Aristophanes Peace 797

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

Table of Contents

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

View: By Scene
← Previous Next →

Peace. 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

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

Translations (2)
Peace (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Anonymous; 1938 compilation). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.) — 797 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.) — 797 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

807. mvp-tlg0019-tlg005-sanjaya-com-eng1-23

Line 807

τὸν χορὸν εἶχον ἁδελφός
The manuscript tradition preserves the reading ἁδελφός ('brother') here, but this creates an insurmountable grammatical and semantic difficulty: the verb ἔχω ('had') requires an accusative object, yet ἁδελφός is nominative, and the notion of 'holding a brother' as a choreographer holds no sense in the context of the play's plot. The consensus among scholars is that ἁδελφός is a corruption of ἁδελφός in the sense of 'the chorus' (a rare metonymy) or, more likely, a dittography or corruption of ἁπλοῦς ('simple') or a specific technical term for a chorus leader, though the exact restoration remains a crux. Some editors have conjectured ἁδελφός for ἁδελφός, but the most compelling solution, supported by the context of the play's satire on the chorus's role, is to read the text as a corruption of ἁπλοῦς or a similar term, with the current reading representing a scribal error that has persisted in the transmission.

811. mvp-tlg0019-tlg005-sanjaya-com-eng1-24

Line 811

γραοσόβαι μιαροὶ τραγομάσχαλοι ἰχθυολῦμαι·
The adjective τραγομάσχαλοι ('goat-axillary' or 'goat-ribbed') is a rare, Aristophanic coinage describing the coarse, hairy underarms of the rustic chorus members, evoking the satyr-like appearance of the 'goat-men' associated with rural festivals and Dionysiac rites. The compound's novelty underscores the grotesque, comic dehumanization of the farmers in this scene.