The Eleven Comedies, Volume 2

The mortar in which hemlock was pounded.

406

An allusion to the effect of hemlock.

407

A quarter of Athens where the Lampadephoria was held in honour of Athené, Hephaestus, and Prometheus, because the first had given the mortals oil, the second had invented the lamp, and the third had stolen fire from heaven. The principal part of this festival consisted in the lampadedromia, or torch-race. This name was given to a race in which the competitors for the prize ran with a torch in their hand; it was essential that the goal should be reached with the torch still alight. The signal for starting was given by throwing a torch from the top of the tower mentioned a few verses later on.

408

Theseus had descended into Hades with Pirithous to fetch away Persephoné. Aristophanes doubtless wishes to say that in consequence of this descent Pluto established a toll across Acheron, in order to render access to his kingdom less easy, and so that the poor and the greedy, who could not or would not pay, might be kept out.

409

Morsimus was a minor poet, who is also mentioned with disdain in 'The Knights,' and is there called the son of Philocles. Aristophanes jestingly likens anyone who helps to disseminate his verses to the worst of criminals.

410

The Pyrrhic dance was a lively and quick-step dance. Cinesias was not a dancer, but a dithyrambic poet, who declaimed with much gesticulation and movement that one might almost think he was performing this dance.

411

Those initiated into the Mysteries of Demeter, who, according to the belief of the ancients, enjoyed a kind of beatitude after death.

412

Xanthias, his strength exhausted and his patience gone, prepares to lay down his load. Asses were used for the conveyance from Athens to Eleusis of everything that was necessary for the celebration of the Mysteries. They were often overladen, and from this fact arose the proverb here used by Xanthias, as indicating any heavy burden.

413

The Ancients believed that meeting this or that person or thing at the outset of a journey was of good or bad omen. The superstition is not entirely dead even to-day.

414

Dionysus had seated himself on instead of at the oar.

415

One of the titles given to Dionysus, because of the worship accorded him at Nysa, a town in Ethiopia, where he was brought up by the nymphs.

416

This was the third day of the Anthesteria or feasts of Dionysus. All kinds of vegetables were cooked in pots and offered to Dionysus and Athené. It was also the day of the dramatic contests.

417

Dionysus' temple, the Lenaeum, was situated in the district of Athens known as the Linnae, or Marshes, on the south side of the Acropolis.

418

He points to the audience.

419

A spectre, which Hecaté sent to frighten men. It took all kinds of hideous shapes. It was exorcised by abuse.

420

This was one of the monstrosities which credulity attributed to the Empusa.

421

He is addressing a priest of Bacchus, who occupied a seat reserved for him in the first row of the audience.

422

A verse from the Orestes of Euripides.—Hegelochus was an actor who, in a recent representation, had spoken the line in such a manner as to lend it an absurd meaning; instead of saying, [Greek: gal_en_en], which means calm, he had pronounced it [Greek: gal_en], which means a cat.

423

The priest of Bacchus, mentioned several verses back.

424

High-flown expressions from Euripides' Tragedies.

425

A second Chorus, comprised of Initiates into the Mysteries of Demeter and Dionysus.

426

A philosopher, a native of Melos, and originally a dithyrambic poet. He was prosecuted on a charge of atheism.

427

A comic and dithyrambic poet.

428

This Thorycion, a toll collector at Aegina, which then belonged to Athens, had taken advantage of his position to send goods to Epidaurus, an Argolian town, thereby defrauding the treasury of the duty of 5 per cent, which was levied on every import and export.

429

An allusion to Alcibiades, who is said to have obtained a subsidy for the Spartan fleet from Cyrus, satrap of Asia Minor.

430

An allusion to the dithyrambic poet, Cinesias, who was accused of having sullied, by stooling against it, the pedestal of a statue of Hecaté at one of the street corners of Athens.

431

Athené.

432

The route of the procession of the Initiate was from the Ceramicus (a district of Athens) to Eleusis, a distance of twenty-five stadia.

433

A shaft shot at the choragi by the poet, because they had failed to have new dresses made for the actors on this occasion.

434

It was at the age of seven that children were entered on the registers of their father's tribe. Aristophanes is accusing Archidemus, who at that time was the head of the popular party, of being no citizen, because his name is not entered upon the registers of any tribe.

435

At funerals women tore their hair, rent their garments, and beat their bosoms. Aristophanes parodies these demonstrations of grief and attributes them to the effeminate Clisthenes. Sebinus the Anaphlystian is a coined name containing an obscene allusion, implying he was in the habit of allowing connexion with himself a posteriori, and being masturbated by the other in turn.

