In the ancient Greek play ‘Lysistrata,’ women stop having sex with men to end a bloody war

The most potent political action for women is sometimes inaction. It’s an idea that has been around for millennia. One particularly enduring version of this idea is found in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, a play written in the year 411 B.C.E., in which women stage a sex strike to force men to stop the Peloponnesian War.

The play has inspired everything from novels to musicals to an episode of M*A*S*H*. Most recently, it was retold by filmmaker Spike Lee in the 2015 film Chi-Raq. In his version, black women in Chicago withhold sex in order to pressure their men to put down their guns.

The play is often summoned as an example of a political tract. But while the suggestion it proffers is certainly serious, Lysistrata itself is a bawdy comedy — one that feels shockingly contemporary, and proves that some themes really are timeless.

The original Lysistrata begins with the title character calling a diverse meeting of women to discuss the bloody Peloponnesian War, and how they might stop it. “Hand in hand we’ll rescue Greece,” she tells her friend Calonice.

Once the women are gathered, Lysistrata tells them they should withhold sex from their men, and in time, the men will lay down arms. “We must refrain from every depth of love… ” she tells the incredulous assembly. She goes further, lamenting that even the men who are able to come and go from battle are of little use to their women, especially sexually. They show “not the slightest glitter of a lover!” she complains, arguing that since war broke out, “I’ve not seen / The image of a single upright man / To be a marble consolation to us.” If only women withheld their affections, the war would cease and men would return.

The women, however, are not convinced. “Let the war proceed,” two of them comment, deadpan. After all, sex is among the their only pleasures. Calonice, stunned by her friend’s proposal, replies, “O bid me walk in fire / But do not rob us of that darling joy.” Though Lysistrata concedes that sex is important — “our whole life’s but a pile of kisses and babies,” she says — she also makes a strong case that denying men carnal delight will bring peace. What if the husbands force them to have sex anyway? one woman asks. “Yield then,” Lysistrata advises, “but with a sluggish, cold indifference. There is no joy to [men] in sullen mating.”

Eventually, the women agree to the plan. Over wine, they swear to uphold it by repeating the following lines:

To husband or lover I’ll not open arms

Though love and denial may enlarge his charms

But still at home, ignoring him, I’ll stay

Beautiful, clad in saffron silks each day

If then he seizes me by dint of force

I’ll give him reason for a long remorse.

I’ll never lie and stare up at the ceiling,

Nor like a lion on all fours go kneeling.

If I keep faith, then bounteous cups be mine.

If not, to nauseous water change this wine.

The battle of the sexes is indeed a raucous fight in Lysistrata. There are two choruses in the play, one composed of old men and one of old women. Just after Lysistrata’s gathering, the two choruses face off at the gate of the Acropolis, which the women have seized. There, the men attempt to set a fire, which the women promptly douse—the symbolism is unmissable.

“We scare you, do we?” ask the women. The men threaten to beat them: “O hit them hard and hit again and hit until they run away, And perhaps they’ll learn […] not to have too much to say.” “Come on, then — do it!” the women cry. “I won’t budge, but like a dog I’ll bite / At every little scrap of meat that dangles in my sight.” The men call the women dirty sluts, and say things like “Woman is the most shameless beast of all the beasts that be.”

When a magistrate arrives and tries to get involved, ordering two men to “lay hands on [Lysistrata] and end it,” her fellow women engage in a rowdy show of solidarity. “If your hand touches her, I’ll spread you out and trample on your guts,” says Calonice. “If your hand moves out her way, You’d better have a surgeon somewhere handy,” Myrrhine chimes in. “One inch nearer my fingers,” warns Stratyllis, “and it’s a bald man that’ll be yelling.”

Lysistrata then goes on to explain to the magistrate the plight of the women. She describes women’s frustration at being expected to listen supportively to their husbands’ endless talk of war and politics, but not welcome to offer an opinion. She talks of “unassuming” wives, “forgotten in quiet,” who are called upon to sit by and watch as men destroy their world. “How wretchedly everything still was progressing,” she says, “by listening dumbly the day long to you.”

It’s time for women to take over.

In spite of soaring rhetoric before the magistrate, the reality is that the women almost lose their cool. They lie to Lysistrata and try to wrangle out of the deal. “You wicked women, cease from juggling lies,” she tells them. “You want your men. But what of them as well? They toss as sleepless in the lonely night, I’m sure of it. Hold out awhile, hold out.”

The women do hold out, and the play has an, ahem, happy ending. Eventually the Athenian and Spartan soldiers gather for peace talks. Lysistrata brings to the talks a beautiful young handmaid, appropriately named Reconciliation, and while the men gaze upon her in ever greater pain, Lysistrata reproaches them for warring. “I want to strip at once and plough my land,” say the Athenians. “And mine I want to fertilize at once,” the Spartans agree. Squirming, they assent to peace, saying “We’ve risen as one man to this conclusion.”

Lysistrata, delighted by the victory, invites the men to prepare for a supper. “There at table / You will pledge good behaviour and uprightness,” she says, “Then each man’s wife is his to hustle home.”