* * * * *
Footnotes:
[147] A name invented by Aristophanes and signifying 'a just citizen.'
[148] Cleon had received five talents from the islanders subject to
Athens, on condition that he should get the tribute payable by them
reduced; when informed of this transaction, the Knights compelled him to
return the money.
[149] A hemistich borrowed from Euripides' 'Telephus.'
[150] The tragedies of Aeschylus continued to be played even after the
poet's death, which occurred in 436 B.C., ten years before the production
of the Acharnians.
[151] A tragic poet, whose pieces were so devoid of warmth and life that
he was nicknamed [Greek: chi_on], i.e. _snow_.
[152] A bad musician, frequently ridiculed by Aristophanes; he played
both the lyre and the flute.
[153] A lively and elevated method.
[154] A hill near the Acropolis, where the Assemblies were held.
[155] Several means were used to force citizens to attend the assemblies;
the shops were closed; circulation was only permitted in those streets
which led to the Pnyx; finally, a rope covered with vermilion was drawn
round those who dallied in the Agora (the marketplace), and the
late-comers, ear-marked by the imprint of the rope, were fined.
[156] Magistrates who, with the Archons and the Epistatae, shared the
care of holding and directing the assemblies of the people; they were
fifty in number.
[157] The Peloponnesian War had already, at the date of the
representation of the 'Acharnians,' lasted five years, 431-426 B.C.;
driven from their lands by the successive Lacedaemonian invasions, the
people throughout the country had been compelled to seek shelter behind
the walls of Athens.
[158] Shortly before the meeting of the Assembly, a number of young pigs
were immolated and a few drops of their blood were sprinkled on the seats
of the Prytanes; this sacrifice was in honour of Ceres.
[159] The name, Amphitheus, contains the word, [Greek: Theos], _god_.
[160] Amongst other duties, it was the office of the Prytanes to look
after the wants of the poor.
[161] The summer residence of the Great King.
[162] Referring to the hardships he had endured garrisoning the walls of
Athens during the Lacedaemonian invasions early in the War.
[163] Cranaus, the second king of Athens, the successor of Cecrops.
[164] Lucian, in his 'Hermotimus,' speaks of these golden mountains as an
apocryphal land of wonders and prodigies.
[165] Cleonymus was an Athenian general of exceptionally tall stature;
Aristophanes incessantly rallies him for his cowardice; he had cast away
his buckler in a fight.
[166] A name borne by certain officials of the King of Persia. The actor
of this part wore a mask, fitted with a single eye of great size.
[167] Jargon, no doubt meaningless in all languages.
[168] The Persians styled all Greeks 'Ionians' without distinction; here
the Athenians are intended.
[169] A Greek measure, containing about six modii.
[170] Noted for his extreme ugliness and his obscenity. Aristophanes
frequently holds him to scorn in his comedies.
[171] Ambassadors were entertained there at the public expense.
[172] King of Thrace.
[173] The tragic poet.
[174] A feast lasting three days and celebrated during the month
Pyanepsion (November). The Greek word contains the suggestion of fraud
([Greek: apat_e]).
[175] A Thracian tribe from the right bank of the Strymon.
[176] The Boeotians were the allies of Sparta.
[177] Dicaeopolis had brought a clove of garlic with him to eat during
the Assembly.
[178] Garlic was given to game-cocks, before setting them at each other,
to give them pluck for the fight.
[179] At the least unfavourable omen, the sitting of the Assembly was
declared at an end.
[180] The deme of Acharnae was largely inhabited by charcoal-burners, who
supplied the city with fuel.
[181] He presents them in the form of wines contained in three separate
skins.
[182] Meaning, preparations for war.
[183] Meaning, securing allies for the continuance of the war.
[184] When Athens sent forth an army, the soldiers were usually ordered
to assemble at some particular spot with provisions for three days.
[185] These feasts were also called the Anthesteria or Lenaea; the
Lenaeum was a temple to Bacchus, erected outside the city. They took
place during the month Anthesterion (February).
