The Eleven Comedies, Volume 1

456

A deme of Attica, abounding in woods and marshes, where the gnats were particularly troublesome. There is very likely also an allusion to the spiteful, teasing character of its inhabitants.

457

A mina was a little over Ł4; 60 minas made a talent.

458

Carystus was a city of Euboea notorious for the dissoluteness of its inhabitants; hence the inclusion of these Carystian youths in the women's invitation.

459

A [Greek: para prosdokian]; i.e. exactly the opposite of the word expected is used to conclude the sentence—to move the sudden hilarity of the audience as a finale to the scene.

460

A wattled cage or pen for pigs.

461

An effeminate, a pathic; failing women, they will have to resort to pederasty.

462

These Hermae were half-length figures of the god Hermes, which stood at the corners of streets and in public places at Athens. One night, just before the sailing of the Sicilian Expedition, they were all mutilated—to the consternation of the inhabitants. Alcibiades and his wild companions were suspected of the outrage.

463

They had repeatedly dismissed with scant courtesy successive Lacedaemonian embassies coming to propose terms of peace after the notable Athenian successes at Pylos, when the Island of Sphacteria was captured and 600 Spartan citizens brought prisoners to Athens. This was in 425 B.C., the seventh year of the War.

464

Chief of the Lacedaemonian embassy which came to Athens, after the earthquake of 464 B.C., which almost annihilated the town of Sparta, to invoke the help of the Athenians against the revolted Messenians and helots.

465

Echinus was a town on the Thessalian coast, at the entrance to the Maliac Gulf, near Thermopylae and opposite the northern end of the Athenian island of Euboea. By the "legs of Megara" are meant the two "long walls" or lines of fortification connecting the city of Megara with its seaport Nisaea—in the same way as Piraeus was joined to Athens.

466

Examples of [Greek: para prosdokian] again; see above.

467

Examples of [Greek: para prosdokian] again; see above.

468

Clitagoras was a composer of drinking songs, Telamon of war songs.

469

Here, off the north coast of Euboea, the Greeks defeated the Persians in a naval battle, 480 B.C.

470

The hero of Thermopylae, where the 300 Athenians arrested the advance of the invading hosts of Xerxes in the same year.

471

Amyclae, an ancient town on the Eurotas within two or three miles of Sparta, the traditional birthplace of Castor and Pollux; here stood a famous and magnificent Temple of Apollo.

"Of the Brazen House," a surname of Athené, from the Temple dedicated to her worship at Chalcis in Euboea, the walls of which were covered with plates of brass.

Sons of Tyndarus, that is, Castor and Pollux, "the great twin brethren," held in peculiar reverence at Sparta.

472

He is in one bed and his son is in another; slaves are sleeping near them. It is night-time.

473

The punishment most frequently inflicted upon slaves in the towns was to send them into the country to work in the fields, but at the period when the 'Clouds' was presented, 424 B.C., the invasions of the Peloponnesians forbade the pursuit of agriculture. Moreover, there existed the fear, that if the slaves were punished too harshly, they might go over to the enemy.

474

Among the Greeks, each month was divided into three decades. The last of the month was called [Greek: en_e kai nea], the day of the old and the new or the day of the new moon, and on that day interest, which it was customary to pay monthly, became due.

475

Literally, the horse marked with the [Greek: koppa] ([Symbol: Letter 'koppa']), a letter of the older Greek alphabet, afterwards disused, which distinguished the thoroughbreds.

476

Phidippides dreams that he is driving in a chariot race, and that an opponent is trying to cut into his track.

477

There was a prize specially reserved for war-chariots in the games of the Athenian hippodrome; being heavier than the chariots generally used, they doubtless had to cover a lesser number of laps, which explains Phidippides' question.

478

The wife of Alcmaeon, a descendant of Nestor, who, driven from Messenia by the Heraclidae, came to settle in Athens in the twelfth century, and was the ancestor of the great family of the Alcmaeonidae, Pericles and Alcibiades belonged to it.

479

The Greek word for horse is [Greek: hippos].