Our information about the Athenian politician Syrakosios is entirely derived from Ar. Birds 1297 and the scholia thereon. Syrakosios here figures among a long list of Athenians who are said to be nicknamed after various birds:δοκε δ κα ψήισμα τεθεικέναι μ κωμδεσθαι νομαστί τινα, ς Φρύνιχος ν Μονοτρόπ ησί [fr. 26 Kock]· “ψρ' χοι Συρακόσιον. πιανς γρ ατ κα μέγα τύχοι. είλετο γρ κωμδεν ος πεθύμουν.” διπικρότερον ατ προσέρονται, ς λάλ δ τν “ κίτταν” παρέθηκεν.

Aristophanes' last two surviving plays, Assemblywomen and Wealth, have long been regarded as something of an enigma. The changes in structure – the diminution in the role of the chorus, the disappearance of the parabasis, etc. –, as well as the shift of interest away from the immediacies of current politics towards broader social themes, can reasonably be interpreted as an early stage of the process that ultimately transformed Old Comedy into New, even if it is unlikely ever to be (...) finally agreed whether Aristophanes was leading or following this trend. The decline in freshness, in verbal agility, in sparkle of wit, in theatrical inventiveness, which is perceptible in the earlier play and very marked in the later, may be put down to advancing years and diminishing inspiration. Such an explanation squares with the evidence of a marked decline in Aristophanes' productivity towards the end of his life. Whereas in the first seven years of his career he seems to have produced, or had produced for him, not less than ten plays, and in the years 420–405 approximately another eighteen, the twenty years or so that followed Frogs yielded a further eleven at the very most unless some titles have been completely lost; and since it is not likely that after the outstanding success of Frogs, and the public recognition that followed it, Aristophanes would have experienced any difficulty in securing a chorus, the explanation can only be that he was writing less. But the truly puzzling feature of the two late plays we possess is the apparent sea-change in the author's social orientation. In his fifth-century plays, from Acharnians toFrogs, as has been shown by de Ste Croix, Aristophanes reveals himself as one who instinctively speaks the language and thinks the thoughts of the well-to-do, even if at the same time he can laugh with the common man at ostentatious and useless wealth in the shape of Pyrilampes' peacocks, Leogoras' pheasants or the sultan-like garments of an Athenian imperial official – as one who was happy for the Demos to be sovereign so long as it was willing to be guided by the advice of its' betters', the καλоί тε κáγоθоί of Knights 738 or Frogs 727–9, and to leave them in the quiet enjoyment of their property. At first sight in Assemblywomen and Wealth this seems to have changed almost diametrically. (shrink)

This paper is based on two separate, though partly overlapping, registers of male Athenian citizens known to have been in the public eye between theyears 432/1 and 405/4 B.C., inclusive. Register I comprises those who are known inthis period to have held important elective public office, or to have proposed andcarried resolutions in the Assembly; a total of 176 persons. These are singled out fromthe much wider range of ‘officials’, most of them chosen by lot, to be found in theprosopography (...) of Develin 1989, because they are those who actively, and in somemeasure successfully, competed for the political favour of the Athenian public. Theimportant elective public offices I take to be those of general, proboulos , member of any embassy, and delegate for swearing to an international treaty. Register II comprises those who are known in this period to have been referred to asindividuals in Athenian comedies; a total of 224 persons. Both lists inevitably havesomewhat fuzzy edges, mainly over questions of identification and dating; doubtfulcases are briefly discussed in the notes to the Registers. Probably no other scholar willagree with every one of my decisions in these matters, but the general validity of thepicture here presented is unlikely to be affected. Within Register II can be identifiedtwo small but important subgroups: those who are referred to not, as is normal, fordisparagement but for praise; and those to whom is devoted an entire play or a largepart of one. I will be returning to these. (shrink)

I do not think it is possible to show beyond reasonable doubt that the two slaves who open the play either must have been, or cannot have been, visually identifiable by portrait-masks or otherwise as Demosthenes and Nikias. I wish however to point out a piece of evidence that appears to have gone unnoticed.

This paper is based on two separate, though partly overlapping, registers (Registers I and II) of male Athenian citizens known to have been in the public eye between theyears 432/1 and 405/4 B.C., inclusive. Register I comprises those who are known inthis period to have held important elective public office, or to have proposed andcarried resolutions in the Assembly; a total of 176 persons. These are singled out fromthe much wider range of ‘officials’, most of them chosen by lot, to (...) be found in theprosopography of Develin 1989, because they are those who actively, and in somemeasure successfully, competed for the political favour of the Athenian public. Theimportant elective public offices I take to be those of general, proboulos (in 413–411), member of any embassy, and delegate for swearing to an international treaty. Register II comprises those who are known in this period to have been referred to asindividuals in Athenian comedies; a total of 224 persons. Both lists inevitably havesomewhat fuzzy edges, mainly over questions of identification and dating; doubtfulcases are briefly discussed in the notes to the Registers. Probably no other scholar willagree with every one of my decisions in these matters, but the general validity of thepicture here presented is unlikely to be affected. Within Register II can be identifiedtwo small but important subgroups: those who are referred to not, as is normal, fordisparagement but for praise; and those to whom is devoted an entire play or a largepart of one. I will be returning to these. (shrink)

