Lysistrata

1

She was in bed.

Athens slept, and so did Lysistrata. But even as the streets of sleeping Athens were disturbed by nocturnal rowdies — in spite of the vigilance of Scythian police from marketplace to the brothels of the Piraeus — so was the sleeping mind of Lysistrata disturbed by dreams of Lycon and Lycon’s love.

It had been now seven long and barren months since he had left her for the fortress of Pylos in distant Messenia. Seven months of days since she had served him Boeotian eels and the wines of Hellas. Seven months of nights since she had received him in the service of Aphrodite. Seven months of days and nights of empty heart and aching groin. It simply did not pay in these days of endless war to be the respected wife of a citizen. One had much better become one of the hetairai, the highest of courtesans, and dye one’s hair yellow and wear flowery robes. One could then, at least, have a little fun out of life.

So Athens and Lysistrata slept, and the night passed. At dawn, since Athenians were early risers, a slave girl came into the room to start the day. The girl was called Theoris, and she had a slender and delicate body that seemed to float with an incredible grace of motion, and to glow softly in the thinning darkness. She carried a small torch which cast a distorted shadow behind her. Kneeling beside the bed of her mistress, she applied the flame of the torch to the wick of an oil lamp, a flat terra-cotta bowl standing on exquisite candelabra. The light of the lamp flickered and grew and spread softly over the sleeping Lysistrata. Leaning forward, Theoris looked upon her mistress with tenderness and compassion. It had been, after all, an intolerable time since the master had come to her on Aphrodite’s business — and chastity, which was a virtue, could quite easily, like other virtues, be overdone. With small and delicate hands, the compassionate slave girl, who had not herself been forced to an excess of virtue, shook her mistress gently awake, making in her throat as she did so a kind of solicitous crooning sound that was like a phrase of barbarous music. Waking slowly to the day and the day’s certain boredom, Lysistrata sat up and stretched in the light of the terra-cotta lamp, her body strong and supple and still firm-fleshed, itself in the light a thing of light and shadow.

“Good-morning, Theoris,” she said. “What time is it?”

“Dawn,” the slave girl said. “Earlier, I should think, than it is necessary for you to get up.”

Lysistrata stretched again, lowering her hands to caress for the briefest instant her alert breasts and the clean lines of her sides.

“Well,” she said bitterly, “I have nothing to keep me in bed in the morning, and nothing, so far as that goes, to send me there at night.”

Theoris understood her mistress’s meaning clearly, feeling almost as resentful as if she were the one who had been deserted, but she was forced by her station to use restraint in her response.

“Men are idiots,” she said.

Lysistrata laughed, patting with affection the bare shoulder of her pretty slave.

“You are certainly right,” she said. “Since they spend their lives in the practice of idiocy, it is perfectly apparent that they are idiots. I must admit, Theoris, that I am frequently astonished by your perception. How old are you?”

“I don’t know, Mistress.”

“Well, no matter. Can you remember a time when Athens was not at war?”

“No. All of my life there has been the war.”

“And almost all of mine. I was a child when it began, long ago in the time of Pericles. Well, Pericles has been dead and out of it for almost two decades now, but his precious war has gone on and on without him, except for the short time of the Peace of Nicias, which was no real peace, and it has been all this time like a hungry beast that eats our idiot men, who nourish and support it in true idiocy so that they may be eaten. Does this make sense?”

“Now that you have asked me, I confess that it doesn’t.”

“Naturally not. That’s because you are a woman and therefore sensible. Do you believe that it makes sense to the women of Sparta and Corinth and Boeotia and all the states of the Peloponnesus?”

“It does not seem likely.”

“Truly you are perceptive, Theoris, and I must say that I have great admiration for your natural intelligence. Women are women before they are Spartans or Corinthians or anything else, and while a Spartan or a Corinthian may not object to sleeping alone, a woman does. To put it mildly, we are sick of this idiocy, which you have perceived and labeled, and if we were permitted, we could do a much better job of managing things. As it is, we have all too few pleasures at present, and not many more to remember or anticipate. Truly a woman is in the worst possible state when there is no purpose in going to bed on the one hand and none for getting out of it on the other. Is the basin filled?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Good. I feel inclined to make myself seductive. There is nothing to be gained from this, of course, but I like to keep in practice in case things should improve. I shall bathe and oil and scent myself as if I were preparing for the arms of Lycon, and then I’ll sit around and do nothing and be bored, and perhaps later my friend Calonice will come to entertain me with some more intimate details of her relationship with her husband Acron. He is home temporarily from the war, and I honestly believe she tells me these things with the idea of satisfying me vicariously.”

Getting up, followed by the slave girl, Lysistrata went out of the room into the Proitas, the central court around which the house was built, and in which stood the family altar and the statue of Hestia, protectress of the hearth. But Hestia, as Lysistrata saw it, had been grossly remiss in her function, and the deserted wife did not linger to offer thanks for nothing. Passing swiftly around a part of the court’s perimeter, she entered a paved bathroom. Naked, standing beside the large marble basin that Theoris had filled, she bathed and dried quickly with the slave girl’s help, and the touch of the slave reminded her suddenly of the touch of Lycon, and she shivered a little and was filled with the disruptive ambivalence of love and longing and anger. Passing again around the court past the statue of Hestia, she returned to the room in which she slept too much alone.

Without instruction, having been told already that the morning toilet would be as if for the arms of Lycon, Theoris opened a chest and began to set out the items her mistress would need. First a shining mirror to catch and reflect the shadow of beauty in the soft light of the oil lamp. Alkanet root for lips and cheeks. Antimony for the eyebrows and kohl for the lids. Oil of mastic to keep the body sweet. Thyme and marjoram, mint and myrrh. Lysistrata sat before the mirror and the mirror’s image, and she thought bitterly that the firm flesh she saw might well be dry and withered on its bones before men returned to sanity and Lycon to his home.

She sat quietly while Theoris braided and bound her hair, securing it with many pins. Afterward, working with a deft economy of motion, she applied to herself in the areas designated by proper usage the oils and paints and scented unguents. This done, she put on a white peplos, a garment in two pieces secured at the waist by a girdle, and sandals.

“I think I’ll go out into the garden for a few minutes,” she said. “I’ll have some bread and wine when I come in.”

Turning away, she went into a passage and through a gate into a small garden. Gardens were rare in Athens, and only fortunate women had one. Only extremely fortunate women had both a garden and a husband.