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SCENES FROM AN ILL-SPENT YOUTH (ARISTOPHANES, KNIGHTS 411–12)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

S. Douglas Olson
S. Douglas Olson*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota and Freiburg Institute for Advanced Study
*
sdolson@umn.edu
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Extract

      ἔγωγε νὴ τοὺς κονδύλους, οὓς πολλὰ δὴ ᾽πὶ πολλοῖς
      ἠνεσχόμην ἐκ παιδίου, μαχαιρίδων τε πληγάς

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Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , December 2016 , pp. 774 - 775
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

ἔγωγε νὴ τοὺς κονδύλους, οὓς πολλὰ δὴ ᾽πὶ πολλοῖς
ἠνεσχόμην ἐκ παιδίου, μαχαιρίδων τε πληγάς

In response to the Paphlagonian's insistence that he will never be outdone in shamelessness, given his close association with the Agora (Ar. Knights [= Eq.] 409–10), the Sausage-Seller offers his own set of dubious political and social credentials, describing how as a good-for-nothing boy he endured countless punches (κόνδυλοι, literally ‘knuckles’) and μαχαιρίδων τε πληγάς.Footnote 1 Translators and editors, seemingly anticipating the mention of thefts of meat in the Sausage-Seller's continuation of his account of his youthful misadventures at Eq. 417–20, routinely take this as a reference to attacks with butchers’ knives.Footnote 2 But the context suggests fast summary blows of a sort judged appropriate for disciplining an underage trouble-maker, not assaults with a deadly weapon, and the lexicographers are agreed in any case that μαχαιρίδες was the Attic word for ‘barbers’ shears’,Footnote 3 i.e. a set of spring shears, made of a single U-shaped piece of metal with two overlapping blades at the ends (in contrast to modern pivot scissors, which consist of two separate blade-handle pieces linked in the middle).Footnote 4 Barbers’ shops were a common place for Athenian men to sit and gossip,Footnote 5 and what the Sausage-Seller presumably means is that he hung about them with everyone else, but that the proprietors occasionally struck him with the standard tool of their trade to drive him away, perhaps for verbal insolence, an attempt to filch something from one of the customers, or the like.

References

1 Thanks are due to Benjamin W. Millis and the anonymous referee for this journal.

2 e.g. W. Ribbeck (ed.), Aristophanes, Ritter (Berlin, 1867), 93 translates ‘Messerschlägen’; R.A. Neil (ed.), The Knights of Aristophanes (Cambridge, 1901), 63 glosses the word (in the singular) ‘a small cook's or carver's knife’; B.B. Rogers (ed. and trans.), Aristophanes I (Loeb Classical Library, 178) (Cambridge, MA and London, 1924), 163 translates ‘hard-handled butchers’ knives’ (the adjective seemingly representing an attempt to deal with the fact that these are expressly called ‘blows’ rather than ‘stabs’, ‘slashes’ vel sim.); LSJ (19259) s.v. μαχαιρίς glosses ‘butcher's cleaver, Ar. Eq. 412’; A.H. Sommerstein (ed.), Knights (The Comedies of Aristophanes, 2) (Warminster, 1981), 51 translates ‘slashes of butchers’ knives’; and J. Henderson (ed. and trans.), Aristophanes Acharnians · Knights (Loeb Classical Library, 178) (Cambridge, MA and London, 1998), 283 translates ‘knife slashes’.

3 Ptol. Ascal. p. 402.9–10 μαχαίρας μὲν ὁμοίως ἡμῖν λέγουσιν οἱ Ἀττικοί, μαχαιρίδας δὲ τὰς τῶν κουρέων (‘Attic-speakers say machairai [“knives”] just as we do, but refer to barbers’ tools as machairides’) ~ [Ammon. gramm.] 306 μάχαιρα καὶ μαχαιρὶς διαϕέρει. μάχαιραν μὲν γὰρ ὁμοίως ἡμῖν λέγουσιν Ἀττικοί, μαχαιρίδας δὲ τὰς τῶν κουρέων (‘machaira and machairis are different; for Attic-speakers say machaira [“knife”] just as we do, but refer to barbers’ tools as machairides’); Moer. μ 10 μαχαιρίδες· αἱ μάχαιραι τῶν κουρέων Ἀττικοί· μάχαιραι κοινόν (‘machairides: the machairai used by barbers, [thus] Attic-speakers; machairai [is] the common term’); [Hdn.] Philet. 108 μαχαιρίδες καὶ μάχαιραι· μαχαιρίδες μὲν γὰρ αἱ τῶν κουρέων, μάχαιραι δὲ αἱ τῶν μαγείρων (‘machairides and machairai: for machairides are barbers’ tools, whereas machairai are butchers’ tools’); Poll. 2.32 (a barber's equipment includes combs, a razor, a razor-case and μαχαιρίδας, also known as κουρίδας); 10.140 (citing Cratin. fr. 39 ‘barbers’ machairai … with which we shear the sheep and the shepherds’ and Eup. fr. 300); Phot. μ 151 (also citing Eupolis, but without quoting the text). Cf. Ar. Ach. 849, where Cratinus is mocked for having his hair cut ‘adulterer style’ μιᾷ μαχαίρᾳ (lit. ‘with a single knife’, i.e. not with μαχαιρίδες but with an instrument with a single blade); Lucian, Ind. 29 (μαχαιρίδες in a list of barber's equipment, presumably as a learned Atticism, along with a razor and a mirror); Alciphron, 3.30.1 (again of a barber's equipment, and again presumably as a learned Atticism). At 10.104, Pollux includes μαχαιρίδες among cooks’ equipment (μαγειρικά), but the only evidence he offers in support of this alternative interpretation is Eq. 412 (Ἀριστοϕάνους γοῦν ἐν Ἱππεῦσιν ὁ μάγειρος λέγει ‘μαχαιρίδων τε πληγάς’, ‘In Aristophanes’ Knights, at any rate, the cook says “and blows of machairides”’), suggesting that, when he added this supplementary book to the Onomasticon (cf. 10.1–2), he was misled by a source that identified the Sausage-Seller as a μάγειρος.

4 The distinction between shears and a barber's razor was drawn already by Nicolson, F.W., ‘Greek and Roman barbers’, HSPh 2 (1891), 53–4Google Scholar, although without consideration of its implications for the passage from Knights. The action at Eq. 411–12 is already implicitly set in barbers’ shops by J. Pickering, A Greek and English Lexicon, Adapted to the Authors Read in the Colleges and Schools of the United States (Boston, 1832), s.v. μαχαιρίς, although he took the word to mean ‘razor’ there.

5 e.g. Ar. Av. 1440–1 with N. Dunbar (ed.), Aristophanes Birds (Oxford, 1995), ad loc.; Pl. 337–8; Eup. fr. 194; Lys. 23.3, 34.20; Theophr. Char. 11.9 with J. Diggle (ed.), Theophrastus Characters (Cambridge, 2004), ad loc.; fr. 577; Men. Sam. 510–12; and see Nicolson (n. 4), 42–3.