Lysistrata (3 page)

A
FTER
L
YCON
had departed in a frenzy of frustration, Lysistrata lay in bed for a long time and thought about what she had done, or hadn’t done, and at first she was sorry for it and was inclined to call Lycon back and say that it was all just a joke and that she was willing to make ready. The truth of the matter was, of course, she was in quite a condition herself, seven months being seven months in Athens as well as in Pylos. At the same time she was shrewd enough to understand that nobody but a simpleton would refuse to invest a drachma to earn a talent, and she was becoming convinced already that she had stumbled onto something with possibilities. In the beginning, because of being left alone all the time without any fun, she’d only meant to hold out long enough to show her resentment. Then she’d intended to cooperate for her own sake as well as his, but now she wondered if she would, and decided that she wouldn’t. And what she’d determined to do was to go on strike until Lycon came home to stay.

Although this seemed the sheerest futility, and probably would turn out so, the detested Peloponnesian War was surely sufficient to drive any reasonable person to desperate measures, because it had been going on for about twenty years and had made very little sense in the beginning and even less as things kept developing. Of course, it wasn’t going to end just because she went on a strike in bed, because no one was going to care at all whether Lycon ever got accommodated or not, so long as the condition did not become general.

Well, then, what was plainly necessary, she thought, was to fix it up so that no one else got accommodated either, not a single Athenian idiot. But even this wouldn’t work unless all the men in Sparta and Boeotia and all the other places on the other side of the war were in the same condition, because they were just as stupid as the Athenians about keeping the war going. One simply couldn’t rely on their having sense enough to be willing to quit killing Athenians just because Athenians decided to quit killing them.

It was just a crazy idea that got into her head and kept growing from necessity in order to meet all the problems that kept arising. The first thing she knew, she had every last man-Jack in all of Greece barred from his wife’s bed. Only in her mind, that is. She kept lying there and thinking about it, and it amused her immensely.

Sometime after dawn, later than usual, Theoris came and looked into the room with a shocked expression on her pretty face.

“Are you actually alone?” she said.

“As you see,” said Lysistrata, “I am quite alone.”

The slave girl came hesitantly into the room and stood beside her mistress’s bed.

“The cook, who is a monstrous liar, told me that the Master returned before dawn and left soon afterward in a temper.”

“The cook is indeed a monstrous liar, which I tolerate because of his superior talent, but in this case he was telling the truth. Lycon has returned from Pylos and has already gone to market. At least, I am prepared to believe that he has gone to market, though I have made no effort to verify it.”

Bending over the bed, Theoris laid a slim hand gently on Lysistrata’s forehead and made in her throat the musical barbarous crooning.

“Are you ill, Mistress? Do you have a fever?”

“Because I am not making love in bed like a reasonable wife? No, I am not ill and have no fever, though I am grateful for your concern. The truth is, I have decided quite suddenly to deprive myself of pleasure in order to teach my husband a lesson. Have you ever thought, Theoris, of the possible results if every woman in Athens were to adopt an identical attitude?”

“No, I have not, and I confess that it is a thought that does not appeal to me.”

“That’s because you, like my friend Calonice, have no vision. However, I referred only to citizens.”

“In that case, I find the thought tolerable.”

“Think it, then. Suppose we were to insist upon abstinence until the war was ended.”

“I predict an enormous increase in the incidence of rape.”

“Rape is not satisfactory to anyone and would relieve nothing.”

“In my opinion, it is at least as satisfactory as abstinence.”

“True. Abstinence is also unsatisfactory. Therefore, perhaps the war could be forced to a conclusion. Do you consider this an extreme tactic?”

“If I were a citizen and faced with the alternatives of love or war, I declare that I wouldn’t hesitate an instant.”

“That’s quite encouraging, especially since you have had practically no personal contact with the war, except for having been made a slave at an age you cannot remember. Are you familiar with the history of this foolish conflict?”

“No, Mistress. I know next to nothing about it.”

