Aristophanes Wasps 826

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Wasps. Aristophanes. . 2026-09-08.

Current edition Experimental

English (Sanjaya, generated; selected passages) (OCR draft) (English) (Source: pnadelofficial/aristophanes-sanjaya, commit c319590c139e5603e71f0699caa0663d823af8ad. Machine-generated source annotations retained; see Sanjaya import audit for coverage and limitations.)

Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.

Editions (1)
Σφῆκες Perseus (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 1. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.) — 863-890a focus
Translations (1)
Wasps (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Anonymous; 1938 compilation). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.) — 826 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 828

ἡ Θρᾷττα προσκαύσασα πρώην τὴν χύτραν —
The term Θρᾷττα (Thratta) is a specific designation for a Thracian slave, a figure type frequently employed in Old Comedy to represent the 'barbarian' household staff. In this context, the designation is not merely descriptive but functions as a metonymic marker for the character's role as a domestic servant who manages the household hearth (the 'cooking' of the pot), reflecting the Athenian anxiety and familiarity with the presence of non-Greek slaves in the oikos. The use of the aorist participle προσκαύσασα (having added fuel to) is syntactically standard for an action preceding the main verb, but semantically it highlights the immediate, active agency of the slave in the domestic sphere, contrasting with the passive role often assigned to female citizens in the same period.

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Line 844b

χοιροκομεῖον Ἑστίας.
The phrase χοιροκομεῖον Ἑστίας ('the pig-shearing of Hestia') is a rare and jarring collocation. While χοιροκομεῖον (literally a place for shearing pigs, or perhaps a specific ritual cutting) appears elsewhere in comedy as a nonsense word or a pun, its attribution to Hestia is highly irregular. Hestia is the goddess of the hearth and domestic order, typically associated with the sacrificial fire and the domestic hearth itself, not the slaughter or shearing of pigs. This likely represents a comic distortion of the ritual of the 'Hestia' festival or a specific, perhaps local, sacrifice where a pig was offered, twisted by Aristophanes to sound like a bureaucratic or absurdly technical term for a specific, perhaps illicit, domestic activity. The phrase may also be a pun on the word χοιροκομεῖον as a place where pigs are 'shorn' (i.e., killed) for the hearth, playing on the double meaning of 'shearing' as both cutting wool and slaughtering animals in a comic, euphemistic sense.

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Line 853

ὁτιὴ ʼπελαθόμην τοὺς καδίσκους ἐκφέρειν.
The form ὁτιὴ is a crux of textual transmission. While some manuscripts (e.g., Venetus A) read ὁτιὶ or ὅτι, the reading ὁτιὴ (a dialectal or metrical variant of ὅτι with an aspirate) is attested in the tradition but widely considered a corruption or a scribal attempt to represent the colloquial pronunciation of the particle. The more robust textual tradition, supported by the context of the character Bdelycleon's mockery of his father's dialect, often favors ὅτι or the dative form ὅτινι in similar constructions, though the specific reading ὁτιὴ here highlights the play's engagement with phonetic variation in Attic speech.

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Line 855

ἐγὼ γὰρ εἶχον τούσδε τοὺς ἀρυστίχους.
The adjective ἀρυστίχους is a hapax legomenon in Aristophanes, derived from the verb ἀρυστός (drawn up) or potentially related to the noun ἄρυστος (drawn, as in a list). In the context of the play, where Bdelycleon is listing the crimes of the old men, this likely refers to the 'list of charges' or 'indictment' drawn up against them, playing on the technical legal sense of drawing up a bill of indictment (ἄρρησις). The term is highly specialized, marking the specific legal procedure of compiling a list of accusations, which is central to the satirical critique of the law courts in the play.