Lysistrata and Other Plays

Summary

This volume collects three of Aristophanes' comedies (contents vary by edition; a long-standing selection is The Acharnians, The Clouds and Lysistrata). The Acharnians (425 BCE), the earliest surviving comedy, is set in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War. Dicaeopolis, an Attic farmer crammed into Athens with other refugees from the countryside and sick of the war, fails to persuade the Assembly to make peace and so negotiates a private thirty-year treaty with Sparta for himself and his family. Charcoal-burners of Acharnae, embittered by Spartan ravaging of their vines, attack him as a traitor; he wins them over by borrowing the rags of a pitiful hero from Euripides and arguing that the war began over trivial grievances. He opens a private market, trading with Megarians and Boeotians, while the general Lamachus marches off to fight; the play ends with Dicaeopolis drunk and feasting and Lamachus carried in wounded. The Clouds (first produced 423 BCE, surviving in a partly revised version) satirises the new intellectual fashions. Strepsiades, deep in debt because of his horse-mad son Pheidippides, enrols in the 'Thinkery' of Socrates, who hangs in a basket contemplating the heavens and worships the Clouds as new deities, in order to learn the argument that can make the weaker case defeat the stronger. Too old and stupid to learn, he sends his son, who hears a debate between Right and Wrong Argument, learns sophistry, beats his father and justifies it logically. Strepsiades, enraged, burns down the Thinkery. Lysistrata (411 BCE), written after the disastrous Sicilian expedition, imagines the women of Athens, Sparta and the other Greek cities, led by the Athenian Lysistrata, swearing a sex strike until the men make peace, while the older women seize the Acropolis and its treasury. A chorus of old men tries to smoke them out and is drenched by a chorus of old women. Some wives try to desert with comic excuses, including feigned pregnancy. Myrrhine teases her desperate husband Kinesias and leaves him unsatisfied. Envoys from Sparta and Athens, visibly tormented by their frustration, agree to terms when Lysistrata presents a personified Reconciliation, and the play ends with feasting, songs and dancing.

Plot or Argument

• The Acharnians: a private peace

  Dicaeopolis makes a personal treaty with Sparta, defends himself before the Acharnian chorus in Euripidean rags, opens his own market, and feasts while Lamachus is wounded.

• The Clouds: the Thinkery

  Strepsiades enrols with Socrates to escape his debts; the debate of Right and Wrong Argument; Pheidippides learns to beat his father; the Thinkery is burned.

• Lysistrata: the oath and the Acropolis

  Lysistrata unites the Greek women in an oath of abstinence; the old women seize the Acropolis and repel the old men.

• Lysistrata: temptation and peace

  Wives try to slip away; Myrrhine torments Kinesias; Spartan and Athenian envoys negotiate before Reconciliation and celebrate peace.

Characters

• Lysistrata, protagonist (Lysistrata)

  Resourceful Athenian woman who organises the sex strike to end the war.

• Myrrhine, Athenian wife (Lysistrata)

  Wife who teases her husband Kinesias as part of the strike.

• Lampito, Spartan woman (Lysistrata)

  Spartan ally who brings her city's women into the plan.

• Dicaeopolis, protagonist (The Acharnians)

  Farmer who makes his own peace treaty with Sparta.

• Lamachus, general (The Acharnians)

  Swaggering soldier who returns wounded.

• Strepsiades, protagonist (The Clouds)

  Indebted old farmer who seeks sophistic tricks to escape his creditors.

• Socrates, head of the Thinkery (The Clouds)

  Caricature of the philosopher as a sophist and natural scientist.

• Pheidippides, Strepsiades' son (The Clouds)

  Horse-mad son who learns to argue that beating his father is just.

Lessons

• Comedy as anti-war argument

  Aristophanes uses fantasy and obscenity to make a serious case for peace. The plays show how laughter can criticise policy in wartime.

  • Is Lysistrata a feminist play?
  • Why does Dicaeopolis make a private peace rather than a public one?
  • How free was Athenian comedy to mock leaders?

• Suspicion of new learning

  The Clouds mocks intellectuals who can argue any side. It raises questions about education, rhetoric and moral relativism that still matter.

  • Is the portrait of Socrates fair?
  • Plato's Apology blames The Clouds for prejudice against Socrates. Is comedy responsible for its effects?

• Bodies and politics

  Lysistrata's plot makes physical desire a political force. Aristophanes shows public affairs as entangled with the private body.

