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ἀνὴρ γεγένηται τοῖσι πολλοῖς τοὐβολοῦ.
The phrase τοὐβολοῦ is a colloquial contraction of τὸν ὀβολόν, the smallest silver coin in circulation. While the genitive case here functions adverbially to denote price or cost ('at the price of an obol'), the use of the accusative form in the genitive slot (or the perception of the oblique case as a fixed idiom) reflects the specific syntactic habits of Old Comedy, where the genitive of price often appears with the article in a way that blurs the distinction between the accusative of respect and the genitive of value. More significantly, the phrase as a whole is a well-known idiom for 'a cheap man' or 'a miser,' yet the literal syntax 'a man has become of the obol' (i.e., 'has become worth only an obol') relies on the specific economic context of the Athenian *deme* and the *demos* itself, where an obol was the daily wage for a laborer, implying a reduction of a citizen's status to the bare minimum of subsistence.
Knights. Aristophanes. . 2026-09-08.