Lysistrata

“ LYSISTRATA. With pleasure. Where is our Usheress? [409] Now, what are you staring at, pray? Lay this shield on the earth before us, its hollow upwards, and someone bring me the victim's inwards.
CALONICÉ. Lysistrata, say, what oath are we to swear?
LYSISTRATA. What oath? Why, in Aeschylus, they sacrifice a sheep, and swear over a buckler; [410] we will do the same.
CALONICÉ. No, Lysistrata, one cannot swear peace over a buckler, surely.
LYSISTRATA. What other oath do you prefer?
CALONICÉ. Let's take a white horse, and sacrifice it, and swear on its entrails. ”

“ Lay aside your water-pots, we will guard them, we will help our friends and companions. For myself, I will never weary of the dance; my knees will never grow stiff with fatigue. I will brave everything with my dear allies, on whom Nature has lavished virtue, grace, boldness, cleverness, and whose wisely directed energy is going to save the State. Oh! my good, gallant Lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let your anger slacken; the winds of fortune blow our way. ”

“ To work then! Be it your task to inflame and torture and torment him. Seductions, caresses, provocations, refusals, try every means! Grant every favour,—always excepting what is forbidden by our oath on the wine-bowl.
Myrrhiné.
Have no fear, I undertake the work.
Lysistrata.
Well, I will stay here to help you cajole the man and set his passions aflame. The rest of you, withdraw.
Cinesias.
Alas! alas! how I am tortured by spasm and rigid convulsion! Oh! I am racked on the wheel!
Lysistrata.
Who is this that dares to pass our lines?
Cinesias.
It is I.
Lysistrata. ”

“ Ah! my boy, what a thing it would have been if these fellows had seen us just now when our tools were on full stand!
Athenian.
Speak out, Laconians, what is it brings you here?
Laconian.
We have come to treat for peace.
Athenian.
Well said; we are of the same mind. Better call Lysistrata then; she is the only person will bring us to terms. ”

“ The women of Athens, led by Lysistrata and supported by female delegates from the other states of Hellas, determine to take matters into their own hands and force the men to stop the War. They meet in solemn conclave, and Lysistrata expounds her scheme, the rigorous application to husbands and levers of a self-denying ordinance—“we must refrain from the male organ altogether.” Every wife and mistress is to refuse all sexual favours whatsoever, till the men have come to terms of peace. ”

“ But if—which the gods forbid—we do refrain altogether from what you say, should we get peace any sooner?
Lysistrata.
Of course we should, by the goddesses twain! We need only sit indoors with painted cheeks, and meet our mates lightly clad in transparent gowns of Amorgos [18] silk, and with our “mottes” nicely plucked smooth; then their tools will stand like mad and they will be wild to lie with us. That will be the time to refuse, and they will hasten to make peace, I am convinced of that!
Lampito. ”

“ Not that anything derogatory to Hamlet or the Birds is intended; but the value of such works is not enhanced by forcing them into contrast with other works which cover deeper and wider nexus of aesthetic and spiritual material. It is the very subtlety of the vitality of such works as Antony and Cleopatra and Lysistrata that makes it so easy to undervalue them, to see only a phallic play and political pamphlet in one, only a chronicle play in a grandiose method in the other. ”

“ At the festivals of Dionysus, Pan and Aphrodité women used to perform lascivious dances to the accompaniment of the beating of tambourines. Lysistrata implies that the women she had summoned to council cared really for nothing but wanton pleasures.
↑ An obscene double entendre; Calonicé understands, or pretends to understand, Lysistrata as meaning a long and thick “membrum virile”! ↑ The eels from Lake Copaïs in Bœotia were esteemed highly by epicures. ↑ This is the reproach Demosthenes constantly levelled against his Athenian fellow-countrymen—their failure to seize opportunity. ”

“ Lampito.
For ourselves, no doubt we shall persuade our husbands to conclude a fair and honest peace; but there is the Athenian populace, how are we to cure these folk of their warlike frenzy?
Lysistrata.
Have no fear; we undertake to make our own people hear reason.
Lampito.
Nay, impossible, so long as they have their trusty ships and the vast treasures stored in the temple of Athené.
Lysistrata.
Ah! but we have seen to that; this very day the Acropolis will be in our hands. That is the task assigned to the older women ”

