No More Learning

[121] Impudent as a dog and cunning as a fox.

[122] An orator and statesman of the day; practically nothing is known
about him.

[123] Another orator and statesman, accused apparently of taking bribes.

[124] As pointed out before, the orators were fond of dragging Athene
continually into their speeches.

[125] One of Cleon's proteges and flatterers. The scholiasts say he was
his secretary.

[126] Terms borrowed from the circus races.

[127] That is, at the expense of other folk.

[128] Pieces of bread, hollowed out, which were filled with mincemeat or
soup.

[129] Both Greeks and Romans drank their wine mixed with water.

[130] After his success in the Sphacteria affair Cleon induced the people
to vote him a chaplet of gold.

[131] That is, by means of the mechanical device of the Greek stage known
as the [Greek: ekkukl_ema].

[132] Parody of a well-known verse from Euripides' 'Alcestis. '

[133] The name Agoracritus is compounded: cf. [Greek: agora], a
market-place, and [Greek: krinein], to judge.
[134] This grandiloquent opening is borrowed from Pindar.

[135] Mentioned in the 'Acharnians. '

[136] A soothsayer.

[137] A flute-player.

[138] An allusion to the vice of the 'cunnilingue,' apparently a novel
form of naughtiness at Athens in Aristophanes' day.

[139] As well known for his gluttony as for his cowardice.

[140] One of the most noisy demagogues of Cleon's party; he succeeded
him, but was later condemned to ostracism.

[141] A town in Bithynia, situated at the entrance of the Bosphorus and
nearly opposite Byzantium. It was one of the most important towns in Asia
Minor. Doubtless Hyperbolus only demanded so large a fleet to terrorize
the towns and oppress them at will.

[142] These temples were inviolable places of refuge, where even slaves
were secure.

[143] A rocky cleft at the back of the Acropolis into which criminals
were hurled.

[144] Young and effeminate orators of licentious habits.

[145] By adroit special pleading he had contrived to get his acquittal,
when charged with a capital offence.

[146] They were personified on the stage as pretty little _filles de
joie_.




THE ACHARNIANS




INTRODUCTION

This is the first of the series of three Comedies--'The Acharnians,'
'Peace' and 'Lysistrata'--produced at intervals of years, the sixth,
tenth and twenty-first of the Peloponnesian War, and impressing on the
Athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the
scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the
consequent ruin of industry and, above all, agriculture, and the urgency
of asking Peace.