Aristophanes' Assemblywomen | The New Thinkery Ep. 59

Welcome back to the new Thinkery. I'm David Barr and With Me as always is my good friend Baldy Alex for you. How are you Alex? How are you doing fatty?

Yeah, that's never gets old. And the old man Greg. How are you? I'm old.

Good to see you. Haven't seen you while David. Yeah. Yeah.

We were the last couple of shows without you because we were recording remotely. Yeah. The quality significantly increased based on our work. It was wonderful.

Yeah. Something exciting. I think yeah, we're doing Arasophanes assembly women and on Twitter, I got some grief from one of our followers, Alexa O'Brien saying it shouldn't be a male only affair. So I did arrange, you know what I thought it would be good to have somebody.

So I reached out to Lisa, Leibowitz and asked her if she would be willing to come on. But and so here she is. Here's Lisa. And she's going to do, she's going to help us sort of interpret the stakes for the folks who don't.

At least you really want your facial hair to come out. Yeah. Well, how was the plan that we made at the last meeting? So yeah.

Right. So I wanted to have a bigger beard than Greg, but then Greg headed off. So I did cut off. Thankfully, that's yeah.

All right. I did cut off my beard and beard on. But we're going to do the assembly woman tonight. So we've done four episodes on three episodes on airstoffnes.

But we're going to do the assembly one. So this has some bearing on an episode we just released on book five of the Republic. And somehow this comedy relates to that book as well. What else we have?

Alkyanne else? Nothing else. I was telling my wife about this place. She started wearing a beard around the house.

She's kind of like a girl. She wants to have a second child, but I don't know if this is going to happen. It's a pretty grotesque, my living situation. I'm not too happy.

Yeah. She's looking a little like you. That's the problem. Like me?

Yeah. Yeah. The big beard. You know, we're at Fox hours or in Atlanta.

Yeah, Alex, that looks cells in Ohio. That's right. It looked like the Mennonites. Anyway, Lisa, since Lisa's here, why don't we just let her maybe tell us a little bit about this text?

Why this text? Give us maybe an overview or tell us what we need to know, Lisa. Well, let me give you a quick overview. In the Assembly women, Prexagra convinces a lot of her friends to dress up like men, go to the Assembly, take up a majority of the seats and have them vote into law that the city of Athens, the governance of the city of Athens will be turned over to the women.

At which point, Prexagra, who's been elected, she general decides to introduce two reforms, the communism of property and the communism of what you could call the sexual resources of the city. And then the rest of the play, yes, so that young men and young women, beautiful young men and women have to service an old or ugly man or woman before they can enjoy an age mate. So the old men also are taking care of Lisa. Just the old men.

Okay, good. All taken care of what category you'll fit into. We'll figure out later, Greg. So don't you worry about that.

But the rest of the play is the category of the old guy dressed in women's clothing is constipated, taking a crap in the street. Yeah, that's so we're this a positive elections are also non human. So this is one of the curious parts of the play is that when Prexagra talks about the reforms or plans for revolution, she actually offers, you know, four different accounts of what she's doing and why she's doing it. And that's why I thought I would invite three of my friends to come on this show and to talk to you about that.

But I don't see them. They seem to be late. Oh, wait a minute. Is the woman's way being Hi, hi, I'm Anna Mansfield.

Sorry, sorry, I'm I I was smashing up some peas from my husband had a sort of a lunch. So now I'm here. Oh, what and there's Linda Rivia from the real sinkery, the MIT. Hey, sorry, I'm late.

I was explaining again to my husband what a podcast is. Right. Carly is from the rural paradise, soony, geneseo. We all together here.

I had to walk over uphill both ways in the snow right now in August after spilling a cocktail on my kid. So things are going great. Guys, we're sorry. We're outnumbered here.

Yeah, I think we were just Anna. You were telling us about the opening of the assembly women. No one. I'm going to say a thing here with the men in the room.

What do you guys think? Yeah, they'll shut up now. We're three. I think we got this covered.

Yeah, I just want to vote. We're not guys. I don't understand what's happening. What I say.

I'm I'm assuming. Yeah, I think we can do it on our own. Yeah. All in favor.

No. I fall guy. Yeah. Right.

I fellas. He does a good meal. I have to go to the showmakers. All right, go ahead, ladies.

Show us how it's done. We'll see you. Bye. Are they gone?

They're gone. They're gone. OK, well, so yeah, what's happening at the beginning. So the assembly women, it's the only play by our stuff.

And he said begins with an old rather than a fetch. All his other plays begin with somebody complaining. But Prickshagara doesn't need to complain because she's got things figured out. She has the plan.

So she's giving an old to her lamp, the one that she's swinging in order to signal to the other women that they can come join her. And it's an old to human ingenuity to the human capacity that emancipates us, especially women from the pendants on the sun, whether the sun is a natural being or a divine being. And in the other place, the protagonist, the protagonists, protagonists are usually helped by divine or natural beings. Like, yeah, I think it's the wine.

The god wealth, the goddess peace, the birds, but Prickshagara and to rely relies entirely on her own feminine wiles, you could say. So women may need artifice and ingenuity more than men do to provide themselves with the things that please them. Women are busy inside the household. They're all busy all day.

They're providing for the young for the old. They're giving each what they need and it's the lamp that helps them get their little private pleasures on the side, whether they're having sex, marital or other, stealing wine or other un-mentionable things, the lamp is there to help. And it's not judgy. It doesn't wrap them out.

