Part 4

[PG52] A _double entendre_--with allusion to the posture in sexual intercourse known among the Greeks as ἵππος, in Latin 'equus,' the horse, where the woman mounts the man in reversal of the ordinary position.

[PG53] Micon, a famous Athenian painter, decorated the walls of the Poecilé Stoa, or Painted Porch, at Athens with a series of frescoes representing the battles of the Amazons with Theseus and the Athenians.

[PG54] To avenge itself on the eagle, the beetle threw the former's eggs out of the nest and broke them. See the Fables of Aesop.

[PG55] Keeper of a house of ill fame apparently.

[PG56] "As chaste as Melanion" was a Greek proverb. Who Melanion was is unknown.

[PG57] Myronides and Phormio were famous Athenian generals. The former was celebrated for his conquest of all Boeotia, except Thebes, in 458 B.C.; the latter, with a fleet of twenty triremes, equipped at his own cost, defeated a Lacedaemonian fleet of forty-seven sail, in 429.

[PG58] Timon, the misanthrope; he was an Athenian and a contemporary of Aristophanes. Disgusted by the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens and sickened with repeated disappointments, he retired altogether from society, admitting no one, it is said, to his intimacy except the brilliant young statesman Alcibiades.

[PG59] A spring so named within the precincts of the Acropolis.

[PG60] The comic poets delighted in introducing Heracles (Hercules) on the stage as an insatiable glutton, whom the other characters were for ever tantalizing by promising toothsome dishes and then making him wait indefinitely for their arrival.

[PG61] The Rhodian perfumes and unguents were less esteemed than the Syrian.

[PG62] 'Dog-fox,' nickname of a certain notorious Philostratus, keeper of an Athenian brothel of note in Aristophanes' day.

[PG63] The god of gardens--and of lubricity; represented by a grotesque figure with an enormous penis.

[PG64] A staff in use among the Lacedaemonians for writing cipher despatches. A strip of leather or paper was wound round the 'skytalé,' on which the required message was written lengthwise, so that when unrolled it became unintelligible; the recipient abroad had a staff of the same thickness and pattern, and so was enabled by rewinding the document to decipher the words.

[PG65] A city of Achaia, the acquisition of which had long been an object of Lacedaemonian ambition. To make the joke intelligible here, we must suppose Pellené was also the name of some notorious courtesan of the day.

[PG66] 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.

[PG67]] A mina was a little over £4; 60 minas made a talent.

[PG68] 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.

[PG69] A παρὰ προσδοκίαν; 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.

[PG70] A wattled cage or pen for pigs.

[PG71] An effeminate, a pathic; failing women, they will have to resort to pederasty.

[PG72] 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.

[PG73] 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.

[PG74] 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.

[PG75] 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.

[PG76] Example of παρὰ προσδοκίαν again; see above.

[PG77] Example of παρὰ προσδοκίαν again; see above.

[PG78] Clitagoras was a composer of drinking songs, Telamon of war songs.

[PG79] Here, off the north coast of Euboea, the Greeks defeated the Persians in a naval battle, 480 B.C.

[PG80] The hero of Thermopylae, where the 300 Athenians arrested the advance of the invading hosts of Xerxes in the same year.

[PG81] 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.