[447] Timon, the misanthrope; he was an Athenian and a
contemporary
of
Aristophanes.
Aristophanes.
Aristophanes
Returning to Athens on the death of Hippias (510 B. C. ), they united with
the democracy, and the then head of the family, Cleisthenes, gave a new
constitution to the city.
[440] Queen of Halicarnassus, in Caria; an ally of the Persian King
Xerxes in his invasion of Greece; she fought gallantly at the battle of
Salamis.
[441] A _double entendre_--with allusion to the posture in sexual
intercourse known among the Greeks as [Greek: hippos], in Latin 'equus,'
the horse, where the woman mounts the man in reversal of the ordinary
position.
[442] Micon, a famous Athenian painter, decorated the walls of the
Poecile Stoa, or Painted Porch, at Athens with a series of frescoes
representing the battles of the Amazons with Theseus and the Athenians.
[443] To avenge itself on the eagle, the beetle threw the former's eggs
out of the nest and broke them. See the Fables of Aesop.
[444] Keeper of a house of ill fame apparently.
[445] "As chaste as Melanion" was a Greek proverb. Who Melanion was is
unknown.
[446] Myronides and Phormio were famous Athenian generals. The former was
celebrated for his conquest of all Boeotia, except Thebes, in 458 B. C. ;
the latter, with a fleet of twenty triremes, equipped at his own cost,
defeated a Lacedaemonian fleet of forty-seven sail, in 429.
[447] Timon, the misanthrope; he was an Athenian and a contemporary of
Aristophanes. Disgusted by the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens and
sickened with repeated disappointments, he retired altogether from
society, admitting no one, it is said, to his intimacy except the
brilliant young statesman Alcibiades.
[448] A spring so named within the precincts of the Acropolis.
[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.