So, can see out to the lamp. The question is that the beginning sets up is Prickshagara using her feminine wiles for some public good? Or are we to think of her as maybe interested in somehow providing herself with further private pleasures? Interesting.

And Carly, what do you think, does the rehearsal of Prickshagara in front of the women of what they're going to say in the assembly contribute to answering Emma's question? It might. I mean, I want to start off by saying that I think Prickshagara sounds pretty impressive and maybe pretty hot. It's hard to say.

One has to ask that question. She does give this speech, right, in front of all the women before they go to the assembly in order to practice what they're about to say. It's interesting that what she ends up saying to the women isn't exactly the same as what she says to the men in the assembly. But in any case, this is what she tells the women.

Athens is going to hell in a hand basket. Things are bad. Our statesmen are terrible. People only go to the assembly to get paid.

So there is no virtue in the assembly. Nobody's public spirited. The assembly can't make good decisions. The people persecute people who give them good advice.

We should give the women rule, right? The women should have the power. Why? Because we're already administrators of the household and we do such a great job.

And she appeals to a couple of different things. She says, we do everything according to ancient custom. We do our cooking according to ancient custom. We do our cleaning according to ancient custom.

We do our fucking according to ancient custom. Yeah. And she says we are conservative, right? Women are conservative.

She appeals to the inherent or maybe customary conservatism of women. And lastly, she says, we're going to be the best providers for our soldiers because as their mothers, we care about them the most and nobody's going to be able to cheat women because women are so good at cheating. So women have all the skills that are needed in order to rule the city. And she seems to really emphasize the fact that most of women's lives are lived not only behind closed doors, but like behind closed doors.

They do things in secret and they're really good at it. And that's part of the reason, apparently, while they're qualified to rule. And what changes does she make when we hear about what's reported of what she said in the assembly, Linda? So what we hear in about what she says in the assembly, we hear about it from a man.

So we have to be very dubious about the adequacy of this report. Here, we hear progress justification as the citizen creme's reports into her husband, Leprous. And the way he explains it, a couple of people were speaking in the city about saving the city, the first person who spoke utterly useless. The second person who spoke gives this kind of funny pale preview of what it turns out, the third person, we know it will be Perksaagra, will propose.

He says that they should just give free clothes and betting to all the poor. Of course, it just so happens that he himself happens to be in need of a cloak. And he is not too quiet about that. Now, the third person that we hear spoke is someone that creme describes as a handsome young man, pale though, very pale.

And apparently this pale man simply came out and said, the city should be handed over to women and why? Well, not so much because of the skills, but especially because of the virtues. So this handsome young guy goes on about women being intelligent and discreet and very thrifty and above all, just now. The funny thing is, is that when creme's reports with the assembly decided to do turn it over to the women, he doesn't say that it was because of their virtues.

What he says is, well, the city has never tried this before. So maybe we're at least invited to raise the question of whether Pratagra is correct in her summary of these virtues. Now, let leopress and creme's theme pretty satisfied with the development, which creme's interprets as meaning the women are now going to do all the stuff that the men do and the men can just stay home and do what are stuff and these when he's portraying them at home on their own seem to like to do best. You guys can guess what that is.

And leopress's only hesitation is that he may be forced to fulfill his husbandly duties at another person's will and if he can't perform, won't get his breakfast. And we feel so badly for him. Yeah. We feel very badly.

Well, creme says to him, you know what, you're just going to have to suck it up for the sake of the city. So you can't actually make old men to anyway. I think it says you're flatter at a time. But at the time, you can be worried about how whether he's going to get his breakfast.

But at that time, Pratagra is defending what she actually plans to do to creme and blepress. She is no longer talking about the women and their ancient ways and how they stick to the ancient ways. Nor is she talking about the women's superiority. In fact, she's worried that the Athenian citizens won't like her reforms because they're too novel.

These are the citizens that she claimed were always too novel on their own. So her reforms must be novelty to the power of novelty. And they are communism of women and children and communism of the sorry, communism of property and communism of the sexual resources are hugely innovative, sort of contradicting everything she said prior. So I think we go back to Anna's question.

What is Pratagra's genuine motive here? Why is she doing what she's doing? And what are the women getting out of this? Nice.

Lisa, I'm sorry. The folks at home in very pedestrian terms, what does this mean? Communism of property and communism of sexual relations. Just to help people understand what you mean.

The simple mind of people like me. And then you go back to the party. Yeah, we're going to turn in. We're going to, yeah, we're going to answer this question because we have to take pity on the men.

They don't understand things very well. So they need lots of explanations. So here we go. Communism with property means.

I just I missed I missed it. I was taking a dump in the yard. What a great. Sorry.

Do you hear something? I don't. I'm not like, I'm wrong. I'm not like property.

All right. Communism with property is giving all your property to the city, only every everyone owns everything altogether. And communism of women and children turns out to be the communism of the sexual resources. Her law is that any young and beautiful person must service an old and ugly person before they can enjoy an age mate.

So everyone is going to share in the sexual resources of the city. Nobody's going to be left out. Nobody's not going to have a young and beautiful sexual partner. But the question becomes, since she's offered such contradictory accounts of what she's up to, what is she?

Why is she doing this? What is she up to? What does prexagra or what do the women in general get out of this innovation? What do you guys think?

I would be trying to first of all take the account that Carly gave that Athens is really in deep trouble. I would take that seriously because we find this in all of their stuff in his place, a really harsh critique of what's going on, of the bad choices that the assembly makes of the, you know, populist choices of the lack of judgment. They don't take peace, trade, and they should. They ally with the wrong people.

