So much to ponder in these intelligent comments on Aristophanes’ comedy The Frogs. “What Aristophanes adds to this debate is a clear sense of the unique role of comedy.” The role, you mean, played by Old Comedy’s carnivalesque satire and transgressive fantasies. I want to believe that the practical effect, beyond sheer entertainment, was to channel the cathartic power of those plays back into the city’s democracy. Only a free society, let’s say, could produce such plays; art with this kind of energy supplied the democracy with the boldness it needed to continue to exist.