Summary
Scene 4. Lysistrata rushes out of the Acropolis, noting that a man is coming towards them, "wild with desire." Calonice wants to know where he is, and Lysistrata notes that he is by the Temple of Demeter. Suddenly, Myrrhina recognizes him as her husband, Cinesias.
Lysistrata sees this as an opportunity, and instructs Myrrhina, "Perfect! Then it will be your job to torture him, inflame him, and torment him with desire. Use every seductive tool you have. Do anything you need to, except the one thing we have all sworn not to do." Myrrhina agrees, as Cinesias enters, fully erect.
Cinesias bemoans his fate, as Lysistrata guards the door. She tells him that Myrrhina talks about him all the time and says that no man can possibly match his masculine virtues. He begs her to call Myrrhina down, and lewdly offers to pay her with his erect penis, but she tells him to save it for his wife.
Left alone, Cinesias cries, "My life has been empty since she left home and took away my happiness. I just sit at home alone, eating food I can barely taste. It’s been so hard, so very, very, very hard, and it keeps getting harder." Meanwhile, Myrrhina speaks to Lysistrata in a voice that he can hear, saying that she misses Cinesias, but cannot go to him because he does not want her.
Cinesias calls to her, insisting she come down, but she refuses. He tells her he brought their baby with him, which a servant is carrying, and the servant pretends to voice the baby. This lures her outside, where Cinesias tells her that the house is a complete mess without her. She tells him that she will not have sex with him until he ends the war.
Cinesias agrees, and Myrrhina says she will reward him with sex when it is all official. He orders her to lie down with her right then, and throws the "baby" away, as the servant goes to grab it. Cinesias wants them to go have sex in the cave of Pan, and Myrrhina reminds him of her oath.
Pretending to go along with his plan, Myrrhina goes and gets a bed from the Acropolis, before realizing they do not have a mattress and going to fetch one. When she comes out with the mattress, she realizes she's forgotten her pillow. As she slowly undresses, she reminds Cinesias that he promised to end the war. She suddenly remembers she doesn't have a blanket and goes to get one inside. When she returns, she decides she needs to put on perfume and goes to fetch some. When she comes out with one perfume, she realizes it is the wrong one, and goes to fetch another.
Cinesias waits on the bed, exclaiming, "My cock has been left, abandoned and bereft," as a chorus assembles around him. They call him a hero and sympathize with the fact that he has been tricked. When Cinesias defends Myrrhina, the leader of the chorus speaks ill of her, saying her wishes Zeus would send a tornado to fly her away.
A Spartan herald enters, also erect, with news for the Senate about declaring peace. Cinesias teases him about his erection, but the herald insists that it is a Spartan message stick. He eventually admits that he too is erect and that everyone in Sparta is also erect. The herald explains that Lampito and the other women are refusing sex. At this point, Cinesias sends the herald back to the Spartan Senate and to negotiate a peace treaty, saying he will do the same.
Chorus 4. The leader of the chorus of men suggests that "there is no beast more shameless than a woman." The leader of the women suggests that men ought to try and be their friends, but the leader of the men insists, "I will never stop hating women." The leader of the women notes that the man has a gnat in his eye and he pulls out a cock ring to get it out.
The leader of the men and the leader of the women kiss and make a treaty to be friends with one another. Then, they all sing a song about how they are reconciled.
Analysis
Not only are Lysistrata and her cohort exercising their power to abstain from sex, but they also try and make the tension even stronger by seducing the men whenever they can. This way, their denial becomes all the more intense, because they have stirred up desire that then goes unconsummated. There is a certain danger in this game, the fact that it holds with it the disappointment of the man, his anger at not getting what he wants. In spite of this, Lysistrata insists that it is the most effective way to enact the protest they need.
Aristophanes does not shy away from showing the consequences of such tactics. For instance, when Cinesias enters, he is fully erect. This image, of an erect military man in agony over his inability to have sex with his wife, is a striking, if lewd, one, an outrageous depiction of the ways that the women's game-playing is having an effect. This cartoonish-ness of scenes like this makes the central comedy of the play that much more ridiculous and outrageous, explicitly theatricalizing the struggle between the men and the women.
Myrrhina agrees to have sex with Cinesias, but makes it a difficult process, insisting on making up the bed and taking a long time to undress. She purposefully makes this foreplay and preparation difficult and painstaking, as a way of leading him on and making his desire that much more painful, before refusing to fulfill it. Her torture of Cinesias becomes a theatrical bit, in which there is always one more item that she needs to fetch from inside, leaving Cinesias desperate and erect, begging for relief.
In this section of the play, Lysistrata's plan begins to work, when Cinesias is pushed to his edge and encounters the Spartan herald, who reports that Spartan men are in the same position, pushed to their brink. In this moment, in which both men complain of the agony that the women have put them through, Cinesias sends the herald back to Sparta and instructs him to tell the Senate to draft a peace treaty. Lysistrata's plan works almost like clockwork as the men realize that their only hope for sexual release is in declaring peace.
As reflected in Chorus 4, the declaration of peace between nations also heralds the declaration of peace between the genders. By eschewing war and violence, the men are also eschewing a more divisive view of the world, which opens them up to communion and connection with the women in their lives. As the leader of the chorus of women says, "...you choose to fight us, when we could be your friends instead." She then helps him get something out of his eye, and teaches him how to be more kind and gentle, which leads to the two genders coming together.
