Abstract

Scholarship on Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” has become almost unanimously aligned in various degrees of support of a proposal made by David M. Lewis in 1955 that we should identify Aristophanes’ character, Lysistrata, with Lysimache, the priestess of Athena Polias when the play was produced in 411 BCE. Lewis also argues that Aristophanes’ Myrrhine should be identified with the priestess of Athena Nike of that same name during that year, but this proposal has turned out to be more controversial. The author intends to show that the identifications or even associations between Aristophanes’ characters and the two acropolis priestesses are much more problematic than scholars have recognized.