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Public domain basis: Public-domain English Aristophanes translations in Project Gutenberg.
Coverage: Lysistrata, The Clouds, and The Acharnians.

# Project Gutenberg #7700

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LYSISTRATA


Translated from the Greek of

ARISTOPHANES

Illustrations by Norman Lindsay


FOREWORD

_Lysistrata_ is the greatest work by Aristophanes. This blank and rash
statement is made that it may be rejected. But first let it be
understood that I do not mean it is a better written work than the
_Birds_ or the _Frogs_, or that (to descend to the scale of values that
will be naturally imputed to me) it has any more appeal to the
collectors of "curious literature" than the _Ecclesiazusae_ or the
_Thesmophoriazusae_. On the mere grounds of taste I can see an at least
equally good case made out for the _Birds_. That brightly plumaged
fantasy has an aerial wit and colour all its own. But there are certain
works in which a man finds himself at an angle of vision where there is
an especially felicitous union of the aesthetic and emotional elements
which constitute the basic qualities of his uniqueness. We recognize
these works as being welded into a strange unity, as having a
homogeneous texture of ecstasy over them that surpasses any aesthetic
surface of harmonic colour, though that harmony also is understood by
the deeper welling of imagery from the core of creative exaltation. And
I think that this occurs in _Lysistrata_. The intellectual and spiritual
tendrils of the poem are more truly interwoven, the operation of their
centres more nearly unified; and so the work goes deeper into life. It
is his greatest play because of this, because it holds an intimate
perfume of femininity and gives the finest sense of the charm of a
cluster of girls, the sweet sense of their chatter, and the contact of
their bodies, that is to be found before Shakespeare, because that
mocking gaiety we call Aristophanies reaches here its most positive
acclamation of life, vitalizing sex with a deep delight, a rare
happiness of the spirit.

Indeed it is precisely for these reasons that it is _not_ considered
Aristophanes' greatest play.

To take a case which is sufficiently near to the point in question, to
make clear what I mean: the supremacy of _Antony and Cleopatra_ in the
Shakespearean aesthetic is yet jealously disputed, and it seems silly to
the academic to put it up against a work like _Hamlet_. But it is the
comparatively more obvious achievement of _Hamlet_, its surface
intellectuality, which made it the favourite of actors and critics. It
is much more difficult to realize the complex and delicately passionate
edge of the former play's rhythm, its tides of hugely wandering emotion,
the restless, proud, gay, and agonized reaction from life, of the blood,
of the mind, of the heart, which is its unity, than to follow the
relatively straightforward definition of Hamlet's nerves. Not that
anything derogatory to _Hamlet_ or the _Birds_ is intended; but the
value of such works is not enhanced by forcing them into contrast with
other works which cover deeper and wider nexus of aesthetic and
spiritual material. It is the very subtlety of the vitality of such
works as _Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Lysistrata_ that makes it so easy
to undervalue them, to see only a phallic play and political pamphlet in
one, only a chronicle play in a grandiose method in the other. For we
have to be in a highly sensitized condition before we can get to that
subtle point where life and the image mix, and so really perceive the
work at all; whereas we can command the response to a lesser work which
does not call so finely on the full breadth and depth of our spiritual
resources.

I amuse myself at times with the fancy that Homer, Sappho, and
Aristophanes are the inviolable Trinity of poetry, even to the extent of
being reducible to One. For the fiery and lucid directness of Sappho, if
her note of personal lyricism is abstracted, is seen to be an element of
Homer, as is the profoundly balanced humour of Aristophanes, at once
tenderly human and cruelly hard, as of a god to whom all sympathies and
tolerances are known, but who is invulnerable somewhere, who sees from a
point in space where the pressure of earth's fear and pain, and so its
pity, is lifted. It is here that the Shakespearean and Homeric worlds
impinge and merge, not to be separated by any academic classifications.
They meet in this sensitivity equally involved and aloof, sympathetic
and arrogant, suffering and joyous; and in this relation we see
Aristophanes as the forerunner of Shakespeare, his only one. We see also
that the whole present aesthetic of earth is based in Homer. We live and
grow in the world of consciousness bequeathed to us by him; and if we
grow beyond it through deeper Shakespearean ardours, it is because those
beyond are rooted in the broad basis of the Homeric imagination. To
shift that basis is to find the marshes of primitive night and fear
alone beneath the feet: Christianity.

And here we return to the question of the immorality of _Lysistrata_.
First we may inquire: is it possible for a man whose work has so
tremendous a significance in the spiritual development of mankind--and I
do not think anyone nowadays doubts that a work of art is the sole
stabilizing force that exists for life--is it possible for a man who
stands so grandly at head of an immense stream of liberating effort to
write an immoral work? Surely the only enduring moral virtue which can
be claimed is for that which moves to more power, beauty and delight in
the future? The plea that the question of changing customs arises is not
valid, for customs ratified by Aristophanes, by Rabelais, by
Shakespeare, have no right to change. If they have changed, let us try
immediately to return from our disgraceful refinements to the nobler and
more rarefied heights of lyric laughter, tragic intensity, and wit, for
we cannot have the first two without the last. And anyhow, how can a
social custom claim precedence over the undying material of the senses
and the emotions of man, over the very generating forces of life?

How could the humanistic emotions, such as pity, justice, sympathy,
exist save as pacifistic quietings of the desire to slay, to hurt, to
torment. Where the desire to hurt is gone pity ceases to be a
significant, a central emotion. It must of course continue to exist, but
it is displaced in the spiritual hierarchy; and all that moves
courageously, desirously, and vitally into the action of life takes on a
deeper and subtler intention. Lust, then, which on the lower plane was
something to be very frightened of, becomes a symbol of the highest
spirituality. It is right for Paul to be terrified of sex and so to hate
it, because he has so freshly escaped a bestial condition of life that
it threatens to plunge him back if he listens to one whisper But it is
also right for a Shakespeare to suck every drop of desire from life,
for he is building into a higher condition, one self-willed,
self-responsible, the discipline of which comes from joy, not fear.

Sex, therefore, is an animal function, one admits, one insists; it may
be only that. But also in the bewildering and humorous and tragic
duality of all life's energies, it is the bridge to every eternity which
is not merely a spectral condition of earth disembowelled of its lusts.
For sex holds the substance of the image. But we must remember with
Heine that Aristophanes is the God of this ironic earth, and that all
argument is apparently vitiated from the start by the simple fact that
Wagner and a rooster are given an analogous method of making love. And
therefore it seems impeccable logic to say that all that is most unlike
the rooster is the most spiritual part of love. All will agree on that,
schisms only arise when one tries to decide what does go farthest from
the bird's automatic mechanism. Certainly not a Dante-Beatrice affair
which is only the negation of the rooster in terms of the swooning
bombast of adolescence, the first onslaught of a force which the
sufferer cannot control or inhabit with all the potentialities of his
body and soul. But the rooster is troubled by no dreams of a divine
orgy, no carnival-loves like Beethoven's _Fourth Symphony_, no heroic
and shining lust gathering and swinging into a merry embrace like the
third act of _Siegfried_. It is desire in this sense that goes farthest
from the animal.

Consciously, no one can achieve the act of love on earth as a completed
thing of grace, with whatever delirium of delight, with whatever
ingenious preciosity, we go through its process. Only as an image of
beauty mated in some strange hermaphroditic ecstasy is that possible. I
mean only as a dream projected into a hypothetical, a real heaven. But
on earth we cannot complete the cycle in consciousness that would give
us the freedom of an image in which two identities mysteriously realize
their separate unities by the absorption of a third thing, the
constructive rhythm of a work of art. It is thus that Tristan and Isolde
become wholly distinct individuals, yet wholly submerged in the unity
that is Wagner; and so reconcile life's duality by balancing its
opposing laughters in a definite form--thereby sending out into life a
profounder duality than existed before. A Platonic equipoise,
Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence--the only real philosophic problem,
therefore one of which these two philosophers alone are aware.

But though Wagner with Mathilde Wesendonck in his arms was Tristan in
the arms of Isolde, he did not find a melody instead of a kiss on his
lips; he did not find a progression of harmonies melting through the
contours of a warm beauty with a blur of desperate ecstasies, semitones
of desire, he found only the anxious happiness of any other lover.
Nevertheless, he was gathering the substance of the second act of
_Tristan und Isolde_. And it is this that Plato means when he says that
fornication is something immortal in mortality. He does not mean that
the act itself is a godlike thing, a claim which any bedroom mirror
would quickly deride. He means that it is a symbol, an essential
condition, and a part of something that goes deeper into life than any
geometry of earth's absurd, passionate, futile, and very necessary
antics would suggest.

It is a universal fallacy that because works like the comedies of
Aristophanes discuss certain social or ethical problems, they are
inspired by them. Aristophanes wrote to express his vision on life, his
delight in life itself seen behind the warping screen of contemporary
event; and for his purposes anything from Euripides to Cleon served as
ground work. Not that he would think in those terms, naturally: but the
rationalizing process that goes on in consciousness during the creation
of a work of art, for all its appearance of directing matters, is the
merest weathercock in the wind of the subconscious intention. As an
example of how utterly it is possible to misunderstand the springs of
inspiration in a poem, we may take the following remark of B. B. Rogers:
_It is much to be regretted that the phallus element should be so
conspicuous in this play.... (This) coarseness, so repulsive to
ourselves, was introduced, it is impossible to doubt, for the express
purpose of counter-balancing the extreme earnestness and gravity of the
play_. It seems so logical, so irrefutable; and so completely
misinterprets every creative force of Aristophanes' Psyche that it
certainly deserves a little admiration. It is in the best academic
tradition, and everyone respects a man for writing so mendaciously. The
effort of these castrators is always to show that the parts considered
offensive are not the natural expression of the poet, that they are
dictated externally. They argue that Shakespeare's coarseness is the
result of the age and not personal predilection, completely ignoring the
work of men like Sir Philip Sidney and Spenser, indeed practically all
the pre-Shakespearean writers, in whom none of this so-called grossness
exists. Shakespeare wrote sculduddery because he liked it, and for no
other reason; his sensuality is the measure of his vitality. These liars
pretend similarly that because Rabelais had a humanistic reason for much
of his work--the destructior Mediaevalism, and the Church, which purpose
they construe of course as an effort to purify, etc.--therefore he only
put the lewdery to make the rest palatable, when it should be obvious
even to an academic how he glories in his wild humour.

What the academic cannot understand is that in such works, while
attacking certain conditions, the creative power of the vigorous spirits
is so great that it overflows and saturates the intellectual conception
with their own passionate sense of life. It is for this reason that
these works have an eternal significance. If Rabelais were merely a
social reformer, then the value of his work would not have outlived his
generation. If _Lysistrata_ were but a wise political tract, it would
have merely an historical interest, and it would have ceased spiritually
at 404 B.C.

But Panurge is as fantastic and fascinating a character now as he was
300 years ago, Lysistrata and her girls as freshly bodied as any girl
kissed to-day. Therefore the serious part of the play is that which
deals with them, the frivolous part that in which Rogers detects gravity
and earnestness.

Aristophanes is the lord of all who take life as a gay adventure, who
defy all efforts to turn life into a social, economic, or moral
abstraction. Is it therefore just that the critics who, by some dark
instinct, unerringly pick out the exact opposite of any creator's real
virtues as his chief characteristics, should praise him as an idealistic
reformer? An "ideal" state of society was the last thing Aristophanes
desired. He wished, certainly, to eliminate inhumanities and baseness;
but only that there might be free play for laughter, for individual
happiness.

Consequently the critics lay the emphasis on the effort to cleanse
society, not the method of laughter. Aristophanes wished to destroy
Cleon because that demagogue failed to realize the poet's conception of
dignified government and tended to upset the stability of Hellas. But it
was the stability of life, the vindication of all individual freedoms,
in which he was ultimately interested.

JACK LINDSAY.


       *       *       *       *       *


LYSISTRATA

The Persons of the drama.

LYSISTRATA
CALONICE
MYRRHINE
LAMPITO
Stratyllis, etc.
Chorus of Women.
MAGISTRATE
CINESIAS
SPARTAN HERALD
ENVOYS
ATHENIANS
Porter, Market Idlers, etc.
Chorus of old Men.


LYSISTRATA _stands alone with the Propylaea at her back._


LYSISTRATA

If they were trysting for a Bacchanal,
A feast of Pan or Colias or Genetyllis,
The tambourines would block the rowdy streets,
But now there's not a woman to be seen
Except--ah, yes--this neighbour of mine yonder.

_Enter_ CALONICE.

Good day Calonice.

CALONICE

Good day Lysistrata.
But what has vexed you so? Tell me, child.
What are these black looks for? It doesn't suit you
To knit your eyebrows up glumly like that.

LYSISTRATA

Calonice, it's more than I can bear,
I am hot all over with blushes for our sex.
Men say we're slippery rogues--

CALONICE

And aren't they right?

LYSISTRATA

Yet summoned on the most tremendous business
For deliberation, still they snuggle in bed.

CALONICE

My dear, they'll come. It's hard for women, you know,
To get away. There's so much to do;
Husbands to be patted and put in good tempers:
Servants to be poked out: children washed
Or soothed with lullays or fed with mouthfuls of pap.

LYSISTRATA

But I tell you, here's a far more weighty object.

CALONICE

What is it all about, dear Lysistrata,
That you've called the women hither in a troop?
What kind of an object is it?

LYSISTRATA

A tremendous thing!

CALONICE

And long?

LYSISTRATA

Indeed, it may be very lengthy.

CALONICE

Then why aren't they here?

LYSISTRATA

No man's connected with it;
If that was the case, they'd soon come fluttering along.
No, no. It concerns an object I've felt over
And turned this way and that for sleepless nights.

CALONICE

It must be fine to stand such long attention.

LYSISTRATA

So fine it comes to this--Greece saved by Woman!

CALONICE

By Woman? Wretched thing, I'm sorry for it.

LYSISTRATA

Our country's fate is henceforth in our hands:
To destroy the Peloponnesians root and branch--

CALONICE

What could be nobler!

LYSISTRATA

Wipe out the Boeotians--

CALONICE

Not utterly. Have mercy on the eels!
[Footnote: The Boeotian eels were highly esteemed delicacies in Athens.]

LYSISTRATA

But with regard to Athens, note I'm careful
Not to say any of these nasty things;
Still, thought is free.... But if the women join us
From Peloponnesus and Boeotia, then
Hand in hand we'll rescue Greece.

CALONICE

How could we do
Such a big wise deed? We women who dwell
Quietly adorning ourselves in a back-room
With gowns of lucid gold and gawdy toilets
Of stately silk and dainty little slippers....

LYSISTRATA

These are the very armaments of the rescue.
These crocus-gowns, this outlay of the best myrrh,
Slippers, cosmetics dusting beauty, and robes
With rippling creases of light.

CALONICE

Yes, but how?

LYSISTRATA

No man will lift a lance against another--

CALONICE

I'll run to have my tunic dyed crocus.

LYSISTRATA

Or take a shield--

CALONICE

I'll get a stately gown.

LYSISTRATA

Or unscabbard a sword--

CALONICE

Let me buy a pair of slipper.

LYSISTRATA

Now, tell me, are the women right to lag?

CALONICE

They should have turned birds, they should have grown
wings and flown.

LYSISTRATA

My friend, you'll see that they are true Athenians:
Always too late. Why, there's not a woman
From the shoreward demes arrived, not one from Salamis.

CALONICE

I know for certain they awoke at dawn,
And got their husbands up if not their boat sails.

LYSISTRATA

And I'd have staked my life the Acharnian dames
Would be here first, yet they haven't come either!

CALONICE

Well anyhow there is Theagenes' wife
We can expect--she consulted Hecate.
But look, here are some at last, and more behind them.
See ... where are they from?

CALONICE

From Anagyra they come.

LYSISTRATA

Yes, they generally manage to come first.

_Enter_ MYRRHINE.

MYRRHINE

Are we late, Lysistrata? ... What is that?
Nothing to say?

LYSISTRATA

I've not much to say for you,
Myrrhine, dawdling on so vast an affair.

MYRRHINE

I couldn't find my girdle in the dark.
But if the affair's so wonderful, tell us, what is it?

LYSISTRATA

No, let us stay a little longer till
The Peloponnesian girls and the girls of Bocotia
Are here to listen.

MYRRHINE

That's the best advice.
Ah, there comes Lampito.

_Enter_ LAMPITO.

LYSISTRATA

Welcome Lampito!
Dear Spartan girl with a delightful face,
Washed with the rosy spring, how fresh you look
In the easy stride of your sleek slenderness,
Why you could strangle a bull!

LAMPITO

I think I could.
It's frae exercise and kicking high behint.

[Footnote: The translator has put the speech of the Spartan characters
in Scotch dialect which is related to English about as was the Spartan
dialect to the speech of Athens. The Spartans, in their character,
anticipated the shrewd, canny, uncouth Scotch highlander of modern
times.]

LYSISTRATA

What lovely breasts to own!

LAMPITO

Oo ... your fingers
Assess them, ye tickler, wi' such tender chucks
I feel as if I were an altar-victim.

LYSISTRATA

Who is this youngster?

LAMPITO

A Boeotian lady.

LYSISTRATA

There never was much undergrowth in Boeotia,
Such a smooth place, and this girl takes after it.

CALONICE

Yes, I never saw a skin so primly kept.

LYSISTRATA

This girl?

LAMPITO

A sonsie open-looking jinker!
She's a Corinthian.

LYSISTRATA

Yes, isn't she
Very open, in some ways particularly.

LAMPITO

But who's garred this Council o' Women to meet here?

LYSISTRATA

I have.

LAMPITO

Propound then what you want o' us.

MYRRHINE

What is the amazing news you have to tell?

LYSISTRATA

I'll tell you, but first answer one small question.

MYRRHINE

As you like.

LYSISTRATA

Are you not sad your children's fathers
Go endlessly off soldiering afar
In this plodding war? I am willing to wager
There's not one here whose husband is at home.

CALONICE

Mine's been in Thrace, keeping an eye on Eucrates
For five months past.

MYRRHINE

And mine left me for Pylos
Seven months ago at least.

LAMPITO

And as for mine
No sooner has he slipped out frae the line
He straps his shield and he's snickt off again.

LYSISTRATA

And not the slightest glitter of a lover!
And since the Milesians betrayed us, I've not seen
The image of a single upright man
To be a marble consolation to us.
Now will you help me, if I find a means
To stamp the war out.

MYRRHINE

By the two Goddesses, Yes!
I will though I've to pawn this very dress
And drink the barter-money the same day.

CALONICE

And I too though I'm split up like a turbot
And half is hackt off as the price of peace.

LAMPITO

And I too! Why, to get a peep at the shy thing
I'd clamber up to the tip-top o' Taygetus.

LYSISTRATA

Then I'll expose my mighty mystery.
O women, if we would compel the men
To bow to Peace, we must refrain--

MYRRHINE

From what?
O tell us!

LYSISTRATA

Will you truly do it then?

MYRRHINE

We will, we will, if we must die for it.

LYSISTRATA

We must refrain from every depth of love....
Why do you turn your backs? Where are you going?
Why do you bite your lips and shake your heads?
Why are your faces blanched? Why do you weep?
Will you or won't you, or what do you mean?

MYRRHINE

No, I won't do it. Let the war proceed.

CALONICE

No, I won't do it. Let the war proceed.

LYSISTRATA

You too, dear turbot, you that said just now
You didn't mind being split right up in the least?

CALONICE

Anything else? O bid me walk in fire
But do not rob us of that darling joy.
What else is like it, dearest Lysistrata?

LYSISTRATA

And you?

MYRRHINE

O please give me the fire instead.

LYSISTRATA

Lewd to the least drop in the tiniest vein,
Our sex is fitly food for Tragic Poets,
Our whole life's but a pile of kisses and babies.
But, hardy Spartan, if you join with me
All may be righted yet. O help me, help me.

LAMPITO

It's a sair, sair thing to ask of us, by the Twa,
A lass to sleep her lane and never fill
Love's lack except wi' makeshifts.... But let it be.
Peace maun be thought of first.

LYSISTRATA

My friend, my friend!
The only one amid this herd of weaklings.

CALONICE

But if--which heaven forbid--we should refrain
As you would have us, how is Peace induced?

LYSISTRATA

By the two Goddesses, now can't you see
All we have to do is idly sit indoors
With smooth roses powdered on our cheeks,
Our bodies burning naked through the folds
Of shining Amorgos' silk, and meet the men
With our dear Venus-plats plucked trim and neat.
Their stirring love will rise up furiously,
They'll beg our arms to open. That's our time!
We'll disregard their knocking, beat them off--
And they will soon be rabid for a Peace.
I'm sure of it.

LAMPITO

          Just as Menelaus, they say,
Seeing the bosom of his naked Helen
Flang down the sword.

CALONICE

               But we'll be tearful fools
If our husbands take us at our word and leave us.

LYSISTRATA

There's only left then, in Pherecrates' phrase,
_To flay a skinned dog_--flay more our flayed desires.

CALONICE

Bah, proverbs will never warm a celibate.
But what avail will your scheme be if the men
Drag us for all our kicking on to the couch?

LYSISTRATA

Cling to the doorposts.

CALONICE

               But if they should force us?

LYSISTRATA

Yield then, but with a sluggish, cold indifference.
There is no joy to them in sullen mating.
Besides we have other ways to madden them;
They cannot stand up long, and they've no delight
Unless we fit their aim with merry succour.

CALONICE

Well if you must have it so, we'll all agree.

LAMPITO

For us I ha' no doubt. We can persuade
Our men to strike a fair an' decent Peace,
But how will ye pitch out the battle-frenzy
O' the Athenian populace?

LYSISTRATA

I promise you
We'll wither up that curse.

LAMPITO

I don't believe it.
Not while they own ane trireme oared an' rigged,
Or a' those stacks an' stacks an' stacks O' siller.

LYSISTRATA

I've thought the whole thing out till there's no flaw.
We shall surprise the Acropolis today:
That is the duty set the older dames.
While we sit here talking, they are to go
And under pretence of sacrificing, seize it.

LAMPITO

Certie, that's fine; all's working for the best.

LYSISTRATA

Now quickly, Lampito, let us tie ourselves
To this high purpose as tightly as the hemp of words
Can knot together.

LAMPITO

Set out the terms in detail
And we'll a' swear to them.

LYSISTRATA

Of course.... Well then
Where is our Scythianess? Why are you staring?
First lay the shield, boss downward, on the floor
And bring the victim's inwards.

CAILONICE

But, Lysistrata,
What is this oath that we're to swear?

LYSISTRATA

What oath!
In Aeschylus they take a slaughtered sheep
And swear upon a buckler. Why not we?

CALONICE

O Lysistrata, Peace sworn on a buckler!

LYSISTRATA

What oath would suit us then?

CALONICE

Something burden bearing
Would be our best insignia.... A white horse!
Let's swear upon its entrails.

LYSISTRATA

A horse indeed!

CALONICE

Then what will symbolise us?

LYSISTRATA

This, as I tell you--
First set a great dark bowl upon the ground
And disembowel a skin of Thasian wine,
Then swear that we'll not add a drop of water.

LAMPITO
  Ah, what aith could clink pleasanter than that!

LYSISTRATA
  Bring me a bowl then and a skin of wine.

CALONICE
  My dears, see what a splendid bowl it is;
  I'd not say No if asked to sip it off.

LYSISTRATA
  Put down the bowl. Lay hands, all, on the victim.
  Skiey Queen who givest the last word in arguments,
  And thee, O Bowl, dear comrade, we beseech:
  Accept our oblation and be propitious to us.

CALONICE
  What healthy blood, la, how it gushes out!

LAMPITO
  An' what a leesome fragrance through the air.

LYSISTRATA
  Now, dears, if you will let me, I'll speak first.

CALONICE
  Only if you draw the lot, by Aphrodite!

LYSISTRATA
  SO, grasp the brim, you, Lampito, and all.
  You, Calonice, repeat for the rest
  Each word I say. Then you must all take oath
  And pledge your arms to the same stern conditions--

LYSISTRATA
  To husband or lover I'll not open arms

CALONICE

_To husband or lover I'll not open arms_

LYSISTRATA

Though love and denial may enlarge his charms.

CALONICE

_Though love and denial may enlarge his charms._
O, O, my knees are failing me, Lysistrata!

LYSISTRATA

But still at home, ignoring him, I'll stay,

CALONICE

_But still at home, ignoring him, I'll stay,_

LYSISTRATA

Beautiful, clad in saffron silks all day.

CALONICE

_Beautiful, clad in saffron silks all day._

LYSISTRATA

If then he seizes me by dint of force,

CALONICE

_If then he seizes me by dint of force,_

LYSISTRATA

I'll give him reason for a long remorse.

CALONICE

_I'll give him reason for a long remorse._

LYSISTRATA

I'll never lie and stare up at the ceiling,

CALONICE

_I'll never lie and stare up at the ceiling,_

LYSISTRATA

Nor like a lion on all fours go kneeling.

CALONICE

_Nor like a lion on all fours go kneeling._

LYSISTRATA

If I keep faith, then bounteous cups be mine.

CALONICE

_If I keep faith, then bounteous cups be mine._

LYSISTRATA

If not, to nauseous water change this wine.

CALONICE
  _If not, to nauseous water change this wine._

LYSISTRATA

Do you all swear to this?

MYRRHINE

We do, we do.

LYSISTRATA

Then I shall immolate the victim thus.
_She drinks._

CALONICE

Here now, share fair, haven't we made a pact?
Let's all quaff down that friendship in our turn.

LAMPITO

Hark, what caterwauling hubbub's that?

LYSISTRATA

As I told you,
The women have appropriated the citadel.
So, Lampito, dash off to your own land
And raise the rebels there. These will serve as hostages,
While we ourselves take our places in the ranks
And drive the bolts right home.

CALONICE

But won't the men
March straight against us?

LYSISTRATA

And what if they do?
No threat shall creak our hinges wide, no torch
Shall light a fear in us; we will come out
To Peace alone.

CALONICE

That's it, by Aphrodite!
As of old let us seem hard and obdurate.

LAMPITO _and some go off; the others go up into the Acropolis._

_Chorus of_ OLD MEN _enter to attack the captured Acropolis_.

Make room, Draces, move ahead; why your shoulder's chafed, I see,
With lugging uphill these lopped branches of the olive-tree.
How upside-down and wrong-way-round a long life sees things grow.
Ah, Strymodorus, who'd have thought affairs could tangle so?

The women whom at home we fed,
Like witless fools, with fostering bread,
Have impiously come to this--
They've stolen the Acropolis,
With bolts and bars our orders flout
And shut us out.

Come, Philurgus, bustle thither; lay our faggots on the ground,
In neat stacks beleaguering the insurgents all around;
And the vile conspiratresses, plotters of such mischief dire,
Pile and burn them all together in one vast and righteous pyre:
Fling with our own hands Lycon's wife to fry in the thickest fire.
By Demeter, they'll get no brag while I've a vein to beat!
Cleomenes himself was hurtled out in sore defeat.
His stiff-backed Spartan pride was bent.
Out, stripped of all his arms, he went:
A pigmy cloak that would not stretch
To hide his rump (the draggled wretch),
Six sprouting years of beard, the spilth
Of six years' filth.

That was a siege! Our men were ranged in lines of seventeen deep
Before the gates, and never left their posts there, even to sleep.
Shall I not smite the rash presumption then of foes like these,
Detested both of all the gods and of Euripides--
Else, may the Marathon-plain not boast my trophied victories!

Ah, now, there's but a little space
To reach the place!
A deadly climb it is, a tricky road
With all this bumping load:
A pack-ass soon would tire....
How these logs bruise my shoulders! further still
Jog up the hill,
And puff the fire inside,
Or just as we reach the top we'll find it's died.
Ough, phew!
I choke with the smoke.

Lord Heracles, how acrid-hot
Out of the pot
This mad-dog smoke leaps, worrying me
And biting angrily....
'Tis Lemnian fire that smokes,
Or else it would not sting my eyelids thus....
Haste, all of us;
Athene invokes our aid.
Laches, now or never the assault must be made!
Ough, phew!
I choke with the smoke. ..

Thanked be the gods! The fire peeps up and crackles as it should.
Now why not first slide off our backs these weary loads of wood
And dip a vine-branch in the brazier till it glows, then straight
Hurl it at the battering-ram against the stubborn gate?
If they refuse to draw the bolts in immediate compliance,
We'll set fire to the wood, and smoke will strangle their defiance.

Phew, what a spluttering drench of smoke! Come, now from off my back....
Is there no Samos-general to help me to unpack?
Ah there, that's over! For the last time now it's galled my shoulder.
Flare up thine embers, brazier, and dutifully smoulder,
To kindle a brand, that I the first may strike the citadel.
Aid me, Lady Victory, that a triumph-trophy may tell
How we did anciently this insane audacity quell!

_Chorus of_ WOMEN.

What's that rising yonder? That ruddy glare, that smoky skurry?
O is it something in a blaze? Quick, quick, my comrades, hurry!
Nicodice, helter-skelter!
Or poor Calyce's in flames
And Cratylla's stifled in the welter.
O these dreadful old men
And their dark laws of hate!
There, I'm all of a tremble lest I turn out to be too late.
I could scarcely get near to the spring though I rose before dawn,
What with tattling of tongues and rattling of pitchers in one jostling din
With slaves pushing in!....

Still here at last the water's drawn
And with it eagerly I run
To help those of my friends who stand
In danger of being burned alive.
For I am told a dribbling band
Of greybeards hobble to the field,
Great faggots in each palsied hand,
As if a hot bath to prepare,
And threatening that out they'll drive
These wicked women or soon leave them charring into ashes
there.
O Goddess, suffer not, I pray, this harsh deed to be done,
But show us Greece and Athens with their warlike acts repealed!
For this alone, in this thy hold,
Thou Goddess with the helm of gold,
We laid hands on thy sanctuary,
Athene.... Then our ally be
And where they cast their fires of slaughter
Direct our water!