[186] A celebrated athlete from Croton and a victor at Olympia; he was
equally good as a runner and at the 'five exercises' ([Greek:
pentathlon.]).
[187] He had been Archon at the time of the battle of Marathon.
[188] A sacred formula, pronounced by the priest before offering the
sacrifice ([Greek: kan_ephoria]).
[189] The maiden who carried the basket filled with fruits at the
Dionysia in honour of Bacchus.
[190] The emblem of the fecundity of nature; it consisted of a
representation, generally grotesquely exaggerated, of the male genital
organs; the phallophori crowned with violets and ivy and their faces
shaded with green foliage, sang improvised airs, called 'Phallics,' full
of obscenity and suggestive 'double entendres.'
[191] The most propitious moment for Love's gambols, observes the
scholiast.
[192] Married women did not join in the processions.
[193] The god of generation, worshipped in the form of a phallus.
[194] A remark, which fixes the date of the production of the
'Acharnians,' viz. the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War, 426 B.C.
[195] Lamachus was an Athenian general, who figures later in this comedy.
[196] At the rural Dionysia a pot of kitchen vegetables was borne in the
procession along with other emblems.
[197] Cleon the Demagogue was a currier originally by trade. He was the
sworn foe and particular detestation of the Knights or aristocratic party
generally.
[198] That is, the baskets of charcoal.
[199] The stage of the Greek theatre was much broader, and at the same
time shallower, than in a modern playhouse.
[200] A mountain in Attica, in the neighbourhood of Acharnae.
[201] Orators in the pay of the enemy.
[202] Satire on the Athenians' addiction to lawsuits.
[203] 'The Babylonians.' Cleon had denounced Aristophanes to the senate
for having scoffed at Athens before strangers, many of whom were present
at the performance. The play is now lost.
[204] A tragic poet; we know next to nothing of him or his works.
[205] Son of Aeolus, renowned in fable for his robberies, and for the
tortures to which he was put by Pluto. He was cunning enough to break
loose out of hell, but Hermes brought him back again.
[206] This whole scene is directed at Euripides; Aristophanes ridicules
the subtleties of his poetry and the trickeries of his staging, which,
according to him, he only used to attract the less refined among his
audience.
[207] "Wheeled out"--that is, by means of the [Greek: ekkukl_ema], a
mechanical contrivance of the Greek stage, by which an interior was
shown, the set scene with performers, etc., all complete, being in some
way, which cannot be clearly made out from the descriptions, swung out or
wheeled out on to the main stage.
[208] Having been lamed, it is of course implied, by tumbling from the
lofty apparatus on which the Author sat perched to write his tragedies.
[209] Euripides delighted, or was supposed by his critic Aristophanes to
delight, in the representation of misery and wretchedness on the stage.
'Aeneus,' 'Phoenix,' 'Philoctetes,' 'Bellerophon,' 'Telephus,' 'Ino' are
titles of six tragedies of his in this _genre_ of which fragments are
extant.
[210] Line borrowed from Euripides. A great number of verses are
similarly parodied in this scene.
[211] Report said that Euripides' mother had sold vegetables on the
market.
[212] Aristophanes means, of course, to imply that the whole talent of
Euripides lay in these petty details of stage property.
[213] 'The Babylonians' had been produced at a time of year when Athens
was crowded with strangers; 'The Acharnians,' on the contrary, was played
in December.
[214] Sparta had been menaced with an earthquake in 427 B.C. Posidon was
'The Earthshaker,' god of earthquakes, as well as of the sea.
[215] A song by Timocreon the Rhodian, the words of which were
practically identical with Pericles' decree.
[216] A small and insignificant island, one of the Cyclades, allied with
the Athenians, like most of these islands previous to and during the
first part of the Peloponnesian War.
[217] A figure of Medusa's head, forming the centre of Lamachus' shield.
[218] Indicates the character of his election, which was arranged, so
Aristophanes implies, by his partisans.
