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By most accounts Aristophanes was the greatest comic writer of his day. On his shoulders alone rests an entire age of comedy. By the time Aristophanes began to write his comedies, the people of Athens were increasingly demoralized by the ongoing conflicts of the Peloponnesian War. That is why in most of his plays there are tones of apprehension and grief. Lysistrata was written twenty-one years into the Peloponnesian War. Although the play is light-hearted, it was written out of the writers grief over the thousand of men who died in the terrible defeat that the Athenians suffered in Syracuse.
The play begins in a public square in Athens. There Lysistrata awaits the other women to explain to them the details of her plan to bring peace in Greece. At the time Athens was at war with Sparta and other cities. Most of the men where at war, a lot of them died, and the rest would come back only to relax for a few days enjoy the pleasure of their wives and go back to war. To Lysistrata that was unacceptable, so she gathered the women from Athens, Sparta and the rest of the cities that were at war and made them take an oath that they will not sleep with their husbands until peace was made and the war would be finally over. The other women were against it at the beginning, but soon they realized that a sex strike was the only thing that they could use to convince their husbands to make peace.
At the same time that the meeting was going on the elderly women of Athens took over Acropolis. Acropolis then became their fortress, all the women gathered inside and would not come out until peace was made. They were constantly threaded by the men to stop their strike but with no results. Some women did break but Lysistrata was always there to convince them that this had to be done. Her plan worked and Aristophanes used the example of Myrrhine and her husband Cinesias to show us how the women tortured the men and made them get together to find a solution to the problem at hand. In the final act the men from Athens and the other cities that were at war decided to find common ground and solve their political differences.
Lysistrata was the negotiator between the opposing sides, she was the voice of reason and in the end all the men respected her and agreed to stop the war. To me Aristophanes was trying to make a political statement about the ongoing war, and give us a taste of the war of the sexes at that time. In reality I do not think that women could have such a political influence. Women were not free to move around with out an escort and there is no way a woman from Athens could contact a Spartan woman, especially at a time of war or take over Acropolis. But the point that Aristophanes was trying to make was that women were capable of intellectual, political, and philosophical thought, and their views should have been taken seriously. They cared about the welfare of their city and they wanted to see their city thrive.
This play is a timeless classic and it survived thousands of years and it can still fit in our lives today. To me that is amazing. Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Peace Was Made Cities That Were At War Women
