LYSISTRATA. What do you lack more? Step aboard the boat; Charon is
waiting for you, you're keeping him from pushing off.
MAGISTRATE. To treat me so scurvily! What an insult! I will go show
myself to my fellow-magistrates just as I am.
LYSISTRATA. What! are you blaming us for not having exposed you according
to custom?[431] Nay, console yourself; we will not fail to offer up the
third-day sacrifice for you, first thing in the morning.[432]
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Awake, friends of freedom; let us hold ourselves aye
ready to act. I suspect a mighty peril; I foresee another Tyranny like
Hippias'.[433] I am sore afraid the Laconians assembled here with
Cleisthenes have, by a stratagem of war, stirred up these women, enemies
of the gods, to seize upon our treasury and the funds whereby I
lived.[434] Is it not a sin and a shame for them to interfere in advising
the citizens, to prate of shields and lances, and to ally themselves with
Laconians, fellows I trust no more than I would so many famished wolves?
The whole thing, my friends, is nothing else but an attempt to
re-establish Tyranny. But I will never submit; I will be on my guard for
the future; I will always carry a blade hidden under myrtle boughs; I
will post myself in the Public Square under arms, shoulder to shoulder
with Aristogiton;[435] and now, to make a start, I must just break a few
of that cursed old jade's teeth yonder.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Nay, never play the brave man, else when you go back
home, your own mother won't know you. But, dear friends and allies, first
let us lay our burdens down; then, citizens all, hear what I have to say.
I have useful counsel to give our city, which deserves it well at my
hands for the brilliant distinctions it has lavished on my girlhood. At
seven years of age, I was bearer of the sacred vessels; at ten, I pounded
barley for the altar of Athené; next, clad in a robe of yellow silk, I
was _little bear_ to Artemis at the Brauronia;[436] presently, grown a
tall, handsome maiden, they put a necklace of dried figs about my neck,
and I was Basket-Bearer.[437] So surely I am bound to give my best advice
to Athens. What matters that I was born a woman, if I can cure your
misfortunes? I pay my share of tolls and taxes, by giving men to the
State. But you, you miserable greybeards, you contribute nothing to the
public charges; on the contrary, you have wasted the treasure of our
forefathers, as it was called, the treasure amassed in the days of the
Persian Wars.[438] You pay nothing at all in return; and into the bargain
you endanger our lives and liberties by your mistakes. Have you one word
to say for yourselves? ... Ah! don't irritate me, you there, or I'll lay
my slipper across your jaws; and it's pretty heavy.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. Outrage upon outrage! things are going from bad to
worse. Let us punish the minxes, every one of us that has a man's
appendages to boast of. Come, off with our tunics, for a man must savour
of manhood; come, my friends, let us strip naked from head to foot.
Courage, I say, we who in our day garrisoned Lipsydrion;[439] let us be
young again, and shake off eld. 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;[440] 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.[441] Just think of all those squadrons of Amazons Micon has
painted for us engaged in hand-to-hand combat with men.[442] Come then,
we must e'en fit collars to all these willing necks.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. By the blessed goddesses, if you anger me, I will let
loose the beast of my evil passions, and a very hailstorm of blows will
set you yelling for help. Come, dames, off tunics, and quick's the word;
women must scent the savour of women in the throes of passion.... Now
just you dare to measure strength with me, old greybeard, and I warrant
you you'll never eat garlic or black beans more. No, not a word! my anger
is at boiling point, and I'll do with you what the beetle did with the
eagle's eggs.[443] I laugh at your threats, so long as I have on my side
Lampito here, and the noble Theban, my dear Ismenia.... Pass decree on
decree, you can do us no hurt, you wretch abhorred of all your fellows.
Why, only yesterday, on occasion of the feast of Hecaté, I asked my
neighbours of Boeotia for one of their daughters for whom my girls have a
lively liking--a fine, fat eel to wit; and if they did not refuse, all
along of your silly decrees! We shall never cease to suffer the like,
till someone gives you a neat trip-up and breaks your neck for you!
CHORUS OF WOMEN (_addressing Lysistrata_). You, Lysistrata, you who are
leader of our glorious enterprise, why do I see you coming towards me
with so gloomy an air?
LYSISTRATA. 'Tis the behaviour of these naughty women, 'tis the female
heart and female weakness so discourages me.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Tell us, tell us, what is it?
LYSISTRATA. I only tell the simple truth.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. What has happened so disconcerting; come, tell your
friends.
LYSISTRATA. Oh! the thing is so hard to tell--yet so impossible to
conceal.
