"They determine, under the leading of the clever Lysistrata, wife to one of the magistrates, to take the question (of the ending of the war) into their own hands. They resolve upon a voluntary separation from their husbands--a practical divorce _a mensa et thoro_--until peace with Sparta shall be proclaimed. It is resolved that a body of the elder matrons shall seize the Acropolis and make themselves masters of the public treasury. These form one of the two choruses in the play, the other being composed of the old men of Athens. The latter proceed (with a good deal of comic difficulty, owing to the steepness of the ascent and their shortness of breath) to attack the Acropolis, armed with torches and fagots and pans of charcoal, with which they hope to smoke out the occupants. But the women have provided themselves with buckets of water, which they empty on the heads of their assailants, who soon retire discomfited to call the police. But the police are, in their turn, repulsed by these resolute insurgents, whom they do not exactly know how to deal with. At last a member of the public committee comes forward to parley, and a dialogue takes place between him and Lysistrata. 'Why,' he asks, 'have they thus taken possession of the citadel?' 'They have resolved henceforth to manage the public revenues themselves,' is the {251} reply, 'and not allow them to be applied to carrying on this ruinous war.' 'That is no business for women,' argues the magistrate. 'Why not?' says Lysistrata; 'the wives have long had the management of the private purses of the husbands, to the great advantage of both.' In short, the women have made up their minds to have their voice no longer ignored, as hitherto, in questions of peace and war. Their remonstrances have always been met with the taunt that 'war is the business of men;' and to any question they have ventured to ask their husbands on such points, the answer has always been the old cry--old as the days of Homer--'Go spin, you jade, go spin!' But they will put up with it no longer. As they have always had wit enough to clear the tangled threads in their work, so they have no doubt of settling all these difficulties and complications in international disputes, if it is left to them. But what concern, her opponent asks, can women have with war, who contribute nothing to its dangers and hardships? 'Contribute, indeed!' says the lady; 'we contribute the sons who carry it on.' And she throws down to her adversary her hood, her basket and her spindle, and bids him 'go home and card wool,'--it is all such old men are fit for; henceforth the proverb (of the men's making) shall be reversed,--'War shall be the care of the women.' The magistrate retires not having got the best of it, very naturally, in an encounter of words; and the chorus of elders raise the cry--{252} well known as a popular partisan cry at Athens, and sure to call