116 ARISTOPHANES.

Dis. “Ah, but it is! And that’s Eubcea stretch-
ing along there.” .

Strep. “Yes; we stretched it, we did, Pericles and
the rest of us.1 But where’s Sparta?”

Dis, “There.”

Strep. “Oh! but how near! See if you can’t
contrive to put it further off.”

Dis. “ Quite impossible.”

Strep. “So much the worse for you. But who is
the man in the basket there?”

Dis, “That is He.”

Strep. “What he?”

Dis. “Socrates.”

After two or three fruitless attempts, Strepsiades
succeeded in attracting the great man’s attention.
“What want you, creature of a day?” he asked.

“T walk in air, and fix a lofty thought
Down on the sun.”

Strep. “Oh, you look down on the gods from a
basket, do you?”

Socrates. “1 never could have found out aerial
things had I not detached my thoughts, bringing

1 The original has a pun which can be given only imperfectly. The
disciple speaks of the position of Eubcea stretching along the coast;
Strepsiades takes the word in the sense of “straining,” “ stretching,”
and go “ torturing?’ Pericles commanded the expedition which con-
quered Eubcea in 440 B.C. Thirty thousand allotments of the con-
quered country were distributed on the occasion among Athenian
citizens.