The Athenian Women

by Alessandro Barbero

  It suddenly dawned on Andromache that that was probably more than the man would have had to pay for her own baby. But he had refused to buy her baby anyway, and he’d been willing to buy the monkey, which was so much more amusing. A wave of grief washed over her, unexpectedly: she’d become adept at pushing it away, at pretending that the past no longer existed, at dismissing the thought and shutting it out of her mind whenever it resurfaced. Only at night had she still not learned to control herself: she dreamed and cried out, and the other slave girls who slept alongside her on the straw mats had complained more than once. Already they give us little time to sleep, don’t you start making things worse! But this time, there was nothing she could do, the pain was there, impossible to ignore: the past, dead and done with, the ones you’ll never lay eyes on again, the city you’ll never return home to. Instead, you’ll live shut up here all the years of your life, cleaning another man’s house, obeying strangers, giving your body to a man that disgusts you, toiling from dawn to the dead of night, until the day you die, when they’ll toss you onto a mass grave. Andromache remembered that before she too had owned slave girls, and she felt a wave of shame. How could I fail to understand what it meant . . . Without even realizing, she started to cry. The monkey in its cage leapt and shrieked, mocking her.

  She roused herself, realizing that tears were streaming down her cheeks. She had made it a rule never to cry, not even when she was alone, and usually she was able to follow that rule. You don’t cry, she repeated to herself over and over, mechanically. But when she got to her feet, she felt her head really spinning, and she realized she was shivering. I’m getting sick, she thought. Maybe I’d better lie down for awhile, after all, no one will ever know. She went to the room where she slept when Eubulus didn’t summon her to his bed, threw herself down onto the straw mat, and pulled a blanket over herself. The fever made her temples throb. I’ll get a little sleep, she thought to herself. As she dropped off to sleep, the image of Cimon heading away from the house and the city came to her mind again, and she clenched her teeth with hatred. I wonder what was wrong with him today, what he’s going to do in the country, she thought confusedly; then she fell asleep, and thought of nothing at all. In the kitchen the monkey, all alone now, looked around uneasily, and occasionally emitted a frightened cry.

  5

  The theater had been full for some time now, and yet the show still wasn’t starting. People began to grumble. More than a few were looking up at the lowering black sky: let’s just hope it doesn’t decide to rain! When the doors had first opened, Polemon and Thrasyllus had been among the first to rush in, and by elbowing their way they’d managed to seize two front-row seats: that is, the front row behind the reserved seating, of course. Now the audience that filled the immense theater was stirring discontentedly: why isn’t the play starting! It’s always the same story, those idiots! Polemon and Thrasyllus, from where they were sitting, could clearly see the reason why: the center seats in the very front row were empty, the priest of Dionysus had not yet arrived. On the other hand, several longhaired young men had found places just in front of them, and they’d brought with them to the theater—unbelievably!—a young lady of the night.

  Thrasyllus spat.

  “For a while now we’ve been seeing certain people in this city, people that are not to be believed!” he muttered, in a loud enough voice for the young people to hear him. One of the young men turned around and looked at him with insolent defiance. His beard was long, and he stroked it with rings on his fingers.

  “Calm down, father!” he snickered. The young woman next to him turned around, stared at Thrasyllus, and laughed. She was brightly made-up, her hair bound up in a strip of Persian silk instead of a hairnet: an insult to poverty.

  Polemon elbowed Thrasyllus, who was starting to get uncomfortable.

  “Just forget about it!”

  In the front rows a stir of movement could be detected. People were standing up, here and there was some cursing. The priest of Dionysus was arriving, accompanied by the judges and a multitude of acolytes. They had to make some people give up reserved seats they’d occupied without permission.

  “It’s about time,” Thrasyllus grunted. “We’re freezing to death here, and he takes his sweet time.”

  “He must have just finished eating,” a neighbor commented.

  “Finished? They have meat to last them all week,” retorted another.

