The Imitation Of Athena In The Lysistrata Of Aristophanes

In the Lysistrata of Aristophanes, the women of all Greece, deprived of sexual pleasure because their husbands are fighting each other in the Peloponnesian War, determine to end the war. To secure their own sensuous good, they agree on a sex-strike against their husbands and the seizing of the Athenian acropolis. The seizing of the Acropolis, however, leads to a deepening of heir goals. Opposed by the violence of men representing the old order, they decide that nothing short of the elevation of women into the government of the State is capable of saving Greece. In this spirit they repulse not only the immediate violence of the old men but also the official of State who attempts to harangue them into submission. During the second part of the play, the women learn, through the guidance of Lysistrata, to subordinate their sex to the general good of the State and to the institutions that define it. The women and especially Lysistrata now compel the men, made radically miserable by the sex-strike, to acquiesce in peace. Peace between Athens and Sparta now achieved, the men are then reconciled with their wives. This marks the re-institution both of the Family and a pan-Hellenic City. A celebration of those gods who preside over religious festivals, then of those protecting the ethical institutions now re-established and finally of Athena, patron of the actual life of the City, ends the play. The praise of Athena declares a common humanity joined in celebration with the unifying principle of the gods. Male and female, Spartan and Athenian, see in her the presence amongst them of Zeus's authority, the living City that can contain the divisions between familial and political, Athens and Sparta. Adoring what they have imitated, the Greeks enjoy true communion with their gods.