SAUSAGE-SELLER See here comes Paphlagon, driving on before him A long ground-swell, all fuss and fury, thinking To drink me up. Boh! for your impudent bluster.
PAPHLAGON O if I’ve any of my old lies left, And don’t destroy you, may I fall to bits!
SAUSAGE-SELLER I like your threats; I’m wonderfully tickled To hear you fume; I skip and cuckoo around you.
PAPHLAGON By Demeter, if I eat you not Out of the land, I’ll never live at all.
SAUSAGE-SELLER You won’t? Nor I, unless I drink you up, And swill you up, and burst myself withal.
PAPHLAGON I’ll crush you, by my Pylus-won precedence.
SAUSAGE-SELLER Precedence, is it? I’m in hopes to see you In the last tier, instead of here in front.
PAPHLAGON By Heaven, I’ll clap you in the public stocks.
SAUSAGE-SELLER How fierce it’s growing! what would it like to eat? What is its favourite dainty? Money-bags?
PAPHLAGON I’ll tear your guts out with my nails, I will.
SAUSAGE-SELLER I’ll scratch your Town Hall dinners out, I will.
PAPHLAGON I’ll hale you off to Demus; then you’ll catch it.
SAUSAGE-SELLER Nay, I’ll hale you, and then out-slander you.
PAPHLAGON Alack, poor chap, he pays no heed to you,
PAPHLAGON But I can fool him to my heart’s content.
SAUSAGE-SELLER How sure you seem that Demus is your own!
PAPHLAGON Because I know the titbits he prefers.
SAUSAGE-SELLER And feed him badly as the nurses do. You chew, and pop a morsel in his mouth, But thrice as much you swallow down yourself.
PAPHLAGON And I’m so dexterous-handed, I can make Demus expand, and then contract again.
SAUSAGE-SELLER I can do that with many things, I trow.
PAPHLAGON ’Twon’t be like bearding me in the Council now! No, come along to Demus.
SAUSAGE-SELLER Aye, why not? I’m ready; march; let nothing stop us now.
PAPHLAGON O Demus, come out here.
SAUSAGE-SELLER O yes, by Zeus, Come out, my father.
PAPHLAGON Dearest darling Demus, Come out, and hear how they’re ill-treating me!
DEMUS What’s all this shouting? go away, you fellows. You’ve smashed my harvest-garland all to bits! Who wrongs you, Paphlagon?
PAPHLAGON He, and these young men, Keep beating me because of you.
DEMUS Why so?
PAPHLAGON Because I love you and adore you, Demus.
DEMUS (To S.S.) And who are you?
SAUSAGE-SELLER A rival for your love. Long have I loved, and sought to do you good,
SAUSAGE-SELLER With many another honest gentleman, But Paphlagon won’t let us. You yourself, Excuse me sir, are like the boys with lovers. The honest gentlemen you won’t accept, Yet give yourself to lantern-selling chaps, To sinew-stitchers, cobblers, aye and tanners.
PAPHLAGON Because I am good to Demus.
SAUSAGE-SELLER Tell me how.
PAPHLAGON ’Twas I slipped in before the general there And sailed to Pylus, and brought back the Spartans.
SAUSAGE-SELLER And walked round, and from the workshop stole A mess of pottage, cooked by someone else.
PAPHLAGON Come, make a full Assembly out of hand, O Demus, do; then find which loves you best, And so decide, and give that man your love.
SAUSAGE-SELLER O Demus, do. Not in the Pnyx however.
DEMUS Aye, in the Pnyx, not elsewhere will I sit. So forward all, move forward to the Pnyx.
SAUSAGE-SELLER O luckless me, I’m ruined! The old fellow Is, when at home, the brightest man alive; But once he sits upon his rock, he moons With open mouth, as one who gapes for figs.
CHORUS Now loosen every hawser, now speed your bark along, And mind your soul is eager, and mind your words are strong, No subterfuge admitting; the man has many a trick
CHORUS From hopeless things, in hopeless times, a hopeful course to pick. Upon him with a whirlwind’s force, impetuous, fresh and quick. But keep on his movements a watch; and be sure that before he can deal you a blow, You hoist to the mast your dolphins, and cast your vessel alongside the foe.
PAPHLAGON To the Lady who over the city presides, to our mistress Athene, I pray If beyond all the rest I am stoutest and best, in the service of Demus to-day, Except Salabaccho, and Cynna the bold, and Lysicles’—then in the Hall May I dine as of late at the cost of the State for doing just nothing at all. But O if I hate you, nor stride to the van to protect you from woes and mishaps, Then slay me, and flay me, and saw me to bits, to be cut into martingale straps.
