Lines 1105–1316

CHORUS.
Any creature more vindictive,
more irascible than we?
Then we manage all our business
in a waspish sort of way,
Swarming in the Courts of Justice,
gathering in from day to day,
Many where the Eleven invite us,
many where the Archon calls,
Many to the great Odeum, many to the city walls.
There we lay our heads together,
densely packed, and stooping low,
Like the grubs within their cells, with
movement tremulous and slow.
And for ways and means in general
we’re superlatively good,
Stinging every man about us,
culling thence a livelihood
Yet we’ve stingless drones amongst us,
idle knaves who sit them still,
Shrink from work, and toil, and labour,
stop at home, and eat their fill,
Eat the golden tribute-honey
our industrious care has wrought.
This is what extremely grieves us,
that a man who never fought
Should contrive our fees to pilfer,
one who for his native land
Never to this day had oar, or
lance, or blister in his hand.
Therefore let us for the future
pass a little short decree,
Whoso wears no sting shall never carry off the obols three.

PHILOCLEON.
No! No! I’ll never put this off alive.
With this I was arrayed, and found my safety,
In the invasion of the great north wind.

BDELYCLEON.
You seem unwilling to accept a good.

PHILOCLEON.
’Tis not expedient: no by Zeus it is not.
’Twas but the other day I gorged on sprats
And had to pay three obols to the fuller.

BDELYCLEON.
Try it at all events: since once for all
Into my hands you have placed yourself for good.

PHILOCLEON.
What would you have me do?

BDELYCLEON.
Put off that cloak.
And wear this mantle in a cloak-like way.

PHILOCLEON.
Should we beget and bring up children then,
When here my son is bent on smothering me?

BDELYCLEON.
Come, take and put it on, and don’t keep chattering.

PHILOCLEON.
Good heavens! and what’s this misery of a thing?

BDELYCLEON.
Some call it Persian, others Caunacés.

PHILOCLEON.
There! and I thought it a Thymaetian rug.

BDELYCLEON.
No wonder: for you’ve never been to Sardis,
Else you’d have known it: now you don’t.

PHILOCLEON.
Who? I?
No more I do by Zeus: it seemed to me
Most like an overwrap of Morychus.

BDELYCLEON.
Nay, in Ecbatana they weave this stuff.

PHILOCLEON.
What! have they wool-guts in Ecbatana?

BDELYCLEON.
Tut, man: they weave it in their foreign looms
At wondrous cost: this very article
Absorbed with ease a talent’s weight of wool.

PHILOCLEON.
Why, then, WOOL-GATHERER were its proper name
Instead of Caunacés.

BDELYCLEON.
Come, take it, take it,
Stand still and put it on.

PHILOCLEON.
O dear, O dear,
O what a sultry puff the brute breathed o’er me!

BDELYCLEON.
Quick, wrap it round you.

PHILOCLEON.
No, I won’t, that’s flat,
You had better wrap me in a stove at once.

BDELYCLEON.
Come then, I’ll throw it round you.
[To the cloak] You, begone.

PHILOCLEON.
Do keep a flesh-hook near.

BDELYCLEON.
A flesh-hook! why?

PHILOCLEON.
To pull me out before I melt away.

BDELYCLEON.
Now off at once with those confounded shoes,
And on with these Laconians, instantly.

PHILOCLEON.
What I, my boy! I bring myself to wear
The hated foe’s insufferable—cloutings!

BDELYCLEON.
Come, sir, insert your foot, and step out firmly
In this Laconian.

PHILOCLEON.
’Tis too bad, it is,
To make a man set foot on hostile—leather.

BDELYCLEON.
Now for the other.

PHILOCLEON.
O no, pray not that,
I’ve a toe there, a regular Lacon-hater.

BDELYCLEON.
There is no way but this.

PHILOCLEON.
O luckless I,
Why I shan’t have, to bless my age, one—chilblain.

BDELYCLEON.
Quick, father, get them on: and then move forward
Thus; in an opulent swaggering sort of way.

