Aristophanes’ Lysistrata

Abstract

Lysistrata was performed in the year 411 bce, either in winter at the Lenaia or in spring at the Dionysia. Athens, its position in the Peloponnesian War waged against Sparta since 428 now dangerously weakened by the catastrophic failure of the 413 Sicilian expedition, saw itself faced in early 411 with the prospect of having to submit to the enemy. Enter Lysistrata, who proposes a plan that, in its utopian character, is typical of Old Comedy: Athenian wives should declare a sex strike for as long as it takes their husbands to end the war. The storyline triggered by that begins in the first scene, but there very soon arises another line of action: the women of Athens occupy the Acropolis, the center of power over the polis, seize the treasury, and must now defend the citadel against the men. And when the old women who form one half of the chorus, prevent its other half, the old men, from setting the citadel alight, there ensues a fight between the two, and that develops into a third sequence of scenes which runs in counterpoint to the main action. All three, however, are integrated into a homogenous whole, and thus Lysistrata differs in its structure from Aristophanes’ earlier comedies: it does not merely consist in a series of loosely connected episodes. That, in turn, is reminiscent of the complex architecture created by the tragedians of the day, and as in one of those (Euripides), here too it is an exceptional woman who, probably for the first time in comedy and certainly for the first time as a citizen wife, stands center stage. Unity of action is also achieved by using the parabasis to have the chorus guide spectators from scene to scene rather than making it speak, as mostly in Aristophanes’ extant plays, with the voice of the poet; the traditional parabasis, in turn, appears in the (roughly comparable) form of Lysistrata’s speech 1112–1135 Again unlike the earlier comedies, Lysistrata contains but few verses in which public figures are ridiculed; that could be explained by Aristophanes’ intention to play his part in the necessary appeasement and conciliation, the above-mentioned crisis in Athens having had its effect on domestic politics. On the other hand, this comedy offers a conspicuous amount of obscenities, above all in scenes which show the men trying to persuade their wives to end the sex strike. But only when the former have declared themselves committed to negotiating a peace treaty are marriage and family restored in the oikos, the nucleus of the polis, and Lysistrata’s comic plan thus realized. Among all modern stage productions of Aristophanes’ comedies, it is Lysistrata that can claim the lion’s share.