Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 373–530a: Episode: the women's assembly and the speech of Mnesilochus

O yes! O yes! The Women’s Council-Board Hath thus enacted (moved by Sostrata, President Timocleia, clerk Lysilla), To hold a morning Parliament to-day When women most have leisure; to discuss

CRIERESS What shall be done about Euripides, How best to serve him out; for that he’s guilty We all admit. Who will address the meeting?

FIRST WOMAN I wish to, I.

CRIERESS Put on this chaplet first. Order! order! Silence, ladies, if you please. She’s learnt the trick; she hems and haws; she coughs in preparation; I know the signs; my soul divines a mighty long oration.

FIRST WOMAN ’Tis not from any feeling of ambition I rise to address you, ladies, but because I long have seen, and inly burned to see The way Euripides insults us all, The really quite interminable scoffs This market-gardener’s son pours out against us. I don’t believe that there’s a single fault He’s not accused us of; I don’t believe That there’s a single theatre or stage, But there is he, calling us double-dealers, False, faithless, tippling, mischief-making gossips, A rotten set, a misery to men. Well, what’s the consequence? The men come home Looking so sour—O, we can see them peeping In every closet, thinking friends are there. Upon my word we can’t do ANYTHING We used to do; he has made the men so silly Suppose I’m hard at work upon a chaplet, Hey, she’s in love with somebody; suppose I chance to drop a pitcher on the floor,

And straightway ’tis, For whom was that intended? I warrant now, for our Corinthian friend. Is a girl ill? Her brother shakes his head; The girl’s complexion is not to my taste. Why, if you merely want to hire a baby, And palm it off as yours, you’ve got no chance, They sit beside our very beds, they do. Then there’s another thing; the rich old men Who used to marry us, are grown so shy We never catch them now; and all because Euripides declares, the scandal-monger, An old man weds a tyrant, not a wife. You know, my sisters, how they mew us up, Guarding our women’s rooms with bolts and seals And fierce Molossian dogs. That’s all his doing. We might put up with that; but, O my friends, Our little special perquisites, the corn, The wine, the oil, gone, gone, all gone for ever. They’ve got such keys, our husbands have, such brutes Laconian-made, with triple rows of teeth. Then in old times we only had to buy A farthing ring, and pantry-doors flew open. But now this wretch Euripides has made them Wear such worm-eaten perforated seals, ’Tis hopeless now to try it. Therefore, ladies, What I propose is that we slay the man, Either by poison or some other way;

FIRST WOMAN Somehow or other he must die the death. That’s all I’ll say in public: I’ll write out A formal motion with the clerkess there.

CHORUS Good heavens! what force and tact combined! O, what a many-woven mind! A better speech, upon my word, I don’t believe I ever heard. Her thoughts so clean dissected, Her words so well selected, Such keen discrimination, Such power and elevation, ’Twas really quite a grand, superb, magnificent oration. So that if, in opposition, Xenocles came forth to speak, Compared with her You’d all aver All his grandest, happiest efforts are immeasurably weak!

SECOND WOMAN Ladies, I’ve only a few words to add. I quite agree with the honourable lady Who has just sat down: she has spoken well and ably. But I can tell you what I’ve borne myself.

SECOND WOMAN The man is bitterer than his mother’s potherbs. I leave my cause with you, my sisters: I Am called away on urgent private business, An order, just received, for twenty chaplets.

CHORUS Better and better still. A subtler intellect, a daintier skill. Wise are her words, and few; Well timed and spoken too. A many-woven mind she too has got, I find. And he must clearly, This rascal man, be punished most severely.

MNESILOCHUS Mrs. Speaker and ladies, I’m not surprised, of course I’m not surprised, To find you all so angry and aggrieved At what Euripides has said against us. For I myself—or slay my babies else— Hate him like poison, to be sure I do, He’s most provoking, I admit he is. But now we’re all alone, there’s no reporter, All among friends, why not be fair and candid? Grant that the man has really found us out, And told a thing or two, sure they’re all TRUE, And there’s a many thousand still behind. For I myself, to mention no one else, Could tell a thousand plaguy tricks I’ve played On my poor husband; I’ll just mention one.

We’d been but three days married; I’m abed, Husband asleep beside me; when my lover (I’d been familiar with him from a child) Came softly scratching at the outer door. I hear; I know “the little clinking sound,” And rise up stealthily, to creep downstairs. Where go you, pray? says husband. Where! say I, I’ve such a dreadful pain in my inside I must go down this instant. Go, says he. He pounds his anise, juniper, and sage, To still my pains: I seize the water-jug, And wet the hinge, to still its creaking noise, Then open, and go out: and I and lover Meet by Aguieus and his laurel-shade, Billing and cooing to our hearts’ content. (With vivacity) Euripides has never found out that. Nor how a wife contrived to smuggle out Her frightened lover, holding up her shawl To the sun’s rays for husband to admire. Nor how we grant our favours to bargees And muleteers, if no one else we’ve got. Nor how, arising from a night’s debauch, We chew our garlic, that our husbands, coming Back from the walls at daybreak, may suspect Nothing amiss at home. Then what’s the odds If he does rail at Phaedra? Let him rail. What’s that to us? Let him rail on, say I. Phaedra indeed! He might come nearer home. I knew a woman, I won’t mention names, Remained ten days in childbirth. Why, do you think? Because she couldn’t buy a baby sooner. Her husband runs to every medicine-man

MNESILOCHUS In dreadful agitation; while he’s out, They bring a little baby in a basket, Bunging its mouth up that it mayn’t cry out, And stow it safe away till he comes home. Then at a given sigh she feebly says, My time is come: please, husband, go away. He goes; they open basket; baby cries. O, what delight, surprise, congratulations! The man runs in; the nurse comes running out, (The same that brought the baby in the basket), A prodigy! a Lion! such a boy! Your form, your features: just the same expression: Your very image: lucky, lucky man! Don’t we do this? By Artemis, we do. Then wherefore rail we at Euripides? We’re not one bit more sinned against than sinning.

CHORUS What a monstrous, strange proceeding! Whence, I wonder, comes her breeding? From what country shall we seek her, Such a bold, audacious speaker? That a woman so should wrong us, Here among us, here among us, I could never have believed it; such a thing was never known. But what may be, no man knoweth, And the wise old proverb showeth,

CHORUS That perchance a poisonous sophist lurketh under every stone. O, nothing, nothing in the world so hateful you will find As shameless women, save of course the rest of womankind.

FIRST WOMAN What can possess us, sisters mine?