United States or Heard Island and McDonald Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The Peace, the Acharnae, and the Lysistrata, with many turns, still all recommend peace; and one object of the Ecclesiazusae, or Women in Parliament,, of the Thesmophoriazusae, or Women keeping the Festival of the Thesmophoriae, and of Lysistrata, is to throw ridicule on the relations and the manners of the female sex.

Indeed, it may remind us of that parody on the soft, superfluous, flowery and frothy style of Agathon, which at the opening of the Thesmophoriazusae cannot but make the youngest and most ignorant reader laugh, though the oldest and most learned has never set eyes on a line of the original verses which supplied the incarnate god of comic song with matter for such exquisite burlesque.

This would not be strange, when we reflect that under Domitian noble ladies even fought in the arena. Thesmophoriazusae, 443-459. See Cicero, pro Caecina, 5, for an account of these business agents for women. Paulus, ii, xi; id. in Dig., 16, 1, 1; Aulus Gellius, v, 19; Pomponius in Dig., 48, 2, 1: non est permissum mulieri publico iudicio quemquam reum facere. Ulpian in Dig., 1, 16, 9.

The Thesmophoriazusae has a proper intrigue, a knot which is not loosed till the conclusion, and in this possesses therefore a great advantage. Euripides, on account of the well-known hatred of women displayed in his tragedies, is accused and condemned at the festival of the Thesmophoriae, at which women only were admitted.