogs is regarded as one of antiquity's most influential pieces of literary criticism, turning questions of tragic style directly into comic stage action. Its influence reaches into modern adaptations, including Stephen Sondheim's musical of the same name (1974, revised for Broadway in 2004).