  Someone, farther back, tossed out some less than charitable comments of their own. That’s just the way the Athenians were: even with the god they took many liberties, so you can imagine how they treated the priest.

  Once they were all seated, the herald appeared on the stage, and the theater fell silent all at once. Everyone was waiting to learn who would be performing today: the drawing of lots had taken place in secret, before dawn.

  The herald cleared his throat.

  “Aristophanes, show in the chorus!” he cried as loudly as he could. Unlike the actors, he wore no mask to amplify his voice, and he really had to work to make himself heard.

  The theater began to buzz: some were in favor, others against. Only the judges who’d been chosen by lot forced themselves to look indifferent. Among the audience, nearly everyone had their biases, they already knew who their favorite was before sitting down to watch the comedy. Thrasyllus, too, had already made up his mind: he didn’t like Aristophanes. He wasn’t saying the playwright didn’t make him laugh, heaven forfend: it’s just that he’s not on our side. He claims to give the people advice, but in reality he mocks them, he demoralizes them: the message, if you read carefully, is that the people don’t know how to rule the city.

  “That sellout!” he huffed. The young man sitting in front of them turned around again, annoyed.

  “Calm down, father!” he said again.

  The others sitting around them also hushed him.

  Preceded by a flautist and a tambourine player, the twenty-four chorus members entered the large clearing of beaten earth, holding in their arms the wooden phalluses that that very morning had been carried through the city in procession; they then burst madly into a dance honoring Dionysus. They were not yet wearing the costumes they’d sport in the comedy; instead they wore bright white ceremonial chitons. When they began to sing the hymn, many in the audience enthusiastically joined in. At the end of the dance, one by one the chorus members bowed to the statue of the god, which had been brought there from the temple; each threw a pinch of incense onto the brazier, and then they walked off the plaza in double file by the side staircases, while the musicians sat down in a corner, right below the statue.

  Everyone’s eyes were now focused on the wooden stage, which stood only two steps higher than the dirt clearing, and on the building that the stage leaned against; it was out of that house that the actors would come. When the door opened, a murmur of surprise spread through the theater: the first actor was wearing a woman’s costume and mask. Beginning a comedy with a woman on the stage was something that had never been done before. The audience was so astounded that they forgot that, in reality, like all actors, this one was actually a man. The theatrical illusion took them in from the very first instant: to everyone watching, from the front rows to the tiers further up, that disguised figure was actually a woman, and for that matter, she wore adroitly placed padding at all the right spots, in front and behind! The actor fidgeted a bit, bouncing his huge tits and his even more disproportionate ass, and then he raised his hand to his forehead and looked around at the empty stage.

  “Ah! if only they had been invited to a Bacchic revelling, or a feast of Pan, why! the streets would have been impassable for the thronging drums!” he declared. To underscore the joke, a massive rolling thunder of drums echoed from the interior of the house. It swelled for an instant and then, suddenly, ceased.

  “But now there’s not a single woman here.”

  The actor looked around again, scruti
nizing. After reviewing the stage and the proscenium, he started examining the spectators. He saw the young woman sitting in the third row, right in front of Polemon and Thrasyllus, leaned forward ostentatiously to check, then shrugged in resignation.

  “Not a one!” he said again.

  In the front rows many snickered. Just then the door swung open again, and everyone stared at the space from which the second actor was about to emerge. When he did appear, an oh! of astonishment rose from the theater. He too was dressed as a woman.

  “Ah! except my neighbor Kleonike, whom I see approaching yonder,” the first actor said, brightening. “Good day, o Kleonike!”

  “Good day, Lysistrata,” replied the second actor. “But pray, why this dark, forbidding face, my dear? Believe me, you don’t look a bit pretty with those black lowering brows.”

  Lysistrata’s mask expressed anxiety and concern, the broad mouth opened wide in a grimace of suffering. The mask worn by Kleonike, in contrast, bore a sly, lascivious smile.

