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.
About the Author
Aristophanes wrote comedies in Athens while the city was losing a long war, and put living people on stage under their own names: Socrates in a basket in The Clouds, Cleon the politician, Euripides. Lysistrata has the women of Greece refuse sex until the men…
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