Women at the Thesmophoria

Probably first performed in 411 BC, Women at the Thesmophoria (also known under its Latin title Thesmophoriazusae) is considered Aristophanes’ wittiest parody of life in 5th-century Athens. The Thesmophoria was a festival of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone, celebrated by adult women only. In Aristophanes’ play, the Athenian women, incensed by their unfavorable portrayal in the tragedies of Euripides, use the festival to plan his punishment (lines 76–85). Euripides finds out and, with the help of his elderly relative Mnesilochus, first begs the tragic poet Agathon to infiltrate the women’s meeting and plead his case (lines 88–92, 177–187). After Agathon refuses (lines 193–209), Mnesilochus himself volunteers: he is shaved, singed and dressed in women’s clothing (lines 210–265), and goes to the Thesmophorion. On the middle day of the festival he takes part in the women’s debate about Euripides. To the women who blame the poet for revealing too much of their private lives, he replies that Euripides has told only a small part of the truth about them (lines 466–519). The argument is interrupted by Cleisthenes, a beardless man who is friendly to the women, and who reports that a relative of Euripides has slipped in among them (lines 574–591). Mnesilochus is stripped, proved to be a man, and, after the arrival of a magistrate, bound to a plank under the guard of a Scythian archer (lines 929–934). In an attempt to get him out, Euripides appears several times, each time in a different disguise and each time parodying one of his own plays: Helen, Andromeda and, finally, a scene of his own invention with an old procuress. Because none of this works at first, he finally makes peace with the women, promising to stop abusing them, and rescues his relative by tricking the archer (lines 1160–1226).

Date and Historical Background

Women at the Thesmophoria (or, better yet, Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria) was most probably first performed in 411 BC. The play has reached us without an ancient introduction (hypothesis), so the date has to be worked out from the text and from what ancient commentators say about the Euripides plays it mentions.

In line 1060, Euripides, disguised as Echo, says that Echo “last year, in this very place, competed alongside Euripides”: the tragedy Andromeda was produced the year before, and Mnesilochus also imitates “the new Helen” (line 850), Euripides’ most recent play on that subject. An ancient commentator’s note (scholion) on Frogs 53 says that Andromeda was staged eight years before Frogs (405 BC), that is in 412 BC, which puts Women at the Thesmophoria in 411 BC. Other passages place the play in wartime Athens: the herald’s curse falls on anyone who “proposes peace to Euripides and the Medes” to the women’s harm (lines 335–337; compare 365), and on anyone who aims at tyranny or tries to bring a tyrant back (lines 338–339).

No ancient evidence tells us at which festival the comedy was shown. The speaker of line 1060 says that Andromeda was produced “in this very place”, that is, in the Theater of Dionysus, but that does not settle whether the comedy belongs to the City Dionysia or to the Lenaia.

Characters and Setting

Characters

• Euripides, one of the three great Athenian tragedians
• Mnesilochus, Euripides’ elderly relative by marriage (kedestes, lines 74 and 210), whom the manuscripts label “Kinsman”
• Agathon, a real Athenian tragic poet, here effeminate in dress and manner
• A servant of Agathon
• A herald who opens the women’s assembly
• Cleisthenes, a beardless man, friendly to the women
• Mica, a woman at the festival
• Critylla, the woman who guards Mnesilochus, named in line 898
• Thratta, Mnesilochus’ slave girl, and other women such as the wife of Cleonymus, Philista and Mania
• An Athenian magistrate (a prytanis)
• A Scythian archer, the city’s police officer, who speaks broken Greek
• Chorus of Agathon’s singers, and Chorus of Athenian women

Setting

The first part of the play is set on the street outside Agathon’s house (lines 25–29); the rest takes place in the Thesmophorion, the sanctuary of the two goddesses, where the women are assembled.

Summary of Women at the Thesmophoria

Prologue

(Lines 1–294.) Euripides leads his elderly relative along the street. Mnesilochus complains that he is being dragged along and is not told where, and Euripides answers with a comic lecture on how the creation of the eye and the ear shows that seeing and hearing are separate (lines 1–21). They stop in front of the house of the tragic poet Agathon. A servant of Agathon comes out with fire and myrtle to offer a preliminary sacrifice for his master’s poetry, and bids all creatures keep silent while Agathon is composing (lines 36–57). His language is so bombastic that Mnesilochus cannot resist mocking it, and the servant remarks that he must have been an insolent youth (line 63). Euripides asks him to call Agathon out.

Euripides then tells Mnesilochus why he needs the poet. “Today it will be decided whether Euripides is alive or has perished,” he says (lines 76–77). Mnesilochus objects that the law courts and the Council are not sitting, since it is the middle day of the Thesmophoria (line 80). That is exactly what frightens Euripides: the women have plotted against him, and today they are going to hold an assembly in the Thesmophorion to decide his fate, because he writes tragedies and speaks ill of them (lines 82–85). Euripides plans to persuade Agathon to go to the Thesmophoria in secret, dressed as a woman, and speak for him if necessary (lines 88–92).

