ABSTRACT
Lysistrata was produced in 411 (almost certainly at the Lenaia), twenty years into the Peloponnesian War, a panhellenic struggle pitting Athens and her island empire against Sparta and her allies.1 Athens and Sparta had emerged from the Persian invasions (490-478) as the two superpowers of Greece. Athens, relying on her navy, had turned a defensive alliance against Persia into a tribute-paying empire composed mainly of small subject states with democratic governments controlled by the Athenian demos. Sparta, the chief city of the Peloponnese (the lower half of mainland Greece) and the greatest land power in Greece, feared the growing power of Athens and disapproved of its imperialism and its democratic government. Although Perikles, the major proponent of the war, had initially predicted a quick victory, the war lasted for twenty-seven years, ending in 404 with Athens’ loss of her navy, her empire and even (for a time) her democracy.