“Sit down on the floor beside me, then, for I am determined to instruct you. When I am finished, I challenge you to deny that desperate measures are called for to end it.”

Obediently, Theoris sat cross-legged on the floor beside the bed, and Lysistrata, after collecting her thoughts, began to tell her about the Peloponnesian War.

“The war,” she said, “started about twenty years ago, and Pericles was in power at the time. It’s difficult to tell just how it got started exactly, and it is necessary to discount all the nonsense that was presented to the citizens. The truth seems to be that Athens had a lot of other places under its domination in the Empire and was determined not to give any of them up regardless of how they felt about it themselves. Besides this, as usual, there were many young hotheads around without much of anything to do, and they thought it would be a very interesting experience to have a war, and Pericles, who was supposed to be very smart about such matters, had the idea that war was bound to come sooner or later in any event, and that it had just as well be sooner. So it wasn’t long before we had it and couldn’t get rid of it.

“Athens didn’t have much of an army, but she had a good navy. The idea was to let the navy win the war practically by itself, but it didn’t work out. The Spartans, who had a good army but no navy to speak of, came over into Attica and overran the country. Instead of putting up a fight, as you might have expected, Pericles brought all the farmers and everyone else inside the walls of the city, and it was his plan not to risk a thing on the ground but just to sit tight and let the navy do it, and this was held to be a good idea by some, and still is, and maybe it was. One thing he didn’t take into proper account, though, in spite of being so smart and all, was that Athens wasn’t big enough to accommodate all those extra people, and it became very crowded and unsanitary, and pretty soon we had a plague.

“This plague got started and kept growing, and it was very bad. A person would be walking around and feeling good, normal and all, and then all of a sudden it would have him by the ears. The symptoms that he displayed in the beginning were a fever and dizziness in the head, a sore throat and foul breath. Then he began to sneeze and cough and have a sore chest, and the sickness worked down him from top to bottom. One felt so hot with fever that he couldn’t stand any clothes on his body, and so the afflicted ran around the streets naked and jumped into the fountains and the rain-tanks and places like that, and so many people died that they started burning the bodies in the streets. The physicians didn’t have anything to cure it, of course, and a lot of people wound up dead. As a matter of fact, one-third of the entire population died.”

“Indeed,” said Theoris, “it must have been terrible.”

“So it was,” said Lysistrata. “One might be inclined to think, after a mess like this, that men would get sensible and take up ordinary living again. Nothing of the sort. They kept right on being as pigheaded as ever about the war.

“One thing about it, Pericles got the plague himself and died of it, which served him right in my opinion, and the worst thing to come of it was that the men who got control of things afterward were even less sensible than he was, if you can believe it.

“There was one fairly sensible man named Nicias who thought it would be a good idea to stop the war and resume activities like fishing and farming and other kinds of work, but there was another man against him who was called Cleon the Tanner and he had no sense whatever. Naturally it was the one with no sense who was voted into office that gave him control of affairs.

“This Cleon was a spellbinder who removed his cloak and beat his thigh when he made a speech to the people, and he made a great point of passing himself off as a common workingman, which he surely wasn’t, because any common workingman would rather work than fight a foolish war with no sense in it. And Cleon was for the war, first and last, and the truth was, he made a lot of money out of it.

“There were a lot of battles here and there that didn’t prove much of anything one way or another, except the idiocy of Greeks, and finally, after quite a long time, there was a big fight in the country of Thrace, and Cleon got himself killed in this fight, which was a good thing. The only thing wrong with it, to be truthful, was that it didn’t happen much sooner than it did. After Cleon was dead, old Nicias finally got people to listen to him, and there was a peace made that didn’t last long, and one reason it didn’t last long was Alcibiades.

