178 Man and Shark 



Soon after Plato's Republic became famous in Greece, the satirical 

 playwright Aristophanes wrote a play, The Ecclesiazusae, in which he 

 lampooned Plato's idea of an ideal republic founded on the principles 

 of communal living, and he used the shark in his satire. 



In The Ecclesiazusae, Aristophanes has written of a communal state 

 ruled by a council of women. Since there is no private property, the 

 citizens eat in public halls at public expense. It is difficult to serve every- 

 one what he wants, but the women valiantly try by offering a single 

 meal that has everything on the Greek menu. The meal is described in 

 what is probably the world's longest word, a word that runs to 77 

 syllables in Greek, and when translated into Latin contains 179 letters. 

 And right in the middle of it, along with the leek, the oyster, the wine 

 sauce, and the pullet's wings, are the skate and the shark! 



