[800] The goddess of death and old age.
[801] Wineshop-keepers were often punished for serving false measure. Hermes, who allowed them to be punished although he was the god of cheating and was worshipped as such by the wineshop-keepers, deserved to be neglected by them.
[802] The greater gods had a day in each month specially dedicated to them; thus Hermes had the fourth, Artemis the sixth, Apollo the seventh, etc.
[803] This game, which was customary during the feasts of Bacchus' consisted in hopping on one leg upon a wine-skin that was blown out and well greased with oil; the competitor who kept his footing longest on one leg, gained the prize.
[804] The cake was placed on the altar, but eaten afterwards by the priest or by him who offered the sacrifice.
[805] An allusion to the occupation of Phylé, in Attica on the Boeotian border, by Thrasybulus; this place was the meeting-place of the discontented and the exiled, and it was there that the expulsion of the thirty tyrants was planned. Once victorious, the conspirators proclaimed a general amnesty and swore to forget everything, [Greek: m_e mn_esikakein], 'to bear no grudge,' hence the proverb which Aristophanes recalls here.
[806] A verse taken from a lost tragedy by Euripides.
[807] Hermes runs through the gamut of his different attributes.
[808] As the rich citizens were accustomed to do at Athens.
[809] This trick was very often practised, its object being to secure the double fee.