AN OLD MAN. You dear old woman, I would fain kiss you.
A WOMAN. I will set you crying without onions.
OLD MAN. … And give you a sound kicking.
OLD WOMAN. Ah, ha! what a dense forest you have there! (Pointing.)
OLD MAN. So was Myronides one of the best-bearded of men o' this side; his backside was all black, and he terrified his enemies as much as Phormio.[446]
CHORUS OF WOMEN. I want to tell you a fable too, to match yours about Melanion. Once there was a certain man called Timon,[447] a tough customer, and a whimsical, a true son of the Furies, with a face that seemed to glare out of a thorn-bush. He withdrew from the world because he couldn't abide bad men, after vomiting a thousand curses at 'em. He had a holy horror of ill-conditioned fellows, but he was mighty tender towards women.
A WOMAN. Suppose I up and broke your jaw for you!
AN OLD MAN. I am not a bit afraid of you.
A WOMAN. Suppose I let fly a good kick at you?
OLD MAN. I should see your backside then.
WOMAN. You would see that, for all my age, it is very well attended to, and all fresh singed smooth.
LYSISTRATA. Ho there! come quick, come quick!
FIRST WOMAN. What is it? Why these cries?
LYSISTRATA. A man! a man! I see him approaching all afire with the flames of love. Oh! divine Queen of Cyprus, Paphos and Cythera, I pray you still be propitious to our emprise.
FIRST WOMAN. Where is he, this unknown foe?
LYSISTRATA. Yonder—beside the Temple of Demeter.
FIRST WOMAN. Yes, indeed, I see him; but who is it?
LYSISTRATA. Look, look! does any of you recognize him?
FIRST WOMAN. I do, I do! 'tis my husband Cinesias.
LYSISTRATA. To work then! Be it your task to inflame and torture and torment him. Seductions, caresses, provocations, refusals, try every means! Grant every favour,—always excepting what is forbidden by our oath on the wine-bowl.
MYRRHINÉ. Have no fear, I undertake the work.
LYSISTRATA. Well, I will stay here to help you cajole the man and set his passions aflame. The rest of you, withdraw.
CINESIAS. Alas! alas! how I am tortured by spasm and rigid convulsion!
Oh! I am racked on the wheel!
LYSISTRATA. Who is this that dares to pass our lines?
CINESIAS. It is I.
LYSISTRATA. What, a man?
CINESIAS. Yes, no doubt about it, a man!
LYSISTRATA. Begone!
CINESIAS. But who are you that thus repulses me?
LYSISTRATA. The sentinel of the day.
CINESIAS. By all the gods, call Myrrhiné hither.
LYSISTRATA. Call Myrrhiné hither, quotha? And pray, who are you?
CINESIAS. I am her husband, Cinesias, son of Peon.
LYSISTRATA. Ah! good day, my dear friend. Your name is not unknown amongst us. Your wife has it for ever on her lips; and she never touches an egg or an apple without saying: "'Twill be for Cinesias."
CINESIAS. Really and truly?
LYSISTRATA. Yes, indeed, by Aphrodité! And if we fall to talking of men, quick your wife declares: "Oh! all the rest, they're good for nothing compared with Cinesias."
CINESIAS. Oh! I beseech you, go and call her to me.
LYSISTRATA. And what will you give me for my trouble?
This, if you like (handling his tool). I will give you what I have there!
LYSISTRATA. Well, well, I will tell her to come.
CINESIAS. Quick, oh! be quick! Life has no more charms for me since she left my house. I am sad, sad, when I go indoors; it all seems so empty; my victuals have lost their savour. Desire is eating out my heart!
MYRRHINÉ. I love him, oh! I love him; but he won't let himself be loved.
No! I shall not come.
CINESIAS. Myrrhiné, my little darling Myrrhiné, what are you saying? Come down to me quick.
MYRRHINÉ. No indeed, not I.
CINESIAS. I call you, Myrrhiné, Myrrhiné; will you not come?
MYRRHINÉ. Why should you call me? You do not want me.
CINESIAS. Not want you! Why, my weapon stands stiff with desire!
MYRRHINÉ. Good-bye.
CINESIAS. Oh! Myrrhiné, Myrrhiné, in our child's name, hear me; at any rate hear the child! Little lad, call your mother.
CHILD. Mammy, mammy, mammy!
CINESIAS. There, listen! Don't you pity the poor child? It's six days now you've never washed and never fed the child.
MYRRHINÉ. Poor darling, your father takes mighty little care of you!
CINESIAS. Come down, dearest, come down for the child's sake.
MYRRHINÉ. Ah! what a thing it is to be a mother! Well, well, we must come down, I suppose.
CINESIAS. Why, how much younger and prettier she looks! And how she looks at me so lovingly! Her cruelty and scorn only redouble my passion.
MYRRHINÉ. You are as sweet as your father is provoking! Let me kiss you, my treasure, mother's darling!
CINESIAS. Ah! what a bad thing it is to let yourself be led away by other women! Why give me such pain and suffering, and yourself into the bargain?
MYRRHINÉ. Hands off, sir!
