Lines 1–221

SOSIAS.
You ill-starred Xanthias, what’s the matter now?

XANTHIAS.
The nightly watch I’m studying to relieve.

SOSIAS.
Why then, your ribs will have a score against you.
Do you forget what sort of beast we’re guarding?

XANTHIAS.
No, but I’d fain just drowse dull care away.

SOSIAS.
Well, try your luck: for I too feel a sort
Of drowsy sweetness settling o’er my eyes.

XANTHIAS.
Sure you’re a maniac or a Corybant.

SOSIAS.
[Producing a wine flask] Nay ’tis a sleep from great
Sabazius holds me.

XANTHIAS.
[Producing another] Aha! and I’m your fellow-votary there.
My lids too felt just now the fierce assault
Of a strong Median nod-compelling sleep.
And then I dreamed a dream; such a strange dream!

SOSIAS.
And so did I: the strangest e’er I heard of.
But tell yours first.

XANTHIAS.
Methought a monstrous eagle
Came flying towards the market-place, and there
Seized in its claws a wriggling brassy shield,
And bore it up in triumph to the sky,
And then—Cleonymus fled off and dropped it.

SOSIAS.
Why then, Cleonymus is quite a riddle.

XANTHIAS.
How so?

SOSIAS.
A man will ask his boon companions,
What is that brute which throws away its shield
Alike in air, in ocean, in the field?

XANTHIAS.
O what mishap awaits me, that have seen
So strange a vision?

SOSIAS.
Take it not to heart,
’Twill be no harm, I swear it by the Gods.

XANTHIAS.
No harm to see a man throw off his shield!
But now tell yours.

SOSIAS.
Ah, mine’s a big one, mine is;
About the whole great vessel of the state.

XANTHIAS.
Tell us at once the keel of the affair.

SOSIAS.
’Twas in my earliest sleep methought I saw
A flock of sheep assembled in the Pnyx,
Sitting close-packed, with little cloaks and staves;
Then to these sheep I heard, or seemed to hear
An all-receptive grampus holding forth
In tone and accents like a scalded pig.

XANTHIAS.
Pheugh!

SOSIAS.
Eh?

XANTHIAS.
Stop, stop, don’t tell us any more.
Your dream smells horribly of putrid hides.

SOSIAS.
Then the vile grampus, scales in hand, weighed out
Bits of fat beef, cut up.

XANTHIAS.
Woe worth the day!
He means to cut our city up in bits.

SOSIAS.
Methought beside him, on the ground, I saw
Theorus seated, with a raven’s head.
Then Alcibiades lisped out to me,
Cwemark! Theocwus has a cwaven’s head.

XANTHIAS.
Well lisped! and rightly, Alcibiades!

SOSIAS.
But is this not ill-omened, that a man
Turn to a crow?

XANTHIAS.
Nay, excellent.

SOSIAS.
How?

XANTHIAS.
How!
Being a man he straight becomes a crow:
Is it not obvious to conjecture that
He’s going to leave us, going to the crows?

SOSIAS.
Shall I not pay two obols then, and hire
One who so cleverly interprets dreams?

XANTHIAS.
Come, let me tell the story to the audience
With just these few remarks, by way of preface.
Expect not from us something mighty grand,
Nor yet some mirth purloined from Megara.
We have no brace of servants here, to scatter
Nuts from their basket out among the audience,
No Heracles defrauded of his supper,
Nor yet Euripides besmirched again;
No, nor though Cleon shine, by fortune’s favour,
Will we to mincemeat chop the man again.
Ours is a little tale, with meaning in it,
Not too refined and exquisite for you,
Yet wittier far than vulgar comedy.
You see that great big man, the man asleep
Up on the roof, aloft: well, that’s our master.
He keeps his father here, shut up within,
And bids us guard him that he stir not out.
For he, the father, has a strange disease,
Which none of you will know, or yet conjecture,
Unless we tell: else, if you think so, guess.
Amynias there, the son of Pronapes,
Says he’s a dice-lover: but he’s quite out.

