POVERTY You pair of luckless manikins who dare A rash, unholy, lawless deed to do— Where! What! Why flee ye? Tarry?
BLEPSIDEMUS Heracles!
POVERTY I’ll make you die a miserable death. For ye have dared a deed intolerable Which no one else has ever dared to do, Or God or man! Now therefore ye must die.
CHREMYLUS But who are you that look so pale and wan?
BLEPSIDEMUS Belike some Fury from a tragic play. She has a wild and tragic sort of look.
CHREMYLUS No, for she bears no torch.
BLEPSIDEMUS The worse for her.
POVERTY What do you take me for?
CHREMYLUS Some pot-house girl Or omelette-seller: else you would not bawl At us so loudly ere you’re harmed at all.
POVERTY Not harmed! Why, is it not a shameful thing That you should seek to drive me from the land?
CHREMYLUS At all events you’ve got the Deadman’s Pit. But tell us quickly who and what you are.
POVERTY One who is going to pay you out to-day Because ye seek to banish me from hence.
BLEPSIDEMUS Is it the barmaid from the neighbouring tap Who always cheats me with her swindling pint-pots?
POVERTY It’s Poverty, your mate for many a year!
BLEPSIDEMUS O King Apollo and ye Gods, I’m off.
CHREMYLUS Hi! What are you at? Stop, stop, you coward you, Stop, can’t you?
BLEPSIDEMUS Anything but that.
CHREMYLUS Pray stop. What! shall one woman scare away two men?
BLEPSIDEMUS But this is Poverty herself, you rogue, The most destructive pest in all the world.
CHREMYLUS Stay, I implore you, stay.
BLEPSIDEMUS Not I, by Zeus.
CHREMYLUS Why, this, I tell you, were the cowardliest deed That ere was heard of, did we leave the God Deserted here, and flee away ourselves Too scared to strike one blow in his defence.
BLEPSIDEMUS O, on what arms, what force, can we rely? Is there a shield, a corslet, anywhere Which this vile creature has not put in pawn?
CHREMYLUS Courage! the God will, single-handed, rear A trophy o’er this atrophied assailant.
POVERTY What! dare you mutter, you two outcasts you, Caught in the act, doing such dreadful deeds?
CHREMYLUS O, you accursed jade, why come you here
CHREMYLUS Abusing us? We never did you wrong.
POVERTY No wrong, forsooth! O by the heavenly Powers No wrong to me, your trying to restore Wealth’s sight again?
CHREMYLUS How can it injure you, If we are trying to confer a blessing On all mankind?
POVERTY Blessing! what blessing?
CHREMYLUS What? Expelling you from Hellas, first of all.
POVERTY Expelling me from Hellas! Could you do A greater injury to mankind than that?
CHREMYLUS A greater? Yes; by NOT expelling you.
POVERTY Now that’s a question I am quite prepared To argue out at once; and if I prove That I’m the source of every good to men, And that by me ye live—: but if I fail, Then do thereafter whatsoe’er ye list.
CHREMYLUS You dare to offer this, you vixen you?
POVERTY And you, accept it: easily enough Methinks I show you altogether wrong Making the good men rich, as you propose.
BLEPSIDEMUS O clubs and pillories! To the rescue! Help!
POVERTY Don’t shout and storm before you have heard the facts.
BLEPSIDEMUS Who can help shouting, when he hears such wild Extravagant notions?
POVERTY Any man of sense.
CHREMYLUS And what’s the penalty you’ll bear, in case You lose the day?
POVERTY Whate’er you please.
CHREMYLUS ’Tis well.
POVERTY But, if ye are worsted, ye must bear the same.
BLEPSIDEMUS (to Chr.) Think you that twenty deaths are fine enough?
CHREMYLUS Enough for her; but two will do for us.
POVERTY Well then, be quick about it; for, indeed, How can my statements be with truth gainsaid?
CHORUS Find something, I pray, philosophic to say, whereby you may vanquish and rout her. No thought of retreat; but her arguments meet with arguments stronger and stouter.
CHREMYLUS All people with me, I am sure, will agree, for to all men alike it is clear, That the honest and true should enjoy, as their due, a successful and happy career, Whilst the lot of the godless and wicked should fall in exactly the opposite sphere. ’Twas to compass this end that myself and my friend have been thinking as hard as we can, And have hit on a nice beneficial device, a truly magnificent plan. For if Wealth should attain to his eyesight again, nor amongst us so aimlessly roam, To the dwellings I know of the good he would go, nor ever depart from their home. The unjust and profane with disgust and disdain he is certain thereafter to shun, Till all shall be honest and wealthy at last, to virtue and opulence won. Is there any design more effective than mine a blessing on men to confer?