CINESIAS. Everything is going to rack and ruin in the house.
MYRRHINÉ. I don't care.
CINESIAS. But your web that's all being pecked to pieces by the cocks and hens, don't you care for that?
MYRRHINÉ. Precious little.
CINESIAS. And Aphrodite, whose mysteries you have not celebrated for so long? Oh! won't you come back home?
MYRRHINÉ. No, at least, not till a sound Treaty put an end to the War.
CINESIAS. Well, if you wish it so much, why, we'll make it, your Treaty.
MYRRHINÉ. Well and good! When that's done, I will come home. Till then, I am bound by an oath.
CINESIAS. At any rate, let's have a short time together.
MYRRHINÉ. No, no, no! … all the same I cannot say I don't love you.
CINESIAS. You love me? Then why refuse what I ask, my little girl, my sweet Myrrhiné.
MYRRHINÉ. You must be joking! What, before the child!
CINESIAS. Manes, carry the lad home. There, you see, the child is gone; there's nothing to hinder us; let us to work!
MYRRHINÉ. But, miserable man, where, where are we to do it?
CINESIAS. In the cave of Pan; nothing could be better.
MYRRHINÉ. But how to purify myself, before going back into the citadel?
CINESIAS. Nothing easier! you can wash at the Clepsydra.[448]
MYRRHINÉ. But my oath? Do you want me to perjure myself?
CINESIAS. I take all responsibility; never make yourself anxious.
MYRRHINÉ. Well, I'll be off, then, and find a bed for us.
CINESIAS. Oh! 'tis not worth while; we can lie on the ground surely.
MYRRHINÉ. No, no! bad man as you are, I don't like your lying on the bare earth.
CINESIAS. Ah! how the dear girl loves me!
MYRRHINÉ (coming back with a bed). Come, get to bed quick; I am going to undress. But, plague take it, we must get a mattress.
CINESIAS. A mattress! Oh! no, never mind!
MYRRHINÉ. No, by Artemis! lie on the bare sacking, never! That were too squalid.
CINESIAS. A kiss!
MYRRHINÉ. Wait a minute!
CINESIAS. Oh! by the great gods, be quick back!
MYRRHINÉ (coming back with a mattress). Here is a mattress. Lie down, I am just going to undress. But, but you've got no pillow.
CINESIAS. I don't want one, no, no.
MYRRHINÉ. But I do.
CINESIAS. Oh! dear, oh, dear! they treat my poor penis for all the world like Heracles.[449]
MYRRHINÉ (coming back with a pillow). There, lift your head, dear!
CINESIAS. That's really everything.
MYRRHINÉ. Is it everything, I wonder.
CINESIAS. Come, my treasure.
MYRRHINÉ. I am just unfastening my girdle. But remember what you promised me about making Peace; mind you keep your word.
CINESIAS. Yes, yes, upon my life I will.
MYRRHINÉ. Why, you have no blanket.
CINESIAS. Great Zeus! what matter of that? 'tis you I want to fuck.
MYRRHINÉ Never fear—directly, directly! I'll be back in no time.
CINESIAS. The woman will kill me with her blankets!
MYRRHINÉ (coming back with a blanket). Now, get up for one moment.
CINESIAS. But I tell you, our friend here is up—all stiff and ready!
MYRRHINÉ. Would you like me to scent you?
CINESIAS. No, by Apollo, no, please!
MYRRHINÉ. Yes, by Aphrodité, but I will, whether you wish it or no.
CINESIAS. Ah! great Zeus, may she soon be done!
MYRRHINÉ (coming back with a flask of perfume). Hold out your hand; now rub it in.
CINESIAS. Oh! in Apollo's name, I don't much like the smell of it; but perhaps 'twill improve when it's well rubbed in. It does not somehow smack of the marriage bed!
MYRRHINÉ. There, what a scatterbrain I am; if I have not brought Rhodian perfumes![450]
CINESIAS. Never mind, dearest, let be now.
MYRRHINÉ. You are joking!
CINESIAS. Deuce take the man who first invented perfumes, say I!
MYRRHINÉ (coming back with another flask). Here, take this bottle.
CINESIAS. I have a better all ready for your service, darling. Come, you provoking creature, to bed with you, and don't bring another thing.
MYRRHINÉ. Coming, coming; I'm just slipping off my shoes. Dear boy, will you vote for peace?
CINESIAS. I'll think about it. (Myrrhiné runs away.) I'm a dead man, she is killing me! She has gone, and left me in torment! I must have someone to fuck, I must! Ah me! the loveliest of women has choused and cheated me. Poor little lad (addressing his penis), how am I to give you what you want so badly? Where is Cynalopex? quick, man, get him a nurse, do![451]
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Poor, miserable wretch, baulked in your amorousness! what tortures are yours! Ah! you fill me with pity. Could any man's back and loins stand such a strain? His organ stands stiff and rigid, and there's never a wench to help him!
CINESIAS. Ye gods in heaven, what pains I suffer!
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Well, there it is; 'tis her doing, that abandoned hussy!
