Lysistrata

4

The marketplace was located in the middle of the town where all the main streets crossed, which made it easy to reach from all directions. Athenians were a gregarious breed and spent a lot of time at this lively center, not because they had anything in particular to do there, but just loafing and talking with cronies and passing the time of day in one way or another.

Having reached the marketplace, Lycon wandered around the square looking at this and that, and after a while he began to feel a little better.

The farmers from the country around town had hauled in their produce to be sold, peas and lentils and other vegetables, as well as fruit and milk and honey, and all this produce was available in the stalls for anyone who had the obols to buy it. There were also wine stalls, and these were doing a brisk business, because the Greeks were very handy with a skin of wine. It was essential in shopping to watch the merchants like a hawk, for they were sharp fellows who took great pride in weighing up a thumb or slipping a customer the wrong change from a drachma.

There were very few women in the marketplace, the Greek custom being to keep the women in the home, unless they happened to be the yellow-headed whores called hetairai, who wore flowery robes and entertained the more prosperous citizens. Exceptions were the girls who sold flowers and bread, and the flower-girls established for themselves a quality of charm that was celebrated by artists and poets and other romantic people.

Pretty soon, after wandering around the square and looking things over, Lycon stopped and watched a pair of clowns cutting capers in front of a studio, but he couldn’t get much fun out of it, and decided that he simply wasn’t in the mood. Thinking of the mood he wasn’t in, he began brooding again over the mood that Lysistrata hadn’t been in, even after seven months and ten days. It didn’t seem to him in any way reasonable, and the only explanation that he could consider acceptable off-hand was that she had another lover, in which case he was bound in honor to throw her out of the house. The truth was, however, he didn’t want to do it. For his obols, when it came to stirring up the juices in a man, there wasn’t another female in Athens, hetairai or otherwise, who could come close to her. Besides, it would probably turn out that she hadn’t been unfaithful at all. It was just that she didn’t understand about how a man had to be a patriotic citizen and do his duty in the war. What he ought to do, he decided, now that he had a chance to think about it clearly with some detachment, was to beat her thoroughly and exercise his prerogatives, which was more than likely what she wanted anyhow, women being generally peculiar.

Moving along, he came to a small group that had gathered to listen to the spiel of a vendor who was selling some kind of medicine that was guaranteed to cure all known diseases. After listening for a while with the others, he went on to a lounge in which a couple of fellows were discussing the situation in Sicily, but he couldn’t get interested in it, and was bored, and just then along came Acron, the husband of Calonice.

“Well, well,” said Acron, “if it isn’t old Lycon. I thought you were in Pylos.”

“I was in Pylos,” said Lycon, “but I have come back temporarily for a rest.”

“When did you get home?”

“Just this morning, as a matter of fact.”

“Well, I’m very glad to see you. How’s everything in Pylos, by the way?”

“Pretty dull, to tell the truth.”

“Oh, that’s to be expected, of course. War’s always a dull business, when you come right down to it.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, Acron, but I doubt that it’s patriotic to admit it.”

“That depends on which day it is. I understand that Alcibiades, after betraying us to the Spartans, is returning to Athens. Yesterday, therefore, it was treasonous to admire him, and tomorrow it will be expected.”

“Oh, well. Alcibiades always was a wild one. Even when he was a kid running around the streets, you never could tell from one day to the next what he’d be up to. A juvenile delinquent was what he was, to tell the truth, and in my opinion he was guilty of knocking the phalli off all the statues of Hermes, just as he was accused.”

“You’re probably right. You have to admit, though, that he had a way about him. The hetairai were crazy about him, and it’s common knowledge that the Queen of Sparta went to bed with him, and even had a bastard by him, and everyone can remember when he slapped the face of old Hipponicus and then had the nerve to talk him out of his daughter and a big dowry of twenty talents besides.”

“I admit that he was successful with the girls, and I only wish he’d been half as successful with the Syracusans.”

“He wasn’t in the campaign against Syracuse, and you know it perfectly well. Before he could get started, he was snatched back to Athens to stand trial for mimicking the Eleusinian Mysteries.”

“They used his plan of campaign, just the same, and where did it get them? Everyone wound up dead or in the stone quarries, that’s where it got them. If you want to know what I think, I think it’s too bad they didn’t get him on that Eleusinian Mysteries business, instead of letting him escape and run off to Sparta.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You have to admire him in a way. I guess it’s true that he offered to help Sparta beat us in the war, which is certainly treason, but he didn’t last long down there after all, and nothing came of it.”

“Of course he didn’t last long. How could you expect anyone to last long anywhere when he’s all the time crawling in and out of bed with someone else’s wife? The minute old King Agis heard he’d tumbled with the Queen, he was a dead pigeon so far as his chances in Sparta were concerned.”

“But he certainly was successful with the girls, all right.” Acron laughed. There was an envious expression on his face, and it was easy to see that this accomplishment was one that he admired. “Do you remember when poor old Hipparete, his wife, went before the archon for a divorce on the grounds that he’d been sleeping around with the hetairai? Well, he didn’t do a thing but snatch her right out from under the old archon’s nose and haul her off home. He carried her right through this marketplace, and I can testify to it, because I was right here when it happened.”

