by Aristophanes
811 Cycnus (“Swan”) and Memnon (“On Cue”) were Trojan warriors slain by Achilles.
812 A moderate democrat whose beard suggested genitalia. (Loeb)
813 Megaenetus (“Big ’n’ Burly”), a tough young soldier.
814 Cleitophon (“Illustrious One”), a moderate democrat and friend of Euripides.
815 Theramenes (“helpful”), known as “the boot that fits either foot,” was a remarkable survivor in the vicissitudes and turmoil of Athenian politics of 415 B.C. onwards. He was one of the loudest in urging the condemnation of the Athenian commanders after the battle of Arginusae.
816 Answering the strophe on page 580.
817 The opening lines of Aeschylus’ Myrmidons (fragment 131). (Loeb)
818 In the Peloponnesian War Thebes sided with Sparta.
819 The Athenians defeated the invading Persians at the naval battle of Salamis in 480 B.C., and at Plataea in 479 B.C.
820 Unknown except that the joke is repeated by the playwright Eupolis in the 420s B.C.
821 An illustrious commander who died in action at Syracuse in 414 B.C.
822 Bosom friend of Achilles in the Trojan War and slain by Hector.
823 Teucer, the half brother of Ajax, was the greatest archer among the Greeks at Troy. ‡Phaedra tried to seduce her stepson Hippolytus; Stheneboea, her stepson Bellerephon. Both women accused these young men of rape when they rejected their advances. Euripides tells the story in his Hippolytus and his Stheneboea (lost). §There seems to have been some scandal in Euripides’ home, with his wife having an affair with one of the servants.
824 It was the duty of the wealthier citizens to pay for and equip a trireme.
825 One of the two State galleys used for official missions.
826 The nurse of Phaedra in Hippolytus (Euripides).
827 The heroine in Auge (Euripides, lost).
828 Canace with her brother, Macareus, in Aeolus (Euripides, lost).
829 The significance of this quotation is doubtful. Jeffrey Henderson suggests that it may refer to Pasiphae in Polybus but Polybus is another lost play of Euripides and we can only guess the possible connection of “coupling with their brothers” with saying that “something living’s not alive.” Pasiphae coupled with a bull (Minos) and produced a monster (the Minotaur). Is Aeschylus hinting that Euripides supports abortion? Possibly.
830 The opening lines of the second play of the Oresteia (Libation Bearers), Orestes speaking. The version differs from our extant version.
831 Gifts of milk, honey, and other edibles were laid on graves as symbols of support for the dead.
832 One of the admirals executed after the naval engagement off Arginusae in which the Athenians defeated the Spartans.
833 From Euripides’ lost play Archelaus, one of his last plays, written while he was a guest of Archelaus, King of Macedon.
834 From Euripides’ lost Hypsipyle.
835 From Euripides’ lost Stheneboea.
836 All the quotations are from plays of Euripides.
837 Fragment form Euripides’ lost Meleager.
838 Fragment from Aeschylus’ lost Wise Melanippe.
839 Fragment from Aeschylus’ lost Myrmidons.
840 Fragment from Aeschylus’ lost Ghost Raisers.
841 Source unidentified.
842 Fragment from lost Priestesses.
843 Fragment from Agamemnon (extant).
844 The nonsensical outpouring of these verses is a jumbled echo of several mythical tales: Agamemnon and Meneláus in the Trojan War, Oedipus and the Sphinx, the Women of Thrace, and probably Memnon: all plays of Aeschylus of which we have only fragments except for his Agamemnon (Oresteia).
845 Aristohanes has ϕαλαττoθpαττoϕλαττoθρατ, which means “sound without sense.”
846 Marathon: a plain in Attica where the Athenians defeated the Persians in 490 B.C. Before the battle, Phidippides ran 150 miles in two days (from Athens to Sparta) to get help. The Athenians raised a temple to his memory.
847 An erotic poet of the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C.
848 In other words, this girl is good for fellatio and not for cunnilingus, and of course for a good heterosexual lay.
849 Glyce and Mania are typical servants’ names.
850 Ida was the Cretan Artemis.
851 A Cretan goddess equivalent to Artemis.
852 From Euripides’ Medea, the Nurse’s speech.
853 From Aeschylus’ lost Philoctetes (fragment 249). We have Sophocles’ Philoctetes. ‡To make it heavier.
854 Fragment from Euripides’ lost Antigone. The Antigone we have is Sophocles’.
855 Fragment from Aeschylus’ lost Niobe.
856 From an unknown play of Euripides. A bad throw, therefore heavy.
857 From Euripides’ lost Meleager.
858 From Aeschylus’ lost Glaucus of Potniae.
859 After the reconquest of Egypt by the Persians, many Egyptians took refuge in Athens and earned livings as masons and artificers. § The “enfant terrible” of fifth-century B.C. Greece: beautiful, noble, brilliant, but also arrogant, unscrupulous, dissolute. He was one of the young men who hung around Socrates and figures in Plato’s Symposium, as well as in the dialogue that bears his name. He entered politics and was soon in the forefront of events. He was chosen as one of the three leaders of the disastrous Sicilian expedition of 415 B.C., but on the eve of departure disgraced himself by a prank that the authorities did not think funny. One morning the Athenians awoke to find all the sacred herms of the city smeared with pitch. He was allowed to sail, his punishment being deferred. The rest of his life was a mixture of political intrigue (with Sparta and Persia), acceptance and reversals at Athens, naval exploits, and final dismissal. He betook himself to his refuge on the Hellespont, where he was assassinated on Persian orders in 404 B.C. at the age of forty-six.
