Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae 533

ed. Eugene O'Neill, Jr.

Thesmophoriazusae. Aristophanes. ed. Eugene O'Neill, Jr.. New York. 1938.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Current edition Experimental

Thesmophoriazusae (OCR draft) (English) (English (Anonymous; 1938 compilation). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.)

Provisional text from uncorrected OCR; expect errors.

Editions (1)
Θεσμοφοριάζουσαι Perseus (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 2. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.) — 533 focus
Translations (1)
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.) — 533 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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οὐδʼ ὡς τὸν ἄνδρα τῷ πελέκει γυνὴ κατεσπόδησεν,
The verb κατεσπόδησεν (perfect active indicative of κατασπόδαζω) is a rare hapax legomenon in the extant corpus of Aristophanes, constructed here with the accusative of the person and the dative of the instrument. While the root σπόδαζω (to trample or stamp) is known from comedy, the prefixation with κατά- in this specific transitive sense of 'trampling a man into submission' or 'crushing him with a shoe' is unique to this passage. The construction relies on the audience's recognition of the hyperbolic violence of the image—a woman subduing a man with a simple shoe (πέδη) using a war-hatchet (πέλεκυς) as a metaphor for the instrument of punishment—rather than a literal description of an event. The perfect tense implies a resulting state of being 'shoe-bound' or 'trampled down' rather than the action itself, emphasizing the completed humiliation of the husband.

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οὐδʼ ὡς ὑπὸ τῇ πυέλῳ κατώρυξέν ποτʼ—
The verb κατώρυξεν (aorist of κατωρύσσω) is used here with a prepositional phrase ὑπὸ τῇ πυέλῳ ('under the door') to describe the act of digging a tunnel. While κατωρύσσω typically implies 'digging down' or 'undermining' in a military or structural sense (e.g., undermining walls), its application to a domestic setting where a character (here, the husband Mnesilochus) is literally or metaphorically 'tunneling' out from beneath a door (or potentially a reference to the specific mechanism of the door itself) is a comic distortion of the word's usual high-register or military context. The phrase likely alludes to the absurdity of the situation: a grown man resorting to the labor of a thief or siege-engineer to escape the women's festival, highlighting the inversion of social roles central to the play.

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ἁχαρνικὴ τὸν πατέρα.
The adjective ἁχαρνικὴ is a rare, coined formation meaning 'belonging to the Akharnians' or 'like an Akharnian.' It is a hapax legomenon in Aristophanes, constructed from the deme name Ἀχαρναί (Acharnae) plus the adjectival suffix -ικ- (as in Ἀττικὴ 'Attic'), with the initial alpha treated as long or the preceding article ἁ (the) elided/contracted in a specific way characteristic of comic diction. In this context, the character (likely a woman pretending to be an Akharnian or mocking one) uses it to characterize the father as rough, rustic, or aggressive, evoking the specific reputation of the Acharnian deme, known for its martial spirit and the famous character of Dicaeopolis in the *Acharnians*. The construction relies on the audience's knowledge of the specific social stereotypes associated with the deme rather than a generic meaning of 'rural'.