VIII.
THE PARLIAMENT OF WOMEN.

This is one of the poet’s later plays, having been produced in
392 B.C. The satire is, for the most part, social rather than political.
There is, indeed, a sarcasm on the passion for change and for novel
experiments in government, when the proposal for placing power in the
hands of the women is approved as being the only scheme which had
not yet been tried in-Athens. But the general object of the satire is
woman, while there is doubtless a special reference to the fashion for
imitating Spartan manners. The Spartan women, it must be remem-
bered, lived in a sort of comradeship, so to speak, with the men, which
was wholly unlike Athenian ways.

ONcE upon a time it happened in Athens that
every form of government having been tried to no
good purpose, and things getting worse and worse -
instead of better, the women thought it would be
well to take affairs into their own hands. How they
managed this will be told; but first it should be said
that their leader in this revolution was a certain
’ Praxagora.

On the appointed day, while it was ‘still dark,
Praxagora made her way to the place in the suburbs
where she had arranged to meet her fellow-conspira-
tors, and began by hanging up the lamp with which
she had lighted her way from home, and paying it
her respects. She said: —

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