kneaded his bread in a round mortar.[1] How ought I to call it henceforth?
Soc. How? Call it καρδόπη, as you call Σωστράτη.
Strep. Καρδόπη, in the feminine?
Soc. For so you speak it rightly.
Strep. But that would make it καρδόπη Κλεωνύμη.
Soc. You must learn one thing more about names, what are masculine, and what of them are feminine.
Strep. I know what are female.
Soc. Tell me, pray.
Strep. Lysilla, Philinna, Clitagora, Demetria.
Soc. What names are masculine?
Strep. Thousands: Philoxenus, Melesias, Amynias.
Soc. But, you wretch! these are not masculine.
Strep. Are they not males with you?
Soc. By no means: for how would you call to Amynias,[2] if you met him?
Strep. How would I call? Thus: "Come hither, come hither, Amynia!"
Soc. Do you see? you call Amynias a woman.
Strep. Is it not then with justice, who does not serve in the army?[3] But why should I learn these things, which we all know?
- ↑ "Whether, in this obscure passage, the round mortar implies Sicily, as it does in Vesp. (924, Br. ed.), I do not undertake to say; but in that case the meaning would perhaps be, that Cleonymus, through the interest of his patron Cleon, had obtained some appointment in that island, where, like Laches, he had made considerable pickings." Mitch.
- ↑ This line will serve to illustrate a principle in the Greek language little known and less noticed: when a finite verb and a participle are accompanied by an objective case of a noun, that objective case depends on the participle in preference to the finite verb. Mr. Walsh (note ad Acharn. p. 120, fin.) has grievously erred in this matter. Eur. Hippol. 659, τῆς σῆς τόλμης εἴσομαι γεγευμένος. "The Greeks always refer the participle to the same noun as the verb, even though the case of the noun will not suit the construction of the participle." Hermann. Comp. Ran. 1176.
- ↑ "Instead of the usual ὅστις, I have given ἥτις from the Ravenna MS., as suiting what has preceded, and very contemptuous." Hermann. "ὅστις fits Strepsiades better, as he just before said τὸν Ἀμ." Dindorf.
"Soc. There, there! you make a wench of him at once.
Strep. And fit it is for one who shuns the field;
A coward ought not to be called a man." Cumberland.