“ Enough, enough, my dear; now let us all drink in turn to cement our friendship.
Lampito.
Hark! what do those cries mean?
Lysistrata.
’Tis what I was telling you; the women have just occupied the Acropolis. So now, Lampito, do you return to Sparta to organize the plot, while your comrades here remain as hostages. For ourselves, let us away to join the rest in the citadel, and let us push the bolts well home.
Calonicé.
But don’t you think the men will march up against us?
Lysistrata.
I laugh at them. Neither threats nor flames shall force our doors ”

“ Lysistrata.
No, but let us wait a moment more, till the women of Bœotia arrive and those from the Peloponnese.
Myrrhiné.
Yes, that is best. . . . Ah! here comes Lampito.
Lysistrata.
Good day, Lampito, dear friend from Lacedæmon. How well and handsome you look! what a rosy complexion! and how strong you seem; why, you could strangle a bull surely!
Lampito.
Yes, indeed, I really think I could. ’Tis because I do gymnastics and practise the kick dance. [9]
Lysistrata. ”

“ The whole play is very brilliant and clever. Some have wished to see in it a caricature of the Athenians' hopes of founding a great western empire in Sicily. The Lysistrata (411) represents a woman's conspiracy to bring about peace. The Thesmophoriazusæ, produced three months after the preceding comedy, contains an attack on Euripides, whom the women, who are celebrating the Thesmophoria, propose to punish for his hatred of them. ”

“ The other pair hasten to make their escape, and the play ends with the policeman’s despairing cry, ‘Artamouxia, Artamouxia, where are you?’
The Lysistrata, ‘breaker up of armies,’ is a much stronger play, and the heroine is a masterpiece of dramatic characterisation. From the beginning of the action, when she stands in the darkness waiting for the women she has summoned, and frowning with impatience—‘although a frown spoils her looks,’ as her one companion tells her—until the end, when, her purpose accomplished, she can say, ‘Let man stand by woman and woman by man. ”

“ It appeared shortly before Peisander had arrived in Athens from the camp at Samos for the purpose of organizing the oligarchic policy. The Lysistrata expresses the popular desire for peace at any cost. As the men can do nothing, the women take the question into their own hands, occupy the citadel, and bring the citizens to surrender. ”

“ Artemis, huntress queen, whose arrows pierce the denizens of the woods, virgin goddess, be thou favourable to the Peace we here conclude; through thee may our hearts be long united! May this treaty draw close for ever the bonds of a happy friendship! No more wiles and stratagems! Aid us, oh! aid us, maiden huntress!
Lysistrata.
All is for the best; and now, Laconians, take your wives away home with you, and you, Athenians, yours. May husband live happily with wife, and wife with husband. Dance, dance, to celebrate our bliss, and let us be heedful to avoid like mistakes for the future. ”

“ O women, if we would compel the men
To bow to Peace, we must refrain--
MYRRHINE
From what?
O tell us!
LYSISTRATA
Will you truly do it then?
MYRRHINE
We will, we will, if we must die for it.
LYSISTRATA
We must refrain from every depth of love....
Why do you turn your backs? Where are you going?
Why do you bite your lips and shake your heads?
Why are your faces blanched? ”

“ Lysistrata.
That is not the same thing. When the soldier returns from the wars, even though he has white hair, he very soon finds a young wife. But a woman has only one summer; if she does not make hay while the sun shines, no one will afterwards have anything to say to her, and she spends her days consulting oracles, that never send her a husband. ”

“ Ah! our men too, like wrestlers in the arena, cannot endure a rag over their bellies; ’tis an athlete’s malady, which only exercise can remedy.
An Athenian.
Can anybody tell us where Lysistrata is? Surely she will have some compassion on our condition.
Chorus of Old Men.
Look! ’tis the very same complaint. (Addressing the Athenian.) Don’t you feel of mornings a strong nervous tension?
An Athenian.
Yes, and a dreadful, dreadful torture it is! Unless peace is made very soon, we shall find no resource but to fuck Clisthenes. [71]
Chorus of Old Men. ”

