Read as the Clive Letchford translation (unavailable here), which is basically just light smut. The timeless exasperation of the sex strike

In the era of #MeToo, there may not be a more important piece of drama than Lysistrata. In the era of forever wars there is probably not a a more important piece of drama than Lysistrata. In the era of environmental collapse there is no more important piece of drama than Lysistrata.

The fact that Aristophenes -- 2400 years ago -- was talking about our shit now should make us drop our heads in shame. But it won't.

Read for a college history class.

Lysistrata is a play about a woman who rallies up a group of other females, the Athenians, because she is against the war. This was a satire of the times and it's actually pretty hilarious.
The ladies gang up and start a chastity rally of sorts - none of them will have sex with their husbands. They even go as far as to tease them so that the men will quit fighting the war.
All in all, this play was a funny way of expressing both the political and family aspect of the war and how Aristophanes felt about it. I imagine it provoked some controversy at the time it was written (it is pretty lewd, but according to my history teacher, there are a lot worse from the time).

I'd recommend it to those who are interested in old plays, and those who are interested in history; this book was written in 411 B.C.
I thought the play was pretty funny, and it showed a lot about how different (yet so similar) the times were back then. I'll just leave this review off with part of their oath as an example:

"I will withhold all rights of access or entrance
From every husband, lover, or casual acquaintance
Who moves in my direction in erection
I will create, imperforate in cloistered chastity,
A newer, more glamorous, supremely seductive me
And fire my husband's desire with my molten allure-
But remain, to his panting advances, icily pure.
If he should force me to share the connubial couch,
I refuse to return his stroke with the teeniest twitch.
I will not lift my slippers to touch the thatch
Or submit sloping prone in a hangdog crouch."

Why do we live under the impression that the Greeks were such serious philosophers, when one of their favorite past-time was listening to dick jokes? I loved this, I do enjoy the occasional dick joke. One has to read this and play it in one's mind at the same time...

Is it me or comedies and satires (when compared to tragedies or other genres) seem to give much more power on average to women? In a book by a Homer or Soohacles, Lysistrata would either have been raped or burned alive or something. Simone de Beauvoir said in Second Sex women are too close and live in same family as their oppressors, men, and thus unlike other opressed sections like people of color or poor have some conflicting interests. I wonder what she would say of this play.

Dick. Jokes.

If we're being accurate, it was a stream of lyrical innuendo with a particular vaginal fixation, but saying "pussy jokes" is jarring, and doesn't roll off the tongue as well.

Hahaha, whoops. See, they get into your head.

My boy Aristophanes wrote a comedy that remains comical thousands of years later about the women of Greece getting sick and tired of their husbands and boyfriends being at war all the time. Greece was a cluster of city states, perpetually squabbling over arbitrary land lines and resource rights, not to mention Sparta getting loud pretty much constantly.

The eponymous Lysistrata came up with an idea: No more dirty-time til the war is over. Nope, not even a handjob (they seriously made this joke). They're gonna dress trashy and wear perfume and do everything necessary to inflame, but then be like "nah, not tonight" and dip out to the barracks all the women holed up in.

The whole play was just men getting blustery and domineering, while the women got naked and flipped them off. At one point the men attempt to burn down the barracks, but the old women doused them in water and left them cold and ridiculous, then continued to flip them off.

Every line was a dirty joke or euphemism. By the end of the first night, the women were tryna sneak off back at home -- "I have to feed the dog" -- but Lysistrata wasn't having it. "Get your ass back in the barracks! We haven't even hit 24 hours yet!"

The men didn't make it through the night. They showed up at like 2 AM and said "Okay. The war is over. Ya'll win. Sorry." Much rejoicing, roll credits.

Now, unfortunately, I was reading this at work, so everyone kept asking me what it was about and I couldn't be like "Welp, it's 132 pages of dick jokes with a name I can't pronounce" so I just had to keep saying "Uh, I got it for a quarter at the used book store, it's a Greek play", which I'm sure came off as incredibly pretentious but considering I write fuckin book reviews on the internet, I can't imagine that's a dumpster-fire worth trying to extinguish.

In the introductory note in my edition a Mr. Crofts mentions that the play "is notorious for its racy, almost pornographic humor". I'd say that this seems to be a bit of an overstatement.

Surely it is not that much more racy than say a William Shakespeare play or for that matter The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights? It is really all talk and no action. Surely we as modern readers can handle that? (And would anyone living in 1994, the date of this edition, really consider this pornographic?)

As for the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley (NSFW link), though they are lovely, they are also a bit... besides the point? I mean there's not actually any enormous penises running around in the play. At the most there's some naked wrinkly old men (ok, all men deciding to never read this play at this point, come back! It is a really fun play, you learn about Greek history and feel smart, yey!).

I'm not saying that there's not a fair amount of sexual innuendo in the play, how much seems to depend a bit on which translation you have. The Beardsley drawings are clearly a rather unsubtle hint on someone being a cock-tease. It's just that... there so many other cool things going on as well.

