Part 17

TRYGAEUS When you are gathering your vintages you will prize me even better.

CHORUS E'en from to-day we hail you as the deliverer of mankind.

TRYGAEUS Wait until you have drunk a beaker of new wine, before you appraise my true merits.

CHORUS Excepting the gods, there is none greater than yourself, and that will ever be our opinion.

TRYGAEUS Yea, Trygaeus of Athmonia has deserved well of you, he has freed both husbandman and craftsman from the most cruel ills; he has vanquished Hyberbolus.

SERVANT Well then, what must be done now?

TRYGAEUS You must offer pots of green-stuff to the goddess to consecrate her altars.

SERVANT Pots of green-stuff(1) as we do to poor Hermes--and even he thinks the fare but mean?

f(1) This was only offered to lesser deities.

TRYGAEUS What will you offer them? A fatted bull?

SERVANT Oh no! I don't want to start bellowing the battle-cry.(1)

f(1) In the Greek we have a play upon the similarity of the words (for) a bull, and to shout the battle-cry.

TRYGAEUS A great fat swine then?

SERVANT No, no.

TRYGAEUS Why not?

SERVANT We don't want any of the swinishness of Theagenes.(1)

f(1) Theagenes, of the Piraeus, a hideous, coarse, debauched and evil-living character of the day.

TRYGAEUS What other victim do you prefer then?

SERVANT A sheep.

TRYGAEUS A sheep?

SERVANT Yes.

TRYGAEUS But you must give the word the Ionic form.

SERVANT Purposely. So that if anyone in the assembly says, "We must go to war," all may start bleating in alarm, "Oi, oi."(1)

f(1) That is the vocative of the Ionic form of the word; in Attic Greek it is contracted throughout.

TRYGAEUS A brilliant idea.

SERVANT And we shall all be lambs one toward the other, yea, and milder still toward the allies.

TRYGAEUS Then go for the sheep and haste to bring it back with you; I will prepare the altar for the sacrifice.

CHORUS How everything succeeds to our wish, when the gods are willing and Fortune favours us! how opportunely everything falls out.