Pisthetaerus: These things are just like that. By Zeus, I am not yet a man of action.
Pisthetaerus: I have never seen anything funnier.
Euelpides: Are you laughing at me?
Pisthetairos: on your swift wings.
Pisthetaerus: Do you know in what way you most resemble [someone] when you are winged?
Pisthetaerus: to a goose written at a low price.
805
Euelpides: and you, with a chisel, have finished off a small box.
Pisthetaerus: We have done this in the manner of Aeschylus;
Pisthetaerus: these things not by others, but by their own wings.
Epop: Come now, what must be done?
Pisthetairos: First, [let's give] the city a name.
Pisthetaerus: to establish something great and famous, and then to the gods
810
Pisthetaerus: Sacrifice after this.
Euelpides: These things also seem good to me.
Epops: Come, let me see, what name will we give the city?
Euelpides: Do you wish for this great thing from Lacedaemon?
Euelpides: Shall we call it 'Sparta'?
Pisthetairos: O Heracles!
Pisthetaerus: For I would put Sparta in my city, wouldn't I?
815
Pisthetaerus: Not even if you have a very ragged chiton.
Euelpides: What name, then, shall we give her?
The hoopoe: from the clouds and the aerial places
Epops: a very lazy thing.
Pisthetaerus: Do you want Cloudcuckooland?
Epops: Indeed, you have found a beautiful and great name.
Euelpides: Is this place Cloudcuckooland,
Euelpides: in order that even the many possessions of Theogenes
Eupolid: All of Aeschines' [plays], then?
Pisthetaerus: and, first of all, then
Pisthetaerus: the plain of Phlegra, where the gods [fought] the earth-born ones
Pisthetaerus: Bluffing, they have become insolent.
825
Epops: The city's money is fat. But who is the god?
Epops: Will he be a city-girdle? Shall we then strip the cloak?
Euelpides: Why don't we let the Athenian [be] a Polias?
Pisthetaerus: And how could a city still be well-ordered?
Pisthetaerus: where a god, having become a woman, has put on full armor
830
Pisthetairos: She is standing, holding [it], and Kleisthenes is holding a shuttle?
Euelpides: Who will then hold the Pelargic district of the city?
Epops: a bird from our own Persian race,
Epops: just as it is said to be most skillful everywhere.
Epops: A young of Ares.
835
Euelpides: O master chicklet!
Euelpides: but the god lives in a place suitable for living on rocks.
Pisthetaerus: Come now, you go towards the air
Pisthetaerus: and serve those who are building the wall as well,
Pisthetaerus: Carry pebbles, taking off your mud.
Pisthetaerus: bring the basin down, jump down from the ladder,
840
Pisthetaerus: set up guards, always hide the fire,
Pisthetaerus: run around carrying the bell and splash water there;
Pisthetaerus: send a herald, one up to the gods,
Pisthetaerus: Another one from above to the people below,
Pisthetairos: And from there again to me.
845
Euelpides: But you, staying right there,
Euelpides: Lament with me.
Pisthetairos: Come now, good man, I send you.
Pisthetaerus: For without you, none of these things that I say will be accomplished.
Pisthetaerus: But in order that I may sacrifice to the new gods,
Pisthetaerus: I call the one who will send the priest the procession.
Pisthetairos: boy, boy, take up the basket and the basin of lustral water.
850
