LYSISTRATA
Lysistrata (alone).
Ah! if only they had been invited to a Bacchic revelling, or a feast of Pan or Aphrodité or Genetyllis,[1] why! the streets would have been impassable for the thronging tambourines! Now there’s never a woman here—ah! except my neighbour Calonicé, whom I see approaching yonder. . . . Good day, Calonicé.
Calonicé.
Good day, Lysistrata; but pray, why this dark, forbidding face, my dear? Believe me, you don’t look a bit pretty with those black lowering brows.
Lysistrata.
Oh! Calonicé, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly. . . .
Calonicé.
And they are quite right, upon my word!
- ↑ At Athens more than anywhere the festivals of Bacchus (Dionysus) were celebrated with the utmost pomp—and also with the utmost licence, not to say licentiousness.
Pan—the rustic god and king of the Satyrs; his feast was similarly an occasion of much coarse self-indulgence.
Aphrodité Colias—under this name the goddess was invoked by courtesans as patroness of sensual, physical love. She had a temple on the promontory of Colias, on the Attic coast—whence the surname.
The Genetyllides were minor deities, presiding over the act of generation, as the name indicates. Dogs were offered in sacrifice to them—presumably because of the lubricity of that animal.
At the festivals of Dionysus, Pan and Aphrodité women used to perform lascivious dances to the accompaniment of the beating of tambourines. Lysistrata implies that the women she had summoned to council cared really for nothing but wanton pleasures.
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