This chapter looks at certain points and characters in Aristophanes's Knights. It mentions Demosthenes, son of Alcisthenes, who was known as one of the most enterprising Athenian generals of the Peloponnesian war. It also talks about Hylas, who was a beautiful youth and beloved by Heracles, and Sibylla, who was an ecstatic prophetess cited by Heracleitus in the mythology. The chapter discusses the death of Themistocles, who was the saviour of Athens and of Greece at the time of the great Persian invasion. It assesses the line “babbling fountain spouting buckets of codswallop”, which is a compound that suggests that Nicias spouts nonsense as a fountain spouts water.