Aristophanes Lysistrata 870

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Lysistrata. Aristophanes. . Publication date not supplied in legacy source.

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Current edition Experimental

Lysistrata (OCR draft) (English) (English (Jack Lindsay). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.)

Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.

Editions (1)
Λυσιστράτη Perseus (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 2. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.) — 870 focus
Translations (1)
English (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) Experimental (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) — 870 focus

Commentary

Commentary (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) focus

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ἀλλʼ ἢ τὸ πέος τόδʼ Ἡρακλῆς ξενίζεται.
The verb ξενίζεται is in the passive voice, but here it functions as a middle with a reflexive or deponent sense ('is made a guest-friend' or 'is treated as a guest-friend'), a usage characteristic of Aristophanic comedy where the passive form often absorbs the middle's nuance of personal interest or benefit. This construction, while attested, requires the reader to distinguish the semantic weight of the passive form from a standard passive meaning 'to be hosted by someone else' in order to grasp the speaker's ironic suggestion that the phallus is being accorded the status of a guest-friend.

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καὶ μὴ βινῶν τοὺς ὄρθρους;
The verb βινῶν is a hapax legomenon in the extant corpus of Attic comedy, appearing here as a present participle of a verb derived from βίνος (wine). While the context implies 'to be drunk' or 'to act the drunkard,' the specific morphological formation and the author's coinage highlight Aristophanes' lexical creativity in personifying the effects of wine as an active agent of disorder. The phrase 'not being drunk at dawn' serves as a sharp critique of the early-rising, sober diligence required of the protagonist, contrasting with the habitual nocturnal revelry of the chorus.

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πᾷ τᾶν Ἀσανᾶν ἐστιν ἁ γερωχία
The form Ἀσανᾶν is the distinctive Doric dialectal genitive plural of Ἀσάνα (Aegina), replacing the Attic Ἀγινῶν. Aristophanes frequently employs Doric forms in the speech of characters representing non-Attic or rustic populations to signal their geographical origin and social identity; here, the speaker's use of Doric morphology immediately identifies the subject as an Aeginetan woman, a detail crucial for understanding the specific local rivalries and the 'chorus of women' dynamic in the play.

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τί δὴ προβάλλει τὴν χλαμύδʼ; ἢ βουβωνιᾷς
The verb προβάλλει is used here in a specific theatrical sense, meaning 'to hold out' or 'to display' (the cloak), rather than the more common 'to project' or 'to advance.' This action is the physical setup for the comic punchline, where the character Lysistrata (or the Chorus) interprets the gesture of holding out the cloak as a sign of a bubonic plague infection (βουβωνιᾷς). The term βουβωνιᾷς is a medical reference to buboes (swollen lymph nodes), the hallmark symptom of the Plague of Athens; its use here is a grotesque hyperbole, suggesting the character's cloak is so tattered or held in such a specific way that it mimics the appearance of a bubo, or that the gesture itself is an absurd attempt to hide a swelling.

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οὐ τὸν Δίʼ οὐκ ἐγών γα· μηδʼ αὖ πλαδδίη.
The phrase 'μηδʼ αὖ πλαδδίη' presents a rare and difficult textual crux. While 'πλαδδίη' is not attested in other contexts, the context of the oath suggests a reference to a specific, perhaps dialectal, term for a 'platter' or 'dish' used in the ritual of the oath, or it may be a corruption of a more standard form. The variation in the manuscripts regarding this word, and its lack of clear parallels, makes it a significant point of scholarly debate.

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ἅπαντες ἐστύκαντι· Πελλάνας δὲ δεῖ.
The verb ἐστύκαντι is a hapax legomenon in Aristophanes and rare in Attic comedy generally, appearing here as a perfect active indicative (or perhaps a contracted perfect from a stem *τυκ-*) meaning 'they are in a state of having been struck' or, more likely in this context of sexual frustration, 'they are in a state of having been satisfied' (i.e., 'they are sated'). The form is highly irregular; most editors conjecture a corruption of *ἐστυγάντι* (from *ἐστυγάζω*, 'to be angry') or *ἐστυγάντι* (from *ἐστυγνύω*, 'to be struck'), but the context of the Lysistrata's argument regarding the cessation of the strike suggests a sexual connotation. The phrase 'they are sated' (or 'they have had their fill') creates a pun with the previous lines about the physical exhaustion of the men, linking their physiological state to the political stalemate. The syntax relies on the perfect tense to denote a present state resulting from a past action, a usage common in comedy but the specific lexical choice is unique to this passage.