SOSIAS.
Ah, he conjectures from his own disease.

XANTHIAS.
Nay, but the word does really end with -lover.
Then Sosias here observes to Dercylus,
That ’tis a prink-lover.

SOSIAS.
Confound it, no:
That’s the disease of honest gentlemen.

XANTHIAS.
Then next, Nicostratus of Scambon says,
It is a sacrifice- or stranger-lover.

SOSIAS.
What, like Philoxenus? No, by the dog,
Not quite so lewd, Nicostratus, as that.

XANTHIAS.
Come, you waste words: you’ll never find it out,
So all keep silence if you want to know.
I’ll tell you the disease old master has.
He is a Lawcourt-lover, no man like him.
Judging is what he dotes on, and he weeps
Unless he sit on the front bench of all.
At night he gets no sleep, no, not one grain,
Or if he doze the tiniest speck, his soul
Flutters in dreams around the water-clock.
So used he is to holding votes, he wakes
With thumb and first two fingers closed, as one
That offers incense on a new moon’s day,
If on a gate is written Lovely Demus,
Meaning the son of Pyrilamp, he goes
And writes beside it Lovely Verdict-box.
The cock which crew from eventide, he said,
Was tampered with, he knew, to call him late,
Bribed by officials whose accounts were due.
Supper scarce done, he clamours for his shoes,
Hurries ere daybreak to the Court, and sleeps
Stuck like a limpet to the doorpost there.
So sour he is, the long condemning line
He marks for all, then homeward like a bee
Laden with wax beneath his finger-nails.
Lest he lack votes, he keeps, to judge withal,
A private pebble-beach secure within.
Such is his frenzy, and the more you chide him
The more he judges: so with bolts and bars
We guard him straitly that he stir not out.
For ill the young man brooks his sire’s disease.
And first he tried by soft emollient words
To win him over, not to don the cloak
Or walk abroad: but never a jot he yielded.
He washed and purged him then: but never a jot.
A Corybant next he made him, but old master,
Timbrel and all, into the New Court bursts
And there sits judging. So when these rites failed,
We cross the Strait, and, in Aegina, place him,
To sleep the night inside Asclepius’ temple:
Lo! with the dawn he stands at the Court rails!
Then, after that, we let him out no more.
But he! he dodged along the pipes and gutters,
And so made off: we block up every cranny,
Stopping and stuffing them with clouts of rag:
Quick he drove pegs into the wall, and clambered
Up like an old jackdaw, and so hopped out.
Now then, we compass all the house with nets,
Spreading them round, and mew him safe within.
Well, sirs, Philocleon is the old man’s name;
Ay truly; and the son’s, Bdelycleon;
A wondrous high-and-mighty mannered man.

BDELYCLEON.
Xanthias and Sosias! are ye fast asleep?

XANTHIAS.
O dear!

SOSIAS.
What now?

XANTHIAS.
Bdelycleon is up.

BDELYCLEON.
One of you two run hither instantly,
For now my father’s got into the kitchen,
Scurrying, mouselike, somewhere. Mind he don’t
Slip through the hole for turning off the water.
And you, keep pressing at the door.

SOSIAS.
Ay, ay, sir.

BDELYCLEON.
O heavens! what’s that? what makes the chimney rumble?
Hallo, sir! who are you?

PHILOCLEON.
I’m smoke escaping.

BDELYCLEON.
Smoke? of what wood?

PHILOCLEON.
I’m of the fig-tree panel.

BDELYCLEON.
Ay, and there’s no more stinging smoke than that.
Come, trundle back: what, won’t you? where’s the board?
In with you! nay, I’ll clap this log on too.
There now, invent some other stratagem.
But I’m the wretchedest man that ever was;
They’ll call me now the son of Chimney-smoked.

SOSIAS.
He’s at the door now, pushing.

BDELYCLEON.
Press it back then
With all your force: I’m coming there directly.
And O be careful of the bolt and bar,
And mind he does not nibble off the door-pin.

