Aristophanes: The Complete Plays

by Aristophanes

  305 Cecrops, son of Gaea (Earth) was the first king of Attica. The upper half of his body was human, the lower half was serpent.

  306 Aeschines was a famous orator in Athens.

  307 Nephew of Aeschylus and a tragic poet (victorious over Sophocles’ Oedipus the King). (Loeb)

  308 The leading Spartan general, therefore the chief enemy of Athens. ‡Rue and parsley: both herbs being evergreens were planted at the borders in gardens. “Not past the rue and parsley” was an idiom meaning “scarcely at the beginning of a thing.”

  309 Hippias, son of Pisistratus: both father and son made themselves tyrants for a while in Athens before they were expelled.

  310 Aristophanes has orthrophoitosukophantodikotalaipōrōn. ‡I can find nothing about this character.

  311 The olive bearers in the Panathenic procession were very old men.

  312 Aesop was a slave who lived on the island of Samos (mid-sixth century B.C.). His animal fables made him famous and he gained his freedom, then lived at the court of Croesus, the millionaire King of Lydia.

  313 I could not resist filching this clever and exact rendering of Jeffrey Henderson in the Loeb Classics.

  314 Probably a famous actor. By the time of Aristophanes, the stage was becoming more an actor’s than a playwright’s theater.

  315 Both Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote plays entitled Niobe. Niobe was turned into stone by the gods for boasting of her numerous children. ‡Euathlus (“Champion”) is unknown. §Kolakomenus (“Toady”) was a nickname for Cleonymus and synonymous with a coward who threw away his shield and fled a battle.

  316 Euphemius (“Mr. Lucky”) is unknown.

  317 Because as a murderer he is ritually polluted.

  318 Unknown.

  319 A citizen of Athens who wrote on agriculture.

  320 At this point Aristophanes turns LOVECLEON into a symbol and surrogate for the state of Athens.

  321 Euboea, the long island running by the east coast of Attica, was constantly used by politicians as a tempting picking ground.

  322 The Greek equivalent to “throw in the sponge.”

  323 As is pointed out in the Loeb Classics, this line is an echo and parody of a fragment from Euripides’ lost play Bellerophon: “Let me pass, you shadowy foliage. Let me cross the watery dells. I am eager to see the heavens above.”

  324 Lysistratus of Cholargus is often mentioned as a penurious wit and jokester. (Loeb)

  325 Hecate was patroness of roads and traveling. Her image, like that of Sidewalk Apollo (the statue of Apollo placed on major avenues), was placed outside many Athenian front doors.

  326 There are at least five men named Lycus in Greek legend and it is difficult to know which one Aristophanes means and why. Possibly Lycus, King of Thebes, married to Dirce.

  327 The joke is double-edged: Cleonymus was the proverbial coward who threw away his shield and fled, weaponless, and the HOUSEBOY standing there is also weaponless and not wearing a dangling phallus.

  328 Hestia (Roman Vesta) was the oldest and most venerable of the twelve Olympians. She was the domestic goddess of the home and was invoked before all prayers and sacrifices.

  329 There would be a statue of Apollo in the offing.

  330 Labes means “Grabber.”

  331 The sailors in the port of Athens (Piraeus), who were drawn from the lowest classes, strongly supported Cleon.

  332 The CAGED COCK used for waking LOVECLEON in the mornings has been present throughout in its cage.

  333 If there is a point to this last remark, it escapes me. In the Greek there is no play of words between “lyre” and “liar”. It is perhaps just another example of Aristophanes’ sense of nonsense. He was a master of the non sequitur.

  334 Eurydes was a ventriloquist.

  335 Knights at the Lenaea of 424 B.C.

  336 Cleon, by trade a tanner, made himself master of Athens and pursued a pro-war policy in general. He was everything that Aristophanes hated. ‡Cynna was probably a courtesan.