CINESIAS. Nay, nay! rather say that sweetest, dearest darling.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. That dearest darling? no, no, that hussy, say I! Zeus, thou god of the skies, canst not let loose a hurricane, to sweep them all up into the air, and whirl 'em round, then drop 'em down crash! and impale them on the point of his weapon!
A HERALD. Say, where shall I find the Senate and the Prytanes? I am bearer of despatches.
MAGISTRATE. But are you a man or a Priapus, pray?[452]
HERALD. Oh! but he's mighty simple. I am a herald, of course, I swear I am, and I come from Sparta about making peace.
MAGISTRATE. But look, you are hiding a lance under your clothes, surely.
HERALD. No, nothing of the sort.
MAGISTRATE. Then why do you turn away like that, and hold your cloak out from your body? Have you gotten swellings in the groin with your journey?
HERALD. By the twin brethren! the man's an old maniac.
MAGISTRATE. Ah, ha! my fine lad, why I can see it standing, oh fie!
HERALD. I tell you no! but enough of this foolery.
MAGISTRATE. Well, what is it you have there then?
HERALD. A Lacedaemonian 'skytalé.'[453]
MAGISTRATE. Oh, indeed, a 'skytalé,' is it? Well, well, speak out frankly; I know all about these matters. How are things going at Sparta now?
HERALD. Why, everything is turned upside down at Sparta; and all the allies are half dead with lusting. We simply must have Pellené.[454]
MAGISTRATE. What is the reason of it all? Is it the god Pan's doing?
HERALD. No, but Lampito's and the Spartan women's, acting at her instigation; they have denied the men all access to their cunts.
MAGISTRATE. But whatever do you do?
HERALD. We are at our wits' end; we walk bent double, just as if we were carrying lanterns in a wind. The jades have sworn we shall not so much as touch their cunts till we have all agreed to conclude peace.
MAGISTRATE. Ha, ha! So I see now, 'tis a general conspiracy embracing all Greece. Go you back to Sparta and bid them send Envoys with plenary powers to treat for peace. I will urge our Senators myself to name Plenipotentiaries from us; and to persuade them, why, I will show them this. (Pointing to his erect penis.)
HERALD. What could be better? I fly at your command.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. No wild beast is there, no flame of fire, more fierce and untameable than woman; the panther is less savage and shameless.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. And yet you dare to make war upon me, wretch, when you might have me for your most faithful friend and ally.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Never, never can my hatred cease towards women.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Well, please yourself. Still I cannot bear to leave you all naked as you are; folks would laugh at me. Come, I am going to put this tunic on you.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. You are right, upon my word! it was only in my confounded fit of rage I took it off.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Now at any rate you look like a man, and they won't make fun of you. Ah! if you had not offended me so badly, I would take out that nasty insect you have in your eye for you.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Ah! so that's what was annoying me so! Look, here's a ring, just remove the insect, and show it me. By Zeus! it has been hurting my eye this ever so long.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Well, I agree, though your manners are not over and above pleasant. Oh! what a huge great gnat! just look! It's from Tricorysus, for sure.[455]
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. A thousand thanks! the creature was digging a regular well in my eye; now it's gone, my tears flow freely.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. I will wipe them for you—bad, naughty man though you are. Now, just one kiss.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. No—a kiss, certainly not!
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Just one, whether you like it or not.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Oh! those confounded women! how they do cajole us! How true the saying: "'Tis impossible to live with the baggages, impossible to live without 'em"! Come, let us agree for the future not to regard each other any more as enemies; and to clinch the bargain, let us sing a choric song.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. We desire, Athenians, to speak ill of no man; but on the contrary to say much good of everyone, and to do the like. We have had enough of misfortunes and calamities. Is there any, man or woman, wants a bit of money—two or three minas or so;[456] well, our purse is full. If only peace is concluded, the borrower will not have to pay back. Also I'm inviting to supper a few Carystian friends,[457] who are excellently well qualified. I have still a drop of good soup left, and a young porker I'm going to kill, and the flesh will be sweet and tender. I shall expect you at my house to-day; but first away to the baths with you, you and your children; then come all of you, ask no one's leave, but walk straight up, as if you were at home; never fear, the door will be … shut in your faces![458]
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Ah! here come the Envoys from Sparta with their long flowing beards; why, you would think they wore a cage[459] between their thighs. (Enter the Lacedaemonian Envoys.) Hail to you, first of all, Laconians; then tell us how you fare.
A LACONIAN. No need for many words; you see what a state we are in.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Alas! the situation grows more and more strained! the intensity of the thing is just frightful.
LACONIAN. 'Tis beyond belief. But to work! summon your Commissioners, and let us patch up the best peace we may.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Ah! our men too, like wrestlers in the arena, cannot endure a rag over their bellies; 'tis an athlete's malady, which only exercise can remedy.
AN ATHENIAN. Can anybody tell us where Lysistrata is? Surely she will have some compassion on our condition.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Look! 'tis the very same complaint. (Addressing the
Athenian.) Don't you feel of mornings a strong nervous tension?
