BLEPYRUS
What’s up? Where’s my wife gone? Why, bless the woman, It’s almost daybreak and she can’t be found. Here am I, taken with the gripes abed, Groping about to find my overcloak And shoes i’ the dark; but hang it, they’re gone too: I could not find them anywhere. Meanwhile Easums kept knocking hard at my back-door; So on I put this kirtle of my wife’s,
BLEPYRUS And shove my feet into her Persian slippers. Where’s a convenient place? or shall I say All are alike convenient in the dark? No man can see me here, I am sure of that. Fool that I was, worse luck, to take a wife In my old age. Ought to be thrashed, I ought! ’Tis for no good, I warrant, that she’s out This time of night. However, I can’t wait.
CITIZEN Hey-day! who’s this? Not neighbour Blepyrus? Sure and it’s he himself. Why, tell me, man, What’s all that yellow? Do you mean to say You’ve had Cinesias at his tricks again?
BLEPYRUS No, no; I wanted to come out, and took This little yellow kirtle of my wife’s.
CITIZEN But where’s your cloak?
BLEPYRUS I’ve not the least idea. I searched amongst the clothes, and ’twasn’t there.
CITIZEN Did you not ask your wife to find the thing?
BLEPYRUS I didn’t. No. For why? SHE wasn’t there. She’s wormed herself away out of the house; Some revolution in the wind, I fear.
CITIZEN O by Poseidon, but your case is just The same as mine. My wife has stolen away, And carried off my cloak. And that’s not all, Hang her, she’s carried off my shoes as well: At least I could not find them anywhere.
BLEPYRUS No more can I: I could not anywhere Find my Laconians: so, my case being urgent, I shove her slippers on, and out I bolt For fear I soil my blanket; ’twas a clean one.
CITIZEN What can it be? can any of her gossips
CITIZEN Have asked her out to breakfast?
BLEPYRUS I expect so She’s not a bad one: I don’t think she is.
CITIZEN Why, man, you are paying out a cable: I Must to the Assembly, when I’ve found my cloak, My missing cloak: the only one I’ve got.
BLEPYRUS I too, when eased; but now an acrid pear Is blocking up the passage of my food.
CITIZEN As Thrasybulus told the Spartans, eh?
BLEPYRUS By Dionysus, but it grips me tight, And that’s not all: whatever shall I do? For how the food I am going to eat hereafter Will find a passage out, I can’t imagine; So firm and close this Acridusian chap Has fastened up its pathway to the door. Who’ll fetch a doctor, and what doctor, here? Which of the pathicks knows this business best? Amynon knows: but perhaps he won’t admit it. Fetch, fetch Antisthenes, by all means fetch him. He’s just the man (to judge from his complaints) To know the pangs from which I’m suffering now, Great Eileithyia, let me not remain Thus plugged and barricaded, nor become A public nightstool for the comic stage
CHREMES Taking your ease, good neighbour?
BLEPYRUS No, I’m not. ’Tis true I have been, but I’ve finished now.
CHREMES O, and you’ve got your lady’s kirtle on!
BLEPYRUS ’Twas dark indoors: I caught it up by chance But whence come you?
CHREMES I’m coming from the Assembly.
BLEPYRUS What, is it over?
CHREMES Aye, betimes to-day. And O, dear Zeus, the fun it was to see The way they spattered the vermilion round.
BLEPYRUS Got your three-obol?
CHREMES No, not I, worse luck. I was too late: I’m carrying home, ashamed, This empty wallet: nothing else at all.
BLEPYRUS Why, how was that?
CHREMES There gathered such a crowd About the Pnyx, you never saw the like; Such pale-faced fellows; just like shoemakers We all declared; and strange it was to see How pallid-packed the whole Assembly looked. So I and lots of us could get no pay.
BLEPYRUS Shall I get any if I run?
CHREMES Not you! Not had you been there when the cock was giving Its second crow.
BLEPYRUS O weep, Antilochus, Rather for me, the living, than for him, The loved and lost—three-obol. All is gone!
