[97] In the original it occupies altogether more than 100 lines in a play of 1400.
[98] Thunder from the right hand was an omen of good fortune. See the original, ver. 639.
[99] A crown or chaplet was the usual reward of such persons as brought good news.
[100] A sacrifice and a public feast were synonymous, for only a small portion of the victims were offered to the gods.
[101] “The sausage–seller in Aristophanes promises to offer a thousand goats to Artemis Agrotera (outbidding in jest the offering of thanks for the battle of Marathon), whenever a hundred trichides, a small kind of fish, were sold for an obolus, which was therefore an impossibility.” Boeckh, Public Economy of Athens.
[102] The seats in the Pnyx.
[103] κᾷτα καθίζου μαλακῶς ἵνα μὴ τρίβῃς τἠ ν ἐν Σαλαμίνι, v. 783. That the respected member on which the chief stress of the battle of Salamis had fallen, might be exempt in future from all common friction.
[104] Bacis was an ancient Bœotian seer of high reputation, who prophesied the Persian invasion among other things: see Herod, viii. 77. The name and existence of Glanis, like the oracles to be produced, is a ready fiction of the sausage–seller.
[105] We are not answerable for the fidelity of Mr. Mitchell’s translation of this, or of some other lines. The corresponding line in the original is indeed hardly susceptible of translation.
[106] A city of Arcadia. A word of similar sound means “lame.”