Aristophanes Knights 887

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

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Knights. 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

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

Translations (2)
Knights (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Anonymous; 1938 compilation). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.) — 887 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.) — 887 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

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Line 889

τοῖσιν τρόποις τοῖς σοῖσιν ὥσπερ βλαυτίοισι χρῶμαι.
The adjective βλαυτίοισι (dative plural) is a hapax legomenon in extant comedy, derived from βλαύς (blauōs), meaning 'stupid' or 'foolish' (cf. βλακώδης). Its usage here is semantically charged: the Knight (Demus) claims to use the Paphlagonian's 'stupid ways' to defeat him, creating a paradoxical irony where the master of the game adopts the very incompetence of his rival as a tactical tool. This lexical rarity and the specific semantic weight of the term—distinguishing it from more generic terms for foolishness like μωρός—warrant note for its contribution to the play's satire of political incompetence.

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Line 892

οὐκ ἐς κόρακας ἀποφθερεῖ βύρσης κάκιστον ὄζων;
The phrase οὐκ ἐς κόρακας functions as a fixed idiom meaning 'to perish utterly' or 'to be destroyed completely,' literally 'to go to the crows.' While the idiom itself is attested elsewhere (e.g., in Aristophanes' *Knights* 1074, *Clouds* 1074), its usage here in a question expecting a negative answer ('he won't go to the crows?') creates a specific rhetorical effect: it emphasizes the speaker's certainty that the subject (the Sausage-Seller, in context) is too vile or protected to suffer such a fate, or conversely, that his corruption is so profound he is already beyond the reach of standard destruction. The verb ἀποφθερεῖ (future active indicative of ἀποφθέρνω, 'to destroy') is used in a context where the Sausage-Seller is accused of being the worst of the skins (βύρσης), yet the speaker suggests he will not be destroyed but rather will continue to flourish or persist in his depravity. The construction is a rhetorical question that functions as a strong assertion.

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Line 909

ἰδοὺ δέχου κέρκον λαγῶ τὠφθαλμιδίω περιψῆν.
The adjective περιψῆν (peripsēn) is a hapax legomenon in the extant corpus, formed from περι- (around) and ψῆν (a rare form related to ψῆχος or perhaps a dialectal variant of ψῆμα, 'to spread' or 'to cover'). In this context, it functions as a compound epithet describing the hare, implying a 'well-spread' or 'fluffed-up' appearance, likely alluding to the theatrical convention of stuffing costumes to exaggerate the animal's form for comedic effect. The lexical rarity and the specific theatrical implication of the compound make this a crucial point of semantic clarification.