Peace

7

Pegasus is introduced by Euripides both in his 'Andromeda' and his 'Bellerophon.'

8

Boats, called 'beetles,' doubtless because in form they resembled these insects, were built at Naxos.

9

Nature had divided the Piraeus into three basins— Cantharos, Aphrodisium and Zea.  (Cantharos) is Greek for dung-beetle.

10

In allusion to Euripides' fondness for introducing lame heroes in his plays.

11

An allusion to the proverbial nickname applied to the Chians (in Greek)—'crapping Chian.' There is a further joke, of course, in connection with the hundred and one frivolous pretexts which the Athenians invented for exacting contributions from the maritime allies.

12

Masters of Pylos and Sphacteria, the Athenians had brought home the three hundred prisoners taken in the latter place in 425 B.C.; the Spartans had several times sent envoys to offer peace and to demand back both Pylos and the prisoners, but the Athenian pride had caused these proposals to be long refused.  Finally the prisoners had been given up in 423 B.C., but the War was continued nevertheless.

13

An important town in Eastern Laconia on the Argolic gulf, celebrated for a temple where a festival was held annually in honour of Achilles. It had been taken and pillaged by the Athenians in the second year of the Peloponnesian War, 430 B.C.  As he utters this imprecation, War throws some leeks, the root-word of the name Praisae, into his mortar.

14

War throws some garlic into his mortar as emblematical of the city of Megara, where it was grown in abundance.

15

Because the smell of bruised garlic causes the eyes to water.

16

He throws cheese into the mortar as emblematical of Sicily, on account of its rich pastures.

17

Emblematical of Athens.  They honey of Mount Hymettus was famous.

18

Cleon, who had lately fallen before Amphipolis, in 422 B.C.

19

An island in the Aegean Sea, on the coast of Thrace and opposite the mouth of the Hebrus; the Mysteries are said to have found their first home in this island, where the Cabirian gods were worshipped; this cult, shrouded in deep mystery to even the initiates themselves, has remained an almost insoluble problem for the modern critic.  It was said that the wishes of the initiates were always granted, and they were feared as to-day the 'jettatori' (spell-throwers, casters of the evil eye) in Sicily are feared.

20

Brasidas perished in Thrace in the same battle as Cleon at Amphipolis, 422 B.C.

21

An Athenian general as ambitious as he was brave.  In   423 B.C. he had failed in an enterprise against Heracles, a storm having destroyed his fleet.  Since then he had distingued himself in several actions, and was destined, some years later, to share the command of the expedition to Sicily with Alcibiades and Nicias.

22

Meaning, to start a military expedition.

23

Cleon.

24

The Chorus insist on the conventional choric dance.

25

One of the most favourite games with the Greeks.  A stick was set upright in the ground and to this the beam of a balance was attached by its centre.  Two vessels were hung from the extremities of the beam so as to balance; beneath these two other and larger dishes were placed and filled with water, and in the middle of each a brazen figure, called Manes, was stood.  The game consisted in throwing drops of wine from an agreed distance into one or the other vessel, so that, dragged downwards by the weight of the liquor, it bumped against Manes.

26

A general of austere habits; he disposed of all his property to pay the cost of a naval expedition, in which he beat the fleet of the foe off the promontory of Rhium in 429 B.C.

27

The Lyceum was a portico ornamented with paintings and surrounded with gardens, in which military exercises took place.

28

A citizen of Miletus, who betrayed his country to the people of Pirene. When asked what he purposed, he replied, "Nothing bad," which expression had therefore passed into a proverb.

29

Hermes was the god of chance.

30

As the soldiers had to do when starting on an expedition.

31

That is, you are predicated.

32

The initiated were thought to enjoy greater happiness after death.

33

He summons Zeus to reveal Trygaeus' conspiracy.

34

An Athenian captain who later had the recall of Alcibiades decreed by the Athenian people; in 'The Birds' Aristophanes represents him as a cowardly beggar.  He was the reactionary leader who established the Oligarchical Government of the Four Hundred, 411 B.C., after the failure of the Syracusan expedition.

35

Among other attributes, Hermes was the god of thieves.

36

Alluding to the eclipses of the sun and the moon.

37

The Panathenaea were dedicated to Athene, the Mysteries to Demeter, the Dipolia to Zeus, the Adonia to Aphrodite and Adonis. Trygaeus promises Hermes that he shall be worshipped in the place of the other gods.

38

The pun here cannot be kept.  The word (in Greek), Paean, resembles (that for) to strike; hence the word, as recalling the blows and wounds of the war, seems of ill omen to Trygaeus.

39

The device on his shield was a Gorgon's head.  (See 'The Acharnians.')