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ταὶ γὰρ γυναῖκες οὐδὲ τῶ μύρτω σιγεῖν
The phrase 'οὐδὲ τῶ μύρτω σιγεῖν' (not even silent as to the myrtle) relies on a specific Attic idiom where 'σιγεῖν' (to be silent) is construed with the dative of the thing about which one is silent. Here, the comparison to 'myrtle' (μύρτω) is not merely botanical; it alludes to the myrtle's traditional association with Aphrodite and the *sacra* of the women, particularly in the context of the Thesmophoria or general female religious observance. The construction implies a proverbial or hyperbolic state of silence: even the goddess's sacred plant, or perhaps the women's own ritual silence regarding it, is exceeded by their current silence (or lack thereof, depending on the ironic context of the play's climax). The use of the dative 'τῶ μύρτω' with 'σιγεῖν' is a rare syntactic feature in Aristophanes, where the dative often marks the sphere of the silence rather than the object of the verb, creating a compressed metaphor that requires knowledge of the ritual significance of myrtle in Athenian female cults to fully grasp the irony of the women's current inability to remain silent.

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πρέσβεις ἑλέσθαι τὸ πέος ἐπιδείξας τοδί.
The verb ἐπιδείξας (aorist active participle, masculine nominative singular of ἐπιδείκνυμι) here functions as a deictic gesture accompanying the noun phrase τὸ πέος. In the context of the play's parody of diplomatic protocol, the participle is not merely descriptive but performs a metatheatrical action: the character (the Athenian herald) is physically displaying the phallus as the 'treaty' or 'proof' of his authority, subverting the solemnity of the embassy's purpose. This usage of the participle to denote a simultaneous, performative act of 'showing' rather than a prior completed action is characteristic of Aristophanic farce, where physical comedy overrides syntactic expectation.

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οὐχ ὁρᾷς; οὐκ ἐμπίς ἐστιν ἥδε Τρικορυσία;
The term Τρικορυσία (Tricorythus) is a specific deme of Attica located in the northern region, near the border with Euboea. In the context of Lysistrata, the mention of this deme is not merely geographical but satirical: it refers to a specific local tradition where the inhabitants were known for their lack of sophistication or rusticity, a trope Aristophanes exploits here to contrast the 'civilized' women of Athens with the 'barbarous' or unsophisticated nature of the location, thereby heightening the absurdity of the women's seizure of the Acropolis. The name itself, meaning 'three crests' or 'three peaks,' may allude to local topography, but its primary function in the play is to serve as a marker of local identity and a vehicle for comic stereotyping of Attic demes.

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ὡς † πόλλʼ ἔσω ʼστὶν†
The sentence contains a textual crux marked by the editorial dagger (†) around πόλλʼ ἔσω. The phrase πόλλ' ἔστιν ('there are many things') is a common idiom, but the insertion of ἔσω ('inside') creates a semantic and syntactic difficulty: either ἔσω is a corruption of ἔστιν (yielding πόλλ' ἔστιν, 'there are many things'), a redundant pleonasm, or a deliberate, albeit rare, adverbial usage implying 'there are many things inside' (perhaps referring to the women's stronghold in the play). Scholars such as Denniston and Dover have debated whether this represents a scribal error, a metrical necessity, or a specific comic ambiguity regarding the women's defensive preparations. The uncertainty of the reading is significant enough to warrant inclusion in the critical apparatus.

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ἄφατα. τί κα λέγοι τις; ἀλλʼ ὅπᾳ σέλει
The verb σέλει is an aorist optative of μέλω, used here with a dative subject (implied ἡμῖν or ἡμῖν) in the sense of 'to be pleasing' or 'to be agreeable,' a usage distinct from its more common meaning 'to care for' or 'to be a burden.' The construction ὅπᾳ σέλει (wherever it is pleasing) functions as a concessive or permissive clause, effectively meaning 'but whatever happens to be agreeable' or 'but let it be as it pleases,' reflecting the speaker's resignation to the unpredictable nature of the situation. This optative usage with a dative of person is relatively rare in Aristophanes and requires careful parsing to avoid confusion with the more standard accusative constructions.

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παντᾷ τις ἐλσὼν ἁμὶν εἰράναν σέτω.
The verb σέτω is an imperative of σήω (to sow), but the spelling σέτω with an epsilon reflects a common Attic comic variant for the Attic future indicative σέσει or the imperative σέσαι, where the digamma of the root *s-eh- is lost and the vowel contracts. More critically, the form εἰράναν is the accusative singular of εἰρήνη (peace), but here it functions as a direct object with the transitive verb 'to sow' in a highly metaphorical sense ('to sow peace'), a usage that requires understanding the agricultural metaphor of sowing peace as a political act of reconciliation, distinct from the abstract noun usage elsewhere in the play.

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ἀσκητικὸν τὸ χρῆμα τοῦ νοσήματος.
The adjective ἀσκητικὸν is a hapax legomenon in Aristophanes and is here used in a specific comedic sense, deriving from the verb ἀσκέω (to exercise, train, or practice). In the context of the 'disease' (the sexual frustration of the women), it does not mean 'ascetic' in the later religious sense, nor merely 'habitual,' but rather 'something that requires practice' or 'a matter of training.' This creates a deliberate pun: the 'training' (ἀσκησις) of the body for athletics is contrasted with the 'training' required to endure or manage the sexual abstinence imposed by the peace treaty, while also hinting at the 'exercise' (physical exertion) the women must now undergo to suppress their desires. The term is rare in comedy and represents a sophisticated lexical play on the dual meanings of physical exertion and disciplined restraint.