  “Oh, Kleonike, it’s more than I can bear, I’m vexed about us women. Men are always ready to say we’re slippery rogues, capable of anything . . . ”

  The second actor addressed the audience, throwing his arms wide.

  “And they are quite right, upon my word!”

  The audience snickered. Kleonike, satisfied, leaned to right and left; the tits bounced and swayed.

  “We had agreed to meet here, one and all, yet when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the greatest importance, they lie in bed instead of coming,” Lysistrata went on, indignantly.

  “Oh! they will come, my dear,” Kleonike encouraged her. “But it’s not easy, you know, for women to leave the house. Husbands to be patted and put in good tempers . . . ”

  The audience chuckled.

  “ . . . and then another woman is busy getting the servant up; a third woman is putting her child to bed or washing the brat or feeding it.”

  “But I tell you, the business that calls them here is far and away more urgent!”

  “And why do you summon all us women, dear Lysistrata?” The second actor emphasized the word “women,” making his tits and ass bounce and sway. “What is it all about? Is it really so important?”

  “Very,” Lysistrata replied brusquely.

  “And is it nice and big, too?” Kleonike insisted, with an eloquent gesture. The audience was howling.

  “Yes, by the gods, and thick,” Lysistrata conceded.

  “Then why are we not all on the spot immediately?” Kleonike asked in astonishment.

  “But that’s not the point!” Lysistrata burst into anger. “Certainly in that case, we’d all have come running! No, no, it concerns a thing I have turned about and about this way and that so many sleepless nights.”

  “Who knows how you must have worn it down, with all that handling,” commented Kleonike, continuing to mime. The actor had practically given up hope, but the audience laughed this time too. Aristophanes, who was listening to it all from inside the house, along with the other actors, rubbed his hands in delight. He himself could hardly believe it: you can repeat the same double entendre a thousand times, and the spectators will laugh every time. It’s so easy it’s almost disgusting.

  “Here’s how I’ve worn it down: it comes down to Greece’s salvation being in the hands of women!”

  Lysistrata enunciated that last phrase slowly, and after the last word, there came a resounding crash from the kettledrums. Even the spectators who had been practically wetting their pants with laughter up till then suddenly turned serious again: they were coming to the point, it was time to stop snickering.

  “Then our goose is cooked!” shouted someone from the back rows. Many in the audience laughed, but many more hushed them. There were a few catcalls.

  “By the women! Why, Greece’s salvation hangs on a poor thread then!” Kleonike joked as well; but Lysistrata went on, without listening to her: “Our country’s fortunes depend on us—it is in our power to eliminate the Spartans entirely . . . ”

  “Nothing could be nobler!” Kleonike said cheerfully.

  “ . . . to wipe out all the Boeotians . . . ”

  “But surely you would spare the eels!” her friend implored her. Instead of prompting laughter, the wisecrack simply drew a collective sigh from the audience: since the Spartans had occupied Decelea, there were no longer eels from the marshes of Boeotia. You might say: after all, eels aren’t a basic necessity. True, but what’s life without a few luxuries, otherwise what makes life worth living?

  “With regard to Athens, note that I’m careful not to say any of these ill-omened things,” said Lysistrata, raising her voice. “But understand me . . . if instead the women join us from Boeotia and Sparta, then hand in hand we’ll rescue Greece.”

  Kleonike jumped for joy.

  “Magnificent!”

  But then she was struck by a doubt, and she ostentatiously scratched her head.

  “ . . . But how should we women perform so wise and glorious a deed, we women who dwell in the retirement of the household, clad in diaphanous garments of yellow silk and long flowing gowns, decked out with flowers and shod with dainty little slippers . . . ”

  “Clad or unclad, it’s all the same to us!” shouted a voice from the audience.

  “Ah, but those are the very instruments of our salvation,” retorted Lysistrata, without missing a beat. “Those yellow tunics, those scents and slippers, those cosmetics and cunning little translucent robes.” And since her friend had thrown her arms out in baffled dismay, she went on: “And as long as we live, there is not a man will wield a spear against another!”