ATHENIAN. Yes, and a dreadful, dreadful torture it is! Unless peace is made very soon, we shall find no resource but to fuck Clisthenes.[460]
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Take my advice, and put on your clothes again; one of the fellows who mutilated the Hermae[461] might see you.
ATHENIAN. You are right.
LACONIAN. Quite right. There, I will slip on my tunic.
ATHENIAN. Oh! what a terrible state we are in! Greeting to you, Laconian fellow-sufferers.
LACONIAN (addressing one of his countrymen). Ah! my boy, what a thing it would have been if these fellows had seen us just now when our tools were on full stand!
ATHENIAN. Speak out, Laconians, what is it brings you here?
LACONIAN. We have come to treat for peace.
ATHENIAN. Well said; we are of the same mind. Better call Lysistrata then; she is the only person will bring us to terms.
LACONIAN. Yes, yes—and Lysistratus into the bargain, if you will.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Needless to call her; she has heard your voices, and here she comes.
ATHENIAN. Hail, boldest and bravest of womankind! The time is come to show yourself in turn uncompromising and conciliatory, exacting and yielding, haughty and condescending. Call up all your skill and artfulness. Lo! the foremost men in Hellas, seduced by your fascinations, are agreed to entrust you with the task of ending their quarrels.
LYSISTRATA. 'Twill be an easy task—if only they refrain from mutual indulgence in masculine love; if they do, I shall know the fact at once. Now, where is the gentle goddess Peace? Lead hither the Laconian Envoys. But, look you, no roughness or violence; our husbands always behaved so boorishly.[462] Bring them to me with smiles, as women should. If any refuse to give you his hand, then catch him by the penis and draw him politely forward. Bring up the Athenians too; you may take them just how you will. Laconians, approach; and you, Athenians, on my other side. Now hearken all! I am but a woman; but I have good common sense; Nature has dowered me with discriminating judgment, which I have yet further developed, thanks to the wise teachings of my father and the elders of the city. First I must bring a reproach against you that applies equally to both sides. At Olympia, and Thermopylae, and Delphi, and a score of other places too numerous to mention, you celebrate before the same altars ceremonies common to all Hellenes; yet you go cutting each other's throats, and sacking Hellenic cities, when all the while the Barbarian is yonder threatening you! That is my first point.
ATHENIAN. Ah, ah! concupiscence is killing me!
LYSISTRATA. Now 'tis to you I address myself, Laconians. Have you forgotten how Periclides,[463] your own countryman, sat a suppliant before our altars? How pale he was in his purple robes! He had come to crave an army of us; 'twas the time when Messenia was pressing you sore, and the Sea-god was shaking the earth. Cimon marched to your aid at the head of four thousand hoplites, and saved Lacedaemon. And, after such a service as that, you ravage the soil of your benefactors!
ATHENIAN. They do wrong, very wrong, Lysistrata.
LACONIAN. We do wrong, very wrong. Ah! great gods! what lovely thighs she has!
LYSISTRATA. And now a word to the Athenians. Have you no memory left of how, in the days when ye wore the tunic of slaves, the Laconians came, spear in hand, and slew a host of Thessalians and partisans of Hippias the Tyrant? They, and they only, fought on your side on that eventful day; they delivered you from despotism, and thanks to them our Nation could change the short tunic of the slave for the long cloak of the free man.
LACONIAN. I have never seen a woman of more gracious dignity.
ATHENIAN. I have never seen a woman with a finer cunt!
LYSISTRATA. Bound by such ties of mutual kindness, how can you bear to be at war? Stop, stay the hateful strife, be reconciled; what hinders you?
LACONIAN. We are quite ready, if they will give us back our rampart.
LYSISTRATA. What rampart, my dear man?
LACONIAN. Pylos, which we have been asking for and craving for ever so long.
ATHENIAN. In the Sea-god's name, you shall never have it!
LYSISTRATA. Agree, my friends, agree.
ATHENIAN. But then what city shall we be able to stir up trouble in?
LYSISTRATA. Ask for another place in exchange.
ATHENIAN. Ah! that's the ticket! Well, to begin with, give us Echinus, the Maliac gulf adjoining, and the two legs of Megara.[464]
LACONIAN. Oh! surely, surely not all that, my dear sir.
LYSISTRATA. Come to terms; never make a difficulty of two legs more or less!
ATHENIAN. Well, I'm ready now to off coat and cultivate my land.
LACONIAN. And I too, to dung it to start with.
LYSISTRATA. That's just what you shall do, once peace is signed. So, if you really want to make it, go consult your allies about the matter.
ATHENIAN. What allies, I should like to know? Why, we are all on the stand; not one but is mad to be fucking. What we all want, is to be abed with our wives; how should our allies fail to second our project?
LACONIAN. And ours the same, for certain sure!
ATHENIANS. The Carystians first and foremost, by the gods!
LYSISTRATA. Well said, indeed! Now be off to purify yourselves for entering the Acropolis, where the women invite you to supper; we will empty our provision baskets to do you honour. At table, you will exchange oaths and pledges; then each man will go home with his wife.
ATHENIAN. Come along then, and as quick as may be.
