Lysistrata is a
comedy by
Aristophanes. Originally performed in
classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the
Peloponnesian War by denying all the men of the land any sex, which was the only thing they truly and deeply desired. 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.