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The purposes of this short monograph are to identify and analyze the problems of Athenian society with which the last two extant plays of Aristophanes - the Ekklesiazousai and the Ploutos - are concerned, as well as to examine the playright's views on the essence of these problems and on attempts to find satisfactory solutions to them.The work contains an introduction and seven sections: 1. Historical Background; 2. Poverty: Symptoms, Ideas regarding Solutions and Criticisms of Ideas; 3. Poverty versus Riches; 4. The sources of the ''Communistic'' Ideas; 5. Misthos Ekklesiastikos; 6. The Censure of Materialism; 7. Aristophanes and the ''Middle Road''. The author has attempted here to set forth both the value of Aristophanes' last plays as historical sources and the significance of their social message.

This volume offers a reconstruction of the court culture of the taifa kings of al-Andalus (11th century A.D.), using both visual and textual evidence. A focus of particular attention is the court of the Ban? H?d at Zaragoza, and that dynasty's palace, the Aljaferma. Principle written sources are not histories and chronicles, but the untranslated poetic anthologies of al-?imyar? and al-Fat? ibn Kh?q?n.The first part of the book addresses taifa visual and literary languages, with especial emphasis on connections between the literary and visual aspects of taifa aesthetics. The sections on the Aljaferma's ornamental program will be of particular interest, not only to historians of Islamic art, but to students of all visual traditions with strong non-figural components.In addition, Part One also proposes that taifa court culture has been considered as a culture of "courtly love," and this argument also forms the point of departure for Part Two. The second part of the study uses luxury objects of Islamic and Limousine production as a point of departure for a detailed comparison of the thematics of taifa poetry in classical Arabic on the themes of courtly love and pleasures with those of the better-known Provengal tradition.