The comedy was written and played at the end of the 5th century BC, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, a time of decline of the Athenian Republic. Aristophanes, on the occasion of the political situation in his country, tries to help his fellow citizens by presenting this comedy. Dionysus and his slave Xanthias, with the instructions of Hercules, go down to Hades looking for a poet, who will bring his city out of the impasse in which it has reached. After the poetic struggle between Euripides and Aeschylus, Dionysus chooses the latter to save Athens and they leave Hades together.