They let opportunities pass. They're vindictive. So I think that is how many surforms going to fix that, Anna? No, but I think that is that's the real deal is the men have screwed up.

Athens is in trouble. And they then they cause the fraud on themselves. But if that was too important, go ahead, Linda. No, I was just going to say that that's a specific problem, but there seems to be sort of bigger that's related to a bigger, more general critique, which is that the men are terribly self interested and that they're always out for themselves.

So it's not only that. I mean, I think you're absolutely right. I think yeah, Athens is in terrible situation, although I believe this is after the end of the war. Yeah.

So the war is over and they're there in the middle of or just having concluded, I guess what was called the Corinthian war, but the democracy had been restored for a little while now. And everybody in the Greek world is kind of ganging up on Sparta. Yeah. Right.

But they lost their wealth and they have a large population of poor people and they're using the assembly to basically sponge off the city. And those are the men they lost every every citizenship that they might have had before. There's not there's no you can join your criticisms. Maybe the lack of common good and lack of interest in the common good can be fixed by Prick'sagverse problems, which would deal with the problems that you say are ruining Athens.

Right. I mean, I think, you know, one, so first of all, just read it on a very plain basis is the main thing is what you can take seriously is you have to take the men out of the equation. They are they can't be reformed, right? They have put themselves into a situation where they're out to themselves.

And you see this in the men in the sun, you see this in leopress and all the people that just go there to make money. And I think Prick'sagra diagnosed is possibly correctly that there's nothing you can reform. You can do with these people. You got to put them on the sofa, take them out of the, you know, out of this out of circulation, give them video games and porn and take over yourselves.

I think that's what's kind of that's the basic idea. I mean, I also go ahead. I know I was just going to say I do also get the sense that she does have a certain amount of ambition, right? And a certain amount of public spiritedness that she wants to do something great for the city.

I mean, her name also in Greek seems to kind of reflect that seems to be some kind of combination of of Praxis and Agora, right? So like deeds of public deeds, basically seems to be referring to. So that means there isn't a word good in there. You know, there is a public deed.

But I mean, I mean, does it, but would it make sense to say that Praxagra thinks that she's going to do something worse? I don't know if she's going to do something works, but she's going to do something in public. The question is, is it really in the interest of the public? Is it really going to benefit the public or does she have, as honestly, just at the beginning, perhaps a self-interested motive at the very heart of her revolution?

I mean, I don't see. Wait, wait, wait. No, no, no. Somebody's voice got hearing.

I can't have smacked that. I don't know. I had something caught in my throat. It was it was.

Yeah, Linda, you got to work that out. It was a porn voice here. I was just telling the room. I'm just saying, I think this is a great idea.

You can call me a committed vagina. I'm all on board. Well, I was going to say, isn't it possible that she does have the common good or the good of the city in mind, but that she doesn't achieve it? That there's something problematic about her plan, as we see.

And that perhaps she's not quite as she's clearly impressive in very many ways, but she may have a real blind spot. Yeah, I think that's why I make that case. See, all it says that what she's done is taken the men out of the equation. But what she's actually done is she started to equalize everything, everything that we want, all the goods that we want in the world, she wants them all equal.

And that's supposed to produce the common good. Well, as she says, she's having for happiness, right? Right. So she says that she's aiming for the people's happiness.

She doesn't want it to be the case anymore, that, you know, like that the one percent are wealthy and the rest of us are miserable, that a few people get what's good for them and everybody else gets crap. She also opens her speech, the practice speech, right, to the women by saying something like, as though she's speaking to the assembly, saying, my concerns are the same as yours or I share your concerns or something like that. So I think her plan, I think Aristophanes shows us is deeply flawed. Brains may also have very selfish, she may also have selfish reasons for doing what she's doing.

But I think there is at least some aspect of concern for the common good going on, including Paxagra. Yeah. Okay. So right.

But I do not, but as opposed to just Paxagra. Right. Exactly. I actually, even if I set it up this way, I generally would probably defend the position the most that Paxagra is not fundamentally self-interested in this.

And here would be my reason. I think, you know, so the reason why a woman is taking over the city or is doing the reform in the way she does is she's hurt the female imaginations, so to speak, or the female experience of managing and organizing and ruling is the household. She turns the city into a giant household. All the individual houses are abolished.

All private rooms are abolished. So she's ruling or she intends the women to rule everything as they would rule a family where you know, the little guy, the baby needs to be fed and grandpa, you know, just because he doesn't have any more teeth, like also needs his food. So everybody should get should get something to make them happy, I think, Carly said that before. And so so speak, the female political imagination is not really political, but it's despotic.

I mean, this is how the plate is presented, giving everybody directly what they would need. And we can talk about it. We have to talk about why this gets perverted in the process or why the outcome is so different from the intention to give everybody to treat everybody like in a household where they, where they receive, you know, their material shares of the, but isn't really the material shares that are most important? Are they her biggest aim?

I wonder if it isn't, since the first time she talks about the happiness of the city, she swears by Aphrodite, meaning that when she's thinking about the happiness of the city, it's the things of Aphrodite that you think may be most important to the happiness of the city. Isn't it the communism of the sexual resources that is her ultimate aim, her, her biggest plan, rather than merely the, um, the one difficulty with that seems to be that the sexual reform, the reform of a sexual Congress seems to come up more as an afterthought. I disagree, Linda. She says when she's talking about the communism of resources of material resources, she says this is her first part of her plan, implying that she already has a second part of her plan in mind.

