No More Learning

[491] Cephisophon, Euripides' friend, is said to have seduced his wife.

[492] Meaning, they have imitated Sthenoboea in everything; like her,
they have conceived adulterous passions and, again like her, they have
poisoned themselves.

[493] Lycabettus, a mountain of Attica, just outside the walls of Athens,
the "Arthur's Seat" of the city. Parnassus, the famous mountain of
Phocis, the seat of the temple and oracle of Delphi and the home of the
Muses. The whole passage is, of course, in parody of the grandiloquent
style of Aeschylus.

[494] An allusion to Oeneus, King of Aetolia, and to Telephus, King of
Mysia; characters put upon the stage by Euripides.

[495] It was only the rich Athenians who could afford fresh fish, because
of their high price; we know how highly the gourmands prized the eels
from the Copaic lake.

[496] If Aristophanes is to be believed, the orators were of depraved
habits, and exacted infamous complaisances as payment for their lessons
in rhetoric.

[497] Aristophanes attributes the general dissoluteness to the influence
of Euripides; he suggests that the subtlety of his poetry, by sharpening
the wits of the vulgar and even of the coarsest, has instigated them to
insubordination.

[498] Auge, who was seduced by Heracles, was delivered in the temple of
Athene (Scholiast); it is unknown in what piece this fact is
mentioned. --Macareus violates his sister Canace in the 'Aeolus. '

[499] i. e. they busy themselves with philosophic subtleties. This line is
taken from 'The Phryxus,' of which some fragments have come down to us.
[500] In the torch-race the victor was the runner who attained the goal
first without having allowed his torch to go out. This race was a very
ancient institution. Aristophanes means to say that the old habits had
fallen into disuse.

[501] A tetralogy composed of three tragedies, the 'Agamemnon,' the
'Choephorae,' the 'Eumenides,' together with a satirical drama, the
'Proteus. '

[502] This is the opening of the 'Choephorae. ' Aeschylus puts the words
in the mouth of Orestes, who is returning to his native land and visiting
his father's tomb.

[503] i. e. your jokes are very coarse.

[504] He was one of the Athenian generals in command at Arginusae; he and
his colleagues were condemned to death for not having given burial to the
men who fell in that naval fight.

[505] As Euripides had done to those of Aeschylus; that sort of criticism
was too low for him.

[506] [Greek: D_ekuthion ap_olesa], _oleum perdidi,_ I have lost my
labour, was a proverbial expression, which was also possibly the refrain
of some song. Aeschylus means to say that all Euripides' phrases are cast
in the same mould, and that his style is so poor and insipid that one can
adapt to it any foolery one wishes; as for the phrase he adds to every
one of the phrases his rival recites, he chooses it to insinuate that the
work of Euripides is _labour lost_, and that he would have done just as
well not to meddle with tragedy. The joke is mediocre at its best and is
kept up far too long.

[507] Prologue of the 'Archelaus' of Euripides, a tragedy now lost.

[508] From prologue of the 'Hypsipile' of Euripides, a play now lost.