  337 Lamia was a hermaphroditic bogey who ate children.

  338 In the second year of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), when half of Attica was crowded into Athens, a plague broke out and carried away hundreds, leaving a chaos of legal entanglements to unravel.

  339 In 423 B.C. when Clouds won only third prize.

  340 Words no doubt accompanied by a flourish of phalli.

  341 The Persians invaded Greece in 480 B.C. and sacked Athens.

  342 Previously, in 490 B.C., the Persians had invaded and been checked by a tiny force of ten thousand Athenians. This was the occasion when Phidippides, the Athenian runner, did his famous run of 150 miles in two days to get help from Sparta.

  343 The battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., when three hundred Spartans held the narrow pass into Greece against the whole Persian army for three days, fighting to the last man.

  344 The owl was Pallas Athena’s bird and therefore a good omen for the Athenians.

  345 A theater in Athens built for musical performances.

  346 Not merely the north wind but the Great King of Persia, more than fifty years earlier.

  347 An interesting example of the dilemma that often faces a translator. The Greek says “from Thymaetidae,” a coastal deme not far from Athens. The joke is lost on us, but it isn’t if we use the modern equivalent. ‡Sardis, the luxurious and sophisticated capital of Lydia in Asia Minor. § A noted glutton. ¶ Ecbatana was the capital of Media, north of Persia and bounded by the Caspian Sea.

  348 Jeffrey Henderson’s clever and accurate rendering in the Loeb Classics, which I cannot hope to equal.

  349 Laconia, or Lacadaemon, is another name for Sparta. The Spartans were men of deeds and few words; from which we get the word “laconic.” One must remember here that Athens was at war with Sparta.

  350 I can find nothing significant about either of these names. There are several women named Lamia both in history and legend.

  351 A shipowner and politician much satirized in comedy as greedy, boastful, dirty, and boorish. (Loeb)

  352 Androcles was a demagogue. Cleisthenes was said to be a professional informer and was ridiculed by Aristophanes in four of his plays.

  353 The Arcadian athlete Euphudion won the Olympic pankration (freestyle wrestling) in 464 B.C. while in his prime; nothing is known of Ascondas. (Loeb)

  354 Ergasion is unknown.

  355 Phayllus was a famous athlete from Croton, in Sicily.

  356 The Greeks, like the Romans, ate reclining on couches.

  357 Acestor was a tragedian satirized as something of a parasite.

  358 These songs were all probably hits of the day. Euripides tells the story of Admetus in his play Alcestis.

  359 Aeschines (circa 390-342 B.C.) was a famous orator at Athens and rival of Demosthenes. For a time he became a tragic actor.

  360 A character in a popular song.

  361 Unknown. ‡Sybaris, a Greek town in southern Italy on the bay of Tarentum, became famous for the luxurious way of life there—also for its pampered and inept inhabitants.

  362 Leogoras is unknown.

  363 Antiphon was either the Sophist known for high living or the son of Lysonides, a rich man ridiculed in comedy.

  364 Pharsalus was a town in Thessaly, later famous for the tremendous battle on May 12, 46 B.C., when Caesar defeated Pompey. §Unknown.

  365 Arignotus: cf. Knights, l. 1278. Unknown.

  366 Brother of Arignotus.

  367 A tragic dramatist whose writing Aristotle considered uninspired. (Loeb)

  368 A pupil of Plato and Aristotle, who presided over the Lyceum for thirty-five years after Aristotle’s death. He was a polymath and writer.

  369 Aristophanes coins kuminopristokardamogluphon.

  370 Apparently initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries involved some kind of ritual charade.

  371 One must remember that DARDANIS is completely naked, which was usually the case with flute girls. The Greeks weren’t frightened of nudity th
e way we are—especially of the naked male form. They frankly adored beauty in all its manifestations.

