Lysistrata

by Aristophanes

I am hot all over with blushes for our sex. Men say we’re slippery rogues—

How could we do Such a big wise deed? We women who dwell Quietly adorning ourselves in a back-room With gowns of lucid gold and gawdy toilets Of stately silk and dainty little slippers. . . .

We must refrain from every depth of love. . . .

Lewd to the least drop in the tiniest vein, Our sex is fitly food for Tragic Poets, Our whole life’s but a pile of kisses and babies.

If then he seizes me by dint of force, LYSISTRATA I’ll give him reason for a long remorse.

Now I appreciate Euripides’ strange subtlety: Woman is the most shameless beast of all the beasts that be.

Though I’m a stay-at-home and most a quiet life enjoy, Polite to all and every (for I’m naturally coy), Still if you wake a wasps’ nest then of wasps you must beware.

Their courage unswerving and witty Will rescue our city.

So with these trivial tricks of the household, domestic analogies of threads, skeins and spools, You think that you’ll solve such a bitter complexity, unwind such political problems, you fools!

Not in the same way. Not as a woman grows withered, grows he. He, when returned from the war, though grey-headed, yet if he wishes can choose out a wife. But she has no solace save peering for omens, wretched and lonely the rest of her life.

I’m dead: the woman’s worn me all away. She’s gone and left me with an anguished pulse.

CINESIAS O Zeus, what throbbing suffering! MEN She did it all, the harlot, she With her atrocious harlotry.

O Zeus, O Zeus, Canst Thou not suddenly let loose Some twirling hurricane to tear Her flapping up along the air And drop her, when she’s whirled around, Here to the ground Neatly impaled upon the stake That’s ready upright for her sake.

There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.