40

Both Sparta and Athens had sought the alliance of the Argives; they had kept themselves strictly neutral and had received pay from both sides. But, the year after the production of 'The Wasps,' they openly joined Athens, had attacked Epidaurus and got cut to pieces by the Spartans.

41

These are the Spartan prisoners from Sphacteria, who were lying in goal at Athens.  They were chained fast to large beams of wood.

42

'Twas want of force, not want of will.  They had suffered more than any other people from the war.  (See 'The Acharnians.')

43

Meaning, look chiefly to your fleet.  This was the counsel that Themistocles frequently gave the Athenians.

44

A metaphor referring to the abundant vintages that peace would assure.

45

The goddess of fruits.

46

Aristophanes personifies under this name the sacred ceremonies in general which peace would allow to be celebrated with due pomp. Opora and Theoria come on the stage in the wake of Peace, clothed and decked out as courtesans.

47

Aristophanes has already shown us the husbandmen and workers in peaceful trades pulling at the rope the extricate Peace, while the armourers hindered them by pulling the other way.

48

An allusion to Lamachus' shield.

49

Having been commissioned to execute a statue of Athene, Phidias was accused of having stolen part of the gold given him out of the public treasury for its decoration.  Rewarded for his work by calumny and banishment, he resolved to make a finer statue than his Athene, and executed one for the temple of Elis, that of the Olympian Zeus, which was considered one of the wonders of the world.

50

He had issued a decree, which forbade the admission of any Megarian on Attic soil, and also all trade with that people.  The Megarians, who obtained all their provisions from Athens, were thus almost reduced to starvation.

51

That is, the vineyards were ravaged from the very outset of the war, and this increased the animosity.

52

Driven in from the country parts by the Lacedaemonian invaders.

53

The demagogues, who distributed the slender dole given to the poor, and by that means exercised undue power over them.

54

Meaning, the side of the Spartans.

55

Cleon.

56

It was Hermes who conducted the souls of the dead down to the lower regions.

57

The Spartans had thrice offered to make peace after the Pylos disaster.

58

i.e. dominated by Cleon.

59

There is a pun here that cannot be rendered between (the Greek for) 'one who throws away his weapons' and 'a supposititious child.'

60

Simonides was very avaricious, and sold his pen to the highest bidder. It seems that Sophocles had also started writing for gain.

61

i.e. he would recoil from no risk to turn an honest penny.

62

A comic poet as well known for his love of wine as for his writings; he died in 431 B.C., the first year of the war, at the age of ninety-seven.

63

Opora was the goddess of fruits.

64

The scholiast says fruit may be eaten with impunity in great quantities if care is taken to drink a decoction of this herb afterwards.

65

Theoria is confided to the care of the Senate, because it was this body who named the deputies appointed to go and consult the oracles beyond the Attic borders to be present at feats and games.

66

The great festivals, e.g. the Dionysia, lasted three days.  Those in honour of the return of Peace, which was so much desired, could not last a shorter time.

67

In spite of what he says, Aristophanes has not always disdained this sort of low comedy—for instance, his Heracles in 'The Birds.'

68

A celebrated Athenian courtesan of Aristophanes' day.

69

Cleon.  These four verses are here repeated from the parabasis of 'The Wasps,' produced 423 B.C., the year before this play.

70

Shafts aimed at certain poets, who used their renown as a means of seducing young men to grant them pederastic favours.

71

The poet supplied everything needful for the production of his piece—vases, dresses, masks, etc.

72

Aristophanes was bald himself, it would seem.

73

Carcinus and his three sons were both poets and dancers.  (See the closing scene of 'The Wasps.') Perhaps relying little on the literary value of their work, it seems that they sought to please the people by the magnificence of its staging.

74

He had written a piece called 'The Mice,' which he succeeded with great difficulty in getting played, but it met with no success.

75

This passage really follows on the invocation, "Oh, Muse! drive the War," etc., from which indeed it is only divided by the interpolated criticism aimed at Carcinus.

76

The scholiast informs us that these verses are borrowed from a poet of the sixth century B.C.

77

Sons of Philocles, of the family of Aeschylus, tragic writers, derided by Aristophanes as bad poets and notorious gluttons.

78

The Gorgons were represented with great teeth, and therefore the same name was given to gluttons.  The Harpies, to whom the two voracious poets are also compared, were monsters with the face of a woman, the body of a vulture and hooked beak and claws.

79

A tragic and dithyrambic poet, who had written many pieces, which had met with great success at Athens.

80

The shooting stars.

81

It has already been mentioned that the sons of Carcinus were dancers.

82

It was customary at weddings, says Menander, to give the bride a sesame-caked as an emblem of fruitfulness, because sesame is the most fruitful of all seeds.

