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THE WASPS. 87

With groping about in the dark; such a blow,

When a man is in years, very painful may grow.

He was ever the sharpest and keenest of all;

In vain on his ear all entreaties would fall;

If you sued for his grace, with an obstinate stoop

Of his head, he would mutter, ‘Boil stones into soup.” _

Can it be that, attempting in vain to forget

The fellow who yesterday slipped through our net,

Having cheated us all with detestable lies

About plots he had spied out among our allies,

He has sickened with fever? That's just like our friend.
' But up with you now, for it’s foolish to spend

Your time in these fruitless reproaches. We've got

From Thrace! a fat.traitor to pop.in our.pot.”

Philocleon replied in corresponding strains :—

“Friends, long have I wasted away with my woe,
As I heard through the chimney your voices below; ~
I am helpless; these will not allow me to go
With you as my spirit desires, for I burn
To do some one or other a mischievous turn, .
If I only could get to the balloting urn.?
‘O-Lord of the thunder, I pray that the stroke
OF thy lightning may speedily change me to smoke
Or to stone, if I only the table were made
To which for the counting the votes are conveyed.”

_ 1 At the time when this play was acted, the struggle of Athens to
retain her possessions in Thrace was going on. The meaning of the
original is not that the traitor was a Thracian, or brought from Thrace,
but that he had betrayed the interests of the city in reference to its
Thracian possessions.

2 The urns (one for acquittal, one for condemnation) in which the
jurymen deposited their votes.