No More Learning

[531] Containing four _choenixes_.

[532] So called from its stirring, warlike character; it was composed of
two dactyls and a spondee, followed again by two dactyls and a spondee.

[533] Composed of dactyls and anapaests.

[534] [Greek: Daktylos] means, of course, both _dactyl_, name of a
metrical foot, and finger. Strepsiades presents his middle finger, with
the other fingers and thumb bent under in an indecent gesture meant to
suggest the penis and testicles. The Romans for this reason called the
middle finger 'digitus infamis,' the _unseemly finger_. The Emperor Nero
is said to have offered his hand to courtiers to kiss sometimes in this
indecent way.

[535] Meaning he was too poor, Aristophanes represents him as a glutton
and a parasite.

[536] A woman's name.

[537] He is classed as a woman because of his cowardice and effeminacy.

[538] In Greek, the vocative of Amynias is Amynia; thus it has a feminine
termination.

[539] The Corinthians, the allies of Sparta, ravaged Attica. [Greek:
Kor], the first portion of the Greek word, is the root of the word which
means a bug in the same language.

[540] Mirrors, or burning glasses, are meant, such as those used by
Archimedes two centuries later at the siege of Syracuse, when he set the
Roman fleet on fire from the walls of the city.

[541] That is, the family of the Alcmaeonidae; Coesyra was wife of
Alcmaeon.
[542] Socrates was an Athenian; but the atheist Diagoras, known as 'the
enemy of the gods' hailed from the island of Melos. Strepsiades,
crediting Socrates with the same incredulity, assigns him the same
birthplace.

[543] i. e. the enemies of the gods. An allusion to the giants, the sons
of Earth, who had endeavoured to scale heaven.

[544] Pericles had squandered all the wealth accumulated in the Acropolis
upon the War. When he handed in his accounts, he refused to explain the
use of a certain twenty talents and simply said, "_I spent them on what
was necessary_. " Upon hearing of this reply, the Lacedaemonians, who were
already discontented with their kings, Cleandrides and Plistoanax, whom
they accused of carrying on the war in Attica with laxness, exiled the
first-named and condemned the second to payment of a fine of fifteen
talents for treachery. In fact, the Spartans were convinced that Pericles
had kept silent as to what he had done with the twenty talents, because
he did not want to say openly, "_I gave this sum to the Kings of
Lacedaemon_. "

[545] The basket in which Aristophanes shows us Socrates suspended to
bring his mind nearer to the subtle regions of air.

[546] The scholiast tells us that Just Discourse and Unjust Discourse
were brought upon the stage in cages, like cocks that are going to fight.
Perhaps they were even dressed up as cocks, or at all events wore cocks'
heads as their masks.

[547] In the language of the schools of philosophy just reasoning was
called 'the stronger'--[Greek: ho kreitt_on logos], unjust reasoning,
'the weaker'--[Greek: ho h_ett_on logos].

[548] A character in one of the tragedies of Aeschylus, a beggar and a
clever, plausible speaker.

[549] A sycophant and a quibbler, renowned for his unparalleled bad faith
in the law-suits he was perpetually bringing forward.