An ambiguity in this passage apperas to have gone unnoticed. The ambiguity in line 27 is well known; and when Xanthias at once continues ‘But you tell me about yours’, many a listener might well not immediately realize that the noun to be supplied was from 25 rather than from 27, and might therefore momentarily suppose that Xanthias was saying ‘Tell me about your penis’; a supposition that would be temporarily confirmed when Sosias replied ‘It's a big one’. The reaction (...) of such a listener would be the same as that of Kalonike at Lys. 23. She has been told that the women have been summoned to deliberate . Now she asks and on receiving the answer at once jumps to the conclusion that Lysistrata is using in its phallic sense and asks. (shrink)

Malcolm Davies, CQ 37 , 65–75, has argued strongly for the view, almost universally discarded since Fraenkel's Agamemnon appeared, that Aeschylus envisaged Klytaimestra as killing her husband with an axe. He succeeds in establishing a strong probability that, among the various pre-Aeschylean versions of the story of Agamemnon's death, those which had him killed in his bath with the help of an entangling robe always made Klytaimestra use an axe, not a sword, to strike the fatal blows; and Sophocles and (...) Euripides when they specify the weapon invariably specify it as an axe. All that this proves, however, is that if Aeschylus did make Klytaimestra kill Agamemnon in his bath with a sword, he was innovating. We have still to determine whether he did in fact so innovate. It is fair to treat the pre- and post-Aeschylean evidence as establishing a presumption in favour of the axe, but a presumption only: if there is unambiguous evidence in the text of the Oresteia that the Aeschylean Klytaimestra used a sword, it must be taken as outweighing any amount of external evidence which can show only that other Klytaimestras, imagined by other poets and artists, did not use one. (shrink)

Dikaiopolis, having borrowed a beggar's disguise from Euripides, is about to return to the place where he has set the butcher's block over which he will make his defence of his private peace-treaty. He finds, however, that his is reluctant to take the plunge. ‘Forward now, my soul,’ he says to it, ‘here's [or ‘there's’] the . What does mean here? Plainly we are meant to think of a foot-race; but is the ‘line’ in question the starting line or the (...) finishing line? The question has implications for production. If it is the starting line, Dikaiopolis must point to an imaginary line on the ground just in front of him; if the finishing line, he must point to the block. The scholia take ypanfiri to mean ‘starting line’ here; but this sense has no fifth-century support. At this date ypanfiri in connection with races meant always ‘finishing line’ (Pind. Pytb. 9. (shrink)

The adjective μøιμτωρ occurs, so far as our evidence goes, twice in Greek literature: in Aeschylus' Herakleidai and in Euripides' Andromache . And the ancient authorities are unanimous that it means, in the words of P. T. Stevens, ‘sons of the same father by different mothers, i.e. half-brothers’.

This passage has long embarrassed interpreters, and many, beginning with Kock, have condemned it as spurious. But this would mean that Aeschylus' only answer to Dionysus' question ‘what safety have you for the city?’ would be, in effect, ‘none’ : and this would hardly justify the general confidence expressed in the final scene that Aeschylus will in fact be able to save the city. The most recent editor, Stanford, rightly rejects the idea of interpolation here.

With regard to my review of Kassel and Austin's PCG vii in CR 40, 223–5, Dr Colin Austin informs me that it has from the first been the intention to include chronological tables of comic productions in PCG i. I am very glad to take this opportunity of putting the record straight.

In Aristophanes' Wasps , Bdelykleon tells his jury-mad father that because the allied states are aware that the ordinary Athenian juror is an exploited creature, deliberately kept poor by the demagogues in whose hands the real power lies, σ μν γονΤαι Κννου ψφον, Τοτοισι δ δωρоφоρоῡσιν. The scholia see that Κόννου ψφον must mean ‘something worthless’, but they add on the authority of Kallistratos and Euphronios that Ar. has altered the original phrase: ΚαλλĺστραΤος παροιμαν φησ “Κόννου θρον”, παρ՚ ν παίζει (...) Εφρόνιος δ τι λέΧθη δι τ δύν τινα τν Κόννον εναι. … ψφον δ επε δι δι τ περ δικαστο λγειν. We cannot tell whether Euphronios was commenting on κóννον θριον or κóννον ψον, since although he was writing before Kallistratos, the latter need not have been the first to cite the phrase κóννον θριον in connection with our passage; indeed, the credit for first noting its relevance may belong to Euphronios himself. I shall be reverting to Euphronios' interpretation of the phrase presently. (shrink)

Cobet, in his second discussion of γορεύω and its compounds, maintained that these verbs in Attic formed all tenses except present and imperfect from ρ, επον, ερηκα, ερηµα, ρρήθην, save that forms with -αγορευ- were optionally used to distinguish certain alternative meanings. Thus πηγόρευσα etc. could be used in the sense ‘forbid’, but not in that of ‘weary’ or ‘give up’; προηγορευµένα could be used in the sense ‘proclaimed’, but not in that of ‘foretold’ ‘or’ ‘said previously’; προσαγορεσαι etc. could (...) be used in the sense ‘call, name’ but not in that of ‘greet’. These distinctions, he believed, did not break down until about the time of Alexander. Hence his rejection of the aorist καταγορεύσ offered by the MS. tradition in Peace 107. But καταγορεύειν too is a verb with two clearly distinct ranges of meaning: ‘tell, declare’ and ‘denounce, accuse’. (shrink)

Diggle has followed Stevens in rejecting 1279–82. Stevens' objections to these lines were that they ‘should [sc. directly] follow a striking demonstration that birth is more important than wealth in marrying and giving in marriage', and that the lines do not form an apt comment on the fates of Peleus and Neoptolemos. The cogency of these objections will be examined presently; but first a counter-objection will be presented against the hypothesis of interpolation.