How we cite our quotes: Line
Quote #7
Magistrate: "But what do you plan to do?"
Lysistrata: "You're asking me that? We'll manage it for you."
Magistrate: "You'll manage the money?"
Lysistrata: "What's so strange about that? Don't we manage the household finances for you already?"
Magistrate: "That's different."
Lysistrata: "How so?"
Magistrate: "These are war funds!" (493-496)
The always-thick Magistrate's attitude seems to be "but…but…but…war funds are for boys!" Lysistrata's point is that women already act as treasurers for the household, and have proved that they know their way around a budget. But the Magistrate, with his "boys rule and girls drool" mentality, seems to think that war budgeting is totally beyond the ability of tiny ladybrains.
Quote #8
Lysistrata: "How could he be right, you sorry fool, when we were forbidden to offer advice even when your policy was wrong? But then, when we began to hear you in the streets openly crying, 'There isn't a man left in the land,' and someone else saying, 'God knows, there isn't, not a one,' after that we women decided to lose no more time, and to band together to save Greece. What was the point of waiting any longer? So, if you're ready to listen in your turn as we give you good advice, and to shut up as we had to, we can put you on the right track." (522-528)
These lines come at the end of a long story, in which she tells how the women of the city listened patiently as their husbands came home every day from the assembly. Even though the women knew the men were making bad decisions that would inevitably plunge the land into war, they kept their mouths shut. And now that there are no dudes running around the streets of Athens (because they're getting killed at war) the women have to speak up.
Quote #9
Magistrate: "Isn't it awful how these women go like this with their sticks, and like that with their bobbins, when they share none of the war's burdens?"
Lysistrata: "None? You monster! We bear more than our fair share, in the first place by giving birth to sons and sending them off to the army—"
Magistrate: "Enough of that! Don't open old wounds."
Lysistrata: "Then, when we ought to be having fun and enjoying our bloom of youth, we sleep alone because of the campaigns. And to say no more about our own case, it pains me to think of the maidens growing old in their rooms." (587-593)
War is hell on the home front, too. So you can see why Lysistrata reacts with such outrage ("None? You monster!") when the Magistrate suggests that men are the only one who have to bear the burdens of the war. Lysistrata then gives the Magistrate an earful, showing him that the decisions about war taken by the men of the city affect everyone who lives in it.