SAUSAGE-SELLER And I, if I love you not, Demus, am game to be slaughtered by chopping and mincing, And boiled in a sausage-meat pie; and if THAT is, you think, not entirely convincing, Let me here, if you please, with a morsel of cheese, upon this to a salad be grated, Or to far Cerameicus be dragged through the streets with my flesh-hook, and there be cremated.
PAPHLAGON O Demus, how can there be ever a man who loves you as dearly as I? When on me you relied your finances to guide, your Treasury never was dry,
PAPHLAGON I was begging of these, whilst those I would squeeze and rack to extort what was due, And nought did I care how a townsman might fare, so long as I satisfied you.
SAUSAGE-SELLER Why, Demus, there’s nothing to boast of in that; to do it I’m perfectly able. I’ve only to steal from my comrade a meal, and serve it up hot on your table. And as for his loving and wishing you well, it isn’t for you that he cares, Excepting indeed for the gain that he gets, and the snug little fire that he shares. Why you, who at Marathon fought with the Medes, for Athens and Hellas contending, And won the great battle, and left us a theme for our songs and our speeches unending, He cares not a bit that so roughly you sit on the rocks, nor has dreamed of providing Those seats with the thing I have stitched you and bring. Just lift yourself up and subside in This ease-giving cushion for fear you should gall what at Salamis sat by the oar.
DEMUS Who are you? I opine you are sprung from the line of Harmodius famous of yore; So noble and Demus-relieving an act I never have witnessed before!
PAPHLAGON O me, by what paltry attentions and gifts you contrive to attract and delude him!
SAUSAGE-SELLER ’Twas by baits that are smaller and poorer than mine, you rascal, you hooked and subdued him.
PAPHLAGON Was there ever a man since the City began who for Demus has done such a lot, Or fought for his welfare so stoutly as I? I will wager my head there is not.
SAUSAGE-SELLER You love him right well who permit him to dwell eight years in the clefts of the City, In the nests of the vulture, in turrets and casks, nor ever assist him or pity, But keep him in durance to rifle his hive; and that is the reason, no doubt, Why the peace which, unsought, Archeptolemus brought, you were quick from the city to scout And as for the embassies coming to treat, you spanked them and chivied them out.
PAPHLAGON That over all Hellas our Demus may rule; for do not the oracles say, He will surely his verdicts in Arcady give, receiving five obols a day, If he grow not aweary of fighting? Meanwhile, it is I who will nourish and pet him, And always the daily triobol he earns, unjustly or justly I’ll get him.
SAUSAGE-SELLER No not that o’er Arcady Demus may rule, but rather that you might essay To harry and plunder the cities at will, while Demus is looking away,
SAUSAGE-SELLER And the war with the haze and the dust that you raise is obscuring your actions from view, And Demus, constrained by his wants and his pay, is a gaping dependent on you. But if once to the country in peace he returns, away from all fighting and fusses, And strengthens his system with furmety there, and a confect of olive discusses, He will know to your cost what a deal he has lost, while the pay you allowed him he drew, And then, like a hunter, irate he will come on the trail of a vote against you. You know it; and Demus you swindle with dreams, crammed full of yourself and your praises.
PAPHLAGON It is really distressing to hear you presume to arraign with such scurrilous phrases Before the Athenians and Demus a man who more for the city has done Than e’er by Demeter Themistocles did who glory undying has won.
SAUSAGE-SELLER O city of Argos! yourself would you match with mighty Themistocles, him Who made of our city a bumper indeed, though he found her scarce filled to the brim, Who, while she was lunching, Peiraeus threw in, as a dainty additional dish,
SAUSAGE-SELLER Who secured her the old, while providing untold and novel assortments of fish Whilst you, with your walls of partition forsooth, and the oracle-chants which you hatch, Would dwarf and belittle the city again, who yourself with Themistocles match! And he was an exile, but you upon crumbs Achilléan your fingers are cleaning.
PAPHLAGON Now is it not monstrous that I must endure accusations so coarse and unmeaning, And all for the love that I bear you?
DEMUS Forbear! no more of your wrangle and row! Too long have your light-fingered tricks with my bread my notice escaped until now.
SAUSAGE-SELLER He’s the vilest of miscreants, Demus, and works more mischief than any, I vow. While you’re gaping about, he is picking from out Of the juiciest audit the juiciest sprout, And devours it with zest; while deep in the chest Of the public exchequer both hands are addressed To ladling out cash for himself, I protest.
PAPHLAGON All this you’ll deplore when it comes to the fore That of drachmas you stole thirty thousand or more.
SAUSAGE-SELLER Why make such a dash with your oar-blades, and thrash The waves into foam with your impotent splash? ’Tis but fury and sound; and you’ll shortly be found The worst of the toadies who Demus surround. And proof I will give, or I ask not to live,
SAUSAGE-SELLER
That a bribe by the Mitylenaeans was sent, Forty minas and more; to your pockets it went.
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