Peace | Page 4

he can't have devoured it yet!
SECOND SERVANT Indeed he has; he snatched it, rolled it between his feet and bolted it.
FIRST SERVANT Come, hurry up, knead up a lot and knead them stiffly.
SECOND SERVANT Oh, scavengers, help me in the name of the gods, if you do not wish to see me fall down choked.
FIRST SERVANT Come, come, another made from the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. 'Twill be to the beetle's taste; he likes it well ground.
SECOND SERVANT There! I am free at least from suspicion; none will accuse me of tasting what I mix.
FIRST SERVANT Faugh! come, now another! keep on mixing with all your might.
SECOND SERVANT I' faith, no. I can stand this awful cesspool stench no longer, so I bring you the whole ill-smelling gear.
FIRST SERVANT Pitch it down the sewer sooner, and yourself with it.
SECOND SERVANT Maybe, one of you can tell me where I can buy a stopped-up nose, for there is no work more disgusting than to mix food for a beetle and to carry it to him. A pig or a dog will at least pounce upon our excrement without more ado, but this foul wretch affects the disdainful, the spoilt mistress, and won't eat unless I offer him a cake that has been kneaded for an entire day.... But let us open the door a bit ajar without his seeing it. Has he done eating? Come, pluck up courage, cram yourself till you burst! The cursed creature! It wallows in its food! It grips it between its claws like a wrestler clutching his opponent, and with head and feet together rolls up its paste like a rope-maker twisting a hawser. What an indecent, stinking, gluttonous beast! I know not what angry god let this monster loose upon us, but of a certainty it was neither Aphrodite nor the Graces.
FIRST SERVANT Who was it then?
SECOND SERVANT No doubt the Thunderer, Zeus.
FIRST SERVANT But perhaps some spectator, some beardless youth, who thinks himself a sage, will say, "What is this? What does the beetle mean?" And then an Ionian,[1] sitting next him, will add, "I think 'tis an allusion to Cleon, who so shamelessly feeds on filth all by himself."--But now I'm going indoors to fetch the beetle a drink.
f[1] 'Peace' was no doubt produced at the festival of the Apaturia, which was kept at the end of October, a period when strangers were numerous in Athens.
SECOND SERVANT As for me, I will explain the matter to you all, children, youths, grownups and old men, aye, even to the decrepit dotards. My master is mad, not as you are, but with another sort of madness, quite a new kind. The livelong day he looks open-mouthed towards heaven and never stops addressing Zeus. "Ah! Zeus," he cries, "what are thy intentions? Lay aside thy besom; do not sweep Greece away!"
TRYGAEUS Ah! ah! ah!
SECOND SERVANT Hush, hush! Mehinks I hear his voice!
TRYGAEUS Oh! Zeus, what art thou going to do for our people? Dost thou not see this, that our cities will soon be but empty husks?
SECOND SERVANT As I told you, that is his form of madness. There you have a sample of his follies. When his trouble first began to seize him, he said to himself, "By what means could I go straight to Zeus?" Then he made himself very slender little ladders and so clambered up towards heaven; but he soon came hurtling down again and broke his head. Yesterday, to our misfortune, he went out and brought us back this thoroughbred, but from where I know not, this great beetle, whose groom he has forced me to become. He himself caresses it as though it were a horse, saying, "Oh! my little Pegasus,[1] my noble aerial steed, may your wings soon bear me straight to Zeus!" But what is my master doing? I must stoop down to look through this hole. Oh! great gods! Here! neighbours, run here quick! here is my master flying off mounted on his beetle as if on horseback.
f[1] The winged steed of Perseus--an allusion to a lost tragedy of Euripides, in which Bellerophon was introduced riding on Pegasus.
TRYGAEUS Gently, gently, go easy, beetle; don't start off so proudly, or trust at first too greatly to your powers; wait till you have sweated, till the beating of your wings shall make your limb joints supple. Above all things, don't let off some foul smell, I adjure you; else I would rather have you stop in the stable altogether.
SECOND SERVANT Poor master! Is he crazy?
TRYGAEUS Silence! silence!
SECOND SERVANT (TO TRYGAEUS) But why start up into the air on chance?
TRYGAEUS 'Tis for the weal of all the Greeks; I am attempting a daring and novel feat.
SECOND SERVANT But what is your purpose? What useless folly!
TRYGAEUS No words of