STRATYLLIS (_caught_)

Let me go!

WOMEN

You villainous old men, what's this you do?
No honest man, no pious man, could do such things as you.

MEN

Ah ha, here's something most original, I have no doubt:
A swarm of women sentinels to man the walls without.

WOMEN

So then we scare you, do we? Do we seem a fearful host?
You only see the smallest fraction mustered at this post.

MEN

Ho, Phaedrias, shall we put a stop to all these chattering tricks?
Suppose that now upon their backs we splintered these our sticks?

WOMEN

Let us lay down the pitchers, so our bodies will be free,
  In case these lumping fellows try to cause some injury.

MEN

O hit them hard and hit again and hit until they run away,
And perhaps they'll learn, like Bupalus, not to have too much to say.

WOMEN

Come on, then--do it! I won't budge, but like a dog I'll bite
At every little scrap of meat that dangles in my sight.

MEN

Be quiet, or I'll bash you out of any years to come.

WOMEN

Now you just touch Stratyllis with the top-joint of your thumb.

MEN

What vengeance can you take if with my fists your face I beat?

WOMEN

I'll rip you with my teeth and strew your entrails at your feet.

MEN

Now I appreciate Euripides' strange subtlety:
Woman is the most shameless beast of all the beasts that be.

WOMEN

Rhodippe, come, and let's pick up our water-jars once more.

MEN

Ah cursed drab, what have you brought this water for?

WOMEN

What is your fire for then, you smelly corpse? Yourself to burn?

MEN

To build a pyre and make your comrades ready for the urn.

WOMEN

And I've the water to put out your fire immediately.

MEN

What, you put out my fire?

WOMEN

Yes, sirrah, as you soon will see.

MEN

I don't know why I hesitate to roast you with this flame.

WOMEN

If you have any soap you'll go off cleaner than you came.

MEN

Cleaner, you dirty slut?

WOMEN

A nuptial-bath in which to lie!

MEN

Did you hear that insolence?

WOMEN

I'm a free woman, I.

MEN

I'll make you hold your tongue.

WOMEN

Henceforth you'll serve in no more juries.

MEN

Burn off her hair for her.

WOMEN

Now forward, water, quench their furies!

MEN

O dear, O dear!

WOMEN

So ... was it hot?

MEN

Hot! ... Enough, O hold.

WOMEN

Watered, perhaps you'll bloom again--why not?

MEN

Brrr, I'm wrinkled up from shivering with cold.

WOMEN

Next time you've fire you'll warm yourself and leave us to our lot.

MAGISTRATE _enters with attendant_ SCYTHIANS.

MAGISTRATE

Have the luxurious rites of the women glittered
Their libertine show, their drumming tapped out crowds,
The Sabazian Mysteries summoned their mob,
Adonis been wept to death on the terraces,
As I could hear the last day in the Assembly?
For Demostratus--let bad luck befoul him--
Was roaring, "We must sail for Sicily,"
While a woman, throwing herself about in a dance
Lopsided with drink, was shrilling out "Adonis,
Woe for Adonis." Then Demostratus shouted,
"We must levy hoplites at Zacynthus,"
And there the woman, up to the ears in wine,
Was screaming "Weep for Adonis" on the house-top,
The scoundrelly politician, that lunatic ox,
Bellowing bad advice through tipsy shrieks:
Such are the follies wantoning in them.

MEN

O if you knew their full effrontery!
All of the insults they've done, besides sousing us
With water from their pots to our public disgrace
For we stand here wringing our clothes like grown-up infants.

MAGISTRATE

By Poseidon, justly done! For in part with us
The blame must lie for dissolute behaviour
And for the pampered appetites they learn.
Thus grows the seedling lust to blossoming:
We go into a shop and say, "Here, goldsmith,
You remember the necklace that you wrought my wife;
Well, the other night in fervour of a dance
Her clasp broke open. Now I'm off for Salamis;
If you've the leisure, would you go tonight
And stick a bolt-pin into her opened clasp."
Another goes to a cobbler; a soldierly fellow,
Always standing up erect, and says to him,
"Cobbler, a sandal-strap of my wife's pinches her,
Hurts her little toe in a place where she's sensitive.
Come at noon and see if you can stretch out wider
This thing that troubles her, loosen its tightness."
And so you view the result. Observe my case--
I, a magistrate, come here to draw
Money to buy oar-blades, and what happens?
The women slam the door full in my face.
But standing still's no use. Bring me a crowbar,
And I'll chastise this their impertinence.
What do you gape at, wretch, with dazzled eyes?
Peering for a tavern, I suppose.
Come, force the gates with crowbars, prise them apart!
I'll prise away myself too.... (LYSISTRATA _appears._)

LYSISTRATA

Stop this banging.
I'm coming of my own accord.... Why bars?
It is not bars we need but common sense.

MAGISTRATE

Indeed, you slut! Where is the archer now?
Arrest this woman, tie her hands behind.

LYSISTRATA

If he brushes me with a finger, by Artemis,
The public menial, he'll be sorry for it.

MAGISTRATE

Are you afraid? Grab her about the middle.
Two of you then, lay hands on her and end it.

CALONICE

By Pandrosos I if your hand touches her
I'll spread you out and trample on your guts.

MAGISTRATE

My guts! Where is the other archer gone?
Bind that minx there who talks so prettily.

MYRRHINE

By Phosphor, if your hand moves out her way
You'd better have a surgeon somewhere handy.

MAGISTRATE

You too! Where is that archer? Take that woman.
I'll put a stop to these surprise-parties.

STRATYLLIS

By the Tauric Artemis, one inch nearer
My fingers, and it's a bald man that'll be yelling.

MAGISTRATE

Tut tut, what's here? Deserted by my archers....
But surely women never can defeat us;
Close up your ranks, my Scythians. Forward at them.

LYSISTRATA

By the Goddesses, you'll find that here await you
Four companies of most pugnacious women
Armed cap-a-pie from the topmost louring curl
To the lowest angry dimple.

MAGISTRATE

On, Scythians, bind them.

LYSISTRATA

On, gallant allies of our high design,
Vendors of grain-eggs-pulse-and-vegetables,
Ye garlic-tavern-keepers of bakeries,
Strike, batter, knock, hit, slap, and scratch our foes,
Be finely imprudent, say what you think of them....
Enough! retire and do not rob the dead.

MAGISTRATE

How basely did my archer-force come off.

LYSISTRATA

Ah, ha, you thought it was a herd of slaves
You had to tackle, and you didn't guess
The thirst for glory ardent in our blood.

MAGISTRATE

By Apollo, I know well the thirst that heats you--
Especially when a wine-skin's close.

MEN

You waste your breath, dear magistrate, I fear, in answering back.
What's the good of argument with such a rampageous pack?
Remember how they washed us down (these very clothes I wore)
With water that looked nasty and that smelt so even more.

WOMEN

What else to do, since you advanced too dangerously nigh.
If you should do the same again, I'll punch you in the eye.
Though I'm a stay-at-home and most a quiet life enjoy,
Polite to all and every (for I'm naturally coy),
Still if you wake a wasps' nest then of wasps you must beware.

MEN

How may this ferocity be tamed? It grows too great to bear.
Let us question them and find if they'll perchance declare
The reason why they strangely dare
To seize on Cranaos' citadel,
This eyrie inaccessible,
This shrine above the precipice,
The Acropolis.
Probe them and find what they mean with this idle talk; listen,
but watch they don't try to deceive.
You'd be neglecting your duty most certainly if now this mystery
unplumbed you leave.

MAGISTRATE

Women there! Tell what I ask you, directly....
Come, without rambling, I wish you to state
What's your rebellious intention in barring up thus on our noses
our own temple-gate.

LYSISTRATA

To take first the treasury out of your management, and so stop the war
through the absence of gold.

MAGISTRATE

Is gold then the cause of the war?

LYSISTRATA

Yes, gold caused it and miseries more, too many to be told.
'Twas for money, and money alone, that Pisander with all of the army of
mob-agitators.
Raised up revolutions. But, as for the future, it won't be worth while
to set up to be traitors.
Not an obol they'll get as their loot, not an obol! while we have the
treasure-chest in our command.

MAGISTRATE

What then is that you propose?

LYSISTRATA

Just this--merely to take the exchequer henceforth in hand.

MAGISTRATE

The exchequer!

LYSISTRATA

Yes, why not? Of our capabilities you have had various clear evidences.
Firstly remember we have always administered soundly the budget of all
home-expenses.

MAGISTRATE

But this matter's different.

LYSISTRATA

How is it different?

MAGISTRATE

Why, it deals chiefly with war-time supplies.

LYSISTRATA

But we abolish war straight by our policy.

MAGISTRATE

What will you do if emergencies arise?

LYSISTRATA

Face them our own way.

MAGISTRATE

What _you_ will?

LYSISTRATA

Yes _we_ will!

MAGISTRATE

Then there's no help for it; we're all destroyed.

LYSISTRATA

No, willy-nilly you must be safeguarded.

MAGISTRATE

What madness is this?

LYSISTRATA

Why, it seems you're annoyed.
It must be done, that's all.

MAGISTRATE

Such awful oppression never,
O never in the past yet I bore.

LYSISTRATA

You must be saved, sirrah--that's all there is to it.

MAGISTRATE

If we don't want to be saved?

LYSISTRATA

All the more.

MAGISTRATE

Why do you women come prying and meddling in matters of state touching
war-time and peace?

LYSISTRATA

That I will tell you.

MAGISTRATE

O tell me or quickly I'll--

LYSISTRATA

Hearken awhile and from threatening cease.

MAGISTRATE

I cannot, I cannot; it's growing too insolent.

WOMEN

Come on; you've far more than we have to dread.

MAGISTRATE

Stop from your croaking, old carrion-crow there....
Continue.

LYSISTRATA

Be calm then and I'll go ahead.
All the long years when the hopeless war dragged along we, unassuming,
forgotten in quiet,
Endured without question, endured in our loneliness all your incessant
child's antics and riot.
Our lips we kept tied, though aching with silence, though well all the
while in our silence we knew
How wretchedly everything still was progressing by listening dumbly the
day long to you.
For always at home you continued discussing the war and its politics
loudly, and we
Sometimes would ask you, our hearts deep with sorrowing though we spoke
lightly, though happy to see,
"What's to be inscribed on the side of the Treaty-stone
What, dear, was said in the Assembly today?"
"Mind your own business," he'd answer me growlingly
"hold your tongue, woman, or else go away."
And so I would hold it.

WOMEN

I'd not be silent for any man living on earth, no, not I!

MAGISTRATE

Not for a staff?

LYSISTRATA

Well, so I did nothing but sit in the house, feeling dreary, and sigh,
While ever arrived some fresh tale of decisions more foolish by far and
presaging disaster.
Then I would say to him, "O my dear husband, why still do they rush on
destruction the faster?"
At which he would look at me sideways, exclaiming, "Keep for your web
and your shuttle your care,
Or for some hours hence your cheeks will be sore and hot; leave this
alone, war is Man's sole affair!"

MAGISTRATE

By Zeus, but a man of fine sense, he.

LYSISTRATA

How sensible?
You dotard, because he at no time had lent
His intractable ears to absorb from our counsel one temperate word of
advice, kindly meant?
But when at the last in the streets we heard shouted (everywhere ringing
the ominous cry)
"Is there no one to help us, no saviour in Athens?" and, "No, there is
no one," come back in reply.
At once a convention of all wives through Hellas here for a serious
purpose was held,
To determine how husbands might yet back to wisdom despite their
reluctance in time be compelled.
Why then delay any longer? It's settled. For the future you'll take
up our old occupation.
Now in turn you're to hold tongue, as we did, and listen while we show
the way to recover the nation.

MAGISTRATE

_You_ talk to _us!_ Why, you're mad. I'll not stand it.

LYSISTRATA

Cease babbling, you fool; till I end, hold your tongue.

MAGISTRATE

If I should take orders from one who wears veils, may my
neck straightaway be deservedly wrung.

LYSISTRATA

O if that keeps pestering you,
I've a veil here for your hair,
I'll fit you out in everything
As is only fair.

CALONICE

Here's a spindle that will do.

MYRRHINE

I'll add a wool-basket too.

LYSISTRATA

Girdled now sit humbly at home,
Munching beans, while you card wool and comb. For war from now on
is the Women's affair.

WOMEN.

Come then, down pitchers, all,
And on, courageous of heart,
In our comradely venture
Each taking her due part.

I could dance, dance, dance, and be fresher after,
I could dance away numberless suns,
To no weariness let my knees bend.
Earth I could brave with laughter,
Having such wonderful girls here to friend.
O the daring, the gracious, the beautiful ones!
Their courage unswerving and witty
Will rescue our city.

O sprung from the seed of most valiant-wombed grand-mothers,
scions of savage and dangerous nettles!
Prepare for the battle, all. Gird up your angers. Our way
the wind of sweet victory settles.

LYSISTRATA

O tender Eros and Lady of Cyprus, some flush of beauty I
pray you devise
To flash on our bosoms and, O Aphrodite, rosily gleam on
our valorous thighs!
Joy will raise up its head through the legions warring and
all of the far-serried ranks of mad-love
Bristle the earth to the pillared horizon, pointing in vain to
the heavens above.
I think that perhaps then they'll give us our title--
Peace-makers.

MAGISTRATE

          What do you mean? Please explain.

LYSISTRATA

  First, we'll not see you now flourishing arms about into the
    Marketing-place clang again.

WOMEN
  No, by the Paphian.

LYSISTRATA

Still I can conjure them as past were the herbs stand or crockery's sold
Like Corybants jingling (poor sots) fully armoured, they noisily round
on their promenade strolled.

MAGISTRATE

And rightly; that's discipline, they--

LYSISTRATA

But what's sillier than to go on an errand of buying a fish
Carrying along an immense. Gorgon-buckler instead the usual platter
or dish?
A phylarch I lately saw, mounted on horse-back, dressed for the part
with long ringlets and all,
Stow in his helmet the omelet bought steaming from an old woman who
kept a food-stall.
Nearby a soldier, a Thracian, was shaking wildly his spear like Tereus
in the play,
To frighten a fig-girl while unseen the ruffian filched from her
fruit-trays the ripest away.

MAGISTRATE

How, may I ask, will your rule re-establish order and justice in lands
so tormented?

LYSISTRATA

Nothing is easier.

MAGISTRATE

Out with it speedily--what is this plan that you boast you've invented?

LYSISTRATA

If, when yarn we are winding, It chances to tangle, then, as perchance you
may know, through the skein
This way and that still the spool we keep passing till it is finally clear
all again:
So to untangle the War and its errors, ambassadors out on all sides we will
send
This way and that, here, there and round about--soon you will find that the
War has an end.

MAGISTRATE

So with these trivial tricks of the household, domestic analogies of
threads, skeins and spools,
You think that you'll solve such a bitter complexity, unwind such political
problems, you fools!

LYSISTRATA

Well, first as we wash dirty wool so's to cleanse it, so with a pitiless
zeal we will scrub
Through the whole city for all greasy fellows; burrs too, the parasites,
off we will rub.
That verminous plague of insensate place-seekers soon between thumb and
forefinger we'll crack.
All who inside Athens' walls have their dwelling into one great common
basket we'll pack.
Disenfranchised or citizens, allies or aliens, pell-mell the lot of them
in we will squeeze.
Till they discover humanity's meaning.... As for disjointed and far
colonies,
Them you must never from this time imagine as scattered about just like
lost hanks of wool.
Each portion we'll take and wind in to this centre, inward to Athens
each loyalty pull,
Till from the vast heap where all's piled together at last can be woven
a strong Cloak of State.

MAGISTRATE

How terrible is it to stand here and watch them carding and winding at
will with our fate,
Witless in war as they are.

LYSISTRATA

What of us then, who ever in vain for our children must weep
Borne but to perish afar and in vain?

MAGISTRATE

Not that, O let that one memory sleep!

LYSISTRATA

Then while we should be companioned still merrily, happy as brides may,
the livelong night,
Kissing youth by, we are forced to lie single.... But leave for a moment
our pitiful plight,
It hurts even more to behold the poor maidens helpless wrinkling in
staler virginity.

MAGISTRATE

Does not a man age?

LYSISTRATA

Not in the same way. Not as a woman grows withered, grows he.
He, when returned from the war, though grey-headed, yet
if he wishes can choose out a wife.
But she has no solace save peering for omens, wretched and
lonely the rest of her life.

MAGISTRATE

But the old man will often select--

LYSISTRATA

O why not finish and die?
A bier is easy to buy,
A honey-cake I'll knead you with joy,
This garland will see you are decked.

CALONICE

I've a wreath for you too.

MYRRHINE

I also will fillet you.

LYSISTRATA

What more is lacking? Step aboard the boat.
See, Charon shouts ahoy.
You're keeping him, he wants to shove afloat.

MAGISTRATE

Outrageous insults! Thus my place to flout!
Now to my fellow-magistrates I'll go
And what you've perpetrated on me show.

LYSISTRATA

Why are you blaming us for laying you out?
Assure yourself we'll not forget to make
The third day offering early for your sake.

MAGISTRATE _retires_, LYSISTRATA _returns within_.

OLD MEN.

All men who call your loins your own, awake at last, arise
And strip to stand in readiness. For as it seems to me
Some more perilous offensive in their heads they now devise.
I'm sure a Tyranny
Like that of Hippias
In this I detect....
They mean to put us under
Themselves I suspect,
And that Laconians assembling
At Cleisthenes' house have played
A trick-of-war and provoked them
Madly to raid
The Treasury, in which term I include
The Pay for my food.

For is it not preposterous
They should talk this way to us
On a subject such as battle!

And, women as they are, about bronze bucklers dare prattle--
Make alliance with the Spartans--people I for one
Like very hungry wolves would always most sincere shun....
Some dirty game is up their sleeve,
I believe.
A Tyranny, no doubt... but they won't catch me, that know.
Henceforth on my guard I'll go,
A sword with myrtle-branches wreathed for ever in my hand,
And under arms in the Public Place I'll take my watchful stand,
Shoulder to shoulder with Aristogeiton. Now my staff I'll draw
And start at once by knocking
that shocking
Hag upon the jaw.

WOMEN.

Your own mother will not know you when you get back to the town.
But first, my friends and allies, let us lay these garments down,
And all ye fellow-citizens, hark to me while I tell
What will aid Athens well.
Just as is right, for I
Have been a sharer
In all the lavish splendour
Of the proud city.
I bore the holy vessels
At seven, then
I pounded barley
At the age of ten,
And clad in yellow robes,
Soon after this,
I was Little Bear to
Brauronian Artemis;
Then neckletted with figs,
Grown tall and pretty,
I was a Basket-bearer,
And so it's obvious I should
Give you advice that I think good,
The very best I can.
It should not prejudice my voice that I'm not born a man,
If I say something advantageous to the present situation.
For I'm taxed too, and as a toll provide men for the nation
While, miserable greybeards, you,
It is true,
Contribute nothing of any importance whatever to our needs;
But the treasure raised against the Medes
You've squandered, and do nothing in return, save that you make
Our lives and persons hazardous by some imbecile mistakes
What can you answer? Now be careful, don't arouse my spite,
Or with my slipper I'll take you napping,
faces slapping
Left and right.

MEN.

What villainies they contrive!
Come, let vengeance fall,
You that below the waist are still alive,
Off with your tunics at my call--
Naked, all.
For a man must strip to battle like a man.
No quaking, brave steps taking, careless what's ahead, white shoed,
in the nude, onward bold,
All ye who garrisoned Leipsidrion of old....
Let each one wag
As youthfully as he can,
And if he has the cause at heart
Rise at least a span.

We must take a stand and keep to it,
For if we yield the smallest bit
To their importunity.
Then nowhere from their inroads will be left to us immunity.
But they'll be building ships and soon their navies will attack us,
As Artemisia did, and seek to fight us and to sack us.
And if they mount, the Knights they'll rob
Of a job,
For everyone knows how talented they all are in the saddle,
Having long practised how to straddle;
No matter how they're jogged there up and down, they're never thrown.
Then think of Myron's painting, and each horse-backed Amazon
In combat hand-to-hand with men.... Come, on these women fall,
And in pierced wood-collars let's stick
quick
The necks of one and all.

WOMEN.

Don't cross me or I'll loose
The Beast that's kennelled here....
And soon you will be howling for a truce,
Howling out with fear.
But my dear,
Strip also, that women may battle unhindered....
But you, you'll be too sore to eat garlic more, or one black bean,
I really mean, so great's my spleen, to kick you black and blue
With these my dangerous legs.
I'll hatch the lot of you,
If my rage you dash on,
The way the relentless Beetle
Hatched the Eagle's eggs.

Scornfully aside I set
Every silly old-man threat
While Lampito's with me.
Or dear Ismenia, the noble Theban girl. Then let decree
Be hotly piled upon decree; in vain will be your labours,
You futile rogue abominated by your suffering neighbour
To Hecate's feast I yesterday went--
Off I sent
To our neighbours in Boeotia, asking as a gift to me
For them to pack immediately
That darling dainty thing ... a good fat eel [1] I meant of course;

[Footnote 1:_Vide supra_, p. 23.]

But they refused because some idiotic old decree's in force.
O this strange passion for decrees nothing on earth can check,
Till someone puts a foot out tripping you,
and slipping you
Break your neck.

LYSISTRATA _enters in dismay_.

WOMEN

Dear Mistress of our martial enterprise,
Why do you come with sorrow in your eyes?

LYSISTRATA

O 'tis our naughty femininity,
So weak in one spot, that hath saddened me.

WOMEN

What's this? Please speak.

LYSISTRATA

Poor women, O so weak!

WOMEN

What can it be? Surely your friends may know.

LYSISTRATA

Yea, I must speak it though it hurt me so.

WOMEN

Speak; can we help? Don't stand there mute in need.

LYSISTRATA

I'll blurt it out then--our women's army's mutinied.

WOMEN

O Zeus!

LYSISTRATA

What use is Zeus to our anatomy?
Here is the gaping calamity I meant:
I cannot shut their ravenous appetites
A moment more now. They are all deserting.
The first I caught was sidling through the postern
Close by the Cave of Pan: the next hoisting herself
With rope and pulley down: a third on the point
Of slipping past: while a fourth malcontent, seated
For instant flight to visit Orsilochus
On bird-back, I dragged off by the hair in time....
They are all snatching excuses to sneak home.
Look, there goes one.... Hey, what's the hurry?

1ST WOMAN

I must get home. I've some Milesian wool
Packed wasting away, and moths are pushing through it.

LYSISTRATA

Fine moths indeed, I know. Get back within.

1ST WOMAN

By the Goddesses, I'll return instantly.
I only want to stretch it on my bed.

LYSISTRATA

You shall stretch nothing and go nowhere either.

1ST WOMAN

Must I never use my wool then?

LYSISTRATA

If needs be.

2ND WOMAN

How unfortunate I am! O my poor flax!
It's left at home unstript.

LYSISTRATA

So here's another
That wishes to go home and strip her flax.
Inside again!

2ND WOMAN

No, by the Goddess of Light,
I'll be back as soon as I have flayed it properly.

LYSISTRATA

You'll not flay anything. For if you begin
There'll not be one here but has a patch to be flayed.

3RD WOMAN

O holy Eilithyia, stay this birth
Till I have left the precincts of the place!

LYSISTRATA

What nonsense is this?

3RD WOMAN

I'll drop it any minute.

LYSISTRATA

Yesterday you weren't with child.

3RD WOMAN

But I am today.
O let me find a midwife, Lysistrata.
O quickly!

LYSISTRATA

Now what story is this you tell?
What is this hard lump here?

3RD WOMAN

It's a male child.

LYSISTRATA

By Aphrodite, it isn't. Your belly's hollow,
And it has the feel of metal.... Well, I soon can see.
You hussy, it's Athene's sacred helm,
And you said you were with child.

3RD WOMAN

And so I am.

LYSISTRATA

Then why the helm?

3RD WOMAN

So if the throes should take me
Still in these grounds I could use it like a dove
As a laying-nest in which to drop the child.

LYSISTRATA

More pretexts! You can't hide your clear intent,
And anyway why not wait till the tenth day
Meditating a brazen name for your brass brat?

WOMAN

And I can't sleep a wink. My nerve is gone
Since I saw that snake-sentinel of the shrine.

WOMAN

And all those dreadful owls with their weird hooting!
Though I'm wearied out, I can't close an eye.

LYSISTRATA

You wicked women, cease from juggling lies.
You want your men. But what of them as well?
They toss as sleepless in the lonely night,
I'm sure of it. Hold out awhile, hold out,
But persevere a teeny-weeny longer.
An oracle has promised Victory
If we don't wrangle. Would you hear the words?

WOMEN

Yes, yes, what is it?

LYSISTRATA

Silence then, you chatterboxes.
Here--
_Whenas the swallows flocking in one place from the hoopoes
Deny themselves love's gambols any more,
All woes shall then have ending and great Zeus the Thunderer
Shall put above what was below before._

WOMEN

Will the men then always be kept under us?

LYSISTRATA
_But if the swallows squabble among themselves and fly away
Out of the temple, refusing to agree,
Then The Most Wanton Birds in all the World
They shall be named for ever. That's his decree._

WOMAN

It's obvious what it means.

LYSISTRATA

                     Now by all the gods
We must let no agony deter from duty,
Back to your quarters. For we are base indeed,
My friends, if we betray the oracle.

_She goes out._


OLD MEN.

I'd like to remind you of a fable they used to employ,
When I was a little boy:
How once through fear of the marriage-bed a young man,
Melanion by name, to the wilderness ran,
And there on the hills he dwelt.
For hares he wove a net
Which with his dog he set--
Most likely he's there yet.
For he never came back home, so great was the fear he felt.
I loathe the sex as much as he,
And therefore I no less shall be
As chaste as was Melanion.

MAN

Grann'am, do you much mind men?

WOMAN

Onions you won't need, to cry.

MAN

From my foot you shan't escape.

WOMAN

What thick forests I espy.

MEN

So much Myronides' fierce beard
And thundering black back were feared,
That the foe fled when they were shown--
Brave he as Phormion.

WOMEN.

Well, I'll relate a rival fable just to show to you
A different point of view:
There was a rough-hewn fellow, Timon, with a face
That glowered as through a thorn-bush in a wild, bleak place.
He too decided on flight,
This very Furies' son,
All the world's ways to shun
And hide from everyone,
Spitting out curses on all knavish men to left and right.
But though he reared this hate for men,
He loved the women even then,
And never thought them enemies.

WOMAN

O your jaw I'd like to break.

MAN

That I fear do you suppose?

WOMAN

Learn what kicks my legs can make.

MAN

Raise them up, and you'll expose--

WOMAN

Nay, you'll see there, I engage,
All is well kept despite my age,
And tended smooth enough to slip
From any adversary's grip.

LYSISTRATA _appears_.

LYSISTRATA

Hollo there, hasten hither to me
Skip fast along.

WOMAN

What is this? Why the noise?

LYSISTRATA

A man, a man! I spy a frenzied man!
He carries Love upon him like a staff.
O Lady of Cyprus, and Cythera, and Paphos,
I beseech you, keep our minds and hands to the oath.

WOMAN

Where is he, whoever he is?

LYSISTRATA

By the Temple of Chloe.

WOMAN

Yes, now I see him, but who can he be?

LYSISTRATA

Look at him. Does anyone recognise his face?

MYRRHINE

I do. He is my husband, Cinesias.

LYSISTRATA

You know how to work. Play with him, lead him on,
Seduce him to the cozening-point--kiss him, kiss him,
Then slip your mouth aside just as he's sure of it,
Ungirdle every caress his mouth feels at
Save that the oath upon the bowl has locked.

MYRRHINE

You can rely on me.

LYSISTRATA

I'll stay here to help
In working up his ardor to its height
Of vain magnificence.... The rest to their quarters.

_Enter_ CINESIAS.

Who is this that stands within our lines?

CINESIAS

I.

LYSISTRATA

A man?

CINESIAS

Too much a man!

LYSISTRATA

Then be off at once.

CINESIAS

Who are you that thus eject me?

LYSISTRATA

Guard for the day.

CINESIAS

By all the gods, then call Myrrhine hither.

LYSISTRATA

So, call Myrrhine hither! Who are you?

CINESIAS

I am her husband Cinesias, son of Anthros.

LYSISTRATA

Welcome, dear friend! That glorious name of yours
Is quite familiar in our ranks. Your wife
Continually has it in her mouth.
She cannot touch an apple or an egg
But she must say, "This to Cinesias!"

CINESIAS

O is that true?

LYSISTRATA

By Aphrodite, it is.
If the conversation strikes on men, your wife
Cuts in with, "All are boobies by Cinesias."

CINESIAS

Then call her here.

LYSISTRATA

And what am I to get?

CINESIAS

This, if you want it.... See, what I have here.
But not to take away.

LYSISTRATA

Then I'll call her.

CINESIAS

Be quick, be quick. All grace is wiped from life
Since she went away. O sad, sad am I
When there I enter on that loneliness,
And wine is unvintaged of the sun's flavour.
And food is tasteless. But I've put on weight.

MYRRHINE (_above_)

I love him O so much! but he won't have it.
Don't call me down to him.

CINESIAS

Sweet little Myrrhine!
What do you mean? Come here.

MYRRHINE

O no I won't.
Why are you calling me? You don't want me.

CINESIAS

Not want you! with this week-old strength of love.

MYRRHINE

Farewell.

