Aristophanes, Lysistrata 829–953 — Cinesias and Myrrhine

Cinesias arrives at the Acropolis visibly overwhelmed by sexual frustration. His wife Myrrhine appears to give in, then turns preparation itself into a weapon: bed, mattress, pillow, blanket, perfume — and finally departure.

This page presents selected passages from the larger Cinesias–Myrrhine episode, the clearest sustained comic scene behind the male bridge of Lysistrata.

The song generalizes male frustration into a heavy baritone chorus.

Aristophanes individualizes it first in one body.

Why This Passage Matters

Lysistrata sees Cinesias approaching and immediately recognizes the success of the women’s strategy.

The comic language is explicitly physical.

Cinesias is not merely sad that his wife is absent.

His body has become the visible evidence that the oath is taking effect.

Lysistrata instructs Myrrhine to inflame him, offer intimacy, withdraw it, and do everything except violate the women’s oath.

The sequence that follows is one of Aristophanes’ most elaborate demonstrations of desire turned into political leverage.

38th Scroll Translation

LYSISTRATA: A man — a man! I see one coming, driven out of his senses, seized by the rites of Aphrodite.

...

LYSISTRATA: Your task now is to roast him and twist him around, deceive him, love him and not love him, offer him everything except what our drinking cup knows we swore not to give.

...

CINESIAS: Ah, miserable me — what spasms have hold of me, what rigid torment, as though I were being twisted on a wheel!

The Endless Preparation

Myrrhine then appears willing to have sex with him.

But each apparent concession creates a new requirement.

A bed.

A mattress.

A pillow.

A blanket.

Perfume.

The repetition is theatrical machinery.

Cinesias is repeatedly allowed to believe that satisfaction is seconds away.

The audience knows that the delays are the point.

Myrrhine converts domestic objects — the ordinary equipment of intimacy — into instruments of comic leverage.

From One Husband to a Male Chorus

The 38th Scroll song transforms this individual scene into a collective masculine breakdown:

**Ohhhh... the ache... We can take this no longer.**

That chorus is not in Aristophanes.

But it grows directly from the play’s comic logic.

Cinesias is the clearest individual example; later, sexually frustrated Spartan and Athenian men make the condition increasingly collective.

The song therefore scales the joke up.

One husband’s body becomes an army of complaints.

What This Scene Does Not Prove

The Cinesias episode does not show that real Athenian women organized a sex strike in 411 BCE.

It is Old Comedy.

Nor is it evidence that sexual politics alone caused peace between Athens and Sparta.

The historical war continued until 404 BCE.

Within the comic world, however, the scene proves the effectiveness of Lysistrata’s impossible strategy.

The men are beginning to experience private desire as a public political force.

Text and Edition

This page deliberately presents selected Greek passages from the Cinesias–Myrrhine sequence rather than reproducing all of lines 829–953. The excerpts are the portions most directly connected with the song: Lysistrata recognizing Cinesias’ condition, the instruction to Myrrhine, the explicit peace condition, the vote for a truce, and Cinesias’ comic physical suffering.

The Greek follows the Hall–Geldart textual tradition as presented in public-domain digital editions. The English is a new 38th Scroll translation of the excerpts shown here.