The Portrayal of Lysistrata in ‘Lysistrata’
‘Lysistrata’ written in 411BC is the third and last of Aristophanes’ ‘peace plays’ that we possess today. Unlike the other two, ‘The Acharnians’ and ‘Peace’, ‘Lysistrata’ is a dream about peace. The title character (or hero) of the play whose name means ‘she who disbands armies’- Lysistrata presents her plan to end the war, her method is straightforward until there is peace there will be no more sex. The united women will dress in their most alluring clothes and yet refuse all amatory advances. Furthermore, the older women seize the Acropolis and Athena’s temple, which holds the funds for Athens war effort. However Lysistrata has to use all her cunning to get the women to agree to such a plan. Throughout the play Aristophanes presents Lysistrata as a cunning leader displaying many leader like qualities such as organisation, manipulation and persuasion, passion for her aims, boldness and an ability to incite passion in others.
Firstly Lysistrata is portrayed as a woman of great organisation and outward thinking thus making her a great leader. She has not only at the beginning of the play organised a meeting to discuss her plans for peace but show outward thinking by inviting not just Athenian women to but delegates of women from all Greek states-“The whole future of the country [here the text implies that Greece is all one country] rests with us.” This is further mirrored in the great organisation and intelligence in the layout of her plan. She knows that it may not be enough to merely go on a sex strike and that for peace to be obtained all Athens war funding contained in the Acropolis must be seized. Therefore she has already organised it that older women, therefore showing great leadership qualities like forward planning and organisation, will seize the Acropolis. Indeed Lysistrata’s lofty idealism and intelligence is shown in her belief that the international situation and even Athens itself should be run on the method women use to sort out ‘raw fleece’ i.e. washing out the dung, beating out the villains, dealing with cliques and those chosen for public office, carding the wool into the work basket of Civic Goodwill. It is this lofty idealism, outward thinking that makes Lysistrata a good leader for Aristophanes allows her character to fantastically break typical female stereotypes so that no longer can “war be the care of men folk”.