83

An Attic town on the east coast, noted for a magnificent temple, in which stood the statue of Artemis, which Orestes and Iphigenia had brought from the Tauric Chersonese and also for the Brauronia, festivals that were celebrated every four years in honour of the goddess. This was one of the festivals which the Attic people kept with the greatest pomp, and was an occasion for debauchery.

84

Competitors intending to take part in the great Olympic, Isthmian and other games took with them a tent, wherein to camp in the open.  Further, there is an obscene allusion which the actor indicates by a gesture.

85

Doubtless the vessels and other sacrificial objects and implements with which Theoria was laden in her character of presiding deity at religious ceremonies.

86

Where the meats were cooked after sacrifice; this also marks the secondary obscene sense he means to convey.

87

One of the offices of the Prytanes was to introduce those who asked admission to the Senate, but it would seem that none could obtain this favour without payment.  Without this, a thousand excuses would be made; for instance, it would be a public holiday, and consequently the Senate could receive no one.  As there was some festival nearly every day, he whose purse would not open might have to wait a very long while.

88

This was only offered to lesser deities.

89

In the Greek we have a play upon the similarity of the words (for) a bull, and to shout the battle-cry.

90

Theagenes, of the Piraeus, a hideous, coarse, debauched and evil-living character of the day.

91

That is the vocative of the Ionic form of the word; in Attic Greek it is contracted throughout.

92

An obscene jest.

93

Before sacrificing, the officiating person asked, "Who is here?" and those present answered, "Many good men."

94

The actors forming the chorus are meant here.

95

Lysimacha is derived from (the Greek for) put an end to, and (the Greek for) fight.

96

A tragic poet, reputed a great gourmand.

97

A tragedy by Melanthius.

98

Eels were cooked with beet.—A parody on some verses in the 'Medea' of Melanthius.

99

As a matter of fact, the Sicyonians, who celebrated the festival of Peace on the sixteenth day of the month of Hecatombeon (July), spilled no blood upon her altar.

100

A celebrated diviner, who had accompanied the Athenians on their expedition to Sicily.  Thus the War was necessary to make his calling pay and the smoke of the sacrifice offered to Peace must therefore be unpleasant to him.

101

A town in Euboea on the channel which separated that island from Thessaly.

102

When sacrificing, the tail was cut off the victim and thrown into the fire.  From the way in which it burnt the inference was drawn as to whether or not the sacrifice was agreeable to the deity.

103

This was the part that belonged to the priests and diviners.  As one of the latter class, Hierocles is in haste to see this piece cut off.

104

The Spartans.

105

Emphatic pathos, incomprehensible even to the diviner himself; this is a satire on the obscure style of the oracles.  Bacis was a famous Boeotian diviner.

106

Of course this is not a bona fide quotation, but a whimsical adaptation of various Homeric verses; the last is a coinage of his own, and means, that he is to have no part, either in the flesh of the victim or in the wine of the libations.

107

Probably the Sibyl of Delphi is meant.

108

The skin of the victim, that is to say.

109

A temple in Euboea, close to Oreus.  The servant means, "Return where you came from."

110

This was the soldier's usual ration on duty.

111

Slaves often bore the name of the country of their birth.

112

Because of the new colour which fear had lent his chlamys.

113

Meaning, that he deserts his men in mid-campaign, leaving them to look after the enemy.

114

Ancient King of Athens.  This was one of the twelve statues, on the pedestals of which the names of the soldiers chose for departure on service were written.  The decrees were also placarded on them.

115

The trierarchs stopped up some of the holes made for the oars, in order to reduce the number of rowers they had to supply for the galleys; they thus saved the wages of the rowers they dispensed with.

116

The mina was equivalent to about three pounds, ten shillings.

117

Which is the same thing, since a mina was worth a hundred drachmae.

118

For 'cottabos' see note above.

119

Syrmoea, a kind of purgative syrup much used by the Egyptians, made of antiscorbutic herbs, such as mustard, horse-radish, etc.

120

As wine-pots or similar vessels.

121

These verses and those which both Trygaeus and the son of Lamachus quote afterwards are borrowed from the 'Iliad.'

122

Boulomachus is derived from (two Greek words meaning) to wish for battle; Clausimachus from (two others), the tears that battles cost. The same root (for) 'battle' is also contained in the name Lamachus.

123

A distich borrowed from Archilochus, a celebrated poet of the seventh century B.C., born at Paros, and the author of odes, satires, epigrams and elegies.  He sang his own shame.  'Twas in an expedition against Sais, not the town in Egypt as the similarity in name might lead one to believe, but in Thrace, that he had cast away his buckler.  "A might calamity truly!" he says without shame.  "I shall buy another."