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Headword: Aiolan
Adler number: alphaiota,244
Translated headword: undulating; leaping in undulating circles; of intricate, dazzling, multicoloured design
Vetting Status: high
Translation:
[Meaning] leaping/hopping. "We croaked an undulating[1] dance-chorus brekekex."
Greek Original:
Aiolan: pêdêtikên. aiolan choreian ephthenxametha brekekex.
Notes:
For this headword, feminine accusative singular, see also alphaiota 245. The gloss, also in Aristophanic scholia (cf. below), is an adjective applied to the hopping, leaping motion of locusts, fleas, grasshoppers and satyrs advancing (LSJ), and here of a dance (choreia) of frogs.
The quotation -- from Aristophanes, Frogs 247-250 (web address 1) -- is here modified, for it begins with the chorus of frogs, reversing the positions of noun and adjective, omitting the octosyllabic word pomfolugopafla/smasin (line 249, nicely translated by J. Henderson in the 2002 Loeb edition as "with bubbly ploppification") and concludes with the (truncated) first word of the following speaker (Dionysus, to be taken both as a mockery of their cry and a fart to match the frogs' bubbles, perhaps with the chorus accompanying). It clearly contains an allusion to the choreography of the chorus in the play, but we are handicapped by our uncertainty over the precise sense of the headword; cf. alphaiota 253, alphaiota 246, alphaiota 251, alphaiota 249, alphaiota 247, kappa 2122. Perhaps the choreography of the human dancers had them on all fours in bright frog costumes leaping in one or more undulating circles, in the visual rise and fall common to a line of moving snakes, worms, frogs or fleas. Alternatively it was a lively, intricate, whirling, twisting dance in dazzling costumes; or any other combination of the word's meanings.
[1] Or: intricate, dazzling.
Associated internet address:
Web address 1
Keywords: botany; comedy; definition; dialects, grammar, and etymology; meter and music; stagecraft; zoology
Translated by: Robert Dyer on 24 February 2003@10:30:24.
Vetted by:
David Whitehead (added x-ref; cosmetics) on 25 February 2003@03:26:35.
Elizabeth Vandiver (Added keyword) on 17 October 2005@18:49:49.
David Whitehead (another keyword; tweaking) on 15 May 2012@07:41:20.
Catharine Roth (restored link) on 26 May 2012@01:03:46.
David Whitehead (cosmetics) on 29 November 2015@04:39:33.

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