Lines 402–608

CHORUS.
Thou in all places, and thou at all hours,
Flitting and sitting in bri-berry flowers,
Sucking and sipping the gold they contain,
Mayest thou lightly, as ’twas swallowed,
cast thy mouthful up again.
Then will I ever the roundelay sing
Drink for the luck which the Destinies bring ,
And old Iulius’s son, the pantler Prytanean,
For joy will “Bacche-Bacchus” shout,
and chant his Io-Paean.

PAPHLAGON.
Think you in shamelessness to win?
No, by Poseidon, no!
Or may I evermore the feasts
of Agora Zeus forgo.
Now by the knuckles which in youth
would discipline my head,
And those hard-handled butchers’ knives
they often used instead,
I think in shamelessness I’ll win;
else vainly in the slums
Have I to such a bulk been reared
on finger-cleaning crumbs.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
On finger-pellets like a dog?
And reared on these, you seek
To fight a dog-faced fierce baboon!
I marvel at your cheek.

PAPHLAGON.
And lots of other monkey-tricks
I practised as a boy.
O how I used to chouse the cooks
by shrieking out Ahoy!
Look lads, a swallow! spring is here.
Look up, look up, I pray.
So up they looked whilst I purloined
a piece of meat away.

CHORUS.
Shrewd body, you were provident,
and stole away your meat
Before the vernal swallow came,
as folk their nettles eat.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
And no one caught me out, or else,
if any saw me pot it,
I clapped the meat between my thighs
and vowed I hadn’t got it;
Whereat an orator observed,
who watched me at my tricks,
Some day this boy will make his mark
as leader in the Pnyx.

CHORUS.
His inference was just; but still
’tis plain from whence he drew it;
He saw you filch the meat away,
and swear you didn’t do it.

PAPHLAGON.
I’ll stop your insolence, my man;
your friend’s and yours together.
I’ll swoop upon you like a gale
of fresh and stormy weather,
And all the land and all the sea
in wild confusion throw.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
But I will furl my sausages,
and down the tide will go
With prosperous seas, and favouring breeze,
at you my fingers snapping.
And if your bark a leak should spring,
the water I’ll be tapping.
Full many a talent have you filched,
and dearly shall you pay,
You public-treasury thief!

CHORUS.
Look out, and slack the sheet away,
I hear a loud Nor’-Easter there
or Sycophanter blow.

PAPHLAGON.
From Potidaea you received
ten talents, that I know.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
Will you take one, and hold your tongue?

CHORUS.
He’d take it like a shot.
Let out the yard-arm ropes a bit.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
The gale has milder got.
The stormy blast is falling fast.

PAPHLAGON.
You’ll have, for bribery and deceit,
Four hundred-talent writs to meet.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
And you, for cowardliness a score,
For theft a thousand writs and more.

PAPHLAGON.
From that old sacrilegious race?
I’ll say that your descent you trace.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
Your father’s father marched, I’ll swear,
As body-guard to—

PAPHLAGON.
Whom? Declare!

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
To Hippias’s Byrsine.

PAPHLAGON.
You jackanapes!

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
You gallows-tree!

CHORUS.
Strike like a man!

PAPHLAGON.
O help me! Oh!
These plotting traitors hurt me so.

CHORUS.
Strike, strike him, well and manfully,
And with those entrails beat him,
And strings of sausage-meat, and try
Meet punishment to mete him.
O noblest flesh in all the world,
O spirit best and dearest,
To City and to citizens
a Saviour thou appearest.
How well and with what varied skill
thou foil’st him in debate!
O would that I could praise you so,
as our delight is great.

PAPHLAGON.
Now, by Demeter, it escaped me not
That these same plots were framing; well I knew
How they were pegged, and fixed, and glued together.

CHORUS.
O, me!
[To the Sausage-seller]
Can’t you say something from the cartwright’s trade?

