Now tell me, if I have discovered a means of ending the war, will you all second me? LYSISTRATA: And not so much as the shadow of a lover! Since the day the Milesians betrayed us, I have never once seen an eight-inch-long godemiche even, to be a leathern consolation to us poor widows. LAMPITO: As for mine, if he ever does return from service, he's no sooner back than he takes down his shield again and flies back to the wars. LYSISTRATA: 'Tis seven long months since mine left me for Pylos. LYSISTRATA: Don't you feel sad and sorry because the fathers of your children are far away from you with the army? For I'll undertake, there is not one of you whose husband is not abroad at this moment.ĬALONICE: Mine has been the last five months in Thrace - looking after Eucrates. LYSISTRATA: But I tell you, the business that calls them here is far and away more urgent.ĬALONICE: And why do you summon us, dear Lysistrata? What is it all about? One is busy pottering about her husband another is getting the servant up a third is putting her child asleep, or washing the brat or feeding it.

LYSISTRATA: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming.ĬALONICE: Oh! they will come, my dear but 'tis not easy, you know, for women to leave the house. Men will have it we are tricky and sly.ĬALONICE: And they are quite right, upon my word! LYSISTRATA: Oh! Calonice, my heart is on fire I blush for our sex. Good day, Calonice.ĬALONICE: Good day, Lysistrata but pray, why this dark, forbidding face, my dear? Believe me, you don't look a bit pretty with those black lowering brows. Ah! if only they had been invited to a Bacchic revelling, or a feast of Pan or Aphrodite or Genetyllis, why! the streets would have been impassable for the thronging tambourines! Now there's never a woman here-ah! except my neighbour Calonice, whom I see approaching yonder.

Lysistrata translation