PAPHLAGON By the Twelve Gods, you two shall pay for this, Always conspiring, plotting ill to Demus! What’s this Chalcidian goblet doing here? Hah! ye’re inciting Chalcis to revolt. Villains and traitors! ye shall die the death.
DEMOSTHENES (To S.S.) Hi! where are you off to? Stop! For goodness’ sake, Don’t fail us now, most doughty Sausage-seller!
DEMOSTHENES Hasten up, my gallant horsemen, now’s the time your foe to fight. Now then Simon, now Panaetius, charge with fury on the right. Here they’re coming! Worthy fellow, wheel about, commence the fray; Lo, the dust of many horsemen rushing on in close array! Turn upon him, fight him, smite him, scout him, rout him, every way.
CHORUS Smite the rascal, smite him, smite him, —troubler of our Knightly train, Foul extortioner, Charybdis, bottomless abyss of gain. Smite the rascal; smite the rascal; many times the word I’ll say, For he proved himself a rascal many, many times a day. Therefore smite him, chase him, pound him, rend and rattle and confound him! Show your loathing, show as we do; press with angry shouts around him. Take you heed, or he’ll evade you; watch him closely, for the man Knows how Eucrates escaped us, fleeing to his stores of bran.
PAPHLAGON O my Heliastic veterans, of the great Triobol clan, Whom through right and wrong I nourish, bawling, shouting all I can, Help me, by conspiring traitors shamefully abused and beaten,
CHORUS Rightly, for the public commons you before your turn have eaten,
CHORUS And you squeeze the audit-passers, pinching them like figs, to try Which is ripe, and which is ripening, which is very crude and dry. Find you one of easy temper, mouth agape, and vacant look, Back from Chersonese you bring him, grasp him firmly, fix your hook, Twist his shoulder back and, glibly, gulp the victim down at once. And you search amongst the townsmen for some lambkin-witted dunce, Wealthy, void of tricks and malice, shuddering at disputes and fuss.
PAPHLAGON You assail me too, my masters? ’tis for you they beat me thus; ’Tis because I thought of moving that ’twere proper here to make Some memorial of your worships for your noble valour’s sake.
CHORUS Hear him trying to cajole us! O the supple-bending sneak, Playing off his tricks upon us, as on dotards old and weak. Nay, but there my arm shall smite him if to pass you there he seek; If he dodge in this direction, here against my leg he butts.
PAPHLAGON Athens! Demus! see the monsters, see them punch me in the guts.
CHORUS Shouting, are you? you who always by your shouts subvert the town.
SAUSAGE-SELLER But in this I’ll first surpass him; thus I shout the fellow down.
CHORUS If in bawling you defeat him, sing we ho! for Victory’s sake. If in shamelessness you beat him, then indeed we take the cake.
PAPHLAGON I denounce this smuggling fellow; contraband of war he takes For the Peloponnesian galleys, frapping them with—girdle-cakes.
SAUSAGE-SELLER I denounce this juggling fellow; at the Hall, from day to day, In he runs with empty belly, with a full one hies away.
CHORUS Fish, and flesh, and bread exporting, and a hundred things like these, Contraband of peace, which never were allowed to Pericles.
PAPHLAGON Death awaits you at once, you two.
SAUSAGE-SELLER Thrice as loud can I squall as you.
PAPHLAGON Now will I bawl you down by bawling.
SAUSAGE-SELLER Now will I squall you down by squalling.
PAPHLAGON Lead our armies, and I’ll backbite you.
SAUSAGE-SELLER I’ll with dog-whips slash you and smite you.
PAPHLAGON I’ll outwit you by fraud and lying.
SAUSAGE-SELLER I’ll your pettitoes chop for frying.
PAPHLAGON Now unblinking regard me, you.
SAUSAGE-SELLER I was bred in the agora too.
PAPHLAGON Say but g-r-r, and to strips I’ll tear you.
SAUSAGE-SELLER Speak one word, and as dung I’ll bear you.
PAPHLAGON I confess that I steal. Do you?
SAUSAGE-SELLER Agora Hermes! yes, I do.
SAUSAGE-SELLER If I’m seen, I’m a perjurer too.
PAPHLAGON Somebody else’s tricks you’re vaunting; Now to the Prytanes off I’ll run, Tell them you’ve got some holy pig-guts. Tell them you’ve paid no tithe thereon.
CHORUS O villain, O shameless of heart, O Bawler and Brawler self-seeking, The land, the Assembly, the Tolls, are all with thine impudence reeking, And the Courts, and the actions at law; they are full unto loathing and hate! Thou stirrest the mud to its depths, perturbing the whole of the State. Ruffian, who hast deafened Athens with thine everlasting din, Watching from the rocks the tribute, tunny-fashion, shoaling in?
PAPHLAGON Well I know the very quarter where they cobbled up the plot.
SAUSAGE-SELLER You’re a knowing hand at cobbling, else in mincing meat I’m not; You who cheated all the rustics with a flabby bullock-hide, Cutting it aslant to make it look like leather firm and dried; In a day, the shoes you sold them
DEMOSTHENES And my friends and fellow burghers laughed with undissembled glee, I was swimming in my slippers ere I got to Pergasae.
CHORUS So then thou hast e’en from the first that shameless bravado displayed Which alone is the Orators’ Patron. And foremost of all by its aid Thou the wealthy strangers milkest, draining off their rich supplies; And the son of Hippodamus watches thee with streaming eyes. Ah, but another has dawned on us now, Viler and fouler and coarser than thou, Viler and fouler and coarser by far, One who’ll beat thee and defeat thee (therefore jubilant we are), Beat thee in jackanapes tricks and rascality, Beat thee in impudence, cheek, and brutality. O trained where Men are trained who best deserve that appellation, Now show us of how little worth is liberal education.
SAUSAGE-SELLER The sort of citizen he is, I’ll first expose to view.
PAPHLAGON Give me precedence.
SAUSAGE-SELLER No, by Zeus, for I’m a blackguard too.
CHORUS And if to that he yield not, add “as all my fathers were.”
PAPHLAGON Give me precedence.
SAUSAGE-SELLER No, by Zeus.
PAPHLAGON O yes, by Zeus. I swear
SAUSAGE-SELLER I’ll fight you on that very point; you never shall be first.
PAPHLAGON O, I shall burst.
SAUSAGE-SELLER You never shall.
CHORUS O let him, let him burst.
PAPHLAGON How dare you try in speech to vie with Me? On what rely you?
SAUSAGE-SELLER Why I can speak first-rate, and eke with piquant sauce supply you.
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