Aristophanes and Comedy
Aristophanes’s Life and His Works
 450?-385? B.C.E
 13 extant comedies
 The bulk of his extant works dates from
the years of Peloponnesian War (431-404
B.C.E.)
 Targets: Peloponnesian War, Euripides,
Socrates
Elements in Aristophanes’s
Comedies
 burlesque and parodic
 crude clowning and the free play of wit
 A brilliant combination of poetry and
obscenity; of farce and wit: Aristophanic
 Plenty of sexual and scatological wit
 Coarse humor and exquisite wit combine
with lyric poetry of a high quality
Lysistrata
 Time of production: 411 B.C.E
 Historical context: the sense of doom
---In 413 B.C.E. the news of the total
destruction of the Athenian fleet in Sicily
had reached Athens. the confidence in
victory had disappeared for ever
Lysistrata: Plot Summary
 During Peloponnesian War, the Athenian
women, who have no political rights, seize
the Acropolis, the repository of the city’s
treasury, and leave the men without sex or
the money to carry on the war. At the
same time similar revolution take place in
all the Greek cities according to a
coordinated plan. The men are eventually
“starved” into submission and the
Spartans come to Athens to end the war.
Lysistrata: Characters
 Lysistrata:
--the woman who initiates the plan of “sex
strike.”
 Myrrhine:
--an Athenian wife, whom Lysistrata assigns
the mission of sex hoax on her husband.
 Kinesias:
--Myrrhine’s husband
Lysistrata: theme & technique
 The comic hero typically upsets the status
quo to produce a series of extraordinary
results and a wish-fulfilling ending.
 The apparent ribald humor: female sexstrike against war
 The serious issues underneath:
---Is war truly the business of men only?
---Women are the real victims of war.
Lysistrata: The Attack on
Gender Stereotype 1
 “War shall be the business of womenfolk!”
 Weaving vs. war:
---“We hold it this way, and carefully wind out
the strands on our spindles, now this way,
now that way.”
Lysistrata: The Attack on
Gender Stereotype 2
 Prejudice about women’s supposed
incapacities:
--Magistrate: “You really think your way with
wool and yarnballs and spindles can stop
a terrible crisis? How brainless?”
Lysistrata: The Attack on
Gender Stereotype 3
 Good-Natured Ridicule:
--Women are addicted to wine and sex
--Women are tricky and deceitful, always probing
for men’s weaknesses, and an obstacle to the
conduct of serious political business. (So men
say, and the women admit it.)
--But these characters are here enlisted in the
service of peace.
Lysistrata: The Attack on Men’s
Love of War 1
 Aristophanes suggests that the dirty secret
of imperialism is that war and territorial
aggression are a substitute for sex, and
vice versa.
Lysistrata: The Attack on Men’s
Love of War 2
 “Body politics”:
--The great diagnosis is the scene in which
the Athenian and Spartan ambassadors
divide up the naked body of Reconciliation
personified as a beautiful woman; they
relate her various anatomical features to
territories of Greece over which their cities
were fighting.