Assemblywomen

Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen (in Greek Ekklesiazousai, also called Ecclesiazusae) is one of the eleven comedies of his that survive, and at 1,183 lines it is the shortest of them. The plot is simple: the women of Athens, led by a wife named Praxagora, dress in their husbands’ clothes, pack the Assembly before dawn, and vote the city into their own hands. Praxagora then introduces common property, shared meals, and a law of sex that favors the old and ugly. The plan, with its sharing of property and of women and children, resembles the proposals Plato makes for his guardians in the Republic. In the play, the women take the men’s clothes in the night, and Praxagora has her friends disguise themselves with beards and walking sticks (lines 57–85). A man named Chremes, coming back from the Assembly, tells Praxagora’s husband Blepyrus, who is wearing his wife’s robe and slippers, that the vote has gone to the women (lines 376–477). Praxagora comes home and tells her husband that she has been at a neighbor’s childbed, and when he tells her of the vote she acts surprised (lines 504–570). She then describes how the new regime will work: private property will be abolished, there will be common meals, the women will be shared, and children will not know their fathers (lines 583–710). The scheme is tried at once. A citizen who is bringing his goods to the common store is mocked by another, who means to keep his goods and still go to the free dinner (lines 725–876). In another scene, a young man is forced by the new law to sleep with an old woman before he can be with his young girlfriend (lines 877–1111). Finally, a maid summons Blepyrus to the state dinner, and the Chorus leaves the stage to the feast (lines 1112–1183).

Date and Historical Background

No ancient source that survives in our texts records the year or festival at which Assemblywomen was produced, so its date has to be inferred from the play itself. It was written after Frogs, which the ancient hypothesis to that play dates to 405 BC, and in the years of the war involving Corinth: Praxagora recalls that the Athenians were angry with the Corinthians and the Corinthians with them, but that now they are good, and tells the Athenians to be good too (lines 199–200). She also mentions the politicians Agyrrhius and Thrasybulus (lines 102, 184 and 203). Wealth, the next of Aristophanes’ surviving comedies, was produced in 388 BC according to the ancient hypothesis to that play. Which festival Assemblywomen was written for, the Lenaea or the City Dionysia, is not known.

The play’s world is the Athens of the Assembly (ekklesia), which met on the hill of the Pnyx, and which paid citizens for attending. In the play, the pay is three obols (lines 289–292, 380), and the Chorus remembers the time when the fee was a single obol (lines 300–310). The men from the town, it complains, who used to sit chattering in the garland market, now crowd the Pnyx to collect it (lines 300–310).

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Praxagora, an Athenian wife who leads the plot
• First Woman, a neighbor of Praxagora
• Second Woman, another neighbor of Praxagora
• Blepyrus, husband of Praxagora
• Neighbor of Blepyrus, a man
• Chremes, a citizen who reports the vote of the Assembly
• Selfish Man, a citizen who will not hand over his goods
• Herald, a woman appointed by Praxagora
• Three old women
• Girl, a young woman
• Epigenes, a young man
• Maid of Praxagora
• Chorus of women disguised as men

Setting

An Athenian street, in front of the houses of Praxagora and her neighbors, at night and then at dawn.

Summary of Assemblywomen

Prologue

The play begins in the dark. Praxagora, alone in the street in front of her house, speaks to her lamp, which has seen everything the women do in their bedrooms and tells no one (lines 1–18). Her friends decided at the festival of the Skira what to do, she says, and they are late (lines 18–29). The women then come, one by one, and Praxagora asks whether they have done what was agreed. One woman did not shave her armpits and has been in the sun; another threw away her razor so as to become hairy (lines 57–67). They have the false beards that Praxagora told them to bring (lines 68–72). They also have Spartan shoes, walking sticks and men’s cloaks, “as we said” (lines 73–75).

Praxagora has a plan for the dawn Assembly, which will be crowded (lines 82–101). The women are to take their seats early, tuck up their cloaks, tie on their beards, and be taken for men. One of them says that Agyrrhius, who has been known to be a woman once, now commands the greatest influence in the city (lines 102–104). They must now rehearse what they will say. The first woman to try is told to put on the garland and speak, but she asks if she should drink first, and when Praxagora objects, she answers that men in the Assembly do drink, which is why their decrees are so foolish (lines 130–143). Praxagora sends her to her seat. The second woman swears “by the two goddesses,” an oath that only women use, and is told to stop (lines 147–160). She tries again and begins, “Women who are sitting here,” and her slip is too much for Praxagora (lines 163–168). So Praxagora puts on the garland herself (lines 169–172).

