[330] A celebrated Athenian courtesan of Aristophanes' day.
[331] Cleon. These four verses are here repeated from the parabasis of 'The Wasps,' produced 423 B.C., the year before this play.
[332] Shafts aimed at certain poets, who used their renown as a means of seducing young men to grant them pederastic favours.
[333] The poet supplied everything needful for the production of his piece—vases, dresses, masks, etc.
[334] Aristophanes was bald himself, it would seem.
[335] Carcinus and his three sons were both poets and dancers. (See the closing scene of 'The Wasps.') Perhaps relying little on the literary value of their work, it seems that they sought to please the people by the magnificence of its staging.
[336] He had written a piece called 'The Mice,' which he succeeded with great difficulty in getting played, but it met with no success.
[337] This passage really follows on the invocation, "Oh, Muse! drive the War," etc., from which indeed it is only divided by the interpolated criticism aimed at Carcinus.
[338] The Scholiast informs us that these verses are borrowed from a poet of the sixth century B.C.
[339] Sons of Philocles, of the family of Aeschylus, tragic writers, derided by Aristophanes as bad poets and notorious gluttons.