LACONIAN. Lead on; I'm your man.
ATHENIAN. Quick, quick's the word, say I.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Embroidered stuffs, and dainty tunics, and flowing gowns, and golden ornaments, everything I have, I offer them you with all my heart; take them all for your children, for your girls, against they are chosen "basket-bearers" to the goddess. I invite you every one to enter, come in and choose whatever you will; there is nothing so well fastened, you cannot break the seals, and carry away the contents. Look about you everywhere … you won't find a blessed thing, unless you have sharper eyes than mine.[465] And if any of you lacks corn to feed his slaves and his young and numerous family, why, I have a few grains of wheat at home; let him take what I have to give, a big twelve-pound loaf included. So let my poorer neighbours all come with bags and wallets; my man, Manes, shall give them corn; but I warn them not to come near my door, or—beware the dog![465]
A MARKET-LOUNGER. I say, you, open the door!
A SLAVE. Go your way, I tell you. Why, bless me, they're sitting down now; I shall have to singe 'em with my torch to make 'em stir! What an impudent lot of fellows!
MARKET-LOUNGER. I don't mean to budge.
SLAVE. Well, as you must stop, and I don't want to offend you—but you'll see some queer sights.
MARKET-LOUNGER. Well and good, I've no objection.
SLAVE. No, no, you must be off—or I'll tear your hair out, I will; be off, I say, and don't annoy the Laconian Envoys; they're just coming out from the banquet-hall.
AN ATHENIAN. Such a merry banquet I've never seen before! The Laconians were simply charming. After the drink is in, why, we're all wise men, all. It's only natural, to be sure, for sober, we're all fools. Take my advice, my fellow-countrymen, our Envoys should always be drunk. We go to Sparta; we enter the city sober; why, we must be picking a quarrel directly. We don't understand what they say to us, we imagine a lot they don't say at all, and we report home all wrong, all topsy-turvy. But, look you, to-day it's quite different; we're enchanted whatever happens; instead of Clitagoras, they might sing us Telamon,[466] and we should clap our hands just the same. A perjury or two into the bargain, la! what does that matter to merry companions in their cups?
SLAVE. But here they are back again! Will you begone, you loafing scoundrels.
MARKET-LOUNGER. Ah ha! here's the company coming out already.
A LACONIAN. My dear, sweet friend, come, take your flute in hand; I would fain dance and sing my best in honour of the Athenians and our noble selves.
AN ATHENIAN. Yes, take your flute, i' the gods' name. What a delight to see him dance!
CHORUS OF LACONIANS. Oh Mnemosyné! inspire these men, inspire my muse who knows our exploits and those of the Athenians. With what a godlike ardour did they swoop down at Artemisium[467] on the ships of the Medes! What a glorious victory was that! For the soldiers of Leonidas,[468] they were like fierce wild-boars whetting their tushes. The sweat ran down their faces, and drenched all their limbs, for verily the Persians were as many as the sands of the seashore. Oh! Artemis, huntress queen, whose arrows pierce the denizens of the woods, virgin goddess, be thou favourable to the Peace we here conclude; through thee may our hearts be long united! May this treaty draw close for ever the bonds of a happy friendship! No more wiles and stratagems! Aid us, oh! aid us, maiden huntress!
LYSISTRATA. All is for the best; and now, Laconians, take your wives away home with you, and you, Athenians, yours. May husband live happily with wife, and wife with husband. Dance, dance, to celebrate our bliss, and let us be heedful to avoid like mistakes for the future.
CHORUS OF ATHENIANS Appear, appear, dancers, and the Graces with you! Let us invoke, one and all, Artemis, and her heavenly brother, gracious Apollo, patron of the dance, and Dionysus, whose eye darts flame, as he steps forward surrounded by the Maenad maids, and Zeus, who wields the flashing lightning, and his august, thrice-blessed spouse, the Queen of Heaven! These let us invoke, and all the other gods, calling all the inhabitants of the skies to witness the noble Peace now concluded under the fond auspices of Aphrodité. Io Paean! Io Paean! dance, leap, as in honour of a victory won. Evoé! Evoé! And you, our Laconian guests, sing us a new and inspiring strain!
CHORUS OF LACONIANS. Leave once more, oh! leave once more the noble height of Taygetus, oh! Muse of Lacedaemon, and join us in singing the praises of Apollo of Amyclae, and Athena of the Brazen House, and the gallant twin sons of Tyndarus, who practise arms on the banks of Eurotas river.[469] Haste, haste hither with nimble-footed pace, let us sing Sparta, the city that delights in choruses divinely sweet and graceful dances, when our maidens bound lightly by the river side, like frolicsome fillies, beating the ground with rapid steps and shaking their long locks in the wind, as Bacchantes wave their wands in the wild revels of the Wine-god. At their head, oh! chaste and beauteous goddess, daughter of Latona, Artemis, do thou lead the song and dance. A fillet binding thy waving tresses, appear in thy loveliness; leap like a fawn; strike thy divine hands together to animate the dance, and aid us to renown the valiant goddess of battles, great Athené of the Brazen House!
