The Athenian Women

by Alessandro Barbero

  But, in yet another incredible twist, Lysistrata walked toward the enemy, with open arms.

  “My dear Spartan! Greetings, Lampito! Sweetheart, how lovely we look! You really look nice, look at your slender, fit body, you’re the picture of health! You could throttle a bull to death with your bare hands!”

  Lampito gurgled in contentment.

  “It’s nussing, really it’s nussing at all, by the Dioskuri! I werk out regularly, I exercise mein angles, mein sighs, mein ass cheeks.”

  The actor was speaking in Doric, and the audience rolled in the aisles. It really is true, that’s the way those people speak: and they all reminded each other of the Spartans who had been taken prisoner in Pylos and conveyed to Athens, all those years ago. How many? Someone started reckoning: my daughter wasn’t born yet . . . Yes, by the gods, exactly fourteen years ago. The one time we defeated the Spartans, you’re not going to forget that, are you? Sure, but it’s not like we got this tremendous profit from it. As usual, the people in the government ruined everything. Anyway, those guys talked just like that, with those hard consonants of theirs, and all those broad a’s. A peasant dialect, no doubt about it.

  The other women gathered around Lampito, ostentatiously grabbing and squeezing her tits and ass, in a chorus of ecstatic oohs and aahs.

  “What lovely titties you have!”

  “Hey!” Lampito objected with a peal of laughter. “Vat do you sink you’re grapping? It’s not like you have to choose a viktim for ze next sakrifice, you know!”

  Kritias was sitting next to Euthydemus and Eubulus. They were comfortable, their slaves had brought them cushions. Kritias was so tall that someone sitting behind him had complained: I can’t see a thing! But Kritias had turned and glared at him, giving him such a look that the other man had apologized and fallen silent.

  “Kritias, about what we discussed last night, I wanted to tell you . . . ” Euthydemus began.

  “Not now, o Euthydemus! Let me listen, I want to see where this is going to end up.”

  “Where do you think it’s going to end up? The women are going to be beaten black and blue,” Euthydemus decreed, with grim satisfaction. Kritias shook his head.

  “I don’t know about that! The other day I was talking to Aristophanes and he wouldn’t tell me how it turns out, but I think we may see some surprises.”

  “But who is it dat brought togezer all dis gang of vimmen?” Lampito brayed over the stage.

  “I did,” replied Lysistrata. A thunderous roar of drums underscored her proud response.

  “Well, explain yourzelf, vat is it dat you vant from us?”

  Lysistrata looked around.

  “I’ll tell you right away, but first answer one small question. Are you not sad your children’s fathers go endlessly off soldiering afar in this plodding war? I am willing to wager there’s not one here whose husband is at home.”

  In the theater, you could have heard a fly buzz. Every one of those men were thinking: but I’m here. And immediately after that, that man thought of the others, the sons or the elder brothers, who at that very moment were in the trenches before Decelea, or rowing in the fleet, who knows where, down toward the Hellespont. Old men and boys, that’s who was left in the city.

  On the stage, after Lysistrata had asked her little question, the women turned to face the audience. Then Kleonike took a step forward.

  “Mine, poor man, has been in Thrace, keeping an eye on Eucrates, for the past five months,” she added disdainfully.

  The audience was divided: some laughed, others emitted piercing whistles of scorn. Eucrates, the commander in Thracia, had been elected by the democrats.

  “You wretch, why don’t you go take command in Thracia, if you’re so smart,” Thrasyllus muttered. In front of him, the long-bearded young men were applauding enthusiastically, and their whore was laughing, though she didn’t even know why. “No, but I told you before, your Aristophanes is a cretin,” Thrasyllus said, heatedly, provoking a response out of Polemon.

  “I know, I know, he’s not one of us. But just shut up so we can hear!” his friend retorted.

  On the stage, Myrrhine had stepped forward.

  “It’s seven long months since mine left for Pylos.”

