While Aristophanes clearly wrote Lysistrata as a way of protesting the war, there is another theme tied into the story that is both important and connected with the protest of the war. At this time in history, women had no political rights. However, Aristophanes makes the women the saviors; they seize the Acropolis, demand the end of the war by leaving the men without sex, and negotiate the peace. This theme, women in politics, or feminism, surrounds this story and perhaps foreshadows the eventual rise of women into politics that we are now beginning to see today. These themes lend weight to each other throughout the course of the play. That Lysistrata focused on the Peloponnesian War was nothing new for Aristophanes. The majority of his works date from the years of the Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C. The Acharnians, written in 425 B.C. was the story of an Athenian that makes a separate peace for himself and his family, and enjoys the benefits of peace while everyone else is still at war (NAWM, 394). The Peace focuses on an Athenian that flies to Heaven on a dung-beetle and asks Zeus to end the war (394). The theme of the Peloponnesian War is nothing new in Aristophanes work. However, the treatment of women in Lysistrata is very different from anything else. First off, Lysistrata, the “hero” of the play, is in actuality a heroine. By the time Lysistrata was released, Sparta had built its own fleet with the help of its allies and had beaten back the Athenian fleet. Perhaps as a way to show his disapproval with the men of still not settling for a peace, he placed the women as the lead political characters. Though women at this time had no rights, Lysistrata does an amazing job of gathering all the women together to meet about the war. Aristophanes does not hold women up as perfect examples with their love of sex and drinking, which was confirmed by the women themselves during their meeting with Lysistrata at the beginning of the play. Instead, he puts them on top of the men by portraying their incompetence. By this point in history, Athens was slowly losing the war to Sparta, yet they would not look to peace. “The sexual potency of women is, of course, the mainspring of the Lysistrata, but Aristophanes has now endowed at least one female body with a mind that is not merely the equal but clearly superior to that of the men in the play” (Dillon, 101). Aristophanes may show the worse side of the women, but you cannot ignore the simple facts of the play. Lysistrata, a woman with no power, stood against society and organized the women to revolt against the men in order to end the war and bring peace to their city. Lysistrata on pages 409-410 of the text explains how women have been kept silent for too long. She says that if she were to even ask her husband about new measures that were passed, he would yell at her to hold her tongue. On page 411 Lysistrata asks her husband: “Husband, how could you pass such a stupid proposal?” with the response of a scowl and: “If you don’t mind your spinning, your head will be sore for weeks. War shall be the concern of men.” Ironically, Lysistrata later turns these words around on the magistrate, making it a sort of rallying call for the women: “War shall be the concern of Women!” It is important to note that the women in Athens had next to no rights at this time. In fact, they would have had to be accompanied outside the house. Lysistrata makes a point of this on page 412: “When a man comes home, no matter how grey he is, he soon finds a girl to marry. But woman’s bloom is short and fleeting; if she doesn’t grasp her chance, no man is willing to marry her and she sits at home a prey to every fortune-teller.” Although women at this time had no rights, it is the women of Lysistrata that are the ones that end the war, negotiating a peace. The fact that these women that have no power or influence in the system are the only ones that are able to see the truth behind the war and see that it needs to be stopped make this a powerful warning. They are outside the system, yet they’re the ones to end the war that the men, the people in power, can’t. “It also made possible the slapstick battle of the twin Choruses of men and women on the one hand, and, one the other, high pronouncements on politics and the place of women in society: though spoken in a light-hearted spirit, these have a serious undertone that makes them not only the ‘meat’ of the play, but gives to them the real importance in the history of Greek thought that has generally been recognized (Hulton, 35-36).
The leader of women also points this point out on page 413: “Therefore am I not bound to give good advice to the city? Don’t take it ill that I was born a woman, if I contribute something better than our present troubles. I pay my share; for I contribute men.” The women are seeing, perhaps for the first time, their place in society and taking a stand for it. As The Norton Anthology of World Masteries points out, we have no idea how the Athenians welcomed this play. The only thing we know is that they seem to have missed the undertone of war that was central to it, as the war continued for seven additional years before Athens’ last fleet was defeated and the empire lost. So whether or not this play had any profound impact on the social structure in Athens at that time, we will never know. But perhaps this at least opened their eyes to the concept of women as equals. The comment from the leader of women also bears relevance because Lysistrata makes a statement that closely mirrors it. Lysistrata says that women’s share in war is double, as they bear sons and have to send them off to fight as long as their husbands. “Even more striking is the willingness - now perhaps necessity – to present the effects of war on human lives, not vines or fig trees. Repeated references to the absence of husbands on campaign or to armed soldiers in the agora or, most unusually, to the lonely lives of young women who will never marry, all strike home more directly than before” (Dillon 103).
These concepts which we take for granted today, perhaps were not realized back then. If the women are nothing more in society than a housemaid and mother, how would they understand the concept that they have feelings and a purpose in society as well. Dillon points out on page 101 that: “Nevertheless, the creation of a “serious” female character does seem to have had a considerable effect on Aristophanes’ art. I believe it is no coincidence that women figure more prominently in Aristocratic comedy from 411 onwards.” Though Aristophanes Lysistrata has clear political undertones, they are driven by another prevalent theme in this work: the role of women in society. Seeing that the men cannot do what is right, the women step in, seizing the Acropolis and organizing women across all of Greece to withhold sex until the peace is restored. This idea of women in power is in itself a very powerful idea, which Aristophanes picked up on through the writing of Lysistrata. So in a sense, Aristophanes accomplished two things through writing this play: to protest the war and to enlighten the Greek people to new ideas.