The Eleven Comedies Vol 2 Part 95

[787] The Scholiast says that this was an individual as poor as he was greedy, and on the watch for every opportunity to satisfy his voracity.--The comic poets often had nuts, figs and other petty dainties thrown to the audience. It was a fairly good way to secure the favour of a certain section of the public.

[788] The ancients used oil in large quant.i.ties, whether for rubbing themselves down after bathing or before their exercises in the palaestra, or for the different uses of domestic life. It was kept in a kind of tank, hollowed in the ground and covered with tiles or stones. The wine-sellers had similar tanks, but of larger size, for keeping their wine.

[789] This was what was styled the triple or complete sacrifice.

[790] As evidence of the sorry condition from which he had been raised.

[791] The clothes a man wore on the day that he was initiated into the Mysteries of Eleusis had, according to custom, to be dedicated to the G.o.ds, but only after they had been worn. Most people only decided to do this when they were full of holes and torn; it is because his visitor's cloak is in such a sorry condition that Chremylus takes it to be the cloak of an Initiate.

[792] This Eudemus was a kind of sorcerer, who sold magic rings, to which, among other virtues, he ascribed that of curing, or rather of securing him who wore them, from snake-bites.

[793] The merchants engaged in maritime commerce were absolved from military service; the Scholiast even declares, though it seems highly unlikely, that all merchants were exempt from imposts on their possessions. When it was a question of escaping taxes and military service the informer pa.s.sed as a merchant.

[794] At Athens 'twas only the injured person who could prosecute in private disputes; everyone, however, had this right where wrongs against the State were involved; but if the prosecutor only obtained one-fifth of the votes, he was condemned to a fine of 1000 drachmae or banished the country.

[795] A proverbial saying, meaning, _the most precious thing_.--Battus, a Lacedaemonian, led out a colony from Thera, an island in the Aegean sea, and, about 630 B.C., founded the city of Cyrene in Africa. He was its first king, and after death was honoured as a G.o.d. The inhabitants of that country gathered great quant.i.ties of _silphium_ or 'laserpitium,'

the sap of which plant was the basis of medicaments and sauces that commanded a high price. The coins of Cyrene bore the representation of a stalk of _silphium_.

[796] The old woman had entered dressed as a young girl. Or is it merely said ironically?

[797] A proverb, meaning, "_All things change with time._" Addressed to the old woman, it meant that she had perhaps been beautiful once, but that the days for love were over for her.--Miletus, the most powerful of the Ionic cities, had a very numerous fleet and founded more than eighty colonies; falling beneath the Persian yoke, the city never succeeded in regaining its independence.

[798] Eleusis was some distance from Athens, about seven and a half miles, and the wealthy women drove there. It was an occasion when they vied with each other in the display of luxury.

[799] You are so old.

[800] The G.o.ddess of death and old age.

[801] Wineshop-keepers were often punished for serving false measure.

Hermes, who allowed them to be punished although he was the G.o.d of cheating and was worshipped as such by the wineshop-keepers, deserved to be neglected by them.

[802] The greater G.o.ds had a day in each month specially dedicated to them; thus Hermes had the fourth, Artemis the sixth, Apollo the seventh, etc.

[803] This game, which was customary during the feasts of Bacchus'

consisted in hopping on one leg upon a wine-skin that was blown out and well greased with oil; the compet.i.tor who kept his footing longest on one leg, gained the prize.

[804] The cake was placed on the altar, but eaten afterwards by the priest or by him who offered the sacrifice.

[805] An allusion to the occupation of Phyle, in Attica on the Boeotian border, by Thrasybulus; this place was the meeting-place of the discontented and the exiled, and it was there that the expulsion of the thirty tyrants was planned. Once victorious, the conspirators proclaimed a general amnesty and swore to forget everything, [Greek: m_e mn_esikakein], 'to bear no grudge,' hence the proverb which Aristophanes recalls here.

[806] A verse taken from a lost tragedy by Euripides.

[807] Hermes runs through the gamut of his different attributes.

[808] As the rich citizens were accustomed to do at Athens.

[809] This trick was very often practised, its object being to secure the double fee.

[810] He is giving Plutus this t.i.tle.

[811] Within the precincts of the Acropolis, and behind the Temple of Zeus Polias, there stood a building enclosed with double walls and double gates, where the public Treasury was kept. Plutus had ceased to dwell there, i.e. the Peloponnesian war and its disastrous consequences had emptied the Treasury; however, at the time of the production of the 'Plutus,' Athens had recovered her freedom and a part of her former might, and money was again flowing into her coffers.

[812] In the Greek there is a pun on the different significations of [Greek: graus],_ _an old woman,_ and the _sc.u.m_, or 'mother,' which forms on the top of boiling milk.

[813] In the 'Lysistrata' the Chorus similarly makes its exit singing.