Aristophanes Wealth 748

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Wealth. 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)
Πλοῦτος Perseus (Aristophanes. Aristophanis Comoediae, Vol. 2. Hall, F. W. and Geldart, William M., editors. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.) — 748 focus
Translations (1)
Wealth (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Anonymous; 1938 compilation). Migrated from Perseus legacy XML; source wording and notes retained. See TEI header and migration inventory.) — 748 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 765

εὐαγγέλιά σε κριβανωτῶν ὁρμαθῷ
The noun ὁρμαθῷ is a hapax legomenon in Aristophanes, occurring only here in the extant corpus. It is a dative of means or instrument ("with the rope of the bakers' news"), forming a rare and striking compound metaphor with εὐαγγέλια (good tidings) and κριβανωτῶν (of the bakers/bakers' ovens). The word itself is etymologically linked to ὁρμάω (to start, rush) or perhaps ὁρμή (impetus), but in this specific context, it is almost certainly a comic coinage referring to a rope used to drag a large baking tray (κριβανός) or perhaps the rope of a cart carrying bread, used here to metaphorically describe the sudden, dragging, or noisy delivery of news. The construction relies on the audience's familiarity with the specific apparatus of Athenian bakeries, a detail not universally known even to advanced students, making this a crucial lexical and semantic clarification rather than a standard syntactic observation.

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Line 769

ὥσπερ νεωνήτοισιν ὀφθαλμοῖς ἐγώ.
The dative plural form νεωνήτοισιν (neōnētoisin) is a rare Doric dialectal variant of the Attic νεανίαις (neaniais, 'to young men') or more likely a dialectal rendering of νεωτερίστοις (neōteristois, 'to the newly initiated'), though in this context it functions as a specific reference to the 'newly initiated' (neōtoi) in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Aristophanes often exploits dialectal variation for comic effect, and here the Doric form may signal a specific social or ritual register, contrasting with the expected Attic phrasing for 'fresh eyes' or 'newly opened eyes.' The phrase alludes to the disorientation of initiates seeing the sacred objects for the first time, a metaphor for Chremylus's sudden enlightenment in the play.