Cinesias (character)

I. Cinesias is Myrrhine's husband in Aristophanes play Lysistrata, in which the women of Greece comically impose a moratorium on all sexual activity as a means to ending the Peloponnesian War. Cinesias (whose name is meant to be a sexual pun of sorts as it derives from kinew or I move, I arouse) makes his way to the Acropolis, where Lysistrata and her women have barricaded themselves, and he pleads for Myrrhine to come back home with him. Lysistrata orders her to torment him. Myrrhine subsequently teases him mercilessly, agreeing to have sex with him if he and other men agree to end the war (a proposition he absurdly assents to) but continually postponing the act until finally she shuts herself in the Acropolis again, leaving him even more frustrated than before.

II. Cinesias was an innovative, 5th century BC Athenian poet who was mocked by his contemporary Aristophanes in a play titled 'The Birds'. Cinesias appears in the play as a ridiculously 'inspired' poet who vainly attempts to borrow wings from the birds so that his imagination might soar even higher above the ordinary human level. His request is denied.