BLEPSIDEMUS No, nothing, that’s flat; I will answer for that; so don’t be inquiring of her.
CHREMYLUS For our life of to-day were a man to survey and consider its chances aright,
CHREMYLUS He might fancy, I ween, it were madness or e’en the sport of some mischievous sprite. So often the best of the world is possessed by the most undeserving of men, Who have gotten their pile of money by vile injustice; so often again The righteous are seen to be famished and lean, yea, with thee as their comrade to dwell. Now if Wealth were to-night to recover his sight, and her from amongst us expel, Can you tell me, I pray, a more excellent way of bestowing a boon on mankind?
POVERTY O men on the least provocation prepared to be crazy and out of your mind, Men bearded and old, yet companions enrolled in the Order of zanies and fools, O what is the gain that the world would obtain were it governed by you and your rules? Why, if Wealth should allot himself equally out (assume that his sight ye restore), Then none would to science his talents devote or practise a craft any more. Yet if science and art from the world should depart, pray whom would ye get for the future To build you a ship, or your leather to snip, or to make you a wheel or a suture? Do ye think that a man will be likely to tan, or a smithy or laundry to keep, Or to break up the soil with his ploughshare, and toil the fruits of Demeter to reap, If regardless of these he can dwell at his ease, a life without labour enjoying?
CHREMYLUS Absurd! why the troubles and tasks you describe we of course shall our servants employ in.
POVERTY Your servants! But how will ye get any now? I pray you the secret to tell.
CHREMYLUS With the silver we’ve got we can purchase a lot,
POVERTY But who is the man that will sell?
CHREMYLUS Some merchant from Thessaly coming, belike, where most of the kidnappers dwell. Who still, for the sake of the gain he will make, with the slaves that we want will provide us.
POVERTY But first let me say, if we walk in the way wherein ye are seeking to guide us, There’ll be never a kidnapper left in the world. No merchant of course (can ye doubt it?) His life would expose to such perils as those had he plenty of money without it. No, no; I’m afraid you must handle the spade and follow the plough-tail in person, Your life will have double the toil and the trouble it used to.
CHREMYLUS Thyself be thy curse on!
POVERTY No more on a bed will you pillow your head, for there won’t be a bed in the land, Nor carpets; for whom will you find at the loom, when he’s plenty of money in hand? Rich perfumes no more will ye sprinkle and pour as home ye are bringing the bride, Or apparel the fair in habiliments rare so cunningly fashioned and dyed. Yet of little avail is your wealth if it fail such enjoyments as these to procure you. Ye fools, it is I who alone a supply of the goods which ye covet ensure you. I sit like a Mistress, by Poverty’s lash constraining the needy mechanic;
POVERTY When I raise it, to earn his living he’ll turn, and work in a terrible panic.
CHREMYLUS Why, what have you got to bestow but a lot of burns from the bathing-room station And a hollow-cheeked rabble of destitute hags, and brats on the verge of starvation? And the lice, if you please, and the gnats and the fleas whom I can’t even count for their numbers, Who around you all night will buzz and will bite, and arouse you betimes from your slumbers. Up! up! they will shrill, ’tis to hunger, but still up! up! to your pain and privation. For a robe but a rag, for a bed but a bag of rushes which harbour a nation Of bugs whose envenomed and tireless attacks would the soundest of sleepers awaken. And then for a carpet a sodden old mat, which is falling to bits, must be taken. And a jolly hard stone for a pillow you’ll own; and, for girdle-cakes barley and wheaten, Must leaves dry and lean of the radish or e’en sour stalks of the mallow be eaten. And the head of a barrel, stove in, for a chair; and, instead of a trough, for your kneading A stave of a vat you must borrow, and that all broken. So great and exceeding Are the blessings which Poverty brings in her train on the children of men to bestow!
POVERTY The life you define with such skill is not mine: ’tis the life of a beggar, I trow.
CHREMYLUS Well, Poverty, Beggary, truly the twain to be sisters we always declare.
POVERTY Aye you! who to good Thrasybulus forsooth Dionysius the Tyrant compare! But the life I allot to my people is not, nor shall be, so full of distresses. ’Tis a beggar alone who has nought of his own, nor even an obol possesses. My poor man, ’tis true, has to scrape and to screw and his work he must never be slack in; There’ll be no superfluity found in his cot; but then there will nothing be lacking.
CHREMYLUS Damater! a life of the Blessed you give: for ever to toil and to slave At Poverty’s call, and to leave after all not even enough for a grave.