* * * * *
* * * * *
Footnotes:
[390] At Athens more than anywhere the festivals of Bacchus (Dionysus) were celebrated with the utmost pomp—and also with the utmost licence, not to say licentiousness.
Pan—-the rustic god and king of the Satyrs; his feast was similarly an occasion of much coarse self-indulgence.
Aphrodité Colias—under this name the goddess was invoked by courtesans as patroness of sensual, physical love. She had a temple on the promontory of Colias, on the Attic coast—whence the surname.
The Genetyllides were minor deities, presiding over the act of generation, as the name indicates. Dogs were offered in sacrifice to them—presumably because of the lubricity of that animal.
At the festivals of Dionysus, Pan and Aphrodité women used to perform lascivious dances to the accompaniment of the beating of tambourines. Lysistrata implies that the women she had summoned to council cared really for nothing but wanton pleasures.
[391] An obscene double entendre; Calonicé understands, or pretends to understand, Lysistrata as meaning a long and thick "membrum virile"!
[392] The eels from Lake Copaïs in Boeotia were esteemed highly by epicures.
[393] This is the reproach Demosthenes constantly levelled against his Athenian fellow-countrymen—their failure to seize opportunity.
[394] An island of the Saronic Gulf, lying between Magara and Attica. It was separated by a narrow strait—scene of the naval battle of Salamis, in which the Athenians defeated Xerxes—only from the Attic coast, and was subject to Athens.
[395] A deme, or township, of Attica, lying five or six miles north of Athens. The Acharnians were throughout the most extreme partisans of the warlike party during the Peloponnesian struggle. See 'The Acharnians.'
[396] The precise reference is uncertain, and where the joke exactly comes in. The Scholiast says Theagenes was a rich, miserly and superstitious citizen, who never undertook any enterprise without first consulting an image of Hecaté, the distributor of honour and wealth according to popular belief; and his wife would naturally follow her husband's example.
[397] A deme of Attica, a small and insignificant community—a 'Little Pedlington' in fact.
[398] In allusion to the gymnastic training which was de rigueur at Sparta for the women no less than the men, and in particular to the dance of the Lacedaemonian girls, in which the performer was expected to kick the fundament with the heels—always a standing joke among the Athenians against their rivals and enemies the Spartans.
[399] The allusion, of course, is to the 'garden of love,' the female parts, which it was the custom with the Greek women, as it is with the ladies of the harem in Turkey to this day, to depilate scrupulously, with the idea of making themselves more attractive to men.
[400] Corinth was notorious in the Ancient world for its prostitutes and general dissoluteness.
[401] An Athenian general strongly suspected of treachery; Aristophanes pretends his own soldiers have to see that he does not desert to the enemy.
[402] A town and fortress on the west coast of Messenia, south-east part of Peloponnese, at the northern extremity of the bay of Sphacteria—the scene by the by of the modern naval battle of Navarino—in Lacedaemonian territory; it had been seized by the Athenian fleet, and was still in their possession at the date, 412 B.C., of the representation of the 'Lysistrata,' though two years later, in the twenty-second year of the War, it was recovered by Sparta.
[403] The Athenian women, rightly or wrongly, had the reputation of being over fond of wine. Aristophanes, here and elsewhere, makes many jests on this weakness of theirs.
[404] The lofty range of hills overlooking Sparta from the west.
[405] In the original "we are nothing but Poseidon and a boat"; the allusion is to a play of Sophocles, now lost, but familiar to Aristophanes' audience, entitled 'Tyro,' in which the heroine, Tyro, appears with Poseidon, the sea-god, at the beginning of the tragedy, and at the close with the two boys she had had by him, whom she exposes in an open boat.
[406] "By the two goddesses,"—a woman's oath, which recurs constantly in this play; the two goddesses are always Demeter and Proserpine.
[407] One of the Cyclades, between Naxos and Cos, celebrated, like the latter, for its manufacture of fine, almost transparent silks, worn in Greece, and later at Rome, by women of loose character.
[408] The proverb, quoted by Pherecrates, is properly spoken of those who go out of their way to do a thing already done—"to kill a dead horse," but here apparently is twisted by Aristophanes into an allusion to the leathern 'godemiche' mentioned a little above; if the worst comes to the worst, we must use artificial means. Pherecrates was a comic playwright, a contemporary of Aristophanes.
[409] Literally "our Scythian woman." At Athens, policemen and ushers in the courts were generally Scythians; so the revolting women must have their Scythian "Usheress" too.
[410] In allusion to the oath which the seven allied champions before Thebes take upon a buckler, in Aeschylus' tragedy of 'The Seven against Thebes,' v. 42.
[411] A volcanic island in the northern part of the Aegaean, celebrated for its vineyards.
[412] The old men are carrying faggots and fire to burn down the gates of the Acropolis, and supply comic material by their panting and wheezing as they climb the steep approaches to the fortress and puff and blow at their fires. Aristophanes gives them names, purely fancy ones—Draces, Strymodorus, Philurgus, Laches.
