[477] An intimate friend of Euripides, who is said to have worked with him on his Tragedies, to have been 'ghost' to him in fact. [478] An allusion to Euripides' obscure birth; his mother had been, so it was said, a vegetable-seller in the public market. [479] Euripides had introduced every variety of character into his pieces, whereas Aeschylus only staged divinities or heroes. [480] There are two Cycni, one, the son of Ares, was killed by Heracles according to the testimony of Hesiod in his description of the "Shield of Heracles"; the other, the son of Posidon, who, according to Pindar, perished under the blows of Achilles. It is not known in which Tragedy of Aeschylus this character was introduced. [481] Memnon, the son of Aurora, was killed by Achilles; in the list of the Tragedies of Aeschylus there is one entitled 'Memnon.' [482] These two were not poets, but Euripides supposes them disciples of Aeschylus, because of their rude and antiquated manners. [483] Clitophon and Theramenes were elegants of effeminate habits and adept talkers. [484] A proverb which was applied to versatile people; the two Greek names [Greek: Chios] and [Greek: Keios] might easily be mistaken for one another. Both, of course, are islands of the Cyclades. [485] A verse from the 'Myrmidons' of Aeschylus; here Achilles is Aeschylus himself. [486] The 'Persae' of Aeschylus (produced 472 B.C.) was received with transports of enthusiasm, reviving as it did memories of the glorious defeat of Xerxes at Salamis, where the poet had fought, only a few years before, 480 B.C. [487] Nothing is known of this Pantacles, whom Eupolis, in his 'Golden Age,' also describes as awkward ([Greek: skaios]). [488] Aristophanes had by this time modified his opinion of this general, whom he had so flouted in 'The Acharnians.' [489] Son of Telamon, the King of Salamis and brother of Ajax. [490] The wife of Proetus, King of Argos. Bellerophon, who had sought refuge at the court of this king after the accidental murder of his brother Bellerus, had disdained her amorous overtures. Therefore she denounced him to her husband as having wanted to attempt her virtue and urged him to cause his death. She killed herself immediately after the departure of the young hero. [491] Cephisophon, Euripides' friend, is said to have seduced his wife. [492] Meaning, they have imitated Sthenoboea in everything; like her, they have conceived adulterous passions and, again like her, they have poisoned themselves. [493] Lycabettus, a mountain of Attica, just outside the walls of Athens, the "Arthur's Seat" of the city. Parnassus, the famous mountain of Phocis, the seat of the temple and oracle of Delphi and the home of the Muses. The whole passage is, of course, in parody of the grandiloquent style of Aeschylus. [494] An allusion to Oeneus, King of Aetolia, and to Telephus, King of Mysia; characters put upon the stage by Euripides.