  • What role do the old men's and women's choruses play?
  • Why does Reconciliation appear as a woman?

Context

All three plays belong to the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431–404 BCE). The Acharnians reflects the crowding of rural Athenians inside the city walls under Pericles' strategy; The Clouds the new sophistic education; Lysistrata the aftermath of the Sicilian disaster of 413 BCE and oligarchic unrest.

Composition

The Acharnians won first prize at the Lenaea of 425 BCE. The Clouds came third at the City Dionysia of 423 BCE and was partly revised later. Lysistrata was produced in 411 BCE, probably at the Lenaea. Women's roles were played by men.

Reception

Lysistrata has become a widely staged anti-war play and was used in the 2003 Lysistrata Project protests against the Iraq war. The Clouds is cited in Plato's Apology as a source of prejudice against Socrates.

Comparisons

• the-last-days-of-socrates

  Plato's Apology names Aristophanes' comic Socrates as one cause of the hostility that led to his trial.

• the-iliad

  Aristophanes' comic resistance to war answers the heroic ethic of epic, which Athenians knew intimately.

• the-satires-of-horace-and-persius

  Horace names Aristophanes and the poets of Old Comedy as forerunners of Roman satire's freedom to attack vice.

• testament-of-youth

  Both express the war-weariness of the home front, Aristophanes through fantasy, Brittain through testimony.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Dicaeopolis in The Acharnians sitting alone in the Assembly waiting to propose peace, then buying a private thirty-year treaty with Sparta for himself and his family. Notice how a comic premise turns a public question into a private bargain.
• Dicaeopolis borrowing the rags of a pitiful hero from Euripides to plead his case before the angry charcoal-burners of Acharnae. Aristophanes is mocking tragedy while making his hero's case.
• Socrates in The Clouds, suspended in a basket over the Thinkery and worshipping the Clouds as new gods. Compare this Socrates with the one you meet in Plato.
• The debate between Right and Wrong Argument in The Clouds, and Pheidippides afterward proving that a son may justly beat his father. Watch how quickly clever argument turns against the man who paid for it.
• The oath in Lysistrata, the old women seizing the Acropolis and its treasury, and Lysistrata's final presentation of the personified Reconciliation to the Spartan and Athenian envoys.

Key terms and names

Old Comedy

The Athenian comic form of the fifth century BCE, of which Aristophanes is the only surviving master. It mixes fantasy, obscenity, political satire of real people, and choral song.

Parabasis

The point in an Old Comedy where the chorus steps forward and addresses the audience directly, often speaking for the poet. In The Acharnians and The Clouds it is used to defend Aristophanes himself.

Dicaeopolis

The farmer of The Acharnians whose name suggests just city or just citizen. Tired of the war and crammed into Athens with other rural refugees, he makes his own peace with Sparta.

The Thinkery

Socrates' school in The Clouds, where pupils study the heavens, the gnat, and the art of making the weaker argument defeat the stronger. Strepsiades burns it down at the end of the play.

Right and Wrong Argument

The two personified arguments who debate in The Clouds over the education of Pheidippides. Right Argument praises the old discipline that trained the men of Marathon; Wrong Argument wins by mocking it.

Sophists

Paid teachers of rhetoric and argument in fifth-century Athens. The Clouds lumps Socrates with them, a portrait Plato's Socrates later says helped create prejudice against him.

The Acropolis

The citadel of Athens, which held the city's treasury. In Lysistrata the older women seize it so the men cannot fund the war, while the younger women keep their oath.

Peloponnesian War

The war between Athens and Sparta, 431 to 404 BCE, behind all three plays. The Acharnians comes in its sixth year, and Lysistrata after the Sicilian disaster of 413 BCE.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why does Dicaeopolis make a private treaty with Sparta in The Acharnians, and how does he win over the angry chorus of charcoal-burners?
2. Comprehension Why does Strepsiades enrol in Socrates' Thinkery in The Clouds, and what happens when he sends his son Pheidippides instead?
3. Comprehension What do the women of Greece swear in Lysistrata, and what role do the older women play in seizing the Acropolis?
4. Interpretation The Acharnians ends with Dicaeopolis feasting and the general Lamachus carried in wounded. What is Aristophanes saying about the war through this contrast?
5. Interpretation In The Clouds, Right Argument loses the debate with Wrong Argument. Does Aristophanes want the audience to side with the loser, and how does the ending of the play answer that question?
6. Interpretation Lysistrata unites the women of enemy cities. Why does Aristophanes give the work of peace to women, and why does the play end with a personified Reconciliation rather than a negotiated treaty?
7. Interpretation All three plays treat serious matters, war, education, and peace, through fantasy and obscene comedy. How does laughter allow Aristophanes to say things that a speech in the Assembly could not?
8. Big Question The Clouds shows clever argument teaching a son to justify beating his father. Can education in argument and rhetoric make people worse as easily as better, and what keeps it on the side of truth?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 5:9 (Scripture)

