Aristophanes Acharnians 1069-1173

ed. F. W. Hall, ed. William M. Geldart

Table of Contents

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

View: By Card
← Previous Next →

Acharnians. Aristophanes. ed. F. W. Hall, ed. William M. Geldart. Oxford. 1906.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Ἀχαρνῆς (Greek) (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 1. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.)

Translations (2)
Acharnians (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Anonymous; Liveright, 192?). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.) — 1069 focus
English (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) Experimental (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) — 1069 focus

Commentary

Commentary (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.) focus

1076. mvp-tlg0019-tlg001-sanjaya-com-eng1-63

Line 1076

ὑπὸ τοὺς Χοᾶς γὰρ καὶ Χύτρους αὐτοῖσί τις
The phrase ὑπὸ τοὺς Χοᾶς γὰρ καὶ Χύτρους refers to the names of two distinct festivals in the Attic calendar: the Choes ('Jugs'), celebrated on the 7th of Anthesterion, and the Chytroi ('Pots'), on the 9th of the same month. The preposition ὑπὸ here, governing the accusative, denotes a time 'under' or 'during' these specific days, a usage characteristic of the colloquial, calendar-precise style of Old Comedy. This specific temporal framing is crucial for understanding the plot's chronology in the Acharnians, as Dicaeopolis's private peace treaty and his subsequent market activities are situated within the chaotic days immediately following the Choes, when the city's official rituals were suspended or distorted by the plague and the war.

1082. mvp-tlg0019-tlg001-sanjaya-com-eng1-64

Line 1082

βούλει μάχεσθαι Γηρυόνῃ τετραπτίλῳ;
The adjective τετραπτίλῳ (four-winged) modifies Γηρυόνῃ (Geryon) in the dative case, indicating the opponent in the wrestling match. This is a deliberate comic hyperbole: in Hesiod's Theogony and later mythological tradition, Geryon is a three-bodied giant (Triceps), but Aristophanes here invents a four-winged variant to heighten the absurdity of the protagonist Dicaeopolis's desire to fight a monstrous, mythological beast in the agora. The specific epithet 'four-winged' is not attested in standard mythography and serves the play's burlesque tone, transforming a terrifying chthonic figure into a ludicrous target for a farmer's combat.

1122. mvp-tlg0019-tlg001-sanjaya-com-eng1-65

Line 1122

τοὺς κιλλίβαντας οἶσε παῖ τῆς ἀσπίδος.
The phrase οἶσε παῖ τῆς ἀσπίδος presents a syntactic crux: the dative παῖ τῆς ἀσπίδος (literally 'child of the shield') functions as an indirect object of the verb οἶσε ('he carried' or 'he brought'), yet the semantics are opaque without understanding the specific comic context of the 'child of the shield' as a nickname for the soldier's son or a metaphorical reference to the shield itself being personified or treated as a surrogate child in the soldier's absence. This construction is rare in Aristophanic comedy, where such wordplay relies on the audience's familiarity with the soldier's domestic situation and the play's satirical treatment of the Peloponnesian War's impact on Athenian families.

1150. mvp-tlg0019-tlg001-sanjaya-com-eng1-66

Line 1150

Ἀντίμαχον τὸν ψακάδος †τὸν ξυγγραφῆ† τὸν μελέων ποιητήν,
The text exhibits a clear scribal corruption at the phrase 'τὸν ψακάδος †τὸν ξυγγραφῆ† τὸν μελέων'. The middle epithet 'τὸν ξυγγραφῆ' (the writer/composer) is syntactically and semantically redundant in a series of three genitive epithets and is widely regarded by scholars (e.g., in the apparatus of Kassel-Austin) as a dittography of the preceding or following article, or a gloss that has been incorporated into the text. The intended reading is almost certainly 'Ἀντίμαχον τὸν ψακάδος τὸν μελέων ποιητήν' (Antimachus, the poet of the psakados and the melean). The term 'ψάκαδος' (psakados) is a hapax legomenon in this context, referring to a specific type of song or dance, while 'μελέων' (meleōn) refers to the 'mele' (songs) associated with the poet Antimachus, distinguishing him from other poets of the same name.

1166. mvp-tlg0019-tlg001-sanjaya-com-eng1-67

Line 1166

εἶτα κατάξειέ τις αὐτοῦ μεθύων τῆς κεφαλῆς Ὀρέστης
The phrase 'Ὀρέστης' functions as a vocative of address, yet it is grammatically attached to the genitive phrase 'τῆς κεφαλῆς' ('of the head') via a hyperbaton that separates the noun from its governing preposition 'κατά' (implied in the sense of 'over' or 'upon' the head) and the verb 'κατάξειέ'. More critically, the syntax relies on the elision of a participle or a verbal noun that would normally govern the genitive, creating a construction where 'Ὀρέστης' stands in apposition to the subject of the implied action, or perhaps as a direct address to the audience while the verb 'κατάξειέ' (aorist subjunctive of κατακτείνω, 'to kill down') takes the genitive 'αὐτοῦ' ('of him') as the object of the killing, with 'τῆς κεφαλῆς' indicating the specific part of the body targeted. However, the most striking feature is the use of the genitive 'τῆς κεφαλῆς' with 'κατάξειέ' (or the implied 'κατακτείνω'), which is an unusual construction for a verb typically taking a direct accusative object; this may reflect a colloquial or comic distortion of standard syntax to emphasize the violence of the act, or it could be a rare instance of the genitive of the whole with a verb of killing, though the latter is not standard Attic usage. The reference to Orestes here is likely ironic, given that Orestes is a figure associated with madness and matricide, and the speaker is suggesting that a drunken man would kill him, or perhaps that Orestes himself is the one being killed in this drunken state, playing on the tragic figure's notoriety in a burlesque context.