Lysistrata
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes’ comedy in which the women of Athens and Sparta, led by Lysistrata, secure peace in the long-running war between them by staging a sex strike. To the men in the audience in 411BC, the idea that peace in the Peloponnesian War could be won so easily was ridiculous and the thought that their wives could have so much power over them was even more so. However Aristophanes’ comedy also has the women seizing the treasure in the Acropolis that was meant to fund more fighting in an emergency, a fund the Athenians had recently had to draw on. They were in a perilous position and, much as they might laugh at Aristophanes’ jokes, they knew there were real concerns about the actual cost of the war in terms of wealth and manpower.
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Guests
- Paul Cartledge
22 episodes
AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge -
Sarah Miles No other episodes
Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University -
James Robson No other episodes
Professor of Classical Studies at the Open University
Reading list
-
Lysistrata
Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson) (Oxford University Press, 1987) Google Books → -
Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women
Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson) (Routledge, 2010) -
Birds; Lysistrata; Women at the Thesmophoria
Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson) (Loeb Classical Library series, Harvard University Press, 2014) Google Books → -
Lysistrata and Other Plays: The Acharnians; The Clouds; Lysistrata
Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein) (Penguin, 2002) Google Books → -
Lysistrata
Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein) (Aris & Phillips, 1998) Google Books → -
Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd
Paul Cartledge (Bristol Classical Press, 1999) Google Books → -
Aristophanic Comedy
Kenneth Dover (University of California Press, 1972) Google Books → -
Lysistrata: The Sex Strike: After Aristophanes
Germaine Greer (Aurora Metro Press, 2000) Google Books → -
The Common Chorus: A Version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata
Tony Harrison (Faber & Faber, 1992) Google Books → -
Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays
Douglas M. MacDowell (Oxford University Press, 1995) Google Books → -
Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson
S. Douglas Olson (ed.) (De Gruyter, 2013) Google Books → -
Aristophanes: Lysistrata
James Robson (Bloomsbury ancient comedy companions, 2023) Google Books → -
Aristophanes: An Introduction
James Robson (Duckworth, 2009) Google Books → -
Aristophanes and Politics. New Studies
Ralph M. Rosen and Helene P. Foley (eds.) (Brill, 2020) Google Books → -
Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy
Donald Sells (Bloomsbury, 2018) Google Books → -
Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophanes' Provocative Comedy
David Stuttard (ed.) (Bristol Classical Press, 2010)
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Programme ID: m001y2z4
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001y2z4
Auto-category: 882.01 (Greek drama (Comedy) - Ancient Greece)
Hello (First sentence from this episode)
Hello. In 411 BC, Athenians watched Aristophanes' new comedy, Lysistrata, for the first and only time.