16 ARISTOPHANES.

I want a number of other things. Do give me a
wicker lamp-shade with a hole burnt in it.”

&. . “Know, fellow, that you bore me, and depart.”
Hon. “Once more I ask—a cup with broken lip.”
&. “Take it and perish, trouble of my house!”
Hon. “And yet again a pitcher plugged with sponge.”
&. “Fellow, you rob me of my work; and yet

I give it— go!”
flon. “Oh! yet once more I beg

One thing which lacking I am all undone;

O dearest, sweetest singer, may the gods

Destroy me, if I ask but one thing more,

One only, single, solitary boon,

A plant of chevril from your mother’s store.”!

&. “The man insults us; close the palace doors.”

Thus clad, and laying his head on the chopping-

- block, to be ready, if he failed to make out his case,

for instant execution, Honesty proceeded to defend
himself.

“You blame me for making peace,” — this was the
substance of his argument, — “but what was the war
about? Why, the most trumpery thing in the world!
A girl is kidnapped from our neighbours of Megara.
Our neighbours kidnap two girls from us, and the
mighty Pericles, forsooth, must bring out his thunder
and lightning, for all the world like Olympian Zeus,
till all Greece was in a turmoil. Then came his
decree, short and sharp: ‘No one from Megara shall

1 Aristophanes is never weary of joking about the low extraction of
Euripides’s mother. It was said that she had sold vegetables.