PHILOCLEON.
Look then! observe my attitudes: think which
Of all your opulent friends I walk most like.

BDELYCLEON.
Most like a pimple bandaged round with garlic.

PHILOCLEON.
Ay, ay, I warrant I’ve a mind for wriggling.

BDELYCLEON.
Come, if you get with clever well-read men
Could you tell tales, good gentlemanly tales?

PHILOCLEON.
Ay, that I could.

BDELYCLEON.
What sort of tales?

PHILOCLEON.
Why, lots,
As, first, how Lamia spluttered when they caught her,
And, next, Cardopion, how he swinged his mother.

BDELYCLEON.
Pooh, pooh, no legends: give us something human,
Some what we call domestic incident.

PHILOCLEON.
O, ay, I know a rare domestic tale,
How once upon a time a cat and mouse—

BDELYCLEON.
O fool and clown, Theogenes replied
Rating the scavenger, what! would you tell
Tales of a cat and mouse, in company!

PHILOCLEON.
What, then?

BDELYCLEON.
Some stylish thing, as how you went
With Androcles and Cleisthenes, surveying.

PHILOCLEON.
Why, bless the boy, I never went surveying,
Save once to Paros, at two obols a day.

BDELYCLEON.
Still you must tell how splendidly, for instance,
Ephudion fought the pancratiastic fight
With young Ascondas: how the game old man
Though grey, had ample sides, strong hands, firm flanks,
An iron chest.

PHILOCLEON.
What humbug! could a man
Fight the pancratium with an iron chest!

BDELYCLEON.
This is the way our clever fellows talk.
But try another tack: suppose you sat
Drinking with strangers, what’s the pluckiest feat,
Of all your young adventures, you could tell them?

PHILOCLEON.
My pluckiest feat? O much my pluckiest, much,
Was when I stole away Ergasion’s vine-poles.

BDELYCLEON.
Tcha! poles indeed! Tell how you slew the boar,
Or coursed the hare, or ran the torch-race, tell
Your gayest, youthfullest act.

PHILOCLEON.
My youthfullest action?
’Twas that I had, when quite a hobbledehoy,
With fleet Phayllus: and I caught him too:
Won by two—votes. ’Twas for abuse, that action.

BDELYCLEON.
No more of that: but lie down there, and learn
To be convivial and companionable.

PHILOCLEON.
Yes; how lie down?

BDELYCLEON.
In an elegant graceful way.

PHILOCLEON.
Like this, do you mean?

BDELYCLEON.
i No, not in the least like that.

PHILOCLEON.
How then?

BDELYCLEON.
Extend your knees, and let yourself
With practised ease subside along the cushions;
Then praise some piece of plate: inspect the ceiling;
Admire the woven hangings of the hall.
Ho! water for our hands! bring in the tables!
Dinner! the after-wash! now the libation.

PHILOCLEON.
Good heavens! then is it in a dream we are feasting?

BDELYCLEON.
The flute-girl has performed! our fellow-guests
Are Phanus, Aeschines, Theorus, Cleon,
Another stranger at Acestor’s head.
Could you with these cap verses properly?

PHILOCLEON.
Could I? Ay, truly; no Diacrian better.

BDELYCLEON.
I’ll put you to the proof. Suppose I’m Cleon.
I’ll start the catch Harmodius. You’re to cap it.
[Singing] “Truly Athens never knew”

PHILOCLEON.
[Singing] “Such a rascally thief as you.”

BDELYCLEON.
Will you do that? You’ll perish in your noise.
He’ll swear he’ll fell you, quell you, and expel you
Out of this realm.

PHILOCLEON.
Ay, truly, will he so?
And if he threaten, I’ve another strain.
“Mon, lustin’ for power supreme, ye’ll mak’
The city capseeze; she’s noo on the shak’.”

BDELYCLEON.
What if Theorus, lying at his feet,
Should grasp the hand of Cleon, and begin,
“From the story of Admetus learn, my friend, to love the good.”
How will you take that on?