The feminist-conspiracy-theorist part of my brain starts to wonder if all this talk about “oh, lordy lord women mentioning sex” is simply there to distract me from what the women are actually talking about: taking the power away from men.

Not only taking away the power, but claiming to be better at using is than the men. In this rendition the women are super clever pacifists, who'd make sure there be no war.

To be fair, women are not portrayed as through and through good. Lysistrata berate the other women throughout the play as being lazy drunkards who can't give up sex even for even a week. She starts of by saying that women will gather for festivities celebrating Bacchus (Dionysus), Pan or Aphrodite (which the translator notes illustrates their taste for “wanton pleasures”), but not for discussing serious matters. She then sees her neighbour and this happens:

“Lysistrata: Oh, Calonicé, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly...

Calonicé: And they are quite right, upon my word!

Lysistrata: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming.

Calonicé: Oh, they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy you know, for a woman to leave the house. One is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep or washing the brat or feeding it.”

This! This is exactly what feminists keep talking about, the difficulty of uniting women for a cause, the difficulty of combining sisterhood with family, and this was written around 2400 years ago!

When the women from near and afar are finally gathered and Lystratia lays forward her plan about depriving men of sex, the women instantly turn around and start to walk away. Give up sex? What nonsense! It is only after some persistent persuasion that Lysistrata manages the women to concur with her plan. The women lock themselves in the treasury of Athen and the old men of the town, and eventually the magistrate, gather to persuade them differently.

The perhaps best part is when one of the husbands arrives sex-crazed and sex-starved from a house in disarray to implore his wife to return back home. This scene gives a whole new dimension to the word tease.

Although the women of this book might have taken the moral high-ground, opposing war, it's obvious that Aristophanes uses the women as a group to represent the opposition that questions the status-quo, rather than saying than saying that all women are perfect (plus it doesn't hurt that it makes a good foundation for some good-ol' sex jokes).

There are some real gems in here about pacifism, feminism and gender roles:

“Lysistrata: To seize the treasury; no more money, no more war.”

then

“Magistrate: What do you propose to do then, pray?

Lysistrata: You ask me that! Why, we propose to administer the treasury ourselves

Magistrate: You do?

Lysistrata: What is there in that a surprise to you? Do we not administer the budget of household expenses?

Magistrate: But that is not the same thing.

Lysistrata: How so – not the same thing?

Magistrate: It is the treasury supplies the expenses of the War.

Lysistrata: That's our first principle – no War!”

or

“Magistrate: May I die a thousand deaths ere I obey one who wears a veil!

Lysistrata: If that's all that troubles you, here take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tounge. Then take this basket; put on a girdle, card wool, munch beans. The War shall be women's business.

Chorus of women: […] Oh! my good, gallant Lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let you anger slacken; the wind of fortune blown our way.”

or

“Chorus of old men: How true the saying: 'Tis impossible to live with the baggages, impossible to live without 'em.”

or

“Chorus of old men: If we give them the least hold over us, 'tis all up! their audacity will know no bounds! We shall see them building ships, and fighting sea-fights like Artemisia*; nay if they want to mount and ride as cavalry, we had best cashier the knights, for indeed women excel in riding, and have a fine, firm seat for the gallop. Just think of all those squadrons of Amazons Micon has painted for us engaged in hand-to-hand combat with men.”

(*a queen who fought alongside with the Persian king Xerxes at sea)

or

“Lysistrata: Silence then! Now - 'Whenas the swallows, fleeing before the hoopoes, shall have all flocked together in one place, and shall refrain them from all amorous commerce, then will be the end of all the ills of life; yea, and Zeus, which doth thunder in the skies, shall set above what was once below...

Chorus of women: What! shall the men be underneath?

But if dissension do arise among the swallows, and they take wing from the holy Temple, 'twill be said there is never more wanton bird in all the world.'”

Again this excellent theme of the importance of women's unity. Sisterhood. Ah, how wonderful.

Oh, and of course we really like our men too. We don't actually want to take away all of you power, we'd just like to share it equally and discuss a thing our two. Like this thing with war...

This is an interesting one. I read it when my Ancient History teacher recommended it to me. I enjoyed it although I didn't love it. It is about a bunch of women who withhold sex from their husbands until they stop going to war. It is an interesting one and I enjoyed it. I would recommend it to fans of the Greek Theatre or people who enjoy reading good plays. Because this is a good one.

Ancient Greek play about women trying to the end the Trojan War by abstaining from sex. It's a classic for a reason...

This particular translation did little for me. I find the older, more archaic English holds more power than the modern vernacular.

This was such a fun read, a comedy in the true sense.

To stop the Peloponnesian War, the namesake heroin Lysistrata talks all the warrior's wives into going on a sex strike. This certainly is one of the earliest examples (to remain) of a play staging such an event. However, this is not the only comedy written by Aristophanes on the many issues raised by the cohabitation of men and women, far from it!

Funny and very risqué, although lots of dialogue, songs and speeches that seem a bit pointless. Should be mandatory reading to show that humour and pantomimes haven't changed for almost 2500 years.