Abstract

In 394 most editors of the Knights read, cited uniquely from this passage in the lexica, in the sense ‘dry up, parch’, referring, for the condition and appearance of the prisoners after long captivity and privations, to Nub. 186, where the allusion is to the squalor and emaciation of the Socratics. Now Aristophanes' skill in maintaining allusively an image, once a keyword has been supplied, makes me wonder how line 394 was intended to complete the metaphor of the harvest and the crop in 392–3.