PHILOCLEON.
[Within] Let me out, villains! let me out to judge.
What, shall Dracontides escape unpunished!

BDELYCLEON.
What if he should?

PHILOCLEON.
Why once, when I consulted
The Delphian oracle, the God replied,
That I should wither if a man escaped me.

BDELYCLEON.
Apollo shield us, what a prophecy!

PHILOCLEON.
O let me out, or I shall burst, I shall.

BDELYCLEON.
No, by Poseidon! no, Philocleon, never!

PHILOCLEON.
O then by Zeus I’ll nibble through the net.

BDELYCLEON.
You’ve got no teeth, my beauty.

PHILOCLEON.
Fire and fury!
How shall I slay thee, how? Give me a sword,
Quick, quick, or else a damage-cessing tablet.

BDELYCLEON.
Hang it, he meditates some dreadful deed.

PHILOCLEON.
O no, I don’t: I only want to take
And sell the donkey and his panniers too.
’Tis the new moon to-day.

BDELYCLEON.
And if it is,
Cannot I sell them?

PHILOCLEON.
Not so well as I.

BDELYCLEON.
No, but much better: drive the donkey out.

XANTHIAS.
How well and craftily he dropped the bait
To make you let him through.

BDELYCLEON.
But he caught nothing
That haul at least, for I perceived the trick.
But I will in, and fetch the donkey out.
No, no; he shan’t come slipping through again.
Donkey, why grieve? at being sold to-day?
Gee up! why grunt and groan, unless you carry
Some new Odysseus there?

XANTHIAS.
And, in good truth,
Here is a fellow clinging on beneath.

BDELYCLEON.
Who? where?

XANTHIAS.
Why, here.

BDELYCLEON.
Why, what in the world is this?
Who are you, sirrah?

PHILOCLEON.
Noman I, by Zeus.

BDELYCLEON.
Where from?

PHILOCLEON.
From Ithaca, son of Runaway.

BDELYCLEON.
Noman I promise to no good you’ll be.
Drag him out there from under. O the villain,
The place he had crept to! Now he seems to me
The very image of a sompnour’s foal.

PHILOCLEON.
Come now, hands off: or you and I shall fight.

BDELYCLEON.
Fight! what about?

PHILOCLEON.
About a donkey’s shadow.

BDELYCLEON.
You’re a born bad one, with your tricks and fetches.

PHILOCLEON.
Bad! O my gracious! then you don’t know yet
How good I am: but wait until you taste
The seasoned paunchlet of a prime old judge.

BDELYCLEON.
Get along in, you and your donkey too.

PHILOCLEON.
O help me, fellow-dicasts: help me, Cleon!

BDELYCLEON.
Bellow within there when the door is shut.
Now pile a heap of stones against the door,
And shoot the door-pin home into the bar,
And heave the beam athwart it, and roll up,
Quick, the great mortar-block.

SOSIAS.
[Starting] Save us! what’s that?
Whence fell that clod of dirt upon my head?

XANTHIAS.
Belike some mouse dislodged it from above.

SOSIAS.
A mouse? O, no, a rafter-haunting dicast,
Wriggling about behind the tiling there.

BDELYCLEON.
Good lack! the man is changing to a sparrow
Sure he’ll fly off: where, where’s the casting-net?
Shoo! shoo there! shoo! ’Fore Zeus, ’twere easier work
To guard Scione than a sire like this.

SOSIAS.
Well but at last we have fairly scared him in,
He can’t slip out, he can’t elude us now,
So why not slumber just a—just a—drop?

BDELYCLEON.
Slumber, you rogue! when in a little while
His fellow-justices will come this way
Calling him up.

SOSIAS.
Why sir, ’tis twilight yet.

BDELYCLEON.
Why then, by Zeus, they are very late to-day.
Soon after midnight is their usual time
To come here, carrying lights, and warbling tunes
Sweet-charming-old-Sidono-Phrynichéan