Lysistrata

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristophanes’ comedy in which the women of Athens and Sparta, led by Lysistrata, secure peace in the long-running war between them by staging a sex strike. To the men in the audience in 411BC, the idea that peace in the Peloponnesian War could be won so easily was ridiculous and the thought that their wives could have so much power over them was even more so. However Aristophanes’ comedy also has the women seizing the treasure in the Acropolis that was meant to fund more fighting in an emergency, a fund the Athenians had recently had to draw on. They were in a perilous position and, much as they might laugh at Aristophanes’ jokes, they knew there were real concerns about the actual cost of the war in terms of wealth and manpower.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Paul Cartledge 21 episodes
  AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge
• Sarah Miles No other episodes
  Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University
• James Robson No other episodes
  Professor of Classical Studies at the Open University

Reading list

• Lysistrata
  Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson) (Oxford University Press, 1987) Google Books →
• Three Plays by Aristophanes: Staging Women
  Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson) (Routledge, 2010)
• Birds; Lysistrata; Women at the Thesmophoria
  Aristophanes (ed. Jeffrey Henderson) (Loeb Classical Library series, Harvard University Press, 2014) Google Books →
• Lysistrata and Other Plays: The Acharnians; The Clouds; Lysistrata
  Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein) (Penguin, 2002) Google Books →
• Lysistrata
  Aristophanes (ed. Alan H. Sommerstein) (Aris & Phillips, 1998) Google Books →
• Aristophanes and his Theatre of the Absurd
  Paul Cartledge (Bristol Classical Press, 1999) Google Books →
• Aristophanic Comedy
  Kenneth Dover (University of California Press, 1972) Google Books →
• Lysistrata: The Sex Strike: After Aristophanes
  Germaine Greer (Aurora Metro Press, 2000) Google Books →
• The Common Chorus: A Version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata
  Tony Harrison (Faber & Faber, 1992) Google Books →
• Aristophanes and Athens: An Introduction to the Plays
  Douglas M. MacDowell (Oxford University Press, 1995) Google Books →
• Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson
  S. Douglas Olson (ed.) (De Gruyter, 2013) Google Books →
• Aristophanes: Lysistrata
  James Robson (Bloomsbury ancient comedy companions, 2023) Google Books →
• Aristophanes: An Introduction
  James Robson (Duckworth, 2009) Google Books →
• Aristophanes and Politics. New Studies
  Ralph M. Rosen and Helene P. Foley (eds.) (Brill, 2020) Google Books →
• Parody, Politics and the Populace in Greek Old Comedy
  Donald Sells (Bloomsbury, 2018) Google Books →
• Looking at Lysistrata: Eight Essays and a New Version of Aristophanes' Provocative Comedy
  David Stuttard (ed.) (Bristol Classical Press, 2010)

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Programme ID: m001y2z4

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001y2z4

Auto-category: 882.01 (Greek drama (Comedy) - Ancient Greece)