“ Lysistrata therefore, in Aristophanes's play, counsels the women to break their chains, seize the reins of government, and bring the dreadful war to an end. She tells the assembled women that they have carried a double burden in the war. As mothers, they have borne sons whom they have been compelled to send forth to death; while as wives, they have been deprived of their husbands; even the maidens have grown old in single blessedness, on account of the absence of men available as husbands. ”

“ Aristotle, who says all great characters are more or less atrabilious, as Socrates and Plato and Hercules were, writes, that Lysander, not indeed early in life, but when he was old, became thus affected. What is singular in his character is that he endured poverty very well, and that he was not at all enslaved or corrupted by wealth, and yet he filled his country with riches and the love of them, and took away from them the glory of not admiring money; importing amongst them an abundance of gold and silver after the Athenian war, though keeping not one drachma for himself. ”

“ In many places, however, simple terrorism probably sufficed. The new Lysandrian Ten overawed resistance and procured recognition of their usurpation by the menace of inviting the victorious admiral with his fleet of two hundred sail, and by the simple arrival of the Lacedæmonian harmost. Not only was each town obliged to provide a fortified citadel and maintenance for this governor with his garrison, but a scheme of tribute, amounting to one thousand talents annually, was imposed for the future, and assessed ratably upon each city by Lysander. ”

“ Therefore, the only course that was to be taken was to go and beg at the doors of the king's commanders, as Lysander had done; for which he was most unfit of any man, being of a generous and great spirit, and one who thought it more becoming for the Greeks to suffer any damage from one another, than to flatter and wait at the gates of barbarians, who, indeed, had gold enough, but nothing else that was commendable. But being compelled by necessity, he proceeded to Lydia, and went at once to Cyrus's house, and sent in word, that Callicratidas, the admiral, was there to speak with him ”

“ COMPARISON OF LYSANDER WITH SYLLA.
Having completed this Life also, come we now to the comparison. That which was common to them both, was that they were founders of their own greatness, with this difference, that Lysander had the consent of his fellow-citizens, in times of sober judgment, for the honors he received; nor did he force any thing from them against their good-will, nor hold any power contrary to the laws.
In civil strife e'en villains rise to fame. ”

“ With that prince he also remonstrated on his own account,—“Truly, Agesilaus, you know how to degrade your friends.”—“Ay, to be sure (was the reply) , those among them who want to appear greater than I am; but such as seek to uphold me, I should be ashamed if I did not know how to repay with due honor.”—Lysander was constrained to admit the force of this reply, and to request, as the only means of escape from present and palpable humiliation, that he might be sent on some mission apart; engaging to serve faithfully in whatever duty he might be employed. ”

“ Lysander's father is said to have been Aristoclitus, who was not indeed of the royal family, but yet of the stock of the Heraclidae. He was brought up in poverty, and showed himself obedient and conformable, as ever anyone did, to the customs of his country; of a manly spirit, also, and superior to all pleasures, excepting only that which their good actions bring to those who are honored and successful; and it is accounted no base thing in Sparta for their young men to be overcome with this kind of pleasure. ”

“ Finding on Lysander's death a large faction formed, which he on his return from Asia had established against Agesilaus, he thought it advisable to expose both him and it, by showing what manner of a citizen he had been whilst he lived. To that end, finding among his writings all oration, composed by Cleon the Halicarnassean, but to have been spoken by Lysander in a public assembly, to excite the people to innovations and changes in the government, he resolved to publish it, as an evidence of Lysander's practices. ”

“ But with ambitious natures, otherwise not ill qualified for command, the feeling of jealousy of those near them in reputation continually stands in the way of the performance of noble actions; they make those their rivals in virtue, whom they ought to use as their helpers to it. Agesilaus took Lysander, among the thirty counselors that accompanied him, with intentions of using him as his especial friend; but when they were come into Asia, the inhabitants there, to whom he was but little known, addressed themselves to him but little and seldom ”