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Interplay between the Battle of the Sexes and the Peloponnesian War During the Greek civil war, Aristophanes wrote the comedy Lysistrata which, behind its Battle-of-the-Sexes plotline, critiques the war between the Spartans and Athenians. Like Confucius who used the private family to dictate how a king should govern his country, Aristophanes used the private disputes between husband and wife to reflect the causes and effects of the Peloponnesian war. Suspicion and distrust – responsible for arguments …

…of Athens and caused many problems for its populace. These problems are reflected in the Lysistrata and with the Lysistrata, readers can experience the raw power of war and its ill effects on its inhabitants. Thus, by comparing war to something that can be easily related to – a family dispute – Aristophanes showed how like a husband and wife squabble, the Greek civil war was nasty and unwanted, an episode that only initiated problems not solutions.