Lysistrata and Other Plays

Three plays that Aristophanes wrote during a period of social and political unrest in Athens are collected in “Lysistrata and Other Plays.” In the course of the protracted conflict with Sparta, the book contains “The Acharnians,” a plea for peace. A woman’s amazing mission to end the Peloponnesian War by forbidding all men in the land from having sex is humorously told in “Lysistrata.”

“The Clouds,” the third drama, reflects the ambiguities of a period that saw all conventional religious and ethical ideas called into question while satirizing Athenian intellectuals, especially Socrates.