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Aristophanes, the only son of a dominating woman and a subservient father, developed his psychological reactions and his character under the direct influence of this parent couple, who were attached to all that was traditional and old, hostile to all that was progressive and new.
To safeguard his morals, his mother Zinodora forebade him to associate with his schoolmates or to take part in their amusements. Later, she prevented him from frequenting the Palestrae and from attending the talks of the Sophists. Thus, Aristophanes' childhood and adolescence evolved in an atmosphere of rigidity which he learned to respect and to admire, while he developed contempt and hatred for youth and pleasures, for new ideas and democracy, which he classed among the things most damnable.
Furthermore, Aristophanes' parents wanted to remove him from the temptations in Athens. Hence, after having finished school and done a year's military service at the beginning of the Peloponesian War, Aristophanes moved with his parents to the island of Egina, near Athens. He was then 20 years old.
In these conditions, having been unable to solve his oedipus complex (especially, since the place of the father was occupied by a phallic mother),1 frustrated and inhibited in his instinctual needs, Aristophanes assimilated the principles of his parents on life, morals, religion, society, politics and in particular on love, and developed an anal-sadistic character which found an outlet in his comedies. On the one hand, they express aggression (wounding satire, scathing criticism, killing ridicule, calumny etc.) in obscene or scatological language; on the other hand, they voice hatred of the new (animosity towards youth, enjoyment of life, new ideas, progress etc.) and love of the old (attachment to the elders, outdated ideas, traditions etc.). A