Lysistrata characters

Appears from the start

An Athenian woman who summons women from the warring Greek cities and proposes a coordinated refusal of sex until the men make peace. Disciplined, persuasive, and politically alert, she keeps the alliance together when its members begin to lose resolve.

Appears from the start

Lysistrata's Athenian neighbor and the first woman to hear the plan. She initially doubts that women can influence a war through domestic action, but joins the oath once the strategy is explained.

Appears from the start

An Athenian participant in the women's alliance and the wife of Cinesias. When her husband arrives desperate for intimacy, she becomes the clearest test of whether the women can place their common purpose above private desire.

Appears from the start

A physically imposing Spartan woman who represents the enemy city at Lysistrata's meeting. She understands the suffering caused by the prolonged war and agrees to carry the women's oath back to Sparta.

Also known as Commissioner

Appears from the start

An Athenian official who comes to the occupied Acropolis seeking access to public money for the war. He treats women's intervention in state affairs as absurd and attempts to restore male authority through threats and argument.

Appears from the start

Myrrhine's husband, who approaches the Acropolis painfully eager for her to come home. He believes a private reunion is within reach and becomes the object of an extended demonstration of the women's strategy.

Appears from the start

The older Athenian women who seize the Acropolis and its treasury while Lysistrata organizes the younger women. They defend the occupation against the men who arrive with fire and repeatedly assert their stake in the city's survival.

Appears from the start

The older Athenian men who attempt to smoke the women out of the Acropolis. Their confrontation with the women's chorus turns the conflict between the sexes into a public contest over control of the city.

Appears from the start

A Spartan messenger whose visible discomfort confirms that the women's campaign is affecting Sparta as strongly as Athens. He arrives ready to discuss an end to hostilities.

Appears from the start

Representatives of Athens and Sparta who meet under intense pressure to end the war. Lysistrata leads them past renewed territorial quarrels toward a settlement and the restoration of ordinary relations between the cities.