Secondly, when, hold on, I just have a couple of pieces of evidence. Secondly, when Bleporus asks about how he's going to get his hands on a young woman, if he has no money, no material resources of his own, she snaps at an answer that is right on the first, on the right, right on the first time. If you look at her in the practice, the girls ask her some questions during the rehearsal for the assembly and she doesn't get the right answer first. So there are stuff, there are stuffies if you wanted, could show us that this is just an afterthought, that she's just coming up with this.

Yes, I didn't quite mean to say it was an afterthought. And it'd be in the sense that it may have to follow necessarily from the, or the part of the general communism, so that the gold ultimate goal that she has in mind, which is a more just city, which isn't, and just as Prakt Seiger understands that is a city that's concerned about the going of all the citizens and not interested in getting as much for each individual as one can, that the, this may be something that's necessary to implement that. But I don't see the evidence that it's the primary concern. So it might be a necessary part of it, but not the primary concern.

I guess that's what I'm saying. Yeah. So Linda, what you're saying is that you don't see the point for Prakt Seiger as reorganizing the entire regime so that she can have a young guy. Right.

Yeah. And you even you said this, Linda, you said the common good, which includes Prakt Seiger currently the common good of Athens doesn't include Prakt Seiger because she's married to this old bag who doesn't even have sex with her. This is also evident. Did we see evidence of this in the text?

Because leopress doesn't even know what her sexual habits are, like what she does to prepare for sex. He's even afraid of being forced to have sex with her, which if she's a young woman, I don't know why he would be. So she's one of the few people in Athens who's not the whole sexual situation. I think it's not.

He doesn't have a lot in him. He doesn't have a lot in him, but that means that Prakt Seiger is left out of one of the most important kinds of happiness that she wants Athens to share in as a common good. But she brings the law. But she isn't because her initial speech very clearly says she has all the wilds about her to provide herself with the lovers or whatever that she needs, right?

They get the women to have her. There's no evidence she has a lover. I think we should just talk about this. I think we could state our agreements or disagreements on this particular part.

We can go back to that. But I would say we have to go somewhat more systematically through. So why is this a woman? I have another.

I just have a little textual point, which is that when she said when she's saying this is around 6.05 for those following along at home, if there are such people. But when she says she's there are people both of them are listening. I'm sure. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm supposed to go on these young days.

Well, then sit back and listen, Alex, and maybe you'll learn something. So when she's describing what they're going to provide, she describes, you know, that having salt fish, a little barley, loaves, clothing, wine. And she asks, what would be the advantage in not laying down what he has if you find out what it is, explain it to me. And it seems as though in there and then also later when she is surprised at the suggestion that someone might want to gamble and play dice, she has no clue as to why anyone would be interested in those goods.

And or goods beyond the ones that are mentioned here. And so it doesn't seem to me that she's as quite as much alive, frankly, to those sexual delights that people have, which is why she's prepared to issue in a regime. That's going, it seems to me, ultimately, to lead to the degradation of that delight for everybody involved. It's interesting, Linda, that you mentioned that passage about the dice.

So that's around 670, somewhere between 676 and 75. Because to me, that pointed not only to the sort of like sexual delights, right? But throwing dice gambling is about risk taking, right? She treats it as though it were only about making money.

And the way this comes up is Praxagra is talking to her husband, Blypress, about what the new regime is going to look like. And he says, and men won't throw dice. And Praxagra says, why would one do this? Because in her mind, you don't need money.

So why would you gamble? But there's a certain thrill to gambling. There's a certain thrill. There's some attraction to risk taking.

And to me, that was one of the only sort of oblique references in this entire play to something like a concern for something beyond one's own good, sort of noble concern, maybe even. But actually, this is attractive because it requires a risk on our part. But that's really interesting, Carly. Another thing that requires a risk is breaking the law, is having a doctor's affair.

And if Praxagra is not interested in adulterous affairs, if she wants to be able to legally have sex with a young and beautiful man, then this is the only way to do it is to change the laws of the city. Because currently it would be risk for her. It would be to have an adulterous affair. So that's very nice observation.

Yeah. And I mean, I think you're right. So it raises this question, which I'm not sure that I'm personally equipped to answer just yet, but it does raise this question about, you know, Praxagra does seem to have been or at least she alludes to the fact that women have plenty of successful love affairs, right? So that is going on, but it is a risk, but it's still going on behind closed doors.

So what's better about being able to do it out in the open? Why would one want to have the ascent of the law to this sort of thing? But I mean, this sort of relates a little bit to something that Anna was talking about before, which if you guys don't mind, I thought we could sort of go back to, which was, you know, Anna kept calling this regime the result of the sort of womanly imagination, right? The transformation of politics into household management.

Now, the question of whether politics and household management, whether the two are the same is something that we see in Aristotle, something that we see in Plato. And here we see it, you know, sort of dealt with or addressed in a certain way in Aristophanes play. And I mean, I'd be interested to know what you guys thought about this. Do you have a sense of what you think Aristophanes is saying about a the he seems to be critiquing the transformation of politics into household management, right, just administering various goods for people, providing safety, warmth, clothes, shelter, and wine, right, some very basic pleasures.

And then, of course, sex. But beyond just the fact that he's generally critiquing it, what did you think that he had to say? What do you think he has to say about this? And it does he seem to present household management as necessarily womenly or womenly.

That's the question that I'm really not sure about, right? Whether she actually has anything to say about women and like the nature of women. Or is this makes us primarily women's women's role? Let me make a comment about what I think the comment on the nature of women is there several here.