[219] Towns in Sicily. There is a pun on the name Gela--[Greek: Gela] and
[Greek: Katagela] (ridiculous)--which it is impossible to keep in
English. Apparently the Athenians had sent embassies to all parts of the
Greek world to arrange treaties of alliance in view of the struggle with
the Lacedaemonians; but only young debauchees of aristocratic connections
had been chosen as envoys.
[220] A contemporary orator apparently, otherwise unknown.
[221] The _parabasis_ in the Old Comedy was a sort of address or topical
harangue addressed directly by the poet, speaking by the Chorus, to the
audience. It was nearly always political in bearing, and the subject of
the particular piece was for the time being set aside altogether.
[222] It will be remembered that Aristophanes owned land in Aegina.
[223] Everything was made the object of a law-suit at Athens. The old
soldiers, inexpert at speaking, often lost the day.
[224] A water-clock used to limit the length of speeches in the courts.
[225] A braggart speaker, fiery and pugnacious.
[226] Cephisodemus was an Athenian, but through his mother possessed
Scythian blood.
[227] The city of Athens was policed by Scythian archers.
[228] Alcibiades.
[229] The leather market was held at Lepros, outside the city.
[230] Meaning an informer ([Greek: phain_o], to denounce).
[231] According to the Athenian custom.
[232] Megara was allied to Sparta and suffered during the war more than
any other city, because of its proximity to Athens.
[233]: Throughout this whole scene there is an obscene play upon the word
[Greek: choiros], which means in Greek both 'sow' and 'a woman's organs
of generation.'
[234] Sacrificial victims were bound to be perfect in every part; an
animal, therefore, without a tail could not be offered.
[235] The Greek word, [Greek: erebinthos], also means the male sexual
organ. Observe the little pig-girl greets this question with _three_
affirmative squeaks!
[236] The Megarians used the Doric dialect.
[237] A play upon the word [Greek: phainein], which both means _to light_
and _to denounce_.
[238] An informer (sycophant), otherwise unknown.
[239] A debauchee of vile habits; a pathic.
[240] Mentioned above; he was as proud as he was cowardly.
[241] An Athenian general, quarrelsome and litigious, and an Informer
into the bargain.
[242] A comic poet of vile habits.
[243] A painter.
[244] A debauchee, a gambler, and always in extreme poverty.
[245] This kind of flute had a bellows, made of dog-skin, much like the
bagpipes of to-day.
[246] A flute-player, mentioned above.
[247] A hero, much honoured in Thebes; nephew of Heracles.
[248] A form of bread peculiar to Boeotia.
[249] A lake in Boeotia.
[250] He was the Lucullus of Athens.
[251] This again fixes the date of the presentation of the 'Acharnians'
to 426 B.C., the sixth year of the War, since the beginning of which
Boeotia had been closed to the Athenians.
[252] An Informer.
[253] The second day of the Dionysia or feasts of Bacchus, kept in the
month Anthesterion (February), and called the Anthesteria. They lasted
three days; the second being the Feast of Cups, a description of which is
to be found at the end of this comedy, the third the Feast of Pans.
Vases, filled with grain of all kinds, were borne in procession and
dedicated to Hermes.
[254] A parody of some verses from a lost poet.
[255] A feasting song in honour of Harmodius, the assassin of Hipparchus
the Tyrant, son of Pisistratus.
[256] The celebrated painter, born at Heraclea, a contemporary of
Aristophanes.
[257] A deme and frontier fortress of Attica, near the Boeotian border.
[258] An Athenian physician of the day.
[259] An allusion to the paroxysms of rage, as represented in many
tragedies familiar to an Athenian audience, of Orestes, the son of
Agamemnon, after he had killed his mother.
[260] No doubt the comic poet, rival of Aristophanes.
[261] Unexpected wind-up of the story. Aristophanes intends to deride the
boasting of Lamachus, who was always ascribing to himself most unlikely
exploits.