* * * * * MAG. Wonderful, marvellous feats, not a doubt of it, you with your skeins and your spindles can show; Fools! do you really expect to unravel a terrible war like a bundle of tow? LYS. Ah, if you only could manage your politics just in the way that we deal with a fleece! * * * * * MAG. Heard any ever the like of their impudence, these who have nothing to do with the war, Preaching of bobbins, and beatings, and washing-tubs? LYS. _Nothing to do with it_, wretch that you are? The women conclude that one who talks thus is no better than a dead man; and when he sets out on some trusty platitude concerning women's sphere and the married state with Truly whoever is able to wed-- Lysistrata takes him up sharply with Truly, old fellow,'tis time you were dead. Accordingly they prepare with sacrificial pigs, funeral cakes, fillets and chaplets to give the walking corpse a decent burial. The magistrate stumps off, taking Heaven to witness he never was so insulted in his life, which, as Lysistrata observes, amounts to nothing more than grumbling because they have not laid him out. Twenty-three centuries are gone since Aristophanes wrote the _Lysistrata_, but the safe official who dismisses with a traditional sneer or a smile the notion that any can manage, save those who have been trained to mismanage, is still with us. Perhaps he has outlived the class whose prejudices and limitations he formerly expressed; but in the days of Aristophanes such a class existed, and it is represented here by the chorus of old gentlemen. In those days the men were not the only fools. Aristophanes had no intention of making out that they were. He was a better artist than party man. He was a comic poet who revealed the essential comedy of all things. The chorus of women, Lysistrata herself, and the other leading ladies, all have their foibles and absurdities; only the chorus of men, who are so keenly alive to them, seem never to guess that there are smuts on the pot. To seek in this age and country a companion for these old fellows would be to insult our Western civilization. Let us invent a purely fantastic character; one who could not sleep at night for fear of Prussians and Social Democrats, who clamoured daily for a dozen Dreadnoughts, conscription, and the head of Mr. Keir Hardie on a charger, and yet spent his leisure warning readers of the daily papers against the danger of admitting to any share of power a sex notorious for its panic-fearfulness, intolerance, and lack of humour; such a one would indeed merit admission to the [Greek: choros geronton], would be a proper fellow to take his stand [Greek: hexes Aristogeitoni], beside the brave Aristogiton, and [Greek: pataxai