Praxagora’s model speech criticizes the city and its leaders: the city always has bad leaders, and for every day that one of them is good, he is bad for ten (lines 173–179), and she goes on to the pay for attending the Assembly, which everyone now wants (lines 183–188). She reminds her listeners of the shifts in the city’s policy on its alliances, Corinth and the fleet (lines 193–203), and she proposes that the city be handed over to the women (lines 205–212):

“I say that we should hand the city over to the women. For in our houses, too, we use them as managers and stewards.”

Her proof that women are better than men is that they follow the old ways. They dye their wool in hot water, as they always did; none of them tries anything new, while Athens would not have been saved without something new. They sit and roast their barley as before, carry loads on their heads as before, keep the Thesmophoria as before, bake their cakes as before, wear out their husbands as before, hide their lovers in the house as before, buy themselves delicacies as before, love their unmixed wine as before, and enjoy being made love to as before (lines 214–228). So let the city be handed to the women, she says, without questions about what they will do; being mothers, they will wish to save the soldiers and send them provisions, and no one is better at finding money or harder to deceive, since women are used to deceiving (lines 229–240). The others cheer, and ask where she learned all this; she explains that she lived with her husband on the Pnyx during the troubles, and learned by listening to the speakers (lines 241–244). The women choose her as their general, and Praxagora tells them to dress like men, take their sticks and walk to the Assembly singing in the manner of countrymen (lines 245–284).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

Led by Praxagora, the women go off to the Assembly. They are now the Chorus, and as they leave they sing of the need to be careful, since if they were caught the danger would be great (lines 285–288). They sing to each other as men: let us go to the Assembly, for the presiding magistrate has threatened that anyone who does not come early will not receive the three obols (lines 289–299). They will push aside the men from town who used to sit chatting in their garlands when the fee was a single obol. In the days when Myronides commanded, they say, nobody would have dared to manage the city’s business for pay, and each man used to arrive with a skin of wine, a piece of bread, two onions and three olives (lines 300–310).

Episodes

Blepyrus, Praxagora’s husband, comes out of his house, dressed in his wife’s saffron robe and Persian slippers (lines 311–319). In the dark he could not find his cloak or his shoes, and when somebody banged on the door he took what he could find because he needed to relieve himself. His wife is gone, and he is afraid that she may be doing something wrong (lines 331–338). A neighbor appears, and Blepyrus tells him that his wife is missing and so is his cloak. The neighbor answers that his own wife has disappeared too, with his cloak and his shoes (lines 339–347). A good deal of comedy is made of Blepyrus’ constipation, to which he applies, among other remedies, the help of a doctor and a prayer to the goddess Eileithyia (lines 354–371). Chremes comes from the Assembly and finds him; the Assembly was over at dawn, and Chremes did not get the three obols, because there was an enormous crowd, “and they all looked like shoemakers, they were so white” (lines 372–392).

The Assembly had met to discuss the city’s safety, Chremes says. First came Neoclides, the blear-eyed, and was shouted down; then Euaeon, who appeared naked and asked for clothing and bedding for the poor (lines 395–421). Then a handsome young man, pale like Nicias, stood up and said that the city must be handed over to the women (lines 427–430). The audience of “shoemakers” cheered him, though the country people grumbled, and he went on, praising the women and insulting the men: they keep secrets, they do not inform on others, and they give back what they borrow (lines 431–454). The vote was taken. “They decided to entrust the city to them,” says Chremes, “since it was the only thing that had not yet been tried in the city” (lines 455–457). Blepyrus asks what will become of the men, and learns that the women will now do everything, including the courts and the feeding of the family (lines 458–464). His only fear is that the women may force the old men to make love, and refuse them lunch if they cannot (lines 465–472). Chremes replies that if it will help the city, every man must do it, and Blepyrus consoles himself with the old saying that even the most foolish decisions turn out for the best (lines 471–477).

The Chorus returns, still dressed as men, and encourages itself to walk like men and to watch for anyone following (lines 478–503). Praxagora tells them to throw off the cloaks, the shoes and the sticks, and she herself hurries inside to put her husband’s cloak back where she found it (lines 504–513).

Agon

Blepyrus catches her at the door: “Where have you come from, Praxagora?” (line 520). She says that a friend in labor had sent for her, and she offers her own appearance as proof: she is not perfumed, as a woman would be who was coming from a lover (lines 522–534). Blepyrus is angry that she took his cloak and left him her robe, and that he has lost the measure of wheat he should have got at the Assembly (lines 535–548). She tells him not to worry, because the friend had a boy (line 549). When Blepyrus tells her what the Assembly has decided, and that the women are to rule the city, she says that the city will be happy, because nobody will inform or steal or go naked or poor (lines 555–567).