CINESIAS

Don't go, please don't go, Myrrhine.
At least you'll hear our child. Call your mother, lad.

CHILD

Mummy ... mummy ... mummy!

CINESIAS

There now, don't you feel pity for the child?
He's not been fed or washed now for six days.

MYRRHINE

I certainly pity him with so heartless a father.

CINESIAS

Come down, my sweetest, come for the child's sake.

MYRRHINE

A trying life it is to be a mother!
I suppose I'd better go.             _She comes down._

CINESIAS

How much younger she looks,
How fresher and how prettier! Myrrhine,
Lift up your lovely face, your disdainful face;
And your ankle ... let your scorn step out its worst;
It only rubs me to more ardor here.

MYRRHINE (_playing with the child_)

You're as innocent as he's iniquitous.
Let me kiss you, honey-petting, mother's darling.

CINESIAS

How wrong to follow other women's counsel
And let loose all these throbbing voids in yourself
As well as in me. Don't you go throb-throb?

MYRRHINE

Take away your hands.

CINESIAS

Everything in the house
Is being ruined.

MYRRHINE

I don't care at all.

CINESIAS

The roosters are picking all your web to rags.
Do you mind that?

MYRRHINE

Not I.

CINESIAS

What time we've wasted
We might have drenched with Paphian laughter, flung
On Aphrodite's Mysteries. O come here.

MYRRHINE

Not till a treaty finishes the war.

CINESIAS

If you must have it, then we'll get it done.

MYRRHINE

Do it and I'll come home. Till then I am bound.

CINESIAS

Well, can't your oath perhaps be got around?

MYRRHINE

No ... no ... still I'll not say that I don't love you.

CINESIAS

You love me! Then dear girl, let me also love you.

MYRRHINE

You must be joking. The boy's looking on.

CINESIAS

Here, Manes, take the child home!... There, he's gone.
There's nothing in the way now. Come to the point.

MYRRHINE

Here in the open! In plain sight?

CINESIAS

In Pan's cave.
A splendid place.

MYRRHINE

Where shall I dress my hair again
Before returning to the citadel?

CINESIAS

You can easily primp yourself in the Clepsydra.

MYRRHINE

But how can I break my oath?

CINESIAS

Leave that to me,
I'll take all risk.

MYRRHINE

Well, I'll make you comfortable.

CINESIAS

Don't worry. I'd as soon lie on the grass.

MYRRHINE

No, by Apollo, in spite of all your faults
I won't have you lying on the nasty earth.
(_From here MYRRHINE keeps on going off to fetch things._)

CINESIAS

Ah, how she loves me.

MYRRHINE

Rest there on the bench,
While I arrange my clothes. O what a nuisance,
I must find some cushions first.

CINESIAS

Why some cushions?
Please don't get them!

MYRRHINE

What? The plain, hard wood?
Never, by Artemis! That would be too vulgar.

CINESIAS

Open your arms!

MYRRHINE

No. Wait a second.

CINESIAS

O....
Then hurry back again.

MYRRHINE

Here the cushions are.
Lie down while I--O dear! But what a shame,
You need more pillows.

CINESIAS

I don't want them, dear.

MYRRHINE

But I do.

CINESIAS

Thwarted affection mine,
They treat you just like Heracles at a feast
With cheats of dainties, O disappointing arms!

MYRRHINE

Raise up your head.

CINESIAS

There, that's everything at last.

MYRRHINE

Yes, all.

CINESIAS

Then run to my arms, you golden girl.

MYRRHINE

I'm loosening my girdle now. But you've not forgotten?
You're not deceiving me about the Treaty?

CINESIAS

No, by my life, I'm not.

MYRRHINE

Why, you've no blanket.

CINESIAS

It's not the silly blanket's warmth but yours I want.

MYRRHINE

Never mind. You'll soon have both. I'll come straight back.

CINESIAS

The woman will choke me with her coverlets.

MYRRHINE

Get up a moment.

CINESIAS

I'm up high enough.

MYRRHINE

Would you like me to perfume you?

CINESIAS

By Apollo, no!

MYRRHINE

By Aphrodite, I'll do it anyway.

CINESIAS

Lord Zeus, may she soon use up all the myrrh.

MYRRHINE

Stretch out your hand. Take it and rub it in.

CINESIAS

Hmm, it's not as fragrant as might be; that is,
Not before it's smeared. It doesn't smell of kisses.

MYRRHINE

How silly I am: I've brought you Rhodian scents.

CINESIAS

It's good enough, leave it, love.

MYRRHINE

You must be jesting.

CINESIAS

Plague rack the man who first compounded scent!

MYRRHINE

Here, take this flask.

CINESIAS

I've a far better one.
Don't tease me, come here, and get nothing more.

MYRRHINE

I'm coming.... I'm just drawing off my shoes....
You're sure you will vote for Peace?

CINESIAS

I'll think about it.
_She runs off._
I'm dead: the woman's worn me all away.
She's gone and left me with an anguished pulse.

MEN

Baulked in your amorous delight
How melancholy is your plight.
With sympathy your case I view;
For I am sure it's hard on you.
What human being could sustain
This unforeseen domestic strain,
And not a single trace
Of willing women in the place!

CINESIAS

O Zeus, what throbbing suffering!

MEN

She did it all, the harlot, she
With her atrocious harlotry.

WOMEN

Nay, rather call her darling-sweet.

MEN

What, sweet? She's a rude, wicked thing.

CINESIAS

A wicked thing, as I repeat.
O Zeus, O Zeus,
Canst Thou not suddenly let loose
Some twirling hurricane to tear
Her flapping up along the air
And drop her, when she's whirled around,
Here to the ground
Neatly impaled upon the stake
That's ready upright for her sake.
_He goes out._

_Enter_ SPARTAN HERALD.

_The_ MAGISTRATE _comes forward_.

HERALD

What here gabs the Senate an' the Prytanes?
I've fetcht despatches for them.

MAGISTRATE

Are you a man
Or a monstrosity?

HERALD

My scrimp-brained lad,
I'm a herald, as ye see, who hae come frae Sparta
Anent a Peace.

MAGISTRATE

Then why do you hide that lance
That sticks out under your arms?

HERALD.

I've brought no lance.

MAGISTRATE

Then why do you turn aside and hold your cloak
So far out from your body? Is your groin swollen
With stress of travelling?

HERALD

By Castor, I'll swear
The man is wud.

MAGISTRATE

Indeed, your cloak is wide,
My rascal fellow.

HERALD

But I tell ye No!
Enow o' fleering!

MAGISTRATE

Well, what is it then?

HERALD

It's my despatch cane.

MAGISTRATE

Of course--a Spartan cane!
But speak right out. I know all this too well.
Are new privations springing up in Sparta?

HERALD

Och, hard as could be: in lofty lusty columns
Our allies stand united. We maun get Pellene.

MAGISTRATE

Whence has this evil come? Is it from Pan?

HERALD

No. Lampito first ran asklent, then the others
Sprinted after her example, and blocked, the hizzies,
Their wames unskaithed against our every fleech.

MAGISTRATE

What did you do?

HERALD

We are broken, and bent double,
Limp like men carrying lanthorns in great winds
About the city. They winna let us even
Wi' lightest neif skim their primsie pretties
Till we've concluded Peace-terms wi' a' Hellas.

MAGISTRATE

So the conspiracy is universal;
This proves it. Then return to Sparta. Bid them
Send envoys with full powers to treat of Peace;
And I will urge the Senate here to choose
Plenipotentiary ambassadors,
As argument adducing this connection.

HERALD

I'm off. Your wisdom none could contravert.
_They retire._

MEN

There is no beast, no rush of fire, like woman so untamed.
She calmly goes her way where even panthers would be shamed.

WOMEN

And yet you are fool enough, it seems, to dare to war with me,
When for your faithful ally you might win me easily.

MEN

Never could the hate I feel for womankind grow less.

WOMEN

Then have your will. But I'll take pity on your nakedness.
For I can see just how ridiculous you look, and so
Will help you with your tunic if close up I now may go.

MEN

Well, that, by Zeus, is no scoundrel-deed, I frankly will admit.
I only took them off myself in a scoundrel raging-fit.

WOMEN

Now you look sensible, and that you're men no one could doubt.
If you were but good friends again, I'd take the insect out
That hurts your eye.

MEN

Is that what's wrong? That nasty bitie thing.
Please squeeze it out, and show me what it is that makes this sting.
It's been paining me a long while now.

WOMEN

Well I'll agree to that,
Although you're most unmannerly. O what a giant gnat.
Here, look! It comes from marshy Tricorysus, I can tell.

MEN

O thank you. It was digging out a veritable well.
Now that it's gone, I can't hold back my tears. See how they fall.

WOMEN

I'll wipe them off, bad as you are, and kiss you after all.

MEN

I won't be kissed.

WOMEN

O yes, you will. Your wishes do not matter.

MEN

O botheration take you all! How you cajole and flatter.
A hell it is to live with you; to live without, a hell:
How truly was that said. But come, these enmities let's quell.
You stop from giving orders and I'll stop from doing wrong.
So let's join ranks and seal our bargain with a choric song.

CHORUS.

Athenians, it's not our intention
To sow political dissension
By giving any scandal mention;
But on the contrary to promote good feeling in the state
By word and deed. We've had enough calamities of late.
So let a man or woman but divulge
They need a trifle, say,
Two minas, three or four,
I've purses here that bulge.
There's only one condition made
(Indulge my whim in this I pray)--
When Peace is signed once more,
On no account am I to be repaid.

And I'm making preparation
For a gay select collation
With some youths of reputation.
I've managed to produce some soup and they're slaughtering for me
A sucking-pig: its flesh should taste as tender as could be.
I shall expect you at my house today.
To the baths make an early visit,
And bring your children along;
Don't dawdle on the way.
Ask no one; enter as if the place
Was all your own--yours henceforth is it.
If nothing chances wrong,
The door will then be shut bang in your face.

_The_ SPARTAN AMBASSADORS _approach_.

CHORUS

Here come the Spartan envoys with long, worried beards.
Hail, Spartans how do you fare?
Did anything new arise?

SPARTANS

No need for a clutter o' words. Do ye see our condition?

CHORUS

The situation swells to greater tension.
Something will explode soon.

SPARTANS

It's awfu' truly.
But come, let us wi' the best speed we may
Scribble a Peace.

CHORUS

I notice that our men
Like wrestlers poised for contest, hold their clothes
Out from their bellies. An athlete's malady!
Since exercise alone can bring relief.

ATHENIANS

Can anyone tell us where Lysistrata is?
There is no need to describe our men's condition,
It shows up plainly enough.

CHORUS

It's the same disease.
Do you feel a jerking throbbing in the morning?

ATHENIANS

By Zeus, yes! In these straits, I'm racked all through.
Unless Peace is soon declared, we shall be driven
In the void of women to try Cleisthenes.

CHORUS

Be wise and cover those things with your tunics.
Who knows what kind of person may perceive you?

ATHENIANS

By Zeus, you're right.

SPARTANS

By the Twa Goddesses,
Indeed ye are. Let's put our tunics on.

ATHENIANS

Hail O my fellow-sufferers, hail Spartans.

SPARTANS

O hinnie darling, what a waefu' thing!
If they had seen us wi' our lunging waddies!

ATHENIANS

Tell us then, Spartans, what has brought you here?

SPARTANS

We come to treat o' Peace.

ATHENIANS

Well spoken there!
And we the same. Let us callout Lysistrata
Since she alone can settle the Peace-terms.

SPARTANS

Callout Lysistratus too if ye don't mind.

CHORUS

No indeed. She hears your voices and she comes.

_Enter LYSISTRATA_

Hail, Wonder of all women! Now you must be in turn
Hard, shifting, clear, deceitful, noble, crafty, sweet, and stern.
The foremost men of Hellas, smitten by your fascination,
Have brought their tangled quarrels here for your sole arbitration.

LYSISTRATA

An easy task if the love's raging home-sickness
Doesn't start trying out how well each other
Will serve instead of us. But I'll know at once
If they do. O where's that girl, Reconciliation?
Bring first before me the Spartan delegates,
And see you lift no rude or violent hands--
None of the churlish ways our husbands used.
But lead them courteously, as women should.
And if they grudge fingers, guide them by other methods,
And introduce them with ready tact. The Athenians
Draw by whatever offers you a grip.
Now, Spartans, stay here facing me. Here you,
Athenians. Both hearken to my words.
I am a woman, but I'm not a fool.
And what of natural intelligence I own
Has been filled out with the remembered precepts
My father and the city-elders taught me.
First I reproach you both sides equally
That when at Pylae and Olympia,
At Pytho and the many other shrines
That I could name, you sprinkle from one cup
The altars common to all Hellenes, yet
You wrack Hellenic cities, bloody Hellas
With deaths of her own sons, while yonder clangs
The gathering menace of barbarians.

ATHENIANS

We cannot hold it in much longer now.

LYSISTRATA

Now unto you, O Spartans, do I speak.
Do you forget how your own countryman,
Pericleidas, once came hither suppliant
Before our altars, pale in his purple robes,
Praying for an army when in Messenia
Danger growled, and the Sea-god made earth quaver.
Then with four thousand hoplites Cimon marched
And saved all Sparta. Yet base ingrates now,
You are ravaging the soil of your preservers.

ATHENIANS

By Zeus, they do great wrong, Lysistrata.

SPARTANS

Great wrong, indeed. O! What a luscious wench!

LYSISTRATA

And now I turn to the Athenians.
Have you forgotten too how once the Spartans
In days when you wore slavish tunics, came
And with their spears broke a Thessalian host
And all the partisans of Hippias?
They alone stood by your shoulder on that day.
They freed you, so that for the slave's short skirt
You should wear the trailing cloak of liberty.

SPARTANS

I've never seen a nobler woman anywhere.

ATHENIANS

Nor I one with such prettily jointing hips.

LYSISTRATA

Now, brethren twined with mutual benefactions,
Can you still war, can you suffer such disgrace?
Why not be friends? What is there to prevent you?

SPARTANS

We're agreed, gin that we get this tempting Mole.

LYSISTRATA

Which one?

SPARTANS

That ane we've wanted to get into,
O for sae lang.... Pylos, of course.

ATHENIANS

By Poseidon,
Never!

LYSISTRATA

Give it up.

ATHENIANS

Then what will we do?
We need that ticklish place united to us--

LYSISTRATA

Ask for some other lurking-hole in return.

ATHENIANS

Then, ah, we'll choose this snug thing here, Echinus,
Shall we call the nestling spot? And this backside haven,
These desirable twin promontories, the Maliac,
And then of course these Megarean Legs.

SPARTANS

Not that, O surely not that, never that.

LYSISTRATA

Agree! Now what are two legs more or less?

ATHENIANS

I want to strip at once and plough my land.

SPARTANS

And mine I want to fertilize at once.

LYSISTRATA

And so you can, when Peace is once declared.
If you mean it, get your allies' heads together
And come to some decision.

ATHENIANS

What allies?
There's no distinction in our politics:
We've risen as one man to this conclusion;
Every ally is jumping-mad to drive it home.

SPARTANS

And ours the same, for sure.

ATHENIANS

The Carystians first!
I'll bet on that.

LYSISTRATA

I agree with all of you.
Now off, and cleanse yourselves for the Acropolis,
For we invite you all in to a supper
From our commissariat baskets. There at table
You will pledge good behaviour and uprightness;
Then each man's wife is his to hustle home.

ATHENIANS

Come, as quickly as possible.

SPARTANS

As quick as ye like.
Lead on.

ATHENIANS

O Zeus, quick, quick, lead quickly on.
_They hurry off._

CHORUS.

Broidered stuffs on high I'm heaping,
Fashionable cloaks and sweeping
Trains, not even gold gawds keeping.
Take them all, I pray you, take them all (I do not care)
And deck your children--your daughter, if the Basket she's to bear.
Come, everyone of you, come in and take
Of this rich hoard a share.
Nought's tied so skilfully
But you its seal can break
And plunder all you spy inside.
I've laid out all that I can spare,
And therefore you will see
Nothing unless than I you're sharper-eyed.
If lacking corn a man should be
While his slaves clamour hungrily
And his excessive progeny,
Then I've a handfull of grain at home which is always to be had,
And to which in fact a more-than-life-size loaf I'd gladly add.
Then let the poor bring with them bag or sack
And take this store of food.
Manes, my man, I'll tell
To help them all to pack
Their wallets full. But O take care.
I had forgotten; don't intrude,
Or terrified you'll yell.
My dog is hungry too, and bites--beware!

Some _LOUNGERS_ from the Market with torches approach
the Banqueting hall. The _PORTER_ bars their entrance.

1ST MARKET-LOUNGER

Open the door.

PORTER

Here move along.

1ST MARKET-LOUNGER

What's this?
You're sitting down. Shall I singe you with my torch?
That's vulgar! O I couldn't do it ... yet
If it would gratify the audience,
I'll mortify myself.

2ND MARKET-LOUNGER

And I will too.
We'll both be crude and vulgar, yes we will.

PORTER

Be off at once now or you'll be wailing
Dirges for your hair. Get off at once,
And see you don't disturb the Spartan envoys
Just coming out from the splendid feast they've had.

_The banqueters begin to come out._

1ST ATHENIAN

I've never known such a pleasant banquet before,
And what delightful fellows the Spartans are.
When we are warm with wine, how wise we grow.

2ND ATHENIAN

That's only fair, since sober we're such fools:
This is the advice I'd give the Athenians--
See our ambassadors are always drunk.
For when we visit Sparta sober, then
We're on the alert for trickery all the while
So that we miss half of the things they say,
And misinterpret things that were never said,
And then report the muddle back to Athens.
But now we're charmed with each other. They might cap
With the Telamon-catch instead of the Cleitagora,
And we'd applaud and praise them just the same;
We're not too scrupulous in weighing words.

PORTER

Why, here the rascals come again to plague me.
Won't you move on, you sorry loafers there!

MARKET-LOUNGER

Yes, by Zeus, they're already coming out.

SPARTANS

Now hinnie dearest, please tak' up your pipe
That I may try a spring an' sing my best
In honour o' the Athenians an' oursels.

ATHENIANS

Aye, take your pipe. By all the gods, there's nothing
Could glad my heart more than to watch you dance.

SPARTANS.

Mnemosyne,
Let thy fire storm these younkers,
O tongue wi' stormy ecstasy
My Muse that knows
Our deeds and theirs, how when at sea
Their navies swooped upon
The Medes at Artemision--
Gods for their courage, did they strike
Wrenching a triumph frae their foes;
While at Thermopylae
Leonidas' army stood: wild-boars they were like
Wild-boars that wi' fierce threat
Their terrible tusks whet;
The sweat ran streaming down each twisted face,
Faen blossoming i' strange petals o' death
Panted frae mortal breath,
The sweat drenched a' their bodies i' that place,
For the hurly-burly o' Persians glittered more
Than the sands on the shore.

Come, Hunting Girl, an' hear my prayer--
You whose arrows whizz in woodlands, come an' bless
This Peace we swear.
Let us be fenced wi' age long amity,
O let this bond stick ever firm through thee
In friendly happiness.
Henceforth no guilefu' perjury be seen!
O hither, hither O
Thou wildwood queen.

LYSISTRATA

Earth is delighted now, peace is the voice of earth.
Spartans, sort out your wives: Athenians, yours.
Let each catch hands with his wife and dance his joy,
Dance out his thanks, be grateful in music,
And promise reformation with his heels.

ATHENIANS.

O Dancers, forward. Lead out the Graces,
Call Artemis out;
Then her brother, the Dancer of Skies,
That gracious Apollo.
Invoke with a shout
Dionysus out of whose eyes
Breaks fire on the maenads that follow;
And Zeus with his flares of quick lightning, and call,
Happy Hera, Queen of all,
And all the Daimons summon hither to be
Witnesses of our revelry
And of the noble Peace we have made,
Aphrodite our aid.
Io Paieon, Io, cry--
For victory, leap!
Attained by me, leap!
Euoi Euoi Euai Euai.

SPARTANS

Piper, gie us the music for a new sang.

SPARTANS.

Leaving again lovely lofty Taygetus
Hither O Spartan Muse, hither to greet us,
And wi' our choric voice to raise
To Amyclean Apollo praise,
And Tyndareus' gallant sons whose days
Alang Eurotas' banks merrily pass,
An' Athene o' the House o' Brass.

Now the dance begin;
Dance, making swirl your fringe o' woolly skin,
While we join voices
To hymn dear Sparta that rejoices
I' a beautifu' sang,
An' loves to see
Dancers tangled beautifully;
For the girls i' tumbled ranks
Alang Eurotas' banks
Like wanton fillies thrang,
Frolicking there
An' like Bacchantes shaking the wild air
To comb a giddy laughter through the hair,
Bacchantes that clench thyrsi as they sweep
To the ecstatic leap.

An' Helen, Child o' Leda, come
Thou holy, nimble, gracefu' Queen,
Lead thou the dance, gather thy joyous tresses up i' bands
An' play like a fawn. To madden them, clap thy hands,
And sing praise to the warrior goddess templed i' our lands,
Her o' the House o' Brass.



# Project Gutenberg #2562

Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer


THE CLOUDS

By Aristophanes


Trans. William James Hickie


     * All Greek from the original edition has been
     transliterated into Roman characters.


DRAMATIS PERSONAE

     Strepsiades
     Phidippides
     Servant of Strepsiades
     Disciples of Socrates
     Socrates
     Chorus of Clouds
     Just Cause
     Unjust Cause
     Pasias
     Amynias
     Witness
     Chaerephon


     Scene: The interior of a sleeping-apartment:
     Strepsiades, Phidippides, and two servants are in their
     beds; a small house is seen at a distance. Time:
     midnight.

     Strepsiades (sitting up in his bed). Ah me! Ah me! O
     King Jupiter, of what a terrible length the nights are!
     Will it never be day? And yet long since I heard the
     cock. My domestics are snoring; but they would not have
     done so heretofore! May you perish then, O war! For many
     reasons; because I may not even punish my domestics.
     Neither does this excellent youth awake through the
     night; but takes his ease, wrapped up in five blankets.
     Well, if it is the fashion, let us snore wrapped up.


     [Lies down, and then almost immediately starts up
     again.]

     But I am not able, miserable man, to sleep, being
     tormented by my expenses, and my stud of horses, and my
     debts, through this son of mine. He with his long hair,
     is riding horses and driving curricles, and dreaming of
     horses; while I am driven to distraction, as I see the
     moon bringing on the twentieths;  for the interest is
     running on. Boy! Light a lamp, and bring forth my
     tablets, that I may take them and read to how many I am
     indebted, and calculate the interest.

     [Enter boy with a light and tablets.]

     Come, let me see; what do I owe? Twelve minae  to
     Pasias. Why twelve minae to Pasias? Why did I borrow
     them? When I bought the blood-horse. Ah me, unhappy!
     Would that it had had its eye knocked out with a stone
     first!

     Phidippides (talking in his sleep). You are acting
     unfairly, Philo! Drive on your own course.

     Strep. This is the bane that has destroyed me; for even
     in his sleep he dreams about horsemanship.

     Phid. How many courses will the war-chariots run?

     Strep. Many courses do you drive me, your father. But
     what debt came upon me after Pasias? Three minae to
     Amynias for a little chariot and pair of wheels.

     Phid. Lead the horse home, after having given him a good
     rolling.

     Strep. O foolish youth, you have rolled me out of my
     possessions; since I have been cast in suits, and others
     say that they will have surety given them for the
     interest.

     Phid. (awakening) Pray, father, why are you peevish, and
     toss about the whole night?

     Strep. A bailiff out of the bedclothes is biting
     me.

     Phid. Suffer me, good sir, to sleep a little.

     Strep. Then, do you sleep on; but know that all these
     debts will turn on your head.

     [Phidippides falls asleep again.]

     Alas! Would that the match-maker had perished miserably,
     who induced me to marry your mother. For a country life
     used to be most agreeable to me, dirty, untrimmed,
     reclining at random, abounding in bees, and sheep, and
     oil-cake. Then I, a rustic, married a niece of Megacles,
     the son of Megacles, from the city, haughty, luxurious,
     and Coesyrafied. When I married her, I lay with her
     redolent of new wine, of the cheese-crate, and abundance
     of wool; but she, on the contrary, of ointment, saffron,
     wanton-kisses, extravagance, gluttony, and of Colias and
     Genetyllis.  I will not indeed say that she was idle;
     but she wove. And I used to show her this cloak by way
     of a pretext and say "Wife, you weave at a great
     rate."

     Servant re-enters.

     Servant. We have no oil in the lamp.

     Strep. Ah me! Why did you light the thirsty lamp? Come
     hither that you may weep!

     Ser. For what, pray, shall I weep?

     Strep. Because you put in one of the thick wicks.

     [Servant runs out]

     After this, when this son was born to us, to me,
     forsooth, and to my excellent wife, we squabbled then
     about the name: for she was for adding hippos  to the
     name, Xanthippus, or Charippus, or Callipides; but I was
     for giving him the name of his grandfather, Phidonides.
     For a time therefore we disputed; and then at length we
     agreed, and called him Phidippides. She used to take
     this son and fondle him, saying, "When you, being grown
     up, shall drive your chariot to the city, like Megacles,
     with a xystis." But I used to say, "Nay, rather, when
     dressed in a leathern jerkin, you shall drive goats from
     Phelleus, like your father." He paid no attention to my
     words, but poured a horse-fever over my property. Now,
     therefore, by meditating the whole night, I have
     discovered one path for my course extraordinarily
     excellent; to which if I persuade this youth I shall be
     saved. But first I wish to awake him. How then can I
     awake him in the most agreeable manner? How?
     Phidippides, my little Phidippides?

     Phid. What, father?

     Strep. Kiss me, and give me your right hand!

     Phid. There. What's the matter?

     Strep. Tell me, do you love me?

     Phid. Yes, by this Equestrian Neptune.

     Strep. Nay, do not by any means mention this Equestrian
     to me, for this god is the author of my misfortunes.
     But, if you really love me from your heart, my son, obey
     me.

     Phid. In what then, pray, shall I obey you?

     Strep. Reform your habits as quickly as possible, and go
     and learn what I advise.

     Phid. Tell me now, what do you prescribe?

     Strep. And will you obey me at all?

     Phid. By Bacchus,  I will obey you.

     Strep. Look this way then! Do you see this little door
     and little house?

     Phid. I see it. What then, pray, is this, father?

     Strep. This is a thinking-shop of wise spirits. There
     dwell men who in speaking of the heavens persuade people
     that it is an oven, and that it encompasses us, and that
     we are the embers. These men teach, if one give them
     money, to conquer in speaking, right or wrong.

     Phid. Who are they?

     Strep. I do not know the name accurately. They are
     minute philosophers, noble and excellent.

     Phid. Bah! They are rogues; I know them. You mean the
     quacks, the pale-faced wretches, the bare-footed
     fellows, of whose numbers are the miserable Socrates and
     Chaerephon.

     Strep. Hold! Hold! Be silent! Do not say anything
     foolish. But, if you have any concern for your father's
     patrimony, become one of them, having given up your
     horsemanship.

     Phid. I would not, by Bacchus, even if you were to give
     me the pheasants which Leogoras  rears!

     Strep. Go, I entreat you, dearest of men, go and be
     taught.

     Phid. Why, what shall I learn?

     Strep. They say that among them are both the two
     causes--the better cause, whichever that is, and the
     worse: they say that the one of these two causes, the
     worse, prevails, though it speaks on the unjust side.
     If, therefore you learn for me this unjust cause, I
     would not pay any one, not even an obolus of these
     debts, which I owe at present on your account.

     Phid. I can not comply; for I should not dare to look
     upon the knights, having lost all my colour.

     Strep. Then, by Ceres,  you shall not eat any of my
     good! Neither you, nor your blood-horse; but I will
     drive you out of my house to the crows.

     Phid. My uncle Megacles will not permit me to be without
     a horse. But I'll go in, and pay no heed to you.

     [Exit Phidippides.]

     Strep. Though fallen, still I will not lie prostrate:
     but having prayed to the gods, I will go myself to the
     thinking-shop and get taught. How, then, being an old
     man, shall I learn the subtleties of refined
     disquisitions? I must go. Why thus do I loiter and not
     knock at the door?

     [Knocks at the door.]

     Boy! Little boy!

     Disciple (from within). Go to the devil! Who it is that
     knocked at the door?

     Strep. Strepsiades, the son of Phidon, of Cicynna.

     Dis. You are a stupid fellow, by Jove! who have kicked
     against the door so very carelessly, and have caused the
     miscarriage of an idea which I had conceived.

     Strep. Pardon me; for I dwell afar in the country. But
     tell me the thing which has been made to miscarry.

     Dis. It is not lawful to mention it, except to
     disciples.

     Strep. Tell it, then, to me without fear; for I here am
     come as a disciple to the thinking-shop.

     Dis. I will tell you; but you must regard these as
     mysteries. Socrates lately asked Chaerephon  about a
     flea, how many of its own feet it jumped; for after
     having bit the eyebrow of Chaerephon, it leaped away
     onto the head of Socrates.

     Strep. How then did he measure this?

     Dis. Most cleverly. He melted some wax; and then took
     the flea and dipped its feet in the wax; and then a pair
     of Persian slippers stuck to it when cooled. Having
     gently loosened these, he measured back the distance.

     Strep. O King Jupiter! What subtlety of thought!

     Dis. What then would you say if you heard another
     contrivance of Socrates?

     Strep. Of what kind? Tell me, I beseech you!

     Dis. Chaerephon the Sphettian asked him whether he
     thought gnats buzzed through the mouth or the breech.

     Strep. What, then, did he say about the gnat?

