WAR Oh! Megara! Megara! how utterly are you going to be ground up! what fine mincemeat14 are you to be made into!
TRYGAEUS Alas! alas! what bitter tears there will be among the Megarians!15
WAR Oh, Sicily! you too must perish! Your wretched towns shall be grated like this cheese.16 Now let us pour some Attic honey17 into the mortar.
TRYGAEUS Oh! I beseech you! use some other honey; this kind is worth four obols; be careful, oh! be careful of our Attic honey.
WAR Hi! Tumult, you slave there!
TUMULT What do you want?
WAR Out upon you! Standing there with folded arms! Take this cuff o' the head for your pains.
TUMULT Oh! how it stings! Master, have you got garlic in your fist, I wonder?
WAR Run and fetch me a pestle.
TUMULT But we haven't got one; 'twas only yesterday we moved.
WAR Go and fetch me one from Athens, and hurry, hurry!
TUMULT Aye, I hasten there; if I return without one, I shall have no cause for laughing. (EXIT.)
TRYGAEUS Ah! what is to become of us, wretched mortals that we are? See the danger that threatens if he returns with the pestle, for War will quietly amuse himself with pounding all the towns of Hellas to pieces. Ah! Bacchus! cause this herald of evil to perish on his road!
WAR Well?
TUMULT (WHO HAS RETURNED) Well, what?
WAR You have brought back nothing?
TUMULT Alas! the Athenians have lost their pestlethe tanner, who ground Greece to powder.18
TRYGAEUS Oh! Athene, venerable mistress! 'tis well for our city he is dead, and before he could serve us with this hash.
WAR Then go and seek one at Sparta and have done with it!
TUMULT Aye, aye, master!
WAR Be back as quick as ever you can.
TRYGAEUS (TO THE AUDIENCE) What is going to happen, friends? 'Tis the critical hour. Ah! if there is some initiate of Samothrace19 among you, 'tis surely the moment to wish this messenger some accidentsome sprain or strain.
TUMULT (WHO RETURNS) Alas! alas! thrice again, alas!
WAR What is it? Again you come back without it?
TUMULT The Spartans too have lost their pestle.
WAR How, varlet?
TUMULT They had lent it to their allies in Thrace,20 who have lost it for them.
TRYGAEUS Long life to you, Thracians! My hopes revive, pluck up courage, mortals!
WAR Take all this stuff away; I am going in to make a pestle for myself.
TRYGAEUS 'Tis now the time to sing as Datis did, as he abused himself at high noon, "Oh pleasure! oh enjoyment! oh delights!" 'Tis now, oh Greeks! the moment when freed of quarrels and fighting, we should rescue sweet Peace and draw her out of this pit, before some other pestle prevents us. Come, labourers, merchants, workmen, artisans, strangers, whether you be domiciled or not, islanders, come here, Greeks of all countries, come hurrying here with picks and levers and ropes! 'Tis the moment to drain a cup in honour of the Good Genius.
CHORUS Come hither all! quick, hasten to the rescue! All peoples of Greece, now is the 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 Lamachus21, 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.
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.22
TRYGAEUS Let us beware lest the cursed Cerberus23 prevent us even from the nethermost hell from delivering the goddess by his furious howling, just as he did when on earth.
CHORUS Once we have hold of her, none in the world will be able to take her from us. Huzza! huzza!24
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 cottabos25, live like true Sybarites and to shout, Io, io!
CHORUS Ah! God grant we may see the blessed day. I have suffered so much; have so oft slept with Phormio26 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 Lyceum27 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.
TRYGAEUS How shall we set about removing these stones?
HERMES Rash reprobate, what do you propose doing?
TRYGAEUS Nothing bad, as Cillicon said28.
HERMES You are undone, you wretch.
TRYGAEUS Yes, if the lot had to decide my life, for Hermes would know how to turn the chance.29
HERMES You are lost, you are dead.
TRYGAEUS On what day?
HERMES This instant.
TRYGAEUS But I have not provided myself with flour and cheese yet30 to start for death.
HERMES You ARE kneaded and ground already, I tell you.31
TRYGAEUS Hah! I have not yet tasted that gentle pleasure.