The Chorus calls on Praxagora to explain her new idea, one that has never been said or done before (lines 571–582). Praxagora asks them not to interrupt until they have heard her out, and begins (lines 588–594):

“I say that everyone must share in everything and live from the same source, and that one man should not be rich and another wretched, one man farm a large estate and another not even have ground to be buried in, one man have many slaves and another not even an attendant. I make one common life for all, and the same for everyone.”

The land, the money and all other property will be put in common, and the women will manage them (lines 597–600). Anyone who hides money will be a perjurer, but it will do him no good, since all will have bread, cakes, cloaks, wine and garlands (lines 601–607). Because nothing will be private, there will be no lawsuits (lines 657–666), no theft (lines 667–671) and no gambling (line 672), and slaves will farm the land (line 651). Women, too, will be common: any man may sleep with any woman and have children by her (lines 611–615). To prevent the best-looking women from being taken by all the men, the plainer and snub-nosed women will sit beside the beautiful ones, and a man who wants a beautiful woman must first sleep with an ugly one (lines 616–629). Blepyrus, an old man, is delighted with this. Children will not know their fathers, but every man will treat all those who are younger as his sons, and every youth will treat the older men as fathers, and so nobody will dare strike an old man (lines 635–643). The city will become one house, with the law courts and porticoes turned into dining rooms, the speaker’s platform used for bowls and water jars, and the allotment machines moved to the market, where each citizen draws a letter that tells him in which hall to dine (lines 673–688). After the meal the men will go home drunk, torch in hand, and the women will call out to them in the street: “Come here, there is a lovely girl,” and another from an upper window will say that she has an even lovelier and whiter one, but that he must first sleep with her. The plain men who follow the handsome youths will be told that the law gives the snub-nosed and ugly the first turn, and that they must wait in the doorway with a few figs (lines 689–709).

Blepyrus and Chremes are won over. Praxagora tells them she must go to the market to receive the property, with a herald with a loud voice, and arrange the common meals, and she will also close the brothels, so that the young men are left to the free women, and the slave women will be allowed only slaves (lines 710–724). Blepyrus follows her, delighted at the prospect of being pointed out as “the husband of the general” (lines 725–727).

Episodes

Now Praxagora’s plan is put to the test. A citizen is busy bringing out his household goods in the order of a procession, calling for a sieve, a pot, a water jar, a tripod and a lamp one after another (lines 728–745). A second citizen, whom we may call the Selfish Man, asks him why. “To take them to the city, in the market, according to the decree” (lines 758–759). The Selfish Man calls him a fool: he will not hand over his goods until he sees what the crowd does, because the Athenians are quick to vote and quick to deny what they have voted (lines 760–798). He says that the gods themselves hold out their hands only to receive (lines 778–783), and that men such as Antisthenes will never give anything up (lines 806–810). The first man says that he sees his neighbors bringing theirs (lines 805–806), and if they do not, they will fight (lines 799–804). A long argument follows about decrees that the Athenians have reversed: the decree about salt, the bronze coins that were suddenly refused in the market, and the promise of five hundred talents from a tax of one fortieth (lines 814–829).

A herald (a woman, appointed by Praxagora) arrives and calls the citizens to dinner. The tables are loaded with delicacies, the couches are spread, the perfumers stand in a row, the hares are being roasted and the cakes baked (lines 834–852). The Selfish Man decides that he will go to dinner without handing over his goods. “What else can I do?” he says; “sensible men must help the city as far as they can” (lines 853–862). When it is pointed out that the women may stop him, he replies that he will stand at the door and snatch food from those who bring it in (lines 862–866). The first citizen tells his slaves Sicon and Parmenon to lift his things, and the Selfish Man offers to help carry them, which the first man refuses because he fears that his helper will claim the goods as his own once they are at the general’s house. The Selfish Man says that he must find a trick that lets him keep his property and still share in the feast (lines 867–876).