     Dis. He said the intestine of the gnat was narrow and
     that the wind went forcibly through it, being slender,
     straight to the breech; and then that the rump, being
     hollow where it is adjacent to the narrow part,
     resounded through the violence of the wind.

     Strep. The rump of the gnats then is a trumpet! Oh,
     thrice happy he for his sharp-sightedness! Surely a
     defendant might easily get acquitted who understands the
     intestine of the gnat.

     Dis. But he was lately deprived of a great idea by a
     lizard.

     Strep. In what way? Tell me.

     Dis. As he was investigating the courses of the moon and
     her revolutions, then as he was gaping upward a lizard
     in the darkness dropped upon him from the roof.

     Strep. I am amused at a lizard's having dropped on
     Socrates.

     Dis. Yesterday evening there was no supper for us.

     Strep. Well. What then did he contrive for provisions?

     Dis. He sprinkled fine ashes on the table, and bent a
     little spit, and then took it as a pair of compasses and
     filched a cloak from the Palaestra.

     Strep. Why then do we admire Thales?  Open open quickly
     the thinking-shop, and show to me Socrates as quickly as
     possible. For I desire to be a disciple. Come, open the
     door.

     [The door of the thinking-shop opens and the pupils of
     Socrates are seen all with their heads fixed on the
     ground, while Socrates himself is seen suspended in the
     air in a basket.]

     O Hercules, from what country are these wild beasts?

     Dis. What do you wonder at? To what do they seem to you
     to be like?

     Strep. To the Spartans who were taken at Pylos.  But why
     in the world do these look upon the ground?

     Dis. They are in search of the things below the earth.

     Strep. Then they are searching for roots. Do not, then,
     trouble yourselves about this; for I know where there
     are large and fine ones. Why, what are these doing, who
     are bent down so much?

     Dis. These are groping about in darkness under Tartarus.

     Strep. Why then does their rump look toward heaven?

     Dis. It is getting taught astronomy alone by itself.

     [Turning to the pupils.]

     But go in, lest he meet with us.

     Strep. Not yet, not yet; but let them remain, that I may
     communicate to them a little matter of my own.

     Dis. It is not permitted to them to remain without in
     the open air for a very long time.

     [The pupils retire.]

     Strep. (discovering a variety of mathematical
     instruments) Why, what is this, in the name of heaven?
     Tell me.

     Dis. This is Astronomy.

     Strep. But what is this?

     Dis. Geometry.

     Strep. What then is the use of this?

     Dis. To measure out the land.

     Strep. What belongs to an allotment?

     Dis. No, but the whole earth.

     Strep. You tell me a clever notion; for the contrivance
     is democratic and useful.

     Dis. (pointing to a map) See, here's a map of the whole
     earth. Do you see? This is Athens.

     Strep. What say you? I don't believe you; for I do not
     see the Dicasts  sitting.

     Dis. Be assured that this is truly the Attic territory.

     Strep. Why, where are my fellow-tribesmen of Cicynna?

     Dis. Here they are. And Euboea here, as you see, is
     stretched out a long way by the side of it to a great
     distance.

     Strep. I know that; for it was stretched by us and
     Pericles.  But where is Lacedaemon?

     Dis. Where is it? Here it is.

     Strep. How near it is to us! Pay great attention to
     this, to remove it very far from us.

     Dis. By Jupiter, it is not possible.

     Strep. Then you will weep for it.

     [Looking up and discovering Socrates.]

     Come, who is this man who is in the basket?

     Dis. Himself.

     Strep. Who's "Himself"?

     Dis. Socrates.

     Strep. O Socrates! Come, you sir, call upon him loudly
     for me.

     Dis. Nay, rather, call him yourself; for I have no
     leisure.

     [Exit Disciple.]

     Strep. Socrates! My little Socrates!

     Socrates. Why callest thou me, thou creature of a day?

     Strep. First tell me, I beseech you, what are you doing.

     Soc. I am walking in the air, and speculating about the
     sun.

     Strep. And so you look down upon the gods from your
     basket, and not from the earth?

     Soc. For I should not have rightly discovered things
     celestial if I had not suspended the intellect, and
     mixed the thought in a subtle form with its kindred air.
     But if, being on the ground, I speculated from below on
     things above, I should never have discovered them. For
     the earth forcibly attracts to itself the meditative
     moisture. Water-cresses also suffer the very same thing.

     Strep. What do you say? Does meditation attract the
     moisture to the water-cresses? Come then, my little
     Socrates, descend to me, that you may teach me those
     things, for the sake of which I have come.

     [Socrates lowers himself and gets out of the basket.]

     Soc. And for what did you come?

     Strep. Wishing to learn to speak; for by reason of
     usury, and most ill-natured creditors, I am pillaged and
     plundered, and have my goods seized for debt.

     Soc. How did you get in debt without observing it?

     Strep. A horse-disease consumed me--terrible at eating.
     But teach me the other one of your two causes, that
     which pays nothing; and I will swear by the gods, I will
     pay down to you whatever reward you exact of me.

     Soc. By what gods will you swear? For, in the first
     place, gods are not a current coin with us.

     Strep. By what do you swear? By iron money, as in
     Byzantium?

     Soc. Do you wish to know clearly celestial matters, what
     they rightly are?

     Strep. Yes, by Jupiter, if it be possible!

     Soc. And to hold converse with the Clouds, our
     divinities?

     Strep. By all means.

     Soc. (with great solemnity). Seat yourself, then, upon
     the sacred couch.

     Strep. Well, I am seated!

     Soc. Take, then, this chaplet.

     Strep. For what purpose a chaplet? Ah me! Socrates, see
     that you do not sacrifice me like Athamas!

     Strep. No; we do all these to those who get initiated.

     Strep. Then what shall I gain, pray?

     Soc. You shall become in oratory a tricky knave, a
     thorough rattle, a subtle speaker. But keep quiet.

     Strep. By Jupiter! You will not deceive me; for if I am
     besprinkled, I shall become fine flour.

     Soc. It becomes the old man to speak words of good omen,
     and to hearken to my prayer. O sovereign King,
     immeasurable Air, who keepest the earth suspended, and
     through bright Aether, and ye august goddesses, the
     Clouds, sending thunder and lightning, arise, appear in
     the air, O mistresses, to your deep thinker!

     Strep. Not yet, not yet, till I wrap this around me lest
     I be wet through. To think of my having come from home
     without even a cap, unlucky man!

     Soc. Come then, ye highly honoured Clouds, for a display
     to this man. Whether ye are sitting upon the sacred
     snow-covered summits of Olympus, or in the gardens of
     Father Ocean form a sacred dance with the Nymphs, or
     draw in golden pitchers the streams of the waters of the
     Nile, or inhabit the Maeotic lake, or the snowy rock of
     Mimas, hearken to our prayer, and receive the sacrifice,
     and be propitious to the sacred rites.

     [The following song is heard at a distance, accompanied
     by loud claps of thunder.]

     Chorus. Eternal Clouds! Let us arise to view with our
     dewy, clear-bright nature, from loud-sounding Father
     Ocean to the wood-crowned summits of the lofty
     mountains, in order that we may behold clearly the
     far-seen watch-towers, and the fruits, and the
     fostering, sacred earth, and the rushing sounds of the
     divine rivers, and the roaring, loud-sounding sea; for
     the unwearied eye of Aether sparkles with glittering
     rays. Come, let us shake off the watery cloud from our
     immortal forms and survey the earth with far-seeing eye.

     Soc. O ye greatly venerable Clouds, ye have clearly
     heard me when I called.

     [Turning to Strepsiades.]

     Did you hear the voice, and the thunder which bellowed
     at the same time, feared as a god?

     Strep. I too worship you, O ye highly honoured, and am
     inclined to reply to the thundering, so much do I
     tremble at them and am alarmed. And whether it be
     lawful, or be not lawful, I have a desire just now to
     ease myself.

     Soc. Don't scoff, nor do what these poor-devil-poets do,
     but use words of good omen, for a great swarm of
     goddesses is in motion with their songs.

     Cho. Ye rain-bringing virgins, let us come to the
     fruitful land of Pallas,  to view the much-loved country
     of Cecrops,  abounding in brave men; where is reverence
     for sacred rites not to be divulged;  where the house
     that receives the initiated is thrown open in holy
     mystic rites; and gifts to the celestial gods; and
     high-roofed temples, and statues; and most sacred
     processions in honour of the blessed gods; and
     well-crowned sacrifices to the gods, and feasts, at all
     seasons; and with the approach of spring the Bacchic
     festivity, and the rousings of melodious choruses, and
     the loud-sounding music of flutes.

     Strep. Tell me, O Socrates, I beseech you, by Jupiter,
     who are these that have uttered this grand song? Are
     they some heroines?

     Soc. By no means; but heavenly Clouds, great divinities
     to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument,
     and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and
     ability to hoax, and comprehension.

     Strep. On this account therefore my soul, having heard
     their voice, flutters, and already seeks to discourse
     subtilely, and to quibble about smoke, and having
     pricked a maxim with a little notion, to refute the
     opposite argument. So that now I eagerly desire, if by
     any means it be possible, to see them palpably.

     Soc. Look, then, hither, toward Mount Parnes;  for now I
     behold them descending gently.

     Strep. Pray where? Show me.

     Soc. See! There they come in great numbers through the
     hollows and thickets; there, obliquely.

     Strep. What's the matter? For I can't see them.

     Soc. By the entrance.

     [Enter Chorus]

     Strep. Now at length with difficulty I just see them.

     Soc. Now at length you assuredly see them, unless you
     have your eyes running pumpkins.

     Strep. Yes, by Jupiter! O highly honoured Clouds, for
     now they cover all things.

     Soc. Did you not, however, know, nor yet consider, these
     to be goddesses?

     Strep. No, by Jupiter! But I thought them to be mist,
     and dew, and smoke.

     Soc. For you do not know, by Jupiter! that these feed
     very many sophists, Thurian soothsayers, practisers of
     medicine, lazy-long-haired-onyx-ring-wearers,
     song-twisters for the cyclic dances, and meteorological
     quacks. They feed idle people who do nothing, because
     such men celebrate them in verse.

     Strep. For this reason, then, they introduced into their
     verses "the dreadful impetuosity of the moist,
     whirling-bright clouds"; and the "curls of
     hundred-headed Typho"; and the "hard-blowing tempests";
     and then "aerial, moist"; "crooked-clawed birds,
     floating in air"; and "the showers of rain from dewy
     Clouds". And then, in return for these, they swallow
     "slices of great, fine mullets, and bird's-flesh of
     thrushes."

     Soc. Is it not just, however, that they should have
     their reward, on account of these?

     Strep. Tell me, pray, if they are really clouds, what
     ails them, that they resemble mortal women? For they are
     not such.

     Soc. Pray, of what nature are they?

     Strep. I do not clearly know: at  any rate they resemble
     spread-out fleeces, and not women, by Jupiter! Not a
     bit; for these have noses.

     Soc. Answer, then, whatever I ask you.

     Strep. Then say quickly what you wish.

     Soc. Have you ever, when you; looked up, seen a cloud
     like to a centaur, or a panther, or a wolf, or a bull?

     Strep. By Jupiter, have I! But what of that?

     Soc. They become all things, whatever they please. And
     then if they see a person with long hair, a wild one of
     these hairy fellows, like the son of Xenophantes, in
     derision of his folly, they liken themselves to
     centaurs.

     Strep. Why, what, if they should see Simon,  a plunderer
     of the public property, what do they do?

     Soc. They suddenly become wolves, showing up his
     disposition.

     Strep. For this reason, then, for this reason, when they
     yesterday saw Cleonymus the recreant, on this account
     they became stags, because they saw this most cowardly
     fellow.

     Soc. And now too, because they saw Clisthenes, you
     observe, on this account they became women.

     Strep. Hail therefore, O mistresses! And now, if ever ye
     did to any other, to me also utter a voice reaching to
     heaven, O all-powerful queens.

     Cho. Hail, O ancient veteran, hunter after learned
     speeches! And thou, O priest of most subtle trifles!
     Tell us what you require? For we would not hearken to
     any other of the recent meteorological sophists, except
     to Prodicus;  to him, on account of his wisdom and
     intelligence; and to you, because you walk proudly in
     the streets, and cast your eyes askance, and endure many
     hardships with bare feet, and in reliance upon us
     lookest supercilious.

     Strep. O Earth, what a voice! How holy and dignified and
     wondrous!

     Soc. For, in fact, these alone are goddesses; and all
     the rest is nonsense.

     Strep. But come, by the Earth, is not Jupiter, the
     Olympian, a god?

     Soc. What Jupiter? Do not trifle. There is no Jupiter.

     Strep. What do you say? Who rains then? For first of all
     explain this to me.

     Soc. These to be sure. I will teach you it by powerful
     evidence. Come, where have you ever seen him raining at
     any time without Clouds? And yet he ought to rain in
     fine weather, and these be absent.

     Strep. By Apollo, of a truth you have rightly confirmed
     this by your present argument. And yet, before this, I
     really thought that Jupiter caused the rain. But tell me
     who is it that thunders. This makes me tremble.

     Soc. These, as they roll, thunder.

     Strep. In what way? you all-daring man!

     Soc. When they are full of much water, and are compelled
     to be borne along, being necessarily precipitated when
     full of rain, then they fall heavily upon each other and
     burst and clap.

     Strep. Who is it that compels them to borne along? Is it
     not Jupiter?

     Soc. By no means, but aethereal Vortex.

     Strep. Vortex? It had escaped my notice that Jupiter did
     not exist, and that Vortex now reigned in his stead. But
     you have taught me nothing as yet concerning the clap
     and the thunder.

     Soc. Have you not heard me, that I said that the Clouds,
     when full of moisture, dash against each other and clap
     by reason of their density?

     Strep. Come, how am I to believe this?

     Soc. I'll teach you from your own case. Were you ever,
     after being stuffed with broth at the Panathenaic
     festival,  then disturbed in your belly, and did a
     tumult suddenly rumble through it?

     Strep. Yes, by Apollo! And immediately the little broth
     plays the mischief with me, and is disturbed and rumbles
     like thunder, and grumbles dreadfully: at first gently
     pappax, pappax; and then it adds papa-pappax; and
     finally, it thunders downright papapappax, as they do.

     Soc. Consider, therefore, how you have trumpeted from a
     little belly so small; and how is it not probable that
     this air, being boundless, should thunder so loudly?

     Strep. For this reason, therefore, the two names also
     Trump and Thunder, are similar to each other. But teach
     me this, whence comes the thunderbolt blazing with fire,
     and burns us to ashes when it smites us, and singes
     those who survive. For indeed Jupiter evidently hurls
     this at the perjured.

     Soc. Why, how then, you foolish person, and savouring of
     the dark ages and antediluvian, if his manner is to
     smite the perjured, does he not blast Simon, and
     Cleonymus, and Theorus? And yet they are very perjured.
     But he smites his own temple, and Sunium the promontory
     of Athens, and the tall oaks. Wherefore, for indeed an
     oak does not commit perjury.

     Strep. I do not know; but you seem to speak well. For
     what, pray, is the thunderbolt?

     Soc. When a dry wind, having been raised aloft, is
     inclosed in these Clouds, it inflates them within, like
     a bladder; and then, of necessity, having burst them, it
     rushes out with vehemence by reason of its density,
     setting fire to itself through its rushing and
     impetuosity.

     Strep. By Jupiter, of a truth I once experienced this
     exactly at the Diasian  festival! I was roasting a
     haggis for my kinsfolk, and through neglect I did not
     cut it open; but it became inflated and then suddenly
     bursting, befouled my eyes and burned my face.

     Cho. O mortal, who hast desired great wisdom from us!
     How happy will you become among the Athenians and among
     the Greeks, if you be possessed of a good memory, and be
     a deep thinker, and endurance of labour be implanted in
     your soul, and you be not wearied either by standing or
     walking, nor be exceedingly vexed at shivering with
     cold, nor long to break your fast, and you refrain from
     wine, and gymnastics, and the other follies, and
     consider this the highest excellence, as is proper a
     clever man should, to conquer by action and counsel, and
     by battling with your tongue.

     Strep. As far as regards a sturdy spirit, and care that
     makes one's bed uneasy, and a frugal spirit and
     hard-living and savory-eating belly, be of good courage
     and don't trouble yourself; I would offer myself to
     hammer on, for that matter.

     Soc. Will you not, pray, now believe in no god, except
     what we believe in--this Chaos, and the Clouds, and the
     Tongue--these three?

     Strep. Absolutely I would not even converse with the
     others, not even if I met them; nor would I sacrifice to
     them, nor make libations,  nor offer frankincense.

     Cho. Tell us then boldly, what we must do for you? For
     you shall not fail in getting it, if you honour and
     admire us, and seek to become clever.

     Strep. O mistresses, I request of you then this very
     small favour, that I be the best of the Greeks in
     speaking by a hundred stadia.

     Cho. Well, you shall have this from us, so that
     hence-forward from this time no one shall get more
     opinions passed in the public assemblies than you.

     Strep. Grant me not to deliver important opinions; for I
     do not desire these, but only to pervert the right for
     my own advantage, and to evade my creditors.

     Cho. Then you shall obtain what you desire; for you do
     not covet great things. But commit yourself without fear
     to our ministers.

     Strep. I will do so in reliance upon you, for necessity
     oppresses me, on account of the blood-horses, and the
     marriage that ruined me. Now, therefore, let them use me
     as they please. I give up this body to them to be
     beaten, to be hungered, to be troubled with thirst, to
     be squalid, to shiver with cold, to flay into a leathern
     bottle, if I shall escape clear from my debts, and
     appear to men to be bold, glib of tongue, audacious,
     impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods,
     inventive of words, a practiced knave in lawsuits, a
     law-tablet, a thorough rattle, a fox, a sharper, a
     slippery knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an
     impostor, a gallows-bird, a blackguard, a twister, a
     troublesome fellow, a licker-up of hashes. If they call
     me this, when they meet me, let them do to me absolutely
     what they please. And if they like, by Ceres, let them
     serve up a sausage out of me to the deep thinkers.

     Cho. This man has a spirit not void of courage, but
     prompt. Know, that if you learn these matters from me,
     you will possess among mortals a glory as high as
     heaven.

     Strep. What shall I experience?

     Cho. You shall pass with me the most enviable of mortal
     lives the whole time.

     Strep. Shall I then ever see this?

     Cho. Yea, so that many be always seated at your gates,
     wishing to communicate with you and come to a conference
     with you, to consult with you as to actions and
     affidavits of many talents, as is worthy of your
     abilities.

     [To Socrates.]

     But attempt to teach the old man by degrees whatever you
     purpose, and scrutinize his intellect, and make trial of
     his mind.

     Soc. Come now, tell me your own turn of mind; in order
     that, when I know of what sort it is, I may now, after
     this, apply to you new engines.

     Strep. What? By the gods, do you purpose to besiege me?

     Soc. No; I wish to briefly learn from you if you are
     possessed of a good memory.

     Strep. In two ways, by Jove! If anything be owing to me,
     I have a very good memory; but if I owe unhappy man, I
     am very forgetful.

     Soc. Is the power of speaking, pray, implanted in your
     nature?

     Strep. Speaking is not in me, but cheating is.

     Soc. How, then, will you be able to learn?

     Strep. Excellently, of course.

     Soc. Come, then, take care that, whenever I propound any
     clever dogma about abstruse matters, you catch it up
     immediately.

     Strep. What then? Am I to feed upon wisdom like a dog?

     Soc. This man is ignorant and brutish--I fear, old man,
     lest you will need blows. Come, let me see; what do you
     do if any one beat you?

     Strep. I take the beating; and then, when I have waited
     a little while, I call witnesses to prove it; then
     again, after a short interval, I go to law.

     Soc. Come, then, lay down your cloak.

     Strep. Have I done any wrong?

     Soc. No; but it is the rule to enter naked.

     Strep. But I do not enter to search for stolen goods.

     Soc. Lay it down. Why do you talk nonsense?

     Strep. Now tell me this, pray. If I be diligent and
     learn zealously, to which of your disciples shall I
     become like?

     Soc. You will no way differ from Chaerephon in
     intellect.

     Strep. Ah me, unhappy! I shall become half-dead.

     Soc. Don't chatter; but quickly follow me hither with
     smartness.

     Strep. Then give me first into my hands a honeyed cake;
     for I am afraid of descending within, as if into the
     cave of Trophonius.

     Soc. Proceed; why do you keep poking about the door?

     [Exeunt Socrates and Strepsiades]

     Cho. Well, go in peace, for the sake of this your
     valour. May prosperity attend the man, because, being
     advanced into the vale of years, he imbues his intellect
     with modern subjects, and cultivates wisdom!

     [Turning to the audience.]

     Spectators, I will freely declare to you the truth, by
     Bacchus, who nurtured me! So may I conquer, and be
     accounted skillful, as that, deeming you to be clever
     spectators, and this to be the cleverest of my comedies,
     I thought proper to let you first taste that comedy,
     which gave me the greatest labour. And then I retired
     from the contest defeated by vulgar fellows, though I
     did not deserve it. These things, therefore, I object to
     you, a learned audience, for whose sake I was expending
     this labour. But not even thus will I ever willingly
     desert the discerning portion of you. For since what
     time my Modest Man and my Rake  were very highly praised
     here by an audience, with whom it is a pleasure even to
     hold converse, and I (for I was still a virgin, and it
     was not lawful for me as yet to have children) exposed
     my offspring, and another girl took it up, and owned it,
     and you generously reared and educated it, from this
     time I have had sure pledges of your good will toward
     me. Now, therefore, like that well-known Electra, has
     this comedy come seeking, if haply it meet with an
     audience so clever, for it will recognize, if it should
     see, the lock of its brother.  But see how modest she is
     by nature, who, in the first place, has come, having
     stitched to her no leathern phallus hanging down, red at
     the top, and thick, to set the boys a laughing;  nor yet
     jeered the bald-headed, nor danced the cordax;  nor does
     the old man who speaks the verses beat the person near
     him with his staff, keeping out of sight wretched
     ribaldry; nor has she rushed in with torches, nor does
     she shout iou, iou;  but has come relying on herself and
     her verses. And I, although so excellent a poet, do not
     give myself airs, nor do I seek to deceive you by twice
     and thrice bringing forward the same pieces; but I am
     always clever at introducing new fashions, not at all
     resembling each other, and all of them clever; who
     struck Cleon  in the belly when at the height of his
     power, and could not bear to attack him afterward when
     he was down. But these scribblers, when once Hyperbolus
     has given them a handle, keep ever trampling on this
     wretched man and his mother. Eupolis,  indeed, first of
     all craftily introduced his Maricas, having basely, base
     fellow, spoiled by altering my play of the Knights,
     having added to it, for the sake of the cordax, a
     drunken old woman, whom Phrynichus long ago poetized,
     whom the whale was for devouring. Then again Hermippus
     made verses on Hyperbolus; and now all others press hard
     upon Hyperbolus, imitating my simile of the eels.
     Whoever, therefore, laughs at these, let him not take
     pleasure in my attempts; but if you are delighted with
     me and my inventions, in times to come you will seem to
     be wise.


      I first invoke, to join our choral band, the mighty
     Jupiter, ruling on high, the monarch of gods; and the
     potent master of the trident, the fierce upheaver of
     earth and briny sea; and our father of great renown,
     most august Aether, life-supporter of all; and the
     horse-guider, who fills the plain of the earth with
     exceeding bright beams, a mighty deity among gods and
     mortals.


      Most clever spectators, come, give us your attention;
     for having been injured, we blame you to your faces. For
     though we benefit the state most of all the gods, to us
     alone of the deities you do not offer sacrifice nor yet
     pour libations, who watch over you. For if there should
     be any expedition without prudence, then we either
     thunder or drizzle small rain.  And then, when you were
     for choosing as your general the Paphlagonian tanner,
     hateful to the gods, we contracted our brows and were
     enraged; and thunder burst through the lightning; and
     the Moon forsook her usual paths; and the Sun
     immediately drew in his wick to himself, and declared he
     would not give you light, if Cleon should be your
     general. Nevertheless you chose him. For they say that
     ill counsel is in this city; that the gods, however,
     turn all these your mismanagements to a prosperous
     issue. And how this also shall be advantageous, we will
     easily teach you. If you should convict the cormorant
     Cleon of bribery and embezzlement, and then make fast
     his neck in the stocks, the affair will turn out for the
     state to the ancient form again, if you have mismanaged
     in any way, and to a prosperous issue.


     Hear me again, King Phoebus, Delian Apollo, who
     inhabitest the high-peaked Cynthian rock!  And thou,
     blessed goddess, who inhabitest the all-golden house of
     Ephesus,  in which Lydian damsels greatly reverence
     thee;  and thou, our national goddess, swayer of the
     aegis, Minerva,  guardian of the city! And thou, reveler
     Bacchus, who, inhabiting the Parnassian rock, sparklest
     with torches, conspicuous among the Delphic Bacchanals!


     When we had got ready to set out hither, the Moon met
     us, and commanded us first to greet the Athenians and
     their allies;  and then declared that she was angry, for
     that she had suffered dreadful things, though she
     benefits you all, not in words, but openly. In the first
     place, not less than a drachma every month for torches;
     so that also all, when they went out of an evening, were
     wont to say, "Boy, don't buy a torch, for the moonlight
     is beautiful." And she says she confers other benefits
     on you, but that you do not observe the days at all
     correctly, but confuse them up and down; so that she
     says the gods are constantly threatening her, when they
     are defrauded of their dinner, and depart home, not
     having met with the regular feast according to the
     number of the days. And then, when you ought to be
     sacrificing, you are inflicting tortures and litigating.
     And often, while we gods are observing a fast, when we
     mourn for Memnon or Sarpedon,  you are pouring libations
     and laughing. For which reason Hyperbolus, having
     obtained the lot this year to be Hieromnemon,  was
     afterward deprived by us gods of his crown; for thus he
     will know better that he ought to spend the days of his
     life according to the Moon.

     [Enter Socrates]

     Soc. By Respiration, and Chaos, and Air, I have not seen
     any man so boorish, nor so impracticable, nor so stupid,
     nor so forgetful; who, while learning some little petty
     quibbles, forgets them before he has learned them.
     Nevertheless I will certainly call him out here to the
     light. Where is Strepsiades? Come forth with your couch.

     Strep. (from within). The bugs do not permit me to bring
     it forth.

     Soc. Make haste and lay it down; and give me your
     attention.

     [Enter Strepsiades]

     Strep. Very well.

     Soc. Come now; what do you now wish to learn first of
     those things in none of which you have ever been
     instructed? Tell me. About measures, or rhythms, or
     verses?

     Strep. I should prefer to learn about measures; for it
     is but lately I was cheated out of two choenices  by a
     meal-huckster.

     Soc. I do not ask you this, but which you account the
     most beautiful measure; the trimetre or the tetrameter?

     Strep. Make a wager then with me, if the semisextarius
     be not a tetrameter.

     Soc. Go to the devil! How boorish you are and dull of
     learning. Perhaps you may be able to learn about
     rhythms.

     Strep. But what good will rhythms do me for a living?

     Soc. In the first place, to be clever at an
     entertainment, understanding what rhythm is for the
     war-dance, and what, again, according to the dactyle.

     Strep. According to the dactyle? By Jove, but I know it!

     Soc. Tell me, pray.

     Strep. What else but this finger? Formerly, indeed, when
     I was yet a boy, this here!

     Soc. You are boorish and stupid.

     Strep. For I do not desire, you wretch, to learn any of
     these things.

     Soc. What then?

     Strep. That, that, the most unjust cause.

     Soc. But you must learn other things before these;
     namely, what quadrupeds are properly masculine.

     Strep. I know the males, if I am not mad-krios, tragos,
     tauros, kuon, alektryon.

     Soc. Do you see what you are doing? You are calling both
     the female and the male alektryon in the same way.

     Strep. How, pray? Come, tell me.

     Soc. How? The one with you is alektryon, and the other
     is alektryon also.

     Strep. Yea, by Neptune! How now ought I to call them?

     Soc. The one alektryaina and the other alektor.

     Strep. Alektryaina? Capital, by the Air! So that, in
     return for this lesson alone, I will fill your kardopos
     full of barley-meal on all sides.

     Soc. See! See! There again is another blunder! You make
     kardopos, which is feminine, to be masculine.

     Strep. In what way do I make kardopos masculine?

     Soc. Most assuredly; just as if you were to say
     Cleonymos.

     Strep. Good sir, Cleonymus had no kneading-trough, but
     kneaded his bread in a round mortar. How ought I to call
     it henceforth?

     Soc. How? Call it kardope, as you call Sostrate.

     Strep. Kardope in the feminine?

     Soc. For so you speak it rightly.

     Strep. But that would make it kardope, Kleonyme.

     Soc. You must learn one thing more about names, what are
     masculine and what of them are feminine.

     Strep. I know what are female.

     Soc. Tell me, pray.

     Strep. Lysilla, Philinna, Clitagora, Demetria.

     Soc. What names are masculine?

     Strep. Thousands; Philoxenus, Melesias, Amynias.

     Soc. But, you wretch! These are not masculine.

     Strep. Are they not males with you?

     Soc. By no means; for how would you call Amynias, if you
     met him?

     Strep. How would I call? Thus: "Come hither, come hither
     Amynia!"

     Soc. Do you see? You call Amynias a woman.

     Strep. Is it not then with justice, who does not serve
     in the army? But why should I learn these things, that
     we all know?

     Soc. It is no use, by Jupiter! Having reclined yourself
     down here--

     Strep. What must I do?

     Soc. Think out some of your own affairs.

     Strep. Not here, pray, I beseech you; but, if I must,
     suffer me to excogitate these very things on the ground.

     Soc. There is no other way.

     [Exit Socrates.]

