Part 15

DICAEOPOLIS Who dares do this thing? Inspectors, drive out the informers. Ah! you offer to enlighten us without a lamp!(1)

f(1) A play upon (a) word which both means 'to light' and 'to denounce.'

INFORMER What! I may not denounce our enemies?

DICAEOPOLIS Have a care for yourself, if you don't go off pretty quick to denounce elsewhere.

MEGARIAN What a plague to Athens!

DICAEOPOLIS Be reassured, Megarian. Here is the price for your two swine, the garlic and the salt. Farewell and much happiness!

MEGARIAN Ah! we never have that amongst us.

DICAEOPOLIS Well! may the inopportune wish apply to myself.

MEGARIAN Farewell, dear little sows, and seek, far from your father, to munch your bread with salt, if they give you any.

CHORUS Here is a man truly happy. See how everything succeeds to his wish. Peacefully seated in his market, he will earn his living; woe to Ctesias,(1) and all other informers who dare to enter there! You will not be cheated as to the value of wares, you will not again see Prepis(2) wiping his foul rump, nor will Cleonymus(3) jostle you; you will take your walks, clothed in a fine tunic, without meeting Hyperbolus(4) and his unceasing quibblings, without being accosted on the public place by any importunate fellow, neither by Cratinus,(5) shaven in the fashion of the debauchees, nor by this musician, who plagues us with his silly improvisations, Artemo, with his arm-pits stinking as foul as a goat, like his father before him. You will not be the butt of the villainous Pauson's(6) jeers, nor of Lysistratus,(7) the disgrace of the Cholargian deme, who is the incarnation of all the vices, and endures cold and hunger more than thirty days in the month.

f(1) An informer (sycophant), otherwise unknown.

f(2) A debauchee of vile habits; a pathic.

f(3) Mentioned above; he was as proud as he was cowardly.

f(4) An Athenian general, quarrelsome and litigious, and an Informer into the bargain.

f(5) A comic poet of vile habits.

f(6) A painter.

f(7) A debauchee, a gambler, and always in extreme poverty.

A BOEOTIAN By Heracles! my shoulder is quite black and blue. Ismenias, put the penny-royal down there very gently, and all of you, musicians from Thebes, pipe with your bone flutes into a dog's rump.(1)

f(1) This kind of flute had a bellows, made of dog-skin, much like the bagpipes of to-day.

DICAEOPOLIS Enough, enough, get you gone. Rascally hornets, away with you! Whence has sprung this accursed swarm of Charis(1) fellows which comes assailing my door?

f(1) A flute-player, mentioned above.

BOEOTIAN Ah! by Iolas!(1) Drive them off, my dear host, you will please me immensely; all the way from Thebes, they were there piping behind me and have completely stripped my penny-royal of its blossom. But will you buy anything of me, some chickens or some locusts?

f(1) A hero, much honoured in Thebes; nephew of Heracles.

DICAEOPOLIS Ah! good day, Boeotian, eater of good round loaves.(1) What do you bring?

f(1) A form of bread peculiar to Boeotia.

BOEOTIAN All that is good in Boeotia, marjoram, penny-royal, rush-mats, lamp-wicks, ducks, jays, woodcocks, water-fowl, wrens, divers.

DICAEOPOLIS 'Tis a very hail of birds that beats down on my market.

BOEOTIAN I also bring geese, hares, foxes, moles, hedgehogs, cats, lyres, martins, otters and eels from the Copaic lake.(1)