Lysistrata

While the chorus of old men are a doltish opponent, more threatening (in theory) is the Councilor. He arrives to make a withdrawal from the Acropolis treasury; “It is my JOB,” he says, “To find the wood for oars and PAY FOR IT” (421-2). He is a member of the probouloi, an emergency council of elite men appointed immediately after the failure of the Sicilian expedition in 413 BCE (discussed further under “The Peloponnesian War and an Appeal to Panhellenic Unity” in Themes). The probouloi were believed to be a necessity after the demonstrated failure of the democratic assembly to make wise decisions in the Sicilian campaign, but they were resented for taking some executive powers from the people. As such, the Councilor is both an authority figure and an easy target for Aristophanes, whose political satire often targeted those in power.

The debate between the Councilor and Lysistrata represents the play’s agon, a stock scene in ancient dramas featuring a formal verbal dispute between characters. Resembling Plato’s Socratic dialogues, they give the playwright a chance to showboat his rhetorical skills while teasing out his character’s conflicting points of view, in turn illuminating the major themes of the play.

Lysistrata’s agon is somewhat atypical, in that the two sides do not seem to be on equal footing. The Councilor barely makes an argument—usually resorting to ad hominem and petty attacks—and mostly serves to ask Lysistrata the sort of leading questions which allow her to shine. Lysistrata, on the other hand, shows a confident adeptness in steamrolling her opponent. While there was certainly a comic element for the ancient audience at the image of a woman debating a powerful man, in her control of rhetoric Lysistrata somewhat resembles Euripides’ Medea, another dangerously clever woman.

There are two driving points to Lysistrata’s argument. First, as citizens who have upheld the duties appropriate to their gender and station, women are deserving of male respect. Men’s civic excellence is expressed in warfare and politics, while women are defined by their status as wives and mothers, roles denied to them by the ongoing war which has left their households empty. Second, there are enough similarities between household management and the management of state to justify melding them in these desperate times. Because men are no longer holding up their end of the social bargain, women are justified in “switching” gender roles to right the system. Lysistrata’s recognition of the parallelism between the feminine and masculine spheres was not revolutionary in Greek thought. Homer made much the same point in his Iliad and Odyssey in his use of Homeric similes, snapshots in which a moment of combat is compared to domestic or agricultural activities.

Finally, in lines 574-86 Aristophanes (through his mouthpiece, Lysistrata) outlines his ideal solution for Athens’ many troubles in 411 BCE. Lysistrata first suggests the dissolution of the city’s oligarchic clubs and elitist factions. She then recommends Athens better integrate its resident non-citizens, foreigners, and even public debtors. Finally, she thinks Athens should better utilize its colonies. One group is noticeably missing from this image of civic utopia: women. Their absence is a useful reminder for the modern reader. While its themes may sometimes feel adjacent to modern feminist movements, Lysistrata was firmly of its time and was relatively conservative in its outlook even then. Lysistrata does not ask for wide-sweeping social change or for the role of women to be elevated long-term. “Given the choice,” she says, “I’d play a prim, demure / Young girl, disturbing no one by so much / As blinking” (773-5). She, unlike Euripides’ Medea, does not present a jarring (and controversial) challenge to gender roles. Lysistrata’s brand of civil disobedience urges a return to traditional values, not an evolution. This fits into our larger understanding of Aristophanes’ politics. He leaned more into what we might describe as the conservative right, often taking potshots at more “progressive” thinkers like the tragedian Euripides.

At the end of their debate, the Councilor tries to put Lysistrata in her place by appealing to her veil, the symbol of a woman’s modesty. In response she and her friends dress him up in the costume of a woman, underlining the topsy-turvy world unending war has created and reiterating that it is men’s turn to be quiet (528-538). Finally they equip him as they would a corpse for burial, emphasizing that for women—who lose the husbands and sons which define their civic role—war is living death (600-10).

In the following choral episode, we get more insight into the tenuous political situation in Athens in 411 BCE, the year of Lysistrata’s production. At lines 618-629, the old men wonder if the women are working in concert with the Spartans to enable an oligarchic revolution in Athens. Following the disastrous Sicilian expedition two years prior, a growing number of elite Athenians were frustrated with the city’s radical system of democracy, believing that they could rule it better on their own. The old men’s concerns were well-founded. Shortly after the performance of Lysistrata, an anti-democratic coup installed a short-lived oligarchy in Athens known as the Four Hundred.

Lysistrata’s old men define their resistance to oligarchy by aligning themselves with Aristogeiton and Harmodius (630-3), famous Athenian patriots from a century before. In 510 BCE the duo assassinated the tyrant Hipparchus, events which led to the establishment of Athenian democracy by Cleisthenes in 508 BCE. That Lysistrata’s pro-democratic characters are a group of impotent, deadbeat old men—“dedicated dweebs,” as Lysistrata calls them (line 559)—speaks to Aristophanes anti-democratic sympathies, though these generalizations should be tempered by an understanding of the demonstrated weaknesses of the Athenian democratic system (see “Aristophanes and Athenian Politics” in Themes).