No More Learning

[440] "Invoke the god" was the usual formula which immediately followed
the offering of the libation in the festival of Dionysus. Here he uses
the words after a libation of a new kind and induced by fear.

[441] That is, Heracles, whose temple was at Melite, a suburban deme of
Athens.

[442] Whose statues were placed to make the boundaries of land.

[443] One of the Thirty Tyrants, noted for his versatility.

[444] Celon and Hyperbolus were both dead, and are therefore supposed to
have become the leaders and patrons of the populace in Hades, the same as
they had been on earth.

[445] Already mentioned; one of the chiefs of the popular party in 406
B. C.

[446] Heracles had carried of Cerberus.

[447] Names of Thracian slaves.

[448] As was done to unruly children; he allows every kind of torture
with the exception of the mildest.

[449] A deme of Attica, where there was a temple to Heracles. No doubt
those present uttered the cry "Oh! oh! " in honour of the god.
[450] He pretends it was not a cry of pain at all, but of astonishment
and admiration.

[451] Pretending that it was the thorn causing him pain, and not the lash
of the whip.

[452] According to the Scholiast this is a quotation from the 'Laocoon,'
a lost play of Sophocles.

[453] A general known for his cowardice; he was accused of not being a
citizen, but of Thracian origin; in 406 B. C. he was in disfavour, and he
perished shortly after in a popular tumult.

[454] According to Athenian law, the accused was acquitted when the
voting was equal.

[455] He had helped to establish the oligarchical government of the Four
Hundred, who had just been overthrown.

[456] The fight of Arginusae; the slaves who had fought there had been
accorded their freedom. --The Plataeans had had the title of citizens
since the battle of Marathon.

[457] Things were not going well for Athens at the time; it was only two
years later, 404 B. C. , that Lysander took the city.

[458] A demagogue; because he deceived the people, Aristophanes compares
him with the washermen who cheated their clients by using some mixture
that was cheaper than potash.

[459] Callistrates says that Clidemides was one of Sophocles' sons;
Apollonius states him to have been an actor.

[460] Dionysus was, of course, the patron god of the drama and dramatic
contests.