The women assemble, and in an elaborate burlesque of a public meeting recount their grievances against Euripides. It is because of the poet that men have become so suspicious: they scent a lover everywhere, spy on their wives, and lock up the store cupboards. Old men who once would take young wives now remain unmarried, for the poet has told them, ‘When an old man marries a young wife, the lady is master.’ Finally, by his atheistical doctrines, Euripides has ruined many an honest flower-girl, for men do not offer garlands now to the gods. Then Mnesilochus gets up for the defence. ‘I detest the fellow as much as you do,’ he says; ‘but it is unreasonable to be annoyed with him for talking about one or two of our weaknesses—we have ten thousand which he has never mentioned.’ He then proceeds to dilate on some of the frailties which Euripides has omitted; but he is stopped by his angry audience. ‘There is nothing so bad as a woman who is naturally shameless’—the chorus say—‘_except it be a woman_.’ A fierce discussion begins, until their arguments are interrupted by the appearance of Cleisthenes, one of those womanish men so unpleasantly familiar in Athens, who tells the assembly that a real man is among them. Suspicion at once falls on Mnesilochus; he is discovered by plain evidence to be of the male sex, and is seized by the women. He makes a gallant attempt to escape by snatching a baby from a woman’s lap, and holding it to ransom (a parody on Euripides’ _Telephus_); but, when he unfastens the child’s wrappings, it is not a baby, but a leather skin, full of wine, which the lady has brought for her private refreshment during the proceedings. He then decides to send to Euripides for help, and a parody of the _Palamedes_ ends the first part of the play. The intermezzo, as we might call it, between the two acts is a humorous statement of the women’s case on strict Euripidean lines: Each and every one [the chorus sings] abuses the tribe of women: we are everything that is bad. Well, then, _why do you marry us_? Why do you keep us indoors, as though we were something very, very precious? Why, if we peep out of a window, does every man want to get a good view of our face? As a matter of fact, women are better than men, not worse; they are less greedy, less dishonest, less vulgar; lastly, they alone are the _mothers_ of heroes.