  372 Cora (Persephone) and Demeter (the Roman Proserpine and Ceres).

  373 Lasus and Simonides were the two most famous lyric poets of the early sixth century B.C.: Lasus from Argolis in the Peloponnese, and Simonides from the island of Ceos in the southern Aegean. We have only fragments of their work. When Lasus was asked what makes life endurable, he replied: “Experience.” Simonides was the author of the haunting epitaph for the heroes of Thermopylae, when on August 7, 480 B.C., three hundred Spartans for three successive days held the narrow pass into Greece against the whole Persian army until the last of them had fallen.

  “Go tell the Spartans, you who pass by,

  That here obedient to their word we lie.”

  374 Even Jeffrey Henderson of the Loeb Classics—my unfailing savior and source of information—confesses himself baffled by the allusion.

  375 The earliest of the Greek tragedians of which we have a record, from whom we get the word “thespian.” He won a victory in 534 B.C.

  376 A semipoisonous plant that flowers in the winter. Its root was used as an antidote to various complaints, especially madness.

  377 A tragic poet in Athens, the first to introduce a female character on the stage.

  378 Carcinus is the Greek word for “crab.”

  379 There is a play of words in the Greek: the word for “wren” is orchidos, and the word for “testicles” is orchis-ios.

  380 Carcinus had shared command of an Athenian fleet in 431 B.C. (Loeb) ‡Carcinus—though at first I thought it meant Poseidon, god of the sea. §Once again Aristophanes has fun with the word orchis. This time it is triorchois, “with three testicles,” i.e., “hyperlecherous.”

  381 Cleon, though killed the previous summer in the battle of Amphipolis, earns continued abuse as having been the principal advocate of the war now ending. (Loeb)

  382 Pegasus was the winged horse that sprang from the blood of Medusa when Perseus cut off her head. He flew to Mount Helicon, struck the earth with his hoof, and raised the spring called Hippocrene. Later he was given to the hero Bellerophon to conquer the monster Chimera, after which, Bellerophon tried to fly to heaven on Pegasus and perished. Euripides wrote a play called Bellerophon (lost), which Aristophanes parodies.

  383 All through the fifth century B.C. Persia was a threat to Greece and invaded it twice.

  384 In Aesop’s fable an eagle had offended a dung beetle by carrying off a rabbit, which the dung beetle was defending. Hence the dung beetle’s revenge.

  385 The dung beetle, or tumblebug (belonging to the scarab family), is well named. Its mode of scavenging is both self-serving and ingenious. After amassing dung and building it into a ball (as large as a tennis ball), it lays its eggs within and then on its hind legs trundles the ball into a hole.

  386 Some of the scarab family are endowed with an iridescent green-and-golden sheen.

  387 An island in the Aegean famous for its wine. A fine was exacted on any allied city if an Athenian was killed there.

  388 The Twins were Castor and Pollux, sons of Zeus and patrons of Sparta.

  389 In the late summer of 425 B.C., the Athenians captured 292 Spartan soldiers in the Bay of Pylos on the west coast of the Peloponnese.

  390 A town in Sparta whose name puns with leeks (prasa).

  391 An image of Dionysus, patron of drama, sat in the first row of the theater.

  392 The demagogue Cleon, who had recently been killed in action. He was a tanner. ‡First communion: not a Christian anachronism but an exactly paralleling initiation into the Mysteries on the island of Samothrace. The “communicants” were assured of a favorable response to their prayers.

  393 Datis was the Persian general defeated by the Athenians at Marathon in 490 B.C., but it seems also to have been the nickname of one of Carcinus’ swarthy and randy sons. (See the last part of Wasps.)

  394 Cerberus is the dog that guards the portals of the underworld. Aristophanes equates him with the hated demagogue and warmonger Cleon, who called himself the people’s watchdog and was now dead.

  395 A notoriously hard commander.

  396 A parade ground.

  397 A legendary traitor who when caught claimed to be doing “only good.” (Loeb)

  398 He means the Eleusinian Mysteries, which promised happiness after death. The piglet would have been a votive offering.