“Alcibiades was considered by many a glamorous character, and still is, and he was especially eager to be a war hero. His father was killed in some earlier battle, and after this, Alcibiades went to live with Pericles himself, who did a very sloppy job of bringing him up, if you can judge by results. Alcibiades was an insolent brat for a fact, and Socrates the philosopher took a fancy to him and tried to call him to virtue, as the saying goes, but Alcibiades didn’t answer the call appreciably. What he really needed, if you ask me, was a few good beatings. He ran around the streets and threw wild parties and slept with the hetairai, and finally he got married to a girl named Hipparete, whose father he’d previously slapped in the face publicly. But this didn’t settle him down much, and Hipparete tried to get a divorce, but couldn’t do it, and finally died young as the only way out of it. Alcibiades’ father had left him a lot of money, and he lived about as high as it was possible to live, but he also gave big donations to this or that cause, and this kept him popular, of course, for anyone who gives away money is always popular. The truth was, he was spoiled and arrogant and got away with a great deal. He finally did something that almost got him into serious trouble. He knocked the phalli off all the statues of Hermes around town.

“Hermes, as you know, is a god who is held in great respect in Athens, and it was considered the worst kind of sacrilege. It wasn’t ever definitely proved that Alcibiades did it, but everyone was certain that he did, and they intended to take him into court for it, but in the meantime, he’d got himself elected one of the Ten Generals and was off to Sicily on an expedition against Syracuse. After he was gone, it was discovered that he’d been participating in ceremonies mocking the Eleusinian Mysteries, and he’d done this with some of his cronies just for fun. But no one else seemed to see the humor in it, and in fact everyone was pretty upset, and they sent a ship to bring him back for trial, but he slipped off to Sparta and slept with the Queen and went on to Persia when the King got annoyed about it.”

“Certainly,” said Theoris, “he was very accomplished in certain ways.”

It was evident that she was already admiring Alcibiades very much, and Lysistrata looked at her sternly and shook her head.

“You will have less admiration for him,” she said, “when I have finished. Before the expedition sailed for Sicily, which turned out to be a great mistake, the crazy men of Athens, under the influence of Alcibiades, attacked the little island of Melos and captured the people there. They killed off all the men and slapped the women and children into slavery and gave the entire island to a gang of Athenians who went there to live and farm it. All of this was just a kind of warmup for the business in Sicily, the idea being to capture the town of Syracuse. Alcibiades thought that this was really going to be the road to glory, but as I said, he was jerked out of it because of the Eleusinian Mysteries thing. This was a lucky break for him in the end, because the Syracusans happened to be very tough and hard to beat.”

“You are right,” Theoris said sadly. “I am admiring him less and less.”

“Well, never mind. You will recover nicely, I imagine. This was a very big expeditionary force, and it practically depleted the Athenian treasury. There were almost thirty thousand troops and sailors on about a hundred and fifty triremes, and besides these there were many smaller boats hauling supplies. Three generals were in charge, including Alcibiades, but he was jerked out of it before the campaign got under way.

“After a lot of fighting back and forth for a long time, the Syracusans captured all the Athenian army that hadn’t already been killed, and they threw what was left into the stone quarries. The two generals were executed, instead of being permitted to die slowly in the quarries. One of these generals was no one but old Nicias, who hadn’t wanted to fight in the first place.

“This occurred not long ago, and all this foolishness has been going on for nearly twenty years, impossible as it seems, and Sparta is now back in the fight and defeating Athenian forces here and there around the country, and things are bad all over. In my judgment, it is time to end it, even at the price of abstinence.”

“I agree that it is a terrible war,” said Theoris, “but it is also a terrible price.”

“Well,” said Lysistrata, sighing, “however that may be, we must now forget the past and consider the present. It is practically certain that Lycon has gone off to the marketplace, where he will talk and loaf all day with his cronies, and it’s just as certain that he will bring them home to dinner this evening, and so you had better make sure that the kitchen force has plenty of wine and cheese and Boeotian eels. You had also better make sure that the table and couches are prepared in his rooms. As for me, I have decided that there are going to be some changes made around here, and I don’t intend to be bothered with it.”