Aristophanes Knights 691

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.) — 691 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.) — 691 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 702

ἀπολῶ σε νὴ τὴν προεδρίαν τὴν ἐκ Πύλου.
The oath 'νὴ τὴν προεδρίαν τὴν ἐκ Πύλου' (by the presidency from Pylos) is a rare and specific attestation of a formulaic curse in Old Comedy. While oaths by the gods or abstract concepts are common, swearing by a specific political office ('proedria') is highly unusual. This likely alludes to the specific role of the 'proedroi' (presidents) in the Athenian Council (Boule) or Assembly, a position of significant administrative power and prestige during the Peloponnesian War. The reference to Pylos ('ek Pylos') connects the oath to the decisive Athenian victory at Pylos (425 BCE), suggesting the speaker is invoking the glory of that specific military triumph as a guarantee of their threat's severity, or perhaps mocking the officialdom associated with the post-war political climate. The construction itself serves as a hyperbolic threat, grounding the speaker's anger in the tangible authority of the state's leadership and a recent, celebrated victory.

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ἐπὶ τῷ φάγοις ἥδιστʼ ἄν; ἐπὶ βαλλαντίῳ;
The particle ἄν with the optative φάγοις (aorist active optative of φαγεῖν) in this interrogative context expresses a potential or hypothetical condition, roughly 'would you rather eat...?' The construction ἐπὶ + dative here denotes the sphere of preference or the 'basis' for the choice ('on the basis of the [food]?', 'on the basis of the [purse]?'), a usage that shifts the prepositional meaning from spatial to abstract preference, a nuance specific to the comic register of Aristophanes.