Tuesday, May 02, 2023
Intestinal Upset
Aristophanes, fragment 621 Kassel and Austin (tr. Jeffrey Henderson):
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What's the matter? Have you breakfasted on plums?Presumably said to a character who just shat himself. On soiling oneself as matter for laughter see Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 188-190. The fragment isn't mentioned either by Henderson or by Andrew Dalby, Food in the Ancient World from A to Z (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 263-264 (entry for Plum).
τί τὸ κακόν; ἀλλ᾿ ἦ κοκκύμηλ᾿ ἠκρατίσω;
Labels: noctes scatologicae
