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τὰς χοιρίνας ἀριθμοῦσι.
The verb ἀριθμέω (to count) with a direct object in the accusative is standard, but the specific construction here—'they count the piglets'—is a metonymic usage where the counting of young pigs serves as a metaphor for the meticulous, bureaucratic, and often absurdly literal accounting performed by the chorus of old men (the 'wasps') in their judicial deliberations. This reflects the play's central satire of the Athenian legal system, where citizens are depicted as obsessively tracking trivialities (like the number of piglets in a specific district) rather than substantive justice, a theme developed throughout the parabasis and the trial of the dog. The phrase is not merely descriptive of agricultural activity but is a deliberate rhetorical device to characterize the chorus's hyper-literalism and their transformation into 'jurors' who count everything but judge nothing.
Wasps. Aristophanes. . 2026-09-08.