Lysistrata | Aristophanes' Depiction of Women in Lysistrata
Metzger has a Ph.D., and specializes in literature and drama at The University of New Mexico, where she is a Lecturer in the English Department and an Adjunct Professor in the University Honors Program. In the following essay, she discusses Aristophanes’ depiction of women and suggests that this depiction of women in Lysistrata misinforms the audience about the public forums available to women in 5th-century B.C. Greece.
The premise of Lysistrata is easy to understand: if men will not fix the mess they have made, then women must fix it for them. Aristophanes’ comedy provides women with a strong incentive to, and an even stronger means to, create peace. The men of Athens have waged war for twenty years, and there appears to be no end to the war, in the foreseeable future. One woman, Lysistrata, decides that if men cannot end the war, women must do so, and so, she calls the women of Athens and a representative of Sparta together to form an alliance. This alliance of women will use the one...
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