[33] Which had been stretched all round the
courtyard
to prevent his
escape.
escape.
Aristophanes
[21] Racine has introduced this incident with some modification into his
'Plaideurs. '
[22] Although called _Heliasts_ ([Greek: H_elios], the sun), the judges
sat under cover. One of the columns that supported the roof is here
referred to.
[23] The juryman gave his vote for condemnation by tracing a line
horizontally across a waxed tablet. This was one method in use; another
was by means of pebbles placed in one or other of two voting urns.
[24] Used for the purpose of voting. There were two urns, one for each of
the two opinions, and each heliast placed a pebble in one of them.
[25] The Heliast's badge of office.
[26] To prepare him for initiation into the mysteries of the Corybantes.
[27] Who pretended to cure madness; they were priests of Cybele.
[28] The sacred instrument of the Corybantes.
[29] _Friend of Cleon,_ who had raised the daily salary of the Heliasts
to three obols.
[30] _Enemy of Cleon. _
[31] The smoke of fig-wood is very acrid, like the character of the
Heliasts.
[32] Used for closing the chimney, when needed.
[33] Which had been stretched all round the courtyard to prevent his
escape.
[34] Market-day.
[35] He enters the courtyard, returning with the ass, under whose belly
Philocleon is clinging.
[36] In the Odyssey (Bk. IX) Homer makes his hero, 'the wily' Odysseus,
escape from the Cyclops' cave by clinging on under a ram's belly, which
slips past its blinded master without noticing the trick played on him.
Odysseus, when asked his name by the Cyclops, replies, _Outis_, Nobody.
[37] A name formed out of two Greek words, meaning, _running away on a
horse_.
[38] The story goes that a traveller who had hired an ass, having placed
himself in its shadow to escape the heat of the sun, was sued by the
driver, who had pretended that he had let the ass, not but its shadow;
hence the Greek proverb, _to quarrel about the shade of an ass_, i. e.
about nothing at all.
[39] When you inherit from me.
[40] There is a similar incident in the 'Plaideurs. '
[41] A Macedonian town in the peninsula of Pallene; it had shaken off the
Athenian yoke and was not retaken for two years.
[42] A disciple of Thespis, who even in his infancy devoted himself to
the dramatic art. He was the first to introduce female characters on the
stage. He flourished about 500 B.