Greek Poetry & Drama
Aristophanes, Lysistrata 486–499 — The War Treasury
When the Athenian magistrate demands to know why the women have barred the Acropolis, Lysistrata gives a blunt answer: they intend to control the money so that it cannot keep financing the war. The exchange turns household financial management into a comic claim to civic authority and makes the seizure of the Acropolis inseparable from the play's argument about war-making.
- Author
- Aristophanes
- Work / Passage
- Lysistrata 486–499
- Language
- Ancient Greek (Attic)
- Genre
- Old Comedy
Aristophanes, Lysistrata 486–499
ΠΡΟΒΟΥΛΟΣ καὶ μὴν αὐτῶν τοῦτ᾽ ἐπιθυμῶ νὴ τὸν Δία πρῶτα πυθέσθαι, ὅ τι βουλόμεναι τὴν πόλιν ἡμῶν ἀπεκλῄσατε τοῖσι μοχλοῖσιν. ΛΥΣΙΣΤΡΑΤΗ ἵνα τἀργύριον σῶν παρέχοιμεν καὶ μὴ πολεμοῖτε δι᾽ αὐτό. ΠΡΟΒΟΥΛΟΣ διὰ τἀργύριον πολεμοῦμεν γάρ;
English Translation
MAGISTRATE By Zeus, this is the first thing I want to learn from you: why did you bar our city shut with bolts? LYSISTRATA So that we might keep the money safe and you would not make war with it. MAGISTRATE Is it because of money that we are at war?
ΛΥΣΙΣΤΡΑΤΗ καὶ τἄλλα γε πάντ᾽ ἐκυκήθη. ἵνα γὰρ Πείσανδρος ἔχοι κλέπτειν χοἰ ταῖς ἀρχαῖς ἐπέχοντες, ἀεί τινα κορκορυγὴν ἐκύκων. οἱ δ᾽ οὖν τοῦδ᾽ οὕνεκα δρώντων ὅ τι βούλονται· τὸ γὰρ ἀργύριον τοῦτ᾽ οὐκέτι μὴ καθέλωσιν.
English Translation
LYSISTRATA And it is what has stirred up all the rest as well. So that Peisander and those grasping after offices could steal, they kept churning up one disturbance after another. Let them do whatever they like now — they will no longer get their hands on this money.
ΠΡΟΒΟΥΛΟΣ ἀλλὰ τί δράσεις; ΛΥΣΙΣΤΡΑΤΗ τοῦτό μ᾽ ἐρωτᾷς; ἡμεῖς ταμιεύσομεν αὐτό. ΠΡΟΒΟΥΛΟΣ ὑμεῖς ταμιεύσετε τἀργύριον; ΛΥΣΙΣΤΡΑΤΗ τί δὲ δεινὸν τοῦτο νομίζεις; οὐ καὶ τἄνδον χρήματα πάντως ἡμεῖς ταμιεύομεν ὑμῖν;
English Translation
MAGISTRATE But what will you do? LYSISTRATA You ask me that? We will manage it ourselves. MAGISTRATE You will manage the money? LYSISTRATA Why do you think that so extraordinary? Do we not already manage the household money for you?
ΠΡΟΒΟΥΛΟΣ ἀλλ᾽ οὐ ταὐτόν. ΛΥΣΙΣΤΡΑΤΗ πῶς οὐ ταὐτόν; ΠΡΟΒΟΥΛΟΣ πολεμητέον ἔστ᾽ ἀπὸ τούτου. ΛΥΣΙΣΤΡΑΤΗ ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲν δεῖ πρῶτον πολεμεῖν.
English Translation
MAGISTRATE But it is not the same thing. LYSISTRATA How is it not the same? MAGISTRATE We have to finance the war from it. LYSISTRATA But first of all, there is no need to wage war.
38th Scroll Translation
Translation Notes
τἀργύριον — literally “the silver” or “the money.” The joke is materially concrete: war depends on funds, and the women have occupied the place where Athens' reserves are kept.
ταμιεύσομεν — “we will manage,” “administer,” or “act as treasurers of.” Lysistrata immediately connects public finance to women's recognized management of household resources.
Πείσανδρος — Peisander, an Athenian political figure active in the crisis of 411 BCE. Aristophanes turns him into a comic emblem of office-seeking and political manipulation.
πολεμητέον — a verbal adjective expressing necessity: “one must wage war.” Lysistrata's answer rejects the premise rather than merely proposing a cheaper way to continue fighting.
Why the Acropolis Matters
The women's occupation is not simply a symbolic seizure of a sacred hill. The Acropolis was also bound up with Athenian financial reserves and the material resources of the state. In the comedy, controlling the citadel means controlling the money with which war is sustained.
The play therefore operates through two coordinated forms of pressure: sexual refusal directed at husbands and lovers, and control of the treasury directed at the machinery of war. The second strategy is what this passage makes explicit.
411 BCE: Comedy in a Political Crisis
Lysistrata was produced in the archonship of Kallias, 412/11 BCE, in the aftermath of the Sicilian catastrophe and during the Spartan occupation of Decelea. Athens was fighting for survival in a far more precarious position than when the Peloponnesian War began.
The exact festival at which the comedy was first staged remains debated, which means we should be cautious about claiming that Aristophanes wrote particular scenes in direct response to every political development of 411. What is secure is the broader atmosphere: military losses, financial strain, imperial crisis, and rapidly intensifying political conflict.
Recent scholarship has also drawn attention to the decision in 412 BCE to use the reserve of one thousand talents set aside early in the war, suggesting that the comedy's fixation on the Acropolis treasury may have had especially immediate resonance for its audience.
Comedy, Not a Policy Programme
The scene can sound strikingly modern when isolated: women seize the treasury and deny resources to war. But Old Comedy works through exaggeration, inversion, obscenity, fantasy, and impossible political solutions. Lysistrata is not presenting an administrative plan for historical Athens.
Its force lies in making ordinary hierarchies temporarily reversible. Domestic financial competence becomes a claim to manage the polis; those excluded from formal political power tell magistrates how the city should be saved. The impossibility is part of the joke and part of the criticism.
From the Text to Lysistrata
The 38th Scroll composition draws on both halves of the women's strategy: erotic refusal and the seizure of the Acropolis. The treasury scene is especially important visually because it turns the barred gates into something more than a defensive image. Behind them is the money required to keep the war moving.
The song's modern intensity should therefore be understood as artistic interpretation of Aristophanic comedy, not evidence that the ancient play was a solemn manifesto. Its source is farce — but farce written in a city living through an extraordinary wartime crisis.
Explore LysistrataText and Edition
The Greek follows the Hall–Geldart text of Aristophanes as presented by Perseus, checked against parallel digital presentations of the same passage. Minor editorial punctuation and speaker labels are supplied for readability.
The English rendering is a new 38th Scroll translation intended to preserve the speed and bluntness of the comic exchange while keeping the financial vocabulary visible.
Selected Sources and Further Reading
- Aristophanes. Lysistrata, Hall–Geldart Greek text, Perseus Digital Library.
- Sommerstein, Alan H. “Aristophanes and the Events of 411.” Journal of Hellenic Studies.
- Thonemann, Peter. “Lysimache and Lysistrata.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 140 (2020).
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