  “I’ll run to have my tunic dyed crocus yellow, by the gods!” exclaimed Kleonike.

  “Or raise a shield!”

  “I’ll hurry to put on a flowing gown.”

  “Or draw a sword!”

  “I’ll hasten out to buy a pair of slippers this instant.”

  Lysistrata fell silent. From beneath the statue of the god, the flautist began to pipe out a melody.

  “Now tell me, would not the women have done best to come?” Lysistrata went on, sardonically.

  “Why, by the gods, they should have flown here! And to think that first thing in the morning, they like to soar, they like to spread their wings!”

  A few spectators laughed, but only the most ignorant ones: most of the audience was now listening in religious silence, trying to understand what was in the offing. The melody of the flute became more insistent. The two women lifted their hands to their ears, expectantly; then they dropped those hands, disappointed.

  “And I’d have staked my life the Acharnian dames would be here first, yet they haven’t come either!”

  A few in the theater loudly agreed: That’s true! The refugees from Acharnae, driven out by the Spartan invasion, hadn’t seen their homes in years.

  The tambourine player shifted his beat to match the rhythm of the flute.

  “Wait!” Kleonike exclaimed. “Here a few are arriving!”

  The third actor came in through the door: he too masked as a woman; by this point, no one could be surprised by anything.

  “Say, are we going to see any men at all?” grumbled Thrasyllus.

  “Why, don’t you like women?” Polemon retorted.

  “No, I’m just saying. This comedy is a strange one.”

  “We aren’t the last to arrive, are we, Lysistrata?” pipes the third actor; his falsetto was so overdone that the audience chuckled.

  Lysistrata planted herself face to face with the new arrival and looked her sternly up and down.

  “I cannot say much for you, Myrrhine! You have not bestirred yourself overmuch for an affair of such urgency!”

  “I could not find my girdle in the dark. However, if the matter is so pressing, here we are; so speak.”

 
Lysistrata raised both hands.

  “No, let’s wait a moment more, till the women of Sparta arrive.”

  Suddenly the tambourine fell silent, and the flute, which had lowered the pace of the music, suddenly lifted it up again; but it was no longer the music from before. Many of the spectators felt the hairs on the backs of their necks stand up, before they even realized what that music was. Even Thrasyllus and Polemon shivered. This was the flute music of the Spartans, the same music they’d heard that long-ago day on the plains of Mantinea, the music that had silenced the cicadas. Many who had heard it hadn’t lived to tell the tale. A few in the audience whistled and catcalled.

  “The usual barbarians,” one man commented. “Let’s make our opinions known.”

  Most of the spectators contained themselves, but it wasn’t easy: the Spartans onstage, that was all that had been missing so far! And behold, a fourth actor scurried out of the door. Yet another new thing, such lavish overabundance: four actors! The crowd buzzed.

  “He’s got money to spend, that guy,” Thrasyllus muttered, shifting uncomfortably on the hard wooden seat.

  The fourth actor, too, was disguised and masked as a woman: as her mask, he wore a mocking smile; but the Doric peplum swung open in a way no Athenian woman would ever have dared. The peplum was scarlet, like the uniforms that Spartan hoplites wore to war; and behold, the ass and tits, here, were less prominent, they didn’t bounce like the tits and asses of the other three women. Spartan women, everyone knows, exercise every morning: nude, just like the men, the shameless things.

  “Behold, here comes Lampito,” Lysistrata declared.

  A murmur of annoyance swept the theater at that name. Lampito was the mother of Sparta’s king, Agis: the man who at that moment was in command of the garrison at Decelea, and who had invaded Attica so many times in their lifetime—cut down their vines, burned their olive trees, shattered their jars, and had even dug the heads of garlic out of the ground before leaving, a ravaged desert in his wake.

  “She’s got some nerve,” Thrasyllus muttered again. This time, Polemon didn’t contradict him: yes, indeed, it took some nerve.