SCENE: In a public square at Athens; afterwards before the gates of the Acropolis, and finally within the precincts of the citadel.
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LYSISTRATA
LYSISTRATA (alone). Ah! if only they had been invited to a Bacchic revelling, or a feast of Pan or Aphrodité or Genetyllis,[390] why! the streets would have been impassable for the thronging tambourines! Now there's never a woman here-ah! except my neighbour Calonicé, whom I see approaching yonder…. Good day, Calonicé.
CALONICÉ. Good day, Lysistrata; but pray, why this dark, forbidding face, my dear? Believe me, you don't look a bit pretty with those black lowering brows.
LYSISTRATA. Oh! Calonicé, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly….
CALONICÉ. And they are quite right, upon my word!
LYSISTRATA. Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming.
CALONICÉ. Oh! they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy, you know, for women to leave the house. One is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep, or washing the brat or feeding it.
LYSISTRATA. But I tell you, the business that calls them here is far and away more urgent.