The Acharnians Part 8

MEGARIAN Ah! here our troubles begin afresh!

INFORMER Let go that sack. I will punish your Megarian lingo!(1)

f(1) The Megarians used the Doric dialect.

MEGARIAN Dicaeopolis, Dicaeopolis, they want to denounce me.

DICAEOPOLIS Who dares do this thing? Inspectors, drive out the informers.

Ah! you offer to enlighten us without a lamp!(1)

f(1) A play upon (a) word which both means 'to light' and 'to denounce.'

INFORMER What! I may not denounce our enemies?

DICAEOPOLIS Have a care for yourself, if you don't go off pretty quick to denounce elsewhere.

MEGARIAN What a plague to Athens!

DICAEOPOLIS Be rea.s.sured, Megarian. Here is the price for your two swine, the garlic and the salt. Farewell and much happiness!

MEGARIAN Ah! we never have that amongst us.

DICAEOPOLIS Well! may the inopportune wish apply to myself.

MEGARIAN Farewell, dear little sows, and seek, far from your father, to munch your bread with salt, if they give you any.

CHORUS Here is a man truly happy. See how everything succeeds to his wish. Peacefully seated in his market, he will earn his living; woe to Ctesias,(1) and all other informers who dare to enter there! You will not be cheated as to the value of wares, you will not again see Prepis(2) wiping his foul rump, nor will Cleonymus(3) jostle you; you will take your walks, clothed in a fine tunic, without meeting Hyperbolus(4) and his unceasing quibblings, without being accosted on the public place by any importunate fellow, neither by Cratinus,(5) shaven in the fashion of the debauchees, nor by this musician, who plagues us with his silly improvisations, Artemo, with his arm-pits stinking as foul as a goat, like his father before him. You will not be the b.u.t.t of the villainous Pauson's(6) jeers, nor of Lysistratus,(7) the disgrace of the Cholargian deme, who is the incarnation of all the vices, and endures cold and hunger more than thirty days in the month.

f(1) An informer (sycophant), otherwise unknown.

f(2) A debauchee of vile habits; a pathic.

f(3) Mentioned above; he was as proud as he was cowardly.

f(4) An Athenian general, quarrelsome and litigious, and an Informer into the bargain.

f(5) A comic poet of vile habits.

f(6) A painter.

f(7) A debauchee, a gambler, and always in extreme poverty.

A BOEOTIAN By Heracles! my shoulder is quite black and blue. Ismenias, put the penny-royal down there very gently, and all of you, musicians from Thebes, pipe with your bone flutes into a dog's rump.(1)

f(1) This kind of flute had a bellows, made of dog-skin, much like the bagpipes of to-day.

DICAEOPOLIS Enough, enough, get you gone. Rascally hornets, away with you!

Whence has sprung this accursed swarm of Charis(1) fellows which comes a.s.sailing my door?

f(1) A flute-player, mentioned above.

BOEOTIAN Ah! by Iolas!(1) Drive them off, my dear host, you will please me immensely; all the way from Thebes, they were there piping behind me and have completely stripped my penny-royal of its blossom.

But will you buy anything of me, some chickens or some locusts?

f(1) A hero, much honoured in Thebes; nephew of Heracles.

DICAEOPOLIS Ah! good day, Boeotian, eater of good round loaves.(1) What do you bring?

f(1) A form of bread peculiar to Boeotia.

BOEOTIAN All that is good in Boeotia, marjoram, penny-royal, rush-mats, lamp-wicks, ducks, jays, woodc.o.c.ks, water-fowl, wrens, divers.

DICAEOPOLIS 'Tis a very hail of birds that beats down on my market.

BOEOTIAN I also bring geese, hares, foxes, moles, hedgehogs, cats, lyres, martins, otters and eels from the Copaic lake.(1)

f(1) A lake in Boeotia.

DICAEOPOLIS Ah! my friend, you, who bring me the most delicious of fish, let me salute your eels.

BOEOTIAN Come, thou, the eldest of my fifty Copaic virgins, come and complete the joy of our host.

DICAEOPOLIS Oh! my well-beloved, thou object of my long regrets, thou art here at last then, thou, after whom the comic poets sigh, thou, who art dear to Morychus.(1) Slaves, hither with the stove and the bellows.

Look at this charming eel, that returns to us after six long years of absence.(2) Salute it, my children; as for myself, I will supply coal to do honour to the stranger. Take it into my house; death itself could not separate me from her, if cooked with beet leaves.

f(1) He was the Lucullus of Athens.

f(2) This again fixes the date of the presentation of 'The Acharnians' to 436 B.C., the sixth year of the War, since the beginning of which Boeotia had been closed to the Athenians.

BOEOTIAN And what will you give me in return?

DICAEOPOLIS It will pay for your market dues. And as to the rest, what do you wish to sell me?

BOEOTIAN Why, everything.

DICAEOPOLIS On what terms? For ready-money or in wares from these parts?

BOEOTIAN I would take some Athenian produce, that we have not got in Boeotia.

DICAEOPOLIS Phaleric anchovies, pottery?

BOEOTIAN Anchovies, pottery? But these we have. I want produce that is wanting with us and that is plentiful here.

DICAEOPOLIS Ah! I have the very thing; take away an Informer, packed up carefully as crockery-ware.

BOEOTIAN By the twin G.o.ds! I should earn big money, if I took one; I would exhibit him as an ape full of spite.

DICAEOPOLIS Hah! here we have Nicarchus,(1) who comes to denounce you.