So first of all, I think partly, sex, I got a bit of a riddle because she's such an unusual woman, right? She's the only one to take the initiative. So she's a hybrid in a way of a manly, a very womanly woman and a very manly woman. By womanly woman, I mean, I don't think she's perse public spirited.

I think the reason with why women care for others is supposed to be in this game or love of their own. So if everything in your, you care for your own household, you're not so much public spirited, but if you turn the city into your own household or your household into the city, then that would all be your own. So this womanly kind of care comes out and running the city as a household. And Park Sagara seems to have that side that she wants to give people what they need, but she's manly enough to be able to do it in a risky fashion, right?

They could all be discovered. She's manly in the way that she takes the initiative and she's not afraid. So there is this, you need a kind of hybrid woman to get this womanly thing going because if she was just womanly, none of this would ever get off the start. That would be one comment I would make.

But the way she rules is as a household despot, I wouldn't even call her rules lost, they're decrees. It's like what a mother would do when she says, you older brother have to look out for your little one that can't take care of his own or grandpa gets the food first and he gets in the scenario, he gets the little girls first, too, because grandpa needs his food and his goodies. So I think, I think, partly we're arguing about prexico's motivations, because she's such an unusual figure that combines something feminine, level of own household management with something that mastered it. And I think that's a feature of play that otherwise would not get started.

It wouldn't get off the ground. And David's fantasies. We would be wrong. Linda.

Well, I mean, it also raises this question about, or I think let me put it somewhat differently, that if we took her as most importantly looking for her own sexual pleasure, I think we'd miss what seems to be part of what Aristophanes is suggesting, which is that there seems to be something about women, though. And so with acknowledging what Ana just said, which I think makes a lot of sense, that is drawn to communism or to this kind of, to at least communism in this sense, or to this degree. One thing I noticed, and I'm curious if any of you have a thought on this, is that, perhaps Agra never extends the, at least explicitly, the fact that everyone will have, will think that the older men are the same or their fathers to women. She never makes that point clear that that means there will be no mothers.

It's clear that there will be no individual fathers, but she doesn't take that next step. And I guess I just, I wonder whether Aristophanes isn't trying to suggest that there's something about a kind of radical egalitarianism, maybe not quite as far as Plato takes it, but to quite to a pretty extraordinary degree that is appealing to women. And so even though it took them as Ani, you were saying, sense of risk and initiative to get this off the ground, it's relevant that it was done by a woman. But can you clarify the point that you were making about the fact that prexagra, or the what you're thinking of when you say that prexagra doesn't extend the the city's family, the two women, because it would seem to me that if if communism is sort of fundamentally somehow more attractive to women, according Aristophanes anyway, then she would be explicitly excited about the fact that everybody is going to be all women are going to be all the children's mothers.

Yeah, I guess I've wondered and that could be. But it seems, I guess I wonder whether it might be a sign of where prexagra was lacking in her foresight, that she doesn't quite think far enough. She doesn't actually turn out to be a problem for her plan, because while she says that father beating will be prevented by the fact that all people will look at this and think, oh, that's my father being beaten and go to his rescue, it's ultimately the fact that the first tag could be the mother of the young boy. It allows the young girl to get the right move.

Good. I'm glad you mentioned that. Right. Exactly.

Right. That was an interesting wrinkle that she doesn't seem to consider the incest problem. The fact that when these young men are forced by law, hold on to your seat boys to their month to win in the city. It could be that one of those could be mommy.

Yeah, I think that tells us the incest solution. Incest and how it can work for you. Yeah. I don't think it's your own pick.

I don't know. There could be. I think there are women would be more egalitarian, especially in the ancient society. It makes sense that people who are in a weaker position, weaker in terms of power, weaker in terms of ownership of money, weaker in terms of the ability to defend themselves.

Any of these things would prefer equality because it's a step up. It's an improvement in their condition, whereas anybody who's in a superior position is not going to favor equality because it's a worse condition. So if your situation in an ancient society is that you have less power, less money, less control, then of course you're going to be more, I think you're going to gravitate toward equality as a radical equality as a political choice. In that scene with the old hag, with the old hags, doesn't doesn't one of them say also we have to do it this way in order to be the most democratic.

Can you explain that scene? What do you mean this scene with the old hags? It's happening in the same. The folks at home, they don't know.

No, we just learned to tell this. You need to women's queens. You'll have to. Yes, I nominate you.

Take a women's thing. You can call this. Well, very generally, I don't want to spoil it. It's so funny.

We have to spoil it for you. So basically what happens is there is a young woman who's waiting for her lover to show up at her door. Right. Unfortunately, unfortunately for this young woman, he happens to live next door to Erstoffany's words, an old hag.

And the young girl in the old hag get into a fight over whether the young man who's coming to visit the young girl is going to have to sleep with the old hag first. That's a real pickle. Yeah, well, it gets even better. Because eventually, even though the first old hag is shoot off, two more old hags, even worse than the first one up here to fight over the services, let's say, of the young man.

And the last we see of this young man, he's being dragged by every limb back into the house with all three or just the two old hag fighting over. Yeah, this sounds awesome. I think it's going to be the first time. It's going to be the last time.

It's going to be a match at 12 worthy of black mirror. Yeah. No, it's going to be a match at 12. There's a lot of nuclear jokes being made there.

So you get the idea. We'll try the relation you guys using, by the way, for just for the audience. We're using the Mayhew translation that we were sent published by Prometheus Books, I believe. I can't find the name of mine.

The pages are all stuck together. Just like a man can't find. So that's your wife. God, what to you?

