Aristophanes Lysistrata 781

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

Table of Contents

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

View: By Card
← Previous Next →

Lysistrata. Aristophanes. ed. F. W. Hall, ed. William M. Geldart. Oxford. 1907.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Λυσιστράτη (Greek) (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 2. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.)

Translations (2)
Lysistrata (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Jack Lindsay). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.) — 781 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.) — 781 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

785. mvp-tlg0019-tlg007-sanjaya-com-eng1-35

Line 785

οὕτως ἦν νεανίσκος Μελανίων τις,
The construction οὕτως ἦν with a following noun phrase (νεανίσκος Μελανίων τις) serves as a narrative introduction to a character, a formulaic usage common in comedy and historiography to signal the emergence of a new actor or the focus of a specific anecdote. While the indefinite τις is standard, its placement after the proper name in apposition to the common noun, combined with the demonstrative οὕτως ('such was the case that...' or 'in this manner...'), creates a specific narrative pivot point often found in the parabasis or in the recitation of a *fabula* within the play, distinguishing it from a simple descriptive statement.

796. mvp-tlg0019-tlg007-sanjaya-com-eng1-36

Line 796

τοῦ Μελανίωνος οἱ σώφρονες.
This phrase functions as a sarcastic epithet or ironic tag rather than a full syntactic clause. The genitive τοῦ Μελανίωνος (of Melanion) likely refers to Melanion, a figure mentioned in Aristophanes' lost play *The Babylonians* or potentially conflated with the character Melanthus, though the specific association here relies on lost comic tradition or a specific local Athenian reference not preserved in the standard scholia. The adjective σώφρονες (sober/wise) is used with heavy irony, contrasting the perceived recklessness of the chorus or the situation with the name of a man whose historical or mythical persona might have been associated with folly or a specific negative trait known to the original audience but obscure to modern readers without specific prosopographical knowledge of Athenian comic character types.