me, that I will show more effrontery than you; as sure as I have rounded this fine stomach by feeding on the pieces of bread that had cleansed other folk's greasy fingers.52
CLEON. On pieces of bread, like a dog! Ah! wretch! you have the nature of a dog and you dare to fight a cynecephalus?53
SAUSAGE-SELLER. I have many another trick in my sack, memories of my childhood's days. I used to linger around the cooks and say to them, "Look, friends, don't you see a swallow? 'tis the herald of springtime." And while they stood, their noses in the air, I made off with a piece of meat.
CHORUS. Oh! most clever man! How well thought out! You did as the eaters of artichokes, you gathered them before the return of the swallows.54
SAUSAGE-SELLER. They could make nothing of it; or, if they suspected a trick, I hid the meat in my breeches and denied the thing by all the gods; so that an orator, seeing me at the game, cried, "This child will get on; he has the mettle that makes a statesman."
CHORUS. He argued rightly; to steal, perjure yourself and make a receiver of your rump55 are three essentials for climbing high.
CLEON. I will stop your insolence, or rather the insolence of both of you. I will throw myself upon you like a terrible hurricane ravaging both land and sea at the will of its fury.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. Then I will gather up my sausages and entrust myself to the kindly waves of fortune so as to make you all the more enraged.
DEMOSTHENES. And I will watch in the bilges in case the boat should make water.
CLEON. No, by Demeter! I swear, 'twill not be with impunity that you have thieved so many talents from the Athenians.56
CHORUS (to the Sausage-seller). Oh! oh! reef your sail a bit! Here is Boreas blowing calumniously.
CLEON. I know that you got ten talents out of Potidaea.57
SAUSAGE-SELLER. Hold! I will give you one; but keep it dark!
CHORUS. Hah! that will please him mightily; now you can travel under full sail.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. Yes, the wind has lost its violence.
CLEON. I will bring four suits against you, each of one hundred talents.58
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And I twenty against you for shirking duty and more than a thousand for robbery.
CLEON. I maintain that your parents were guilty of sacrilege against the goddess.59
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And I, that one of your grandfathers was a satellite….
CLEON. To whom? Explain!
SAUSAGE-SELLER. To Byrsina, the mother of Hippias.60
CLEON. You are an impostor.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And you are a rogue.
CHORUS. Hit him hard.
CLEON. Oh, oh, dear! The conspirators are murdering me!
CHORUS. Strike, strike with all your might; bruise his belly, lashing him with your guts and your tripe; punish him with both arms! Oh! vigorous assailant and intrepid heart! Have you not routed him totally in this duel of abuse? how shall I give tongue to my joy and sufficiently praise you?
CLEON. Ah! by Demeter! I was not ignorant of this plot against me; I knew it was forming, that the chariot of war was being put together.61
CHORUS (to Sausage-seller). Look out, look out! Come, outfence him with some wheelwright slang?
SAUSAGE-SELLER. His tricks at Argos do not escape me. Under pretence of forming an alliance with the Argives, he is hatching a plot with the Lacedaemonians there; and I know why the bellows are blowing and the metal that is on the anvil; 'tis the question of the prisoners.
CHORUS. Well done! Forge on, if he be a wheelwright.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And there are men at Sparta62 who are hammering the iron with you; but neither gold nor silver nor prayers nor anything else shall impede my denouncing your trickery to the Athenians.
CLEON. As for me, I hasten to the Senate to reveal your plotting, your nightly gatherings in the city, your trafficking with the Medes and with the Great King, and all you are foraging for in Boeotia.63
SAUSAGE-SELLER. What price then is paid for forage by Boeotians?
CLEON. Oh! by Heracles! I will tan your hide.
CHORUS. Come, if you have both wit and heart, now is the time to show it, as on the day when you hid the meat in your breeches, as you say. Hasten to the Senate, for he will rush there like a tornado to calumniate us all and give vent to his fearful bellowings.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. I am going, but first I must rid myself of my tripe and my knives; I will leave them here.
CHORUS. Stay! rub your neck with lard; in this way you will slip between the fingers of calumny.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. Spoken like a finished master of fence.
CHORUS. Now, bolt down these cloves of garlic.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. Pray, what for?
CHORUS. Well primed with garlic, you will have greater mettle for the fight. But hurry, hurry, bestir yourself!
SAUSAGE-SELLER. That's just what I am doing.
CHORUS. And, above all, bite your foe, rend him to atoms, tear off his comb64 and do not return until you have devoured his wattles. Go! make your attack with a light heart, avenge me and may Zeus guard you! I burn to see you return the victor and laden with chaplets of glory. And you, spectators, enlightened critics of all kinds of poetry, lend an ear to my anapaests.65
CHORUS. Had one of the old authors asked to mount this stage to recite his verses, he would not have found it hard to persuade me. But our poet of to-day is likewise worthy of this favour; he shares our hatred, he dares to tell the truth, he boldly braves both waterspouts and hurricanes. Many among you, he tells us, have expressed wonder, that he has not long since had a piece presented in his own name, and have asked the reason why.66 This is what he bids us say in reply to your questions; 'tis not without grounds that he has courted the shade, for, in his opinion, nothing is more difficult than to cultivate the comic Muse; many court her, but very few secure her favours. Moreover, he knows that you are fickle by nature and betray your poets when they grow old. What fate befell Magnes,67 when his hair went white? Often enough has he triumphed over his rivals; he has sung in all keys, played the lyre and fluttered wings; he turned into a Lydian and even into a gnat, daubed himself with green to become a frog.
Guests used pieces of bread to wipe their fingers at table.
'Dog's head,' a vicious species of ape.
They were allowed to remain in the ground throughout the winter so that they might grow tender.
An allusion to the pederastic habits ascribed to some of the orators by popular rumour.
He imputes the crime to Agoracritus of which he is guilty himself.
A town in Thrace and subject to Athens. It therefore paid tribute to the latter. It often happened that the demagogues extracted considerable sums from the tributaries by threats or promises.
It was customary in Athens for the plaintiff himself to fix the fine to be paid by the defendant.
Athené, the tutelary divinity of Athens.
And wife of Pisistratus. Anything belonging to the ancient tyrants was hateful to the Athenians.
An allusion to the language used by the democratic orators, who, to be better understood by the people, constantly affected the use of terms belonging to the different trades.
He accuses Cleon of collusion with the enemy.
Cleon retorts upon his adversary the charge brought against himself. The Boeotians were the allies of Sparta.
Allusion to cock-fighting.
The tripping metre usually employed in the
Hitherto Aristophanes had presented his pieces under an assumed name.
A comic poet, who had carried off the prize eleven times; not a fragment of his works remains to us.