436

Callias, the son of Hipponicus, which the poet turns into Hippobinus, i.e. one who treads a mare, was an Athenian general, who had distinguished himself at the battle of Arginusae; he was notorious for his debauched habits, which he doubtless practised even on board his galleys. He is called a new Heracles, because of the legend that Heracles triumphed over fifty virgins in a single night; no doubt the poet alludes to some exploit of the kind here.

437

A proverb applied to silly boasters. The Corinthians had sent an envoy to Megara, who, in order to enhance the importance of his city, incessantly repeated the phrase, "The Corinth of Zeus."

438

Demeter.

439

Tartessus was an Iberian town, near the Avernian marshes, which were said to be tenanted by reptiles, the progeny of vipers and muraenae, a kind of fish.

440

Tithrasios was a part of Libya, fabled to be peopled by Gorgons.

441

"Invoke the god" was the usual formula which immediately followed the offering of the libation in the festival of Dionysus. Here he uses the words after a libation of a new kind and induced by fear.

442

That is, Heracles, whose temple was at Melité, a suburban deme of Athens.

443

Whose statues were placed to make the boundaries of land.

444

One of the Thirty Tyrants, noted for his versatility.

445

Celon and Hyperbolus were both dead, and are therefore supposed to have become the leaders and patrons of the populace in Hades, the same as they had been on earth.

446

Already mentioned; one of the chiefs of the popular party in 406 B.C.

447

Heracles had carried of Cerberus.

448

Names of Thracian slaves.

449

As was done to unruly children; he allows every kind of torture with the exception of the mildest.

450

A deme of Attica, where there was a temple to Heracles. No doubt those present uttered the cry "Oh! oh!" in honour of the god.

451

He pretends it was not a cry of pain at all, but of astonishment and admiration.

452

Pretending that it was the thorn causing him pain, and not the lash of the whip.

453

According to the Scholiast this is a quotation from the 'Laocoon,' a lost play of Sophocles.

454

A general known for his cowardice; he was accused of not being a citizen, but of Thracian origin; in 406 B.C. he was in disfavour, and he perished shortly after in a popular tumult.

455

According to Athenian law, the accused was acquitted when the voting was equal.

456

He had helped to establish the oligarchical government of the Four Hundred, who had just been overthrown.

457

The fight of Arginusae; the slaves who had fought there had been accorded their freedom.—The Plataeans had had the title of citizens since the battle of Marathon.

458

Things were not going well for Athens at the time; it was only two years later, 404 B.C., that Lysander took the city.

459

A demagogue; because he deceived the people, Aristophanes compares him with the washermen who cheated their clients by using some mixture that was cheaper than potash.

460

A demagogue; because he deceived the people, Aristophanes compares him with the washermen who cheated their clients by using some mixture that was cheaper than potash.

461

Callistrates says that Clidemides was one of Sophocles' sons; Apollonius states him to have been an actor.

462

Dionysus was, of course, the patron god of the drama and dramatic contests.

463

The majestic grandeur of Aeschylus' periods, coupled with a touch of parody, is to be recognized in this piece.

464

It is said that Euripides was the son of a fruit-seller.

465

Euripides is constantly twitted by Aristophanes with his predilection for ragged beggars and vagabonds as characters in his plays.

466

Bellerophon, Philoctetes, and Telephus, were all characters in different Tragedies of Euripides.

467

Sailors, when in danger, sacrificed a black lamb to Typhon, the god of storms.

468

An allusion to a long monologue of Icarus in the tragedy called 'The Cretans.'

469

In 'Aeolus,' Macareus violates his own sister; in 'The Clouds,' this incest, which Euripides introduced upon the stage, is also mentioned.

470

The title of one of Euripides' pieces.

471

The titles of three lost Tragedies of Euripides.

472

A verse from one of the lost Tragedies of Euripides; the poet was born at Eleusis.

473

Aristophanes often makes this accusation of religious heterodoxy against Euripides.

474

A dramatic poet, who lived about the end of the sixth century B.C., and a disciple of Thespis; the scenic art was then comparatively in its infancy.

475

The Scholiast tells us that Achilles remained mute in the tragedy entitled 'The Phrygians' or 'The Ransom of Hector,' and that his face was veiled; he only spoke a few words at the beginning of the drama during a dialogue with Hermes.—We have no information about the Niobé mentioned here.

