Lysistrata Of Aristophanes Essays -- essays research papers fc

The Lysistrata of Aristophanes Aristophanes was a satirist who produced Lysistrata around 413 BC when the news of Athens warships had been undone near Sicily. For twenty-one years, eyepatch Athens was engaged in war, he relentlessly and wittliy attacked the war, the ideals of the war, the war party and the war spirit. This risked his acceptance and his Athenian citizenship. Lysistrata is belike the oldest comedy which has retained a place in modern theatre. It in the beginning deals with cardinal themes, war and the proponent of sexuality.. Lysistrata (an invented name meaning, She Who Puts an End to War) has summoned the women of Athens to have-to doe with her at the foot of Acropolis. She puts before them the easy invitation that they must never craft again with their husbands until the war is ended. At first, they shudder and withdraw and refuse until, with the attend to of the women from Sparta and Thebes, they are impelled to agree. The women seize the Acropolis from w hich Athens is funding the war. After days of sexually depriving their men in order to bring peace to on that point communities. They defeat back in an attack from the old men who had remained in Athens while the younger men are on their crusade. When their husbands give up from battle, the women reject sex and stand guard at Acropolis. The sex strike, envisioned in risqu& angstromeacute episodes, finally pressure the men of Athens and Sparta to consent to a peace agreement. Ancient Greece in 431 BC was not a nation. It was a collection of rival city-states that were allies with each new(prenominal) or with leading military powers. Athens was a great naval power, while Sparta relied mainly on its army for superiority. In 431 BC, these alliances went to war against each other in a conflict called the Peleponnesian War. The war, which went on for 27 years, is named for the Peloponnesus, the peninsula on which Sparta is located. As the war began, Sparta and Athens each took adva ntage of their military strengths. Sparta ravaged Attica, the grime around Athens, while the Athenian navy raided cities in Peloponnesus. This strategy lasted for two years. Meanwhile, Pericles death in 429 BC left the democracy open for opposing factions and reckless leaders who pursued their own advantages. Chief among these leaders was Alcibiades, who was as irresponsible as brilliant. By 425 BC, Spartas hopes for victory were bleak, and its leaders were tack together to ask... ... to succeed. Ending the war would be so easy that women could complete the task. Aristophanes is not one of the most profound or exalted of Greek poets, tho he is the most creative. Others deal with the world as it is, glorifying it or justifying its flaws, discovering undercover values in it and suggesting how they may be realized. Aristophanes erases the present and constructs another. He rids archives and its constraints. If war has become tiresome he makes a private treaty and fetches the god dess of Peace. If Athens has become tiresome, he builds a new one in the sky. As Lysistrata shows, he is more moved by sympathy for the barren sufferers of war than anger against the warmongers. Although caustic and good-humored, he intended to show the power lust and civil war amongst the Greeks. Works Cited Aristophanes Lysistrata. 18 September 2000. *http//www1.cc.va.us/hurst/eng251cr/* Arkins, Brian. Classics Ireland. &quotSexuality in Fifth-Century&quot. 15 September 2000. *http//www.ucd.ie/classics/94/Arkins94.html/* Hadas, Moses. Lysistrata. The consummate Plays of Aristophanes. New York, 1962. 287-328 Peleponnesian War. 16 September 2000. *http/www.library.thinkquest.org/*