[638] Which the archer had driven in to tighten up the rope binding the prison to the pillory. [639] Perseus was returning from the land of the Gorgons mounted upon Pegasus, when, while high up in the air, he saw Andromeda bound to a rock and exposed to the lusts and voracity of a sea monster. Touched by the misfortune and the beauty of the princess, he turned the monster to stone by showing him the head of Medusa, released Andromeda and married her.--Euripides had just produced a tragedy on this subject. [640] Mnesilochus speaks alternately in his own person and as though he were Andromeda, the effect being comical in the extreme. [641] A notorious glutton, mentioned also in the 'Peace.' [642] Through Euripides, his father-in-law. [643] On the occasion of the presentation of the tragedy of 'Andromeda,' in which the nymph Echo plays an important part. [644] Unknown; Aristophanes plays upon the similarity of name. [645] That is, the Thesmophoriae, viz. Demeter and Persephoné. [646] Throughout the whole scene the Scythian speaks with a grotesque barbarian accent. [647] The pun depends in the Greek on the similarity of the final syllables of [Greek: subin_e], and [Greek: katabin_esi]. It can be given literally in English. THE ECCLESIAZUSAE or Women In Council INTRODUCTION The 'Ecclesiazusae, or Women in Council,' was not produced till twenty years after the preceding play, the 'Thesmophoriazusae' (at the Great Dionysia of 392 B.C.), but is conveniently classed with it as being also largely levelled against the fair sex. "It is a broad, but very amusing, satire upon those ideal republics, founded upon communistic principles, of which Plato's well-known treatise is the best example. His 'Republic' had been written, and probably delivered in the form of oral lectures at Athens, only two or three years before, and had no doubt excited a considerable sensation. But many of its most startling principles had long ago been ventilated in the Schools."