476

The Scholiast tells us that this expression ([Greek: hippalektru_on]) was used in 'The Myrmidons' of Aeschylus; Aristophanes ridicules it again both in the 'Peace' and in 'The Birds.'

477

An individual apparently noted for his uncouth ugliness.

478

The beet and the decoctions are intended to indicate the insipidity of Euripides' style.

479

An intimate friend of Euripides, who is said to have worked with him on his Tragedies, to have been 'ghost' to him in fact.

480

An allusion to Euripides' obscure birth; his mother had been, so it was said, a vegetable-seller in the public market.

481

Euripides had introduced every variety of character into his pieces, whereas Aeschylus only staged divinities or heroes.

482

There are two Cycni, one, the son of Ares, was killed by Heracles according to the testimony of Hesiod in his description of the "Shield of Heracles"; the other, the son of Posidon, who, according to Pindar, perished under the blows of Achilles. It is not known in which Tragedy of Aeschylus this character was introduced.

483

Memnon, the son of Aurora, was killed by Achilles; in the list of the Tragedies of Aeschylus there is one entitled 'Memnon.'

484

These two were not poets, but Euripides supposes them disciples of Aeschylus, because of their rude and antiquated manners.

485

Clitophon and Theramenes were elegants of effeminate habits and adept talkers.

486

A proverb which was applied to versatile people; the two Greek names [Greek: Chios] and [Greek: Keios] might easily be mistaken for one another. Both, of course, are islands of the Cyclades.

487

A verse from the 'Myrmidons' of Aeschylus; here Achilles is Aeschylus himself.

488

The 'Persae' of Aeschylus (produced 472 B.C.) was received with transports of enthusiasm, reviving as it did memories of the glorious defeat of Xerxes at Salamis, where the poet had fought, only a few years before, 480 B.C.

489

Nothing is known of this Pantacles, whom Eupolis, in his 'Golden Age,' also describes as awkward ([Greek: skaios]).

490

Aristophanes had by this time modified his opinion of this general, whom he had so flouted in 'The Acharnians.'

491

Son of Telamon, the King of Salamis and brother of Ajax.

492

The wife of Proetus, King of Argos. Bellerophon, who had sought refuge at the court of this king after the accidental murder of his brother Bellerus, had disdained her amorous overtures. Therefore she denounced him to her husband as having wanted to attempt her virtue and urged him to cause his death. She killed herself immediately after the departure of the young hero.

493

Cephisophon, Euripides' friend, is said to have seduced his wife.

494

Meaning, they have imitated Sthenoboea in everything; like her, they have conceived adulterous passions and, again like her, they have poisoned themselves.

495

Lycabettus, a mountain of Attica, just outside the walls of Athens, the "Arthur's Seat" of the city. Parnassus, the famous mountain of Phocis, the seat of the temple and oracle of Delphi and the home of the Muses. The whole passage is, of course, in parody of the grandiloquent style of Aeschylus.

496

An allusion to Oeneus, King of Aetolia, and to Telephus, King of Mysia; characters put upon the stage by Euripides.

497

It was only the rich Athenians who could afford fresh fish, because of their high price; we know how highly the gourmands prized the eels from the Copaic lake.

498

If Aristophanes is to be believed, the orators were of depraved habits, and exacted infamous complaisances as payment for their lessons in rhetoric.

499

Aristophanes attributes the general dissoluteness to the influence of Euripides; he suggests that the subtlety of his poetry, by sharpening the wits of the vulgar and even of the coarsest, has instigated them to insubordination.

500

Augé, who was seduced by Heracles, was delivered in the temple of Athené (Scholiast); it is unknown in what piece this fact is mentioned.—Macareus violates his sister Canacé in the 'Aeolus.'

501

i.e. they busy themselves with philosophic subtleties. This line is taken from 'The Phryxus,' of which some fragments have come down to us.

502

In the torch-race the victor was the runner who attained the goal first without having allowed his torch to go out. This race was a very ancient institution. Aristophanes means to say that the old habits had fallen into disuse.

503

A tetralogy composed of three tragedies, the 'Agamemnon,' the 'Choëphorae,' the 'Eumenides,' together with a satirical drama, the 'Proteus.'

504

This is the opening of the 'Choëphorae.' Aeschylus puts the words in the mouth of Orestes, who is returning to his native land and visiting his father's tomb.

505

i.e. your jokes are very coarse.

506

He was one of the Athenian generals in command at Arginusae; he and his colleagues were condemned to death for not having given burial to the men who fell in that naval fight.

507

As Euripides had done to those of Aeschylus; that sort of criticism was too low for him.

