Read this if you…
- want the original sex strike (the ladies refuse men sex)
- want the most famous Greek comedy play
- want to see a comedian's anti-war material
- like real dirty/sexual humor
Skip this if you…
- find the plot point of women refusing men sex off-putting
The 
Take
Crazy to see the ancient Greeks loving super low brow humor. Very funny concept. And damn, Aristophanes really loves peace I guess
The lineage through Lysistrata
- The Iliad by Homer. Lysistrata built on it. - When Lysistrata recalls her husband telling her "war shall be the business of menfolk," she's echoing Hector's farewell to Andromache in *Iliad* 6 - Aristophanes takes Homer's most famous statement of separate spheres and detonates it — the women make war their business and end it - Knowing the original line lands the joke: he's quoting the canon to overturn it
Depicted in Art
Greek soldier and woman face off in stylised art-deco line, mid-scene from the sex-strike.
Charles-Émile Carlègle, 1928
Lysistrata stands frontally in flowing robes, brandishing a spear, having seized the Acropolis from the men of Athens.
Aubrey Beardsley, 1896
A Spartan herald arrives at Athens visibly aroused under his cloak; a magistrate examines him with a staff, both in profile.
Aubrey Beardsley, 1896
Two Spartan ambassadors arrive in profile with prominent erections under their tunics, sent to sue for peace after the sex-strike has worked.
Aubrey Beardsley, 1896
Engraved marble bust of the comic poet Aristophanes
Recommended Editions
Alan H. Sommerstein
Penguin Classics · 2003
Sommerstein in Penguin's Lysistrata and Other Plays. The jokes mostly land in English, and the introductions cover the Peloponnesian War context you'd otherwise be googling on the way through.
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Notable Quotes
We women have the salvation of Greece in our hands.
Screen & Stage
Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)
- Pablo Picasso, artist, 1881–1973: Picasso made six original etchings for the 1934 Limited Editions Club Lysistrata — bold, erotic line drawings matching Aristophanes' frank sexuality.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet and dramatist, 1749–1832: "Aristophanes, the ill-mannered darling of the Graces."
- Plato, philosopher, c. 428–348 BCE: The Graces, looking for a shrine that would never fall, found one in the soul of Aristophanes.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher, 1844–1900: "Under the pillow of his death-bed there was found no 'Bible'… but a book of Aristophanes."
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