Aeschylus has just defeated Euripides in the verse-weighing round of their contest. In 1407–10 he issues a final challenge, that with two lines he could outweigh Euripides' whole household. But as it stands the challenge is incomplete; to finish it we need something like ‘and my poetry would easily appear the heavier’. Perhaps Aeschylus is interrupted by the next speaker— or, it has been suggested, by a thunderclap heralding the arrival of Pluto.

Our texts of the two complete extant works of Gorgias and of the two attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Alkidamas are derived entirely from two manuscripts. The one generally known as A is the Cripps manuscript , now in the British Museum, which is a principal authority also for Antiphon, Andokides, Isaios, Lykourgos, and Deinarchos; it contains Helen, Palamedes, and Odysseus, but not On Sophists. The other, known as X, is the Palatine manuscript , which is the principal manuscript of (...) Lysias; it contains Helen Odysseus, and On Sophists, but not Palamedes. (shrink)

Nikostratos son of Dieitrephes is stated by Thucydides to have been a general in a number of years during the first half of the Peloponnesian War, ranging from 427 to his death in 418 . Nikostratos, a Skambonides by deme, is mentioned in Aristophanes as a member of the audience at the performance of the Wasps in 422.