CLASSICAL NOTES. 53 



passage, it is true, in wliicli this line occurs is evidently imitated by 

 Sophocles in different parts of Ms Antigone, but this apparent 

 correspondence, in the minutest detail, seemed to me so remarkable 

 as to be worthy of notice. 



^schines contra Ctesiph., sec. 77. This passage has always puzzled 

 the commentators, and no satisfactory explanation has hitherto been 

 offered. The explanation here proposed, although I am far from 

 presuming to say that it is by any means a certain one, was 

 suggested by a passage in the Agamemnon of ^schylus, v. 358, 

 sqq., where what would seem to be a similar metaphor is employed. 

 In the passage before us, ^schines is holding up to ridicule the 

 strange metaphors which he says that Demosthenes uses, and he 

 expresses his surprise that the Athenians can sit to hear such coarse 

 language. The other expressions which he qiiotes are metaphors 

 taken from the vineyard and hunting field : e.g., " Men have lopped 

 the branches of the pfeople;" "Our affairs have been hamstrung." 

 That which follows is, if I am right in my conjecture, a metaphor 

 from fishing. " We are being huddled in rush-nets to the narrows, 

 men are stringing us (or ' ripping us up ') as they do gar-fish." 

 In this rendering, the MSS. reading r.pwy.-ov gives more force to 

 the expression, although it justly lays Demosthenes open to the 

 charge of coarseness which ^schines brings against him. The word 

 <pop!J.od^a(poviJ.£Oa is a compound one, one of its roots signifying " a 

 rush or wicker mat " also used for " a fishing basket," and the other 

 "to sew or fasten together." It only occurs in this one passage. 

 L. and S. translate it "to squeeze iip." The word ^=.Xwri signifies 

 both " a needle " and a kind of fish — " gar-fish." It seems not 

 improbable that ambiguity was studied, and the metaphor over- 

 strained in the attempt to convey the two ideas of netting fish and 

 sewing with a needle. The passage which I quote from the 

 Agamemnon, exactly illustrates the first part of the metaphor. The 

 walls of Troy are described as having a net thrown over them in 

 such a way that not one of the people can escape the iiijo- bovXziaz 

 Yd'iya!J.ov arrjq — -" the mighty trawl net of slavery," as Paley translates 

 it. The ydyja/jLov was the narrow part of the net, into which the 

 game or fish were driven in order that they might be caught with 

 more ease, and it thus corresponds with rd arevd, " the narrows," in 

 this passage of ^schines. 



Tacitus, Hist, i., 71. Sed ne hostis metueret conciliationis adhihens, 

 statim inter intimos amicos hahuit. This passage has been variously 



