DICAEOPOLIS
What heaps of things have bitten me to the heart! A small few pleased me, very few, just four; But those that vexed were sand-dune-hundredfold. Let’s see: what pleased me, worth my gladfulness? I know a thing it cheered my heart to see; ’Twas those five talents vomited up by Cleon. At that I brightened; and I love the Knights For that performance; ’twas of price to Hellas, Then I’d a tragic sorrow, when I looked With open mouth for Aeschylus, and lo, The Crier called, Bring on your play, Theognis. Judge what an icy shock that gave my heart! Next; pleased I was when Moschus left, and in Dexitheus came with his Boeotian song. But oh this year I nearly cracked my neck, When in slipped Chaeris for the Orthian Nome. But never yet since first I washed my face Was I so bitten—in my brows with soap,
DICAEOPOLIS As now, when here’s the fixed Assembly Day, And morning come, and no one in the Pnyx. They’re in the Agora chattering, up and down Scurrying to dodge the vermeil-tinctured cord. Why even the Prytanes are not here! They’ll come; Long after time, elbowing each other, jostling For the front bench, streaming down all together You can’t think how. But as for making Peace They do not care one jot. O City! City! But I am always first of all to come, And here I take my seat; then, all alone,— I pass the time complaining, yawning, stretching, I fidget, write, twitch hairs out, do my sums, Gaze fondly country-wards, longing for Peace, Loathing the town, sick for my village-home, Which never cried, Come, buy my charcoal, or My vinegar, my oil, my anything; But freely gave us all; no buy-word there. So here I’m waiting, thoroughly prepared To riot, wrangle, interrupt the speakers Whene’er they speak of anything but Peace. —But here they come, our noon-day Prytanes! Aye, there they go! I told you how ’twould be Every one jostling for the foremost place.
CRIER Move forward all, Move up, within the consecrated line.
AMPHITHEUS Speaking begun?
CRIER Who will address the meeting?
AMPHITHEUS I,
CRIER Who are you?
AMPHITHEUS Amphitheus.
CRIER Not a man?
AMPHITHEUS No, an immortal. For the first Amphitheus Was of Demeter and Triptolemus The son: his son was Celeus; Celeus married Phaenarete, who bare my sire Lycinus. Hence I’m immortal; and the gods committed To me alone the making peace with Sparta. But, though immortal, I’ve no journey-money; The Prytanes won’t provide it. Archers, there!
AMPHITHEUS O help me, Celeus! help, Triptolemus!
DICAEOPOLIS Ye wrong the Assembly, Prytanes, ye do wrong it, Haling away a man who only wants To give us Peace, and hanging up of shields.
CRIER St! Take your seat.
DICAEOPOLIS By Apollo, no, not I, Unless ye prytanize about the Peace.
CRIER O yes! The Ambassadors from the Great King!
DICAEOPOLIS What King! I’m sick to death of embassies, And all their peacocks and their impositions.
CRIER Keep silence!
DICAEOPOLIS Hey!!! Ecbatana, here’s a show.
AMBASSADOR Ye sent us, envoys to the Great King’s Court, Receiving each two drachmas daily, when Euthymenes was Archon.
DICAEOPOLIS O me, the drachmas!
AMBASSADOR And weary work we found it, sauntering on, Supinely stretched in our luxurious litters With awnings o’er us, through Cajystrian plains. ’Twas a bad time.
DICAEOPOLIS Aye, the good time was mine, Stretched in the litter on the ramparts here!
AMBASSADOR And oft they féted us, and we perforce Out of their gold and crystal cups must drink The pure sweet wine.
DICAEOPOLIS O Cranaan city, mark you The insolent airs of these ambassadors?
AMBASSADOR For only those are there accounted MEN Who drink the hardest, and who eat the most.
DICAEOPOLIS As here the most debauched and dissolute.
AMBASSADOR In the fourth year we reached the Great King’s Court. But he, with all his troops, had gone to sit An eight-months’ session on the Golden Hills!
DICAEOPOLIS Pray, at what time did he conclude his session?
AMBASSADOR At the full moon; and so came home again. Then he too féted us, and set before us Whole pot-baked oxen—
DICAEOPOLIS And who ever heard Of pot-baked oxen? Out upon your lies!
AMBASSADOR And an enormous bird, three times the size Of our Cleonymus: its name was—Gull.
DICAEOPOLIS That’s why you gulled us out of all those drachmas!
AMBASSADOR And now we bring you Pseudo-Artabas The Great King’s Eye.
DICAEOPOLIS O how I wish some raven Would come and strike out yours, the Ambassador’s.
CRIER O yes! the Great King’s Eye!
DICAEOPOLIS O Heracles! By Heaven, my man, you wear a war-ship look! What! Do you round the point, and spy the docks? Is that an oar-pad underneath your eye?
AMBASSADOR Now tell the Athenians, Pseudo-Artabas, What the Great King commissioned you to say. Serndeiirahs. Ijisti boutti furbiss upde rotti.
AMBASSADOR Do you understand?
DICAEOPOLIS By Apollo, no not I.
AMBASSADOR He says the King is going to send you gold. (To Pseudo.) Be more distinct and clear about the gold.