860 Cleocritus was a notably fat man parodied in Birds as having an ostrich for a mother. Cinesias was a ridiculously thin man, a dithyrambic poet and musician noted for his irreligion. Plato blames him in Gorgias for producing poetry that aims at giving pleasure rather than telling the truth.
861 Engineer, inventor, and the cleverest Greek hero at Troy. Euripides wrote a play about him that Aristophanes parodies in Women at Thesmophoria Festival.
862 The chief actor in Euripides’ tragedies.
863 The Greek proverb runs “One who will wear neither jacket nor shirt,” for which the English equivalent perhaps is “Jack sprat would eat no fat, his wife would eat no lean.”
864 A gibe at the way money for public services is apt to get subverted into the pockets of shysters.
865 This is the second time that these famous lines from Euripides’ Hippolytus are quoted: “It was my tongue that swore; my heart remained aloof.”
866 Adapted from a line of Euripides’ lost Aeolus.
867 Adapted from a line of Euripides’ lost Polybus.
868 The identity of most of the names mentioned here is either unknown or obscure. Adeimantus was a cousin of Alcibiades and became mixed up in various scandals before serving as a general in the Athenian army. He was captured by the Spartans at the Battle of Aegospotami in 406 B.C., but his life was spared.
869 Is Aeschylus speaking here or is this harsh assessment of Euripides Aristophanes’ own opinion? Probably a bit of both. Euripides was not popular in his lifetime. His outlook was too new and his portrayal of humanity too real not to shock the Athenians of his day. It is not surprising that he left Athens and ended his days at the court of King Archelaus of Macedon. It may have been a consolation had he known that in the next century and onwards he was more popular than Aeschylus and Sophocles combined. When Marcus Licinius Crassus, the Roman general and multimillionaire, was defeated by the Parthians in 53 B.C., Euripides’ Bacchae was being played in the local theater. It is said that for the gruesome scene of Agave gloating over the head of her son (whom she murdered while possessed by the Bacchic spirit) the head of Crassus was r
ushed to the theater.
870 Cleophon, a hawkish demagogue, was not regarded by Aristophanes as a proper Athenian because he came from Thrace.
871 The name means “public spirited.”
872 Parodying a quotation from an unknown source.
873 A women’s festival in honor of Demeter.
874 The natives of the island of Salamis were noted for their oarsmanship.
875 These and the other names were typical.
876 A suggestion that her husband was impotent.
877 A politician who had a great square beard and was nicknamed “the Shield Bearer.”
878 This Lamias is unknown, but his name brings to mind the ogre Lamia, who carried a cudgel and farted when captured.
879 Argus was the giant with eyes all over his body whom Hera sent to keep Zeus from Io, with whom Zeus was having an affair and whom he turned into a cow to hide her identity from Hera. When Argus died, Hera placed his hundred eyes in the peacock’s tail.
880 The women’s disguises, apparently, were chiefly in wearing beards. They kept their own clothes on under their cloaks.
881 Agyrrhius was a rich politician and, it seems, a homosexual.
882 Nothing is known of Pronomos.
883 Actually the Assembly was purified with a piglet; the women, normally confined to the house, think of a house pet.
884 Not known, but obviously one of the women.
885 To swear by the twin goddesses was a female oath.
886 Unknown except for the fact that he had got himself enrolled in a women’s cult and was notoriously womanish.
887 Agyrrhius was a rich politician who had recently persuaded the government to grant a salary to members of Parliament.
888 With Argos and Corinth against Sparta.
889 The Athenian fleet had recently been destroyed by the Spartans at the Battle of Aegospotami in 407 B.C., when the Spartan navy was under the command of Alcibiades.
890 Hieronymus was probably the admiral of that name. Thrasybulus was a veteran general who had argued against the Spartan peace terms.
891 A general who had commanded the democratic forces in the civil war of 403 B.C.
892 A formidable orator who also sold pottery.
893 A politician known for his aggressiveness.
894 Only the first six thousand assemblymen in attendance were paid. (Loeb)
895 Typical men’s names.
896 A triumphant general at the time of the Persian wars.
897 The procedure must have been much the same as it was in my boyhood in India. In those days there were no flush toilets. Once a day, the Ramussi (the lowest caste) would clean out the chamber pots.
898 Why is BLEPYRUS having difficulty? Presumably because his urgency coincides with the fact that there are no chamber pots available. They are being cleaned out.
