Aristophanes Wasps 1122

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

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Wasps. 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

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

Translations (2)
Wasps (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Anonymous; 1938 compilation). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.) — 1122 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.) — 1122 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 1127

καὶ γὰρ πρότερον ἐπανθρακίδων ἐμπλήμενος
The genitive plural ἐπανθρακίδων is a hapax legomenon in the Aristophanic corpus (and rare in general Attic), deriving from the adjective ἐπανθρακίτης (a 'soot-seller' or one who deals in charcoal). Here it functions as a substantive in the genitive of content (or measure), paralleling constructions like πλήρης ὕδατος. The term is significant for the comedic context of Philocleon's delirious transformation into a wasp, where he imagines himself as a creature of the earth or perhaps alludes to the soot-stained, subterranean conditions of the wasps' nest or the underworld, contrasting with the 'bright' civic life of the jury courts. The form is morphologically regular but semantically opaque without the specific lexical knowledge of the compound.

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Line 1144

ἐν Ἐκβατάνοισι γίγνεται κρόκης χόλιξ;
The phrase ἐν Ἐκβατάνοισι (in Ecbatana) is a hyperbolic geographical marker rather than a literal claim of agricultural practice. Ecbatana, the capital of Media, was famous in Greek literature for its cold climate and distance from Attica, making the cultivation of χόλιξ (a type of wild lettuce or thistle) there absurd. Aristophanes uses this impossible pairing to satirize the obsessive nature of the juror Philocleon, suggesting that his desire to judge cases is so intense that he imagines it occurring even in the most remote and unsuitable locations, thereby exaggerating the ubiquity of the legal process.

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Line 1151

ὡς θερμὸν ἡ μιαρά τί μου κατήρυγεν.
The verb κατήρυγεν (aorist of κατάρωμαι) here takes a direct object in the accusative (μου) with a predicate adjective in the nominative (θερμὸν ἡ μιαρά), a construction that reflects the specific syntax of curses in Attic comedy: the curse is not merely 'upon' someone but 'to be' something, effectively predicating the quality of the curse itself onto the addressee. While the aorist participle ὡς θερμὸν might suggest a temporal or causal clause ('as soon as the wretched one cursed me to be hot'), the context of Bdelycleon's speech suggests a rhetorical inversion where the 'heat' is the result of the curse, a syntactic ambiguity that Aristophanes exploits for comic effect, contrasting the literal heat of the fever with the metaphorical heat of the curse.

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Line 1158

τασδὶ δʼ ἀνύσας † ὑπόδυθι † τὰς Λακωνικάς.
The phrase '† ὑπόδυθι †' is a textual crux; the verb ὑπόδυθι (aorist imperative of ὑποδύω, 'to put on') is metrically impossible in this position within the iambic trimeter and creates a sense of 'putting on' the 'Laconics' that is semantically awkward. Editors have variously conjectured the text, with most accepting the emendation ὑπόδυθι for the transmitted reading or suggesting a corruption where the verb should be something like ὑποδύου (present) or a different verb entirely, such as ὑποδύειν (to undergo) or perhaps a reference to the 'Laconian' style of speech or dress which the character is being told to adopt. The specific issue is the lack of a clear antecedent for what 'Laconics' refers to in this context, leading to the emendation of the verb to make sense of the action.