Posted: 5/11/2019
Recently watched Classicist Michael Scott’s excellent documentary Ancient Greece The Greatest Show on Earth: Kings
If you are not very familiar with ancient Greek literature (comedies, tragedies, drama), then I highly recommend the above the three episode documentary by Michael Scott. Ancient Greek literature has so much more to offer than the Odyssey or Trojan War.
As a teenager my parents told me about a very peculiar story that a long time ago Greek women refused having sex with their husbands to end a war. Never followed up on this amazing story or forgot details about it … Now, in the above documentary, Michael Scott retells the story, which is actually based on an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes titled Lysistrata. “It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War between Greek city states by denying all the men of the land any sex … withhold sexual privileges ...” (Source: Wikipedia)
Was this comedy a reaction to the disastrous failure of the so called Sicilian Expedition by Athens. It was a catastrophic defeat and a serious blow to Athenian power over the Mediterranean Sea.
Unfortunately, the reverse case, i.e. that a majority of women usually are in support of or ignore war efforts by their male partners is far more common in human history. Someone still ought to write a comedy about this!
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