Lines 909–1105

XANTHIAS.
He played us all, me and the Sailor-laddies.
Alone, in a corner, in the dark, he gorged,
And munched, and crunched, and Siciliced the cheese!

PHILOCLEON.
Pheugh! the thing’s evident: the brute this instant
Breathed in my face the filthiest whiff of cheese.
O the foul skunk!

XANTHIAS.
And would not give me any,
Not though I asked. Yet can he be your friend
Who won’t throw anything to Me, the dog?

PHILOCLEON.
Not give you any! No, nor Me, the state.
The man’s a regular scorcher, [burns his mouth] like this gruel.

BDELYCLEON.
Come, don’t decide against us, pray don’t, father,
Before you’ve heard both sides.

PHILOCLEON.
But, my dear boy,
The thing’s self-evident, speaks for itself.

XANTHIAS.
Don’t let him off; upon my life he is
The most lone-eatingest dog that ever was.
The brute went coasting round and round the mortar,
And snapped up all the rind off all the cities.

PHILOCLEON.
And I’ve no mortar even to mend my pitcher!

XANTHIAS.
So then be sure you punish him. For why?
One bush, they say, can never keep two thieves.
Lest I should bark, and bark, and yet get nothing.
And if I do I’ll never bark again.

PHILOCLEON.
Soh! soh!
Here’s a nice string of accusations truly!
A rare thief of a man! You think so too,
Old gamecock? Ay, he winks his eye, he thinks so.
Archon! Hi, fellow, hand me down the vessel.

BDELYCLEON.
Reach it yourself; I’ll call my witnesses.
The witnesses for Labes, please stand forward!
Pot, pestle, grater, brazier, water-jug,
And all the other scarred and charred utensils.
[To Phil.]
Good heavens, sir, finish there, and take your seat!

PHILOCLEON.
I guess I’ll finish him before I’ve done.

BDELYCLEON.
What! always hard and pitiless, and that
To the prisoners, always keen to bite!
[To Labes]
Up, plead your cause: what, quite dumbfounded? speak.

PHILOCLEON.
Seems he’s got nothing in the world to say.

BDELYCLEON.
Nay, ’tis a sudden seizure, such as once
Attacked Thucydides when brought to trial.
’Tis tongue-paralysis that stops his jaws.
[To Labes]
Out of the way! I’ll plead your cause myself.
O sirs, ’tis hard to argue for a dog
Assailed by slander: nevertheless, I’ll try.
’Tis a good dog, and drives away the wolves.

PHILOCLEON.
A thief I call him, and conspirator.

BDELYCLEON.
Nay, he’s the best and worthiest dog alive,
Fit to take charge of any number o’ sheep.

PHILOCLEON.
What use in that, if he eat up the cheese?

BDELYCLEON.
Use! why, he fights your battles, guards your door
The best dog altogether. If he filched,
Yet O forgive: he never learnt the lyre.

PHILOCLEON.
I would to heaven he had never learned his letters,
Then he’d not given us all this tiresome speech.

BDELYCLEON.
Nay, nay, sir, hear my witnesses, I beg.
Grater, get in the box, and speak well out.
You kept the mess; I ask you, answer plainly,
Did you not grate the spoil between the soldiers?
He says he did.

PHILOCLEON.
Ay, but I vow he’s lying.

BDELYCLEON.
O sir, have pity upon poor toiling souls.
Our Labes here, he lives on odds and ends,
Bones, gristle: and is always on the go.
That other Cur is a mere stay-at-home,
Sits by the hearth, and when one brings aught in
Asks for a share: if he gets none, he bites.

PHILOCLEON.
O me, what ails me that I grow so soft!
Some ill’s afoot: I’m nearly giving in.

BDELYCLEON.
O, I beseech you, father, show some pity,
Don’t crush him quite. Where are his little cubs?
Up, little wretches, up; and whimpering there
Plead for your father: weep, implore, beseech.

PHILOCLEON.
[Deeply affected] Get down, get down, get down, get down.

BDELYCLEON.
I will.
Yet that “get down,” I know, has taken in
A many men. However I’ll get down.

PHILOCLEON.
Dash it! this guzzling ain’t the thing at all.
Here was I shedding tears, and seems to me
Only because I have gorged myself with gruel.

BDELYCLEON.
Then will he not get off?

PHILOCLEON.
’Tis hard to know.

BDELYCLEON.
O take, dear father, take the kindlier turn.
Here, hold this vote: then with shut eyes dash by
To the Far Urn. O father, do acquit him.

PHILOCLEON.
No, no, my boy. I never learnt the lyre.

BDELYCLEON.
Here, let me lead you round the handiest way.

PHILOCLEON.
Is this the Nearer?

BDELYCLEON.
This is.

PHILOCLEON.
In she goes.

BDELYCLEON.
[Aside] Duped, as I live! acquits him by mistake!
[Aloud] I’ll do the counting.

PHILOCLEON.
Well, how went the battle?

BDELYCLEON.
We shall soon see. O Labes, you’re acquitted!
Why, how now, father?

PHILOCLEON.
[Faintly] Water, give me water!

BDELYCLEON.
Hold up, sir, do.

PHILOCLEON.
Just tell me only this,
Is he INDEED acquitted?

BDELYCLEON.
Yes.

PHILOCLEON.
I’m done for.

BDELYCLEON.
Don’t take it so to heart: stand up, sir, pray.

PHILOCLEON.
How shall I bear this sin upon my soul?
A man acquitted! What awaits me now?
Yet, O great gods! I pray you pardon me,
Unwilled I did it, not from natural bent.

