[22] Their reputation has continued down to modern days. “I was able to partake of some fine eels of an extraordinary size, which had been sent to us by the Greek primates of the city. They were caught in the Lake Copais, which, as in ancient times, still supplies the country round with game and wild-fowl.”--Hughes’s Travels in Greece, i. 33. (Note to Walsh’s Aristophanes.) [23] The old commentators assign the story to Æsop. The eagle had eaten the beetle’s young ones; the beetle, in revenge, rolled the eagle’s eggs out of her nest: so often, that the latter made complaint to her patron Jupiter, who gave her leave to lay her eggs in his bosom. The beetle flew up to heaven, and buzzed about the god’s head, who jumped up in a hurry to catch his tormentor, quite forgetting his duty as nurse, and so the eggs fell out and were broken. [24] Her name, like most of those used in these comedies, is significant. It means, “Dissolver of the Army.” [25] Hom. Iliad, vi. 490. Hector to Andromache:-- “No more--but hasten to thy tasks at home; There guide the spindle and direct the loom.” --POPE. [26] Susarion. So also the Roman censor, Metellus Numidicus: “It is not possible to live with them in any comfort--or to live without them at all.”--Aul. Gellius, i. 6. [27] Lucian, Dial. ‘Piscator.’ [28] For fear lest they should desert at once to the enemy. [29] Names thus compounded with ‘_ippos_’ (‘horse’) were much affected by the Athenian aristocracy. ‘_Pheidōn_,’ on the other hand, in the proposed name Pheidōnides, means ‘economical.’ [30] A caricature of the doctrine of Heraclitus, that Heat was the great principle of all things. [31] Eubœa had revolted from its allegiance to Athens some years before this war. Pericles had swept the island with an overwhelming force, banished the chiefs of the oligarchical party, and distributed their lands amongst colonists from Athens. [32] The Greek commentators inform us very particularly by what appliances thunder was imitated on the Athenian stage; either “by rolling leather bags full of pebbles down sheets of brass,” or by “pouring them into a huge brazen caldron.” (See note to Walsh’s Aristoph., p. 302.) But Greek commentators are not to be depended upon in such matters. [33] A doctrine taught by the philosopher Anaxagoras, whose lectures Socrates is said to have attended. [34] A hit, no doubt, at theories of education which were in fashion then, and which have been revived in modern days. Plato, in his treatise on Legislation, advises that the child who is intended for an architect should be encouraged to build toy-houses, the future farmer to make little gardens, &c.--(De Leg., i. 643.) [35] Some of the old commentators say that the disputants were brought upon the stage in the guise of game-cocks; but there are no allusions in the dialogue to justify such an interpretation of the scene.