“Well,” he said bitterly, “I don’t make any excuse for most of the silliness that Alcibiades was always up to, but I can see how he might have been justified in sleeping around with the hetairai, and if things don’t pick up around my house pretty fast, I may take it up myself.”

Acron looked at him with interest, smelling something juicy.

“What’s the matter, old boy? You run into something unexpected when you got home? Personally, I make a special point of never coming home unexpectedly at night or early in the morning. It prevents a lot of unnecessary trouble, you know.”

“It’s not anything like that.”

“No? What’s the trouble, then? It might do you good to get it off your chest.”

“Well, the truth is, Lysistrata seems to be on a strike.”

“Strike? What kind of strike?”

“To come right out with it, the first thing I did when I got home this morning was to duck down to her bed chamber.”

“Naturally.”

“But Lysistrata refused to move over and make ready.”

“Really? That’s incredible.”

“It’s worse than that. It’s dereliction of duty, to say the least.”

“Of course you beat her and made her get ready just the same.”

“I didn’t, as a matter of fact. I was so surprised that I just couldn’t do anything.”

“Oh, that was a bad mistake. You certainly should have beaten her. I’ve never had precisely the same situation arise, but I’ve frequently been compelled to beat Calonice for other reasons having to do with pigheadedness. The results are always very satisfactory.”

“I don’t know. Somehow I got the idea that beating Lysistrata wouldn’t accomplish much in this case.”

“Did she give you a reason for not making ready? Is she ill or anything like that?”

“No. The best I can understand it, she’s annoyed because I spend too much time in the war and not enough at home.”

“Is that all? That’s common among wives, Lycon, old boy. Surely you realize that. Calonice is always bitching about the war, especially when it creates a shortage of Boeotian eels. You just don’t pay any attention to it, that’s all.”

“How can you help paying attention to it if your wife refuses absolutely to make ready?”

“Well, that complicates the problem, and I admit it. Did she declare openly that she was on strike because of the war and all?”

“Not exactly, but that’s what’s behind it, I’m certain. She just said she didn’t seem to be in the mood.”

“Not in the mood? I don’t want to plant nasty suspicions in your mind, old boy, but I feel compelled to point out that seven months without love is just as long to a wife as to a husband. Almost anyone short of an octogenarian should be able to work up a mood in seven months, and it’s my opinion that in every case where no mood is present, it hasn’t been seven months.”

“I thought of that myself, and I said so, but she just accused me of having a dirty mind. It was pretty confusing, if you want to know it.”

“Women are very clever at that sort of thing. They play some dirty trick on you, and you beat them or take some other appropriate action, and the first thing you know they’ve got you feeling like you’re completely wrong and it was all your fault in the first place. How do you feel? Physically, I mean. It’s hard on the health to be frustrated in these matters.”

“It is, especially after seven months and ten days, and it’s the truth that I’m feeling rather peculiar right now, not at all well.”

“In that case, you had better resolve the situation at home as soon as possible. Do you feel light in the head?”

“I believe I do, now that you mention it.”

“A stiffness?”

“Well, naturally. That’s to be expected.”

“In the joints, I mean. I’ve heard that it’s usual in this sort of thing to get a temporary stiffness in the joints, which is followed by a general muscular twitching and foaming at the mouth.”

“Really?”

“Well, I never actually saw it happen, but I was told that it’s so by a vendor of nostrums that I met one day at the Piraeus. He sold me a packet of powder that was guaranteed to relieve the attack if taken in time, but I lost it in the excursion against Melos. Fortunately, I have never been in a position to need it.”

“I don’t intend to need it either, I can promise you that, and I’ll relieve myself with something besides a packet of powder long before I begin to twitch in the muscles and foam at the mouth.”

“That’s the spirit, old boy. But these attacks are pretty sneaky, according to this vendor of nostrums, and get onto you fast. What I mean is, it doesn’t pay to fool around with anything as serious as this too long. By the way, isn’t that old Cadmus coming across the square?”

Acron pointed with a finger, and Lycon followed the gesture and saw a tall thin fellow approaching at a kind of lope with a too-short chiton flapping around his shanks.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “It’s certainly old Cadmus.”

“Do you suppose he’d be willing to chip in on a skin of wine with us?”

“It seems likely enough to me.”

“He’s a deadly old bore, to be honest about it, and is always talking about the theories of Empedocles, as if anyone cared, but I’m willing to tolerate him if he pays for his share of the wine. How about you?”

“I’m willing to tolerate him, and I’m strongly in favor of the wine.”

“In that case, I’ll put it up to him.”

As it turned out, Cadmus was prepared to pay for his share, so they bought the wine and began to drink it, and after a while, sure enough, Cadmus began to talk about the theories of Empedocles, but Lycon was thinking about Lysistrata, and Acron was hardly thinking at all, and neither paid much attention.