Agathon is wheeled out on the stage trolley (ekkyklema, line 96). Mnesilochus, seeing no man, declares: “I see no man here, I see Cyrene” (lines 97–98), a joke on the name of a well-known courtesan. Agathon sings a hymn in the manner of a chorus of girls, answered by his own chorus, calling on Apollo, Artemis and Leto (lines 101–129). Mnesilochus mocks the song as effeminate and asks the poet to explain his dress: where are the cloak and the sandals of a man, and where are the breasts of a woman (lines 130–145)? Agathon replies that a poet must adapt his ways to the plays he writes: “I wear my dress together with my thought” (lines 148–152), and that what he does not possess by nature he must acquire by imitation (lines 154–156).

Euripides now explains what he wants. Agathon should speak for him among the women, because Euripides himself is well known, gray-haired and bearded, while Agathon is fair, clean-shaven, soft and has a woman’s voice (lines 189–192). Agathon refuses. He quotes a line of Euripides back to him, and says that one should bear misfortunes by suffering them, not by tricks (lines 193–199); he is also afraid that, in women’s clothing, he would be accused of stealing the women’s night-time pleasures (lines 204–205). Mnesilochus therefore offers himself (lines 210–212). Euripides sets about transforming him on the spot. He shaves his face and, with a lamp, singes his body hair, to the old man’s loud screams (lines 215–247); when he looks at himself, Mnesilochus says he sees not himself but Cleisthenes (line 235). Agathon lends him a saffron robe, a breast-band, a hair-net and cap, a cloak and shoes (lines 249–265). Before leaving, Mnesilochus makes Euripides swear to save him from any trouble; Euripides swears by the upper air, the dwelling of Zeus, and by “all the gods,” and Mnesilochus reflects that “the mind swore, but the tongue did not” (lines 270–276), a parody of a famous line of Euripides’ Hippolytus (line 612). Euripides departs, and Mnesilochus enters the sanctuary with his slave girl Thratta, praying to Demeter and Persephone and asking for a rich husband for his “daughter” (lines 279–294).

Parodos (Entrance Song)

(Lines 295–371.) The women of the chorus enter, and a herald calls for silence and leads the prayers to the two goddesses, to Plutus, Calligeneia, Kourotrophos, Earth, Hermes and the Graces, that the assembly may go well for the city of Athens and for the women themselves (lines 295–311). The chorus prays to Zeus, Athena, Artemis, Poseidon, the Nereids and the mountain nymphs (lines 312–330). The herald then pronounces a curse on anyone who plots against the people of the women or who “proposes peace to Euripides and the Medes” to the women’s harm (lines 335–337), on anyone aiming at tyranny, on a woman who passes off a baby as her own, on a go-between slave, on a deceiving lover, and on dishonest wine-sellers (lines 338–351). The chorus joins in the curse (lines 352–371). The decree is read: the women’s council has decided to hold an assembly early on the middle day of the Thesmophoria, and the first item is the question of what Euripides is to suffer for wronging them all (lines 373–379).

Episodes

(Lines 372–785.) A woman who asks to speak is told to put on a wreath first, as speakers did in the Athenian assembly (line 380), and speaks first (lines 380–432). She complains that Euripides has made the husbands suspicious of every wife: they look under the bed for hidden lovers, lock the women’s quarters with seals and bolts, keep Molossian dogs, and carry the storeroom keys themselves, so that the women can no longer take a little flour, oil or wine. She proposes that Euripides be destroyed “by poison or by some device.” The chorus declares it has never heard a cleverer woman (lines 433–442).

A second woman, who weaves wreaths and sells them among the myrtle, speaks of her husband, who died in Cyprus and left her five children. She used to feed them by weaving garlands, but now Euripides in his tragedies has persuaded the men that there are no gods, and her trade has fallen by half (lines 443–458). The chorus again approves (lines 459–465).

Mnesilochus, in his disguise, then rises (lines 466–519). His defense of Euripides is as ill-judged as possible: it is no wonder that the women are angry, he says, but they should consider how little Euripides has revealed. He then tells, as if from his own life, how a bride three days married let her lover in while her husband slept, how wives are slept with by slaves and muleteers, how they chew garlic to hide the smell of their night, and how a wife pretended to give birth and had a baby smuggled in a pot (lines 476–517). Euripides, he says, has never mentioned these things; he has only dared to abuse Phaedra. The women are outraged, and one proposes to depilate him (lines 533–539). Mnesilochus continues to insist that the poet has done nothing worse than tell the truth, and goes on with a longer list of women’s tricks, including the sale of meat to procuresses at the Apatouria and a wife who murdered her husband (lines 552–565). The argument turns into a brawl, which the chorus stops when it sees another woman rushing toward them (lines 571–573).

