Lysistrata

The play’s protagonist, Lysistrata’s name means “Army-Dissolver.” It also had a faint connotation with sex; “lysi-” comes from a Greek verb which means “to loosen,” and can refer to sex’s ability to make people loosen up (as the sex blockade does in the play). Her name may be a reference to a famous real-life contemporary priestess of Athena, Lysimache (“Battle-Dissolver”), but we should not think of Lysistrata as a direct adaptation of a real historical figure. The similarities between her and the priestess may be useful, though, in linking Lysistrata to the goddess Athena herself. Like Athena, she is knowledgeable about the domestic sphere, but also competent in battle (even if the battle is for love). Like Athena, she also takes up a place on the Acropolis and refuses to leave; in myth, Athena bested the sea god Poseidon there to become the patron goddess of the city.

Lysistrata is typical of Aristophanes’ male comic heroes in everything but her gender. She sees a problem, has an innovative idea to solve it, and eventually puts things right, not only for herself but for her city (and in this case, all of Greece). She is a sympathetic hero embodying the ideal civic person. She vocalizes the thoughts and needs of the ordinary, marginal, and powerless class including women (for whom she proves a somewhat lukewarm advocate and men of various classes in Aristophanes’ audience. Lysistrata does not go as far in lewdness or outrageousness as some of Aristophanes’ later heroines. While she occasionally tells the dirty joke, she largely stays above the fray, presenting a stark contrast to the other women’s stereotypical addictions to oath-breaking, binge-drinking, and sex.

Interestingly, we are unsure of Lysistrata’s age or social role. We know only that she is a free citizen of Athens. We hear of no husband or children, and while she feels youthful in her easy jokes and comfort with her peers, she takes no part in the other young women’s escapades or vices. In this way she would have read as distinctly “masculine” to a Greek audience, a trait shared with the Spartan Lampito. Lysistrata is not the butt of gender-related jokes in the play—at least not successful ones. The Councilor debates her as if she were a man, and the respect both women and men have for her is reflected in the united chorus’s invitation for her to preside over the peace talks. Lysistrata’s primary virtue is her deep understanding of everyone’s expected role in a functioning Greek society, male or female. She is a traditionalist above all, with a strong sense of what constitutes proper behavior for every Athenian.