Fletcher Flora - Lysistrata

“It seems likely enough to me.”

“He’s a deadly old bore, to be honest about it, and is always talking about the theories of Empedocles, as if anyone cared, but I’m willing to tolerate him if he pays for his share of the wine. How about you?”

“I’m willing to tolerate him, and I’m strongly in favor of the wine.”

“In that case, I’ll put it up to him.”

As it turned out, Cadmus was prepared to pay for his share, so they bought the wine and began to drink it, and after a while, sure enough, Cadmus began to talk about the theories of Empedocles, but Lycon was thinking about Lysistrata, and Acron was hardly thinking at all, and neither paid much attention.

After Lycon had departed in a frenzy of frustration, Lysistrata lay in bed for a long time and thought about what she had done, or hadn’t done, and at first she was sorry for it and was inclined to call Lycon back and say that it was all just a joke and that she was willing to make ready. The truth of the matter was, of course, she was in quite a condition herself, seven months being seven months in Athens as well as in Pylos. At the same time she was shrewd enough to understand that nobody but a simpleton would refuse to invest a drachma to earn a talent, and she was becoming convinced already that she had stumbled onto something with possibilities. In the beginning, because of being left alone all the time without any fun, she’d only meant to hold out long enough to show her resentment. Then she’d intended to cooperate for her own sake as well as his, but now she wondered if she would, and decided that she wouldn’t. And what she’d determined to do was to go on strike until Lycon came home to stay.

Although this seemed the sheerest futility, and probably would turn out so, the detested Peloponnesian War was surely sufficient to drive any reasonable person to desperate measures, because it had been going on for about twenty years and had made very little sense in the beginning and even less as things kept developing. Of course, it wasn’t going to end just because she went on a strike in bed, because no one was going to care at all whether Lycon ever got accommodated or not, so long as the condition did not become general.

Well, then, what was plainly necessary, she thought, was to fix it up so that no one else got accommodated either, not a single Athenian idiot. But even this wouldn’t work unless all the men in Sparta and Boeotia and all the other places on the other side of the war were in the same condition, because they were just as stupid as the Athenians about keeping the war going. One simply couldn’t rely on their having sense enough to be willing to quit killing Athenians just because Athenians decided to quit killing them.

It was just a crazy idea that got into her head and kept growing from necessity in order to meet all the problems that kept arising. The first thing she knew, she had every last man-Jack in all of Greece barred from his wife’s bed. Only in her mind, that is. She kept lying there and thinking about it, and it amused her immensely.

Sometime after dawn, later than usual, Theoris came and looked into the room with a shocked expression on her pretty face.

“Are you actually alone?” she said.

“As you see,” said Lysistrata, “I am quite alone.”

The slave girl came hesitantly into the room and stood beside her mistress’s bed.

“The cook, who is a monstrous liar, told me that the Master returned before dawn and left soon afterward in a temper.”

“The cook is indeed a monstrous liar, which I tolerate because of his superior talent, but in this case he was telling the truth. Lycon has returned from Pylos and has already gone to market. At least, I am prepared to believe that he has gone to market, though I have made no effort to verify it.”

Bending over the bed, Theoris laid a slim hand gently on Lysistrata’s forehead and made in her throat the musical barbarous crooning.

“Are you ill, Mistress? Do you have a fever?”

“Because I am not making love in bed like a reasonable wife? No, I am not ill and have no fever, though I am grateful for your concern. The truth is, I have decided quite suddenly to deprive myself of pleasure in order to teach my husband a lesson. Have you ever thought, Theoris, of the possible results if every woman in Athens were to adopt an identical attitude?”

“No, I have not, and I confess that it is a thought that does not appeal to me.”

“That’s because you, like my friend Calonice, have no vision. However, I referred only to citizens.”

“In that case, I find the thought tolerable.”

“Think it, then. Suppose we were to insist upon abstinence until the war was ended.”

“I predict an enormous increase in the incidence of rape.”

“Rape is not satisfactory to anyone and would relieve nothing.”

“In my opinion, it is at least as satisfactory as abstinence.”

“True. Abstinence is also unsatisfactory. Therefore, perhaps the war could be forced to a conclusion. Do you consider this an extreme tactic?”

“If I were a citizen and faced with the alternatives of love or war, I declare that I wouldn’t hesitate an instant.”

“That’s quite encouraging, especially since you have had practically no personal contact with the war, except for having been made a slave at an age you cannot remember. Are you familiar with the history of this foolish conflict?”

“No, Mistress. I know next to nothing about it.”

“Sit down on the floor beside me, then, for I am determined to instruct you. When I am finished, I challenge you to deny that desperate measures are called for to end it.”

Obediently, Theoris sat cross-legged on the floor beside the bed, and Lysistrata, after collecting her thoughts, began to tell her about the Peloponnesian War.

“The war,” she said, “started about twenty years ago, and Pericles was in power at the time. It’s difficult to tell just how it got started exactly, and it is necessary to discount all the nonsense that was presented to the citizens. The truth seems to be that Athens had a lot of other places under its domination in the Empire and was determined not to give any of them up regardless of how they felt about it themselves. Besides this, as usual, there were many young hotheads around without much of anything to do, and they thought it would be a very interesting experience to have a war, and Pericles, who was supposed to be very smart about such matters, had the idea that war was bound to come sooner or later in any event, and that it had just as well be sooner. So it wasn’t long before we had it and couldn’t get rid of it.

“Athens didn’t have much of an army, but she had a good navy. The idea was to let the navy win the war practically by itself, but it didn’t work out. The Spartans, who had a good army but no navy to speak of, came over into Attica and overran the country. Instead of putting up a fight, as you might have expected, Pericles brought all the farmers and everyone else inside the walls of the city, and it was his plan not to risk a thing on the ground but just to sit tight and let the navy do it, and this was held to be a good idea by some, and still is, and maybe it was. One thing he didn’t take into proper account, though, in spite of being so smart and all, was that Athens wasn’t big enough to accommodate all those extra people, and it became very crowded and unsanitary, and pretty soon we had a plague.

“This plague got started and kept growing, and it was very bad. A person would be walking around and feeling good, normal and all, and then all of a sudden it would have him by the ears. The symptoms that he displayed in the beginning were a fever and dizziness in the head, a sore throat and foul breath. Then he began to sneeze and cough and have a sore chest, and the sickness worked down him from top to bottom. One felt so hot with fever that he couldn’t stand any clothes on his body, and so the afflicted ran around the streets naked and jumped into the fountains and the rain-tanks and places like that, and so many people died that they started burning the bodies in the streets. The physicians didn’t have anything to cure it, of course, and a lot of people wound up dead. As a matter of fact, one-third of the entire population died.”