You really, that was way too easy, Alex. That was, yeah. Back to the story. Yes.

That's right, Alex. It was a shame. It goes dark. The folks at home, Alex just turned off his camera.

I mean, just don't set yourself up like that so easily. It's just not fair to you. Anyway, so in that very beautiful scene, one of the women, or the Hags asserts that it has to be this way because it's the most democratic. And so I think this provokes us to wonder whether this is, is this regime, particularly womanly, right, is could it would only a woman ever come up with this?

Or is this the working out to the fullest extent of democracy? The democratic. Yeah. Yeah, does this is this what if you if you work out the principles of democracy, it's understanding of justice, it claims about equality.

Is this what it turns into? Does it have to turn into this? And if that's the case, then it's not so clear, I think, that this is a major commentary on the nature of women, right? Or at least it raises that question.

Right. Why couldn't it be both? Why couldn't it be, for example, that it is the full working out of democracy, but it still might be according to Aristophanes, at least women who are the vanguard championing it most fervently and intensely. And I think you're right.

I mean, that at least the full working out of democracy, that seems very, very powerful. You know, the thought that what it means to combat injustice is equality. And that what we really mean by equality aren't just things like property, but what we mean by equality are the equality in all of the goods of life. Many of the goods.

Anybody who is going to do it by nature. Right. You know, in fact, though, it's not all the goods. It's as Anna pointed out earlier, it's especially the goods that the women provide the goods of the body, the goods of the food and the taken care of.

And I share with the people. Not the wisdom. Wisdom isn't shared equally in the city. Yeah.

And even thought of it. The women look to prexagra as wise. So they at least recognize her as a wise individual. And so.

It's true. But then she completely subsumed by the end of the play. Right. We don't see her after.

Yeah, Anna. But I think it's important that it sounds like everything is completely equal, which is, you know, this is the attempt. But first of all, the sex roles aren't really touched. The women do exactly the work after the revolution as they did before.

So, you know, today we have a very different kind of feminist revolution or very different kind of egalitarianism that we're aiming for today. This is not touched. The women provide for everybody. So there's one kind of egalitarianism there that remains very traditional.

And I think that's important that the women do seem to not even expect their work to change, their fine to work for the men. So prexagra is something more like an activist who wants to, I would think of her as something in today's terms as an activist for justice. And this happens as these things go, you have some good intentions. And then if you follow out the logic of these things, they basically turn perverse and turn things on their head.

And you know what's who I mean, who comes out on top in this system is the old farts. It's the oldest of the old men. They need to have to work anything else. Greg, you're not old enough, just the beard.

Why not? You have to wait. You have to wait. You have plenty of old hacks for us to go through.

But so the old guys, they're sitting pretty. And second, probably it's the old women, but they have to work, but they get to school the young men. To me, it seems completely unclear for the young people. There's really nothing in it, especially for the young women.

They have to do all the work and they only get to school the old guys. And they don't get to school in age mate. And in the Pricksagras case, after she's done her duty by her by Blevverist, she's free to go off and have some. I think it's a taste for that.

It's not left them after you've had to run through. Remember, Pricksagras claims that one of the real qualities of the women is that they're deceptive, they're great cheaters. So couldn't she cheat and say, I've had sex with my husband, old fat Blevverist. Can she do that?

I'm not ready for you. If she's in the same way, you don't need to go to the whole ring hole where you're going more basically the entire course of your of your middle age, women, whatever. Where do they get left in this thing? I don't know where middle age from.

I'm not that good. Parably wrong, we're supposed to think through the logic of, you know, equality. And everybody can have an amazing meal at the end of the day. That's I think everybody can have.

Not everybody can have amazing sex at the end of the day. Only the old guys do, but not the young people. Well, is it really amazing? We have to think about that.

If we look at the last scene that Carly described with these two old women dragging this man who is literally calling them corpses and monkeys. And he's claiming that he might die from the sex with them. That it might be like this might be so risky for his life that he might die. That it's almost a noble activity because he's risking his life to get to his lover.

Is this really going to be what the old women want? Do the old women really want just sex with a really resistant young man who's going to be holding his nose and closing his eyes and praying to God the whole time that he gets out of their alive? Or hold on a second. Isn't Air Stephanie's asking us to look at the ugliness of the scene and say, what is it that we really want?

Isn't what we really want? Mutual affection from the person we're having sex with. And exclusivity. That's these two things are completely obliterated in the system.

And I think it's meant to point out to us that this is what we're really hungering for and the law has no ability to touch this. The law has no ability to give us these things. I'm not so sure about the exclusivity part in that last scene with the old women. I do think that the young women and the young men do do really want to be together.

But the the the the hags. I don't know about the exclusivity part, but I think you're right that they they want him to love them. I mean, she wants to buy them one straight. And then she's not a patient that they're in a sort of room.

I want, you know, anyone. I mean, garlands. Will you bring me nice things? And she's like a one.

She's as though she's going to tell herself. I mean, I think that the point is that nobody gets it. In other words, if everybody gets equal sex, nobody gets good sex. That seems to be the suggestion that even the old women to have to be with a man who doesn't want to be with them.

That can't be very enjoyable. And so it does seem to be that part of what we're seeing with the logic of democracy, if you're right, and just to go back to something you were saying, Lisa, I do think that there is a kind of trajectory to thinking the democratic mind might be to thinking that we can equalize all goods. You know, I mean, if you think today about the arguments about privilege, right? What doesn't count as some good or advantage that we don't now count as sort of privilege if someone has it and sense that there's a kind of unfairness if others don't.