PHILOCLEON.
I, very neatly,
“It is not good the fox to play,
Nor to side with both in a false friend’s way.”

BDELYCLEON.
Next comes that son of Sellus, Aeschines,
Clever, accomplished fellow, and he’ll sing
“O the money, O the might,
How Cleitagora and I,
With the men of Thessaly”—

PHILOCLEON.
“How we boasted, you and I.”

BDELYCLEON.
Well, that will do: you’re fairly up to that:
So come along: we’ll dine at Philoctemon’s.
Boy! Chrysus! pack our dinner up; and now
For a rare drinking-bout at last.

PHILOCLEON.
No, no,
Drinking ain’t good: I know what comes of drinking,
Breaking of doors, assault, and battery,
And then, a headache and a fine to pay.

BDELYCLEON.
Not if you drink with gentlemen, you know.
They’ll go to the injured man, and beg you off,
Or you yourself will tell some merry tale,
A jest from Sybaris, or one of Aesop’s,
Learned at the feast. And so the matter turns
Into a joke, and off he goes contented.

PHILOCLEON.
O I’ll learn plenty of those tales, if so
I can get off, whatever wrong I do.
Come, go we in: let nothing stop us now.

CHORUS.
Often have I deemed myself
exceeding bright, acute, and clever,
Dull, obtuse, and awkward never.
That is what Amynias is,
of Curling-borough, Sellus’ son;
Him who now upon an apple
and pomegranate dines, I saw
At Leogoras’s table
Eat as hard as he was able,
Goodness, what a hungry maw!
Pinched and keen as Antiphon.
Once he travelled to Pharsalus, our ambassador to be,
There a solitary guest, he
Stayed with only the Penestae,
Coming from the tribe himself,
the kindred tribe, of Penury.
Fortunate Automenes, we envy your felicity;
Every son of yours is of an infinite dexterity:
First the Harper,’ known to all, and loved of all excessively,
Grace and wit attend his steps, and elegant festivity,
Next the Actor, shrewd of wit beyond all credibility:
Last of all Ariphrades, that soul of ingenuity,
He who of his native wit, with rare originality,
Hit upon an undiscovered trick of bestiality:
All alone, the father tells us, striking out a novel line.
Some there are who said that I
was reconciled in amity,
When upon me Cleon pressed,
and made me smart with injury,
Currying and tanning me:
then as the stripes fell heavily
Th’ outsiders laughed to see the sport,
and hear me squalling lustily,
Caring not a whit for me, but only looking merrily,
To know if squeezed and pressed I chanced
to drop some small buffoonery.
Seeing this, I played the ape a little bit undoubtedly.
So then, after all, the Vine-pole
proved unfaithful to the Vine.

XANTHIAS.
O lucky tortoises, to have such skins,
Thrice lucky for the case upon your ribs:
How well and cunningly your backs are roofed
With tiling strong enough to keep out blows:
Whilst I, I’m cudgelled and tattooed to death.

CHORUS.
How now, my boy? for though a man be old,
Still, if he’s beaten, we may call him boy.

XANTHIAS.
Was not the old man the most outrageous nuisance,
Much the most drunk and riotous of all!
And yet we’d Lycon, Antiphon, Hippyllus,
Lysistratus, Theophrastus, Phrynichus;
But he was far the noisiest of the lot.
Soon as he’d gorged his fill of the good cheer,
He skipped, he leapt, and laughed, and frisked, and whinnied,
Just like a donkey on a feed of corn:
And slapped me youthfully, calling Boy! Boy!
So then Lysistratus compared him thus:
Old man, says he, you’re like new wine fermenting,
Or like a sompnour, scampering to its bran.
But he shrieked back, And you, you’re like a locust
That has just shed the lappets of its cloak,
Or Sthenelus, shorn of his goods and chattels.
At this all clapped, save Theophrast; but he
Made a wry face, being forsooth a wit.