     Strep. Unfortunate man that I am! What a penalty shall I
     this day pay to the bugs!

     Cho. Now meditate and examine closely; and roll yourself
     about in every way, having wrapped yourself up; and
     quickly, when you fall into a difficulty, spring to
     another mental contrivance. But let delightful sleep be
     absent from your eyes.

     Strep. Attatai! Attatai!

     Cho. What ails you? Why are you distressed?

     Strep. Wretched man, I am perishing! The Corinthians,
     coming out from the bed, are biting me, and devouring my
     sides, and drinking up my life-blood, and tearing away
     my flesh, and digging through my vitals, and will
     annihilate me.

     Cho. Do not now be very grievously distressed.

     Strep. Why, how, when my money is gone, my complexion
     gone, my life gone, and my slipper gone? And furthermore
     in addition to these evils, with singing the
     night-watches, I am almost gone myself.

     [Re-enter Socrates]

     Soc. Ho you! What are you about? Are you not meditating?

     Strep. I? Yea, by Neptune!

     Soc. And what, pray, have you thought?

     Strep. Whether any bit of me will be left by the bugs.

     Soc. You will perish most wretchedly.

     Strep. But, my good friend, I have already perished.

     Soc. You must not give in, but must wrap yourself up;
     for you have to discover a device for abstracting, and a
     means of cheating.

     [Walks up and down while Strepsiades wraps himself up in
     the blankets.]

     Strep. Ah me! Would, pray, some one would throw over me
     a swindling contrivance from the sheep-skins.

     Soc. Come now; I will first see this fellow, what he is
     about. Ho you! Are you asleep?

     Strep. No, by Apollo, I am not!

     Soc. Have you got anything?

     Strep. No; by Jupiter, certainly not!

     Soc. Nothing at all?

     Strep. Nothing, except what I have in my right hand.

     Soc. Will you not quickly cover yourself up and think of
     something?

     Strep. About what? For do you tell me this, O Socrates!

     Soc. Do you, yourself, first find out and state what you
     wish.

     Strep. You have heard a thousand times what I wish.
     About the interest; so that I may pay no one.

     Soc. Come then, wrap yourself up, and having given your
     mind play with subtilty, revolve your affairs by little
     and little, rightly distinguishing and examining.

     Strep. Ah me, unhappy man!

     Soc. Keep quiet; and if you be puzzled in any one of
     your conceptions, leave it and go; and then set your
     mind in motion again, and lock it up.

     Strep. (in great glee). O dearest little Socrates!

     Soc. What, old man?

     Strep. I have got a device for cheating them of the
     interest.

     Soc. Exhibit it.

     Strep. Now tell me this, pray; if I were to purchase a
     Thessalian witch, and draw down the moon by night,  and
     then shut it up, as if it were a mirror, in a round
     crest-case, and then carefully keep it--

     Soc. What good, pray, would this do you?

     Strep. What? If the moon were to rise no longer
     anywhere, I should not pay the interest.

     Soc. Why so, pray?

     Strep. Because the money is lent out by the month.

     Soc. Capital! But I will again propose to you another
     clever question. If a suit of five talents should be
     entered against you, tell me how you would obliterate
     it.

     Strep. How? How? I do not know but I must seek.

     Soc. Do not then always revolve your thoughts about
     yourself; but slack away your mind into the air, like a
     cock-chafer  tied with a thread by the foot.

     Strep. I have found a very clever method of getting rid
     of my suit, so that you yourself would acknowledge it.

     Soc. Of what description?

     Strep. Have you ever seen this stone in the chemist's
     shops, the beautiful and transparent one, from which
     they kindle fire?

     Soc. Do you mean the burning-glass?

     Strep. I do. Come what would you say, pray, if I were to
     take this, when the clerk was entering the suit, and
     were to stand at a distance, in the direction of the
     sun, thus, and melt out the letters of my suit?

     Soc. Cleverly done, by the Graces!

     Strep. Oh! How I am delighted, that a suit of five
     talents has been cancelled!

     Soc. Come now, quickly seize upon this.

     Strep. What?

     Soc. How, when engaged in a lawsuit, you could overturn
     the suit, when you were about to be cast, because you
     had no witnesses.

     Strep. Most readily and easily.

     Soc. Tell me, pray.

     Strep. Well now, I'll tell you. If, while one suit was
     still pending, before mine was called on, I were to run
     away and hang myself.

     Soc. You talk nonsense.

     Strep. By the gods, would I! For no one will bring
     action against me when I am dead.

     Soc. You talk nonsense. Begone; I can't teach you any
     longer.

     Strep. Why so? Yea, by the gods, O Socrates!

     Soc. You straightaway forget whatever you learn. For
     what now was the first thing you were taught? Tell me.

     Strep. Come, let me see: nay, what was the first? What
     was the fist? Nay, what was the thing in which we knead
     our flour? Ah me! What was it?

     Soc. Will you not pack off to the devil, you most
     forgetful and most stupid old man?

     Strep. Ah me, what then, pray will become of me,
     wretched man? For I shall be utterly undone, if I do not
     learn to ply the tongue. Come, O ye Clouds, give me some
     good advice.

     Cho. We, old man, advise you, if you have a son grown
     up, to send him to learn in your stead.

     Strep. Well, I have a fine, handsome son, but he is not
     willing to learn. What must I do?

     Cho. But do you permit him?

     Strep. Yes, for he is robust in body, and in good
     health, and is come of the high-plumed dames of Coesyra.
     I will go for him, and if he be not willing, I will
     certainly drive him from my house.

     [To Socrates.]

     Go in and wait for me a short time.

     [Exit]

     Cho. Do you perceive that you are soon to obtain the
     greatest benefits through us alone of the gods? For this
     man is ready to do everything that you bid him. But you,
     while the man is astounded and evidently elated, having
     perceived it, will quickly fleece him to the best of
     your power.

     [Exit Socrates]

     For matters of this sort are somehow accustomed to turn
     the other way.

     [Enter Strepsiades and Phidippides]

     Strep. By Mist, you certainly shall not stay here any
     longer! But go and gnaw the columns of Megacles.

     Phid. My good sir, what is the matter with you, O
     father? You are not in your senses, by Olympian Jupiter!

     Strep. See, see, "Olympian Jupiter!" What folly! To
     think of your believing in Jupiter, as old as you are!

     Phid. Why, pray, did you laugh at this?

     Strep. Reflecting that you are a child, and have
     antiquated notions. Yet, however, approach, that you may
     know more; and I will tell you a thing, by learning
     which you will be a man. But see that you do not teach
     this to any one.

     Phid. Well, what is it?

     Strep. You swore now by Jupiter.

     Phid. I did.

     Strep. Seest thou, then, how good a thing is learning?
     There is no Jupiter, O Phidippides!

     Phid. Who then?

     Strep. Vortex reigns, having expelled Jupiter.

     Phid. Bah! Why do you talk foolishly?

     Strep. Be assured that it is so.

     Phid. Who says this?

     Strep. Socrates the Melian, and Chaerephon, who knows
     the footmarks of fleas.

     Phid. Have you arrived at such a pitch of frenzy that
     you believe madmen?

     Strep. Speak words of good omen, and say nothing bad of
     clever men and wise; of whom, through frugality, none
     ever shaved or anointed himself, or went to a bath to
     wash himself; while you squander my property in bathing,
     as if I were already dead. But go as quickly as possible
     and learn instead of me.

     Phid. What good could any one learn from them?

     Strep. What, really? Whatever wisdom there is among men.
     And you will know yourself, how ignorant and stupid you
     are. But wait for me here a short time.

     [Runs off]

     Phid. Ah me! What shall I do, my father being crazed?
     Shall I bring him into court and convict him of lunacy,
     or shall I give information of his madness to the
     coffin-makers?

     [Re-enter Strepsiades with a cock under one arm and a
     hen under the other]

     Strep. Come, let me see; what do you consider this to
     be? Tell me.

     Phid. Alectryon.

     Strep. Right. And what this?

     Phid. Alectryon.

     Strep. Both the same? You are very ridiculous. Do not do
     so, then, for the future; but call this alektryaina, and
     this one alektor.

     Phid. Alektryaina! Did you learn these clever things by
     going in just now to the Titans?

     Strep. And many others too; but whatever I learned on
     each occasion I used to forget immediately, through
     length of years.

     Phid. Is it for this reason, pray, that you have also
     lost your cloak?

     Strep. I have not lost it; but have studied it away.

     Phid. What have you made of your slippers, you foolish
     man?

     Strep. I have expended them, like Pericles, for needful
     purposes.  Come, move, let us go. And then if you obey
     your father, go wrong if you like. I also know that I
     formerly obeyed you, a lisping child of six years old,
     and bought you a go-cart at the Diasia, with the first
     obolus I received from the Heliaea.

     Phid. You will assuredly some time at length be grieved
     at this.

     Strep. It is well done of you that you obeyed. Come
     hither, come hither O Socrates! Come forth, for I bring
     to you this son of mine, having persuaded him against
     his will.

     [Enter Socrates]

     Soc. For he is still childish, and not used to the
     baskets here.

     Phid. You would yourself be used to them if you were
     hanged.

     Strep. A mischief take you! Do you abuse your teacher?

     Soc. "Were hanged" quoth 'a! How sillily he pronounced
     it, and with lips wide apart! How can this youth ever
     learn an acquittal from a trial or a legal summons, or
     persuasive refutation? And yet Hyperbolus learned this
     at the cost of a talent.

     Strep. Never mind; teach him. He is clever by nature.
     Indeed, from his earliest years, when he was a little
     fellow only so big, he was wont to form houses and carve
     ships within-doors, and make little wagons of leather,
     and make frogs out of pomegranate-rinds, you can't think
     how cleverly. But see that he learns those two causes;
     the better, whatever it may be; and the worse, which, by
     maintaining what is unjust, overturns the better. If not
     both, at any rate the unjust one by all means.

     Soc. He shall learn it himself from the two causes in
     person.

     [Exit Socrates]

     Strep. I will take my departure. Remember this now, that
     he is to be able to reply to all just arguments.

     [Exit Strepsiades and enter Just Cause and Unjust Cause]

     Just Cause. Come hither! Show yourself to the
     spectators, although being audacious.

     Unjust Cause. Go whither you please; for I shall far
     rather do for you, if I speak before a crowd.

     Just. You destroy me? Who are you?

     Unj. A cause.

     Just. Ay, the worse.

     Unj. But I conquer you, who say that you are better than
     I.

     Just. By doing what clever trick?

     Unj. By discovering new contrivances.

     Just. For these innovations flourish by the favour of
     these silly persons.

     Unj. No; but wise persons.

     Just I will destroy you miserably.

     Unj. Tell me, by doing what?

     Just By speaking what is just.

     Unj. But I will overturn them by contradicting them; for
     I deny that justice even exists at all.

     Just Do you deny that it exists?

     Unj. For come, where is it?

     Just With the gods.

     Unj. How, then, if justice exists, has Jupiter not
     perished, who bound his own father?

     Just Bah! This profanity now is spreading! Give me a
     basin.

     Unj. You are a dotard and absurd.

     Just You are debauched and shameless.

     Unj. You have spoken roses of me.

     Just And a dirty lickspittle.

     Unj. You crown me with lilies.

     Just And a parricide.

     Unj. You don't know that you are sprinkling me with
     gold.

     Just Certainly not so formerly, but with lead.

     Unj. But now this is an ornament to me.

     Just You are very impudent.

     Unj. And you are antiquated.

     Just And through you, no one of our youths is willing to
     go to school; and you will be found out some time or
     other by the Athenians, what sort of doctrines you teach
     the simple-minded.

     Unj. You are shamefully squalid.

     Just And you are prosperous. And yet formerly you were a
     beggar saying that you were the Mysian Telephus,  and
     gnawing the maxims of Pandeletus out of your little
     wallet.

     Unj. Oh, the wisdom--

     Just Oh, the madness--

     Unj. Which you have mentioned.

     Just And of your city, which supports you who ruin her
     youths.

     Unj. You shan't teach this youth, you old dotard.

     Just Yes, if he is to be saved, and not merely to
     practise loquacity.

     Unj. (to Phidippides) Come hither, and leave him to
     rave.

     Just You shall howl, if you lay your hand on him.

     Cho. Cease from contention and railing. But show to us,
     you, what you used to teach the men of former times, and
     you, the new system of education; in order that, having
     heard you disputing, he may decide and go to the school
     of one or the other.

     Just. I am willing to do so.

     Unj. I also am willing.

     Cho. Come now, which of the two shall speak first?

     Unj. I will give him the precedence; and then, from
     these things which he adduces, I will shoot him dead
     with new words and thoughts. And at last, if he mutter,
     he shall be destroyed, being stung in his whole face and
     his two eyes by my maxims, as if by bees.

     Cho. Now the two, relying on very dexterous arguments
     and thoughts, and sententious maxims, will show which of
     them shall appear superior in argument. For now the
     whole crisis of wisdom is here laid before them; about
     which my friends have a very great contest. But do you,
     who adorned our elders with many virtuous manners, utter
     the voice in which you rejoice, and declare your nature.

     Just. I will, therefore, describe the ancient system of
     education, how it was ordered, when I flourished in the
     advocacy of justice, and temperance was the fashion. In
     the first place it was incumbent that no one should hear
     the voice of a boy uttering a syllable; and next, that
     those from the same quarter of the town should march in
     good order through the streets to the school of the
     harp-master, naked, and in a body, even if it were to
     snow as thick as meal. Then again, their master would
     teach them, not sitting cross-legged, to learn by rote a
     song, either "pallada persepolin deinan"  or "teleporon
     ti boama"  raising to a higher pitch the harmony which
     our fathers transmitted to us. But if any of them were
     to play the buffoon, or to turn any quavers, like these
     difficult turns the present artists make after the
     manner of Phrynis, he used to be thrashed, being beaten
     with many blows, as banishing the Muses. And it behooved
     the boys, while sitting in the school of the
     Gymnastic-master, to cover the thigh, so that they might
     exhibit nothing indecent to those outside; then again,
     after rising from the ground, to sweep the sand
     together, and to take care not to leave an impression of
     the person for their lovers. And no boy used in those
     days to anoint himself below the navel; so that their
     bodies wore the appearance of blooming health. Nor used
     he to go to his lover, having made up his voice in an
     effeminate tone, prostituting himself with his eyes. Nor
     used it to be allowed when one was dining to take the
     head of the radish, or to snatch from their seniors dill
     or parsley, or to eat fish, or to giggle, or to keep the
     legs crossed.

     Unj. Aye, antiquated and dipolia-like  and full of
     grasshoppers, and of Cecydes, and of the Buphonian
     festival!

     Just Yet certainly these are those principles by which
     my system of education nurtured the men who fought at
     Marathon. But you teach the men of the present day, so
     that I am choked, when at the Panathenaia a fellow,
     holding his shield before his person, neglects
     Tritogenia,  when they ought to dance. Wherefore, O
     youth, choose with confidence, me, the better cause, and
     you will learn to hate the Agora, and to refrain from
     baths, and to be ashamed of what is disgraceful, and to
     be enraged if any one jeer you, and to rise up from
     seats before your seniors when they approach, and not to
     behave ill toward your parents, and to do nothing else
     that is base, because you are to form in your mind an
     image of Modesty: and not to dart into the house of a
     dancing-woman, lest, while gaping after these things,
     being struck with an apple by a wanton, you should be
     damaged in your reputation: and not to contradict your
     father in anything; nor by calling him Iapetus, to
     reproach him with the ills of age, by which you were
     reared in your infancy.

     Unj. If you shall believe him in this, O youth, by
     Bacchus, you will be like the sons of Hippocrates, and
     they will call you a booby.

     Just. Yet certainly shall you spend your time in the
     gymnastic schools, sleek and blooming; not chattering in
     the market-place rude jests, like the youths of the
     present day; nor dragged into court for a petty suit,
     greedy, pettifogging, knavish; but you shall descend to
     the Academy  and run races beneath the sacred olives
     along with some modest compeer, crowned with white
     reeds, redolent of yew, and careless ease, of
     leaf-shedding white poplar, rejoicing in the season of
     spring, when the plane-tree whispers to the elm. If you
     do these things which I say, and apply your mind to
     these, you will ever have a stout chest, a clear
     complexion, broad shoulders, a little tongue, large
     hips, little lewdness. But if you practise what the
     youths of the present day do, you will have in the first
     place, a pallid complexion, small shoulders, a narrow
     chest, a large tongue, little hips, great lewdness, a
     long psephism;  and this deceiver will persuade you to
     consider everything that is base to be honourable, and
     what is honourable to be base; and in addition to this,
     he will fill you with the lewdness of Antimachus.

     Cho. O thou that practisest most renowned high-towering
     wisdom! How sweetly does a modest grace attend your
     words! Happy, therefore, were they who lived in those
     days, in the times of former men! In reply, then, to
     these, O thou that hast a dainty-seeming Muse, it
     behooveth thee to say something new; since the man has
     gained renown. And it appears you have need of powerful
     arguments against him, if you are to conquer the man and
     not incur laughter.

     Unj. And yet I was choking in my heart, and was longing
     to confound all these with contrary maxims. For I have
     been called among the deep thinkers the "worse cause" on
     this very account, that I first contrived how to speak
     against both law and justice; and this art is worth more
     than ten thousand staters, that one should choose the
     worse cause, and nevertheless be victorious. But mark
     how I will confute the system of education on which he
     relies, who says, in the first place, that he will not
     permit you to be washed with warm water. And yet, on
     what principle do you blame the warm baths?

     Just. Because it is most vile, and makes a man cowardly.

     Unj. Stop! For immediately I seize and hold you by the
     waist without escape. Come, tell me, which of the sons
     of Jupiter do you deem to have been the bravest in soul,
     and to have undergone most labours?

     Just. I consider no man superior to Hercules.

     Unj. Where, pray, did you ever see cold Herculean baths?
     And yet, who was more valiant than he?

     Just. These are the very things which make the bath full
     of youths always chattering all day long, but the
     palaestras empty.

     Unj. You next find fault with their living in the
     market-place; but I commend it. For if it had been bad,
     Homer would never have been for representing Nestor  as
     an orator; nor all the other wise men. I will return,
     then, from thence to the tongue, which this fellow says
     our youths ought not to exercise, while I maintain they
     should. And again, he says they ought to be modest: two
     very great evils. For tell me to whom you have ever seen
     any good accrue through modesty and confute me by your
     words.

     Just. To many. Peleus,  at any rate, received his sword
     on account of it.

     Unj. A sword? Marry, he got a pretty piece of luck, the
     poor wretch! While Hyperbolus, he of the lamps, got more
     than many talents by his villainy, but by Jupiter, no
     sword!

     Just. And Peleus married Thetis, too, through his
     modesty.

     Unj. And then she went off and left him; for he was not
     lustful, nor an agreeable bedfellow to spend the night
     with. Now a woman delights in being wantonly treated.
     But you are an old dotard. For (to Phidippides)
     consider, O youth, all that attaches to modesty, and of
     how many pleasures you are about to be deprived--of
     women, of games at cottabus, of dainties, of
     drinking-bouts, of giggling. And yet, what is life worth
     to you if you be deprived of these enjoyments? Well, I
     will pass from thence to the necessities of our nature.
     You have gone astray, you have fallen in love, you have
     been guilty of some adultery, and then have been caught.
     You are undone, for you are unable to speak. But if you
     associate with me, indulge your inclination, dance,
     laugh, and think nothing disgraceful. For if you should
     happen to be detected as an adulterer, you will make
     this reply to him, "that you have done him no injury":
     and then refer him to Jupiter, how even he is overcome
     by love and women. And yet, how could you, who are a
     mortal, have greater power than a god?

     Just. But what if he should suffer the radish through
     obeying you, and be depillated with hot ashes?  What
     argument will he be able to state, to prove that he is
     not a blackguard?

     Unj. And if he be a blackguard, what harm will he
     suffer?

     Just. Nay, what could he ever suffer still greater than
     this?

     Unj. What then will you say if you be conquered by me in
     this?

     Just. I will be silent: what else can I do?

     Unj. Come, now, tell me; from what class do the
     advocates come?

     Just. From the blackguards.

     Unj. I believe you. What then? From what class do
     tragedians come?

     Just. From the blackguards.

     Unj. You say well. But from what class do the public
     orators come?

     Just. From the blackguards.

     Unj. Then have you perceived that you say nothing to the
     purpose? And look which class among the audience is the
     more numerous.

     Just. Well now, I'm looking.

     Unj. What, then, do you see?

     Just. By the gods, the blackguards to be far more
     numerous. This fellow, at any rate, I know; and him
     yonder; and this fellow with the long hair.

     Unj. What, then, will you say?

     Just. We are conquered. Ye blackguards, by the gods,
     receive my cloak, for I desert to you.

     [Exeunt the Two Causes, and re-enter Socrates and
     Strepsiades.]

     Soc. What then? whether do you wish to take and lead
     away this your son, or shall I teach him to speak?

     Strep. Teach him, and chastise him: and remember that
     you train him properly; on the one side able for petty
     suits; but train his other jaw able for the more
     important causes.

     Soc. Make yourself easy; you shall receive him back a
     clever sophist.

     Strep. Nay, rather, pale and wretched.

     [Exeunt Socrates, Strepsiades, and Phidippides.]

     Cho. Go ye, then: but I think that you will repent of
     these proceedings. We wish to speak about the judges,
     what they will gain, if at all they justly assist this
     Chorus. For in the first place, if you wish to plough up
     your fields in spring, we will rain for you first; but
     for the others afterward. And then we will protect the
     fruits, and the vines, so that neither drought afflict
     them, nor excessive wet weather. But if any mortal
     dishonour us who are goddesses, let him consider what
     evils he will suffer at our hands, obtaining neither
     wine nor anything else from his farm. For when his
     olives and vines sprout, they shall be cut down; with
     such slings will we smite them. And if we see him making
     brick, we will rain; and we will smash the tiles of his
     roof with round hailstones. And if he himself, or any
     one of his kindred or friends, at any time marry, we
     will rain the whole night; so he will probably wish
     rather to have been even in Egypt than to have judged
     badly.

     [Enter Strepsiades with a meal-sack on his shoulder.]

     Strep. The fifth, the fourth, the third, after this the
     second; and then, of all the days I most fear, and
     dread, and abominate, immediately after this there is
     the Old and New. For every one to whom I happen to be
     indebted, swears, and says he will ruin and destroy me,
     having made his deposits against me; though I only ask
     what is moderate and just-"My good sir, one part don't
     take just now; the other part put off I pray; and the
     other part remit"; they say that thus they will never
     get back their money, but abuse me, as I am unjust, and
     say they will go to law with me. Now therefore let them
     go to law, for it little concerns me, if Phidippides has
     learned to speak well. I shall soon know by knocking at
     the thinking-shop.

     [Knocks at the door.]

     Boy, I say! Boy, boy!

     [Enter Socrates]

     Soc. Good morning, Strepsiades.

     Strep. The same to you. But first accept this present;
     for one ought to compliment the teacher with a fee. And
     tell me about my son, if he has learned that cause,
     which you just now brought forward.

     Soc. He has learned it.

     Strep. Well done, O Fraud, all-powerful queen!

     Soc. So that you can get clear off from whatever suit
     you please.

     Strep. Even if witnesses were present when I borrowed
     the money?

     Soc. Yea, much more! Even if a thousand be present.

     Strep. Then I will shout with a very loud shout: Ho!
     Weep, you petty-usurers, both you and your principals,
     and your compound interests! For you can no longer do me
     any harm, because such a son is being reared for me in
     this house, shining with a double-edged tongue, for my
     guardian, the preserver of my house, a mischief to my
     enemies, ending the sadness of the great woes of his
     father. Him do thou run and summon from within to me.

     [Socrates goes into the house.]

     O child! O son! Come forth from the house! Hear your
     father!

     [Re-enter Socrates leading in Phidippides]

     Soc. Lo, here is the man!

     Strep. O my dear, my dear!

     Soc. Take your son and depart.

     [Exit Socrates.]

     Strep. Oh, oh, my child! Huzza! Huzza! How I am
     delighted at the first sight of your complexion! Now,
     indeed, you are, in the first place, negative and
     disputatious to look at, and this fashion native to the
     place plainly appears, the "what do you say?" and the
     seeming to be injured when, I well know, you are
     injuring and inflicting a wrong; and in your countenance
     there is the Attic look. Now, therefore, see that you
     save me, since you have also ruined me.

     Phid. What, pray, do you fear?

     Strep. The Old and New.

     Phid. Why, is any day old and new?

     Strep. Yes; on which they say that they will make their
     deposits against me.

     Phid. Then those that have made them will lose them; for
     it is not possible that two days can be one day.

     Strep. Can not it?

     Phid. Certainly not; unless the same woman can be both
     old and young at the same time.

     Strep. And yet it is the law.

     Phid. For they do not, I think, rightly understand what
     the law means.

     Strep. And what does it mean?

     Phid. The ancient Solon  was by nature the commons'
     friend.

     Strep. This surely is nothing whatever to the Old and
     New.

     Phid. He therefore made the summons for two days, for
     the Old and New, that the deposits might be made on the
     first of the month.

     Strep. Why, pray, did he add the old day?

     Phid. In order, my good sir, that the defendants, being
     present a day before, might compromise the matter of
     their own accord; but if not, that they might be worried
     on the morning of the new moon.

     Strep. Why, then, do the magistrates not receive the
     deposits on the new moon, but on the Old and New?

     Phid. They seem to me to do what the forestallers do: in
     order that they may appreciate the deposits as soon as
     possible, on this account they have the first pick by
     one day.

     Strep. (turning to the audience) Bravo! Ye wretches, why
     do you sit senseless, the gain of us wise men, being
     blocks, ciphers, mere sheep, jars heaped together,
     wherefore I must sing an encomium upon myself and this
     my son, on account of our good fortune. "O happy
     Strepsiades! How wise you are yourself, and how
     excellent is the son whom you are rearing!" My friends
     and fellow-tribesmen will say of me, envying me, when
     you prove victorious in arguing causes. But first I wish
     to lead you in and entertain you.

     [Exeunt Strepsiades and Phidippides.]

     Pasias (entering with his summons-witness) Then, ought a
     man to throw away any part of his own property? Never!
     But it were better then at once to put away blushes,
     rather than now to have trouble; since I am now dragging
     you to be a witness, for the sake of my own money; and
     further, in addition to this, I shall become an enemy to
     my fellow-tribesman. But never, while I live, will I
     disgrace my country, but will summon Strepsiades.

     Strep. (from within) Who's there?

     Pas. For the Old and New.

     Strep. I call you to witness, that he has named it for
     two days. For what matter do you summon me?

     Pas. For the twelve minae, which you received when you
     were buying the dapple-gray horse.

     Strep. A horse? Do you not hear? I, whom you all know to
     hate horsemanship!

     Pas. And, by Jupiter! You swore by the gods too, that
     you would repay it.

     Strep. Ay, by Jove! For then my Phidippides did not yet
     know the irrefragable argument.

     Pas. And do you now intend, on this account, to deny the
     debt?

     Strep. Why, what good should I get else from his
     instruction?

     Pas. And will you be willing to deny these upon oath of
     the gods?

     Strep. What gods?

     Pas. Jupiter, Mercury, and Neptune.

     Strep. Yes, by Jupiter! And would pay down, too, a
     three-obol piece besides to swear.

     Pas. Then may you perish some day for your impudence!

     Strep. This man would be the better for it if he were
     cleansed by rubbing with salt.

     Pas. Ah me, how you deride me!

     Strep. He will contain six choae.

      Pas. By great Jupiter and the gods, you certainly shall
     not do this to me with impunity!

     Strep. I like your gods amazingly; and Jupiter, sworn
     by, is ridiculous to the knowing ones.

      Pas. You will assuredly suffer punishment, some time or
     other, for this. But answer and dismiss me, whether you
     are going to repay me my money or not.

     Strep. Keep quiet now, for I will presently answer you
     distinctly.

     [Runs into the house.]

     Pas. (to his summons-witness). What do you think he will
     do?

     Witness. I think he will pay you.

     [Re-enter Strepsiades with a kneading-trough]

     Strep. Where is this man who asks me for his money? Tell
     me what is this?

     Pas. What is this? A kardopos.

     Strep. And do you then ask me for your money, being such
     an ignorant person? I would not pay, not even an obolus,
     to any one who called the kardope kardopos.

     Pas. Then won't you pay me?

     Strep. Not, as far as I know. Will you not then pack off
     as fast as possible from my door?

     Pas. I will depart; and be assured of this, that I will
     make deposit against you, or may I live no longer!

     Strep. Then you will lose it besides, in addition to
     your twelve minae. And yet I do not wish you to suffer
     this, because you named the kardopos foolishly.

     [Exeunt Pasias and Witness, and enter Amynias]

     Amynias. Ah me! Ah me!

     Strep. Ha! Whoever is this, who is lamenting? Surely it
     was not one of Carcinus' deities  that spoke.

     Amyn. But why do you wish to know this, who I am?-A
     miserable man.

     Strep. Then follow your own path.

     Amyn. O harsh fortune! O Fates, breaking the wheels of
     my horses! O Pallas, how you have destroyed me!

     Strep. What evil, pray, has Tlepolemus  ever done you?

     Amyn. Do not jeer me, my friend; but order your son to
     pay me the money which he received; especially as I have
     been unfortunate.

     Strep. What money is this?

     Amyn. That which he borrowed.

     Strep. Then you were really unlucky, as I think.

     Amyn. By the gods, I fell while driving my horses.

     Strep. Why, pray, do you talk nonsense, as if you had
     fallen from an ass?

     Amyn. Do I talk nonsense if I wish to recover my money?

     Strep. You can't be in your senses yourself.

     Amyn. Why, pray?