It is Cleisthenes, who says that he is the women’s friend and champion (lines 574–581). He reports what he has heard in the agora: Euripides has sent a relative, an old man, to spy on their deliberations, and has plucked and singed him to look like a woman (lines 584–591). Mnesilochus protests that no man would put up with being plucked (lines 592–594), but the women begin to examine the women around them. The wife of Cleonymus is identified, and so is another woman’s nurse. Mnesilochus pretends to need to urinate and then, to the women’s questioning, invents a husband whom nobody can identify (lines 603–625). A woman tests him with questions about the previous year’s rites; his answers are wrong (lines 626–633). Cleisthenes and the woman strip him, and his sex is revealed (lines 634–648). The women set a guard over him; Cleisthenes goes to inform the magistrates (lines 652–654), and the women search the whole sanctuary for other men, singing and dancing with torches (lines 655–688).

Mnesilochus, hoping to escape, snatches the baby of a woman, Mica, and threatens to sacrifice it on the altar (lines 689–695). The scene recalls Euripides’ lost Telephus, in which the hero seized an infant at an altar (the connection is made by the ancient scholia); Aristophanes had used the same situation, with a basket of coals, in Acharnians (lines 325–351). The chorus is appalled (lines 699–725) and the women gather brushwood to burn him (lines 726–729). When Mnesilochus pulls off the baby’s Cretan robe, he finds a wineskin: “What is this? The girl has turned into a skin full of wine, and in Persian slippers too!” (lines 730–734). Mica protests that she has carried it for ten months (lines 741–745); then, when he threatens to cut it, she begs to catch the “blood” in a bowl (lines 751–757). Mnesilochus cuts the skin and Mica catches the wine, and he declares the hide the priestess’s share (line 758). A woman laments for Mica and her lost “daughter” (lines 760–761).

Left alone, Mnesilochus looks for a way to send word to Euripides. He remembers a device from Euripides’ lost Palamedes, in which the news was written on oars, but there are no oars here (lines 769–771); he decides to write on the wooden votive objects (agalmata) of the sanctuary instead and to scatter them (lines 773–775, 778–784).

Parabasis

(Lines 785–845.) The chorus of women steps forward to speak well of themselves. Though everyone says that women are the source of all evil, they ask why men marry them, forbid them to leave the house, and are furious if they find one outside, when they ought to rejoice at having lost the “evil” (lines 786–800). They then set named women against named men: Nausimache, they say, is no worse than Charminus, and Cleophon is worse than Salabaccho (lines 801–810). A woman would never ride into the city with a team after stealing fifty talents of public money, and if she steals a basket of grain from her husband she gives it back the same day (lines 811–813); men lose their shields in battle, but women still have the basket and parasol (lines 819–829). Finally they say that a woman who bears a brave general should be honored with a front seat at the Stenia and the Skira, while the mother of a coward, such as Hyperbolus’ mother, should sit apart with her head shorn (lines 830–845).

Episodes

(Lines 846–1159.) Euripides has not come, and Mnesilochus decides to try another device, this time from Euripides’ recent Helen: he imitates “the new Helen” (line 850), speaking the opening lines about the Nile, Sparta, and Tyndareus (lines 855–870), while the woman who is guarding him interrupts with insults. Euripides appears, disguised as Menelaus, and the scene follows the recognition scene of the tragedy (lines 871–919). Mnesilochus makes the altar of the Thesmophorion into the tomb of Proteus (lines 885–888); he calls his guard “Theonoe, daughter of Proteus,” and she answers that she is Critylla, daughter of Antitheus of Gargettus (lines 897–898). When Menelaus tries to carry off his “wife,” the guard threatens to beat him with a torch (lines 916–922). As the magistrate and the archer approach, Euripides slips away, promising not to abandon his relative (lines 923–927).

The magistrate orders the archer to bind Mnesilochus to the plank (sanis) and to guard him (lines 929–934). Mnesilochus begs to be at least stripped of his saffron gown, so that he will not give the crows a laugh in women’s clothes, but the magistrate refuses: he must be seen as a rogue (lines 939–944). While the guard watches him, the women sing and dance in honor of Demeter and Persephone, Artemis, Hera, Hermes, Pan, the nymphs and Dionysus (lines 947–1000). The archer hammers Mnesilochus’ bonds tighter (lines 1001–1007).

