Ancient & Modern | 23 September 2006

A group of gangsters’ molls in Pereira, which evidently has the highest murder rate in Colombia, has decided to withhold sex from their boyfriends until they give up their guns. Inevitably they have been likened to the women in Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata (staged in Athens in February 411 bc) whose purpose was to persuade their men to make peace in the war between Athens and Sparta that had been going on for some 20 years. But the Colombian ladies have not been reading their Aristophanes.

The point about Lysistrata, the heroine of the play, is that she fully understands the nature of her fellow Athenians, i.e. that the women (in the best comic traditions of the ancient world) are as crazy for sex as their men are, while the men just love fighting. The first point is illustrated at the start of the play when she gathers some women to discuss the initiative. They are horrified, averring that however desirable it may be to end the war, giving up sex was not a means that any of them could countenance. It takes the Spartan Lampito to rally the women to the cause, while Lysistrata points out that if it all becomes too much for them, they can always revert to dildos; but if their men force them, they must be as grudging and unco-operative as possible.

But the Spartan Lampito now raises the second issue: given that Athens has such a powerful fleet and such a bottomless pit of money, abstaining from sex may only have the effect of persuading the real warmongering mob in the Assembly — Lampito implies they are in the majority — to press even harder to finish the war off once and for all. Lysistrata, however, has the answer to this: ‘We’ve got that all organised.