Chremylus: for you could find some good thing to say coming from the bathhouse.
535
Chremylus: And the cry of starving children and old women, the cry of the hungry?
Chremylus: Nor do I tell you the number of lice, gnats, and fleas.
Chremylus: by the crowd, who, buzzing around my head, annoy me,
Chremylus: Waking up and looking around, you will be hungry, but get up.
Chremylus: and to add to this, he has a rag in place of a cloak, but instead of a bed
540
Chremylus: a pallet full of cords, which wakes the sleepers;
Chremylus: and he has a rotting bolster instead of a carpet; instead of a pillow
Chremylus: a large stone by his head; and to eat instead of bread
Chremylus: stalks of mallows, and instead of a cake, leaves of thin radishes,
Chremylus: instead of the doorposts, the head of a broken jar, and instead of the sieve
545
Chremylus: a snake's rib, and this one too. Is it really many?
Chremylus: 'Do I declare that you are the cause of all good things for all men?'
Poverty: you have not spoken of my life, but you have deceived the lives of the poor.
Chremylus: Well then, do we not say that Poverty is the sister of Destitution?
Poverty: You, who even considered Thrasybulus to be like Dionysius.
550
Poverty: But my life has not suffered this, not by Zeus, nor indeed is it about to.
Poverty: for the life of a poor man, which you speak of, is to live having nothing;
Poverty: living frugally for the poor man and having to do with his own labors,
Poverty: may nothing come to him, yet may he not lack anything either.
Chremylus: "As for the blessed life of the woman, you have described it well, Demeter."
555
Chremylus: if, having been thrifty and having toiled, he leaves without even being buried.
Poverty: you try to mock and ridicule, having neglected to be earnest,
Poverty: not realizing that I provide better men than Wealth
Poverty: both in opinion and in appearance. For with those who suffer from gout
Poverty: And they are belly-bearing and thick-kneed and fat, wantonly,
560
Poverty: But with me they are thin and wasp-like and a nuisance to my enemies.
Chremylus: For perhaps it is from hunger that you supply them with the wasp-like nature.
Poverty: then, in regard to self-control, I shall soon finish for you and also teach you.
Poverty: because modesty dwells with me, but it is for Wealth to act insolently.
Chremylus: At any rate, it is very respectable to steal and to tunnel through the walls.
565
Blepsydemus: By Zeus, if he must be deceived, is it not decent?
Poverty: therefore consider in the cities the orators, whenever
Poverty: woe to the poor, for they are just in the people and the city,
Poverty: 'Once they have become rich from the common funds, immediately they become unjust.'
Poverty: They are plotting against the people and making war on the demos.
570
Chremylus: But none of these is false, although she is extremely envious.
Chremylus: Nevertheless, he will not weep any the less, nor will he in any way give way on this point,
Chremylus: Because you seek to persuade us of this, that it is better.
Chremylus: Poverty, [you are] Plutus's.
Poverty: And you still cannot refute me on this matter,
Poverty: But you chatter and flap about.
575
Chremylus: And how do they all flee from you?
Poverty: Because I make them better. It is possible, above all, to consider it.
Poverty: from the children; for they flee their fathers when they are thinking very well.
Poverty: to them. For it is a difficult thing to judge what is just.
Chremylus: 'You will say, won't you, that Zeus does not judge correctly the best thing?'
Chremylus: for he too has Plutus.
580
Blepsydemus: But send her away from us.
Poverty: But truly, you two who are truly drunk with the blasts of Kronos in your minds,
Poverty: Zeus, surely, is in need, and this I shall now teach you plainly.
Poverty: For if he were rich, how could he himself be holding the Olympic contest?
Poverty: so that she may gather all the Greeks every fifth year,
Poverty: having crowned the victors among the athletes, she was proclaiming them.
585
Poverty: with a wreath of straw? Yet she ought rather to have used gold, if indeed she was rich.
Chremylus: So then, by honoring that man, that one clearly honors Wealth, doesn't he?
Chremylus: since he was saving and wishing to spend nothing on this,
Chremylus: Letting the liars who beat Chremylus, the one who defeats Wealth, stay by his side.
Poverty: you are seeking something much more shameful than Poverty to put on him,
590
Poverty: If being rich makes one ignoble and love of gain in this way.
Chremylus: But may Zeus destroy you, having crowned you with a vine-leaf wreath.
Poverty: for it is bold of you to contradict [me] by saying that not everything is good for you.
Poverty: because of Poverty.
Chremylus: it is possible to learn this from Hecate,
Chremylus: Whether it is better to be rich or to be hungry. For she says this
595
Chremylus: those who have and are rich he sends away with a meal every month,
Chremylus: but to snatch the poor among men before they deposit [it].
Wealth. Aristophanes. . 2026-09-08.