     Strep. You appear to me to have had your brains shaken
     as it were.

     Amyn. And you appear to me, by Hermes, to be going to be
     summoned, if you will not pay me the money?

     Strep. Tell me now, whether you think that Jupiter
     always rains fresh rain on each occasion, or that the
     sun draws from below the same water back again?

     Amyn. I know not which; nor do I care.

     Strep. How then is it just that you should recover your
     money, if you know nothing of meteorological matters?

     Amyn. Well, if you are in want, pay me the interest of
     my money.

     Strep. What sort of animal is this interest?

     Amyn. Most assuredly the money is always becoming more
     and more every month and every day as the time slips
     away.

     Strep. You say well. What then? Is it possible that you
     consider the sea to be greater now than formerly?

     Amyn. No, by Jupiter, but equal; for it is not fitting
     that it should be greater.

     Strep. And how then, you wretch does this become no way
     greater, though the rivers flow into it, while you seek
     to increase your money? Will you not take yourself off
     from my house? Bring me the goad.

     [Enter Servant with a goad.]

      Amyn. I call you to witness these things.

     Strep. (beating him). Go! Why do you delay? Won't you
     march, Mr. Blood-horse?

     Amyn. Is not this an insult, pray?

     Strep. Will you move quickly?

      [Pricks him behind with the goad.]

     I'll lay on you, goading you behind, you outrigger? Do
     you fly?

     [Amynias runs off.]

     I thought I should stir you, together with your wheels
     and your two-horse chariots.

     [Exit Strepsiades.]

     Cho. What a thing it is to love evil courses! For this
     old man, having loved them, wishes to withhold the money
     that he borrowed. And he will certainly meet with
     something today, which will perhaps cause this sophist
     to suddenly receive some misfortune, in return for the
     knaveries he has begun. For I think that he will
     presently find what has been long boiling up, that his
     son is skilful to speak opinions opposed to justice, so
     as to overcome all with whomsoever he holds converse,
     even if he advance most villainous doctrines; and
     perhaps, perhaps his father will wish that he were even
     speechless.

     Strep. (running out of the house pursued by his son)
     Hollo! Hollo! O neighbours, and kinsfolk, and
     fellow-tribesmen, defend me, by all means, who am being
     beaten! Ah me, unhappy man, for my head and jaw! Wretch!
     Do you beat your father?

     Phid. Yes, father.

     Strep. You see him owning that he beats me.

     Phid. Certainly.

     Strep. O wretch, and parricide, and house-breaker!

     Phid. Say the same things of me again, and more. Do you
     know that I take pleasure in being much abused?

     Strep. You blackguard!

     Phid. Sprinkle me with roses in abundance.

     Strep. Do you beat your father?

     Phid. And will prove too, by Jupiter! that I beat you
     with justice.

     Strep. O thou most rascally! Why, how can it be just to
     beat a father?

     Phid. I will demonstrate it, and will overcome you in
     argument.

     Strep. Will you overcome me in this?

     Phid. Yea, by much and easily. But choose which of the
     two Causes you wish to speak.

     Strep. Of what two Causes?

     Phid. The better, or the worse?

     Strep. Marry, I did get you taught to speak against
     justice, by Jupiter, my friend, if you are going to
     persuade me of this, that it is just and honourable for
     a father to be beaten by his sons!

     Phid. I think I shall certainly persuade you; so that,
     when you have heard, not even you yourself will say
     anything against it.

     Strep. Well, now, I am willing to hear what you have to
     say.

     Cho. It is your business, old man, to consider in what
     way you shall conquer the man; for if he were not
     relying upon something, he would not be so licentious.
     But he is emboldened by something; the boldness of the
     man is evident. Now you ought to tell to the Chorus from
     what the contention first arose. And this you must do by
     all means.

     Strep. Well, now, I will tell you from what we first
     began to rail at one another. After we had feasted, as
     you know, I first bade him take a lyre, and sing a song
     of Simonides, "The Shearing of the Ram."  But he
     immediately said it was old-fashioned to play on the
     lyre and sing while drinking, like a woman grinding
     parched barley.

     Phid. For ought you not then immediately to be beaten
     and trampled on, bidding me sing, just as if you were
     entertaining cicadae?

     Strep. He expressed, however, such opinions then too
     within, as he does now; and he asserted that Simonides
     was a bad poet. I bore it at first, with difficulty
     indeed, yet nevertheless I bore it. And then I bade him
     at least take a myrtle-wreath and recite to me some
     portion of Aeschylus; and then he immediately said,
     "Shall I consider Aeschylus the first among the poets,
     full of empty sound, unpolished, bombastic, using rugged
     words?" And hereupon you can't think how my heart
     panted. But, nevertheless, I restrained my passion, and
     said, "At least recite some passage of the more modern
     poets, of whatever kind these clever things be." And he
     immediately sang a passage of Euripides, how a brother,
     O averter of ill! Debauched his uterine sister. And I
     bore it no longer, but immediately assailed him with
     many abusive reproaches. And then, after that, as was
     natural, we hurled word upon word. Then he springs upon
     me; and then he was wounding me, and beating me, and
     throttling me.

     Phid. Were you not therefore justly beaten, who do not
     praise Euripides, the wisest of poets?

     Strep. He the wisest! Oh, what shall I call you? But I
     shall be beaten again.

     Phid. Yes, by Jupiter, with justice?

     Strep. Why, how with justice? Who, O shameless fellow,
     reared you, understanding all your wishes, when you
     lisped what you meant? If you said bryn, I,
     understanding it, used to give you to drink. And when
     you asked for mamman, I used to come to you with bread.
     And you used no sooner to say caccan, than I used to
     take and carry you out of doors, and hold you before me.
     But you now, throttling me who was bawling and crying
     out because I wanted to ease myself, had not the heart
     to carry me forth out of doors, you wretch; but I did it
     there while I was being throttled.

     Cho. I fancy the hearts of the youths are panting to
     hear what he will say. For if, after having done such
     things, he shall persuade him by speaking, I would not
     take the hide of the old folks, even at the price of a
     chick-pea. It is thy business, thou author and upheaver
     of new words, to seek some means of persuasion, so that
     you shall seem to speak justly.

     Phid. How pleasant it is to be acquainted with new and
     clever things, and to be able to despise the established
     laws! For I, when I applied my mind to horsemanship
     alone, used not to be able to utter three words before I
     made a mistake; but now, since he himself has made me
     cease from these pursuits, and I am acquainted with
     subtle thoughts, and arguments, and speculations, I
     think I shall demonstrate that it is just to chastise
     one's father.

     Strep. Ride, then, by Jupiter! Since it is better for me
     to keep a team of four horses than to be killed with a
     beating.

     Phid. I will pass over to that part of my discourse
     where you interrupted me; and first I will ask you this:
     Did you beat me when I was a boy?

     Strep. I did, through good-will and concern for you.

     Phid. Pray tell me, is it not just that I also should be
     well inclined toward you in the same way, and beat you,
     since this is to be well inclined-to give a beating? For
     why ought your body to be exempt from blows and mine
     not? And yet I too was born free. The boys weep, and do
     you not think it is right that a father should weep? You
     will say that it is ordained by law that this should be
     the lot of boys. But I would reply, that old men are
     boys twice over, and that it is the more reasonable that
     the old should weep than the young, inasmuch as it is
     less just that they should err.

     Strep. It is nowhere ordained by law that a father
     should suffer this.

     Phid. Was it not then a man like you and me, who first
     proposed this law, and by speaking persuaded the
     ancients? Why then is it less lawful for me also in turn
     to propose henceforth a new law for the sons, that they
     should beat their fathers in turn? But as many blows as
     we received before the law was made, we remit: and we
     concede to them our having been thrashed without return.
     Observe the cocks and these other animals, how they
     punish their fathers; and yet, in what do they differ
     from us, except that they do not write decrees?

     Strep. Why then, since you imitate the cocks in all
     things, do you not both eat dung and sleep on a perch?

     Phid. It is not the same thing, my friend; nor would it
     appear so to Socrates.

     Strep. Therefore do not beat me; otherwise you will one
     day blame yourself.

     Phid. Why, how?

     Strep. Since I am justly entitled to chastise you; and
     you to chastise your son, if you should have one.

     Phid. But if I should not have one, I shall have wept
     for nothing, and you will die laughing at me.

     Strep. To me, indeed, O comrades, he seems to speak
     justly; and I think we ought to concede to them what is
     fitting. For it is proper that we should weep, if we do
     not act justly.

     Phid. Consider still another maxim.

     Strep. No; for I shall perish if I do.

     Phid. And yet perhaps you will not be vexed at suffering
     what you now suffer.

     Strep. How, pray? For inform me what good you will do me
     by this.

     Phid. I will beat my mother, just as I have you.

     Strep. What do you say? What do you say? This other,
     again, is a greater wickedness.

     Phid. But what if, having the worst Cause, I shall
     conquer you in arguing, proving that it is right to beat
     one's mother?

     Strep. Most assuredly, if you do this, nothing will
     hinder you from casting yourself and your Worse Cause
     into the pit along with Socrates. These evils have I
     suffered through you, O Clouds! Having intrusted all my
     affairs to you.

     Cho. Nay, rather, you are yourself  the cause of these
     things, having turned yourself to wicked courses.

     Strep. Why, pray, did you not tell me this, then, but
     excited with hopes a rustic and aged man?

     Cho. We always do this to him whom we perceive to be a
     lover of wicked courses, until we precipitate him into
     misfortune, so that he may learn to fear the gods.

     Strep. Ah me! it is severe, O Clouds! But it is just;
     for I ought not to have withheld the money which I
     borrowed. Now, therefore, come with me, my dearest son,
     that you may destroy the blackguard Chaerephon and
     Socrates, who deceived you and me.

     Phid. I will not injure my teachers.

     Strep. Yes, yes, reverence Paternal Jove.

     Phid. "Paternal Jove" quoth'a! How antiquated you are!
     Why, is there any Jove?

     Strep. There is.

     Phid. There is not, no; for Vortex reigns having
     expelled Jupiter.

     Strep. He has not expelled him; but I fancied this, on
     account of this Vortex here. Ah me, unhappy man! When I
     even took you who are of earthenware for a god.

     Phid. Here rave and babble to yourself.

     [Exit Phidippides]

     Strep. Ah me, what madness! How mad, then, I was when I
     ejected the gods on account of Socrates! But O dear
     Hermes, by no means be wroth with me, nor destroy me;
     but pardon me, since I have gone crazy through prating.
     And become my adviser, whether I shall bring an action
     and prosecute them, or whatever you think. You advise me
     rightly, not permitting me to get up a lawsuit, but as
     soon as possible to set fire to the house of the prating
     fellows. Come hither, come hither, Xanthias! Come forth
     with a ladder and with a mattock and then mount upon the
     thinking-shop and dig down the roof, if you love your
     master, until you tumble the house upon them.

     [Xanthias mounts upon the roof]

     But let some one bring me a lighted torch and I'll make
     some of them this day suffer punishment, even if they be
     ever so much impostors.

     1st Dis. (from within) Hollo! Hollo!

     Strep. It is your business, O torch, to send forth
     abundant flame.

     [Mounts upon the roof]

     1st Dis. What are you doing, fellow?

     Strep. What am I doing? Why, what else, than chopping
     logic with the beams of your house?

     [Sets the house on fire]

     2nd Dis. (from within) You will destroy us! You will
     destroy us!

     Strep. For I also wish this very thing; unless my
     mattock deceive my hopes, or I should somehow fall first
     and break my neck.

     Soc. (from within). Hollo you! What are you doing, pray,
     you fellow on the roof?

     Strep. I am walking on air, and speculating about the
     sun.

     Soc. Ah me, unhappy! I shall be suffocated, wretched
     man!

     Chaer. And I, miserable man, shall be burnt to death!

     Strep. For what has come into your heads that you acted
     insolently toward the gods, and pried into the seat of
     the moon? Chase, pelt, smite them, for many reasons, but
     especially because you know that they offended against
     the gods!

     [The thinking shop is burned down]

     Cho. Lead the way out; for we have sufficiently acted as
     chorus for today.


     [Exeunt omnes]



# Project Gutenberg #3012

Produced by Derek Davis, and David Widger


THE ACHARNIANS

By Aristophanes
[Translator uncredited. Footnotes have been retained because they
provide the meanings of Greek names, terms and ceremonies and explain
puns and references otherwise lost in translation. Occasional Greek
words in the footnotes have not been included. Footnote numbers, in
brackets, start anew at (1) for each piece of dialogue, and each
footnote follows immediately the dialogue to which it refers, labeled
thus: f(1).]


INTRODUCTION

THE ACHARNIANS


INTRODUCTION

This is the first of the series of three Comedies--'The Acharnians,'
'Peace' and 'Lysistrata'--produced at intervals of years, the sixth,
tenth and twenty-first of the Peloponnesian War, and impressing on the
Athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the
scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the
consequent ruin of industry and, above all, agriculture, and the urgency
of asking Peace. In date it is the earliest play brought out by the
author in his own name and his first work of serious importance. It was
acted at the Lenaean Festival, in January, 426 B.C., and gained the
first prize, Cratinus being second.

Its diatribes against the War and fierce criticism of the general policy
of the War party so enraged Cleon that, as already mentioned, he
endeavoured to ruin the author, who in 'The Knights' retorted by a
direct and savage personal attack on the leader of the democracy.

The plot is of the simplest. Dicaeopolis, an Athenian citizen, but a
native of Acharnae, one of the agricultural demes and one which had
especially suffered in the Lacedaemonian invasions, sick and tired of
the ill-success and miseries of the War, makes up his mind, if he fails
to induce the people to adopt his policy of "peace at any price," to
conclude a private and particular peace of his own to cover himself, his
family, and his estate. The Athenians, momentarily elated by victory and
over-persuaded by the demagogues of the day--Cleon and his henchmen,
refuse to hear of such a thing as coming to terms. Accordingly
Dicaeopolis dispatches an envoy to Sparta on his own account, who comes
back presently with a selection of specimen treaties in his pocket. The
old man tastes and tries, special terms are arranged, and the play
concludes with a riotous and uproarious rustic feast in honour of the
blessings of Peace and Plenty.

Incidentally excellent fun is poked at Euripides and his dramatic
methods, which supply matter for so much witty badinage in several
others of our author's pieces.

Other specially comic incidents are: the scene where the two young
daughters of the famished Megarian are sold in the market at Athens as
suck(l)ing-pigs--a scene in which the convenient similarity of the Greek
words signifying a pig and the 'pudendum muliebre' respectively is
utilized in a whole string of ingenious and suggestive 'double
entendres' and ludicrous jokes; another where the Informer, or
Market-Spy, is packed up in a crate as crockery and carried off home by
the Boeotian buyer.

The drama takes its title from the Chorus, composed of old men of
Acharnae.


THE ACHARNIANS

DRAMATIS PERSONAE


     DICAEOPOLIS
     HERALD
     AMPHITHEUS
     AMBASSADORS
     PSEUDARTABAS
     THEORUS
     WIFE OF DICAEOPOLIS
     DAUGHTER OF DICAEOPOLIS
     EURIPIDES
     CEPHISOPHON, servant of Euripides
     LAMACHUS
     ATTENDANT OF LAMACHUS
     A MEGARIAN
     MAIDENS, daughters of the Megarian
     A BOEOTIAN
     NICARCHUS
     A HUSBANDMAN
     A BRIDESMAID
     AN INFORMER
     MESSENGERS
     CHORUS OF ACHARNIAN ELDERS

SCENE: The Athenian Ecclesia on the Pnyx; afterwards Dicaeopolis' house in the country.


DICAEOPOLIS(1) (alone)
 What cares have not gnawed at my heart and how few have been the
 pleasures in my life!  Four, to be exact, while my troubles have been
 as countless as the grains of sand on the shore!  Let me see! of what
 value to me have been these few pleasures?  Ah! I remember that I was
 delighted in soul when Cleon had to disgorge those five talents;(2) I was
 in ecstasy and I love the Knights for this deed; 'it is an honour to
 Greece.'(3) But the day when I was impatiently awaiting a piece by
 Aeschylus,(4) what tragic despair it caused me when the herald called,
 "Theognis,(5) introduce your Chorus!" Just imagine how this blow struck
 straight at my heart!  On the other hand, what joy Dexitheus caused
 me at the musical competition, when he played a Boeotian melody
 on the lyre!  But this year by contrast! Oh! what deadly torture
 to hear Chaeris(6) perform the prelude in the Orthian mode!(7)
 --Never, however, since I began to bathe, has the dust hurt my
 eyes as it does to-day.  Still it is the day of assembly; all should be
 here at daybreak, and yet the Pnyx(8) is still deserted.  They are
 gossiping in the marketplace, slipping hither and thither to avoid
 the vermilioned rope.(9) The Prytanes(10) even do not come; they will be
 late, but when they come they will push and fight each other for a
 seat in the front row.  They will never trouble themselves with the
 question of peace.  Oh!  Athens! Athens! As for myself, I do not fail to
 come here before all the rest, and now, finding myself alone, I groan,
 yawn, stretch, break wind, and know not what to do; I make sketches in
 the dust, pull out my loose hairs, muse, think of my fields, long for
 peace, curse town life and regret my dear country home,(11) which never
 told me to 'buy fuel, vinegar or oil'; there the word 'buy,' which
 cuts me in two, was unknown; I harvested everything at will.  Therefore
 I have come to the assembly fully prepared to bawl, interrupt and
 abuse the speakers, if they talk of anything but peace.  But here come the
 Prytanes, and high time too, for it is midday!  As I foretold, hah! is it
 not so?  They are pushing and fighting for the front seats.

 f(1) A name invented by Aristophanes and signifying 'a just citizen.'

 f(2) Clean had received five talents from the islanders subject to Athens,
 on condition that he should get the tribute payable by them reduced; when
 informed of this transaction, the knights compelled him to return
 the money.

 f(3) A hemistich borrowed from Euripides' 'Telephus.'

 f(4) The tragedies of Aeschylus continued to be played even after the
 poet's death, which occurred in 436 B.C., ten years before the production
 of 'The Acharnians.'

 f(5) A tragic poet, whose pieces were so devoid of warmth and life that he
 was nicknamed (the Greek for) 'snow.'

 f(6) A bad musician, frequently ridiculed by Aristophanes; he played both
 the lyre and the flute.

 f(7) A lively and elevated method.

 f(8) A hill near the Acropolis, where the Assemblies were held.

 f(9) Several means were used to force citizens to attend the assemblies;
 the shops were closed; circulation was only permitted in those streets which
 led to the Pnyx; finally, a rope covered with vermilion was drawn round those
 who dallied in the Agora (the market-place), and the late-comers,
 ear-marked by the imprint of the rope, were fined.

 f(10) Magistrates who, with the Archons and the Epistatae, shared the care
 of holding and directing the assemblies of the people; they were fifty
 in number.

 f(11) The Peloponnesian War had already, at the date of the representation
 of 'The Acharnians,' lasted five years, 431-426 B.C.; driven from their lands
 by the successive Lacedaemonian invasions, the people throughout the
 country had been compelled to seek shelter behind the walls of Athens.

HERALD
 Move on up, move on, move on, to get within the consecrated area.(1)

 f(1) Shortly before the meeting of the Assembly, a number of young pigs
 were immolated and a few drops of their blood were sprinkled on the
 seats of the Prytanes; this sacrifice was in honour of Ceres.

AMPHITHEUS
 Has anyone spoken yet?

HERALD
 Who asks to speak?

AMPHITHEUS
 I do.

HERALD
 Your name?

AMPHITHEUS
 Amphitheus.

HERALD
 You are no man.(1)

 f(1) The name, Amphitheus, contains (the Greek) word (for) 'god.'

AMPHITHEUS
 No!  I am an immortal!  Amphitheus was the son of Ceres and
 Triptolemus; of him was born Celeus.  Celeus wedded Phaenerete, my
 grandmother, whose son was Lucinus, and, being born of him I am an
 immortal; it is to me alone that the gods have entrusted the duty of
 treating with the Lacedaemonians.  But, citizens, though I am immortal,
 I am dying of hunger; the Prytanes give me naught.(1)

 f(1) Amongst other duties, it was the office of the Prytanes to look after
 the wants of the poor.

A PRYTANIS
 Guards!

AMPHITHEUS
 Oh, Triptolemus and Ceres, do ye thus forsake your own blood?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Prytanes, in expelling this citizen, you are offering an outrage
 to the Assembly.  He only desired to secure peace for us and to sheathe
 the sword.

PRYTANIS
 Sit down and keep silence!

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, by Apollo, I will not, unless you are going to discuss the
 question of peace.

HERALD
 The ambassadors, who are returned from the Court of the King!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Of what King?  I am sick of all those fine birds, the peacock
 ambassadors and their swagger.

HERALD
 Silence!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh! oh! by Ecbatana,(1) what a costume!

 f(1) The summer residence of the Great King.

AN AMBASSADOR
 During the archonship of Euthymenes, you sent us to the Great King
 on a salary of two drachmae per diem.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! those poor drachmae!

AMBASSADOR
 We suffered horribly on the plains of the Cayster, sleeping under a tent,
 stretched deliciously on fine chariots, half dead with weariness.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And I was very much at ease, lying on the straw along the
 battlements!(1)

 f(1) Referring to the hardships he had endured garrisoning the walls of
 Athens during the Lacedaemonian invasions early in the War.

AMBASSADOR
 Everywhere we were well received and forced to drink delicious
 wine out of golden or crystal flagons....

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh, city of Cranaus,(1) thy ambassadors are laughing at thee!

 f(1) Cranaus, the second king of Athens, the successor of Cecrops.

AMBASSADOR
 For great feeders and heavy drinkers are alone esteemed as men
 by the barbarians.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Just as here in Athens, we only esteem the most drunken debauchees.

AMBASSADOR
 At the end of the fourth year we reached the King's Court, but
 he had left with his whole army to ease himself, and for the space of
 eight months he was thus easing himself in the midst of the golden
 mountains.(1)

 f(1) Lucian, in his 'Hermotimus,' speaks of these golden mountains as an
 apocryphal land of wonders and prodigies.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And how long was he replacing his dress?

AMBASSADOR
 The whole period of a full moon; after which he returned to his palace;
 then he entertained us and had us served with oxen roasted whole
 in an oven.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Who ever saw an oxen baked in an oven?  What a lie!

AMBASSADOR
 On my honour, he also had us served with a bird three
 times as large as Cleonymus,(1) and called the Boaster.

 f(1) Cleonymus was an Athenian general of exceptionally tall stature;
 Aristophanes incessantly rallies him for his cowardice; he had cast away
 his buckler in a fight.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And do we give you two drachmae, that you should treat us to all
 this humbug?

AMBASSADOR
 We are bringing to you Pseudartabas(1), the King's Eye.

 f(1) A name borne by certain officials of the King of Persia.  The actor of
 this part wore a mask, fitted with a single eye of great size.

DICAEOPOLIS
 I would a crow might pluck out thine with his beak, you cursed
 ambassador!

HERALD
 The King's Eye!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Eh!  Great Gods!  Friend, with thy great eye, round like the hole through
 which the oarsman passes his sweep, you have the air of a galley
 doubling a cape to gain port.

AMBASSADOR
 Come, Pseudartabas, give forth the message for the Athenians
 with which you were charged by the Great King.

PSEUDARTABAS
 Jartaman exarx 'anapissonia satra.(1)

 f(1) Jargon, no doubt meaningless in all languages.

AMBASSADOR
 Do you understand what he says?

DICAEOPOLIS
 By Apollo, not I!

AMBASSADOR (TO THE PRYTANES)
 He says that the Great King will send you gold.  Come, utter the word
 'gold' louder and more distinctly.

PSEUDARTABAS
 Thou shalt not have gold, thou gaping-arsed Ionian.(1)

 f(1) The Persians styled all Greeks 'Ionians' without distinction; here
 the Athenians are intended.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! may the gods forgive me, but that is clear enough!

AMBASSADOR
 What does he say?

DICAEOPOLIS
 That the Ionians are debauchees and idiots, if they expect to receive
 gold from the barbarians.

AMBASSADOR
 Not so, he speaks of medimni(1) of gold.

 f(1) A Greek measure, containing about six modii.

DICAEOPOLIS
 What medimni?  Thou are but a great braggart; but get your way; I
 will find out the truth by myself.  Come now, answer me clearly, if you
 do not wish me to dye your skin red.  Will the Great King send us gold?
 (PSEUDARTABAS MAKES A NEGATIVE SIGN.) Then our ambassadors
 are seeking to deceive us?  (PSEUDARTABAS SIGNS AFFIRMATIVELY.)
 These fellows make signs like any Greek; I am sure that they are
 nothing but Athenians.  Oh! ho! I recognize one of these eunuchs; it is
 Clisthenes, the son of Sibyrtius.(1) Behold the effrontery of this shaven
 rump!  How! great baboon, with such a beard do you seek to play the
 eunuch to us?  And this other one?  Is it not Straton?

 f(1) Noted for his extreme ugliness and his obscenity.  Aristophanes
 frequently holds him to scorn in his comedies.

HERALD
 Silence!  Let all be seated.  The Senate invites the King's Eye to the
 Prytaneum.(1)

 f(1) Ambassadors were entertained there at the public expense.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Is this not sufficient to drive one to hang oneself?  Here I
 stand chilled to the bone, whilst the doors of the Prytaneum fly
 wide open to lodge such rascals.  But I will do something great and
 bold.  Where is Amphitheus?  Come and speak with me.

AMPHITHEUS
 Here I am.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Take these eight drachmae and go and conclude a truce with the
 Lacedaemonians for me, my wife and my children; I leave you free,
 my dear citizens, to send out embassies and to stand gaping in the air.

HERALD
 Bring in Theorus, who has returned from the Court of Sitalces.(1)

 f(1) King of Thrace.

THEORUS
 I am here.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Another humbug!

THEORUS
 We should not have remained long in Thrace...

DICAEOPOLIS
 Forsooth, no, if you had not been well paid.

THEORUS
 ...if the country had not been covered with snow; the rivers were
 ice-bound at the time that Theognis(1) brought out his tragedy here;
 during the whole of that time I was holding my own with
 Sitalces, cup in hand; and, in truth, he adored you to such a degree,
 that he wrote on the walls, "How beautiful are the Athenians!" His
 son, to whom we gave the freedom of the city, burned with desire to
 come here and eat chitterlings at the feast of the Apaturia;(2) he prayed
 his father to come to the aid of his new country and Sitalces swore on
 his goblet that he would succour us with such a host that the Athenians
 would exclaim, "What a cloud of grasshoppers!"

 f(1) The tragic poet.

 f(2) A feast lasting three days and celebrated during the month Pyanepsion
 (November).  The Greek word contains the suggestion of fraud.

DICAEOPOLIS
 May I die if I believe a word of what you tell us!  Excepting the
 grasshoppers, there is not a grain of truth in it all!

THEORUS
 And he has sent you the most warlike soldiers of all Thrace.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Now we shall begin to see clearly.

HERALD
 Come hither, Thracians, whom Theorus brought.

DICAEOPOLIS
 What plague have we here?

THEORUS
 'Tis the host of the Odomanti.(1)

 f(1) A Thracian tribe from the right bank of the Strymon.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Of the Odomanti?  Tell me what it means.  Who has mutilated them
 like this?

THEORUS
 If they are given a wage of two drachmae, they will put all
 Boeotia(1) to fire and sword.

 f(1) The Boeotians were the allies of Sparta.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Two drachmae to those circumcised hounds!  Groan aloud, ye people
 of rowers, bulwark of Athens!  Ah! great gods! I am undone; these
 Odomanti are robbing me of my garlic!(1) Will you give me back
 my garlic?

 f(1) Dicaeopolis had brought a clove of garlic with him to eat during
 the Assembly.

THEORUS
 Oh! wretched man! do not go near them; they have eaten garlic(1).

 f(1) Garlic was given to game-cocks, before setting them at each other,
 to give them pluck for the fight.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Prytanes, will you let me be treated in this manner, in my own
 country and by barbarians?  But I oppose the discussion of paying
 a wage to the Thracians; I announce an omen; I have just felt a drop
 of rain.(1)

 f(1) At the lest unfavourable omen, the sitting of the Assembly was
 declared at an end.

HERALD
 Let the Thracians withdraw and return the day after tomorrow;
 the Prytanes declare the sitting at an end.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ye gods, what garlic I have lost!  But here comes Amphitheus
 returned from Lacedaemon.  Welcome, Amphitheus.

AMPHITHEUS
 No, there is no welcome for me and I fly as fast as I can, for I
 am pursued by the Acharnians.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Why, what has happened?

AMPHITHEUS
 I was hurrying to bring your treaty of truce, but some old dotards
 from Acharnae(1) got scent of the thing; they are veterans of Marathon,
 tough as oak or maple, of which they are made for sure--rough and
 ruthless.  They all started a-crying: "Wretch!  you are the bearer of
 a treaty, and the enemy has only just cut our vines!" Meanwhile they
 were gathering stones in their cloaks, so I fled and they ran after
 me shouting.

 f(1) The deme of Acharnae was largely inhabited by charcoal-burners,
 who supplied the city with fuel.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Let 'em shout as much as they please!  But HAVE you brought me
 a treaty?

AMPHITHEUS
 Most certainly, here are three samples to select from,(1) this one is
 five years old; take it and taste.

 f(1) He presents them in the form of wines contained in three separate
 skins.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Faugh!

AMPHITHEUS
 Well?

DICAEOPOLIS
 It does not please me; it smells of pitch and of the ships they are
 fitting out.(1)

 f(1) Meaning, preparations for war.

AMPHITHEUS
 Here is another, ten years old; taste it.

