“People suffer less because of their enemies than their friends. For they guard against their enemies because they fear them while they remain open to their friends. They too are slippery and likely to conspire.”
“Euripides was the son of Mnêsarkhos or Mnêsarkhidês and Kleitô, who settled in Boiotia as exiles and then in Attica. It is not true that his mother was a vegetable vendor. For she was actually of real highborn lineage as Philokhoros demonstrates.
His mother became pregnant when Xerxes was crossing the Hellespont and gave birth the day the Greeks routed the Persians. At first, he was a painter and then a student of Prodikos among the orators and Socrates for ethics and philosophy. He also learned from Anaxagoras the Klazomenian. But he tried his hand at tragedy after he observed the dangers Anaxagoras faced because of the beliefs he introduced.
Euripides had a grumpy character and was irritable and avoided people. For this reason, he was also believed to be a misogynist. Still, first he married Mnêsilokhos’ daughter Khoirine. With her he fathered Mnesilokhos and Mnesikhardê as well as little Euripidês. He divorced her and remarried another woman whom he also discovered to be unfaithful
He left Athens and when to the court of Arkhelaos, king of the Macedonians, where he lived enjoying the highest honors. But he died thanks to the plot of Arribaios the Macedonian and Krateuas of Thessaly, two poets who were jealous of him and who used 10 minai to convince one of the king’s servants, Lysimakhos, to set the king’s dogs—animals he had trained himself—on Euripides.
But some people record that he was torn apart at night by women instead of dogs when he was sneaking out for a late night meeting with Krateros, Archelaus’ lover [since he was enamored with him too and had a lot of these kinds of lovers]. But there are those who say he was on his way to meet the wife of Nikodikos of Arethousa.
Euripides lived until he was 75 years old and the king had his bones interred at Pella. He wrote 75 plays—although some claim 92—but there are 77 attributed to him. He was victorious 5 times, 4 while alive and once after his death when his nephew, also named Euripides, staged his play. He staged plays for 22 years in a row and performed his last in the 93rd Olympiad.”
“You ate some lotus”: [this proverb is applied to those] who are forgetful of things in the household and are slow in matters of hospitality. It is based on the lotus which imbues one who eats it with forgetfulness.”
“Agamemnon’s sacrifice”: [a proverb] applied to the difficult to persuade and the stubborn. For when Agamemnon was making a sacrifice, the bull was scarcely caught after it fled.” Or, it is because Agamemnon wanted to sacrifice his daughter. And she fled.”
“People suffer less because of their enemies than their friends. For they guard against their enemies because they fear them while they remain open to their friends. They too are slippery and likely to conspire.”
Solon: They [the Amphiktyones] selected this man to be their adviser for war against the Kirrhaians. When they were consulting the oracle about victory, the Pythia said: “you will not capture and raze the tower of this city before the wave of dark-eyed Amphitritê washes onto my precinct as it echoes over the wine-faced sea.”
Solon persuaded them to make Kirrhaia sacred to the god so that the sea would become a neighbor to Apollo’s precinct. And another strategy was devised by Solon against the Kirrhaians. For he turned a river’s water which used to flow in its channel into the city elsewhere.
The Kirrhaians withstood the besiegers by drinking water from wells and from rain. But [Solon] filled the river with hellebore roots and when he believed the water had enough of the drug, he returned it to its course. Then the Kirrhaians took a full portion of this water. And when they went AWOL because of diarrhea, the Amphiktyones who were stationed near the wall took it and then the city.”
“In his work On Plants, in the last part of the material, Theophrastos says that Eunomos, the Khian and purveyor of drugs, did not [cleanse himself/die] while drinking many draughts of hellebore. Once, even, when together with his fellow craftsmen he took over 22 drinks in one day as he sat in the agora and he did not return from his implements. Then he left to wash and eat, as he was accustomed, and did not vomit. He accomplished this after being in this custom for a long time, because he started from small amounts until he got to so many large ones. The powers of all drugs are less severe for those used to them and for some they are even useless.”
Kirkê: This comes from “the woman who mixes [kirnôsa] the drugs. Or it is from kerkis [shuttle] from the verb kerkô. We call women who are especially subtle Kirkes.
“The oblivion of dogs”: [This is a proverb] for drugs that bring forgetfulness
Λήθην κυνῶν: λήθην ἐμποιούντων φαρμάκων.
Drug [Pharmakon]: this can mean persuasion, conversation: the etymology is said to be from bearing [pherein] the cure [akos]. Others claim that it comes from flowers.
“Leôn, the son of Leôn. He was a Peripatetic philosopher and sophist, a student of Plato or, as some claim, of Aristotle. He wrote about the time of Philip and Byzantium in 7 books, Teuthrantikos, On Bêsaios, On The Sacred War, Concerning Disagreements, and A History of Alexander.
He was very fat. And when he was on a delegation to Athens he both prompted laughter and secured the embassy’s mission, all while he appeared drinking wine with an enormous belly. When he wasn’t at all troubled by the laughter, he said “Why are you laughing Athenians, because I am this fat? My wife is even fatter! And our bed is large enough when we are in agreement—but when we argue, the house is not.” The Athenians came together, united by Leôn who had acted so wisely at the right time.
Philip slandered Leôn when he was trying to keep him from Byzantium in a letter that went like this: “If I gave as much money to Leôn as he asked for, I could have taken Byzantium at the start!” When the people heard these things, they prepared to Attack Leôn’s home. Because he was afraid that they would stone him, he choked himself to death, a wretch who gained nothing from his wisdom and his words.”
“After he left from Circe’s island, Odysseus arrived at another island, tossed up on it by struggling winds. Calypso, Circe’s sister welcomed him there and considered him worthy of a great deal of help. She had sex with him almost as if in marriage.
He went from there to a massive lake near the sea which was called the Nekyopompos. The people who live around that lake are prophets and they told him everything that had happened to him and what would happen in the future. When he left there, he was thrown from the sea when a great storm arose onto “the Sirens,” rocks which have that name from the peculiar sound that comes from waves crashing around them. Once he freed himself from there, he arrived at the place called “Charybdis,” a wild and desolate territory. He lost all his ships and his army here.
Then Odysseus was carried alone on a ship’s plank in the sea, waiting for a death from violence. But some Phoenician sailors passing by saw him swimming in the water and saved him in their pity. They took him to the island Crete to Idomeneus, a leader of the Greeks. When he saw Odysseus naked and impoverished, he sympathetically gave him a great of gifts because he had been a general with him at Troy along with two ships and people to guard him safely home. He sent him back to Ithaka like this. Wise Dictys wrote these details down after he heard them from Odysseus.”
“People suffer less because of their enemies than their friends. For they guard against their enemies because they fear them while they remain open to their friends. They too are slippery and likely to conspire.”
Etymologicum Magnum [= Etymologicum Gudianum, 461.13]
“Emeia. This is a place near Mycenae. Emeia comes from emo [“to vomit”] just as Thaleia comes from thallô [“to bloom, flourish”]. It is so named either because Kerberos puked there after he came up from Hades or because Thyestes puked there after he ate his own children.”
Interestingly, there is a bit of a slip the next time Eustathius tells the story.
Eustathius, Comm. Ad Homeri Il. 3.691.20
“[Note also] that the city Emeia comes from emein [to vomit] because it is where Aigisthos [sic] vomited after eating his own children thanks to the plan of Atreus, as the story goes.”
