Lines 819–972

JUST MAN.
Now then, young fellow, come along with me
To find the God.

CARIO.
Eh? Who comes here, I wonder.

JUST MAN.
A man once wretched, but so happy now.

CARIO.
One of the honest sort, I dare aver.

JUST MAN.
Aye, aye.

CARIO.
What want you now?

JUST MAN.
I am come to thank
The God: great blessings hath he wrought for me.
For I, inheriting a fair estate,
Used it to help my comrades in their need,
Esteeming that the wisest thing to do.

CARIO.
I guess your money soon began to fail.

JUST MAN.
Aye, that it did!

CARIO.
And then you came to grief.

JUST MAN.
Aye, that I did! And I supposed that they
Whom I had succoured in their need, would now
Be glad to help me when in need myself.
But all slipped off as though they saw me not.

CARIO.
And jeered you, I’ll be bound.

JUST MAN.
Aye, that they did!
The drought in all my vessels proved my ruin.
But not so now.
Therefore with right good cause
I come with thankfulness to praise the God.

CARIO.
But what’s the meaning, by the Powers, of that,
That ancient gaberdine your boy is bearing?

JUST MAN.
This too I bring, an offering to the God.

CARIO.
That’s not the robe you were initiate in?

JUST MAN.
No, but I shivered thirteen years therein.

CARIO.
Those shoes?

JUST MAN.
Have weathered many a storm with me.

CARIO.
And them you bring as votive offerings?

JUST MAN.
Yes.

CARIO.
What charming presents to the God you bring!

INFORMER.
O me unlucky! O my hard, hard fate!
O thrice unlucky, four times, five times, yea
Twelve times, ten thousand times! O woe is me,
So strong the spirit of ill-luck that swamps me.

CARIO.
Apollo shield us and ye gracious Gods,
What dreadful misery has this poor wretch suffered?

INFORMER.
What misery quoth’a? Shameful, scandalous wrong.
Why, all my goods are spirited away
Through this same God, who shall be blind again
If any justice can be found in Hellas.

JUST MAN.
Methinks I’ve got a glimmering of the truth.
This is some wretched fellow, come to grief;
Belike he is metal of the baser sort.

CARIO.
Then well done he to come to wrack and ruin.

INFORMER.
Where, where is he who promised he would make
All of us wealthy in a trice, if only
He could regain his sight? Some of us truly
He has brought to ruin rather than to wealth.

CARIO.
Whom has he brought to ruin?

INFORMER.
Me, this chap.

CARIO.
One of the rogues and housebreakers perchance?

INFORMER.
O aye, by Zeus, and you’re quite rotten too.
’Tis you have got my goods, I do believe.

CARIO.
How bold, Damater, has the Informing rogue
Come blustering in! ’Tis plain he’s hunger-mad.

INFORMER.
You, sirrah, come to the market-place at once,
There to be broken on the wheel, and forced
To tell your misdemeanours.

CARIO.
You be hanged!

JUST MAN.
O, if the God would extirpate the whole
Informer-brood, right well would he deserve,
O Saviour Zeus, of all the Hellenic race!

INFORMER.
You jeer me too? Alack, you shared the spoil,
Or whence that brand new cloak? I’ll take my oath
I saw you yesterday in a gaberdine.

JUST MAN.
I fear you not. I wear an antidote,
A ring Eudemus sold me for a drachma.

CARIO.
’Tis not inscribed FOR AN INFORMER’S BITE.

INFORMER.
Is not this insolence? Ye jest and jeer,
And have not told me what you are doing here.
’Tis for no good you two are here, I’m thinking.

CARIO.
Not for your good, you may be sure of that.

INFORMER.
For off my goods ye are going to dine, I trow.

CARIO.
O that in very truth ye’d burst asunder,
You and your witness, crammed with nothingness.

INFORMER.
Dare ye deny it? In your house they are cooking
A jolly lot of flesh and fish, you miscreants.
[The Informer gives five double sniffs.]

CARIO.
Smell you aught, lackpurse?

JUST MAN.
Maybe ’tis the cold,
Look what a wretched gaberdine he’s wearing.

