Page:Frogs (Murray 1912).djvu/127

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COMMENTARY ON THE FROGS
119

like a barbarian, and was in fact of Thracian birth; (2) that he went about whining—and well he might!—that his political enemies meant to twist the law somehow so as to have him condemned to death. An equally divided vote counted by rights as an acquittal. See also the last two lines of this play.

P. 54, l. 688, All Athenians shall be equal, &c.]—That is, an amnesty should be granted to those implicated in the Oligarchical Revolution led by Phrynichus in 411.

P. 54, l. 694, Become Plataeans.]—When Plataea was destroyed by Sparta in 431, the refugees were granted rights of Athenian citizenship and eventually given land (421) in the territory of Skiône in Chalcidice. The slaves who were enfranchised after Arginusae were apparently sent to join the Plataeans.

P. 56, ll. 718–720, Is the same towards men and money.]—Mr. George Macdonald has convinced me that such is the meaning of this passage. Gold coins were struck at this period (B.C. 407; Scholiast quoting Hellanicus and Philochorus), and were, to judge from those specimens now extant, of exceptional purity. Bronze coins also were struck (Schol. on v. 725) in the year 406–5, and apparently found unsatisfactory, as they were demonetised by the date of the Ecclesiazusae, B.C. 392 (Eccl. 816 ff.). See Köhler in Zeitsch. für Numismatik, xxi. pp. 11 ff. Others take the general sense to be:—

"It has often struck our notice that this city draws the same
Line between her sons true-hearted and the men who cause her shame,