HERMES Don't you know that Zeus has decreed death for him who is surprised exhuming Peace?
TRYGAEUS What! must I really and truly die?
HERMES You must.
TRYGAEUS Well then, lend me three drachmae to buy a young pig; I wish to have myself initiated before I die.32
HERMES Oh! Zeus, the Thunderer!33
TRYGAEUS I adjure you in the name of the gods, master, don't denounce us!
HERMES I may not, I cannot keep silent.
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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.
2
The winged steed of Perseusan allusion to a lost tragedy of Euripides, in which Bellerophon was introduced riding on Pegasus.
3
Fearing that if it caught a whiff from earth to its liking, the beetle might descend from the highest heaven to satisfy itself.
4
The Persians and the Spartans were not then allied as the scholiast states, since a treaty between them was only concluded in 412 B.C., i.e. eight years after the production of 'Peace'; the great king, however, was trying to derive advantages out of the dissensions in Greece.
5
"Go to the crows," a proverbial expression equivalent to our "Go to the devil."
6
Aesop tells us that the eagle and the beetle were at war; the eagle devoured the beetle's young and the latter got into its nest and tumbled out its eggs. On this the eagle complained to Zeus, who advised it to lay its eggs in his bosom; but the beetle flew up to the abode of Zeus, who, forgetful of the eagle's eggs, at once rose to chase off the objectionable insect. The eggs fell to earth and were smashed to bits.
7
Pegasus is introduced by Euripides both in his 'Andromeda' and his 'Bellerophon.'
8
Boats, called 'beetles,' doubtless because in form they resembled these insects, were built at Naxos.
9
Nature had divided the Piraeus into three basins Cantharos, Aphrodisium and Zea. (Cantharos) is Greek for dung-beetle.
10
In allusion to Euripides' fondness for introducing lame heroes in his plays.
11
An allusion to the proverbial nickname applied to the Chians (in Greek)'crapping Chian.' There is a further joke, of course, in connection with the hundred and one frivolous pretexts which the Athenians invented for exacting contributions from the maritime allies.
12
Masters of Pylos and Sphacteria, the Athenians had brought home the three hundred prisoners taken in the latter place in 425 B.C.; the Spartans had several times sent envoys to offer peace and to demand back both Pylos and the prisoners, but the Athenian pride had caused these proposals to be long refused. Finally the prisoners had been given up in 423 B.C., but the War was continued nevertheless.
13
An important town in Eastern Laconia on the Argolic gulf, celebrated for a temple where a festival was held annually in honour of Achilles. It had been taken and pillaged by the Athenians in the second year of the Peloponnesian War, 430 B.C. As he utters this imprecation, War throws some leeks, the root-word of the name Praisae, into his mortar.
14
War throws some garlic into his mortar as emblematical of the city of Megara, where it was grown in abundance.
15
Because the smell of bruised garlic causes the eyes to water.
16
He throws cheese into the mortar as emblematical of Sicily, on account of its rich pastures.
17
Emblematical of Athens. They honey of Mount Hymettus was famous.
18
Cleon, who had lately fallen before Amphipolis, in 422 B.C.
19
An island in the Aegean Sea, on the coast of Thrace and opposite the mouth of the Hebrus; the Mysteries are said to have found their first home in this island, where the Cabirian gods were worshipped; this cult, shrouded in deep mystery to even the initiates themselves, has remained an almost insoluble problem for the modern critic. It was said that the wishes of the initiates were always granted, and they were feared as to-day the 'jettatori' (spell-throwers, casters of the evil eye) in Sicily are feared.
20
Brasidas perished in Thrace in the same battle as Cleon at Amphipolis, 422 B.C.
21
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.
22
Meaning, to start a military expedition.
23
Cleon.
24
The Chorus insist on the conventional choric dance.
25
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.
26
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.
27
The Lyceum was a portico ornamented with paintings and surrounded with gardens, in which military exercises took place.
28
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.
29
Hermes was the god of chance.
30
As the soldiers had to do when starting on an expedition.
31
That is, you are predicated.
32
The initiated were thought to enjoy greater happiness after death.
33
He summons Zeus to reveal Trygaeus' conspiracy.