  Now it was Lampito’s turn, and she strode forward, with a quick, light step, to the edge of the stage: not weighed down, like the other women, with padded tits and ass. She seemed to dance.

  “My husband,” she declaimed, bowing mockingly toward the priest of Dionysus, “even zough zey zometimes let him kome home vrom the regiment, alvays dizappears again immediately, gone, kaputt, viz his shield over his shoulder.”

  This time, many in the audience took umbrage. Let the Spartan be as provocative as she liked! Sooner or later, though, we’ll show you the way back home: for real, and for good! Just wait till we warm up our muscles! Lampito’s words were met with a salvo of whistles. As soon as quiet returned, the women began to complain again.

  “And not even the shadow of a lover.”

  “A lover? Not even one of those eight-inch gadgets, for a leathern consolation to us poor widows. They were a help too: but they no longer import them, now that we’re at war!”

  Twisting their hands in worry, the three women took a step backward, and Lysistrata took a step forward. The flute started up: but it broke off almost immediately. An error, no doubt. Aristophanes, inside the house, bit his lip. You can rehearse and rehearse for weeks, but it’s never enough!

  “Now tell me, if I have discovered a means of ending the war, will you all second me?” asked Lysistrata.

  After an instant of stupefied silence, the women began to dance for joy. They seconded her, they were all in: at the cost of selling their cloaks and freezing to death, climbing mountains, being beaten flat as a flounder.

  “Then I will out with it at last, my mighty secret,” announced Lysistrata. “Oh! sister women, if we would compel our husbands to make peace, we must refrain . . . ”

  “Refrain from what? tell us, tell us!”

  “But will you do it?” Lysistrata insisted, dubiously.

  “We will, we will, though we should die of it!” they all replied, in chorus.

  “Then: We must refrain from the péos altogether.”

  As soon as Lysistrata had revealed her method, underscored by a roll of kettledrums, the women began to stir about like so many demented moths. Lysistrata chased after them and even caught them: but it was no good, they just kept slipping through her fingers.

  “Nay, why do you turn your backs on me? Where are you going? So, you bite your lips, and shake your heads, eh? Why these pale, sad looks? Come, will you do it—yes or no? Do you hesitate?”

  The actors, though they were wearing masks, were gesticulating so eloquently that it seemed to everyone that they could see them turn pale and grimace: just as with Lysistrata’s tirade. Finally one of them—was it Kleonike?—stopped and stated loud and clearly: “I will not do it, rather let the war go on.”

  6

  Glycera petted the chained dog that was wagging its tail, opened the door with the heavy iron key that her father had entrusted to her with a thousand words of advice and precaution, and entered the deserted house. The fire had almost died out entirely, and it was cold. She hastily took off her holiday best, shivering as she did so, and put on three everyday chitons, one over the other. She stirred up the fire with the poker, tossed in a couple of chunks of charcoal, and then puffed on the fire until the flames sprang up brightly. Then she went over into the corner where they kept the sacks of dried figs and filled the bushel basket, choosing only the biggest, puffiest figs. It didn’t take her long, and when she was done she wandered aimlessly around the house with nothing to do. Just starting to do some chore or another for no good reason made no sense, Charis was supposed to get there any minute now: the time it would take her to fill a bushel basket of h
er own. She looked out the door, scanning the empty road, and then went back in and sat down by the fire. She was seized by the groundless fear that her father might return home earlier than expected and find the house empty. How absurd: at this time of day the theater was still filling up, the play hadn’t even begun yet. Who knew why Cimon wasn’t going to the theater, since he could certainly afford it. Perhaps, it dawned on Glycera, he had been planning to go but had instead chosen to miss it because he would rather see me. That idea was so delightful that she turned it over and over again in her mind for a while, imagining the scene: his friends remonstrate with him, his father is astonished, but he is unmoved—no two ways about it, his mind is made up. And he refuses to tell anyone why. Glycera was so excited that she leapt to her feet and spun around; then she suddenly grew serious and looked down at her feet. Well, it only makes sense, those are the feet of a young countrywoman, who’d gone everywhere barefoot since the day she was born. Her toenails are broken, black, her toes are twisted. But her legs, there was no cause for complaint about those. She lifted her skirts a little at a time, uncovering her ankles, her calves, her knees. Then she hiked them a little higher, until she had uncovered her thighs, and the hair of what she and her girlfriends called her little swallow. Will a man find me pleasing? she wondered, doubtfully. Perhaps if I were just a little taller . . .

