It’s true, so true.
LEADER OF WOMEN’S CHORUS
What’s wrong? You can tell us— we’re friends of yours.
I’m ashamed to say, but it’s hard to keep it quiet.
LEADER OF WOMEN’S CHORUS
Don’t hide from me bad news affecting all of us.
All right, I’ll keep it short—we all want to get laid.
LEADER OF WOMEN’S CHORUS
O Zeus!
What’s the point of calling Zeus? There’s nothing he can do about this mess. I can’t keep these women from their men,
not any longer—they’re all running off. First I caught one slipping through a hole
beside the Cave of Pan, then another trying it with a rope and pulley, a third deserting on her own, and yesterday there was a woman on a giant bird intending to fly down to that place run by Orsilochus. I grabbed her hair. They’re all inventing reasons to go home.
Here’s one of them on her way right now.
Where do you think you’re going?
Who me? I want to get back home. Inside the house I’ve got bolts of Milesian cloth, and worms are eating them.
What worms? Get back in there!
I’ll come back right away, by god—I just need to spread them on the bed.
Spread them? You won’t be doing that. You’re not leaving!
My wool just goes to waste?
If that’s what it takes.
I’m such a fool, I’ve left my wretched flax back in my house unstripped.
Another one
leaving here to go and strip her flax! Get back inside!
By the goddess of light, I’ll be right back, once I’ve rubbed its skin.
You’ll not rub anything. If you start that,
I’ll come back right away, by god—I just need to spread them on the bed.
Spread them? You won’t be doing that. You’re not leaving!
My wool just goes to waste?
If that’s what it takes.
I’m such a fool, I’ve left my wretched flax back in my house unstripped.
Another one
leaving here to go and strip her flax! Get back inside!
By the goddess of light, I’ll be right back, once I’ve rubbed its skin.
You’ll not rub anything. If you start that,
some other woman will want to do the same.
O sacred Eileithia, goddess of birth, hold back my labour pains till I can find a place where I’m permitted to give birth.
What are you moaning about?
It’s my time— I’m going to have a child!
But yesterday
you weren’t even pregnant.
Well, today I am. Send me home, Lysistrata, and quickly. I need a midwife.
What are you saying? What’s this you’ve got here? It feels quite rigid.
A little boy.
No, by Aphrodite, I don’t think so. It looks like you’ve got
some hollow metal here. I’ll have a look.
You silly creature, you’ve got a helmet there, Athena’s sacred helmet. Didn’t you say you were pregnant.
Yes, and by god, I am.
Then why’ve you got this helmet?
Well, in case I went into labour in the citadel. I could give birth right in the helmet, lay it in there like a nesting pigeon.
What are you talking about? You’re just making an excuse—that’s so obvious. You’ll stay here for at least five days until your new child’s birth is purified.
I can’t get any sleep in the Acropolis, not since I saw the snake that guards the place.
Nor can I. I’m dying from lack of sleep
those wretched owls keep hooting all the time.
Come on ladies, stop all these excuses! All right, you miss your men. But don’t you see they miss you, too? I’m sure the nights they spend don’t bring them any pleasure. But please, dear friends, hold on—persevere a little longer. An oracle has said we will prevail, if we stand together. That’s what it said.
Tell us what it prophesied.
Then, keep quiet.
“When the sparrows, as they fly away,
escaping from the hoopoe birds, shall stay together in one place and shall say nay to sexual encounters, then a bad day will be rare. High thundering Zeus will say ‘What once was underneath on top I’ll lay.’”
Women are going to lie on top of men?
“ . . . but if the sparrows fight and fly away out of the holy shrine, people will say no bird is more promiscuous than they.”
That oracle is clear enough, by god.
All you heavenly gods, can we stop talking of being in such distress. Let us go back in. For, my dearest friends, it will be a shame if we don’t live up to this prophecy.
MEN’S CHORUS
I’d like to tell you all a tale, which I heard once when I was young about Melanion, a lad who fled from marriage and then came into the wilds and so he lived
up in the hills. He wove some nets
Frederick William Hall (1865–1948) was a classical scholar and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Together with William Martin Geldart, he produced the Oxford Classical Text of several authors. Hall was a careful editor known for his thorough collation of manuscripts and his conservative approach to textual criticism.
The Hall–Geldart editions in the Oxford Classical Texts series provide reliable critical texts with selective apparatus criticus. The OCT series, established in 1894 as the Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, aims to present the best available Greek and Latin texts in a format suitable for both scholarly use and teaching. Each volume provides a clean text with the most significant manuscript variants recorded at the foot of each page.
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