The Assemblywomen

Aristophanes · c. 391 BCE · Play · Greek · Classical

Before dawn Praxagora drills a squad of Athenian wives in false beards and their husbands' cloaks, coaching them how to sit and how to speak so that they can pack the assembly and vote the running of the city over to themselves. The decrees that follow abolish private property and private marriage, and the old women claim first turn with the young men under the new sexual law. A late play with the chorus much reduced and the topical bite gone slack, one of two surviving specimens of the turn toward Middle Comedy.

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