Lysistrata: Oh, Calonicé, my heart is on fire; I blush for our sex. Men will have it we are tricky and sly... Calonicé: And they are quite right, upon my word! Lysistrata: Yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming. Calonicé: Oh, they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy you know, for a woman to leave the house. One is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep or washing the brat or feeding it.

Thus the political conservatism of the plays might reflect the views of the wealthiest section of society on whose generosity comic dramatists depended for the success of their plays. The conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of a dominant group in an unrepresentative audience.

These together with fragments of some of his other plays provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and they are used to define the genre. 446 BC – ca. Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author.