Lysistrata

Athens and Sparta have been at war for twenty years, and the Athenian woman Lysistrata has had enough. She gathers women from all over Greece, including the sturdy Spartan Lampito, and persuades them to refuse their husbands until the men make peace, while the older women seize the Acropolis and the treasury that pays for the war. As the men grow more desperate and ridiculous, the women hold firm.

Aristophanes (about 446–386 BC), the great comic poet of Athens, staged the play in 411 BC, during the Peloponnesian War described by Thucydides. Bawdy and outrageous, it is also a serious plea for peace, and it has been performed in protest against many modern wars; Spike Lee's film Chi-Raq (2015) moves its story to Chicago.