Page images
PDF
EPUB

sons, all players, Xenotimus, Demotimus, and the youngest Xenocles, a tragick poet.

1507. The chorus here give way to the three sons of Carcinus, or to such as imitated them, who dance a vaulting dance.

1524. For uas read pas. The chorus came on, but never went off, dancing.

NUBES.

Ol. 89. 1. In Dionysiis TOIS KаT' ασTU, Mens. Elaphebol. after the Vespa.

The Nubes was played Ol. 89. 1. and damned; it was altered and repeated Ol. 89. 2, but still with ill success. It was again altered, and published two or three years after, but never played again.

v. 10. Zwvpa, a kind of frieze (Ecclesiaz: 347) or thick woollen garment, used as a great coat, and also to cover beds, as here, like a blanket.

37. Δημαρχος, an officer presiding over each Δημος, instituted (as Aristotle says) by Clisthenes; for before that time they were called Navкλapoi. They had a register of all the debts of their Anpora, and obliged them to give their creditors security, when demanded.

178. Außηтηv. The Scholiast here exactly describes a pair of compasses. (Vid. Platon. Philebus, p. 567.) 180. Thales the Milesian.

256. The sacrifice of Athamas, in a tragedy of Sophocles.

267. Kvv, a leather cap, or calotte, with which they covered their head against the rain

335. Bombast expressions of dithyrambick writers, Cinesias, Philoxenus, and Cleomenes, as the Scholiast

says.

VOL. IV.

с

503. Chærephon; his leanness and paleness.

524. The first Nubes exploded: Aristophanes regarded it as his best work. His Δαιταλεις, the first comedy of his brought upon the stage, but under another person's name, Philonides or Callistratus; its success. 534. The Choephori of Eschylus.

549. His abuse of Cleon in the Equites. Eupolis's Maricas, a bad imitation of the Equites. Phrynichus, the comick writer. Hermippus, his drama against Hyperbolus. The simile of the eel-catchers in the Equites was famous.

586. It is not necessary that we should understand this of Cleon's expedition to Thrace, where he was killed and the Athenians defeated, as the Scholia and Spanheim would have us understand it; it is meant of his Στρατηγία, in the year he took Σφακτηρία, which, however successful in that particular, is always represented by the poet, here and elsewhere, as the misfortune and errour of the publick, on account of the signal depravity of manners, rapacity, and mad conduct of Cleon. It appears, even from v. 591, that Cleon was actually alive at the time when this was written. Hyperbolus was chosen Hieromnemon in this year, to go to Thermopylæ and Delphi. Mad. Dacier's explanation of v. 625, is the best we can find.

765. A remarkable description of a burning-glass. The Scholia here tells us, that at this time they called rock-crystal Yados, which may possibly be, as he here calls it, Atos. Not that artificial glass, from Egypt and the east, was unknown to them: Herodotus mentions it in his account of the Ethiopians, &c.; however

it appears, that they did not put it to this use of collecting the sunbeams, till they had heated it first, and rubbed it with oil it seems to have been then newly invented. Spanhemius, at v. 619 and 626, does not imagine this confusion of the year to be owing to the irregularities before the invention of Meto's cycle, (which was not received into publick use), but to some attempt, perhaps of the magistracy, at this time to introduce that cycle, which, however, did not obtain: the months still continuing of thirty, and the year of three hundred and sixty, days.

919. The Telephus of Euripides.

961. The Greek children from ten years old to thirteen were sent to the T'pappaтurns, who taught them to read and write, then to the Kilapioτns, and next to the Παιδοτρίβης.

964. The odes of Lamprocles son of Midon an Athenian, and of Cydides of Hermione.

967. Phrynis, the musician of Mitylene, scholar of Aristoclitus, corrupted and softened the ancient musick.

981. Schol. Cecides, was an ancient dithyrambick. 1047. All natural warm baths were sacred to Hercules.

1264. Carcinus introduced in his tragedies, certain deities deploring and lamenting themselves. A parody of two lines in the Licymnius of Xenocles.

1359. Scholia of Simonides. Speeches from Eschylus and Euripides were sung at entertainments.

PAX.

Acted in the Dionysia та каT' αoru, Ol. 90. 2. Archonte Archiâ. Bentley and Malalam.

v. 81. This whole whim of making Trygæus fly to heaven, mounted on the back of a monstrous beetle, is a ridiculous imitation of the Bellerophon of Euripides, who is introduced in like sort taming Pegasus for the same purpose, and seating himself on his back. This Ήσυχος, ήσυχος, ηρεμα, κανθών, is a parody of that scene which begun, Αγ' ω φιλον μοι Πηγασου πτερον : and so, from the elevated expression, I imagine the rest to be, as far as v. 155. The reason why he himself chooses to go to heaven on a beetle, he himself gives us out of Æsop's fables;

Εν τοισιν Αισωπου λογοις εξηυρεθη

Μονος πετεινων εις θεους αφιγμενος

and he adds another, which shews his œconomy and prudence; for he says, that had he used any other vehicle, he must have carried twice the provision, whereas this animal will feed on what he himself had digested.

146. The Bellerophon of Euripides introduced lame after his fall.

218. Ην εχωμεν την Πυλον. This seems to allude

« PreviousContinue »