[617] The cylinder and the beams were the chief tools of the weaver. It was the women who did this work.
[618] The taxiarch had the command of 128 men; the strategus had the direction of an army.
[619] The Sthenia were celebrated in honour of Athené Sthenias, or the goddess of force; the women were then wont to attack each other with bitter sarcasms.—During the Scirophoria ([Greek: skiron], canopy) the statues of Athené, Demeter, Persephone, the Sun and Posidon were carried in procession under canopies with great pomp.
[620] The trierarchs were rich citizens, whose duty it was to maintain the galleys or triremes of the fleet.
[621] Hyperbolus is incessantly railed at by Aristophanes as a traitor and an informer. Lamachus, although our poet does not always spare him, was a brave general; he had been one of the commanders of the Sicilian Expedition.
[622] It will be remembered that Mnesilochus had employed a similar device to one imputed to Oeax by Euripides in his 'Palamedes,' in order to inform his father-in-law of his predicament.
[623] A tragedy, in which Menelaus is seen in Egypt, whither he has gone to seek Helen, who is detained there.
[624] These are the opening verses of Euripides' 'Helen,' with the exception of the last words, which are a parody.—Syrmea is a purgative plant very common in Egypt. Aristophanes speaks jestingly of the white soil of Egypt, because the slime of the Nile is very black.
[625] This reply and those that follow are fragments from 'Helen.'
[626] An infamous Athenian, whose name had become a byword for everything that was vile.