Page:Frogs (Murray 1912).djvu/130

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122
ARISTOPHANES

joke to call her a "Greengroceress." (Cf. Ach. 457, 478; Knights, 18 ff.; Thesm. 387, 456, 910, and the "beetroot and book juice," below, p. 70.) Possibly the poet was at some time of his life a vegetarian.

P. 64, l. 842, Blind-beggar-bard; crutch-and-cripple playwright.]—Euripides seems to have used more or less realistic costumes. With him the shipwrecked Menelaus looked shipwrecked, the lame Telephus lame; Electra, complaining of the squalor of her peasant life, was dressed like a peasant-woman. It is curious how much anger this breach in the tradition seems to have created. We are told that Aeschylus dressed all his characters in gorgeous sacerdotal robes. Yet I wonder if we moderns would have felt any very great difference between his Philoctetes or Telephus (in both of which cases the lameness is essential) and that of Euripides.

P. 64, l. 844, Strike not thine heart, &c.]—A tragic line, the source not known.

P. 64, l. 847, A black lamb.]—As sacrifced to appease Typhon, the infernal storm-god.

P. 64, l. 849, Cretan dancing-solos.]—Possibly a reference to his Cretan tragedies (The Cretans, The Cretan Women); perhaps merely a style of dancing accompanied by song.

P. 65, l. 855, Knock out all the Telephus.]—(Cf. "That'll knock the Sordello out of him"), i.e. his brains, which consist of Telephus in masses. No play of Euripides is so often mocked at.

P. 66, l. 877, Founts of Quotation.]—Literally "makers of Gnômae" or quotable apophthegms.

P. 68, l. 910, Phrynichus.]—The tragic poet, predecessor of Aeschylus, not the oligarchical conspirator.