§ 231. cancel them out ([Greek: antanelein]): strictly, to strike each out of the account in view of something on the opposite side (i.e. in view of the alternative which you would have proposed).
§ 234. collected in advance: i.e. Athens had been anticipating her income.
§ 238. if you refer, &c. Aeschines had accused Demosthenes of saddling Athens with two-thirds of the expense of the war, and Thebes with only one-third.
three hundred, &c. See Speech on Naval Boards, § 29 n.
§ 243. customary offerings, made at the tomb on the third and ninth days after the death.
§ 249. Philocrates: not Philocrates of Hagnus, the proposer of the Peace of 346, but an Eleusinian. For Diondas, see § 222. The others are unknown.
§ 251. Cephalus. Cf. § 219. He was an orator and statesman of the early part of the fourth century. (The best account of him is in Beloch, Attische Politik, p. 117.)
§ 258. the attendants' room. The 'attendants' are those who escorted the boys to and from school—generally slaves.
§ 259. the books, &c. Cf. § 129 and notes. The books probably contained the formulae of initiation, or the hymns which were chanted by some Dionysiac societies. The service described here is probably that of the combined worship of Dionysus-Sabazios and the Great Mother (Cybele).
dressing, &c. The candidate for initiation was clothed in a fawn-skin, and was 'purified' by being smeared with clay (while sitting down, with head covered) and rubbed clean with bran, and after the initiation was supposed to enter upon a new and higher life. It is possible that the veiling and disguising with clay originally signified a death to the old life, such as is the ruling idea in many initiations of a primitive type. (Cf. Aristophanes, travesty of an initiation-ceremony in the Clouds 256.)