[375] A temple of Euboea, close to Oreus. The
servant means, “Return where you came from.”
[376] This was the soldier’s usual ration when
on duty.
[377] Slaves often bore the name of the country of
their birth.
[378] Because of the new colour which fear had lent
his chlamys.
[379] Meaning, that he deserts his men in mid-campaign,
leaving them to look after the enemy.
[380] Ancient King of Athens. This was one of
the twelve statues, on the pedestals of which the
names of the soldiers chosen for departure on service
were written. The decrees were also placarded
on them.
[381] The trierarchs stopped up some of the holes
made for the oars, in order to reduce the number of
rowers they had to supply for the galleys; they thus
saved the wages of the rowers they dispensed with.
[382] The mina was equivalent to about £3 10s.
[383] Which is the same thing, since a mina was worth
a hundred drachmae.
[384] For cottabos see note above, p. 177.
[Footnote 287. Transcriber.]
[385] Syrmaea, a kind of purgative syrup much
used by the Egyptians, made of antiscorbutic herbs,
such as mustard, horse-radish, etc.
[386] As wine-pots or similar vessels.
[387] These verses and those which both Trygaeus and
the son of Lamachus quote afterwards are borrowed
from the ‘Iliad.’
[388] Boulomachus is derived from [Greek: boulesthai]
and [Greek: mach_e] to wish for battle; Clausimachus
from [Greek: klaein] and [Greek: mach_e],
the tears that battles cost. The same root, [Greek:
mach_e], battle, is also contained in the name Lamachus.
[389] A distich borrowed from Archilochus, a celebrated
poet of the seventh century B.C., born at Paros, and
the author of odes, satires, epigrams and elegies.
He sang his own shame. ’Twas in an expedition
against Saïs, not the town in Egypt as the similarity
in name might lead one to believe, but in Thrace,
that he had cast away his buckler. “A mighty
calamity truly!” he says without shame.
“I shall buy another.”
The ‘Lysistrata,’ the third and concluding
play of the War and Peace series, was not produced
till ten years later than its predecessor, the ‘Peace,’
viz. in 411 B.C. It is now the twenty-first
year of the War, and there seems as little prospect
of peace as ever. A desperate state of things
demands a desperate remedy, and the Poet proceeds to
suggest a burlesque solution of the difficulty.
