Lysistrata

Summary

The Peloponnesian War drags on and on with no end in sight, and the tough-minded Lysistrata has had enough. Men!—always making stupid decisions that affect everyone. Women’s opinions are never listened to.

Taking matters into her own hands, Lysistrata convenes a meeting of women from warring city-states across Greece and calls for a sex strike. It’s a hard sell, but in the end it is agreed: they will withhold sex until the war is brought to hasty a close.

Playing their part too, the old women of Athens seize control of the Acropolis—and with it, the treasury—holing up behind it’s barred gates and choking off the silver that funds the interminable war.

It’s a waiting game, and a difficult one—some of the women are already becoming desperate for sex and deserting the cause. But Lysistrata is determined to stay the course and soon restores discipline. The men can’t hold out forever … can they?

First staged in 411 BCE, Lysistrata is the bawdy, comic account of one woman’s singular mission to end the Peloponnesian War using the only means that seems available to her in a male-dominated world.