Page:Comedies of Aristophanes (Hickie 1853) vol2.djvu/266

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642

TITLE.

642

642 THE ECCLESIAZUS^. 500-524.

see here ! now we behold our general coming from the As- sembly. Come, hasten every one, and hate to have a beard ' on your jaws. For see ! they have come with this dress on this long while. ^£nter Praocagora and other women from the Assembly, no longer disguised os men.'

Pkax. {addressing the chorus). These measures, O women, which we deliberated on, have turned out successfully. But throw off your cloaks as soon as possible, before any of the men see you ! let the men's shoes go far away ! undo ^ the fastened Laconian shoe-strings ! throw away your staffs ! And do you now [to a female servant^ put them in order. I wish to creep in secretly, before^ my husband sees me, and deposit his garment again whence I took it, and the other things which I brought out.

Cho. Now all the things you spoke of are lying in order. It is your business to instruct us in the rest, by doing what useful thing we shall seem rightly to obey you. For I know I have conversed with no woman clevei'er than you.

Prax. Wait then, in order that I may use you all<r4> as advisers in the office to which I have been just now elected. For there, in the uproar and danger, you have been most courageous.

Blep. (suddenly coming out of his house). Ho you ! whence have you come, Praxagora ?

Prax. What's that to you,^ my dear ?

Blep. " What's that to me ? " How foolishly you ask.

Prax. You certainly will not say, from a paramour.

Blep. Perhaps not from one.*^

Prax. Well now you can put this to the test.

Blep. How ?

Prax. If my head smells of perfume.

' Hence the epithet (raKe(T(p6pog applied to Epicrates, by Plato the comic writer. See note on vs. 71. So the philosophers are called (TaKKoytveiorpotpoi ap. Allien, iv. p. 1(j2.

^ See note on Ran. 1075.

' " Instead of any of tlie other moods the infinitive [with TrpiV] is also admissible." Harper. See KriJger, Gr. Gr. § 54, 17, obs. (i Bernhardy, W. S. p. 400. Mus. Grit. ii. p. 13.

In some MSS. xp'/o'CAtat. See note on Lys. 1243. Cf. Person,

Opusc. p. xciii. Praaf. liec. ]). li.x.

See Kriiger, Gr- Gr. § 48, 3, 8.

" " From two, heUke, not one." Smith.

' For this construction, see note on Pax, 52!).