Lysistrata

Aristophanes' peace comedy: the women of Greece go on strike until the men stop the war.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Aristophanes

type

Old Comedy (Greek)

era

Classical Athens (411 BC)

language

Ancient Greek

setting

Athens and the Acropolis

source text

The Peloponnesian War's miseries

acts

1 acts

Relative Scale in Plays

Core Principles & Analysis

• Produced in 411 BC, two years after Athens's Sicilian catastrophe.
• Its sex-strike plot inverts every convention of war comedy.
• Lysistrata's name means 'disbander of armies'.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Lysistrata