Ian Ruffell is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Glasgow. His main research interest is Greek drama and he has worked most extensively on comedy. His monograph, Politics and Anti-Realism in Athenian Old Comedy: The Art of the Impossible, was published in 2011.

Ruffell has provided a worthy contribution to this very useful series of companions to ancient tragedy. He covers all the bases with well-documented scholarship and eminent fairness to all sides of what has become in the last few decades a very perplexing and controversial drama… he argues his case well and does an admirable job of embedding the play within its political and intellectual context.

• PrefaceThemes, Contexts and Receptions Gods and Other Monsters Technology and Civilisation Making a Spectacle The Radical Tradition Timeline Abbreviations and Select Bibliography References Index