No More Learning

[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.
Each Heliast was
paid three obols for each day's attendance in court.

[419] Women only celebrated the festivals of Adonis. These rites were not
performed in public, but on the terraces and flat roofs of the houses.

[420] The Assembly, or Ecclesia, was the General Parliament of the
Athenian people, in which every adult citizen had a vote. It met on the
Pnyx hill, where the assembled Ecclesiasts were addressed from the Bema,
or speaking-block.

[421] An orator and statesman who had first proposed the disastrous
Sicilian Expedition, of 415-413 B. C. This was on the first day of the
festival of Adonis--ever afterwards regarded by the Athenians as a day of
ill omen.

[422] An island in the Ionian Sea, on the west of Greece, near
Cephalenia, and an ally of Athens during the Peloponnesian War.

[423] Cholozyges, a nickname for Demostratus.

[424] The State treasure was kept in the Acropolis, which the women had
seized.

[425] The second (mythical) king of Athens, successor of Cecrops.

[426] The leader of the Revolution which resulted in the temporary
overthrow of the Democracy at Athens (413, 412 B. C. ), and the
establishment of the Oligarchy of the Four Hundred.

[427] Priests of Cybele, who indulged in wild, frenzied dances, to the
accompaniment of the clashing of cymbals, in their celebrations in honour
of the goddess.