I can't speak to the accuracy or precision of the translation, but I definitely appreciated Paul Roche's efforts to render Greek language, theatre, culture, and history as transparent and relevant as possible. Because of his introduction and notes, I was able to enjoy not only the plays, themselves, but what they reflected of Aristophanes' world. I will say, though, that I found the verse more engaging in the earlier plays---particularly in The Frogs, where the banter between Aeschylus, Dionysus, and Euripides crackles and hums in the English---but whether that's due to Aristophanes or Roche or a combination of the two, I can't say. ( )

There's an old joke that goes something like this:

Guy is sentenced to ten years in prison. During his first week in prison, each night, at lockdown, one of the inmates calls out a number--27, 16, 104, etc.--and the whole prison shakes with laughter.

The new guy is the only one who isn't laughing. He's bewildered. He asks his cellmate what all the laughter is about. "We used to tell a joke every night at lockdown," cellmate says, "but then the warden made a new rule forbidding it. So we got around it. We gave a number to every joke. Each night, one of us calls out that number, we remember the joke, and we all have a good laugh."

The next night, it's the the new guy's turn. Lockdown. All's quiet. He waits his moment and then shouts out "Seventy-four!"

Silence. Dead silence.

New guy turns to his cellmate. Cellmate shakes his head at him. "You know what they say. Some guys can tell 'em, and some guys can't."

This joke kept coming to mind as I was reading Paul Roche's terrible translations of Aristophanes. According to people who know classical Greek, these are some of the most uproarious comedies ever written. But Paul Roche is a guy who can't tell 'em.

I know what you're thinking. Maybe it isn't Roche's fault. Maybe Aristophanes is not as hilarious as people say. Scholars who devote their lives to the study of ancient Greek may not be the best judges of what's funny. Or maybe Aristophanes truly is hilarious, but his humor doesn't translate. Perhaps his subject matter is just too alien.

A lot of the humor consists of mocking uppity women and effeminate men. Which is strange, given that Aristophanes has this reputation as a visionary feminist on account of Lysistrata.

And then there are the dick jokes. Nowadays, our idea of a funny sex joke is a sly double entendre. "Everybody's cornholing but Buster." "George Michael has Pop-Pop in the attic." But for Aristophanes, a funny sex joke consists of people chanting "Cock! Cock! Penis! Cock!" while marching around wearing giant prosthetic dicks.

Wait a second. This actually sounds hilarious. But when I am reading Roche's Aristophanes, it just isn't. It's dead on the page.

There's also a lot of time spent depicting citizens of other city-states (such as the Spartans in Lysistrata) as uncouth, semiliterate rubes. Aristophanes does this by having them speak in dialect. This is a problem for the translator. Roche's solution is to render their speech in slang-ridden Cockney that might as well be Greek to me. For the record, I read another translation of Lysistrata in which the Spartans speak like American hillbillies. That didn't work, either.

Then there is the problem of obscure topical references. Aristophanes' plays are full of them. For example, The Parliament of Women, in which women put on beards and take over the Athenian government, features a gag about "The beard of Pronomos." Now I am sure this was unbelievably hilarious to the play's original spectators. Perhaps Pronomos was in the audience and turned red with embarrassment. I'll bet it brought down the house. But me, I don't have the slightest idea who Pronomos is.

Fortunately Paul Roche has supplied a footnote. I glance to the bottom of the page and read this: "Nothing is known of Pronomos."

HAHAHAHAHA--wait, what?

Reading Aristophanes is like this. It's like listening in on a conversation consisting almost entirely of inside jokes, with an occasional scrotum pun thrown in for good measure. You try to work up some laughter for the bawdy bits, so as not to come off as a humorless jackhole, only to lapse into uncomprehending blankness as somebody makes a joke about Epigonus, who is "Unknown" (reads the footnote) "except for the fact that he had got himself enrolled in a women's cult and was notoriously womanish." GET IT?!

I thought if any play could make me love Aristophanes, it would be The Frogs. This is the one where Aeschylus and Euripides compete for the title of great tragedian. It is set in Hades and has a chorus of croaking frogs. Sondheim adapted it into a musical I have never seen.

Aside from fart jokes, the humor mainly consists of Aeschylus and Euripides mocking each other's stylistic affectations. While Euripides faults Aeschylus's poetry for highfalutin' bombast, Aeschylus accuses his rival of overusing a predictable sing-song meter: dumdi-dumdidi-dum. As Euripides declaims a series of passages from his tragedies, Aeschylus keeps jumping in to insert the phrase "And lost a cruet of oil."

And lost a cruet of oil. A cruet of oil. If you are anything like me, you may be wondering to yourself: What the fuck is a cruet? Or maybe I am the only person who doesn't know what a cruet is. I look it up in the dictionary. Turns out it's the word for those glass bottles with narrow metal spouts you store olive oil in.

A cruet of oil: for six excruciating pages, this is what counts as a punch line. And I am wondering, since the point of the joke is that the phrase is just a meaningless placeholder, why didn't Roche use bottle instead?

Some guys can tell 'em, and some guys can't. ( )