508

[Greek: D_ekuthion ap_olesa], oleum perdidi, I have lost my labour, was a proverbial expression, which was also possibly the refrain of some song. Aeschylus means to say that all Euripides' phrases are cast in the same mould, and that his style is so poor and insipid that one can adapt to it any foolery one wishes; as for the phrase he adds to every one of the phrases his rival recites, he chooses it to insinuate that the work of Euripides is labour lost, and that he would have done just as well not to meddle with tragedy. The joke is mediocre at its best and is kept up far too long.

509

Prologue of the 'Archelaus' of Euripides, a tragedy now lost.

510

From prologue of the 'Hypsipilé' of Euripides, a play now lost.

511

From prologue of the 'Sthenoboea' of Euripides, a play now lost.

512

From prologue of the 'Phryxus' of Euripides, a play now lost.

513

From prologue of the 'Iphigeneia in Tauris' of Euripides.

514

Prologue of 'The Meleager' by Euripides, lost.

515

Prologue of 'The Menalippé Sapiens,' by Euripides, lost.

516

The whole of these fragments are quoted at random and have no meaning. Euripides, no doubt, wants to show that the choruses of Aeschylus are void of interest or coherence. As to the refrain, "haste to sustain the assault," Euripides possibly wants to insinuate that Aeschylus incessantly repeats himself and that a wearying monotony pervades his choruses. However, all these criticisms are in the main devoid of foundation.

517

This ridiculous couplet pretends to imitate the redundancy and nonsensicality of Aeschylus' language; it can be seen how superficial and unfair the criticism of Euripides is; probably this is just what Aristophanes wanted to convey by this long and wearisome scene.

518

The Scholiast conjectures this Melitus to be the same individual who later accused Socrates.

519

The most infamous practices were attributed to the Lesbian women, amongst others, that of fellation, that is the vile trick of taking a man's penis in the mouth, to give him gratification by sucking and licking it with the tongue. Dionysus means to say that Euripides takes pleasure in describing shameful passions.

520

Here the criticism only concerns the rhythm and not either the meaning or the style. This passage was sung to one of the airs that Euripides had adopted for his choruses and which have not come down to us; we are therefore absolutely without any data that would enable us to understand and judge a criticism of this kind.

521

A celebrated courtesan, who was skilled in twelve different postures of Venus. Aeschylus returns to his idea, which he has so often indicated, that Euripides' poetry is low and impure; he at the same time scoffs at the artifices to which Euripides had recourse when inspiration and animation failed him.

522

No monologue of Euripides that has been preserved bears the faintest resemblance to this specimen which. Aeschylus pretends to be giving here.

523

Beginning of Euripides' 'Medea.'

524

Fragment from Aeschylus 'Philoctetes.' The Sperchius is a river in Thessaly, which has its source in the Pindus range and its mouth in the Maliac gulf.

525

A verse from Euripides' 'Antigoné.' Its meaning is, that it is better to speak well than to speak the truth, if you want to persuade.

526

From the 'Niobe,' a lost play, of Aeschylus.

527

From the 'Telephus' of Euripides, in which he introduces Achilles playing at dice. This line was also ridiculed by Eupolis.

528

From Euripides' 'Meleager.' All these plays, with the one exception of the 'Medea,' are lost.

529

From the 'Glaucus Potniensis,' a lost play of Aeschylus.

530

i.e. one hundred porters, either because many of the Athenian porters were Egyptians, or as an allusion to the Pyramids and other great works, which had habituated them to carrying heavy burdens.

531

Euripides' friend and collaborator.

532

The invention of weights and measures, of dice, and of the game of chess are attributed to him, also that of four additional letters of the alphabet.

533

i.e. that cannot decide for either party.

534

i.e. that a country can always be invaded and that the fleet alone is a safe refuge. This is the same advice as that given by Pericles, and which Thucydides expresses thus, "Let your country be devastated, or even devastate it yourself, and set sail for Laconia with your fleet."

535

An allusion to the fees of the dicasts, or jurymen; we have already seen that at this period it was two obols, and later three.

536

A half-line from Euripides' 'Hippolytus.' The full line is: [Greek: h_e gl_ott' om_omok', h_e de phr_en an_omotos,] "my tongue has taken an oath, but my mind is unsworn," a bit of casuistry which the critics were never tired of bringing up against the author.

537

A verse from the 'Aeolus' of Euripides, but slightly altered. Euripides said, "Why is is shameful, if the spectators, who enjoy it, do not think so?"