BDELYCLEON.
And don’t begrudge it; for I’ll tend you well,
And take you, father, everywhere with me,
To feasts, to suppers, to the public games.
Henceforth in pleasure you shall spend your days,
And no Hyperbolus delude and mock you.
But go we in.

PHILOCLEON.
Yes, if you wish it, now.

CHORUS.
Yea, go rejoicing your own good way,
Wherever your path may be;
But you, ye numberless myriads, stay
And listen the while to me.
Beware lest the truths I am going to say
Unheeded to earth should fall;
For that were the part of a fool to play,
And not your part at all.
Now all ye people attend and hear,
if ye love a simple and genuine strain,
For now our poet, with right good will,
of you, spectators, must needs complain.
Ye have wronged him much, he protests, a bard
who had served you often and well before;
Partly, indeed, himself unseen,
assisting others to please you more;
With the art of a Eurycles, weird and wild,
he loved to dive in a stranger’s breast,
And pour from thence through a stranger’s lips
full many a sparkling comical jest;
And partly at length in his own true form,
as he challenged his fate by himself alone,
And the Muses whose bridled mouths he drave,
were never another’s, were all his own.
And thus he came to a height of fame
which none had ever achieved before,
Yet waxed not high in his own conceit,
nor ever an arrogant mind he bore.
He never was found in the exercise-ground,
corrupting the boys: he never complied
With the suit of some dissolute knave, who loathed
that the vigilant lash of the bard should chide
His vile effeminate boylove. No!
he kept to his purpose pure and high,
That never the Muse, whom he loved to use,
the villainous trade of a bawd should ply.
When first he began to exhibit plays,
no paltry men for his mark he chose,
He came in the mood of a Heracles forth
to grapple at once with the mightiest foes.
In the very front of his bold career
with the jag-toothed Monster he closed in fight,
Though out of its fierce eyes flashed and flamed
the glare of Cynna’s detestable light,
And a hundred horrible sycophants’ tongues
were twining and flickering over its head,
And a voice it had like the roar of a stream
which has just brought forth destruction and dread,
And a Lamia’s groin, and a camel’s loin,
and foul as the smell of a seal it smelt.
But He, when the monstrous form he saw,
no bribe he took and no fear he felt,
For you he fought, and for you he fights:
and then last year with adventurous hand
He grappled besides with the Spectral Shapes,
the Agues and Fevers that plagued our land;
That loved in the darksome hours of night
to throttle fathers, and grandsires choke,
That laid them down on their restless beds,
and against your quiet and peaceable folk
Kept welding together proofs and writs
and oath against oath, till many a man
Sprang up, distracted with wild affright,
and off in haste to the Polemarch ran.
Yet although such a champion as this ye had found,
to purge your land from sorrow and shame,
Ye played him false when to reap, last year,
the fruit of his novel designs he came,
Which, failing to see in their own true light,
ye caused to fade and wither away.
And yet with many a deep libation,
invoking Bacchus, he swears this day
That never a man, since the world began,
has witnessed a cleverer comedy.
Yours is the shame that ye lacked the wit
its infinite merit at first to see.
But none the less with the wise and skilled
the bard his accustomed praise will get,
Though when he had distanced all his foes,
his noble Play was at last upset.
But O for the future, my Masters, pray
Show more regard for a genuine Bard
Who is ever inventing amusements new
And fresh discoveries, all for you.
Make much of his play, and store it away,
And into your wardrobe throw it
With the citrons sweet: and if this you do,
Your clothes will be fragrant, the whole year through,
With the volatile wit of the Poet.
O of old renowned and strong,
in the choral dance and song,
In the deadly battle throng,
And in this, our one distinction,
manliest we, mankind among!
Ah, but that was long ago:
Those are days for ever past:
Now my hairs are whitening fast,
Whiter than the swan they grow.
Yet in these our embers low
still some youthful fires must glow.
Better far our old-world fashion,
Better far our ancient truth,
Than the curls and dissipation
Of your modern youth.
Do you wonder, O spectators,
thus to see me spliced and braced,
Like a wasp in form and figure,
tapering inwards at the waist?
Why I am so, what’s the meaning
of this sharp and pointed sting,
Easily I now will teach you,
though you “knew not anything.”
We on whom this stern-appendage,
this portentous tail is found,
Are the genuine old Autochthons,
native children of the ground;
We the only true-born Attics,
of the staunch heroic breed,
Many a time have fought for Athens,
guarding her in hours of need;
When with smoke and fire and rapine
forth the fierce Barbarian came,
Eager to destroy our wasps-nests,
smothering all the town in flame,
Out at once we rushed to meet him:
on with shield and spear we went,
Fought the memorable battle,
primed with fiery hardiment;
Man to man we stood, and, grimly,
gnawed for rage our under lips.
Hah! their arrows hail so densely,
all the sun is in eclipse!
Yet we drove their ranks before us,
ere the fall of eventide:
As we closed, an owl flew o’er us,
and the Gods were on our side!
Stung in jaw, and cheek, and eyebrow,
fearfully they took to flight,
We behind them, we harpooning
at their slops with all our might:
So that in barbarian countries,
even now the people call
Attic wasps the best, and bravest,
yea, the manliest tribe of all!
Mine was then a life of glory,
never craven fear came o’er me
Every foeman quailed before me
As across the merry waters,
fast the eager galleys bore me.
’Twas not then our manhood’s test,
Who can make a fine oration?
Who is shrewd in litigation?
It was, WHO CAN ROW THE BEST?
Therefore did we batter down
many a hostile Median town.
And ’twas we who for the nation
Gathered in the tribute pay,
Which the younger generation
Merely steal away.
You will find us very wasplike,
if you scan us through and through,
In our general mode of living,
and in all our habits too.
First, if any rash assailant dare provoke us, can there be