  Right at that moment the sound of barking could be heard. Glycera hastily lowered her skirt and went to open the door. Charis had left home still dressed in her festive outfit, under her cloak, with the basket of figs balanced on her head.

  “Are you ready?” she laughed. Then she looked at her and opened her eyes wide. “You’re not going dressed like that, are you?”

  Glycera hesitated. She didn’t want to confess that yes, she had in fact planned to go dressed like that, after all they were going to sell figs, weren’t they? But Charis is right, what a fool I’ve been, I ought to put my best chiton back on.

  “No, it’s just that it’s cold in the house. I’ll go change straightaway.”

  She went to her clothes chest and got out the dress that she’d carefully folded and put away just a short time ago. Out of the chest came the bittersweet odor of the apples she’d put in it that fall, to give the clothing a nice smell. She put on the new chiton in place of the last one she’d been wearing. She gathered her hair in her golden hairnet, the one that her mother had left her.

  “Here I am!”

  Planted in front of the door, the statue of the god Hermes smiled through its beard; its long hair hung over its shoulders, the long, heavy phallus pointed proudly upward. As a girl Glycera had become accustomed to patting the statue every time she went by: it brought luck, and even the adults did it, they’d patted it for generations, the god’s forehead was worn smooth. For years, when it was time to go to bed, she’d been filled with fear of darkness and monsters, of Gello the demoness that suffocated babies in their cribs, and Empusa with red eyes and a leg of donkey manure; she would shut her eyes tight and recite spells to ward off evil, and then, to comfort herself, she’d tell herself that the god outside would stand guard and keep the monsters away. But that used to happen long ago, nowadays she was no longer afraid of monsters, and she’d spend days at a time without thinking about the god, entering and exiting the house many times without even saying hello. Even now, after locking the door, she walked past the statue without remembering to pat its forehead.

  They had just started off when a crow cawed loudly behind them. From the right or from the left? Glycera and Charis stopped for a minute to try and figure that out, but it was no good: from behind, that’s all they could say. They stopped to peer back, but the bird was in the stand of olive trees, and they couldn’t see it. Go figure whether it was an evil omen or a good one! The young women, a little uneasy, continued down the muddy path, dotted with prints of horses’ hooves. They had both hung their sandals around their necks, to keep them from getting dirty. As they walked, they talked without a break, about everything and nothing; they were both on edge, but neither one wanted the other to know. They’d reached Eubulus’s front door; they wiped their feet with a handful of straw that they’d brought for that purpose in the basket of figs; they put on their sandals and knocked on the door.

  Cimon came to the door, and he ceremoniously greeted them and invited them in. It’s strange that one of the slaves didn’t answer the door, thought Glycera; but she forgot about that thought immediately. The young women entered with some trepidation: it was the first time they’d set foot in the home of the wealthy family their neighbors all talked about—some with respect, others sarcastically. At first they were disappointed: the place was big, but slightly bare. Next to the hearth, however, was something they’d never before seen in a private home: a statue of Zeus, bronze, as tall as a man.

  Cimon saw that they were staring, openmouthed.

  “My family sacrifices to Zeus Karios,” he said in an offhand tone of voice. Actually, he didn’t even know himself why they had that tradition in his house, and what’s more, he didn’t care; still, it was an enormous satisfaction to have been able to utter such a grand sentence. Let those two fleabitten peasant girls know who they had the good luck of talking to.

