It's frae exercise and kicking high behint. In the easy stride of your sleek slenderness, Washed with the rosy spring, how fresh you look The Peloponnesian girls and the girls of Boeotia ĭear Spartan girl with a delightful face, What is that?īut if the affair's so wonderful, tell us, what is it? Yes, they generally manage to come first.Īre we late, Lysistrata?. īut look, here are some at last, and more behind them. Would be here first, yet they haven't come either! Īnd got their husbands up if not their boat sails.Īnd I'd have staked my life the Acharnian dames Why, there's not a womanįrom the shoreward demes arrived, not one from Salamis. My friend, you'll see that they are true Athenians:Īlways too late. They should have turned birds, they should have grown Now, tell me, are the women right to lag?

No man will lift a lance against another. Slippers, cosmetics dusting beauty, and robes These crocus-gowns, this outlay of the best myrrh, These are the very armaments of the rescue. Of stately silk and dainty little slippers. With gowns of lucid gold and gaudy toilets Quietly adorning ourselves in a back-room Have mercy on the eels! īut with regard to Athens, note I'm careful To destroy the Peloponnesians root and branch.

Our country's fate is henceforth in our hands: So fine it comes to this-Greece saved by woman!īy woman? Wretched thing, I'm sorry for it. It must be fine to stand such long attention. It concerns an object I've felt overĪnd turned this way and that for sleepless nights. If that was the case, they'd soon come fluttering along. That you've called the women hither in a troop? Or soothed with lullays or fed with mouthfuls of pap.īut I tell you, here's a far more weighty object. Servants to be poked out: children washed Husbands to be patted and put in good tempers: Yet summoned on the most tremendous businessįor deliberation, still they snuggle in bed. I am hot all over with blushes for our sex. To knit your eyebrows up glumly like that. What are these black looks for? It doesn't suit you The tambourines would block the rowdy streets,Įxcept-ah, yes-this neighbor of mine over there.īut what has vexed you so? Tell me, child. If they were trysting for a Bacchanal ,Ī feast of Pan or Colias or Genetyllis,

LYSISTRATA (She stands alone with the Propylaea at her back).

Lysistrata translation