Lysistrata.
Now we see ’em, mixed up with saucepans and kitchen stuff, armed to the teeth, looking like wild Corybantes![1]
Magistrate.
Why, of course; that’s how brave men should do.
Lysistrata.
Oh! but what a funny sight, to behold a man wearing a Gorgon’s-head buckler coming along to buy fish!
A Woman.
’Tother day in the Market I saw a phylarch[2] with flowing ringlets; he was a-horseback, and was pouring into his helmet the broth he had just bought att an old dame’s stall. There was a Thracian warrior too, who was brandishing his lance like Tereus in the play;[3] he had scared a good woman selling figs into a perfect panic, and was gobbling up all her ripest fruit.
Magistrate.
And how, pray, would you propose to restore peace and order in all the countries of Greece?
Lysistrata.
’Tis the easiest thing in the world!
Magistrate.
Come, tell us how; I am curious to know.
Lysistrata.
When we are winding thread, and it is tangled, we pass the spool across and through the skein, now this way, now that way; even so, to finish off the War, we shall send embassies hither and thither and everywhere, to disentangle matters.
- ↑ Priests of Cybelé, who indulged in wild, frenzied dances, to the accompaniment of the clashing of cymbals, in their celebrations in honour of the goddess.
- ↑ Captain of a cavalry division; they were chosen from amongst the Hippeis, or ‘Knights’ at Athens.
- ↑ In allusion to a play of Euripides, now lost, with this title. Tereus was son of Ares and king of the Thracians in Daulis.
