I was brushing up on my German by reading The Past Through Tomorrow (the translation has the title Methusaleh's Kindern)

While reading "Delilah and the Space Rigger", (Delila und der Raummonteur), I noticed a reference that I had never thought about. When Gloria comes to the theater, Tiny walks out. The narrator mentions that it was a good film "Lysistrata Goes To Town".

The original Lysistrata, of course, was a play by Aristophanes.


Once I read the summary, it became obvious to me that Heinlein was emphasizing the changes that having an 'untouchable woman' in the presence of a group of men would cause.

What do you think?

After 50 years of multiple readings of all that Heinlein wrote, I am amazed that I still can notice things that I have never noticed before.

I don't know exactly why, but 'going to town' has, for me, a connotation of 'making a splash'. That would certainly describe what Gloria did

Good spotting. I don't think I've reread "Delilah and the Space Rigger" since reading Lysistrata -- but I might have missed that anyway. Thanks!

Funny, I noticed it on first reading, and I've never read "Lysistrata."

For those not experienced with The Lysistrata, unless you read Greek, beware of getting a "pansy" translation into English. There are a LOT of those around.

It is also necessary to realize that this piece of anti-war propaganda was performed for the first time in the middle of the Pelloponesian War, which in the end left Athens prostrate at the feet of Sparta. Yet Athenians were free enough to both write, produce and attend sucha play in the middle of a life-or-death struggle for national survival.

The plot is approximately (and much oversimplified) this: The women of both Athens and Sparta are tired of thier men being gone to war all the time and go on STRIKE (shades of John Galt!). Nobody gets a piece, until they make peace!

Toward the end of the play the actors are all wearing "appliances" to make it appear they ALL have raging hard-ons under their clothes, and much ribald humor hangs thereby.

This reminded me of one of my favorite satires: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15851/15 ... htm#toc_27 .