LYSISTRATA

An easy task if the love's raging home-sickness

Doesn't start trying out how well each other

Will serve instead of us. But I'll know at once

If they do. O where's that girl, Reconciliation?

1340

Bring first before me the Spartan delegates,

And see you lift no rude or violent hands—

None of the churlish ways our husbands used.

But lead them courteously, as women should.

And if they grudge fingers, guide them by other methods,

1345

And introduce them with ready tact. The Athenians

Draw by whatever offers you a grip.

Now, Spartans, stay here facing me. Here you,

Athenians. Both hearken to my words.

I am a woman, but I'm not a fool.

1350

And what of natural intelligence I own

Has been filled out with the remembered precepts

My father and the city-elders taught me.

First I reproach you both sides equally

That when at Pylae and Olympia ,

1355

At Pytho and the many other shrines

That I could name, you sprinkle from one cup

The altars common to all Hellenes, yet

You wrack Hellenic cities, bloody Hellas

With deaths of her own sons, while yonder clangs

1360

The gathering menace of barbarians.

ATHENIANS

We cannot hold it in much longer now.

LYSISTRATA

Now unto you, O Spartans, do I speak.

Do you forget how your own countryman,

Pericleidas, once came hither suppliant

1365

Before our altars, pale in his purple robes,

Praying for an army when in Messenia

Danger growled, and the Sea-god made earth quayer.

Then with four thousand hoplites Cimon marched

And saved all Sparta . Yet base ingrates now,

1370

You are ravaging the soil of your preservers.

ATHENIANS

By Zeus, they do great wrong, Lysistrata.

SPARTANS

Great wrang, indeed. O! What a luscious wench!

LYSISTRATA

And now I turn to the Athenians.

Have you forgotten too how once the Spartans

1375

In days when you wore slavish tunics, came

And with their spears broke a Thessalian host

And all the partisans of Hippias?

They alone stood by your shoulder on that day.

They freed you, so that for the slave's short skirt

1380

You should wear the trailing cloak of liberty.