DICAEOPOLIS
Spectators, be not angered if, although I am a beggar, I dare in a Comedy to speak before the people of
Athens
of the public weal; Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right. I shall not please, but I shall say what is true. Besides, Cleon shall not be able to accuse me of attacking
Athens
before strangers;
1
we are by ourselves at the festival of the Lenaea; the period when our allies send us their tribute and their soldiers is not yet. Here is only the pure wheat without chaff; as to the resident strangers settled among us, they and the citizens are one, like the straw and the ear.
I detest the Lacedaemonians with all my heart, and may Poseidon, the god of Taenarus,
2
cause an earthquake and overturn their dwellings! My vines also have been cut. But come (there are only friends who hear me), why accuse the Laconians of all our woes? Some men (I do not say the city, note particularly that I do not say the city), some wretches, lost in vices, bereft of honour, who were not even citizens of good stamp, but strangers, have accused the Megarians of introducing their produce fraudulently, and not a cucumber, a leveret, a suck[l]ing pig, a clove of garlic, a lump of salt was seen without its being said,
Halloa! these come from
Megara
, and their being instantly confiscated. Thus far the evil was not serious and we were the only sufferers. But now some young drunkards go to
Megara
and carry off the courtesan Simaetha; the Megarians, hurt to the quick, run off in turn with two harlots of the house of Aspasia; and so for three gay women
Greece
is set ablaze. Then Pericles, aflame with ire on his Olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to roll, upset
Greece
and passed an edict, which ran like the song,
That the Megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets and from the sea and from the continent.
3
Meanwhile the Megarians, who were beginning to die of hunger, begged the Lacedaemonians to bring about the abolition of the decree, of which those harlots were the cause; several times we refused their demand; and from that time there was horrible clatter of arms everywhere.
Spectators, be not angered if, although I am a beggar, I dare in a Comedy to speak before the people of
Athens
of the public weal; Comedy too can sometimes discern what is right. I shall not please, but I shall say what is true. Besides, Cleon shall not be able to accuse me of attacking
Athens
before strangers;
1
we are by ourselves at the festival of the Lenaea; the period when our allies send us their tribute and their soldiers is not yet. Here is only the pure wheat without chaff; as to the resident strangers settled among us, they and the citizens are one, like the straw and the ear.
I detest the Lacedaemonians with all my heart, and may Poseidon, the god of Taenarus,
2
cause an earthquake and overturn their dwellings! My vines also have been cut. But come (there are only friends who hear me), why accuse the Laconians of all our woes? Some men (I do not say the city, note particularly that I do not say the city), some wretches, lost in vices, bereft of honour, who were not even citizens of good stamp, but strangers, have accused the Megarians of introducing their produce fraudulently, and not a cucumber, a leveret, a suck[l]ing pig, a clove of garlic, a lump of salt was seen without its being said,
Halloa! these come from
Megara
,
and their being instantly confiscated. Thus far the evil was not serious and we were the only sufferers. But now some young drunkards go to
Megara
and carry off the courtesan Simaetha; the Megarians, hurt to the quick, run off in turn with two harlots of the house of Aspasia; and so for three gay women
Greece
is set ablaze. Then Pericles, aflame with ire on his Olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to roll, upset
Greece
and passed an edict, which ran like the song,
That the Megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets and from the sea and from the continent.
3
Meanwhile the Megarians, who were beginning to die of hunger, begged the Lacedaemonians to bring about the abolition of the decree, of which those harlots were the cause; several times we refused their demand; and from that time there was horrible clatter of arms everywhere. Acharnians. Aristophanes. Anonymous (Translator). New York. 192?.
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