The women of Greece refuse their husbands until the men make peace. Aristophanes, 411 BC.
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Twenty years into the war between Athens and Sparta, an Athenian woman named Lysistrata calls together the women of Greece, Spartans and Boeotians included, and they swear an oath: no sex until the men sign a peace. Meanwhile the older women seize the Acropolis and the treasury that pays for the war. It is in the press now and isn't readable here yet. Help press it.
Aristophanes staged it in 411 BC, two years after Athens lost its great fleet and army in Sicily, and a few months before the democracy was overthrown. The war had been running since 431. Lysistrata's name means something like she who disbands armies.
The Spartan woman, Lampito, speaks her own Laconian dialect, and in Greek you hear it in every line: a long a where Athenians say ē, and her own words for things. The women swear their oath over a great bowl of wine instead of a sacrificed animal. Read word by word, the dialect jokes and double meanings that translators have to smooth over are all still on the page.
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