[270] Boats, called 'beetles,' doubtless because in form they resembled these insects, were built at Naxos.
[271] Nature had divided the Piraeus into three basins—Cantharos, Aphrodisium and Zea; [Greek: kántharos] is Greek for a dung-beetle.
[272] In allusion to Euripides' fondness for introducing lame heroes in his plays.
[273] An allusion to the proverbial nickname applied to the Chians—[Greek: Chios apopat_on], "shitting Chian." On account of their notoriously pederastic habits, the inhabitants of this island were known throughout Greece as 'loose-arsed' Chians, and therefore always on the point of voiding their faeces. There is a further joke, of course, in connection with the hundred and one frivolous pretexts which the Athenians invented for exacting contributions from the maritime allies.
[274] Masters of Pylos and Sphacteria, the Athenians had brought home the three hundred prisoners taken in the latter place in 425 B.C.; the Spartans had several times sent envoys to offer peace and to demand back both Pylos and the prisoners, but the Athenian pride had caused these proposals to be long refused. Finally the prisoners had been given up in 423 B.C., but the War was continued nevertheless.
[275] An important town in Eastern Laconia on the Argolic gulf, celebrated for a temple where a festival was held annually in honour of Achilles. It had been taken and pillaged by the Athenians in the second year of the Peloponnesian War, 430 B.C. As he utters this imprecation, War throws some leeks, [Greek: prasa], the root-word of the name Prasiae, into his mortar.
[276] War throws some garlic into his mortar as emblematical of the city of Megara, where it was grown in abundance.
[277] Because the smell of bruised garlic causes the eyes to water.
[278] He throws cheese into the mortar as emblematical of Sicily, on account of its rich pastures.
[279] Emblematical of Athens. The honey of Mount Hymettus was famous.