  Out of the darkness a figure materialized. The two young women took fright, but then it became clear it was Cimon’s friend, Argyrus. Glycera looked him up and down dismissively: just a pimply kid, let’s hope he gets out from underfoot. While the young women set their baskets of dried figs down next to the hearth, Cimon and Argyrus also exchanged a glance. They were both thinking the same thing: one of the girls, no two ways about it, is cuter—she never speaks, but her little face says all that needs to be said. The other one is a big old girl, a peasant born and bred. But it’s all the same, there’s two of them and two of us. When Cratippus had come up with his story about having to drop by his folks’ house, because they were in the country too and were expecting him, and that maybe he’d be able to catch up with Cimon and Argyrus later on, it had come as a disappointment to Cimon: if all three of us aren’t together at times like this! Now, though, he could see the advantage of the situation: if he’d been there, Cratippus would have insisted on having first choice, and an argument would have ensued. This way, instead, I’ll have first choice, we’re at my house and I’d like to see that infant Argyrus trying to argue with me.

  In the meantime, he’d gone to get money, and he put three obols in each girl’s hand. The young women were a little ashamed to take the money, but they didn’t object too strenuously either. Cimon was expecting the littler one to blush the most: it was clear that she was the more delicate of the two, she almost didn’t look as if she came from the country. What was her name again? Oh, that’s right: Charis. Instead, it was the other one who blushed brightest.

  The young women didn’t know where to put the coins, that was a problem they hadn’t anticipated. In the end, they put them in their mouths, as they’d seen their fathers do when they brought their daily stipend home from the city. Charis suddenly felt like laughing.

  “What is it?” Glycera scolded her, annoyed now.

  “Nothing! It’s just that I thought of Tryphosa!”

  One of their girlfriends had gotten into the habit, when her father came home, of kissing him on the mouth, and with her tongue she would steal his coins: her father really liked those kisses, and he let her do it. She bragged about it to her girlfriends. They would always laugh, to conceal their discomfort. Glycera shushed Charis, and blushed even brighter red. The young men didn’t ask who Tryphosa was.

  They were all four standing there next to the hearth, five if you counted Zeus Karios. None of them knew what to say. Cimon started getting nervous. They’d come over, and now what? None of them had the slightest idea of how to behave in a situation like this: two young freewomen in the home of a stranger. If Cratippus had been there, he would have known what to do, Cimon thought; and that thought only worsened
his bad mood. At last, an idea occurred to him.

  “Do you want to see the horses?”

  The young women accepted enthusiastically. Through a small door at the back of the house they went into the stables. In the midst of the stacks of hay, the heads of four horses were protruding from the same number of arches, the bottom halves of which were closed by wooden gates. All four horses turned to look at the bipeds as they entered, and they continued staring at them, a bit restless. The young women hung back at a certain distance: Charis was afraid.

  “They won’t hurt you,” said Cimon; he walked up to the first horse, and roughly petted its muzzle.

  “Isn’t that right, that you won’t do anything to these pretty girls? It’s not like you’re one of those Thracian mares!”

  Charis turned pale. What a dope, thought Glycera.

  “No, right?” Charis asked, in a hesitant voice. If Glycera, as a little girl, had been afraid of Gello and Empusa, Charis had been deathly frightened of the story of the meat-eating mares of the king of Thracia, every time she heard it as a little girl; more than once, she had even dreamed about them. The mares ate the corpses of soldiers who’d been killed in battle, but when there was no war, the king invited lots of guests to a great party at his palace, then he murdered the guests and fed them to the mares . . .

  “Oh come on!” laughed Cimon, with a superior air. “This one is so well-behaved even you could ride him.”

  “No, thanks,” Charis declined, only partly reassured.

  “Or you,” Cimon went on, speaking to Glycera. The young woman laughed.

  “I don’t know how to ride. But can I touch him?”

  “Of course you can touch him,” said Cimon, after exchanging a glance with Argyrus. Good, he thought, it’s going very well indeed. This one here is willing, that much is clear. Just wait and see what else I’ll let her touch.