Second Woman
I have only a very few words to add, for the last speaker has covered the various points of the indictment;
445
allow me only to tell you what happened to me. My husband died at
Cyprus
, leaving me five children, whom I had great trouble to bring up by weaving chaplets on the myrtle market. Anyhow, I lived as well as I could
450
until this wretch had persuaded the spectators by his tragedies that there were no gods; since then I have not sold as many chaplets by half. I charge you therefore and exhort you all to punish him, for does he not deserve it in a thousand respects,
455
he who loads you with troubles, who is as coarse toward you as the vegetables upon which his mother reared him? But I must back to the market to weave my chaplets; I have twenty to deliver yet.
I have only a very few words to add, for the last speaker has covered the various points of the indictment;
445
allow me only to tell you what happened to me. My husband died at
Cyprus
, leaving me five children, whom I had great trouble to bring up by weaving chaplets on the myrtle market. Anyhow, I lived as well as I could
450
until this wretch had persuaded the spectators by his tragedies that there were no gods; since then I have not sold as many chaplets by half. I charge you therefore and exhort you all to punish him, for does he not deserve it in a thousand respects,
455
he who loads you with troubles, who is as coarse toward you as the vegetables upon which his mother reared him? But I must back to the market to weave my chaplets; I have twenty to deliver yet.
Thesmophoriazusae. Aristophanes. ed. Eugene O'Neill, Jr.. New York. 1938.
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