[418] A spectre, which Hecate sent to
frighten
men.
Aristophanes
[409] The Pyrrhic dance was a lively and quick-step dance. Cinesias was
not a dancer, but a dithyrambic poet, who declaimed with much
gesticulation and movement that one might almost think he was performing
this dance.
[410] Those initiated into the Mysteries of Demeter, who, according to
the belief of the ancients, enjoyed a kind of beatitude after death.
[411] Xanthias, his strength exhausted and his patience gone, prepares to
lay down his load. Asses were used for the conveyance from Athens to
Eleusis of everything that was necessary for the celebration of the
Mysteries. They were often overladen, and from this fact arose the
proverb here used by Xanthias, as indicating any heavy burden.
[412] The Ancients believed that meeting this or that person or thing at
the outset of a journey was of good or bad omen. The superstition is not
entirely dead even to-day.
[413] Dionysus had seated himself _on_ instead of _at_ the oar.
[414] One of the titles given to Dionysus, because of the worship
accorded him at Nysa, a town in Ethiopia, where he was brought up by the
nymphs.
[415] This was the third day of the Anthesteria or feasts of Dionysus.
All kinds of vegetables were cooked in pots and offered to Dionysus and
Athene. It was also the day of the dramatic contests.
[416] Dionysus' temple, the Lenaeum, was situated in the district of
Athens known as the _Linnae_, or Marshes, on the south side of the
Acropolis.
[417] He points to the audience.
[418] A spectre, which Hecate sent to frighten men. It took all kinds of
hideous shapes. It was exorcised by abuse.
[419] This was one of the monstrosities which credulity attributed to the
Empusa.
[420] He is addressing a priest of Bacchus, who occupied a seat reserved
for him in the first row of the audience.
[421] A verse from the Orestes of Euripides. --Hegelochus was an actor
who, in a recent representation, had spoken the line in such a manner as
to lend it an absurd meaning; instead of saying, [Greek: gal_en_en],
which means _calm_, he had pronounced it [Greek: gal_en], which means _a
cat_.
[422] The priest of Bacchus, mentioned several verses back.
[423] High-flown expressions from Euripides' Tragedies.
[424] A second Chorus, comprised of Initiates into the Mysteries of
Demeter and Dionysus.
[425] A philosopher, a native of Melos, and originally a dithyrambic
poet. He was prosecuted on a charge of atheism.
[426] A comic and dithyrambic poet.
[427] This Thorycion, a toll collector at Aegina, which then belonged to
Athens, had taken advantage of his position to send goods to Epidaurus,
an Argolian town, thereby defrauding the treasury of the duty of 5 per
cent, which was levied on every import and export.
[428] An allusion to Alcibiades, who is said to have obtained a subsidy
for the Spartan fleet from Cyrus, satrap of Asia Minor.
[429] An allusion to the dithyrambic poet, Cinesias, who was accused of
having sullied, by stooling against it, the pedestal of a statue of
Hecate at one of the street corners of Athens.
