Female dancers, Illustration from Notor's Lysistrata, 1898 (litho)

Reproduction of vase illustration from Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia; Lysistrata is a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society; translated by Charles Marie Zévort and Published by The Librairie Charpentier et Fasquelle, 1898;