POVERTY You are all for your jeers and your comedy-sneers, and you can’t be in earnest a minute Nor observe that alike in their bodily frame and the spirit residing within it. My people are better than Wealth’s; for by him, men bloated and gross are presented. Fat rogues with big bellies and dropsical legs, whose toes by the gout are tormented: But mine are the lean and the wasplike and keen, who strike at their foemen and sting them.
CHREMYLUS Ah, yes; to a wasplike condition, no doubt, by the pinch of starvation you bring them.
POVERTY I can show you besides that Decorum abides with those whom I visit; that mine Are the modest and orderly folk, and that Wealth’s are “with insolence flushed and with wine.”
CHREMYLUS ’Tis an orderly job, then, to thieve and to rob and to break into houses by night.
BLEPSIDEMUS Such modesty too! In whatever they do they are careful to keep out of sight.
POVERTY Behold in the cities the Orator tribe; when poor in their early career How faithful and just to the popular trust, how true to the State they appear. When wealth at the City’s expense they have gained, they are worsened at once by the pelf, Intriguing the popular cause to defeat, attacking the People itself.
CHREMYLUS That is perfectly true though ’tis spoken by you, you spiteful malevolent witch! But still you shall squall for contending that all had better be poor than be rich. So don’t be elate; for a terrible fate shall your steps overtake before long—
POVERTY Why, I haven’t yet heard the ghost of a word to prove my contention is wrong. You splutter and try to flutter and fly: but of argument never a letter.
CHREMYLUS Pray why do all people abhor you and shun?
POVERTY Because I’m for making them better. So children, we see, from their parents will flee who would teach them the way they should go. So hardly we learn what is right to discern; so few what is best for them know.
CHREMYLUS Then Zeus, I suppose, is mistaken, nor knows what most for his comfort and bliss is, Since money and pelf he acquires for himself.
BLEPSIDEMUS And her to the earth he dismisses.
POVERTY O dullards and blind! full of styes is your mind; there are tumours titanic within it. Zeus wealthy! Not he: he’s as poor as can be: and this I can prove in a minute.
POVERTY If Zeus be so wealthy, how came it of yore that out of his riches abounding He could find but a wreath of wild olive for those who should win at the games he was founding, By all the Hellenes in each fourth year on Olympia’s plains to be holden? If Zeus were as wealthy and rich as you say, the wreath should at least have been golden.
CHREMYLUS It is plain, I should think, ’tis from love of the chink that the conduct you mention arises; The God is unwilling to lavish a doit of the money he loves upon prizes. The rubbish may go to the victors below; the gold he retains in his coffers.
POVERTY How dare you produce such a libel on Zeus, you couple of ignorant scoffers? ’Twere better, I’m sure, to be honest and poor, than rich and so stingy and screwing.
CHREMYLUS Zeus crown you, I pray, with the wild olive spray, and send you away to your ruin!
POVERTY To think that you dare to persist and declare that Poverty does not present you With all that is noblest and best in your lives! Will Hecate’s judgement content you? If you question her which are the better, the rich or the poor, she will say, I opine, Each month do the wealthy a supper provide, to be used in my service divine, But the poor lie in wait for a snatch at the plate, or ere it is placed on my shrine. So away, nor retort with a g-r-r, you degraded
CHREMYLUS Importunate scold! Persuade me you may, but I won’t be persuaded.
POVERTY O Argos, behold!
CHREMYLUS Nay Pauson, your messmate, to aid you invite.
POVERTY O woe upon woe!
CHREMYLUS Be off to the ravens; get out of my sight.
POVERTY O where shall I go?
CHREMYLUS Go? Go to the pillory; don’t be so slack, Nor longer delay.
POVERTY Ah me, but ye’ll speedily send for me back, Who scout me to-day!
CHREMYLUS When we send for you, come; not before. So farewell! With Wealth as my comrade ’tis better to dwell. Get you gone, and bemoan your misfortunes alone.
BLEPSIDEMUS I too have a mind for an opulent life Of revel and mirth with my children and wife, Untroubled by Poverty’s panics. And then as I’m passing, all shiny and bright, From my bath to my supper, what joy and delight My fingers to snap in disdain at the sight Of herself and her frowsy mechanics.
CHREMYLUS That cursed witch, thank Heaven, has gone and left us. But you and I will take the God at once To spend the night inside Asclepius’ Temple.
BLEPSIDEMUS And don’t delay one instant, lest there come Some other hindrance to the work in hand.
CHREMYLUS Hi! boy there, Cario, fetch me out the blankets, And bring the God himself, with due observance, And whatsoever is prepared within.
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