h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Aristophanes and the CIA. What do they have in common, which also holds them apart?

There are relatively few klaxons in this one, but plenty of room for interestingness as ever.

Aristophanes is considered the Father of Comedy, so you might say Comedy Is Aristophanes' - CIA

Not what I had in mind. Plausible as a thing they might have had in common, but not pointworthy alas!

They'd both be very strange things to name your dog?

Possibly. I'll stand aside now - and leave the hints until they are needed.

Wasnt; Aristophanes charged with bringing the reputation of Athens into question ?

Some sort of national security type link ?

Yes...there is no trick question with the abreviations.

Are we talking "whistle blowers" here?

Wasn't Lysistrata a not so subtle statement of opposition for whichever war Athens was in at the time? Theatre-as-metaphor-as-political-tract, doing the same service that Arthur Miller's play The Crucible did for the McCarthy witch trials.

So, did Aristophanes get in to trouble for being "un-Athenian"? Did he fall foul of the Athenian equivalent of the Patriot act?

On another tack: the only other thing I know about Aristophanes is that every single one of his contemporaries we know of from other sources is referenced in one of his plays, which makes him a sort of Athenian phone-book. I can't tie that one in with the CIA though.

B

Aristophanes was the son of Philip.

RF

Well done Ben! Lysistrata is the key to the answer.

The CIA link comes from the play, rather than Aristophanes' life. (As ever, reading guide entries could be useful in solving this one, but I'll say no more...)

All I know about Aristophanes is that he wrote The Frogs, which is referenced in the Major-General's Song in the Pirates of Penzance.
I'd like to think it was some kind of polite hat-tip towards the first writer of comic opera, since "I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zophanies" looks to me like it was written to rhyme with Aristophanes, rather than vice versa.

read a guide entry...rather skimmed it

was the Lysistrata project subject to CIA surveillance and infiltration as the were un patriotic about the war

I didn't know about the Lysistrata Project Taff, so no. But there is a clue in that (unedited) entry.

are we still playing this one??

I can't play it *for* you, mate.

Don't you want to follow up on that clue you found?

if you title the questions

QI-blah blah blah

then more people might play

As true as that might be, there isn't a lot I can do about it now, short of an edit function being introduced.

reset the q?

Yes, that could be done Robyn.