[413] Cleomenes, King of Sparta, had in the preceding century commanded a Lacedaemonian expedition against Athens. At the invitation of the Alcmaeonidae, enemies of the sons of Peisistratus, he seized the Acropolis, but after an obstinately contested siege was forced to capitulate and retire.
[414] Lemnos was proverbial with the Greeks for chronic misfortune and a succession of horrors and disasters. Can any good thing come out of Lemnos?
[415] That is, a friend of the Athenian people; Samos had just before the date of the play re-established the democracy and renewed the old alliance with Athens.
[416] A second Chorus enters—of women who are hurrying up with water to extinguish the fire just started by the Chorus of old men. Nicodicé, Calycé, Crityllé, Rhodippé, are fancy names the poet gives to different members of the band. Another, Stratyllis, has been stopped by the old men on her way to rejoin her companions.
[417] Bupalus was a celebrated contemporary sculptor, a native of Clazomenae. The satiric poet Hipponax, who was extremely ugly, having been portrayed by Bupalus as even more unsightly-looking than the reality, composed against the artist so scurrilous an invective that the latter hung himself in despair. Apparently Aristophanes alludes here to a verse in which Hipponax threatened to beat Bupalus.
[418] The Heliasts at Athens were the body of citizens chosen by lot to act as jurymen (or, more strictly speaking, as judges and jurymen, the Dicast, or so-called Judge, being merely President of the Court, the majority of the Heliasts pronouncing sentence) in the Heliaia, or High Court, where all offences liable to public prosecution were tried. They were 6000 in number, divided into ten panels of 500 each, a thousand being held in reserve to supply occasional vacancies. Each Heliast was paid three obols for each day's attendance in court.
[419] Women only celebrated the festivals of Adonis. These rites were not performed in public, but on the terraces and flat roofs of the houses.
[420] The Assembly, or Ecclesia, was the General Parliament of the Athenian people, in which every adult citizen had a vote. It met on the Pnyx hill, where the assembled Ecclesiasts were addressed from the Bema, or speaking-block.
[421] An orator and statesman who had first proposed the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, of 415-413 B.C. This was on the first day of the festival of Adonis—ever afterwards regarded by the Athenians as a day of ill omen.
[422] An island in the Ionian Sea, on the west of Greece, near Cephalenia, and an ally of Athens during the Peloponnesian War.
[423] Cholozyges, a nickname for Demostratus.
[424] The State treasure was kept in the Acropolis, which the women had seized.
[425] The second (mythical) king of Athens, successor of Cecrops.
[426] The leader of the Revolution which resulted in the temporary overthrow of the Democracy at Athens (413, 412 B.C.), and the establishment of the Oligarchy of the Four Hundred.
[427] Priests of Cybelé, who indulged in wild, frenzied dances, to the accompaniment of the clashing of cymbals, in their celebrations in honour of the goddess.
[428] Captain of a cavalry division; they were chosen from amongst the Hippeis, or 'Knights' at Athens.
[429] In allusion to a play of Euripides, now lost, with this title. Tereus was son of Ares and king of the Thracians in Daulis.
[430] An allusion to the disastrous Sicilian Expedition (415-413 B.C.), in which many thousands of Athenian citizens perished.
[431] The dead were laid out at Athens before the house door.
[432] An offering made to the Manes of the deceased on the third day after the funeral.
[433] Hippias and Hipparchus, the two sons of Pisistratus, known as the Pisistratidae, became Tyrants of Athens upon their father's death in 527 B.C. In 514 the latter was assassinated by the conspirators, Harmodius and Aristogiton, who took the opportunity of the Panathenaic festival and concealed their daggers in myrtle wreaths. They were put to death, but four years later the surviving Tyrant Hippias was expelled, and the young and noble martyrs to liberty were ever after held in the highest honour by their fellow-citizens. Their statues stood in the Agora or Public Market-Square.
[434] That is, the three obols paid for attendance as a Heliast at the High Court.
[435] See above, under note 3 [433. Transcriber.].
[436] The origin of the name was this: in ancient days a tame bear consecrated to Artemis, the huntress goddess, it seems, devoured a young girl, whose brothers killed the offender. Artemis was angered and sent a terrible pestilence upon the city, which only ceased when, by direction of the oracle, a company of maidens was dedicated to the deity, to act the part of she-bears in the festivities held annually in her honour at the Brauronia, her festival so named from the deme of Brauron in Attica.
[437] The Basket-Bearers, Canephoroi, at Athens were the maidens who, clad in flowing robes, carried in baskets on their heads the sacred implements and paraphernalia in procession at the celebrations in honour of Demeter, Dionysus and Athené.
[438] A treasure formed by voluntary contributions at the time of the Persian Wars; by Aristophanes' day it had all been dissipated, through the influence of successive demagogues, in distributions and gifts to the public under various pretexts.
[439] A town and fortress of Southern Attica, in the neighbourhood of Marathon, occupied by the Alcmaeonidae—the noble family or clan at Athens banished from the city in 595 B.C., restored 560, but again expelled by Pisistratus—in the course of their contest with that Tyrant. Returning to Athens on the death of Hippias (510 B.C.), they united with the democracy, and the then head of the family, Cleisthenes, gave a new constitution to the city.
