Aristophanes: The Complete Plays
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948 King of Persia.
949 Installed in the Gulf of Corinth after a Spartan attack in 390 B.C.
950 Pamphilus, Agyrrhius, and Philopsius were politicians.
951 Lais was a celebrated courtesan born in 422/1 B.C. and now resident in Corinth. Philonides of Melite is ridiculed elsewhere as rich, corpulent, and foolish. (Loeb) ¶The reference is obscure, but Timotheus, the son of a famous general called Conon, enjoyed a distinguished career in both the army and politics.
952 One of the Argonauts famous for his keen vision.
953 The Greeks regarded circumcision as a barbarity.
954 Midas, King of Phrygia, made a fool of himself twice: when he asked the gods to turn everything he touched into gold, and when he judged that Pan was a better musician than Apollo, whereat Apollo gave him the ears of an ass. ‡The Cyclopes were one-eyed giants who lived in caves and kept herds of sheep and goats. They were cannibals.
955 Philomedes (the name means “laughter loving”) was one of Odysseus’ companions in The Odyssey.
956 Odysseus.
957 An obscure poet.
958 Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi, from which they are returning.
959 Heracles and Eurystheus were lifelong rivals. Eurystheus made life as difficult as possible for Heracles and continued to persecute his family after his death. Nothing is known about Pamphilus or his tragedy.
960 The goddess of the hearth.
961 The god of healing.
962 Perhaps a gibe at the inevitable torches in Greek tragedy.
963 In the long anapestic passages that follow I have shortened the Greek heptameter to hexameter, because English is a slower language than Greek.
964 The point is that Thrasybulus, a hero of the democracy recently killed in a campaign, could not be more different from Dionysius I, the stern tyrant of Syracuse, but some popular politician had evidently made the comparison. (Loeb)
965 Bracketed by some editors as dubious.
966 Aristophanes continues for another thirty-two lines with this singsong repartee, however—salva reverentia—I can’t help thinking that enough is enough, so at this point I am returning to his more straightforward manner.
967 Artemis in her moon personation: patroness of many departments of life, including magic and witchcraft. Her statue was erected outside houses to ward off evil.
968 From Euripides’ Telephus, fragment 713, a hyperbolic request for witnesses to an outrageous claim, cf. Knights 813. (Loeb)
969 Gibed at for his mean way of living in Acharnians and Women at Thesmophoria Festival.
970 Probably the line is another quotation of a lost play of Euripides. Hephaestus (the Roman Vulcan) was the god of fire and patron of all artists working in metal. His mother, Hera, was so disgusted with him as a baby that she tore him from her breast and he spouted milk all over the heavens—the Milky Way.
971 Not known. Probably one of Aristophanes’ political hates.
972 The daughters of Aesclepius, god of healing. Iaso means “healer,” and Panacaea “cure-all.”
973 From the little island of Tenos in the Aegean not far from Andros, famous for its fountains, its wine, and its garlic.
974 Sphettus was a deme of Athens.
975 Not known, possibly another politician.
976 Not at all far-fetched. It’s what they still do in the Indian countryside.
977 At the Eleusinian Mysteries, the custom was to wear ragged garments and then dedicate these to the deities.
978 It is obvious from the following conversation that a big meal is in the offing.
979 Unknown.
980 ΣIΛΦION, silphium (later confused with laserwort or asafetida) was a wonder plant that grew wild in Libya and apparently resisted attempts at cultivation. It was thought by many to be worth its weight in gold and was used as a food, a cure-all and, it seems, an abortifacient. Silphium was often represented on Greek and Roman coins and looked a little like celery with side shoots. Several North African cities controlled the silphium trade and many men built their wealth upon it, like Battus, a North African millionaire who founded the city of Cyrene. Silphium became extinct through overharvesting during the reign of Nero (A.D. 54-68).
981 Almost all fruiting olive trees are grafted onto a stock of wild olive, which gives the tree the energy to live for hundreds of years provided that the suckers of wild olive that sprout below the graft line and threaten to take over are removed regularly.
982 A proverb for “Once upon a time” or “Things change” or “So what?”
983 From Thasos, an island in the Aegean famous for its marble quarries, its gold and silver mines, and its red wine.
984 A proverbial saying.
985 Hermes’s monthly birthday.
986 From a lost tragedy probably by Euripides in which Heracles bemoans the death of Hylas, a beautiful youth whom Heracles took to Colchis (in search of the Golden Fleece).
987 In the Greek there is a play on the words Kωλη (kōlē) and ’AσKωλƖαζω (Askōliazō ), “to hop about at the festival of Askōlia.” I have stolen Jeffrey Henderson’s clever solution of the problem with “ham it up.”
988 A bellicose village near Athens, captured by Thrasybulus in 404/3 B.C.
989 Probably another quotation from a lost tragedy.
990 It was the wealthy citizens who paid for much of civic entertainment.
991 Volunteers for jury work were parceled off among an assortment of courts and received payment.
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