BLEPYRUS Whatever was it though that brought together So vast a crowd so early?
CHREMES ’Twas determined To put this question to the assembled people, “How best to save the State.” So first and foremost Came Neocleides, groping up to speak. And all the people shouted out aloud, What scandal that this blear-eyed oaf, who cannot Save his own eyesight for himself, should dare To come and teach us how to save the State. But he cried out, and leered around, and said, What’s to be done?
BLEPYRUS Pound garlic up with verjuice, Throw in some spurge of the Laconian sort, And rub it on your eyelids every night. That’s what, had I been present, I’d have said.
CHREMES Next came Evaeon, smart accomplished chap, With nothing on, as most of us supposed, But he himself insisted he was clothed. He made a popular democratic speech. Behold, says he, I am myself in want Of cash to save me; yet I know the way To save the citizens, and save the State. Let every clothier give to all that ask Warm woollen robes, when first the sun turns back. No more will pleurisy attack us then. Let such as own no bedclothes and no bed, After they’ve dined, seek out the furriers, there To sleep; and whoso shuts the door against them
CHREMES In wintry weather, shall be fined three blankets.
BLEPYRUS Well said indeed; and never a man would dare To vote against him, had he added this: That all who deal in grain shall freely give Three quarts to every pauper, or be hanged. That good, at least, they’d gain from Nausicydes.
CHREMES Then, after him, there bounded up to speak A spruce and pale-faced youth, like Nicias. And he declared we ought to place the State Into the hands of (whom do you think?) the women! Then the whole mob of shoemakers began To cheer like mad; whilst all the country folk Hooted and hissed.
BLEPYRUS They showed their sense, by Zeus.
CHREMES But less their numbers; so the lad went on, Speaking all good of women, but of you Everything bad.
BLEPYRUS What?
CHREMES First of all he called you An arrant rogue.
BLEPYRUS And you?
CHREMES Let be, awhile. Also a thief.
BLEPYRUS Me only?
CHREMES And by Zeus, A sycophant.
BLEPYRUS Me only?
CHREMES And by Zeus, All our friends here.
BLEPYRUS Well, who says nay to that?
CHREMES And then the woman is, he said, a thing
CHREMES They don’t betray their Thesmophorian secrets, But you and I blab all State secrets out.
BLEPYRUS By Hermes, there at least he told no lie.
CHREMES And women lend each other, said the lad, Their dresses, trinkets, money, drinking-cups, Though quite alone, with never a witness there. And all restore the loan, and none withhold it. But men, he said, are always doing this.
BLEPYRUS Aye to be sure: though witnesses were there.
CHREMES They don’t inform, or prosecute, or put The people down: but everything that’s right. And much, besides, he praised the womankind.
BLEPYRUS What was determined?
CHREMES You’re to put the State Into their hands. This was the one reform Not yet attempted.
BLEPYRUS ’Twas decreed?
CHREMES It was.
BLEPYRUS So then the women now must undertake All manly duties?
CHREMES So I understand.
BLEPYRUS Then I shan’t be a dicast, but my wife?
CHREMES Nor you support your household, but your wife.
BLEPYRUS Nor I get grumbling up in early morn?
CHREMES No: for the future that’s your wife’s affair. You’ll lie abed: no grumbling any more.
BLEPYRUS But hark ye, ’twould be rough on us old men If, when the women hold the reins of State, They should perforce compel us to—
CHREMES Do what?
BLEPYRUS Make love to them.
CHREMES But if we’re not prepared?
BLEPYRUS They’ll dock our breakfasts.
CHREMES Therefore learn the way How to make love, and eat your breakfast too.
BLEPYRUS Upon compulsion! Faugh!
CHREMES If that is for The public good, we needs must all obey. There is a legend of the olden time, That all our foolish plans and vain conceits Are overruled to work the public good. So be it now, high Pallas and ye gods! But I must go. Farewell.
BLEPYRUS And farewell, Chremes.
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