DICAEOPOLIS
 It smells strongly of the delegates, who go around the towns
 to chide the allies for their slowness.(1)

 f(1) Meaning, securing allies for the continuance of the war.

AMPHITHEUS
 This last is a truce of thirty years, both on sea and land.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh! by Bacchus! what a bouquet!  It has the aroma of nectar and
 ambrosia; this does not say to us, "Provision yourselves for three
 days." But it lisps the gentle numbers, "Go whither you will."(1)
 I accept it, ratify it, drink it at one draught and consign the
 Acharnians to limbo.  Freed from the war and its ills, I shall
 keep the Dionysia(2) in the country.

 f(1) When Athens sent forth an army, the soldiers were usually ordered
 to assemble at some particular spot with provisions for three days.

 f(2) These feasts were also called the Anthesteria or Lenaea; the Lenaem
 was a temple to Bacchus, erected outside the city.  They took place
 during the month Anthesterion (February).

AMPHITHEUS
 And I shall run away, for I'm mortally afraid of the Acharnians.

CHORUS
 This way all!  Let us follow our man; we will demand him of
 everyone we meet; the public weal makes his seizure imperative.  Ho,
 there!  tell me which way the bearer of the truce has gone; he has escaped
 us, he has disappeared.  Curse old age!  When I was young, in the days
 when I followed Phayllus,(1) running with a sack of coals on my back, this
 wretch would not have eluded my pursuit, let him be as swift as he will;
 but now my limbs are stiff; old Lacratides(2) feels his legs are
 weighty and the traitor escapes me.  No, no, let us follow him; old
 Acharnians like ourselves shall not be set at naught by a
 scoundrel, who has dared, great gods!  to conclude a truce, when I wanted
 the war continued with double fury in order to avenge my ruined lands.
 No mercy for our foes until I have pierced their hearts like sharp
 reed, so that they dare never again ravage my vineyards.
 Come, let us seek the rascal; let us look everywhere, carrying our
 stones in our hands; let us hunt him from place to place until we trap
 him; I could never, never tire of the delight of stoning him.

 f(1) A celebrated athlete from Croton and a victor at Olympia; he was
 equally good as a runner and at the 'five exercises.'

 f(2) He had been Archon at the time of the battle of Marathon.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Peace! profane men!(1)

 f(1) A sacred formula, pronounced by the priest before offering
 the sacrifice.

CHORUS
 Silence all!  Friends, do you hear the sacred formula?  Here is he,
 whom we seek!  This way, all!  Get out of his way, surely he comes
 to offer an oblation.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Peace, profane men!  Let the basket-bearer(1) come forward, and thou
 Xanthias, hold the phallus well upright.(2)

 f(1) The maiden who carried the basket filled with fruits at the Dionysia
 in honour of Bacchus.

 f(2) The emblem of the fecundity of nature; it consisted of a representation,
 generally grotesquely exaggerated, of the male genital organs;
 the phallophori crowned with violets and ivy and their faces shaded
 with green foliage, sang improvised airs, call 'Phallics,' full of obscenity
 and suggestive 'double entendres.'

WIFE OF DICAEOPOLIS
 Daughter, set down the basket and let us begin the sacrifice.

DAUGHTER OF DICAEOPOLIS
 Mother, hand me the ladle, that I may spread the sauce on the
 cake.

DICAEOPOLIS
 It is well! Oh, mighty Bacchus, it is with joy that, freed from
 military duty, I and all mine perform this solemn rite and offer
 thee this sacrifice; grant that I may keep the rural Dionysia
 without hindrance and that this truce of thirty years may be
 propitious for me.

WIFE OF DICAEOPOLIS
 Come, my child, carry the basket gracefully and with a grave, demure
 face.  Happy he, who shall be your possessor and embrace you so firmly
 at dawn,(1) that you belch wind like a weasel.  Go forward, and have a care
 they don't snatch your jewels in the crowd.

 f(1) The most propitious moment for Love's gambols, observes the
 scholiast.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Xanthias, walk behind the basket-bearer and hold the phallus well
 erect; I will follow, singing the Phallic hymn; thou, wife, look on from
 the top of the terrace.(1) Forward! Oh, Phales,(2) companion of the orgies
 of Bacchus, night reveller, god of adultery, friend of young men, these
 past six(3) years I have not been able to invoke thee.  With what joy I
 return to my farmstead, thanks to the truce I have concluded, freed
 from cares, from fighting and from Lamachuses!(4) How much sweeter,
 oh Phales, oh, Phales, is it to surprise Thratta, the pretty woodmaid,
 Strymodorus' slave, stealing wood from Mount Phelleus, to catch her
 under the arms, to throw her on the ground and possess her, Oh, Phales,
 Phales! If thou wilt drink and bemuse thyself with me, we shall
 to-morrow consume some good dish in honour of the peace, and I will
 hang up my buckler over the smoking hearth.

 f(1) Married women did not join in the processions.

 f(2) The god of generation, worshipped in the form of a phallus.

 f(3) A remark which fixes the date of the production of 'The Acharnians,'
 viz. the sixth year of the Peloponnesian War, 426 B.C.

 f(4) Lamachus was an Athenian general, who figures later in this comedy.

CHORUS
 It is he, he himself.  Stone him, stone him, stone him, strike
 the wretch.  All, all of you, pelt him, pelt him!

DICAEOPOLIS
 What is this?  By Heracles, you will smash my pot.(1)

 f(1) At the rural Dionysia a pot of kitchen vegetables was borne in
 the procession along with other emblems.

CHORUS
 It is you that we are stoning, you miserable scoundrel.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And for what sin, Acharnian Elders, tell me that!

CHORUS
 You ask that, you impudent rascal, traitor to your country; you
 alone amongst us all have concluded a truce, and you dare to look us
 in the face!

DICAEOPOLIS
 But you do not know WHY I have treated for peace.  Listen!

CHORUS
 Listen to you?  No, no, you are about to die, we will annihilate
 you with our stones.

DICAEOPOLIS
 But first of all, listen.  Stop, my friends.

CHORUS
 I will hear nothing; do not address me; I hate you more than I
 do Cleon,(1) whom one day I shall flay to make sandals for the Knights.
 Listen to your long speeches, after you have treated with the
 Laconians?  No, I will punish you.

 f(1) Cleon the Demagogue was a currier originally by trade.  He was the
 sworn foe and particular detestation of the Knights or aristocratic party
 generally.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Friends, leave the Laconians out of debate and consider only
 whether I have not done well to conclude my truce.

CHORUS
 Done well! when you have treated with a people who know neither
 gods, nor truth, nor faith.

DICAEOPOLIS
 We attribute too much to the Laconians; as for myself, I know that
 they are not the cause of all our troubles.

CHORUS
 Oh, indeed, rascal!  You dare to use such language to me and then
 expect me to spare you!

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, no, they are not the cause of all our troubles, and I who
 address you claim to be able to prove that they have much to
 complain of in us.

CHORUS
 This passes endurance; my heart bounds with fury.  Thus you dare to
 defend our enemies.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Were my head on the block I would uphold what I say and rely on
 the approval of the people.

CHORUS
 Comrades, let us hurl our stones and dye this fellow purple.

DICAEOPOLIS
 What black fire-brand has inflamed your heart!  You will not hear
 me?  You really will not, Acharnians?

CHORUS
 No, a thousand times, no.

DICAEOPOLIS
 This is a hateful injustice.

CHORUS
 May I die, if I listen.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Nay, nay! have mercy, have mercy, Acharnians.

CHORUS
 You shall die.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Well, blood for blood!  I will kill your dearest friend.  I have
 here the hostages of Acharnae;(1) I shall disembowel them.

 f(1) That is, the baskets of charcoal.

CHORUS
 Acharnians, what means this threat?  Has he got one of our children
 in his house?  What gives him such audacity?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Stone me, if it please you; I shall avenge myself on this.
 (SHOWS A BASKET.) Let us see whether you have any love
 for your coals.

CHORUS
 Great Gods! this basket is our fellow-citizen.  Stop, stop,
 in heaven's name!

DICAEOPOLIS
 I shall dismember it despite your cries; I will listen to nothing.

CHORUS
 How! will you kill this coal-basket, my beloved comrade?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Just now, you would not listen to me.

CHORUS
 Well, speak now, if you will; tell us, tell us you have a weakness
 for the Lacedaemonians.  I consent to anything; never will I forsake
 this dear little basket.

DICAEOPOLIS
 First, throw down your stones.

CHORUS
 There! 'tis done.  And you, do put away your sword.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Let me see that no stones remain concealed in your cloaks.

CHORUS
 They are all on the ground; see how we shake our garments.  Come,
 no haggling, lay down your sword; we threw away everything while
 crossing from one side of the stage to the other.(1)

 f(1) The stage of the Greek theatre was much broader, and at the same
 time shallower, than in a modern playhouse.

DICAEOPOLIS
 What cries of anguish you would have uttered had these coals of
 Parnes(1) been dismembered, and yet it came very near it; had they
 perished, their death would have been due to the folly of their
 fellow-citizens.  The poor basket was so frightened, look, it has
 shed a thick black dust over me, the same as a cuttle-fish does.
 What an irritable temper!  You shout and throw stones, you will not
 hear my arguments--not even when I propose to speak in favour of the
 Lacedaemonians with my head on the block; and yet I cling to life.

 f(1) A mountain in Attica, in the neighbourhood of Acharnae.

CHORUS
 Well then, bring out a block before your door, scoundrel, and
 let us hear the good grounds you can give us; I am curious to know
 them.  Now mind, as you proposed yourself, place your head on the block
 and speak.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Here is the block; and, though I am but a very sorry speaker, I
 wish nevertheless to talk freely of the Lacedaemonians and without the
 protection of my buckler.  Yet I have many reasons for fear.  I know our
 rustics; they are delighted if some braggart comes, and rightly or
 wrongly, loads both them and their city with praise and flattery; they
 do not see that such toad-eaters(1) are traitors, who sell them for gain.
 As for the old men, I know their weakness; they only seek to overwhelm
 the accused with their votes.(2) Nor have I forgotten how Cleon treated
 me because of my comedy last year;(3) he dragged me before the Senate
 and there he uttered endless slanders against me; 'twas a tempest of
 abuse, a deluge of lies.  Through what a slough of mud he dragged me!  I
 almost perished.  Permit me, therefore, before I speak, to dress in the
 manner most likely to draw pity.

 f(1) Orators in the pay of the enemy.

 f(2) Satire on the Athenians' addiction to law-suits.

 f(3) 'The Babylonians.' Cleon had denounced Aristophanes to the Senate for
 having scoffed at Athens before strangers, many of whom were present at
 the performance.  The play is now lost.

CHORUS
 What evasions, subterfuges and delays!  Hold! here is the sombre
 helmet of Pluto with its thick bristling plume; Hieronymus(1) lends it to
 you; then open Sisyphus'(2) bag of wiles; but hurry, hurry, pray, for
 discussion does not admit of delay.

 f(1) A tragic poet; we know next to nothing of him or his works.

 f(2) Son of Aeolus, renowned in fable for his robberies, and for the tortures
 to which he was put by Pluto.  He was cunning enough to break loose out
 of hell, but Hermes brought him back again.

DICAEOPOLIS
 The time has come for me to manifest my courage, so I will go
 and seek Euripides.  Ho! slave, slave!

SLAVE
 Who's there?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Is Euripides at home?

SLAVE
 He is and he isn't; understand that, if you have wit for't.

DICAEOPOLIS
 How?  He is and he isn't!(1)

 f(1) This whole scene is directed at Euripides; Aristophanes ridicules the
 subtleties of his poetry and the trickeries of his staging, which, according
 to him, he only used to attract the less refined among his audience.

SLAVE
 Certainly, old man; busy gathering subtle fancies here and
 there, his mind is not in the house, but he himself is; perched aloft,
 he is composing a tragedy.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh, Euripides, you are indeed happy to have a slave so quick at
 repartee!  Now, fellow, call your master.

SLAVE
 Impossible!

DICAEOPOLIS
 So much the worse.  But I will not go.  Come, let us knock at the door.
 Euripides, my little Euripides, my darling Euripides, listen;
 never had man greater right to your pity.  It is Dicaeopolis of the
 Chollidan Deme who calls you.  Do you hear?

EURIPIDES
 I have no time to waste.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Very well, have yourself wheeled out here.(1)

 f(1) "Wheeled out"--that is, by means of a mechanical contrivance of
 the Greek stage, by which an interior was shown, the set scene
 with performers, etc., all complete, being in some way, which cannot
 be clearly made out from the descriptions, swung out or wheeled out
 on to the main stage.

EURIPIDES
 Impossible.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Nevertheless...

EURIPIDES
 Well, let them roll me out; as to coming down, I have not
 the time.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Euripides....

EURIPIDES
 What words strike my ear?

DICAEOPOLIS
 You perch aloft to compose tragedies, when you might just as
 well do them on the ground.  I am not astonished at your introducing
 cripples on the stage.(1) And why dress in these miserable tragic rags?
 I do not wonder that your heroes are beggars.  But, Euripides, on my knees
 I beseech you, give me the tatters of some old piece; for I have to
 treat the Chorus to a long speech, and if I do it ill it is all over
 with me.

 f(1) Having been lamed, it is of course implied, by tumbling from the lofty
 apparatus on which the Author sat perched to write his tragedies.

EURIPIDES
 What rags do you prefer?  Those in which I rigged out Aeneus(1) on
 the stage, that unhappy, miserable old man?

 f(1) Euripides delighted, or was supposed by his critic Aristophanes to
 delight, in the representation of misery and wretchedness on the stage.
 'Aeneus,' 'Phoenix,' 'Philoctetes,' 'Bellerophon,' 'Telephus,' Ino' are titles
 of six tragedies of his in this genre of which fragments are extant.

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, I want those of some hero still more unfortunate.

EURIPIDES
 Of Phoenix, the blind man?

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, not of Phoenix, you have another hero more unfortunate than him.

EURIPIDES
 Now, what tatters DOES he want?  Do you mean those of the beggar
 Philoctetes?

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, of another far more the mendicant.

EURIPIDES
 Is it the filthy dress of the lame fellow, Bellerophon?

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, 'tis not Bellerophon; he, whom I mean, was not only lame and a
 beggar, but boastful and a fine speaker.

EURIPIDES
 Ah! I know, it is Telephus, the Mysian.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Yes, Telephus.  Give me his rags, I beg of you.

EURIPIDES
 Slave! give him Telephus' tatters; they are on top of the rags
 of Thyestes and mixed with those of Ino.

SLAVE
 Catch hold! here they are.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh! Zeus, whose eye pierces everywhere and embraces all, permit me
 to assume the most wretched dress on earth.  Euripides, cap your
 kindness by giving me the little Mysian hat, that goes so well with
 these tatters.  I must to-day have the look of a beggar; "be what I am,
 but not appear to be";(1) the audience will know well who I am, but
 the Chorus will be fools enough not to, and I shall dupe 'em with my
 subtle phrases.

 f(1)
 Line borrowed from Euripides.  A great number of verses are similarly
 parodied in this scene.

EURIPIDES
 I will give you the hat; I love the clever tricks of an ingenious
 brain like yours.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Rest happy, and may it befall Telephus as I wish.  Ah!  I already
 feel myself filled with quibbles.  But I must have a beggar's staff.

EURIPIDES
 Here you are, and now get you gone from this porch.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh, my soul!  You see how you are driven from this house, when I
 still need so many accessories.  But let us be pressing, obstinate,
 importunate.  Euripides, give me a little basket with a lamp alight inside.

EURIPIDES
 Whatever do you want such a thing as that for?

DICAEOPOLIS
 I do not need it, but I want it all the same.

EURIPIDES
 You importune me; get you gone!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Alas! may the gods grant you a destiny as brilliant as your
 mother's.(1)

 f(1) Report said that Euripides' mother had sold vegetables on the market.

EURIPIDES
 Leave me in peace.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh, just a little broken cup.

EURIPIDES
 Take it and go and hang yourself.  What a tiresome fellow!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! you do not know all the pain you cause me.  Dear, good
 Euripides, nothing beyond a small pipkin stoppered with a sponge.

EURIPIDES
 Miserable man!  You are robbing me of an entire tragedy.(1) Here, take it
 and be off.

 f(1) Aristophanes means, of course, to imply that the whole talent of
 Euripides lay in these petty details of stage property.

DICAEOPOLIS
 I am going, but, great gods! I need one thing more; unless I
 have it, I am a dead man.  Hearken, my little Euripides, only give me
 this and I go, never to return.  For pity's sake, do give me a few
 small herbs for my basket.

EURIPIDES
 You wish to ruin me then.  Here, take what you want; but it is
 all over with my pieces!

DICAEOPOLIS
 I won't ask another thing; I'm going.  I am too importunate and
 forget that I rouse against me the hate of kings.--Ah! wretch that I am!
 I am lost!  I have forgotten one thing, without which all the rest is
 as nothing.  Euripides, my excellent Euripides, my dear little Euripides,
 may I die if I ask you again for the smallest present; only one, the last,
 absolutely the last; give me some of the chervil your mother left
 you in her will.

EURIPIDES
 Insolent hound!  Slave, lock the door!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh, my soul!  I must go away without the chervil.  Art thou
 sensible of the dangerous battle we are about to engage upon in
 defending the Lacedaemonians?  Courage, my soul, we must plunge
 into the midst of it.  Dost thou hesitate and art thou fully steeped
 in Euripides?  That's right! do not falter, my poor heart, and let us risk
 our head to say what we hold for truth.  Courage and boldly to
 the front.  I wonder I am so brave.

CHORUS
 What do you purport doing?  what are you going to say?  What an
 impudent fellow!  what a brazen heart!  to dare to stake his head and
 uphold an opinion contrary to that of us all!  And he does not
 tremble to face this peril.  Come, it is you who desired it, speak!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Spectators, be not angered if, although I am a beggar, I dare in
 a Comedy to speak before the people of Athens of the public weal;
 Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right.  I shall not please,
 but I shall say what is true.  Besides, Cleon shall not be able to accuse
 me of attacking Athens before strangers;(1) we are by ourselves at the
 festival of the Lenaea; the period when our allies send us their tribute
 and their soldiers is not yet.  Here is only the pure wheat
 without chaff; as to the resident strangers settled among us, they
 and the citizens are one, like the straw and the ear.

I detest the Lacedaemonians with all my heart, and may Posidon,
 the god of Taenarus,(2) cause an earthquake and overturn their dwellings!
 My vines also have been cut.  But come (there are only friends who
 hear me), why accuse the Laconians of all our woes?  Some men (I do not
 say the city, note particularly that I do not say the city), some
 wretches, lost in vices, bereft of honour, who were not even
 citizens of good stamp, but strangers, have accused the Megarians of
 introducing their produce fraudulently, and not a cucumber, a leveret,
 a suck(l)ing pig, a clove of garlic, a lump of salt was seen without its
 being said, "Halloa!  these come from Megara," and their being
 instantly confiscated.  Thus far the evil was not serious and we were
 the only sufferers.  But now some young drunkards go to Megara and
 carry off the courtesan Simaetha; the Megarians, hurt to the quick, run
 off in turn with two harlots of the house of Aspasia; and so for three
 gay women Greece is set ablaze.  Then Pericles, aflame with ire on his
 Olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to
 roll, upset Greece and passed an edict, which ran like the song, "That
 the Megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets
 and from the sea and from the continent."(3) Meanwhile the Megarians,
 who were beginning to die of hunger, begged the Lacedaemonians to bring
 about the abolition of the decree, of which those harlots were the
 cause; several times we refused their demand; and from that time there
 was horrible clatter of arms everywhere.  You will say that Sparta
 was wrong, but what should she have done?  Answer that.  Suppose that
 a Lacedaemonian had seized a little Seriphian(4) dog on any pretext and
 had sold it, would you have endured it quietly?  Far from it, you would
 at once have sent three hundred vessels to sea, and what an uproar
 there would have been through all the city!  there 'tis a band of
 noisy soldiery, here a brawl about the election of a Trierarch;
 elsewhere pay is being distributed, the Pallas figure-heads are
 being regilded, crowds are surging under the market porticos,
 encumbered with wheat that is being measured, wine-skins,
 oar-leathers, garlic, olives, onions in nets; everywhere are chaplets,
 sprats, flute-girls, black eyes; in the arsenal bolts are being
 noisily driven home, sweeps are being made and fitted with leathers;
 we hear nothing but the sound of whistles, of flutes and fifes to
 encourage the work-folk.  That is what you assuredly would have done,
 and would not Telephus have done the same?  So I come to my general
 conclusion; we have no common sense.

 f(1) 'The Babylonians' had been produced at a time of year when Athens
 was crowded with strangers; 'The Acharnians,' on the contrary, was played
 in December.

 f(2) Sparta had been menaced with an earthquake in 427 B.C.  Posidon
 was 'The Earthshaker,' god of earthquakes, as well as of the sea.

 f(3) A song by Timocreon the Rhodian, the words of which were practically
 identical with Pericles' decree.

 f(4) A small and insignificant island, one of the Cyclades, allied with
 the Athenians, like months of these islands previous to and during
 the first part of the Peloponnesian War.

FIRST SEMI-CHORUS
 Oh! wretch! oh! infamous man!  You are naught but a beggar and
 yet you dare to talk to us like this!  you insult their worships
 the informers!

SECOND SEMI-CHORUS
 By Posidon! he speaks the truth; he has not lied in a single detail.

FIRST SEMI-CHORUS
 But though it be true, need he say it?  But you'll have no great
 cause to be proud of your insolence!

SECOND SEMI-CHORUS
 Where are you running to?  Don't you move; if you strike this man,
 I shall be at you.

FIRST SEMI-CHORUS
 Lamachus, whose glance flashes lightning, whose plume
 petrifies thy foes, help!  Oh! Lamachus, my friend, the hero of my
 tribe and all of you, both officers and soldiers, defenders of our
 walls, come to my aid; else is it all over with me!

LAMACHUS
 Whence comes this cry of battle?  where must I bring my aid?
 where must I sow dread?  who wants me to uncase my dreadful Gorgon's
 head?(1)

 f(1) A figure of Medusa's head, forming the centre of Lamachus' shield.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh, Lamachus, great hero!  Your plumes and your cohorts terrify me.

CHORUS
 This man, Lamachus, incessantly abuses Athens.

LAMACHUS
 You are but a mendicant and you dare to use language of this sort?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh, brave Lamachus, forgive a beggar who speaks at hazard.

LAMACHUS
 But what have you said?  Let us hear.

DICAEOPOLIS
 I know nothing about it; the sight of weapons makes me dizzy.
 Oh! I adjure you, take that fearful Gorgon somewhat farther away.

LAMACHUS
 There.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Now place it face downwards on the ground.

LAMACHUS
 It is done.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Give me a plume out of your helmet.

LAMACHUS
 Here is a feather.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And hold my head while I vomit; the plumes have turned my stomach.

LAMACHUS
 Hah! what are you proposing to do?  do you want to make yourself
 vomit with this feather?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Is it a feather?  what bird's?  a braggart's?

LAMACHUS
 Ah! ah! I will rip you open.

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, no, Lamachus!  Violence is out of place here!  But as you are so
 strong, why did you not circumcise me?  You have all the tools you want
 for the operation there.

LAMACHUS
 A beggar dares thus address a general!

DICAEOPOLIS
 How?  Am I a beggar?

LAMACHUS
 What are you then?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Who am I?  A good citizen, not ambitious; a soldier, who has fought
 well since the outbreak of the war, whereas you are but a vile
 mercenary.

LAMACHUS
 They elected me...

DICAEOPOLIS
 Yes, three cuckoos did!(1) If I have concluded peace, 'twas
 disgust that drove me; for I see men with hoary heads in the ranks and
 young fellows of your age shirking service.  Some are in Thrace getting
 an allowance of three drachmae, such fellows as Tisamenophoenippus
 and Panurgipparchides.  The others are with Chares or in Chaonia, men
 like Geretotheodorus and Diomialazon; there are some of the same
 kidney, too, at Camarina and at Gela,(2) the laughing-stock of all and sundry.

 f(1) Indicates the character of his election, which was arranged, so
 Aristophanes implies, by his partisans.

 f(2) Town in Sicily.  There is a pun on the name Gela and 'ridiculous'
 which it is impossible to keep in English.  Apparently the Athenians
 had sent embassies to all parts of the Greek world to arrange treaties
 of alliance in view of the struggle with the Lacedaemonians; but only
 young debauchees of aristocratic connections had been chosen as envoys.

LAMACHUS
 They were elected.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And why do you always receive your pay, when none of these
 others ever gets any?  Speak, Marilades, you have grey hair; well then,
 have you ever been entrusted with a mission?  See! he shakes his
 head.  Yet he is an active as well as a prudent man.  And you, Dracyllus,
 Euphorides or Prinides, have you knowledge of Ecbatana or
 Chaonia?  You say no, do you not?  Such offices are good for the son
 of Caesyra(1) and Lamachus, who, but yesterday ruined with debt, never
 pay their shot, and whom all their friends avoid as foot passengers
 dodge the folks who empty their slops out of window.

 f(1) A contemporary orator apparently, otherwise unknown.

LAMACHUS
 Oh! in freedom's name! are such exaggerations to be borne?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Lamachus is well content; no doubt he is well paid, you know.

LAMACHUS
 But I propose always to war with the Peloponnesians, both at sea, on land
 and everywhere to make them tremble, and trounce them soundly.

DICAEOPOLIS
 For my own part, I make proclamation to all Peloponnesians,
 Megarians and Boeotians, that to them my markets are open; but I debar
 Lamachus from entering them.

CHORUS
 Convinced by this man's speech, the folk have changed their view
 and approve him for having concluded peace.  But let us prepare for the
 recital of the parabasis.(1)

Never since our poet presented Comedies, has he praised himself
 upon the stage; but, having been slandered by his enemies amongst
 the volatile Athenians, accused of scoffing at his country and of
 insulting the people, to-day he wishes to reply and regain for himself
 the inconstant Athenians.  He maintains that he has done much that is
 good for you; if you no longer allow yourselves to be too much
 hoodwinked by strangers or seduced by flattery, if in politics you are
 no longer the ninnies you once were, it is thanks to him.  Formerly,
 when delegates from other cities wanted to deceive you, they had but
 to style you, "the people crowned with violets," and at the word
 "violets" you at once sat erect on the tips of your bums.  Or if, to
 tickle your vanity, someone spoke of "rich and sleek Athens," in
 return for that "sleekness" he would get all, because he spoke of you
 as he would have of anchovies in oil.  In cautioning you against
 such wiles, the poet has done you great service as well as
 in forcing you to understand what is really the democratic
 principle.  Thus, the strangers, who came to pay their tributes,
 wanted to see this great poet, who had dared to speak the truth to
 Athens.  And so far has the fame of his boldness reached that one day
 the Great King, when questioning the Lacedaemonian delegates, first
 asked them which of the two rival cities was the superior at sea,
 and then immediately demanded at which it was that the comic poet
 directed his biting satire.  "Happy that city," he added, "if it
 listens to his counsel; it will grow in power, and its victory is
 assured." This is why the Lacedaemonians offer you peace, if you
 will cede them Aegina; not that they care for the isle, but they
 wish to rob you of your poet.(2) As for you, never lose him, who will
 always fight for the cause of justice in his Comedies; he promises you
 that his precepts will lead you to happiness, though he uses neither
 flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading
 you with praise, he will point you to the better way.  I scoff at
 Cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause;
 never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute to the
 highest bidder.

I invoke thee, Acharnian Muse, fierce and fell as the devouring fire;
 sudden as the spark that bursts from the crackling oaken coal when
 roused by the quickening fan to fry little fishes, while others knead
 the dough or whip the sharp Thasian pickle with rapid hand, so break
 forth, my Muse, and inspire thy tribesmen with rough, vigorous,
 stirring strains.

We others, now old men and heavy with years, we reproach the city;
 so many are the victories we have gained for the Athenian fleets
 that we well deserve to be cared for in our declining life; yet far
 from this, we are ill-used, harassed with law-suits, delivered over to
 the scorn of stripling orators.  Our minds and bodies being ravaged
 with age, Posidon should protect us, yet we have no other support than
 a staff.  When standing before the judge, we can scarcely stammer forth
 the fewest words, and of justice we see but its barest shadow, whereas
 the accuser, desirous of conciliating the younger men, overwhelms us
 with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, presses us with
 questions, lays traps for us; the onslaught troubles, upsets and ruins
 poor old Tithonus, who, crushed with age, stands tongue-tied;
 sentenced to a fine,(3) he weeps, he sobs and says to his friend,
 "This fine robs me of the last trifle that was to have bought my coffin."

Is this not a scandal?  What! the clepsydra(4) is to kill the
 white-haired veteran, who, in fierce fighting, has so oft covered
 himself with glorious sweat, whose valour at Marathon saved the
 country!  'Twas we who pursued on the field of Marathon,
 whereas now 'tis wretches who pursue us to the death and crush us!
 What would Marpsias reply to this?(5) What an injustice that a man,
 bent with age like Thucydides, should be brow-beaten by this braggart
 advocate, Cephisodemus,(6) who is as savage as the Scythian desert
 he was born in! Is it not to convict him from the outset?  I wept tears
 of pity when I saw an Archer(7) maltreat this old man, who, by Ceres,
 when he was young and the true Thucydides, would not have permitted
 an insult from Ceres herself!  At that date he would have floored
 ten orators, he would have terrified three thousand Archers with his
 shouts; he would have pierced the whole line of the enemy with his shafts.
 Ah!  but if you will not leave the aged in peace, decree that the advocates
 be matched; thus the old man will only be confronted with a toothless
 greybeard, the young will fight with the braggart, the ignoble
 with the son of Clinias;(8) make a law that in the future, the old man
 can only be summoned and convicted at the courts by the aged
 and the young man by the youth.

 f(1) The 'parabasis' in the Old Comedy was a sort of address or topical
 harangue addressed directly by the poet, speaking by the Chorus,
 to the audience.  It was nearly always political in bearing, and the subject
 of the particular piece was for the time being set aside altogether.

 f(2) It will be remembered that Aristophanes owned land in Aegina.

 f(3) Everything was made the object of a law-suit in Athens.  The old
 soldiers, inexpert at speaking, often lost the day.

 f(4) A water-clock used to limit the length of speeches in the courts.

 f(5) A braggart speaker, fiery and pugnacious.

 f(6) Cephisodemus was an Athenian, but through his mother possessed
 Scythian blood.

 f(7) The city of Athens was policed by Scythian archers.

 f(8) Alcibiades.

