Sos. Is the old man escaping again some whither?
Bdel. No, by Jove, certainly not; but is letting himself down, having fastened himself to a cord.
Sos. O most abominable![1] what are you doing? Get down with you.[2]
Bdel. Mount quickly to the other window, and beat him with the boughs,[3] if by any means he will back astern, having been beaten with the harvest-wreaths.
Phil. Will you not assist me, as many as are going to have suits this year, Smicythion,[4] and Tisiades, and Chremon, and Pheredipnus? When, if not now, will you aid me, ere that I be carried more in? [Philocleon is driven in.]
Cho. Tell me, why do we delay to rouse that wrath of ours, which we are wont to rouse, when any one irritates our wasps' nest? Now that, now that choleric sting, with which we punish[5]— [To the boys in attendance.] Come, my lads, throw off your garments as quick as possible, and run and shout and tell this to Cleon, and bid him come against a man who is a hater of our commonwealth, and who shall perish, because he introduces this opinion, "not to try causes."
Bdel. My good sirs, hear the matter, and do not bawl.
Cho.[6] Yea, by Jove, to heaven;[7] since I will not let go this man. Are not these things terrible, pray, and manifest tyranny? O city, and impiety of Theorus, and whatever other flatterer presides over us!
Xan. Hercules! they have stings too! Do you not see, master?
- ↑ Owing to the dactyl preceding the anapaest, Person reads ὦ μιάρ᾽ ἀνδρῶν.
- ↑ See Krüger's Gr. Gr. § 53, 7, obs. 5. Dawes, M. C. p. 409.
- ↑ "Words ending in ὰς were more favoured by the tragic than the comic writers. Blomf. Theb. p. 122." Mitchell.
- ↑ Eccles. vs. 46, τὴν Σμικυθίωνος οὐχ ὁρᾶς Μελιστίχην
σπεύδουσαν ἐν ταῖς ἐμβάσιν. - ↑ There is a lacuna here in Dindorf's edition, he having expunged the words ἐντέτατ᾽ ὀξὺ, which follow in most editions.
- ↑ These lines are wrongly distributed in Brunck's edition.
- ↑ i. e. κεκραξόμεθα, Vide Ran. vs. 787. In the latter part of the verse the Greek idiom requires τοῦδ᾽. Vide Dawes, p. 438, ed. Kidd; Liddell's Lex. voc. μεθίημι; Bernhardy, W. S. p. 180; Person, Med. 734; Valck. Phœn. 522. Dindorf, who with most German scholars rejects this rule, retains τόνδ᾽.