INFORMER.
O Zeus and Gods, can such affronts be borne
From rogues like these? O me, how vexed I am
That I, a virtuous patriot, get such treatment.

CARIO.
What, you a virtuous patriot?

INFORMER.
No man more so.

CARIO.
Come then, I’ll ask you—Answer me.

INFORMER.
Well.

CARIO.
Are you
A farmer?

INFORMER.
Do you take me for a fool?

CARIO.
A merchant?

INFORMER.
Aye, I feign so, on occasion.

CARIO.
Have you learned any trade?

INFORMER.
No, none by Zeus.

CARIO.
Then how and whence do you earn your livelihood?

INFORMER.
All public matters and all private too
Are in my charge.

CARIO.
How so?

INFORMER.
’Tis I WHO WILL.

CARIO.
You virtuous, housebreaker? When all men hate you
Meddling with matters which concern you not.

INFORMER.
What, think you, booby, it concerns me not
To aid the State with all my might and main?

CARIO.
To aid the State! Does that mean mischief-making?

INFORMER.
It means upholding the established laws
And punishing the rogues who break the same.

CARIO.
I thought the State appointed Justices
For this one task.

INFORMER.
And who’s to prosecute?

CARIO.
Whoever will.

INFORMER.
I am that MAN WHO WILL.
Therefore, at last, the State depends on me.

CARIO.
’Fore Zeus, a worthless leader it has got.
Come, will you this, to lead a quiet life
And peaceful?

INFORMER.
That’s a sheep’s life you’re describing,
Living with nothing in the world to do.

CARIO.
Then you won’t change?

INFORMER.
Not if you gave me all
Battus’s silphium, aye and Wealth to boot.

CARIO.
Put off your cloak!

JUST MAN.
Fellow, to you he’s speaking.

CARIO.
And then your shoes.

JUST MAN.
All this to you he’s speaking.

INFORMER.
I dare you all. Come on and tackle me
Whoever will.

CARIO.
I am that MAN WHO WILL.

INFORMER.
O me, they are stripping me in open day.

CARIO.
You choose to live by mischief-making, do you?

INFORMER.
What are you at? I call you, friend, to witness.

CARIO.
Methinks the witness that you brought has cut it.

INFORMER.
O me! I am trapped alone.

CARIO.
Aye, now you are roaring.

INFORMER.
O me! once more.

CARIO.
[To the Just Man] Hand me your gaberdine,
I’ll wrap this rogue of an Informer in it.

JUST MAN.
Nay, that long since is dedicate to Wealth.

CARIO.
Where can it then more aptly be suspended
Than on a rogue and housebreaker like this?
Wealth we will decorate with nobler robes.

JUST MAN.
How shall we manage with my cast-off shoes?

CARIO.
Those on his forehead, as upon the stock
Of a wild olive, will I nail at once.

INFORMER.
I’ll stay no longer; for, alone, I am weaker,
I know, than you; but give me once a comrade,
A WILLING one, and ere the day is spent
I’ll bring this lusty God of yours to justice,
For that, being only one, he is overthrowing
Our great democracy; nor seeks to gain
The Council’s sanction, or the Assembly’s either.

CARIO.
Aye run you off, accoutred as you are
In all my panoply, and take the station
I held erewhile beside the bath-room fire,
The Coryphaeus of the starvelings there.
Nay, but the keeper of the baths will drag him
Out by the ears; for he’ll at once perceive
The man is metal of the baser sort.
But go we in that you may pray the God.

OLD WOMAN.
Pray, have we really reached, you dear old men,
The very dwelling where this new God dwells?
Or have we altogether missed the way?

CHORUS.
No, you have really reached his very door,
You dear young girl; for girl-like is your speech,

OLD WOMAN.
O, then, I’ll summon one of those within.

CHREMYLUS.
Nay, for, unsummoned, I have just come out.
So tell me freely what has brought you here.

OLD WOMAN.
O, sad, my dear, and anguished is my lot,
For ever since this God began to see
My life’s been not worth living; all through him.

CHREMYLUS.
What, were you too a she-informer then
Amongst the women?

OLD WOMAN.
No indeed, not I.