Ancient Greece’s Legacy for Liberty: Aristophanes’ Flirtation with Feminism

Given Aristophanes’ comedic intentions, we cannot be sure to what extent he agrees with the grievances he allows his female protagonists to air – and it would be particularly rash to assume he favored literal extension of political rights to women. (Though on the other hand this possibility should not be rejected as unthinkable either; after all, serious advocates of political equality between the sexes – such as Plato, the Cynics, and the early Stoics – would emerge in the next few generations.) But whatever his real sympathies, in the three plays mentioned Aristophanes offers important explorations of the justice or otherwise of women’s status, and gives voice to some intriguing feminist arguments.

In Lysistrata, the women’s seizure of power is temporary, its purpose being solely to pressure the men to call off the Peloponnesian War; in the Assemblywomen the seizure is permanent (and the women’s goal is to replace male rulers rather than sharing power with them on a basis of equality). But in both cases women’s financial role within the household is offered as evidence of their qualification to take over the finances of the city as a whole. Lysistrata, leader of the women’s revolt in the play that bears her name, has the following exchange with the leader of the male magistrates:

Likewise Praxagora,³ the analogous leader of the women’s revolt in Assemblywomen, argues:

Aristophanes here anticipates the Socratic philosopher Xenophon, who would later argue in his Economicus that women were the true administrators of the household, that the expertise needed to run a household was the same as that needed to rule a state, and that men and women were equal in respect of intellect and virtue.⁵ The clear implication is that women are likewise qualified to rule the state.⁶ (And it’s surely no coincidence that Plato, who defends women’s political capacity in his Republic,⁷ agrees with Xenophon that political rule and household management are the same skill,⁸ while Aristotle, who defends the political subordination of women, also insists that the two skills are different.)⁹

Historically, a common argument against the extension of political rights to women is that women do not share men’s liability to military conscription.¹⁰ Herbert Spencer, for example, despite having defended equal political rights for both sexes in his early work Social Statics,¹¹ reversed his position forty years later in his Principles of Ethics:

When the male Athenian magistrates in Lysistrata likewise argue that women are not entitled to political rights, since they’ve been “doing not a thing for the war,” the protagonist replies:

(Lysistrata doesn’t mention, but could, that the women of defeated cities frequently faced, in addition. the prospect of enslavement – so one could hardly describe them as enjoying an exemption from the risks involved in warfare.)

Aristophanes also describes the ways in which women’s concerns were silenced, both in the political sphere and within the home. Lysistrata complains:

In addition to political disabilities, Lysistrata points to the ways in which social mores impact men and women differently:

And in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazousai, the women’s chorus points out the inconsistencies within prevailing patriarchal values: if women really are “a pest to all humanity,” then why do men “shut the door” on their wives and “[f]orbid us to poke a nose outside or roam,” thus perversely “[w]anting to keep a pest at home”?¹⁶

Aristophanes also directs our attention to the influence of cultural depictions of women. His Thesmophoriazousai concerns an assembly of women who meet to bring Euripides to trial for his negative depictions of the female sex. As we’ve seen previously,¹⁷ while modern readers tend to find proto-​feminist themes in Euripides’ plays, in antiquity his work was widely regarded as misogynist – perhaps in part for the same reasons (assertive female protagonists defying traditional gender roles and familial expectations).

While it’s unclear whether Aristophanes shares his characters’ interpretation of Euripides, he certainly raises issues that anticipate modern debates about the harmful effects of works in popular media that promulgate sexist stereotypes. While some of his characters make a case for the stereotypes’ being unfair, other characters make a case for the stereotypes’ being accurate – leaving Aristophanes’ own perspective enigmatic.