Our governor must have read his Greek drama.

     He's vowed that he will stay his pen, and not sign any bills until the Legislature gets a budget together.

    In the Aristophanes play ``Lysistrata,'' the women of ancient Athens are holed up in the Acropolis to stop their men from getting at the money they need to keep fighting the Peloponnesian War -- and they go on strike from their marital beds until the war ends.

    The governor may not be the only one in the Schwarzenegger household who has read the classics. At a conference in Seaside, California, not long after he delivered a speech for George W. Bush at the 2004 Republican convention, he was asked what his wife -- Maria Shriver, daughter of Democrats and a Democrat herself -- thought of the speech.

    ''Well,'' the governor said, ''there was no sex for 14 days.''

     And he added, ''everything comes with side effects.''

     We'll find out soon enough what the side effects are in Sacramento when the governor lays down his signing pen.