No More Learning

[589] An altar in the form of a column in the front vestibule of houses
and dedicated to Apollo.

[590] Because the smell of garlic is not inviting to gallants.

[591] The last words are the thoughts of the woman, who pretends to be in
child-bed; she is, however, careful not to utter them to her husband.

[592] The proverb runs, "_There is a scorpion beneath every stone. _" By
substituting _orator_ for _scorpion_, Aristophanes means it to be
understood that one is no less venomous than the other.

[593] There were two women named Aglaurus. One, the daughter of Actaeus,
King of Attica, married Cecrops and brought him the kingship as her
dowry; the other was the daughter of Cecrops, and was turned into stone
for having interfered from jealousy with Hermes' courtship of Herse her
sister. It was this second Aglaurus the Athenian women were in the habit
of invoking; they often associated with her her sister Pandrosus.

[594] Underneath the baths were large hollow chambers filled with steam
to maintain the temperature of the water.

[595] By kicking her in the stomach.

[596] Clisthenes is always represented by Aristophanes as effeminate in
the extreme in dress and habits.

[597] The coward, often mentioned with contempt by Aristophanes, had
thrown away his shield.

[598] The ancients believed that cress reduced the natural secretions.

[599] A deme of Attica.

[600] The women lodged in pairs during the Thesmophoria in tents erected
near the Temple of Demeter.
[601] The Corinthians were constantly passing their vessels across the
isthmus from one sea to the other; we know that the Grecian ships were of
very small dimensions.

[602] This was the name of the place where the Ecclesia, the public
meeting of the people, took place; the chorus gives this name here to
Demeter's temple, because the women are gathered there.

[603] The spaces left free between the tents, and which served as
passage-ways.

[604] A choric dance began here.

[605] A woman's footgear. --On undressing the supposed child, Mnesilochus
perceives that it is nothing but a skin of wine.

[606] Dr. P. Menier repeatedly points out in his "La medecine et les
po? tes latins," that the ancient writers constantly spoke of ten months
as being a woman's period of gestation.

[607] A cotyla contained nearly half a pint.

[608] Both the Feast of Cups and the Dionysia were dedicated to Bacchus,
the god of wine; it is for this reason that Mnesilochus refers to the
former when guessing the wine-skin's age.

[609] The Cretan robe that had covered the wine-skin.

[610] An allusion to the tragedy by Euripides called 'Palamedes,' which
belonged to the tetralogy of the Troades, and was produced in 414 B. C.
Aristophanes is railing at the strange device which the poet makes Oeax
resort to.