Ληκυθιον απωλεσεν

You'll have to blame the human for the title, I'm afraid, as he's been a little obsessed with Aristophanes since spending most of last week boning up on obscure works of criticism in the British Library.

"Ληκυθιον απωλεσεν"; "Lost his bottle of oil," I hear you say? Who? Surely not Euripides? Not according to his wife at least... Google it and you'll find plenty of hilarious commentaries going to great lengths to elaborate what the phrase doesn't mean.

The human is back for a final week in Aquae Sextiae and tying himself in terrible knots about packing to head back to Terra Australis Incognita. One of the more amusing things to watch has been the weighing of books to post back by seamail--the post office will only accept packages of 5kg maximum, even though it seems to cost less the more packages one sends in the same postal bag. With any luck he'll even get to keep the bags at the other end, so I can have somewhere abit bigger and a bit more summery to live than my stripy sock.

Weighing books reminds me all too much of the wonderful weighing-of-words contest between Euripides and Aeschylus in the latter part of Aristophanes' Frogs, though this worries me for my own sake. Aeshcylus tipped the scales by piling

Εφ’ αρματος γαρ αρμα και νεκρωι νεκρος
Chariot upon chariot, corpse upon corpse

into a single line of verse, whereas the postcard and I only weigh 14 grams...

Perhaps, like Euripides, that's what you get for breaking the rules. Damned agelastic classicists with no sense of humour!