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102 THE LYSISTRATA
and feeling. Now, to write like the sociolo-
gists, the subject of the Lysistrata
is the
fundamental nature and necessity of the in-
terdependence of the sexes. But what Aristophanes
thought and felt about the matter
is just what we shall not find in this transla-
tion. For instance, the scene between Cine-
sias and Myrrhina is essential to a perfect
understanding of the play, but the latter
part of it (11. 905-60) is not so much as paraphrased
here. And so the spirit languishes ;
it could flourish only in the body created
for it by the poet, and that body has been
mutilated.
This version, then, fails to bring out the profound,
comic conception that gives unity and
significance to the original
something more than such literary
interest as
may be supposed to belong to any work by Mr.
Rogers. The comic poet offers matter worthy
the consideration of
politicians and political
controversialists, and this the translator has
rendered fearlessly and well. For the Lysistrata
is a political play, and cannot be discussed
profitably apart from its political ideas and
arguments. It can no more be treated as pure
literature than the poetry of Keats can be
; nevertheless, it has
treated as anything else. Frankly " pacificist,"
and to some extent " feminist," hostile, at any
rate, to arrogant virility, it sounds in its ideas