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[449] 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.

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

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

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

[453] A staff in use among the Lacedaemonians for writing cipher
despatches. A strip of leather or paper was wound round the 'skytale,' 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.

[454] 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 Pellene was also the name of some notorious courtesan of the day.

[455] 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.

[456] A mina was a little over ? 4; 60 minas made a talent.

[457] 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.

[458] A [Greek: para prosdokian]; 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.

[459] A wattled cage or pen for pigs.

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

[461] 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.

[462] 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.

[463] 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.

[464] 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.

[465] Examples of [Greek: para prosdokian] again; see above.