Lysistrata

**Read Λυσιστράτη at the source, before centuries of translation made its language familiar in other forms.**

## The Work and Its World

Lysistrata, preserved here as Λυσιστράτη, is one of the works through which ancient Greek literature and thought continue to speak to later centuries. Women from warring cities organize a sex strike and seize public funds, turning comic fantasy into a sharp anti-war argument.

Lysistrata is a comedy by Aristophanes written and taught in 411 BC. It is considered one of the oldest and most characteristic anti-war plays. The case has to do with the sexual strike declared by the women of Athens and Sparta, thus trying to convince their men to stop the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata is one of the first and perhaps the best-known sex comedies ever written.

In ancient Athens, during the Peloponnesian War, the women led by Lysistrata decide to stop the war and restore peace to their land. Among the gathered women, apart from Lysistrata, the Athenian Cleonike, the young Myrini, and the Spartan Labito stand out.

The original idea was conceived by Lysistrata who, for this reason, secretly summoned all the Athenians as well as representatives from the other cities. The women gather but when she suggests they declare sexual abstinence until the men decide to end the war, they initially disagree. Finally, and after intense hesitation, they are convinced when the Spartan Labito resolutely joins Lysistrata's plan. The decision is sealed with an oath on the wine.

At the same time, voices of excitement are heard from the Acropolis, a sign that the second part of Lysistrata's plan has succeeded. The old women have taken over the Acropolis, where the treasury of the public money used to subsidize the war operations is located.

The gathering of women breaks up. The dance consisting of old men now enters the stage, followed by a second dance of old women. The men, enraged by the rebellion of the women, come carrying kettles and lighted torches. The women on the other side are holding pitchers of water. The showdown begins. The men threaten the women with their torches, and the women defeat them by emptying their pitchers on the men's fires.

An elderly Probulus (a member of a twelve-member committee of distinguished citizens, whose purpose was to strictly control the economy) enters the scene. As a representative of the Municipality Church, he orders the archers who follow him to capture the women. But women don't allow it.

Lysistrata and Probulus engage in a contest of words, where the female dance attends to Lysistrata and the male dance to Probulus. Lysistrata repeats to Probulus the women's decision to enforce peace, and Probulus is driven out by the women. Abstinence is becoming unbearable for both sexes. But men are beginning to feel the consequences very heavily. Their wives, according to the instructions of Lysistrates, provoke them as much as possible without ultimately yielding to their desires.

At the same time, the women's project is also successful in Sparta. A Spartan herald arrives and requests that Athenian representatives be appointed to begin peace negotiations. The Spartan envoys and the Athenians appeal to Lysistrata to help them compromise. Lysistrata achieves this with the help of a beauty, Reconciliation personified.

Lysistrata blames Athenians and Spartans for betraying their shared religious and cultural heritage. The two delegations, absorbed in the good things of Reconciliation, make mutual concessions and peace is secured.

## Why It Still Matters

Approaching Lysistrata in its original language brings the reader closer to choices of rhythm, argument, image, and dramatic emphasis that translations must inevitably interpret. The work is not important only because it is old: it remains a living point of reference for writers, philosophers, historians, theatre makers, and readers confronting related questions today.

## Author and Legacy

Aristophanes was the leading poet of Old Comedy, using fantasy, parody, obscenity, and political satire to confront Athenian public life.

Aristophanes (445 BC – 386 BC) was an Athenian comedian of the 5th century BC. Aristophanes is, along with Eupolis and Cratinus, one of the most important representatives of the period of ancient Athenian comedy characterized as "ancient comedy" and the only one of which survives intact works, with the exception of Menander, of whom only one work survives intact. During the 5th century BC, he wrote 46 comedies. Of these, 11 have been preserved intact, while 924 fragments have been handed down.

We have very little independent information about his life and, often, evidence of his biography is drawn from his comedies themselves, and must therefore be treated with great caution. The ancients disagreed about the poet's birthplace, some asserting that he was a citizen of Lindos or Camiros of Rhodes, others of Naucratida in Egypt, and others of Aegina. These dichotomies resulted in the unfounded information that the demagogue Cleon was seeking a "writ of exile" against the poet. It is a given that Aristophanes stayed most of the time in Aegina, as he owned estates that had been given to his father when Athenian clergy had settled there. It is said that he was an example of a moral, modest, conservative person who watched the political life of the Athenians from Aegina and satirized its vulnerabilities.

He was born in Athens in 445 BC. about, and died in the mid-380s BC. He lived in Athens and grew up in the years that began for Athens and its inhabitants an era of peace and prosperity, during which the political life was dominated by the personality of Pericles (peace with Sparta and Persia) and which lasted until the beginning of the thirty-year Peloponnesian war in 431 BC.

He was the son of Philip, a genuine Athenian, from the municipality of Kydathinaion, so he is also considered a genuine Athenian citizen. About his life, however, only little is known to us today.

In this collection, the author's importance is approached through Lysistrata. The work shows how a particular genre or method could become a durable instrument for examining human action, public life, knowledge, memory, and the demands of justice.