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
These Argos doings have escaped me not.
He goes, he says, to make a friend of Argos,
But ’tis with Sparta he’s colloguing there.
Aye and I know the anvil whereupon
His plan is forged: ’tis welded on the captives.

CHORUS.
Good! good! return him welding for his glue.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
And men from thence are hammering at it too.

PAPHLAGON.
And not by bribes of silver or of gold
Or sending friends, will you persuade me not
To tell the Athenians how you are going on.
I’ll go this instant to the Council-board,
And all your vile conspiracies denounce,
And all your nightly gatherings in the town,
And how you plotted with the Medes and King,
And all your cheese-pressed doings in Boeotia.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
Pray, how’s cheese selling in Boeotia now?

PAPHLAGON.
I’ll stretch you flat, by Heracles I will.
[Exit]

CHORUS.
Now then, what mean you? what are you going to do?
Now shall you show us if in very truth
You stole the meat and hid it as you said.
So to the Council-house you’ll run, for he
Will burst in thither, and against us all
Utter his lies and bawl a mighty bawl.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
Well, I will go; but first I’ll lay me down
Here, as I am, these guts and butchers’-knives.

DEMOSTHENES.
Here take this ointment and anoint your neck,
So can you slip more easily through his lies.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
Well now, that’s good and trainer-like advice.

DEMOSTHENES.
And next, take this and swallow it.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
What for?

DEMOSTHENES.
Why, if you are garlic-primed, you’ll fight much better.
And now begone.

SAUSAGE-SELLER.
I’m off.

DEMOSTHENES.
And don’t forget
To peck, to lie, to gobble down his combs,
And bite his wattles off. That done, return.

