Peace | Page 4

SICKLE-MAKER A CREST-MAKER
A TRUMPET-MAKER A HELMET-MAKER A SPEAR-MAKER
SON OF LAMACHUS SON OF CLEONYMUS CHORUS OF
HUSBANDMEN

SCENE: A farmyard, two slaves busy beside a dungheap; afterwards,
in Olympus.

FIRST SERVANT Quick, quick, bring the dung-beetle his cake.
SECOND SERVANT Coming, coming.
FIRST SERVANT Give it to him, and may it kill him!
SECOND SERVANT May he never eat a better.
FIRST SERVANT Now give him this other one kneaded up with ass's
dung.
SECOND SERVANT There! I've done that too.
FIRST SERVANT And where's what you gave him just now; surely 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