Customer Reviews

Lysistrata (Clarendon Paperbacks)

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In his comic play, Lysistrata, Aristophanes provides a fantasy account of the Peloponnesian War between the Spartans and Athenians. The women of Greece, disheartened by all of the bloodshed and damage caused by the war attempt to take the matter into their own hands. Led by Lysistrata, the women of Sparta and Athens band together and institute a sex-strike which will continue until the men agree to a cease-fire. Henderson is very liberal with his translation, which stands in contrast to some of the pruder translations from the Victorian era and even ones from this century. The play is filled with graphic sexual innuendos, which were repressed in other editions, but are fully presented here to retain the original comic power of the play. The vernacular used is modern and uninhibited, and is not recommended for young audiences (University level minimum).

I ordered this bc my high school honors class is going to read it. The translation is fabulous and totally modern and understandable, however, be warned that it is quite sexually graphic. I know the story is the same, but I guess it seems more raunchy in this version as compared to a more classical translation. Regardless of this, I personally LOVED the story as portrayed here and even read excerpts to my classes to help them understand different parts. This is a great and hilarious read, but definitely for adults :)

I think this is the best presentation of a Greek text, because there is a good introduction, a lot of help behind in the book, but no translation. So this is the ideal Lysistrata for students.

As Amazon often does, they've lumped together reviews of some English translation with this, the edited Greek manuscript. If you're looking for Henderson's English translation of the Lysistrata, see Loeb n179.

Henderson is one superb commentator. He introductions is lively, and hits all the critical points of modern scholarship on the Lysistrata. He also presents an effective outline of the play, and supplements his commentary with a short introduction to the Spartan dialect (or--Aristophane's take on the dialect). His notes are not as friendly to intermediate readers as, for instance, the Cambridge commentaries (i.e. they don't frequently translate the lines for you), but they are useful for setting lines within historical context. Henderson does occasionally offer suggests for more difficult or contested words and phrases. Most importantly, his notes often bring out the humor that gets lost in an English translation--pointing to puns and topic references.

This is the best feminist play written in ancient Greece... don't know that there were many, but it's a great play anyway.

this books gives you the sense on how women wee treated and how they made themselves stand out and been heard using special tatics to stop the war between the athenians and the trojans. Although they say that women are the weaker sex the men are weaker with out sex.