CHORUS.
Good-bye and good speed: may your daring succeed,
And Zeus of the Agora help you in need.
May you conquer in fight, and return to our sight
A Victor triumphant with garlands bedight.
But ye to our anapaests listen the while,
And give us the heed that is due,
Ye wits, who the Muse of each pattern and style
Yourselves have attempted to woo.
If one of the old-fashioned Comedy-bards
had our services sought to impress,
And make us before the spectators appear,
to deliver the public address,
He would not have easily gained us; but now,
with pleasure we grant the request
Of a poet who ventures the truth to declare,
and detests what we also detest,
And against the Tornado and Whirlwind, alone,
with noble devotion advances.
But as for the question that puzzles you most,
so that many inquire how it chances
That he never a Chorus had asked for himself,
or attempted in person to vie,
On this we’re commissioned his views to explain,
and this is the Poet’s reply;
That ’twas not from folly he lingered so long,
but discerning by shrewd observation
That Comedy-Chorus-instruction is quite
the most difficult thing in creation.
For out of the many who courted the Muse
she has granted her favours to few,
While e’en as the plants that abide but a year,
so shifting and changeful are you;
And the Poets who flourished before him, he saw,
ye were wont in their age to betray.
Observing the treatment which Magnes received
when his hair was besprinkled with grey,
Than whom there was none more trophies had won
in the fields of dramatic display.
All voices he uttered, all forms he assumed,
the Lydian, the fig-piercing Fly,
The Harp with its strings, the Bird with its wings,
the Frog with its yellow-green dye.
Yet all was too little; he failed in the end,
when the freshness of youth was gone by,
And at last in his age he was hissed from the stage
when lost was his talent for jeering.
Then he thought of Cratinus who flowed through the plains
’mid a tumult of plaudits and cheering;
And sweeping on all that obstructed his course,
with a swirl from their stations he tore them,
Oaks, rivals, and planes; and away on his flood
uprooted and prostrate he bore them.
And never a song at a banquet was sung
but Doro fig-sandaled and true,
Or Framers of terse and artistical verse,
such a popular poet he grew.
Yet now that he drivels and dotes in the streets,
and Time of his ambers has reft him,
And his framework is gaping asunder with age,
and his strings and his music have left him,
No pity ye show; no assistance bestow;
but allow him to wander about
Like Connas, with coronal withered and sere,
and ready to perish with drought;
Who ought for his former achievements to DRINK
in the Hall, nor be laid on the shelf,
But to sit in the Theatre shining and bright,
beside Dionysus himself.
And then he remembered the stormy rebuffs
which Crates endured in his day,
Who a little repast at a little expense
would provide you, then send you away;
Who the daintiest little devices would cook
from the driest of mouths for you all;
Yet he, and he only held out to the end,
now standing, now getting a fall.
So in fear of these dangers he lingered; besides,
a sailor, he thought, should abide
And tug at the oar for a season, before
he attempted the vessel to guide;
And next should be stationed awhile at the prow,
the winds and the weather to scan:
And then be the Pilot, himself for himself.
So seeing our Poet began
In a mood so discreet, nor with vulgar conceit
rushed headlong before you at first,
Loud surges of praise to his honour upraise;
salute him, all hands, with a burst
Of hearty triumphant Lenaean applause,
That the bard may depart, all radiant and bright
To the top of his forehead with joy and delight,
Having gained, by your favour, his cause.
Dread Poseidon, the Horseman’s King,
Thou who lovest the brazen clash,
Clash and neighing of warlike steeds;
Pleased to watch where the trireme speeds
Purple-beaked, to the oar’s long swing,
Winning glory (and pay); but chief
Where bright youths in their chariots flash
Racing (coming perchance to grief);
Cronus’s son,
Throned on Geraestus and Sunium bold,
Swaying thy dolphins with trident of gold,
Come, O come, at the call of us
Dearest to Phormio thou,
Yea and dearest to all of us,
Dearest to all of us now.
Let us praise our mighty fathers,
men who ne’er would quake or quail,
Worthy of their native country,
worthy of Athene’s veil;
Men who with our fleets and armies;
everywhere the victory won,
And adorned our ancient city
by achievements nobly done.
Never stayed they then to reckon
what the numbers of the foe,
At the instant that they saw him,
all their thought was At him got!
If they e’er in desperate struggling
on their shoulder chanced to fall,
Quick they wiped away the dust-mark,
swore they ne’er were thrown at all,
Closed again in deadly grapple.
None of all our generals brave
Then had stooped a public banquet
from Cleaenetus to crave.
Now unless ye grant them banquets,
grant precedence as their right,
They will fight no more, they tell you.
Our ambition is to fight
Freely for our Gods and country,
as our fathers fought before,
No reward or pay receiving;
asking this and nothing more,
When returning Peace shall set us
free from all our warlike toil,
Grudge us not our flowing ringlets,
grudge us not our baths and oil.
Holy Pallas, our guardian Queen,
Ruling over the holiest land,
Land poetic, renowned, and strong,
First in battle and first in song,
Land whose equal never was seen,
Come to prosper our Choral band!
Bring thou with thee the Maiden bright,
Her who greets us in every fight,
Victory!
She in the choir-competition abides with us,
Always against our antagonists sides with us.
Come, great Goddess, appear to us,
Now, if ever, we pray,
Bring thou victory dear to us,
Crown thine Horsemen to-day.
What we witnessed with our horses
we desire to eulogize.
Worthy they of praise and honour!
many a deed of high emprize,
Many a raid and battle-onset
they with us have jointly shared.
Yet their feats ashore surprise not,
with their feats afloat compared,
When they bought them cans and garlic,
bought them strings of onions too,
Leapt at once aboard the transports,
all with manful hearts and true,
Took their seats upon the benches,
dipped their oar-blades in the sea,
Pulled like any human beings,
neighing out their Hippapae
Pull my hearties, pull your strongest,
don’t be shirking, Sigma-brand,
Then they leapt ashore at Corinth,
and the youngest of the band
Hollowed with their hoofs their couches
or for bedding searched about.
And they fed on crabs, for clover,
if they met one crawling out,
Or detected any lurking,
in the Ocean’s deepest bed,
Till at length a crab of Corinth,
so Theorus tells us, said: