For the barbitos (the neuter form barbiton in the present entry is late) see already beta 107; and cf. mu 20.
[1] Greek Anthology 7.23b1. Followed by another extract from the Anthology at delta 705, this line begins a couplet that in both the Anthologia Palatina and the Anthologia Planudea was inserted--without any ascription in either text--between 7.23 (Antipater of Sidon; see alpha 3777, mu 437, tau 393, and chi 518) and 7.24 (attributed to Simonides; see gamma 192, eta 304, and lambda 126); cf. Gow and Page (43). Gow and Page note (ibid.) that the distich was appended to 7.23 by Huetius (Pierre Daniel Huet, 1630-1721, French churchman and classical scholar). However, they contend that it is incoherent there as a fourth couplet to 7.23 and endorse Joseph Justus Scaliger's (1540-1609) argument that these lines belong as the opening of another epigram otherwise lost (ibid.). Although Gow and Page allow (ibid.) that the couplet might be ascribed to the Sidonian, they do raise a doubt, gesturing to the presence here of the late neuter form to\ ba/rbiton (see principal note). This form is first securely attested in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. ca. 20 BCE) Roman Antiquities 7.72.5 (in the plural, web address 1). It then finds instances in later writers, whereas Antipater's floruit is close to 150 BCE; cf. Gow and Page (46).
[2] alpha 1916.
[3] From the scholia on the passage of Aristophanes about to be quoted.
[4] Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae 136-40 (web address 2).