Aristophanes

“ At the back of the scene is the house of Heracles. Enter Dionysus, disguised as Heracles, with lion-skin and club, but with the high boots of tragedy and a tunic of saffron silk. He is followed by Xanthias, seated on a donkey and carrying an immense bale of luggage on a porter's pole. They advance for a while in silence. ”

“ A man's slaves would generally know about his movements. Hence it was a mark of conscious innocence for an accused person to offer his slaves to be examined. They were examined under torture, or threats of torture, in order that they might fear the law as much as they feared their master, and were guaranteed protection against his anger if they told the truth. The master usually stipulated that no severe or permanently injurious torture should be used. Xanthias generously offers to let them maltreat Dionysus as much as ever they like! ”

“ It implies an argument of this sort: "All poetry, to be good, must do something good;" a true statement as it stands. "Homer and the ancients do good to people." No one would dare to deny this, and no doubt it is true; he does them good by helping them to see the greatness and interestingness of things, by filling their minds with beauty, and so on; but the ordinary man, having a narrower idea of good, imagines that Homer must do him "good" in one of the recognised edifying or dogmatic ways, and is driven to concluding that Homer does him good by his military descriptions and exhortations! ”

“ Aeschylus struck Aristophanes as being like Homer, not because they were both warlike, but chiefly because they were both great well-recognised poets of the past, whom he had accepted in his childhood without criticism. He attacks Euripides for making him think and feel in some new or disturbing way, or perhaps at a time of life when he does not expect really to think and feel at all. ”

“ Enter a Funeral on the right.
Here, sir—it's you I'm addressing—the defunct;
Do you care to carry a few traps to Hades?
The Corpse (sitting up) .
How heavy?
Dionysus.
⁠What you see.
Corpse. ”

“ The growth of formal titles for books was a very slow thing. Probably Aeschylus scarcely "named" his plays much more definitely than Herodotus and Thucydides "named" their histories. Even Euripides' plays sometimes bear in the MSS. varying names: Bacchae or Pentheus, Hippolytus or Phaedra. By the time of Plato regular names for plays must have been established, as he named his dialogues in evident analogy from plays. ”

“ The defeat at Notium in 406, for which his carelessness was considered responsible, caused him to be superseded, and he retired to the castles which were his private possessions in the Chersonese, maintaining an ambiguous political attitude, but on the whole friendly to Athens. He was mysteriously assassinated in 404. The divergent advice of the two poets is clear and probably characteristic. Euripides says, "Have no dealings with such a shifty and traitorous person;" Aeschylus says, "Make all the use you can, even with some risk, of every good fighter." ”

“ Others take the general sense to be:—
"It has often struck our notice that this city draws the same
Line between her sons true-hearted and the men who cause her shame,
As between our ancient silver and the stuff we now call gold. ”

“ A "Moderate" at a time when faction was furiously high, he is continually found supporting various movements until they "go too far." Aristotle (Const. of Athens, cap. 28) counts him with Nicias and Thucydides, son of Melesias, as one of the "three best statesmen in Athenian history," and has an interesting defence of his character. He was certainly a man of great culture, eloquence, ability, and personal influence. ”

“ The respective lines of advice are the same as before. Euripides says, "Purge your governing bodies and keep the morale of the state sound"; Aeschylus says, "Fight your hardest and think of nothing but fighting." ”

“ Aeschylus drew largely from the more primitive and wild strata of Greek legend, as in the Prometheus and Suppliants. The titles and fragments of the lost plays show the same tendency even more strongly. ”

“ Fifty plays are attributed to him by Suidas, among others a Bacchae or Pentheus, from which we have the fragment: "This I understand, woman though I be; that the more man seeketh to know the Gods' mysteries, the more shall he miss knowledge." ”

“ Appointed one of the three generals of the Sicilian expedition in 415, he was called back from his command to be tried for "impiety" (in connection with the mutilation of the Hermae) . He fled and was banished; then he acted with Sparta against Athens in order to procure his recall. Upon the outbreak of the Oligarchic Revolution of 411, the fleet, which remained democratic, recalled Alcibiades. He commanded with success for three years, returned to Athens in triumph in 408, and was formally appointed Commander-in-Chief. ”

“ Aeschylus proceeds, "I am like Homer because I describe battles and brave deeds, and similar things that are good for people. Euripides is unlike Homer, because he describes all sorts of other things, which are not in Homer, and are therefore probably trash ”

“ Other celebrated men of this time who in their youth tried writing tragedies were Antiphon, Melêtus the accuser of Socrates, Critias the Oligarch, and Theognis his colleague, Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse ”

“ He also gives his name to a fragmentary Platonic dialogue, where he argues that Socrates is of inestimable value in rousing the conscience of the quite unconverted man, but worse than useless to the converted man who seeks positive guidance. ”

“ A dithyrambic poet of the new and florid school of music, from whom Aristophanes can never long keep his hands. He had frail health and thin legs; and you could not "tell right from left" in his music. The parodies of his style in the Birds are rather charming. ”

“ When Plataea was destroyed by Sparta in 431, the refugees were granted rights of Athenian citizenship and eventually given land (421) in the territory of Skiône in Chalcidice. The slaves who were enfranchised after Arginusae were apparently sent to join the Plataeans.
P. 56, ll. 718–720, Is the same towards men and money. ”

“ P. 32, ll. 354 ff.—The Hierophant's address is apparently a parody of some similar warning off of the impure at the Mysteries before the addresses to Korê (the Maiden) , Demêter, and Iacchus. As to the allusions: Cratînus is the celebrated comic poet, precursor and rival of Aristophanes. He was personally a burly and vigorous "Beef-eater," and the word is additionally suitable in this context because the ceremonial eating of an ox's flesh, being sacramentally the flesh of Dionysus, the Mystic Bull of Zeus, was an essential part of the Orphic Mysteries. ”

“ Pp. 92 ff., ll. 1264 ff.—Aristophanes parodying Aeschylus is not nearly as brilliant and funny as when parodying Euripides. The lines here are all actual lines of Aeschylus: a refrain is made of a line which is good sense when first used, but easily relapses into gibberish. The plays quoted are, in order, the Myrmidons, Raisers of the Dead, Telephus (?) ”

“ Cf. the criticism on the 'light weight' of his lines, below, pp. 97 ff.
As to the second point, it is amusing to make out the statistics. Of the extant Greek tragedies, the following can have ληκύθιον ἀπώλεσε stuck on to one of the first ten lines of the prologue: Aesch. Prom. 8, Sept. 6, Eum. 3 (a good one, ἣ δὴ τὸ μητρὸς ληκύθιον ἀπώλεσεν and several other lines; Soph. O. T. 4, El. 5, Trach. 3 and 6, Antig. 2 and 7 (XXX) ; Euripides, Tro. ”