[440] Queen of Halicarnassus, in Caria; an ally of the Persian King Xerxes in his invasion of Greece; she fought gallantly at the battle of Salamis.
[441] A double entendre—with allusion to the posture in sexual intercourse known among the Greeks as [Greek: hippos], in Latin 'equus,' the horse, where the woman mounts the man in reversal of the ordinary position.
[442] Micon, a famous Athenian painter, decorated the walls of the Poecilé Stoa, or Painted Porch, at Athens with a series of frescoes representing the battles of the Amazons with Theseus and the Athenians.
[443] To avenge itself on the eagle, the beetle threw the former's eggs out of the nest and broke them. See the Fables of Aesop.
[444] Keeper of a house of ill fame apparently.
[445] "As chaste as Melanion" was a Greek proverb. Who Melanion was is unknown.
[446] Myronides and Phormio were famous Athenian generals. The former was celebrated for his conquest of all Boeotia, except Thebes, in 458 B.C.; the latter, with a fleet of twenty triremes, equipped at his own cost, defeated a Lacedaemonian fleet of forty-seven sail, in 429.
[447] Timon, the misanthrope; he was an Athenian and a contemporary of Aristophanes. Disgusted by the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens and sickened with repeated disappointments, he retired altogether from society, admitting no one, it is said, to his intimacy except the brilliant young statesman Alcibiades.
[448] A spring so named within the precincts of the Acropolis.
[449] The comic poets delighted in introducing Heracles (Hercules) on the stage as an insatiable glutton, whom the other characters were for ever tantalizing by promising toothsome dishes and then making him wait indefinitely for their arrival.
[450] The Rhodian perfumes and unguents were less esteemed than the Syrian.
[451] 'Dog-fox,' nickname of a certain notorious Philostratus, keeper of an Athenian brothel of note in Aristophanes' day.
[452] The god of gardens—and of lubricity; represented by a grotesque figure with an enormous penis.
[453] A staff in use among the Lacedaemonians for writing cipher despatches. A strip of leather or paper was wound round the 'skytalé,' on which the required message was written lengthwise, so that when unrolled it became unintelligible; the recipient abroad had a staff of the same thickness and pattern, and so was enabled by rewinding the document to decipher the words.
[454] A city of Achaia, the acquisition of which had long been an object of Lacedaemonian ambition. To make the joke intelligible here, we must suppose Pellené was also the name of some notorious courtesan of the day.
[455] A deme of Attica, abounding in woods and marshes, where the gnats were particularly troublesome. There is very likely also an allusion to the spiteful, teasing character of its inhabitants.
[456] A mina was a little over £4; 60 minas made a talent.
[457] Carystus was a city of Euboea notorious for the dissoluteness of its inhabitants; hence the inclusion of these Carystian youths in the women's invitation.
[458] A [Greek: para prosdokian]; i.e. exactly the opposite of the word expected is used to conclude the sentence—to move the sudden hilarity of the audience as a finale to the scene.
[459] A wattled cage or pen for pigs.
[460] An effeminate, a pathic; failing women, they will have to resort to pederasty.
[461] These Hermae were half-length figures of the god Hermes, which stood at the corners of streets and in public places at Athens. One night, just before the sailing of the Sicilian Expedition, they were all mutilated—to the consternation of the inhabitants. Alcibiades and his wild companions were suspected of the outrage.
[462] They had repeatedly dismissed with scant courtesy successive Lacedaemonian embassies coming to propose terms of peace after the notable Athenian successes at Pylos, when the Island of Sphacteria was captured and 600 Spartan citizens brought prisoners to Athens. This was in 425 B.C., the seventh year of the War.
[463] Chief of the Lacedaemonian embassy which came to Athens, after the earthquake of 464 B.C., which almost annihilated the town of Sparta, to invoke the help of the Athenians against the revolted Messenians and helots.
[464] Echinus was a town on the Thessalian coast, at the entrance to the Maliac Gulf, near Thermopylae and opposite the northern end of the Athenian island of Euboea. By the "legs of Megara" are meant the two "long walls" or lines of fortification connecting the city of Megara with its seaport Nisaea—in the same way as Piraeus was joined to Athens.
[465] Examples of [Greek: para prosdokian] again; see above.
[466] Clitagoras was a composer of drinking songs, Telamon of war songs.
[467] Here, off the north coast of Euboea, the Greeks defeated the Persians in a naval battle, 480 B.C.
[468] The hero of Thermopylae, where the 300 Athenians arrested the advance of the invading hosts of Xerxes in the same year.
[469] Amyclae, an ancient town on the Eurotas within two or three miles of Sparta, the traditional birthplace of Castor and Pollux; here stood a famous and magnificent Temple of Apollo.
"Of the Brazen House," a surname of Athené, from the Temple dedicated to her worship at Chalcis in Euboea, the walls of which were covered with plates of brass.
Sons of Tyndarus, that is, Castor and Pollux, "the great twin brethren," held in peculiar reverence at Sparta.