The Assemblywomen

By Ishmael, Student

A brief description of the laws formed in the play and their implications for Greek society.

An essay hosted at LiteratureClassics.com

The Assemblywomen was written as a comical comment on the social issues of the time. The play was written by Aristophanes during the years of decay following the height of the Greek Golden Age. The play is an attempt by the author to bring the growing corruption and the decline of the governmental institute to the attention of the masses in order to present alternatives, remedies and examples to those who had the power to institute change.

A number of changes are put in place by the women who come to dominate the Assembly of Athens during the play, not the least of which is the law governing sexual partnerships and couplings. The law states that ‘if a young man desires a young woman, it shall not be lawful for him to screw the same unless and until he has pleasured old one.’ The law is enacted to protect the young women from the advances older men as it had been, both post and prior the play, the custom of Grecians to permit a man of any age to take to his bed, any woman who took his fancy. The author presents, in this law, the ideals of sexual equality between men and women. Because the play focuses centrally on the ideals of true equality, it should be noted at this time that the law also applies in perfect Inversion (vice versa).

The sex law also inspires the idea behind the parentage law, the law that says that know man or woman shall know which man fathered him. This further emphasises the sex law as the comment that the author was trying to make at this time was that the only way to cease the strength of the men’s belief in their superiority was to enact changes that would reach fruition in the inability of men to have sex with any person younger than them for fear of committing incest, the most grievous of all moral breaches that the Ancient Greeks applied to themselves.

There are two categories that all laws represented in the play can be put into; sexual or gender equality laws and public property or Communistic laws. The first has been described already but the second is of equal importance. In order to prevent greed, jealousy, excess and lust and all crimes arising from the four, the women put in place laws by which each man contributed all his possessions and wealth to a common pool so that it may be, from there, distributed evenly in a rationing so that a person has no more and no less than is strictly necessary. This rationing system is wielded as an effective threat against crime; anyone who commits a crime shall be unable to partake of the common pool for a Period decided upon by the Assembly.

The Assemblywomen is about equality. Nothing short of true and complete equality can stop the Greeks from scheming against each other. Yet in a peculiar twist, the author shows, in the character of Citizen, that not even pure and unalloyed equality can prevent the problems that inevitably result from the conflict of a myriad of wills that are needed to be submerged in continual homogeneity in order for the ideals demonstrated by the author to function to their maximum efficiency. However, despite its deficiencies, The Assemblywomen is an important insight into the lives of the Golden Age Greeks and humanity in General. It is one of the few writings whose meaning stays constant and relevant throughout any period of time.