Philosophy and Comedy: Aristophanes, Logos, and Eros

4. Lysistrata: Erōs and Transcendence

In this chapter, I propose an interpretation of this most popular of Aristophanes ’ comedies that moves in a different direction than is usual. The abundance and the virtuosity of sexual punning, innuendo, and actual imagery that permeates virtually every scene of the comedy provides contemporary audiences with straightforward access and enjoyment. With its underlying feminist themes,1 its make-love-not-war sentiments, its more serious concerns with the terrible costs of war and with matters of competent governance generally, Lysistrata is an especially timely play for us. These matters require little commentary and those that do, such as the historical and linguistic matters, have been ably treated elsewhere.2 A reading of Lysistrata through a different lens, in order to discern its philosophical yield, gives the play another and deeper side. While this deeper side is unmistakably present in its text, Lysistrata’s own hilarity and good cheer has seemed to overwhelm it in the literature. In Assemblywomen, erōs made itself manifest as the direct desire for sexual satisfaction—little or nothing more. Further, the city of Athens was presented first of all as a city of selfish, bungling men; then as a reorganized city under the principle of equality; finally once again as a city of self-seeking individuals for whom the new laws instituted by Praxagora are either means or obstacles to self-gratification. In terms of Plato’s Symposium, erōs never ascends beyond the love of beautiful bodies. More precisely, it never even ascends to this lowest rung, for in the Symposium this initial rung unFour Lysistrata Eros and Transcendence _ folds into beautiful logoi (210a8), none of which are remotely present in the erotic discourses of Assemblywomen. By contrast, erōs serves transcendent purposes in Lysistrata. The physical beauty and sexual charms of the wives are withheld from their husbands , a withholding that aims at the great political goal of ending warfare, and at the great private goal of familial happiness. The men are depicted as politically inept, but this ineptitude has far more dangerous consequences than those in Assemblywomen. Their folly leads to deep human misery on all fronts. At the same time, they are granted moral nobility: they are scrupulously faithful to their wives. While away from home, they do not avail themselves of hetaireia to satisfy their sexual frustrations, nor do they “employ their hand” (dephesthai) for relief. The women are initially depicted as silly and superficial, but they too share in the moral nobility of their husbands , whom they love just as truly and just as ardently as they are loved. The superficial difference consists of their complaints concerning the unavailability of those technological products useful for easing their sexual frustration in their husbands’ absence. Erōs, then, serves not merely as sexual desire for one beautiful body, but as the seal of a sacred promise. As the comedy unfolds directly into the public , the private, and the universal realms, I shall endeavor to direct attention to these subtler and more philosophical dimensions. LInes 1–145 The play opens with its heroine Lysistrata bemoaning the propensity of her gender to frivolity. First among her examples is “a revel for Bacchus” (Bakkheion). This is a most peculiar example, since the comedy is being performed at a Bacchic (Dionysian) festival, which at the very least is an outgrowth of the Bacchanalian revels of the past, and might well be regarded virtually identical to them. There is neither shame nor negativity attached to rejoicing in one’s erotic nature. When Lysistrata expresses her annoyance with the women for being late to the “serious” meeting she called, decrying the view held by “the men that we’re capable of any sort of mischief ” (para men tois andrasin nenomismetha einai panourgoi) (11–12), her friend Kalonike agrees at once: “By God, we are!” (12). The word panourgos at its most negative pole points to wickedness, and at its most positive it points to cunning. Henderson’s “mischief,” which can point both to criminal activity and to playfulness, captures these two poles in a single word. Lysistrata regards the feminine propensity to panourgoi as entirely frivolous, at least in the current context. Her friend, who just might have a greater appreciation of both the wholeness and the actuality of womanly experience, celebrates the feminine capacity for panLysistrata |  ourgia. Lysistrata stands alone among the plays of Aristophanes...