Lysistrata

by Aristophanes

Still if you wake a wasps’ nest then of wasps you must beware.

While ever arrived some fresh tale of decisions more foolish by far and presaging disaster. Then I would say to him, “O my dear husband, why still do they rush on destruction the faster?” At which he would look at me sideways, exclaiming, “Keep for your web and your shuttle your care, Or for some hours hence your cheeks will be sore and hot; leave this alone, war is Man’s sole affair!” MAGISTRATE By Zeus, but a man of fine sense, he.

LYSISTRATA If, when yarn we are winding, It chances to tangle, then, as perchance you may know, through the skein This way and that still the spool we keep passing till it is finally clear all again: So to untangle the War and its errors, ambassadors out on all sides we will send This way and that, here, there and round about—soon you will find that the War has an end. MAGISTRATE 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!

MEN There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed. She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed. WOMEN And yet you are fool enough, it seems, to dare to war with me, When for your faithful ally you might win me easily.

O botheration take you all! How you cajole and flatter. A hell it is to live with you; to live without, a hell:

1ST ATHENIAN I’ve never known such a pleasant banquet before, And what delightful fellows the Spartans are. When we are warm with wine, how wise we grow. 2ND ATHENIAN That’s only fair, since sober we’re such fools: This is the advice I’d give the Athenians— See our ambassadors are always drunk.

Aristophanes (446–386 BC), an ancient Greek dramatist, is universally acknowledged as the father of comedy.