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Nay, never seek to hide any ill that has befallen our
cause.
LYSISTRATA. To blurt it out in a word--we are in heat!
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Oh! Zeus, oh! Zeus!
LYSISTRATA. What use calling upon Zeus? The thing is even as I say. I
cannot stop them any longer from lusting after the men. They are all for
deserting. The first I caught was slipping out by the postern gate near
the cave of Pan; another was letting herself down by a rope and pulley; a
third was busy preparing her escape; while a fourth, perched on a bird's
back, was just taking wing for Orsilochus' house,[444] when I seized her
by the hair. One and all, they are inventing excuses to be off home.
Look! there goes one, trying to get out! Halloa there! whither away so
fast?
FIRST WOMAN. I want to go home; I have some Miletus wool in the house,
which is getting all eaten up by the worms.
LYSISTRATA. Bah! you and your worms! go back, I say!
FIRST WOMAN. I will return immediately, I swear I will by the two
goddesses! I only have just to spread it out on the bed.
LYSISTRATA. You shall not do anything of the kind! I say, you shall not
go.
FIRST WOMAN. Must I leave my wool to spoil then?
LYSISTRATA. Yes, if need be.
SECOND WOMAN. Unhappy woman that I am! Alas for my flax! I've left it at
home unstript!
LYSISTRATA. So, here's another trying to escape to go home and strip her
flax forsooth!
SECOND WOMAN. Oh! I swear by the goddess of light, the instant I have put
it in condition I will come straight back.
LYSISTRATA. You shall do nothing of the kind! If once you began, others
would want to follow suit.
THIRD WOMAN. Oh! goddess divine, Ilithyia, patroness of women in labour,
stay, stay the birth, till I have reached a spot less hallowed than
Athene's Mount!
LYSISTRATA. What mean you by these silly tales?
THIRD WOMAN. I am going to have a child--now, this minute.
LYSISTRATA. But you were not pregnant yesterday!
THIRD WOMAN. Well, I am to-day. Oh! let me go in search of the midwife,
Lysistrata, quick, quick!
LYSISTRATA. What is this fable you are telling me? Ah! what have you got
there so hard?
THIRD WOMAN. A male child.
LYSISTRATA. No, no, by Aphrodité! nothing of the sort! Why, it feels like
something hollow--a pot or a kettle. Oh! you baggage, if you have not got
the sacred helmet of Pallas--and you said you were with child!
THIRD WOMAN. And so I am, by Zeus, I am!
LYSISTRATA. Then why this helmet, pray?
THIRD WOMAN. For fear my pains should seize me in the Acropolis; I mean
to lay my eggs in this helmet, as the doves do.
LYSISTRATA. Excuses and pretences every word! the thing's as clear as
daylight. Anyway, you must stay here now till the fifth day, your day of
purification.
THIRD WOMAN. I cannot sleep any more in the Acropolis, now I have seen
the snake that guards the Temple.
FOURTH WOMAN. Ah! and those confounded owls with their dismal hooting! I
cannot get a wink of rest, and I'm just dying of fatigue.
LYSISTRATA. You wicked women, have done with your falsehoods! You want
your husbands, that's plain enough. But don't you think they want you
just as badly? They are spending dreadful nights, oh! I know that well
enough. But hold out, my dears, hold out! A little more patience, and the
victory will be ours. An Oracle promises us success, if only we remain
united. Shall I repeat the words?
FIRST WOMAN. Yes, tell us what the Oracle declares.
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 erst below...."
CHORUS OF WOMEN. What! shall the men be underneath?
LYSISTRATA. "But if dissension do arise among the swallows, and they take
wing from the holy Temple, 'twill be said there is never a more wanton
bird in all the world."
CHORUS OF WOMEN. Ye gods! the prophecy is clear. Nay, never let us be
cast down by calamity! let us be brave to bear, and go back to our posts.
'Twere shameful indeed not to trust the promises of the Oracle.
CHORUS OF OLD MEN. I want to tell you a fable they used to relate to me
when I was a little boy. This is it: Once upon a time there was a young
man called Melanion, who hated the thought of marriage so sorely that he
fled away to the wilds. So he dwelt in the mountains, wove himself nets,
kept a dog and caught hares. He never, never came back, he had such a
horror of women. As chaste as Melanion,[445] we loathe the jades just as
much as he did.
AN OLD MAN. You dear old woman, I would fain kiss you.
A WOMAN. I will set you crying without onions.
OLD MAN. ... And give you a sound kicking.