Dikaiopolis: Do not envy me, gentlemen who are watching,
Dikaiopolis: if, being poor, you then speak among the Athenians
Dikaiopolis: I am about to make a comedy about the city.
Dikaiopolis: for tragedy also knows what is just.
500
Dicaeopolis: But I will speak terrible things, but just ones.
Dicaeopolis: for he will not now slander me, Cleon, that
Dikaiopolis: while foreigners are present, I speak ill of the city.
Dikaiopolis: For we ourselves are [competitors] at the Lenaia, too,
Dikaiopolis: And they are not yet foreigners; for there are no taxes
505
Dikaiopolis: The allies have not come either from the cities;
Dicaeopolis: but we ourselves are now, at least, completely covered up;
Dikaiopolis: for I call the metics the chaff of the citizens.
Dicaeopolis: But I hate the Lacedaemonians very much,
Dikaiopolis: and Poseidon too is their god, the one at Taenarum.
510
Dicaeopolis: Shake and cast the houses upon all;
Dicaeopolis: For I too have vineyards cut down.
Dicaeopolis: but indeed, for those present in the speech are friends,
Dicaeopolis: Why do we blame the Lacedaemonians for these things?
Dicaeopolis: for, men of ours, I am not speaking of the city,
515
Dikaiopolis: Remember this, that I am not speaking about the city,
Dikaiopolis: but wretched little men, shaved smooth,
Dikaiopolis: "unhonored, unmarked, and strange,"
Dikaiopolis: He was acting as a sycophant against the Megarians' cloaks;
Dikaiopolis: and if they should see any cucumber or hare.
520
Dicaeopolis: either a little pig, or garlic, or barley groats with salt,
Dikaiopolis: These things were Megarian, and he was selling them on the same day.
Dikaiopolis: And these things, then, are small and rustic,
Dicaeopolis: 'Going to Megara, let's get a prostitute named Simaetha.'
Dikaiopolis: young men, drunkards, are stealing me;
525
Dikaiopolis: and then the Megarians, swollen with pains,
Dikaiopolis: They stole two of Aspasia's prostitutes;
Dicaeopolis: And from here too the beginning of the war was shattered.
Dikaiopolis: to all Greeks from three basket-weavers.
Dikaiopolis: from here, the Olympian Pericles is angry.
530
Dicaeopolis: The lightning flashed, the thunder crashed, and the whole of Greece was in a whirlwind,
Dikaiopolis: 'He was laying down laws like those written crookedly,'
Dicaeopolis: 'The Megarians must be banned both from the land and from the market.'
Dikaiopolis: neither in the sea nor in the sky shall he remain.
Dikaiopolis: from here the Megarians, when they were indeed starving, came on foot,
535
Dikaiopolis: 'The Spartans were asking for the decree that'
Dikaiopolis: turn the head for the sake of the flute-girls.
Dikaiopolis: And yet we did not wish, although they begged us often.
Dikaiopolis: And from here too there was already the clatter of shields.
Dicaeopolis: Someone will say, 'He should not have said it'; but what should he have said, tell me.
540
Acharnians. Aristophanes. . 2026-09-08.