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[667] The Lacedaemonians, after having recalled their king, Agesilas, who
gained the victory of Coronea, were themselves beaten at sea off Cnidus
by Conon and Pharnabazus. 'Twas no doubt this victory which gave a _spark
of hope_ to the Athenians, who had suffered so cruelly during so many
years; but Aristophanes declares that, in order to profit by this return
of fortune, they must recall Thrasybulus, the deliverer of Athens in 401
B. C. He was then ostensibly employed in getting the islands of the Aegean
sea and the towns of the Asiatic coast to return under the Athenian
power, but this was really only an honourable excuse for thrusting him
aside for reasons of jealousy.

[668] Unknown.

[669] During the earlier years of the Peloponnesian war, when the annual
invasion of Attica by the Lacedaemonians drove the country population
into the city.

[670] A demagogue, otherwise unknown.

[671] Cephalus' father was said to have been a tinker.

[672] The comic poets accused him of being an alien by birth and also an
informer and a rogue. See the 'Plutus. '

[673] There was a Greek saying, "_Look into the backside of a dog and of
three foxes_" which, says the Scholiast, used to be addressed to those
who had bad eyes. But the precise point of the joke here is difficult to
see.

[674] An obscene allusion; [Greek: hupokrouein] means both _pulsare_ and
_subagitare_,--to strike, and also to move to the man in sexual
intercourse.

[675] In order to vote.

[676] The Chorus addresses the leaders amongst the women by the names of
men.
Charitimides was commander of the Athenian navy.

[677] The countryfolk affected to despise the townspeople, whom they
dubbed idle and lazy.

[678] The fee of the citizens who attended the Assembly had varied like
that of the dicasts, or jurymen.

[679] An Athenian general, who gained brilliant victories over the
Thebans during the period prior to the Peloponnesian war.

[680] A dithyrambic poet, and notorious for his dissoluteness; he was
accused of having daubed the statues of Hecate at the Athenian
cross-roads with ordure.

[681] The women wore yellow tunics, called [Greek: krok_otoi], because of
their colour.

[682] This Thrasybulus, not to be confounded with the more famous
Thrasybulus, restorer of the Athenian democracy, in 403 B. C. , had
undertaken to speak against the Spartans, who had come with proposals of
peace, but afterwards excused himself, pretending to be labouring under a
sore throat, brought on by eating wild pears (B. C. 393). The Athenians
suspected him of having been bribed by the Spartans.

[683] A coined word, derived from [Greek: _achras_], a wild pear.

[684] Amynon was not a physician, according to the Scholiast, but one of
those orators called [Greek: europr_oktoi] (_laticuli_) 'wide-arsed,'
because addicted to habits of pathic vice, and was invoked by Blepyrus
for that reason.

[685] A doctor notorious for his dissolute life.

[686] The Grecian goddess who presided over child-birth.