The next scene shows the other law. An old woman, painted with white lead and wearing a saffron dress, stands at her door waiting for a man and singing (lines 877–883). A young girl pushes in beside her and the two quarrel, each singing to attract a lover (lines 884–923). The old woman says she is waiting for Epigenes, “my friend” (lines 931–933). The young man, Epigenes, comes for the girl, who calls him with a love song at her window (lines 947–975), but the old woman intercepts him. He objects, but she cites the decree: if a young man wants a young woman he must first sleep with the old woman, and if he refuses, the old women may drag him by his private parts (lines 1015–1020). “Alas, I shall be Procrustes today!” he says (line 1021). The girl comes out and protests that the old woman is old enough to be his mother, and that if the law is kept the land will be full of Oedipuses (lines 1037–1042). The old woman threatens her, and the young man, thankful, thinks that he is free (lines 1043–1048). Then a second old woman, still uglier, claims him by the same law (lines 1049–1066). While she drags him, a third, hideous beyond all, joins in, and the two old women pull him in opposite directions (lines 1074–1097). Epigenes ends by lamenting that he must lie with an old woman day and night, and then with another who wears a toad-like face with a perfume bottle on her cheek, and that if anything happens to him, they are to bury him at the entrance to the tomb with the two old women sealed on top of him (lines 1098–1111).

Exodos (Exit Song)

A maid of Praxagora arrives from the banquet, perfumed and overjoyed, and asks where she may find her mistress’ husband (lines 1112–1126). She finds Blepyrus on his way to dinner and tells him that he is the happiest man alive, since of thirty thousand citizens he alone has not yet dined (lines 1129–1136). Praxagora has told her to bring him, and the girls with him, and there is Chian wine left over; she adds that any spectator or judge who feels kindly toward the play may come as well (lines 1137–1143). Blepyrus tells her to invite all, young and old, for dinner has been prepared for everyone who goes home, and he sets off for the meal with his torch (lines 1144–1150).

The Chorus asks him why he waits and asks him to take the girls (lines 1151–1153). While he goes, it will sing a song that is “about the dinner” and speak a word to the judges. The wise should judge in favor of its wisdom, those who laugh in favor of its jokes; it asks, in short, for everyone’s vote, and not to hold it against the Chorus that it drew the first place by lot, and not to be like the bad courtesans who remember only the latest lover (lines 1154–1162). Then the women call to each other to move off to dinner with a Cretan step, because “soon will come” a dish named in a single word of about 170 letters that lists the ingredients of a stew: fish, dogfish, shark’s head, sauce, silphium, cheese, honey, thrushes, blackbirds, pigeons, doves, roast fowl, hare in boiled-down wine, and wings (lines 1163–1175). They shout “Euai” and go off to the feast, “as if to victory” (lines 1176–1183).

A Brief Analysis

Assemblywomen is the shortest of Aristophanes’ surviving comedies, and its Chorus has a smaller part than in most of them. After the parodos (lines 285–310) the Chorus sings only briefly: a song when it returns from the Assembly (lines 478–503), a few lines before Praxagora’s speech (lines 571–582), and the finale (lines 1151–1183). The play has no parabasis. The central scene is a long argument, in which Blepyrus asks the questions and Praxagora answers them (lines 583–729), and what follows is a series of short scenes that test her scheme.

The play has to do with reversals of the roles of men and women, like Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Women at the Thesmophoria, but its subject is the running of the city. Praxagora’s proposals resemble the arrangements Plato describes for the guardians of his ideal city, where nobody owns private property and men and women have the same pursuits (Plato, Republic 3.416d–e; 5.457c–d). According to Socrates in the Republic, the guardians’ women and children are to be held in common, and no parent is to know its own child. The Greeks knew of similar customs elsewhere: Herodotus says that the Agathyrsi, a people near the Black Sea, have women in common so that all may be kin and none feel envy (Herodotus 4.104). The play does not say that these ideas come from anyone; in the text they are Praxagora’s own, set out in answer to Blepyrus’ questions about theft, lawsuits, food and fatherhood (lines 583–709).

What the play does show is how such a scheme works in practice. The first citizen is willing to hand over his goods, but the Selfish Man plans to keep what he has and still eat the common dinner (lines 746–876). The law that opens the young to the old, meant to give the ugly an equal share of love, is shown in the scene with Epigenes, who is dragged away by three old women, each with a claim in the decree (lines 1015–1111). And the end of the play is not the new society but a dinner, which Blepyrus joins and to which the audience and judges are invited (lines 1112–1183). Praxagora does not speak again after line 724, and the maid’s account of the feast is the last news of the new regime.

Assemblywomen Sources

Aristophanes, Assemblywomen (Ecclesiazusae), cited by line, in Greek at the Perseus Digital Library; Plato, Republic 3.416d–e and 5.457c–d; Herodotus 4.104. The dates of Frogs (405 BC) and Wealth (388 BC) are those given in the ancient hypotheses to those plays.

See Also: Aristophanes, Lysistrata, Women at the Thesmophoria, Wealth