  Jesus blesses the peacemakers, who will be called children of God. Dicaeopolis and Lysistrata are both peacemakers, though one makes peace only for himself and the other for all Greece, and the contrast clarifies what true peacemaking requires.

• 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (Scripture)

  Paul says God has made foolish the wisdom of the world and that the Greeks seek wisdom. The Clouds is a Greek comedy about the dangers of a cleverness detached from virtue, and Paul's critique of worldly wisdom carries on a conversation the Athenians themselves had begun.

• Augustine, City of God II (Church Fathers)

  Augustine discusses Greek comedy's freedom to mock gods and leading citizens, contrasting Athenian licence with Roman law against defamatory verse. His chapters show that early Christian readers took Old Comedy seriously as evidence of how a city's gods and stage shaped its morals.

• Plato, Apology 18a-19c (Great Conversation)

  At his trial Socrates says his oldest accusers spread the story of a man who studies things in the heavens and makes the weaker argument the stronger, and he names a comic poet showing Socrates swinging in a basket. The Apology answers The Clouds directly, a generation after its first performance.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Across the three plays Aristophanes argues that Athens is ruled by forces that serve neither its farmers nor its families: a war prolonged by generals and demagogues, and a new education that teaches the young to win arguments rather than to be good. Ordinary people bear the cost, the farmer driven off his land and the father beaten by his clever son. The old virtues of the countryside and of the generation of Marathon were sounder. Therefore the city should make peace and distrust teachers who make the weaker argument the stronger, and if men will not act, comedy imagines farmers and women who will.

Rhetorical device: prosopopoeia (personification). In The Clouds the abstract arguments of education appear on stage as Right Argument and Wrong Argument and debate in person, and at the end of Lysistrata peace itself appears as the figure of Reconciliation, whom the envoys divide between them. Turning ideas into bodies lets the comedy argue by spectacle.

Debate: Resolved: Aristophanes' portrait of Socrates in The Clouds was a fair criticism of the new learning, even if unfair to Socrates himself.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Dicaeopolis makes peace for himself alone, while Lysistrata makes peace for all Greece. Comparing the plans and endings of The Acharnians and Lysistrata, argue what Aristophanes thinks peace requires and who is able to bring it about.

Comparison with The Last Days of Socrates: In the Apology Socrates blames the old slanders behind his trial in part on a comic poet's picture of him in a basket studying the heavens. Compare the Socrates of The Clouds with the Socrates of Plato's Apology, and argue whether Aristophanes' comedy was a harmless joke or a real contribution to the charges against him.

Medical Lens

Medical content is mostly comic. In The Acharnians the wounded Lamachus is carried in and calls for the physician Pittalus, a real Athenian public doctor, while Dicaeopolis celebrates drunk. In Lysistrata the men's sexual frustration is staged physically, and wives invent pregnancies (one with a helmet under her dress) to escape, a comic glimpse of ancient childbirth customs on the Acropolis. The Clouds satirises natural philosophy, including Socratic investigations of bodily functions.

• The Acharnians, finale

  Lamachus returns wounded and calls for the doctor Pittalus while Dicaeopolis revels.

  WAR WoundsPhysicians DoctorsAlcohol
• Lysistrata, middle scenes

  Women's excuses to leave the Acropolis, including a feigned imminent childbirth.

  Childbirth Maternal
• Lysistrata, Myrrhine and Kinesias; envoys' scene

  Sexual frustration presented as an ailment afflicting men across Greece.

  Sexuality Medicalized

Creative Prompts

• Adaptation

  Adapt Lysistrata to a modern conflict, keeping the choruses of old men and women.

• Dialogue

  Write a new debate between Right and Wrong Argument on a contemporary topic.

• Classroom

  Read The Clouds alongside Plato's Apology. What does each reveal about how Athenians saw Socrates?

Further Reading

• The Frogs, Aristophanes

• History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

• Aristophanic Comedy, K. J. Dover