899 A contemporary dithyrambic poet, teased elsewhere for some defecatory incident, cf. Frogs 366, with Scholiast. (Loeb)
900 When the Spartans offered peace in 405 B.C., Thrasybulus, the veteran and much-respected Athenian general, was largely responsible for blocking the measure.
901 Amynon and Antisthenes were probably not real doctors but Machiavelli types and adepts at political abortions.
902 Red dye was used to mark the latecomers.
903 Parodying Achilles’ lament for Patroclus in Aeschylus’ Myrmidons (fragment 138), substituting “those three obols” for “the deceased.” (Loeb)
904 Unknown but obviously a pauper.
905 A rich grain magnate.
906 A lad hardly twenty years old and the grandson of Nicias, the commander in chief of the Athenian Sicilian expedition of 415 B.C.
907 I could not resist stealing Jeffrey Henderson’s rendering of this line in the Loeb translation.
908 Taking out his stage phallus and wagging it.
909 The Assembly pay was three obols.
910 A remark that can be taken either as a feminine non sequitur to change the subject or very much to the point. Praxagora would have earned more than three obols as a midwife.
911 One of the “puny and gruesome.”
912 Epicurus is unknown. Leucolophas is probably the commander prosecuted for being a traitor at the Battle of Aegospotami.
913 Apparently a coprophiliac, cf. Plutus (Wealth), 313-14, fragment 551. (Loeb)
914 The time of day is ambiguous in the Greek, but even if the dinner were at ten a.m., that would not be entirely unusual. The main meal of the day was seldom in the evening.
915 Beta, Theta, and Gamma—that is, B, TH, and G.
916 Jeffrey Henderson’s clever rendering of this line in Loeb.
917 A well-known fop.
918 The ancients, so far as we know, did not have coffee, but they used burned millet and other grains with boiling water.
919 The word used is KηρƖα which can also be translated “honeycomb.” I have opted for something else waxen because the word is in the plural and because it is not comestibles that are being numbered but household items.
920 One of a group of Cynic philosophers. He sold all he possessed, keeping only a ragged old coat. Socrates teased him, saying: “Antisthenes, I see how vain you are through the holes in your coat.”
921 Unknown.
922 A young man who squandered the fortune his father left him and reduced himself to poverty.
923 Although copper had been put into circulation following the debacle of the Sicilian campaign, Athens never debased her silver currency.
924 A young man brought to the fore by Conon, the admiral who was defeated at Aegospotami in 405 B.C., but who subsequently commanded the Persian fleet and defeated the Spartans in 397 B.C.
925 Simoeus was known for cunnilingus.
926 Though Geron means “old man,” this Geron seems to be a young man because the text says that he is laughing with another lad.
927 Ionia constituted a group of islands off the west coast of Asia Minor, the foremost of which was Lesbos, the home of Sappho. It became a symbol of sexual prowess—in both directions.
928 A dildo.
929 Also a dildo.
930 Meaning cunnilingus.
931 Namely, Death.
932 Procrustes was a robber whose curious whim was to put his victims on a bed and dock legs too long for the bed, but stretch legs too short for the bed. Here there is a play on words in the Greek: the verb πϱoKϱoύειγ (prokrouein) means not only “to stretch” but “to have the first fuck.”
933 Diomedes fed his horses human flesh, but he in turn was fed to them when he was killed. FIRST CRONE seems to mean: “If you feed on her, you first have to feed on me.”
934 Waxen garlands were used for the dead.
935 This seems to me a loose end that the playwright shouldn’t have left lying around.
936 Priests of the goddess Cybele (Rhea) who followed her with wild dances and music. They had a great knowledge of all the arts.
937 The sons of Zeus and Leda: Castor and Pollux (Polydeuces).
938 Commonus Law, datable to the era of the Persian wars, ordered that those accused of injuring the Athenian people be bound and face (not fuck!) the charge before the people. (Loeb)
939 Meaning it is still a pleasure to come.
940 Speaking for Aristophanes.
941 The Cretans were renowned for their dances.
942 For the list of foods that follows, Aristophanes creates several portmanteau words of up to fifteen syllables, for instance: σƖλϕƖoλƖπαϱoμЄλƖτoκατακЄυχμЄo, silphioliparomelitokatakexumeno.
943 Rocksalmon is the fishmonger’s fancy name for dogfish.
944 Silphium was the ancient wonder drug said to be worth its weight in gold. It was an umbelliferous plant, often represented on Greek and Roman coins and looking a little like celery. It was used not only as food but for every possible ailment and, it seems, as an abortifacient. It grew in Libya and became extinct (probably through overuse) in the reign of Nero (A.D. 54-68). The plant was
also called laserpitium and later confused with asafetida. If by any chance silphium still exists anywhere, my guess would be in India.
945 Quoted from a lost play of Euripides.
946 Identity uncertain.
947 That is, he couldn’t pay a debt and must have been a metic (resident alien without full citizenship); a citizen couldn’t be sold into slavery.