PSEUDO-ARTABAS No getti goldi, nincompoop Iawny.
DICAEOPOLIS Wow, but that’s clear enough!
AMBASSADOR What does he say?
DICAEOPOLIS He says the Ionians must be nincompoops If they’re expecting any gold from Persia.
AMBASSADOR No, no: he spoke of golden income-coupons.
DICAEOPOLIS What income-coupons? You’re a great big liar! You, get away; I’ll test the man myself. (To Pseudo.) Now look at this (showing his fist): and answer Yes, or No!
DICAEOPOLIS Or else I’ll dye you with a Sardian dye. Does the Great King intend to send us gold? (Pseudo-Artabas nods dissent.) Then are our envoys here bamboozling us? (He nods assent.) These fellows nod in pure Hellenic style; I do believe they come from hereabouts. Aye, to be sure; why, one of these two eunuchs Is Cleisthenes, Sibyrtius’s son! O thou young shaver of the hot-souled rump, With such a beard, thou monkey, dost thou come Tricked out amongst us in a eunuch’s guise? And who’s this other chap? Not Straton, surely?
CRIER St! Take your seat! O yes! The Council ask the Great King’s Eye to dinner At the Town Hall.
DICAEOPOLIS Now is not that a throttler? Here must I drudge at soldiering; while these rogues, The Town-Hall door is never closed to them. Now then, I’ll do a great and startling deed. Amphitheus! Where’s Amphitheus?
AMPHITHEUS Here am I,
DICAEOPOLIS Here be eight drachmas; take them; and with all The Lacedaemonians make a private peace For me, my wife and children: none besides. (To the Prytanes and citizens) Stick to your embassies and befoolings, you.
CRIER O yes! Theorus from Sitalces!
THEORUS Here!
DICAEOPOLIS O here’s another humbug introduced.
THEORUS We should not, sirs, have tarried long in Thrace—
DICAEOPOLIS But for the salary you kept on drawing.
THEORUS But for the storms, which covered Thrace with snow And froze the rivers. "’Twas about the season At which Theognis was performing here. I all that time was drinking with Sitalces; A most prodigious Athens-lover he, Yea such a true admirer, he would scribble On every wall My beautiful Athenians! His son, our newly-made Athenian, longed To taste his Apaturian sausages, And bade his father help his fatherland. And he, with deep libations, vowed to help us With such an host that every one would say Heavens! what a swarm of locusts comes this may!
DICAEOPOLIS Hang me, if I believe a single word Of all that speech, except about the locusts.
THEORUS And here he sends you the most warlike tribe Of all in Thrace.
DICAEOPOLIS Come, here’s proof positive.
CRIER The Thracians whom Theorus brought, come forward!
DICAEOPOLIS What the plague’s this?
THEORUS The Odomantian host.
DICAEOPOLIS The Odomantians, pho! Hallo, look here. Are Odomantians all equipped like this?
THEORUS Give them two drachmas each a day, and these Will targeteer Boeotia all to bits.
DICAEOPOLIS Two drachmas for THESE scarecrows! Oh, our tars, Our noble tars, the safeguard of our state, Well may they groan at this. O! Murder! O! These Odomantian thieves have sacked my garlic. Put down the garlic! drop it!
THEORUS You rapscallion, How dare you touch them, when they’re garlic-primed.
DICAEOPOLIS O will you let them, Prytanes, use me thus, Barbarians too, in this my fatherland? But stop! I warn you not to hold the Assembly About the Thracians’ pay. I tell you there’s A portent come; I felt a drop of rain!
CRIER The Thracians are to go, and two days hence Come here again. The Assembly is dissolved.
DICAEOPOLIS O me, the salad I have lost this day! But here’s Amphitheus, back from Lacedaemon. Well met, Amphitheus!
AMPHITHEUS Not till I’ve done running. I needs must flee the Acharnians, clean away.
DICAEOPOLIS What mean you?
AMPHITHEUS I was bringing back in haste The treaties, when some veterans smelt them out,
AMPHITHEUS Acharnians, men of Marathon, hard in grain As their own oak and maple, rough and tough; And all at once they cried, O villain, dare you Bring treaties when our vineyards are cut down? Then in their lappets up they gathered stones; I fled away: they followed roaring after.
DICAEOPOLIS So let them roar. But have you got the treaties?
AMPHITHEUS O yes, I have. Three samples; here they are. These are the five-year treaties; take and taste them.
DICAEOPOLIS Pheugh!
AMPHITHEUS What’s the matter?
DICAEOPOLIS I don’t like the things, They smell of tar and naval preparations.
AMPHITHEUS Then taste the ten-year samples; here they are.
DICAEOPOLIS These smell of embassies to all the states, Urgent, as if the Allies are hanging back.
AMPHITHEUS Then here are treaties both by land and sea For thirty years.
DICAEOPOLIS O Feast of Dionysus! These have a smell of nectar and ambrosia, And never mind about the three days’ rations, And in your mouth they say, Go where you please. These do I welcome, these I pour, and drain, Nor care a hang about your old Acharnians. But I, released from War and War’s alarms, Will hold, within, the Rural Dionysia.
AMPHITHEUS
And I will flee those peppery old Acharnians.
Cite This Text