No More Learning

[402] A town and fortress on the west coast of Messenia, south-east part
of Peloponnese, at the northern extremity of the bay of Sphacteria--the
scene by the by of the modern naval battle of Navarino--in Lacedaemonian
territory; it had been seized by the Athenian fleet, and was still in
their possession at the date, 412 B. C. , of the representation of the
'Lysistrata,' though two years later, in the twenty-second year of the
War, it was recovered by Sparta.

[403] The Athenian women, rightly or wrongly, had the reputation of being
over fond of wine. Aristophanes, here and elsewhere, makes many jests on
this weakness of theirs.

[404] The lofty range of hills overlooking Sparta from the west.

[405] In the original "we are nothing but Poseidon and a boat"; the
allusion is to a play of Sophocles, now lost, but familiar to
Aristophanes' audience, entitled 'Tyro,' in which the heroine, Tyro,
appears with Poseidon, the sea-god, at the beginning of the tragedy, and
at the close with the two boys she had had by him, whom she exposes in an
open boat.

[406] "By the two goddesses,"--a woman's oath, which recurs constantly in
this play; the two goddesses are always Demeter and Proserpine.

[407] One of the Cyclades, between Naxos and Cos, celebrated, like the
latter, for its manufacture of fine, almost transparent silks, worn in
Greece, and later at Rome, by women of loose character.

[408] The proverb, quoted by Pherecrates, is properly spoken of those who
go out of their way to do a thing already done--"to kill a dead horse,"
but here apparently is twisted by Aristophanes into an allusion to the
leathern 'godemiche' mentioned a little above; if the worst comes to the
worst, we must use artificial means. Pherecrates was a comic playwright,
a contemporary of Aristophanes.

[409] Literally "our Scythian woman. " At Athens, policemen and ushers in
the courts were generally Scythians; so the revolting women must have
_their_ Scythian "Usheress" too.

[410] In allusion to the oath which the seven allied champions before
Thebes take upon a buckler, in Aeschylus' tragedy of 'The Seven against
Thebes,' v. 42.
[411] A volcanic island in the northern part of the Aegaean, celebrated
for its vineyards.

[412] The old men are carrying faggots and fire to burn down the gates of
the Acropolis, and supply comic material by their panting and wheezing as
they climb the steep approaches to the fortress and puff and blow at
their fires. Aristophanes gives them names, purely fancy ones--Draces,
Strymodorus, Philurgus, Laches.

[413] Cleomenes, King of Sparta, had in the preceding century commanded a
Lacedaemonian expedition against Athens. At the invitation of the
Alcmaeonidae, enemies of the sons of Peisistratus, he seized the
Acropolis, but after an obstinately contested siege was forced to
capitulate and retire.

[414] Lemnos was proverbial with the Greeks for chronic misfortune and a
succession of horrors and disasters. Can any good thing come out of
_Lemnos_?

[415] That is, a friend of the Athenian people; Samos had just before the
date of the play re-established the democracy and renewed the old
alliance with Athens.

[416] A second Chorus enters--of women who are hurrying up with water to
extinguish the fire just started by the Chorus of old men. Nicodice,
Calyce, Critylle, Rhodippe, are fancy names the poet gives to different
members of the band. Another, Stratyllis, has been stopped by the old men
on her way to rejoin her companions.

[417] Bupalus was a celebrated contemporary sculptor, a native of
Clazomenae. The satiric poet Hipponax, who was extremely ugly, having
been portrayed by Bupalus as even more unsightly-looking than the
reality, composed against the artist so scurrilous an invective that the
latter hung himself in despair. Apparently Aristophanes alludes here to a
verse in which Hipponax threatened to beat Bupalus.

[418] The Heliasts at Athens were the body of citizens chosen by lot to
act as jurymen (or, more strictly speaking, as judges and jurymen, the
Dicast, or so-called Judge, being merely President of the Court, the
majority of the Heliasts pronouncing sentence) in the Heliaia, or High
Court, where all offences liable to public prosecution were tried. They
were 6000 in number, divided into ten panels of 500 each, a thousand
being held in reserve to supply occasional vacancies.