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Footnotes:
[262] An obscene allusion, the faeces of catamites being 'well ground' from the treatment they are in the habit of submitting to.
[263] 'Peace' was no doubt produced at the festival of the Apaturia, which was kept at the end of October, a period when strangers were numerous in Athens.
[264] The winged steed of Perseus—an allusion to a lost tragedy of Euripides, in which Bellerophon was introduced riding on Pegasus.
[265] Fearing that if it caught a whiff from earth to its liking, the beetle might descend from the highest heaven to satisfy itself.
[266] The Persians and the Spartans were not then allied as the Scholiast states, since a treaty between them was only concluded in 412 B.C., i.e. eight years after the production of 'Peace'; the great king, however, was trying to derive advantages out of the dissensions in Greece.
[267] Go to the crows, a proverbial expression equivalent to our Go to the devil.
[268] Aesop tells us that the eagle and the beetle were at war; the eagle devoured the beetle's young and the latter got into its nest and tumbled out its eggs. On this the eagle complained to Zeus, who advised it to lay its eggs in his bosom; but the beetle flew up to the abode of Zeus, who, forgetful of the eagle's eggs, at once rose to chase off the objectionable insect. The eggs fell to earth and were smashed to bits.
[269] Pegasus is introduced by Euripides both in his 'Andromeda' and his 'Bellerophon.'