Page:Comedies of Aristophanes (Hickie 1853) vol1.djvu/218

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202
THE WASPS.
467—497.

laws which the city has enacted, neither having any pretence for so doing nor any well-turned plea, though you bear rule alone by yourself.

Bdel. Is it possible that without fight and piercing cry we might come to a conference with one another, and to a reconciliation?

Cho. A conference with thee thou hater of the democratic party, and loving absolutism, and siding with Brasidas,[1] and wearing fringes of wool, and keeping your mustache unshaven?

Bdel. By Jove, in truth it were better for me to give up my father altogether, rather than daily[2] contend with so great ills.

Cho. The matter has not yet arrived either at the parsley or the rue, for this most capacious word will we interpolate. Now, however, you are no way grieved, but you will be, when the public accuser asperses you with the self-same accusations, and summons your fellow-conspirators.

Bdel. Oh, by the gods,[3] will you get away from me? or I am determined to be beaten and to beat the day through.

Cho. Never! no, as long as any part of me be left! you, who have[4] thus set out for a tyranny over us!

Bdel. How every thing with you is tyranny and conspirators, whether the accuser's charge be great or small, the name of which I have not heard, not even for these[5] fifty years: but now it is cheaper by far than salted fish;[6] so that now the name of it is much talked of in the market-place. If any one purchase anchovies, and do not choose to purchase sprats, forthwith the man who is selling the sprats hard by says, "This fellow seems to be Buying relishes to his tyranny." But if any one ask for a leek, as[7] a sauce for his anchovies, the woman that sells herbs, winking[8] with one eye, says, "Tell



  1. Vide Pac. 640 GREEK.
  2. "GREEK, Attic; GREEK, Hellenic." Mæris.
  3. See Krüger's Gr. Gr. § 68, 37, obs. 2.
  4. For GREEK, cf. vs. 517.
  5. The Scholiast's interpretation, GREEK, is evidently right. See note on Thesm. 876.
  6. Cf. Eq. 672. "GREEK, in the neuter, is exclusively Attic; in the masculine, common to all the Greeks." Pierson.
  7. See note on Plut. 314.
  8. See Liddell's Lex. voc. GREEK.