  399 A pro-war politician criticized elsewhere in comedy as a glutton and coward. (Loeb)

  400 The text has “elbows” or “funny bones,” but this hardly makes sense.

  401 Cleonymus was a proverbial coward.

  402 The Paean originally was a song of healing addressed to Apollo but came to be an outburst of thanksgiving—what we might call a Te Deum.

  403 Enyalius was Ares’ sidekick and sometimes identified with him. ‡The Boeotians had rejected the peace proposals. Aristophanes plays on their proverbial stupidity. Boeotia is pronounced Bee-o-sha.

  404 “Lamachon” means a battle-ax, and Lamachus was an energetic general but “because he was the least wealthy of contemporary commanders,” he was “vulnerable to the charge of promoting war for personal gain.” (Loeb)

  405 Meaning the 292 Spartan soldiers captured by the Athenians in 425 B.C. in the Bay of Pylos.

  406 The Megarians, like the Boeotians, rejected the peace. (Loeb)

  407 A reminder to the Athenians that they were a maritime nation.

  408 Ivy was not only a symbol of eternal youth but was used as a narcotic. Chewing its leaves was thought to induce the Bacchic trance. Muslin was used for straining wine into the vat.

  409 Shields were often embossed with the heads of Gorgons.

  410 This whole passage is a clever metaphor covering Greek history before and during the Peloponnesian War, of which Thucydides gives a detailed account. The trouble over Megara (a city state equidistant from Corinth and Athens) was that Athens, to punish Megara for supporting Sparta, decreed that the Megarians were to be excluded from all parts of the Athenian empire and from the market in Athens itself.

  411 Phidias was the greatest of Greek sculptors. He was employed by Pericles, circa 438 B.C., to carve the statue of Athena for the Parthenon on the Acropolis. It was thirty-nine feet high and of ivory and gold. The enemies of Pericles, however, accused him of having stolen some of the gold. Phidias also sculpted the frieze for the pediment of the Parthenon (known now as the Elgin marbles and housed in the British Museum).

  412 If one wants to follow the vicissitudes of this continued political metaphor, one must go to Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.

  413 The text is ambiguous as to exactly what kind of tree was cut down. The Greek word used is KopωνЄως (korōneōs), which can mean something of crowlike color or something curved and possibly dangling. Most translators opt for “black fig,” but it could just as easily be (and more plausibly) the black mulberry.

  414 Meaning pro-Spartan.

  415 Cleon was killed the previous summer (422 B.C.) at the battle of Amphipolis, fighting against Brassidas, who was also mortally wounded.

  416 One of Hermes’ functions was to conduct souls to the underworld.

  417 See page 284.

  418 Simonides is said to have been the first poet to demand a fee.

  419 Sophocles would have been about seventy-five and lived to be over ninety. ‡Cratinus, some seventy-two years older than Aristophanes, was his chief rival as a comic poet.

  420 Not true, except metaphorically. Cratinus lived to be ninety-seven and died only two years before Aristophanes produced Peace.

  421 The lines are from Euripides’ Bellerophon (lost).

  422 The beautiful youth Zeus abducted to heaven as an eagle to be his cupbearer.

  423 The author’s apologia to the audience promoting himself for the prize.

  424 The nine Muses.

  425 /† Cleon the demagogue who was a tanner.

  426 A well-known
prostitute.

  427 A misshapen creature with a woman’s body that preyed on human beings and sucked children’s blood.

  428 Aristophanes was still in his teens when he won his first victories. ‡If Aristophanes is speaking of himself, it looks as though he is now bald, aged about twenty-four.

  429 A rival playwright whose three sons were dancers and whom Aristophanes mercilessly parodied. (See the finale of Wasps.)

  430 Son of the tragic poet Philocles and great-nephew of Aeschylus. (Loeb) ‡To be granted a chorus by the organizers of a dramatic festival was equivalent to a commission to compete. §Another tragic poet, frequently criticized in comedy both as a bad artist and as a dissolute person. (Loeb)