Aristophanes' Portrayal of Greek Life

When Aristophanes' was asked to write a play for the Feast of Dionysus, he decided to use the ongoing war between the Greeks and the Spartans as his theme. He wrote a comedy that also included satire to show how the war could be won if women ran it, a ridiculous notion for that time period. In his play, Lysistrata, Aristophanes portrayed two serious problems of Greek life: how often and long the men were away at war and how their absence affected the women.

The message Lysistrata portrayed was that if the women took matters into their own hands, the war would be over quickly. Lysistrata, who led the Greek and Spartan women on her conquest, gathered all the women together. They seized the Acropolis in order to keep their husbands away from them. They planned to stay there until the men stopped fighting the war. Their hope was that withholding sexual favors from their husbands would cause them to break and give the women what they wanted: an end to the war.

Lysistrata was challenged by the magistrate who thought her idea was ridiculous. In a confrontation between the two, Lysistrata talked about all the times the men came home and wouldn't tell the women what was happening in their own country and that when she questioned her own husband he replied that "war shall be the concern of Men" (480). She said that the women had allowed this to happen long enough and now they've had enough of their men being away, so they are going to take matters into their own hands to stop the war and bring the men home; that "War shall be the concern of Women!" (480).

The magistrate thinks the women were all crazy, but Lysistrata insisted that the women had a plan to end the war. Although the magistrate didn't listen, Lysistrata and the other women continued with their plan. They stayed at the Acropolis during the time that the war continued.