Ναύφρακτον βλέπεις
you look like a warship
Translated by Alan Sommerstein8 Sep 2003Vetting: high3 revisions
Translation
Aristophanes [says]: "in the gods' name, man, [you look like a warship]1." Because the eyes on triremes, through which they inserted the oars and rowed them, are large.
So that2 the [phrase] "you look like a warship" is a riddling way of saying "you look3 clear and broad and big".
So that2 the [phrase] "you look like a warship" is a riddling way of saying "you look3 clear and broad and big".
Greek original · Adler’s text
Ναύφρακτον βλέπεις· Ἀριστοφάνης· πρὸς τῶν θεῶν, ἄνθρωπε, ναύλην. ἐπειδὴ μεγάλοι ταῖς τριήρεσιν οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ γίνονται, δι' ὧν τὰς κώπας ἐμβάλλοντες ἐκωπηλάτουν. ὥστε τὸ ναύφρακτον βλέπεις, αἴνιγμά ἐστι τοῦ τρανὲς καὶ πλατὺ καὶ μέγα βλέπεις.
Betacode
*nau/frakton ble/peis: *)aristofa/nhs: pro\s tw=n qew=n, a)/nqrwpe, nau/lhn. e)peidh\ mega/loi tai=s trih/resin oi( o)fqalmoi\ gi/nontai, di' w(=n ta\s kw/pas e)mba/llontes e)kwphla/toun. w(/ste to\ nau/frakton ble/peis, ai)/nigma/ e)sti tou= trane\s kai\ platu\ kai\ me/ga ble/peis.
Notes (3)
- A garbled version (see below) of one of several scholiastic explanations of Aristophanes, Acharnians 95 (web address 1). The Athenian ambassadors reporting to the Assembly on their mission to the King of Persia have just introduced a person they identify as "Pseudartabas, the King's Eye", who appears to have (among other peculiarities) a fantastic one-eyed mask, and the quoted line is the first reaction of Dikaiopolis to this character's appearance. Precisely in what way Pseudartabas could be said to "look like a warship" remains unclear, but the reference is most likely (so Olson 103) to be to the large eyes often painted on the prows of ships. The scholiast cited by the Suda -- for a different one see Photius nu65 Theodoridis -- thought that the reference was to oarports and that oarports were called "eyes"; this is possible (see Morrison & Williams 283-4) but less likely, since the eye on the mask would certainly look much more like the eyes painted on ships than like an oarport.
For nauphraktos in another Aristophanic passage see nu 89. - 1The author, or a copyist, has created nonsense here by omitting (probably) two or three lines. The transmitted word
nau/lhn is composed of the first three letters ofnau/frakton ble/peis "you look like a warship" and the last three letters of a paraphrase found in the Aristophanic scholia,oi(=on ou)=n stratia\n ble/peis o(/lhn ("equivalent, therefore, to 'you look like a whole armada'"). ↩ - 2What now follows is preserved only in the Suda, not in the scholia of any Aristophanic manuscript. ↩
- 3i.e. your eye looks. ↩
References
Morrison, J.S., and R.T. Williams. Greek Oared Ships 900-322 B.C. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968
Olson, S. Douglas. Aristophanes: Acharnians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002
Olson, S. Douglas. Aristophanes: Acharnians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002
External resources
- Web address 1 perseus.tufts.edu
Linked from1 entry
Neighbouring entries
Revision history3 revisions · last 16 Oct 2020
- added a link — Catharine Roth
- expansion to note; tweaking — David Whitehead
- added x-ref; cosmetics — David Whitehead
- Translated — Alan Sommerstein