Peace | Page 8

time or never, for you to help each other. You see yourselves freed from battles and all their horrors of bloodshed. The day, hateful to Lamachus[1], has come. Come then, what must be done? Give your orders, direct us, for I swear to work this day without ceasing, until with the help of our levers and our engines we have drawn back into light the greatest of all goddesses, her to whom the olive is so dear.
f[1] An Athenian general as ambitious as he was brave. In 423 B.C. he had failed in an enterprise against Heracles, a storm having destroyed his fleet. Since then he had distingued himself in several actions, and was destined, some years later, to share the command of the expedition to Sicily with Alcibiades and Nicias.
TRYGAEUS Silence! if War should hear your shouts of joy he would bound forth from his retreat in fury.
CHORUS Such a decree overwhelms us with joy; how different to the edict, which bade us muster with provisions for three days.[1]
f[1] Meaning, to start a military expedition.
TRYGAEUS Let us beware lest the cursed Cerberus[1] prevent us even from the nethermost hell from delivering the goddess by his furious howling, just as he did when on earth.
f[1] Cleon.
CHORUS Once we have hold of her, none in the world will be able to take her from us. Huzza! huzza![1]
f[1] The Chorus insist on the conventional choric dance.
TRYGAEUS You will work my death if you don't subdue your shouts. War will come running out and trample everything beneath his feet.
CHORUS Well then! LET him confound, let him trample, let him overturn everything! We cannot help giving vent to our joy.
TRYGAEUS Oh! cruel fate! My friends! in the name of the gods, what possesses you? Your dancing will wreck the success of a fine undertaking.
CHORUS 'Tis not I who want to dance; 'tis my legs that bound with delight.
TRYGAEUS Enough, an you love me, cease your gambols.
CHORUS There! 'Tis over.
TRYGAEUS You say so, and nevertheless you go on.
CHORUS Yet one more figure and 'tis done.
TRYGAEUS Well, just this one; then you must dance no more.
CHORUS No, no more dancing, if we can help you.
TRYGAEUS But look, you are not stopping even now.
CHORUS By Zeus, I am only throwing up my right leg, that's all.
TRYGAEUS Come, I grant you that, but pray, annoy me no further.
CHORUS Ah! the left leg too will have its fling; well, 'tis but its right. I am so happy, so delighted at not having to carry my buckler any more. I sing and I laugh more than if I had cast my old age, as a serpent does its skin.
TRYGAEUS No, 'tis not time for joy yet, for you are not sure of success. But when you have got the goddess, then rejoice, shout and laugh; thenceforward you will be able to sail or stay at home, to make love or sleep, to attend festivals and processions, to play at cottabos,[1] live like true Sybarites and to shout, Io, io!
f[1] One of the most favourite games with the Greeks. A stick was set upright in the ground and to this the beam of a balance was attached by its centre. Two vessels were hung from the extremities of the beam so as to balance; beneath these two other and larger dishes were placed and filled with water, and in the middle of each a brazen figure, called Manes, was stood. The game consisted in throwing drops of wine from an agreed distance into one or the other vessel, so that, dragged downwards by the weight of the liquor, it bumped against Manes.
CHORUS Ah! God grant we may see the blessed day. I have suffered so much; have so oft slept with Phormio[1] on hard beds. You will no longer find me an acid, angry, hard judge as heretofore, but will find me turned indulgent and grown younger by twenty years through happiness. We have been killing ourselves long enough, tiring ourselves out with going to the Lyceum[2] and returning laden with spear and buckler. --But what can we do to please you? Come, speak; for 'tis a good Fate that has named you our leader.
f[1] A general of austere habits; he disposed of all his property to pay the cost of a naval expedition, in which he beat the fleet of the foe off the promontory of Rhium in 429 B.C. f[2] The Lyceum was a portico ornamented with paintings and surrounded with gardens, in which military exercises took place.
TRYGAEUS How shall we set about removing these stones?
HERMES Rash reprobate, what do you propose doing?
TRYGAEUS Nothing bad, as Cillicon said.[1]
f[1] A citizen of Miletus, who betrayed his country to the people of Pirene. When asked what he purposed, he replied, "Nothing bad," which expression had therefore passed into a proverb.
HERMES You