DICAEOPOLIS
 These are the confines of my market-place.  All Peloponnesians,
 Megarians, Boeotians, have the right to come and trade here,
 provided they sell their wares to me and not to Lamachus.  As
 market-inspectors I appoint these three whips of Leprean(1) leather,
 chosen by lot.  Warned away are all informers and all men of Phasis.(2)
 They are bringing me the pillar on which the treaty is inscribed(3) and
 I shall erect it in the centre of the market, well in sight of all.

 f(1) The leather market was held in Lepros, outside the city.

 f(2) Mean an informer ((from the Greek) 'to denounce').

 f(3) According to the Athenian custom.

A MEGARIAN
 Hail! market of Athens, beloved of Megarians.  Let Zeus, the patron
 of friendship, witness, I regretted you as a mother mourns her son.
 Come, poor little daughters of an unfortunate father, try to find
 something to eat; listen to me with the full heed of an empty belly.
 Which would you prefer?  To be sold or to cry with hunger?

DAUGHTERS
 To be sold, to be sold!

MEGARIAN
 That is my opinion too.  But who would make so sorry a deal as to
 buy you?  Ah! I recall me a Megarian trick; I am going to disguise
 you as little porkers, that I am offering for sale.  Fit your hands
 with these hoofs and take care to appear the issue of a sow of good
 breed, for, if I am forced to take you back to the house, by Hermes!
 you will suffer cruelly of hunger!  Then fix on these snouts and cram
 yourselves into this sack.  Forget not to grunt and to say wee-wee like
 the little pigs that are sacrificed in the Mysteries.  I must summon
 Dicaeopolis.  Where is be?  Dicaeopolis, do you want to buy
 some nice little porkers?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Who are you?  a Megarian?

MEGARIAN
 I have come to your market.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Well, how are things at Megara?(1)

 f(1) Megara was allied to Sparta and suffered during the war more than
 any other city because of its proximity to Athens.

MEGARIAN
 We are crying with hunger at our firesides.

DICAEOPOLIS
 The fireside is jolly enough with a piper.  But what else is
 doing at Megara, eh?

MEGARIAN
 What else?  When I left for the market, the authorities were taking
 steps to let us die in the quickest manner.

DICAEOPOLIS
 That is the best way to get you out of all your troubles.

MEGARIAN
 True.

DICAEOPOLIS
 What other news of Megara?  What is wheat selling at?

MEGARIAN
 With us it is valued as highly as the very gods in heaven!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Is it salt that you are bringing?

MEGARIAN
 Are you not holding back the salt?

DICAEOPOLIS
 'Tis garlic then?

MEGARIAN
 What! garlic!  do you not at every raid grub up the ground with your
 pikes to pull out every single head?

DICAEOPOLIS
 What DO you bring then?

MEGARIAN
 Little sows, like those they immolate at the Mysteries.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! very well, show me them.

MEGARIAN
 They are very fine; feel their weight.  See! how fat and fine.

DICAEOPOLIS
 But what is this?

MEGARIAN
 A SOW, for a certainty.(1)

 f(1) Throughout this whole scene there is an obscene play upon (a) word
 which means in Greek both 'sow' and 'a woman's organs of generation.'

DICAEOPOLIS
 You say a sow!  Of what country, then?

MEGARIAN
  From Megara.  What! is it not a sow then?

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, I don't believe it is.

MEGARIAN
 This is too much!  what an incredulous man!  He says 'tis not a sow;
 but we will stake, an you will, a measure of salt ground up with
 thyme, that in good Greek this is called a sow and nothing else.

DICAEOPOLIS
 But a sow of the human kind.

MEGARIAN
 Without question, by Diocles! of my own breed!  Well! What think
 you?  will you hear them squeal?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Well, yes, I' faith, I will.

MEGARIAN
 Cry quickly, wee sowlet; squeak up, hussy, or by Hermes! I take you
 back to the house.

GIRL
 Wee-wee, wee-wee!

MEGARIAN
 Is that a little sow, or not?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Yes, it seems so; but let it grow up, and it will be a fine fat bitch.

MEGARIAN
 In five years it will be just like its mother.

DICAEOPOLIS
 But it cannot be sacrificed.

MEGARIAN
 And why not?

DICAEOPOLIS
 It has no tail.(1)

 f(1) Sacrificial victims were bound to be perfect in every part; an animal,
 therefore, without a tail could not be offered.

MEGARIAN
 Because it is quite young, but in good time it will have a big one,
 thick and red.

DICAEOPOLIS
 The two are as like as two peas.

MEGARIAN
 They are born of the same father and mother; let them be fattened,
 let them grow their bristles, and they will be the finest sows you can
 offer to Aphrodite.

DICAEOPOLIS
 But sows are not immolated to Aphrodite.

MEGARIAN
 Not sows to Aphrodite!  Why, 'tis the only goddess to whom they
 are offered!  the flesh of my sows will be excellent on the spit.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Can they eat alone?  They no longer need their mother!

MEGARIAN
 Certainly not, nor their father.

DICAEOPOLIS
 What do they like most?

MEGARIAN
 Whatever is given them; but ask for yourself.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Speak! little sow.

DAUGHTER
 Wee-wee, wee-wee!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Can you eat chick-pease?

DAUGHTER
 Wee-wee, wee-wee, wee-wee!

DICAEOPOLIS
 And Attic figs?

DAUGHTER
 Wee-wee, wee-wee!

DICAEOPOLIS
 What sharp squeaks at the name of figs.  Come, let some figs be
 brought for these little pigs.  Will they eat them?  Goodness! how
 they munch them, what a grinding of teeth, mighty Heracles! I
 believe those pigs hail from the land of the Voracians.  But surely
 'tis impossible they have bolted all the figs!

MEGARIAN
 Yes, certainly, bar this one that I took from them.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! what funny creatures!  For what sum will you sell them?

MEGARIAN
 I will give you one for a bunch of garlic, and the other, if you
 like, for a quart measure of salt.

DICAEOPOLIS
 I buy them of you.  Wait for me here.

MEGARIAN
 The deal is done.  Hermes, god of good traders, grant I may sell
 both my wife and my mother in the same way!

AN INFORMER
 Hi! fellow, what countryman are you?

MEGARIAN
 I am a pig-merchant from Megara.

INFORMER
 I shall denounce both your pigs and yourself as public enemies.

MEGARIAN
 Ah! here our troubles begin afresh!

INFORMER
 Let go that sack.  I will punish your Megarian lingo!(1)

 f(1) The Megarians used the Doric dialect.

MEGARIAN
 Dicaeopolis, Dicaeopolis, they want to denounce me.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Who dares do this thing?  Inspectors, drive out the informers.
 Ah! you offer to enlighten us without a lamp!(1)

 f(1) A play upon (a) word which both means 'to light' and 'to denounce.'

INFORMER
 What! I may not denounce our enemies?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Have a care for yourself, if you don't go off pretty quick to denounce
 elsewhere.

MEGARIAN
 What a plague to Athens!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Be reassured, Megarian.  Here is the price for your two swine,
 the garlic and the salt.  Farewell and much happiness!

MEGARIAN
 Ah! we never have that amongst us.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Well! may the inopportune wish apply to myself.

MEGARIAN
 Farewell, dear little sows, and seek, far from your father, to
 munch your bread with salt, if they give you any.

CHORUS
 Here is a man truly happy.  See how everything succeeds to his
 wish.  Peacefully seated in his market, he will earn his living; woe to
 Ctesias,(1) and all other informers who dare to enter there!  You will not
 be cheated as to the value of wares, you will not again see Prepis(2)
 wiping his foul rump, nor will Cleonymus(3) jostle you; you will take your
 walks, clothed in a fine tunic, without meeting Hyperbolus(4) and his
 unceasing quibblings, without being accosted on the public place by
 any importunate fellow, neither by Cratinus,(5) shaven in the fashion
 of the debauchees, nor by this musician, who plagues us with his silly
 improvisations, Artemo, with his arm-pits stinking as foul as a goat,
 like his father before him.  You will not be the butt of the villainous
 Pauson's(6) jeers, nor of Lysistratus,(7) the disgrace
 of the Cholargian deme, who is the incarnation of all the vices,
 and endures cold and hunger more than thirty days in the month.

 f(1) An informer (sycophant), otherwise unknown.

 f(2) A debauchee of vile habits; a pathic.

 f(3) Mentioned above; he was as proud as he was cowardly.

 f(4) An Athenian general, quarrelsome and litigious, and an Informer
 into the bargain.

 f(5) A comic poet of vile habits.

 f(6) A painter.

 f(7) A debauchee, a gambler, and always in extreme poverty.

A BOEOTIAN
 By Heracles! my shoulder is quite black and blue.  Ismenias, put
 the penny-royal down there very gently, and all of you, musicians
 from Thebes, pipe with your bone flutes into a dog's rump.(1)

 f(1) This kind of flute had a bellows, made of dog-skin, much like
 the bagpipes of to-day.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Enough, enough, get you gone.  Rascally hornets, away with you!
 Whence has sprung this accursed swarm of Charis(1) fellows which comes
 assailing my door?

 f(1) A flute-player, mentioned above.

BOEOTIAN
 Ah!  by Iolas!(1) Drive them off, my dear host, you will please me
 immensely; all the way from Thebes, they were there piping behind me
 and have completely stripped my penny-royal of its blossom.
 But will you buy anything of me, some chickens or some locusts?

 f(1) A hero, much honoured in Thebes; nephew of Heracles.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! good day, Boeotian, eater of good round loaves.(1) What do you
 bring?

 f(1) A form of bread peculiar to Boeotia.

BOEOTIAN
 All that is good in Boeotia, marjoram, penny-royal, rush-mats,
 lamp-wicks, ducks, jays, woodcocks, water-fowl, wrens, divers.

DICAEOPOLIS
 'Tis a very hail of birds that beats down on my market.

BOEOTIAN
 I also bring geese, hares, foxes, moles, hedgehogs, cats, lyres,
 martins, otters and eels from the Copaic lake.(1)

 f(1) A lake in Boeotia.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! my friend, you, who bring me the most delicious of fish,
 let me salute your eels.

BOEOTIAN
 Come, thou, the eldest of my fifty Copaic virgins, come and
 complete the joy of our host.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh! my well-beloved, thou object of my long regrets, thou art here
 at last then, thou, after whom the comic poets sigh, thou, who art
 dear to Morychus.(1)  Slaves, hither with the stove and the bellows.
 Look at this charming eel, that returns to us after six long years
 of absence.(2)  Salute it, my children; as for myself, I will supply
 coal to do honour to the stranger.  Take it into my house; death itself
 could not separate me from her, if cooked with beet leaves.

 f(1) He was the Lucullus of Athens.

 f(2) This again fixes the date of the presentation of 'The
 Acharnians' to 436 B.C., the sixth  year of the War, since the
 beginning of which Boeotia had been closed to the Athenians.

BOEOTIAN
 And what will you give me in return?

DICAEOPOLIS
 It will pay for your market dues.  And as to the rest, what do
 you wish to sell me?

BOEOTIAN
 Why, everything.

DICAEOPOLIS
 On what terms?  For ready-money or in wares from these parts?

BOEOTIAN
 I would take some Athenian produce, that we have not got
 in Boeotia.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Phaleric anchovies, pottery?

BOEOTIAN
 Anchovies, pottery?  But these we have.  I want produce that is
 wanting with us and that is plentiful here.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! I have the very thing; take away an Informer, packed up
 carefully as crockery-ware.

BOEOTIAN
 By the twin gods!  I should earn big money, if I took one; I
 would exhibit him as an ape full of spite.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Hah! here we have Nicarchus,(1) who comes to denounce you.

 f(1) An informer.

BOEOTIAN
 How small he is!

DICAEOPOLIS
 But in his case the whole is one mass of ill-nature.

NICARCHUS
 Whose are these goods?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Mine; they come from Boeotia, I call Zeus to witness.

NICARCHUS
 I denounce them as coming from an enemy's country.

BOEOTIAN
 What! you declare war against birds?

NICARCHUS
 And I am going to denounce you too.

BOEOTIAN
 What harm have I done you?

NICARCHUS
 I will say it for the benefit of those that listen; you introduce lamp-wicks
 from an enemy's country.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Then you go as far as denouncing a wick.

NICARCHUS
 It needs but one to set an arsenal afire.

DICAEOPOLIS
 A wick set an arsenal ablaze!  But how, great gods?

NICARCHUS
 Should a Boeotian attach it to an insect's wing, and, taking
 advantage of a violent north wind, throw it by means of a tube into
 the arsenal and the fire once get hold of the vessels, everything
 would soon be devoured by the flames.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! wretch! an insect and a wick devour everything!
 (HE STRIKES HIM.)

NICARCHUS (TO THE CHORUS)
 You will bear witness, that he mishandles me.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Shut his mouth.  Give me some hay; I am going to pack him up like
 a vase, that he may not get broken on the road.

CHORUS
 Pack up your goods carefully, friend; that the stranger may not
 break it when taking it away.

DICAEOPOLIS
 I shall take great care with it, for one would say he is cracked already;
 he rings with a false note, which the gods abhor.

CHORUS
 But what will be done with him?

DICAEOPOLIS
 This is a vase good for all purposes; it will be used as a vessel for holding
 all foul things, a mortar for pounding together law-suits, a lamp
 for spying upon accounts, and as a cup for the mixing up and poisoning
 of everything.

CHORUS
 None could ever trust a vessel for domestic use that has such a
 ring about it.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh! it is strong, my friend, and will never get broken, if care is
 taken to hang it head downwards.

CHORUS
 There! it is well packed now!

BOEOTIAN
 Marry, I will proceed to carry off my bundle.

CHORUS
 Farewell, worthiest of strangers, take this informer, good for
 anything, and fling him where you like.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Bah! this rogue has given me enough trouble to pack!  Here!
 Boeotian, pick up your pottery.

BOEOTIAN
 Stoop, Ismenias, that I may put it on your shoulder, and be very
 careful with it.

DICAEOPOLIS
 You carry nothing worth having; however, take it, for you will
 profit by your bargain; the Informers will bring you luck.

A SERVANT OF LAMACHUS
 Dicaeopolis!

DICAEOPOLIS
 What do you want crying this gait?

SERVANT
 Lamachus wants to keep the Feast of Cups,(1) and I come by his order
 to bid you one drachma for some thrushes and three more for a Copaic eel.

 f(1) The second day of the Dionysia or feasts of Bacchus, kept in the month
 Anthesterion (February), and called the Anthesteria.  They lasted three
 days; the second being the Feast of Cups, the third the Feast of Pans.
 Vases, filled with grain of all kinds, were borne in procession and
 dedicated to Hermes.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And who is this Lamachus, who demands an eel?

SERVANT
 'Tis the terrible, indefatigable Lamachus, who is always brandishing
 his fearful Gorgon's head and the three plumes which o'ershadow
 his helmet.

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, no, he will get nothing, even though he gave me his buckler.
 Let him eat salt fish, while he shakes his plumes, and, if he comes
 here making any din, I shall call the inspectors.  As for myself,
 I shall take away all these goods; I go home on thrushes' wings
 and black-birds' pinions.(1)

 f(1) A parody on some verses from a lost poet.

CHORUS
 You see, citizens, you see the good fortune which this man owes to
 his prudence, to his profound wisdom.  You see how, since he has
 concluded peace, he buys what is useful in the household and good to
 eat hot.  All good things flow towards him unsought.  Never will I welcome
 the god of war in my house; never shall he chant the "Harmodius" at
 my table;(1) he is a sot, who comes feasting with those who are
 overflowing with good things and brings all manner of mischief at his
 heels. He overthrows, ruins, rips open; 'tis vain to make him a
 thousand offers, "be seated, pray, drink this cup, proffered in all
 friendship," he burns our vine-stocks and brutally pours out the wine
 from our vineyards
 on the ground.  This man, on the other hand, covers his table with
 a thousand dishes; proud of his good fortunes, he has had these feathers
 cast before his door to show us how he lives.

 f(1) A feasting song in honour of Harmodius, the assassin of Hipparchus
 the Tyrant, son of Pisistratus.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh, Peace! companion of fair Aphrodite and of the sweet Graces,
 how charming are thy features and yet I never knew it!  Would that Eros
 might join me to thee, Eros, crowned with roses as Zeuxis(1) shows him to
 us!  Perhaps I seem somewhat old to you, but I am yet able to make you a
 threefold offering; despite my age I could plant a long row of vines for you;
 then beside these some tender cuttings from the fig; finally a young
 vine-stock, loaded with fruit and all around the field olive trees, which
 would furnish us with oil, wherewith to anoint us both at the New Moons.

 f(1) The celebrated painter, born in Heraclea, a contemporary
 of Aristophanes.

HERALD
 List, ye people!  As was the custom of your forebears, empty a full
 pitcher of wine at the call of the trumpet; he, who first sees the
 bottom, shall get a wine-skin as round and plump as Ctesiphon's belly.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Women, children, have you not heard?  Faith! do you not heed the
 herald?  Quick! let the hares boil and roast merrily; keep them
 a-turning; withdraw them from the flame; prepare the chaplets;
 reach me the skewers that I may spit the thrushes.

CHORUS
 I envy you your wisdom and even more your good cheer.

DICAEOPOLIS
 What then will you say when you see the thrushes roasting?

CHORUS
 Ah! true indeed!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Slave! stir up the fire.

CHORUS
 See, how he knows his business, what a perfect cook!  How well
 he understands the way to prepare a good dinner!

A HUSBANDMAN
 Ah! woe is me!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Heracles! What have we here?

HUSBANDMAN
 A most miserable man.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Keep your misery for yourself.

HUSBANDMAN
 Ah! friend! since you alone are enjoying peace, grant me a part
 of your truce, were it but five years.

DICAEOPOLIS
 What has happened to you?

HUSBANDMAN
 I am ruined; I have lost a pair of steers.

DICAEOPOLIS
 How?

HUSBANDMAN
 The Boeotians seized them at Phyle.(1)

 f(1) A deme and frontier fortress of Attica, near the Boeotian border.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! poor wretch! and yet you have not left off white?

HUSBANDMAN
 Their dung made my wealth.

DICAEOPOLIS
 What can I do in the matter?

HUSBANDMAN
 Crying for my beasts has lost me my eyesight.  Ah! if you care for poor
 Dercetes of Phyle, anoint mine eyes quickly with your balm of peace.

DICAEOPOLIS
 But, my poor fellow, I do not practise medicine.

HUSBANDMAN
 Come, I adjure you; perhaps I shall recover my steers.

DICAEOPOLIS
 'Tis impossible; away, go and whine to the disciples of Pittalus.(1)

 f(1) An Athenian physician of the day.

HUSBANDMAN
 Grant me but one drop of peace; pour it into this reedlet.

DICAEOPOLIS
 No, not a particle; go a-weeping elsewhere.

HUSBANDMAN
 Oh! oh! oh! my poor beasts!

CHORUS
 This man has discovered the sweetest enjoyment in peace; he will share it
 with none.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Pour honey over this tripe; set it before the fire to dry.

CHORUS
 What lofty tones he uses!  Did you hear him?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Get the eels on the gridiron!

CHORUS
 You are killing me with hunger; your smoke is choking your
 neighbours, and you split our ears with your bawling.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Have this fried and let it be nicely browned.

A BRIDESMAID
 Dicaeopolis!  Dicaeopolis!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Who are you?

BRIDESMAID
 A young bridegroom sends you these viands from the marriage feast.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Whoever he be, I thank him.

BRIDESMAID
 And in return, he prays you to pour a glass of peace into this vase,
 that he may not have to go to the front and may stay at home
 to do his duty to his young wife.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Take back, take back your viands; for a thousand drachmae I
 would not give a drop of peace; but who are you, pray?

BRIDESMAID
 I am the bridesmaid; she wants to say something to you
 from the bride privately.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Come, what do you wish to say?  (THE BRIDESMAID WHISPERS IN
 HIS EAR.)  Ah! what a ridiculous demand!  The bride burns with longing
 to keep by her her husband's weapon.  Come! \bring hither my truce; to
 her alone will I give some of it, for she is a woman, and, as such,
 should not suffer under the war.  Here, friend, reach hither your vial.
 And as to the manner of applying this balm, tell the bride, when a
 levy of soldiers is made to rub some in bed on her husband, where
 most needed.  There, slave, take away my truce!  Now, quick, bring me
 the wine-flagon, that I may fill up the drinking bowls!

CHORUS
 I see a man, striding along apace, with knitted brows; he seems
 to us the bearer of terrible tidings.

HERALD
 Oh! toils and battles, 'tis Lamachus!

LAMACHUS
 What noise resounds around my dwelling, where shines the glint
 of arms.

HERALD
 The Generals order you forthwith to take your battalions and
 your plumes, and, despite the snow, to go and guard our borders.
 They have learnt that a band of Boeotians intend taking advantage
 of the Feast of Cups to invade our country.

LAMACHUS
 Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much!
 It's cruel, not to be able to enjoy the feast!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Oh! warlike host of Lamachus!

LAMACHUS
 Wretch! do you dare to jeer me?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Do you want to fight this four-winged Geryon?

LAMACHUS
 Oh! oh! what fearful tidings!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! ah! I see another herald running up; what news does he bring me?

HERALD
 Dicaeopolis!

DICAEOPOLIS
 What is the matter?

HERALD
 Come quickly to the feast and bring your basket and your cup;
 'tis the priest of Bacchus who invites you.  But hasten, the guests
 have been waiting for you a long while.  All is ready--couches,
 tables, cushions, chaplets, perfumes, dainties and courtesans to boot;
 biscuits, cakes, sesame-bread, tarts, lovely dancing women, the sweetest
 charm of the festivity.  But come with all haste.

LAMACHUS
 Oh! hostile gods!

DICAEOPOLIS
 This is not astounding; you have chosen this huge, great ugly Gorgon's head
 for your patron.  You, shut the door, and let someone get ready the meal.

LAMACHUS
 Slave! slave! my knapsack!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Slave! slave! a basket!

LAMACHUS
 Take salt and thyme, slave, and don't forget the onions.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Get some fish for me; I cannot bear onions.

LAMACHUS
 Slave, wrap me up a little stale salt meat in a fig-leaf.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And for me some good greasy tripe in a fig-leaf; I will have it cooked here.

LAMACHUS
 Bring me the plumes for my helmet.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Bring me wild pigeons and thrushes.

LAMACHUS
 How white and beautiful are these ostrich feathers!

DICAEOPOLIS
 How fat and well browned is the flesh of this wood-pigeon!

LAMACHUS
 Bring me the case for my triple plume.

DICAEOPOLIS

Pass me over that dish of hare.

LAMACHUS
 OH! the moths have eaten the hair of my crest.

DICAEOPOLIS
 I shall always eat hare before dinner.

LAMACHUS
 Hi! friend! try not to scoff at my armor?

DICAEOPOLIS
 Hi! friend! will you kindly not stare at my thrushes.

LAMACHUS
 Hi! friend! will you kindly not address me.

DICAEOPOLIS
 I do not address you; I am scolding my slave.  Shall we wager and submit
 the matter to Lamachus, which of the two is the best to eat, a locust or
 a thrush?

LAMACHUS
 Insolent hound!

DICAEOPOLIS
 He much prefers the locusts.

LAMACHUS
 Slave, unhook my spear and bring it to me.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Slave, slave, take the sausage from the fire and bring it to me.

LAMACHUS
 Come, let me draw my spear from its sheath.  Hold it, slave, hold it tight.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And you, slave, grip, grip well hold of the skewer.

LAMACHUS
 Slave, the bracings for my shield.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Pull the loaves out of the oven and bring me these bracings of my stomach.

LAMACHUS
 My round buckler with the Gorgon's head.

DICAEOPOLIS
 My round cheese-cake.

LAMACHUS
 What clumsy wit!

DICAEOPOLIS
 What delicious cheese-cake!

LAMACHUS
 Pour oil on the buckler.  Hah! hah! I can see reflected there an old
 man who will be accused of cowardice.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Pour honey on the cake.  Hah! hah! I can see an old man who makes
 Lamachus of the Gorgon's head weep with rage.

LAMACHUS
 Slave, full war armour.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Slave, my beaker; that is MY armour.

LAMACHUS
 With this I hold my ground with any foe.

DICAEOPOLIS
 And I with this with any tosspot.

LAMACHUS
 Fasten the strappings to the buckler; personally I shall carry the knapsack

DICAEOPOLIS
 Pack the dinner well into the basket; personally I shall carry the cloak.

LAMACHUS
 Slave, take up the buckler and let's be off.  It is snowing!  Ah!
 'tis a question of facing the winter.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Take up the basket, 'tis a question of getting to the feast.


CHORUS
 We wish you both joy on your journeys, which differ so much.  One goes
 to mount guard and freeze, while the other will drink, crowned
 with flowers, and then sleep with a young beauty, who will excite
 him readily.

I say it freely; may Zeus confound Antimachus, the poet-historian,
 the son of Psacas!  When Choregus at the Lenaea, alas! alas! he
 dismissed me dinnerless.  May I see him devouring with his eyes a
 cuttle-fish, just served, well cooked, hot and properly salted; and
 the moment that he stretches his hand to help himself, may a dog seize
 it and run off with it.  Such is my first wish.  I also hope for him a
 misfortune at night.  That returning all-fevered from horse practice,
 he may meet an Orestes,(1) mad with drink, who breaks open his head;
 that wishing to seize a stone, he, in the dark, may pick up a fresh stool,
 hurl his missile, miss aim and hit Cratinus.(2)

 f(1) An allusion to the paroxysms of rage, as represented in many tragedies
 familiar to an Athenian audience, of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon,
 after he had killed his mother.

 f(2) No doubt the comic poet, rival of Aristophanes.

SLAVE OF LAMACHUS
 Slaves of Lamachus!  Water, water in a little pot!  Make it warm, get ready
 cloths, cerate greasy wool and bandages for his ankle.  In leaping a ditch,
 the master has hurt himself against a stake; he has dislocated and twisted
 his ankle, broken his head by falling on a stone, while his Gorgon shot far
 away from his buckler.  His mighty braggadocio plume rolled on the
 ground; at this sight he uttered these doleful words, "Radiant star, I gaze
 on thee for the last time; my eyes close to all light, I die." Having
 said this,
 he falls into the water, gets out again, meets some runaways and pursues
 the robbers with his spear at their backsides.(1) But here he comes,
 himself. Get the door open.

 f(1) Unexpected wind-up of the story.  Aristophanes intends to deride
 the boasting of Lamachus, who was always ascribing to himself most
 unlikely exploits.

LAMACHUS
 Oh! heavens! oh! heavens! What cruel pain!  I faint, I tremble!  Alas!
 I die!  the foe's lance has struck me!  But what would hurt me most
 would be for Dicaeopolis to see me wounded thus and laugh
 at my ill-fortune.

DICAEOPOLIS (ENTERS WITH TWO COURTESANS)
 Oh!  my gods!  what bosoms!  Hard as a quince!  Come, my treasures, give
 me voluptuous kisses!  Glue your lips to mine.  Haha! I was the first to
 empty my cup.

LAMACHUS
 Oh! cruel fate! how I suffer!  accursed wounds!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Hah! hah! hail! Knight Lamachus!  (EMBRACES LAMACHUS.)

LAMACHUS
 By the hostile gods!  (BITES DICAEOPOLIS.)

DICAEOPOLIS
 Ah! Great gods!

LAMACHUS
 Why do you embrace me?

DICAEOPOLIS
 And why do you bite me?

LAMACHUS
 'Twas a cruel score I was paying back!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Scores are not evened at the Feast of Cups!

LAMACHUS
 Oh! Paean, Paean!

DICAEOPOLIS
 But to-day is not the feast of Paean.

LAMACHUS
 Oh! support my leg, do; ah! hold it tenderly, my friends!

DICAEOPOLIS
 And you, my darlings, take hold of this, both of you!

LAMACHUS
 This blow with the stone makes me dizzy; my sight grows dim.

DICAEOPOLIS
 For myself, I want to get to bed; I am bursting with lustfulness,
 I want to be bundling in the dark.

LAMACHUS
 Carry me to the surgeon Pittalus.

DICAEOPOLIS
 Take me to the judges.  Where is the king of the feast?
 The wine-skin is mine!

LAMACHUS
 That spear has pierced my bones; what torture I endure!

DICAEOPOLIS
 You see this empty cup!  I triumph! I triumph!

CHORUS
 Old man, I come at your bidding!  You triumph! you triumph!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Again I have brimmed my cup with unmixed wine and drained it at
 a draught!

CHORUS
 You triumph then, brave champion; thine is the wine-skin!

DICAEOPOLIS
 Follow me, singing "Triumph! Triumph!"

CHORUS
 Aye!  we will sing of thee, thee and thy sacred wine-skin, and we all,
 as we follow thee, will repeat in thine honour, "Triumph, Triumph!"