Mnesilochus then sees a new chance: Perseus has “run out” across the stage as a signal that he must become Andromeda, chained to the rock (lines 1009–1015). He sings a lament in the manner of Euripides’ heroine (lines 1022–1055), and Euripides answers as Echo, repeating the last words of everything Mnesilochus and the archer say (lines 1056–1097). Echo refers to Andromeda as a play in which he took part “last year, in this very place” (lines 1059–1061). When the archer drives Echo away, Euripides returns as Perseus, on his way to Argos with the Gorgon’s head (lines 1098–1102), notices the maiden chained to the rock, and offers to free her; the archer replies, “I will cut off your head” (lines 1125–1127). Euripides abandons the scene, remarking that new and clever things are wasted on a barbarian and that another device must be found (lines 1128–1132). The chorus of women then invokes Pallas Athena and, in the next song, the two goddesses of the festival, Demeter and Persephone (lines 1136–1159).

Exodos (Exit Song)

(Lines 1160–1231.) Euripides now speaks to the women in his own person. If they will make peace with him and release his relative, who is tied to the plank, he promises never again to speak ill of them; if not, he will tell their husbands, home from the army, what they get up to in their absence (lines 1160–1169). The chorus tells him that on their part he has their consent, but that he must persuade the barbarian himself (lines 1170–1171). Euripides then takes the part of an old procuress, with a dancing girl, Elaphion, and a flute-girl, Teredon (lines 1172–1175), and tells the archer that the girl is rehearsing a dance for some men. The archer is quickly captivated; he agrees to pay a drachma and to take the girl on his lap, and he asks the old woman’s name, which Euripides gives as Artemisia, to the archer’s “Artamouxia” (lines 1176–1201). While the archer is distracted, Euripides takes his chance to release Mnesilochus, and the pair run away (lines 1202–1209). The archer realizes he has been tricked and chases the “old woman”; the chorus sends him in the wrong direction (lines 1210–1226). The chorus then announces that the entertainment has lasted long enough and that it is time for each of them to go home, praying that the two goddesses may reward them (lines 1227–1231).

A Brief Analysis

The comedy is a play about tragedy. Almost everything that happens after the prologue is a parody of Euripides’ own plays, which the audience of 411 BC knew well. Four of them are named or clearly imitated: Palamedes (lines 769–784 and 848), Helen (lines 850–919), Andromeda (lines 1009–1135), and, according to the ancient scholia, Telephus (lines 689–764). Of these only Helen survives, which allows a direct comparison between the tragic scene and Aristophanes’ version, in which Mnesilochus even adopts Helen’s opening speech about the Nile and Sparta (lines 855–862). Some of the parodied plays were recent: Andromeda had been staged only the year before (line 1060) and Helen is “the new Helen” (line 850), whereas the situation of Telephus had already served Aristophanes in Acharnians (lines 325–351).

The play itself explains why Euripides is the target. The women accuse him of presenting wives as adulterous, drunk and treacherous, and of making men watch their households (lines 389–432); one adds that he has persuaded men that there are no gods (lines 450–451). One woman says that Euripides made a point of writing about wicked women such as Melanippe and Phaedra, and never wrote a Penelope, “because she was thought a sensible wife”; Mnesilochus replies that one could not find a single Penelope among the women of today (lines 546–550). The comedy therefore turns the accusation on its head, because Mnesilochus’ defense, that the poet has not said the half of it, only enrages them further (lines 466–519).

The play is also a comedy about disguise and the confusion of the sexes. Euripides’ kinsman is dressed as a woman (lines 213–265); Agathon, a man, wears women’s clothes as part of his art (lines 148–156); Cleisthenes, a beardless man, is a trusted informer in the women’s world (lines 574–583); and Euripides himself plays, in turn, Menelaus, Echo, Perseus and an old procuress. In the end it is not the women who change but Euripides, who offers a truce, and the women accept it (lines 1160–1171). The lyric songs of the chorus (lines 947–1000, 1136–1159) give the second half of the comedy its festival setting, with prayers and dances to Demeter, Persephone, Artemis, Hera, Pan, the nymphs and Dionysus. Euripides’ style is parodied too, from the opening lecture on how the eye and the ear were made (lines 14–18), in the language of natural philosophy, to Agathon’s choral song (lines 101–129), which sets the lyric style of the tragic stage against the plain speech of Mnesilochus. The women’s speeches are modeled on the Athenian assembly, with a herald, a decree, a wreath for the speaker and a secretary (lines 295–311, 373–380), so that the festival becomes a small-scale parody of the men’s political life.

Sources

Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria, lines 1–1231, the main source for the plot, characters and quotations in this article; Aristophanes, Acharnians 325–351, for the hostage scene in a related parody; Euripides, Hippolytus 612, for the line of the oath that Mnesilochus parodies; the ancient scholia on Aristophanes (on Frogs 53) for the date of Andromeda. The Greek text can be read on Perseus.

See Also: Aristophanes, Euripides, The Acharnians, Helen