[458] A [Greek: para prosdokian]; i.e. exactly
the opposite of the word expected is used to conclude
the sentence—to move the sudden hilarity
of the audience as a finale to the scene.
[459] A wattled cage or pen for pigs.
[460] An effeminate, a pathic; failing women, they
will have to resort to pederasty.
[461] These Hermae were half-length figures
of the god Hermes, which stood at the corners of streets
and in public places at Athens. One night, just
before the sailing of the Sicilian Expedition, they
were all mutilated—to the consternation
of the inhabitants. Alcibiades and his wild companions
were suspected of the outrage.
[462] They had repeatedly dismissed with scant courtesy
successive Lacedaemonian embassies coming to propose
terms of peace after the notable Athenian successes
at Pylos, when the Island of Sphacteria was captured
and 600 Spartan citizens brought prisoners to Athens.
This was in 425 B.C., the seventh year of the War.
[463] Chief of the Lacedaemonian embassy which came
to Athens, after the earthquake of 464 B.C., which
almost annihilated the town of Sparta, to invoke the
help of the Athenians against the revolted Messenians
and helots.
[464] Echinus was a town on the Thessalian coast,
at the entrance to the Maliac Gulf, near Thermopylae
and opposite the northern end of the Athenian island
of Euboea. By the “legs of Megara”
are meant the two “long walls” or lines
of fortification connecting the city of Megara with
its seaport Nisaea—in the same way as Piraeus
was joined to Athens.
[465] Examples of [Greek: para prosdokian] again;
see above.
[466] Clitagoras was a composer of drinking songs,
Telamon of war songs.
[467] Here, off the north coast of Euboea, the Greeks
defeated the Persians in a naval battle, 480 B.C.
[468] The hero of Thermopylae, where the 300 Athenians
arrested the advance of the invading hosts of Xerxes
in the same year.
[469] Amyclae, an ancient town on the Eurotas within
two or three miles of Sparta, the traditional birthplace
of Castor and Pollux; here stood a famous and magnificent
Temple of Apollo.
“Of the Brazen House,” a surname of Athené,
from the Temple dedicated to her worship at Chalcis
in Euboea, the walls of which were covered with plates
of brass.
Sons of Tyndarus, that is, Castor and Pollux, “the
great twin brethren,” held in peculiar reverence
at Sparta.
