Note: The assigned text was the Hackett edition, 2003, Tr. Sarah Ruden.
The premise behind Lysistrata is well-known: women from 2 warring communities withholding sex from their men in order to force the men to make peace. It's obviously a timeless theme as this summer in Togo, women in a civil rights movement called on the women of Togo to withhold sex from their husbands in order to force the president of the country to step down. So far the women of Togo haven't been successful (President Faure Gnassingbe remains in power) but I'm not sure they were as steadfast and unified as the Greek women during the Peloponnesian War.
Lysistrata is a great character: brave, strong, principled, determined, steadfast and smart. She's the quintessential leader: she has a vision, figures out a novel plan to achieve her goal (thinking "outside the box" to use the modern phrase), strategizes (withhold sex AND seize the Treasury), seeks and obtains consensus from the stakeholders, rallies her troops, monitors for weakness and steps in as needed to strengthens the women's resolve.
Lysistrata
Darlings, let's call a halt to this hocus-pocus.
You miss your men - now isn't that the trouble?
[Shamefaced nods from the group]
Don't you think they miss you just as much?
I can assure you, their nights are every bit
as hard as yours. So be good girls; endure!
Persist a few days more, and Victory is ours.
It's fated: a current prophecy declares that the men
Will go down to defeat before us, provided that we
Maintain a United Front.
Lysistrata then quotes the prophecy:
But when the swallows, in flight from the
hoopoes, have flocked to a hole
on high, and stoutly eschew their
accustomed perch on the pole,
yea, then shall Thunderer Zeus to
their suff'ring establish a stop,
by making the lower the upper [...]
But should these swallows, indulging their
lust for the perch, lose heart,
dissolve their flocks in winged dissension,
and singly depart
the sacred stronghold, breaking the
bands that bind them together -
then know them as lewd, the pervertedest
birds that ever wore feather.
Lysistrata herself seems to combine passion and reason in an ideal way. She is very passionate in her views and in her resolve but she tempers her passion with reason. Reason probably has the upper hand in Lysistrata which is likely why the outcome is peace, happiness, joy, contentment vs Medea's tidal wave of destruction.
LYSISTRATA ends with our heroine proffering some advice in a voice of reason that still has merit almost 2500 years later - if only we would listen:
Each man stand by his wife, each wife by her husband.
Dance to the gods' glory, and thank them for the happy ending.
And, from now on, please be careful.
Let's not make the same mistakes again.
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