[Meaning] exhausted by exercise,[1] found. So that I, full of anxiety, toss and turn; for that is the way the anxious are. But it is better to think of it as a metaphor from dice, which are tossed up in the air[2] so that things may turn out well.[3] For we toss up [dice] on the dice board[4] until the one to be thrown is found.
Aristophanes [says]: "but it is a thing I have sought to raise and laid low again and again in many sleepless nights."
*)erriptasme/non: gegumnasme/non, hu(rhme/non. w(/ste merimnw=nta/ me r(ipta/zesqai kai\ stre/fesqai: toiou=toi ga\r oi( merimnw=ntes. be/ltion de\ a)po\ tw=n ku/bwn th\n metafora\n noei=n a)nerrimme/nwn, o(/pws a)\n eu)= e)/lqh|. kai\ ga\r e)pi\ tou= ku/bou a)naba/llomen, a)/xris a)\n eu(reqh=| to\ prokei/menon blhqh=nai. *)aristofa/nhs: a)ll' e)/stin u(p' e)mou= pra=gm' a)nezhthme/non, pollai=si/ t' a)grupni/aisin e)rriptasme/non.
This unhappy entry tries and fails to explain the metaphor at
Aristophanes,
Lysistrata 26-27 (web address 1), quoted at the end; it follows the
scholia on these lines.
Lysistrata is in the process of putting forward her proposal to Calonice. This "thing" is described as "big and hard". The expected verb "investigated, thought over" is changed by the prefix
ana/ "upwards" to continue the double entendre (which I try to translate with "raise"). The form
e)rriptasme/non is from the frequentative form of the verb
r(i/ptw and its participle
e)rrimme/nos "prostrate, dormant, hibernating" and hence to be translated "laid low, prostrated again and again;" the prepositional phrase "by me" has a sexual overtone from its other meaning "beneath me." Calonice replies by saying that the "thing tossed to and fro" must be pretty limp by now. Lysistrata continues that it is "so limp that the only hope for Greece" is in the hands of women. The adjective
lepto/n, translated "limp", may retain its etymological meaning "peeled", which Catullus translates into Latin with this overtone at 58.5 (
glubit). The writer here has no comprehension of the bawdy joke and interprets it as a metaphor from gambling. He seems to rely on the image of shaking the dice before throwing discussed at
delta 748 (cf.
tau 7), but he misinterprets why the gambler shakes the "tower," with his dice within, above his head. The explanation given here, that he is choosing his best die to throw, makes no sense.
[1] This participle also means "stripped naked and ready for exercise," but the dominant sense here must have been "tossed about by exercise."
[2] See note 4 at
kappa 2602, citing
Greek Anthology 5.25.3-4 (cf.
alpha 2310,
alpha 2383,
kappa 1633,
kappa 2601).
[3] This phrase seems to depend on the proverb from
Sophocles, "For only the dice of a god fall well" (see references in [2]). It was for this reason that the dice were thrown above the head.
[4] The plural of the word for a cubic die is here used in one of its rarer meanings, for the gaming board itself (LSJ [II 3], citing
Hermippus fr. 27 Kock [and K.-A.]).
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