And there's a great story. Maybe somebody remembers something, Girdron. So, Girdron, heres a Girdron. Right.

Right. So to equalize intelligence, you know, you have the smart people have to have a sound going in their ear constantly. So I do think that that is the hope. Right.

So there seems to be this argument, that the law can equalize successfully some things perhaps, but not it can't equally satisfy all of our desires. Right. What's a little bit striking is that, you know, we've had the idea to communize property and to redistribute property for a long time. But it seems to me, maybe I haven't been paying attention that the idea of privilege in terms of beauty and age and these kinds of things, that's a relatively late phenomenon now that we are going against ageism, that, you know, I have a lot of really fat ladies in my Instagram feed and underwear that we have.

So I mean, I don't tell you. Can you share this? I'll also on Twitter. So this is something, it's just striking that Aristophanes thought about, you know, that these things can't be divided or redistributed because they're properties of an individual body and unlike, you know, other material goods that you can divide, you can share a meal that you can't share intelligence and we are we are today.

We're it seems like we're relatively late to realizing the privilege of beauty and youth. And he wasn't the only one who explored this. Plato also explores in the Republic what would happen if you tried to create a perfectly just society by equalizing things. But there are some significant differences between Plato's society of perfect justice and Aristophanes society of perfect justice.

I think, Carly, you were mentioning one. I mean, well, just first it's worth mentioning some of the similarities before we get to the differences. For one thing, it should be noted, I think, right, that Plato's Republic quotes almost directly from this play, right, from the Assembly Women. So it's clear without a doubt that as he was writing the Republic, Plato had Plato had the Assembly Women, the play in mind.

Plato was thinking about Aristophanes the whole time as he wrote this. And so the similarities, right, are that the regime of the Republic institutes, right, communism of property first, right, for the guardians and then communism of women and children. And there are some similarities also in references. There is some question about how we're going to deal with the possibility of incest, right, but there's this idea that everyone is going to share, right, in the family, right, everybody's in the family will be the whole city will become one family so that what was previously the love of one's own will become the love of everyone.

And there will be this true common good. So there are those things as similarities. Maybe the most obvious difference, of course, is that in the regime of the Republic, those two institutions are the stepping stones, right? The means or the instruments for the third for the third institution, namely the rule of the philosopher.

Can I interject for a moment? Yeah, of course. It is important to point out again that in the Republic, you do have men and women doing the same work and Aristophanes, you don't. It's a I would say it really is a very different model.

The women, I would recommend to invite all the goods for the city. Yeah, go ahead. I just want to also add. Yeah, just that even before that, in order to have men and women doing the same thing, there's this extremely rigorous education that required a whole set of transformation of men and women exercising together in the nude.

Well, and not to mention their music and education. Yeah. The rewriting of poetry, the rewriting of poetry, which I suppose the Republic is already in itself a rewriting of poetry since he's rewriting the assembly women, right? The next and for instance, are they ever in question in this play in the assembly women?

I'm sorry. The differences of the sexes. Is that it was something? Yes.

The natural differences of the Socrates claims that they're there. I think that's mentioned. One difference is mentioned. But again, it's not clear to me that Aristophanes is making comments here about the nature of men and women.

Well, back to Quayton. It's only because he does say about mothers. He makes the women explicitly or perhaps ever explicitly in your account. It speaks of her of them or explains their their decisions in terms of their being mothers.

No, that's absolutely right. The other thing that I was thinking of about the differences between men and women is that they pray to different gods. Right. So and that comes up several times.

And an interesting transformation over the course of the play happens, namely that somewhere in the second half of the play of the assembly women, you have one of the men swearing by female God, which didn't happen at all at the beginning. He swears by Demeter. Now, of course, this is emphasized also by Plato, right? Socrates, we see part of his strangeness as emphasized by the fact that he often swears by Hera, which is again a goddess that women swear to.

But that's something that Aristophanes points to. And I think that other than the motherhood point, Linda, which you mentioned, which I have somehow forgot about already, I think that the fact that men and women pray to different gods and worship different gods is the only big difference between them that's explicitly referred to in the play. I think I would disagree because it's kind of unimaginable that this whole thing would have been started by a man. And it's also not noteworthy to me that the women after they go to the assembly immediately say, OK, Paxara, you take over, you decide everything.

They have no interest in self rule. They have no interest in liberty. They have no interest in any kind of glory. They're each confined in their individual households where they had a role of making everybody happy.

There was no sense of distinguishing themselves from each other because that's their role. And they're isolated. They don't compete with each other. They don't conquer the world.

So just a point of advocate. I mean, another thing that's emphasized in the play is that women do everything up until this point, according to ancient custom. And so it might not be precisely because the women have been isolated and inside their households for most of their lives, that they don't have any experience of doing the sorts of things that men do or having the kinds of desires that free citizens have or wanting to do the deeds that free citizens have. So it's not I'm not saying that I'm not really making a comment that Erasophanes definitely wasn't interested in the nature of women, but at least it's not so obvious to me that that everything is clearly down to natural differences.

I agree with that. It's it's exaggerated in a society where the roles are that different and where women have not been exposed that I would agree with. But I think that's not really the point of the play to ask exactly how much is this a question of just this particular habituation of women because there's enough indications, I think that this the sex differences make sense that women are in the household and the men are at war, right? And that's like enough at least the women don't understand anything about violence.

They don't understand anything about war. They don't raise any. They have no military training, sex, I would think to know if somebody challenges or she's just going to argue back because that's women, but women do. They talk, talk, talk, they whatever they they do.

