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Aeschylus: For of what evils is he not the cause?

Aeschylus: This man has not shown us any advance guards,

Aeschylus: and giving birth in the sacred places,

1080

Aeschylus: and mixed with their brothers,

Aeschylus: 'And [she] says that living is not living?'

Aeschylus: And from these our city

Aeschylus: he was filled up with scribes.

Aeschylus: and of the buffoonish monkeys of the people

1085

Aeschylus: deceiving the people always,

Aeschylus: 'No one is able to carry a torch.'

Aeschylus: even now from lack of exercise.

Dionysus: By Zeus, not at all, so that I should have been seen.

Dionysus: To the Athenians laughing, when indeed

1090

Dionysus: a certain man is walking slowly, stooping down.

Dionysus: a white, fat fellow left behind.

Dionysus: And doing terrible things; and then the potters.

Dionysus: They are beating at the gates.

Dionysus: belly, ribs, haunches, rump,

1095

Dionysus: but the one being struck with the flat parts

Dionysus: farting loudly

Dionysus: blowing the torch, he was fleeing.

Frogs. 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)

Βάτραχοι Perseus (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 2. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.) — 1078 focus

Αἰσχύλος

ποίων δὲ κακῶν οὐκ αἴτιός ἐστʼ;

οὐ προαγωγοὺς κατέδειξʼ οὗτος,

καὶ τικτούσας ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς,
1080

καὶ μιγνυμένας τοῖσιν ἀδελφοῖς,

καὶ φασκούσας οὐ ζῆν τὸ ζῆν;

κᾆτʼ ἐκ τούτων ἡ πόλις ἡμῶν

ὑπογραμματέων ἀνεμεστώθη

καὶ βωμολόχων δημοπιθήκων
1085

ἐξαπατώντων τὸν δῆμον ἀεί,

λαμπάδα δʼ οὐδεὶς οἷός τε φέρειν

ὑπʼ ἀγυμνασίας ἔτι νυνί.

Διόνυσος

μὰ Δίʼ οὐ δῆθʼ, ὥστʼ ἐπαφαυάνθην

Παναθηναίοισι γελῶν, ὅτε δὴ
1090

βραδὺς ἄνθρωπός τις ἔθει κύψας

λευκὸς πίων ὑπολειπόμενος

καὶ δεινὰ ποιῶν· κᾆθʼ οἱ Κεραμῆς

ἐν ταῖσι πύλαις παίουσʼ αὐτοῦ

γαστέρα πλευρὰς λαγόνας πυγήν,
1095

ὁ δὲ τυπτόμενος ταῖσι πλατείαις

ὑποπερδόμενος

φυσῶν τὴν λαμπάδʼ ἔφευγεν.

Translations (1)

Frogs (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Matthew Dillon). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.) — 1078 focus

Aeschylus

Of what crimes is he not guilty?

Didn't he show pimps,

women giving birth in temples,

sleeping with their brothers,

claiming that life is not life?
1255

And then our state

is filled with these bureaucrats

and oafish democratic apes

always cheating the people,

and there's no one able to carry the torch
1260

any more because of lack of training.

Dionysus

No sir, not any more! So that I laughed

myself dry at the Panathenaic games, when

some slow guy ran, hunched over,

pale, drunk, left behind
1265

and doing miserably. And then the folks of the Ceramicus

at the gates hit his

stomach, ribs, sides, butt,

and he, getting whacked with their hands,

broke wind,
1270

blew out the torch and ran away.

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

1084. mvp-tlg0019-tlg009-sanjaya-com-eng1-52

Line 1084

ὑπογραμματέων ἀνεμεστώθη

The verb ἀνεμεστώθη (aorist passive indicative of ἀνεμιοῦν, attested only here in the extant corpus of Aristophanes) is a hapax legomenon constructed from ἀνήμι ('to empty') and the intensive or causative prefix ἀνέ-. In this context, it functions as a vivid, comic neologism describing the scribes' stomachs as having been 'emptied out' or 'hollowed' by hunger, playing on the physical sensation of the 'scribes' (ὑπογραμματέων) being so impoverished they are literally air-filled or empty. The form is a rare instance of Aristophanic morphological invention where a compound verb is formed on the spot to suit the metrical and comic necessity of describing a state of extreme destitution.

Aristophanes Frogs 1078

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