Sycophant: some birds, having nothing, are wing-variegated,
1410
Sycophant: 'Long-winged, varied swallow?'
Pisthetaerus: This evil has not awakened lightly.
Pisthetaerus: Here comes someone approaching us, humming.
Sycophant: with stretched wings, again, in various colors.
1415
Pisthetaerus: I think he should sing to the crooked tunic,
Pisthetaerus: It seems that many swallows are needed.
Sycophant: Who is the one with wings who has come here to the arriving ones?
Pisthetaerus: Here I am. But one must speak when one must.
Sycophant: Wings, wings are needed; do not ask a second time.
1420
Pisthetaerus: Do you really intend to fly straight to Pellene?
Sycophant: By Zeus, but I am an islander summoner.
Sycophant: and a sycophant —
Pisthetaerus: O happy man of the craft.
Sycophant: and one who gnaws at facts. Then I pray, having taken wings
Sycophant: being called to trim the cities all around.
1425
Pisthetaerus: Are you summoning something under the wings that is more clever?
Sycophant: By Zeus, but so that the robbers may not distress me,
Sycophant: I am departing again from there with the cranes,
Sycophant: having sold many lawsuits in exchange for a rock.
Pisthetairos: you are doing this work, are you? Tell me,
1430
Pisthetaerus: As a young man, do you slander the foreigners?
Sycophant: For what should I suffer? For I do not know how to dig.
Pisthetaerus: But by Zeus, there are other moderate deeds,
Pisthetaerus: from which a man should live to such an extent
Pisthetaerus: from the right, rather than from the lawsuit-patchers.
1435
Birds. Aristophanes. . 2026-09-08.