Lysistrata
Λυσιστράτη
First published 411 BC, written in Ancient Greek
Lysistrata is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, first staged in early 411 BCE at Lenaea festival in classical Athens. The play is a comic account of a woman's – Lysistrata's – mission to end the Peloponnesian War between Greek city states by denying sex to all the men of the warring parties and occupying the Acropolis of Athens. Lysistrata persuades the women of the warring cities to engage in a sex strike as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace – a strategy that inflames the battle between the sexes.
Your reading
Where it is set
What it draws on
- Iliad
Homer, 800 BC
Lysistrata quotes her husband quoting Hector's farewell to Andromache in Book 6 of the Iliad, 'war will be men's business', and the women of Greece set out to prove him wrong.




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