Aristophanes

Along with Sophocles and Euripides, Aristophanes is considered one of the three great Greek playwrights. Only eleven of his nearly forty plays survive in their entirety to this day. Of his extant works Aristophanes's "Lysistrata" is considered one of his finest and one of the truly great comedies from classical antiquity. Central to the work is the vow by the women of Greece to withhold sex from their husbands until they end the brutal war between...

Classic Greek plays offer a caricature of Socrates, a flawed utopia, a clever plan to gain peace, and a debate between deceased playwrights.

At a time when all of America is debating the wayward course of contemporary manhood, one thing has been missing from the conversation: a source to which concerned readers might turn for guidance and inspiration, a path back to the wisdom of our shared tradition of manly virtues. Missing, that is, until now. In What Is a Man? historian and commentator Waller R. Newell collects three thousand years of the finest and most thought-provoking writings...