About the work
The Banqueters was Aristophanes' first comedy, performed in 427 BC at the City Dionysia in Athens. As with his following play, Callistratus registered the work because Aristophanes was still too young to produce under his own name. The comedy won second prize.
Plot
Only fragments survive. A father sends his two sons to be educated in the city: one keeps to traditional, morally strict upbringing, while the other is trained by a sophist in fashionable rhetoric and cunning and eventually returns to the countryside ruined and in debt. The play centres on a debate between the virtuous and the corrupted son.
Cultural significance
With its contrast between traditional and sophist-influenced education, the play anticipated a theme Aristophanes explored at greater length in "The Clouds" (423 BC). As his first play, it marks the start of his long stage career but survives for posterity only in fragments.