Wait a minute. You only had to write. It's like, there are differences. There are differences that are pointed to that we still have today.

For example, the scene with the two hags and the young man wouldn't work the other way around with two old men dragging the young woman. First of all, that would be more a scene that would inspire indignation rather than laughter, but it's also the case, I think that young women voluntarily marry older men, sometimes quite a bit older men, maybe some of you've heard of this. It's much rare in the particular. No, no, I was just.

But it's rarer for older women to marry younger men, not in hernos, but the French. That's who I was thinking of. The French president, yeah, Matt Comme, his wife, and I think significantly older. I know it's not unheard of, but it's rarer.

She's quite tense. She's quite common. Yeah. We get back to the big difference between the the Republic, the Republic, the Assembly, the last institution, which is as you pointed out, the other ones are meant to in order to get to the last institution, which is Wallach's for Kings.

Why do we think that Aristophanes left out, not just philosopher Kings, but any emphasis on wisdom or education at all? I think it was not ever pointed out that there was, or Linda pointed out, that there's a whole education in the Republic that allows them to move to the city of the perfectly just city, whereas there's no education before we move from the old order to the new order in the assembly women. Well, I had a thought going back to Carly's question earlier about the household and the way in which the in for Aristophanes in this play, he presents women taking charge as turning the city into a bigger household that it has a lot to do with the fact that it's prexagra. And again, this would be going back to making the argument that there's something Aristophanes is saying here about women, that it's something about the fact that prexagra is at the at the helm of this experiment that is that is making the city into, as Carly said earlier, a big household.

So now the city doesn't exist for philosophy or wisdom in the way that the republic seems to existing for the sake of the philosopher Kings, although that's complicated in the republic. But in fact, what it does exist for is just providing people with the basic needs. Another big difference between the republic and the assembly women is that while prexagra experiments with one understanding of justice, the understanding that we're going to make everyone equal or concerned for the common good, the republic experiments with both both the desire for equality, the desire to produce the common good and also distributive justice. Hence, we get the gold, silver and bronze, noble lie that allows them to keep this hierarchy of the rulers, the guardians and the craftsmen.

So there isn't a complete equality. There's also giving truth is deserved, whereas in prexagra, you get taking from what is just you get taking what is deserved from the naturally superior people and giving that to the naturally inferior people, the old and ugly people in order to equalize things. So isn't that also crucial to the republic being concerned or the city and the republic having as its goal weighs down the rule of philosopher Kings because that's part of what makes it possible for the wise to rule because it's also what's fitting. It's also what's good for the city, you know, sort of all these things as horrifying as so much of the republic is, all of these things kind of contribute to making that to making that come into being the rule of wisdom.

I mean, I wonder if for Aristophanes, you know, I wonder whether he's also considering not just the partially this is about that, you know, as we said, the working out of the democratic principle and the concern for equality and what happens when you take that as far as it can go. But another question that we haven't considered yet and maybe it just has to remain an open question is whether the transformation of politics into household management and the transformation of democracy as it's generally, you know, like a Athenian democracy into this regime of communism of property and of the women and children, whether those things are necessarily connected because it strikes me that there are a lot of people in this play who are not so upset about the transformation of politics into household management. It's kind of what they want. Right?

I mean, you know, right? Grimmese is upset, but he's law abiding. So he's going to obey the law. No, he says at one point that it would be lovely if he couldn't deposit his stuff.

If there wasn't room for him to deposit, meaning he preferred to keep it, I think, because he'd like to do his own good things with it. I don't think he's a mood drink. But that's about the that's a problem with the communism part of it. Right?

Does he have a problem with a regime in which, you know, virtue and nobility are not really the goal? Right? And it strikes me that in many ways our politics today has been transformed into largely the concerns of household management. So as Aristotle is possibly thinking about whether, well, most of us for the most part, we're not really that into doing great noble virtuous deeds.

Like there might be some of that on the periphery, but most people are going to be satisfied with a big feast and some, you know, decent wine. Like, yeah, I'm diamond. Right. Exactly.

Actually, I know it's 24. Is he considering the possibility of more gentle politics in that way? And is that is he is that something that he thinks is perhaps plausible under the Great Japanese? Do you think our softness approves of communism?

No. So so not of not of the communism of property or of the communism of the family, the sexual resources and that sort of thing. But I do wonder whether there's this consideration of whether most of us would be satisfied with how, you know, conceiving of how household management. And so women are something like enjoying comedies come in here.

Just one of the delights. But what would I get it right about today? I shared a hot dog with the criticism. But the criticism might be or Aristophanes criticism might be that communism isn't a good means to enjoying, you know, the most of the goods or the kinds of goods that are provided in the city, right?

So everyone wants these goods. But if you equalize them, you degrade them. You no longer become very good. So you don't want the communism.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that those are the goods that we want. Right. Right. So that's my sorry.

Go ahead, partly. I would give this regime about two or three days to exist because I think it's really abstracts from, you know, we don't see the young people, we especially don't see the young men rebel. And I think for example, has no understanding of violence. I disagree with the fact that she took care of the father beating part because I think that versus right, she just turns the logic around.

That was says, well, if everybody thinks everybody could be my, no, she thinks of everybody thinks that we could be my father that would be no father beating. But I think the other that versus right, if everybody isn't sure that this is even their father and they were already willing to beat their fathers before, kill their fathers before, they're especially willing to do this now. And the women somehow have no idea as to the people who are strongest and most virtuous, most interested in something bigger because they can. They still can't achieve it.