1
Coarseness, he says, in words, vulgarity and ribaldry are present in Aristophanes, but not at all in Menander; obviously, for the uneducated, ordinary person is captivated by what the former says, but the educated man will be displeased. I refer to antitheses and similar endings and plays on words. For of these Menander does make use with proper consideration and rarely, believing that they should be treated with care, but Aristophanes employs them frequently, inopportunely, and frigidly; for his punning is applauded, he says, in because he soused the bankers - Though they never were that but damn curs,This quotation is not found in any collection of the fragments of Aristophanes (Bernardakis). The play on words in the Greek consists in the change of the initial letters of the words tamias (treasurers) and Lamias, fabulous creatures such as the bugbears with which children are frightened by their nurses. and This fellow blows an ill north-east or calumny, Knights, 437. In the Greek north-east and calumny both have the same endings in -ias, characteristic of the names of winds. and Give him a belly-punch in his bowels and guts, Knights, 454. The play here consists in the use of gastrize, usually meaning stuff the belly with food, as punch in the belly. The language is intentionally coarse as being characteristic of the Sausage-dealer, Cleon’s rival for political leadership. and By laughter driven I soon shall be in Laughter-town,Kock, Com. Att. Frag. i. p. 546, no. 618. The play is on the word gelôs laughter and the city of Gela in Sicily. and Whatever shall I do to you, you wretched pot, When gone the way of pots?Kock, ibid. p. 543, no. 593. The speaker seems to be about to smash a pot in order to get some ostraka or potsherds on which to inscribe the name of the politician for whose ostracism he desires to vote. and Since, women, what he does to us are evils wild, For one who e’en himself in the wild-greens market grew, Women Celebrating the Thesmophoria, 455. One of the assembled women is arraigning Euripides for the wrongs he has done to the sex in his tragedies. The reference in the second line is to the then current story that the poet’s mother earned her living by selling wild greens and vegetables. and But look, the moths have eaten up my plumes entire, Acharnians, 1110. The speaker is the general Lamachus, who comes on the scene in his full officer’s regalia. The word for moth in Greek is trichobros hair-eater. and Lam. I say, bring here my shield’s round orb all Gorgon-faced. Dic. I say, hand me a flat-cake’s orb all faced with cheese,The first line is spoken by Lamachus, who has been ordered to lead out his forces for the defence of the frontier in blustery wintry weather. Everything he says is parodied by the pacifist Dicaeopolis, the charcoal-burner, who for his part is preparing for a grand banquet. and many things of the same sort. Moreover, in his diction there are tragic, comic, pompous, and prosaic elements, obscurity, vagueness, dignity, and elevation, loquacity and sickening nonsense. And with all these differences and dissimilarities his use of words does not give to each kind its fitting and appropriate use; I mean, for example, to a king his dignity, to an orator his eloquence, to a woman her artlessness, to an ordinary man his prosaic speech, to a market-lounger his vulgarity; but he assigns to his characters as if by lot such words as happen to turn up, and you could not tell whether the speaker is son or father, a rustic or a god, or an old woman or a hero.
