[378] Because of the new colour which fear had lent his chlamys. [379] Meaning, that he deserts his men in mid-campaign, leaving them to look after the enemy. [380] Ancient King of Athens. This was one of the twelve statues, on the pedestals of which the names of the soldiers chosen for departure on service were written. The decrees were also placarded on them. [381] The trierarchs stopped up some of the holes made for the oars, in order to reduce the number of rowers they had to supply for the galleys; they thus saved the wages of the rowers they dispensed with. [382] The mina was equivalent to about £3 10s. [383] Which is the same thing, since a mina was worth a hundred drachmae. [384] For _cottabos_ see note above, p. 177. [Footnote 287. Transcriber.] [385] _Syrmaea_, a kind of purgative syrup much used by the Egyptians, made of antiscorbutic herbs, such as mustard, horse-radish, etc. [386] As wine-pots or similar vessels. [387] These verses and those which both Trygaeus and the son of Lamachus quote afterwards are borrowed from the 'Iliad.' [388] Boulomachus is derived from [Greek: boulesthai] and [Greek: mach_e] to wish for battle; Clausimachus from [Greek: klaein] and [Greek: mach_e], the tears that battles cost. The same root, [Greek: mach_e], battle, is also contained in the name Lamachus. [389] A distich borrowed from Archilochus, a celebrated poet of the seventh century B.C., born at Paros, and the author of odes, satires, epigrams and elegies. He sang his own shame. 'Twas in an expedition against Saïs, not the town in Egypt as the similarity in name might lead one to believe, but in Thrace, that he had cast away his buckler. "A mighty calamity truly!" he says without shame. "I shall buy another." LYSISTRATA INTRODUCTION The 'Lysistrata,' the third and concluding play of the War and Peace series, was not produced till ten years later than its predecessor, the 'Peace,' viz. in 411 B.C. It is now the twenty-first year of the War, and there seems as little prospect of peace as ever. A desperate state of things demands a desperate remedy, and the Poet proceeds to suggest a burlesque solution of the difficulty.