Lysistrata: Lines 1 – 253 Summary & Analysis

The play opens on a street in Athens, with the Acropolis visible in the background. It is early morning. Lysistrata is alone, pacing in furious impatience, waiting for the women she has summoned to arrive. She complains that they would come right away if it was for a party in honor of the wine god Bacchus or for some debauchery, but today “there’s not one woman here.”

Lysistrata’s neighbor Kleonike enters. “Don’t look so barbarous, baby,” she says. Lysistrata responds that she’s ashamed to be a woman—women can’t even live up to male slanders, she says. Husbands say their wives are sly, deceitful, always plotting, yet here Lysistrata is attempting to devise a “monstrous” plot, and the women, she thinks, are all sleeping at home. Kleonike attempts to soothe Lysistrata by reminding her of how hard women have it—pleasing their husbands, taking care of their babies—but Lysistrata thinks all this is trivial compared to her plot.

Kleonike asks what Lysistrata’s plot is all about. Lysistrata responds that the hope and salvation of Greece lies with the women. “Now there’s a last resort,” retorts Kleonike. Lysistrata elaborates: it is up to the woman of Greece to decide whether the Greek city-state of Athens pursues peace or annihilation in its war with Sparta (i.e. the Peloponnesian War). Kleonike thinks this sounds fun: annihilation of every last Boiotian, she cries. (The Boiotians were allies of Sparta in the war.) On second thought, she says, peace is best—how else would Athenians get their hands on the delicious eels Boiotia is famous for?

Lysistrata insists that she wants to bring together all the Greek women to form an alliance and save the States of Greece. “Be practical,” Kleonike advises. Women are unwise, she says, and are talented only in glamorously painting their faces and primping. Indeed, she gets so carried away by the very thought of primping that she begins to indulgently list the clothes she loves: “saffron rappers,” “exquisite negligees,” and so on. Lysistrata thinks that such sexy garments, along with rouge and perfume, are precisely the way to salvation for Greece. But where are the other women? Kleonike assures her that authentic Athenians do everything late, and that the delegations of women from out of town are late on account of their long trips.

At last, other women enter from the right and left, even some ragged rural women. Lysistrata’s friend Myrrhine also enters guiltily. Soon after, the brawny Spartan woman Lampito enters, along with a pretty Boiotian girl named Ismenia and a huge, big-butted Corinthian girl. Lysistrata welcomes all, and showers the out-of-towners with compliments. Lampito demonstrates the dance that keeps her so fit, and Kleonike praises the beauty of her bosoms. Lampito says, in her “bumpkin” Spartan dialect, that she feels “like a heifer come fair-time” to be so inspected and praised. Lysistrata and Kleonike go on to inspect the aristocratic Ismenia of Thebes, and the Corinthian girl, who comes from an important family.

The women want to know, at last, why Lysistrata has summoned them. Lysistrata asks if the women would like their men to come home from war—they would. Lysistrata then asks if she’d have their support in a scheme to end the war. The women enthusiastically pledge money and hard work to the cause. Myrrhine says that she’s “ready to split myself right up the middle like a mackerel, and give you half!” Lysistrata then reveals her plot: the women can force their husbands to negotiate peace through “Total Abstinence.” From what? the women ask. They’d be willing to die for peace.

To force a peaceful end to the Peloponnesian War, says Lysistrata, the women need only abstain totally—from sex. At once, the women turn away and begin to gloomily walk off, in tears. “On with the War!” cry Kleonike and Myrrhine. They’re willing to walk through fire barefoot, “but not to give up SEX—there nothing like it!” Lysistrata curses her sex, saying that it’s so weak in willpower, and is material only for tragedy. The tragic formula of going to bed with a god and getting rid of the baby sums women up, Lysistrata says disgustedly.

Lampito, however, is on Lysistrata’s side, and the other women gradually come around to the idea of a sex strike. They need only present themselves to the men at their most seductive—made-up, dressed in “those filmy tunics that set off everything we have”—and then refuse to sleep with their hot and bothered men. Lysistrata thinks the men will conclude a treaty rather quickly. Kleonike worries that the men will leave the women, or force them to have sex, or beat them. Lysistrata tells her to resist nastily: “A married man wants harmony—cooperation, not rape,” she says. The women are persuaded, and they approve the sex strike.

Lysistrata proceeds to reveal the second part of her plot: to prevent the Athenian men from continuing the war effort, the Chorus of Old Women will seize the Acropolis, where the war treasury is located, on Lysistrata’s command.

The women feel like they can’t possibly lose, and they decide to bind their agreement with the Oath. Instead of swearing on a shield and animal sacrifice, however—deciding this is too warlike—they swear on a huge black cup filled with fragrant wine. The women surround the cup and place their right hand on it, and Lysistrata leads Kleonike through the Oath as a spokesperson for all the women. To uphold the Oath, the women must “withhold all rights of access or entrance” from any man, even while they fire up their husbands’ desire by presenting themselves at their most glamorous and seductive. Led by Lysistrata, the women then take their turns drinking from the cup.

Lampito then hears a “ruckus” in the distance—the Chorus of Old Women have taken the Acropolis, citadel of the wise goddess Athena! Lysistrata tells Lampito to return to Sparta to work on bringing about peace on her end. She also demands that the other women in Lampito’s group be left in Athens as hostages. Lampito exits. Lysistrata then orders the women to hurry inside the Acropolis to help the others. Kleonike worries that the men will send reinforcements against them, but Lysistrata is confident that the Gates will hold. The women hurry off, and the door to the Acropolis shuts behind them.