138 ARISTOPHANES.

of some country where they might live at peace,
being free from the troubles of law-suits and debts.
Plausible had bought a raven and Hopeful a jack-
daw, hoping that they might be useful to them as
guides. They had a notion of finding King Tereus,
who many years before had married an Athenian
princess, and had been changed into a hoopoe, or, as
some said, a hawk; and a bird-seller in the city had
persuaded them that these creatures would help
them to do so. Tereus, if they could light upon
him, would tell them of some country or other that
he had seen in his migrations. After many wander-
ings, in which their guides, as far as they could
make out, did nothing but contradict each other and
bite their masters’ fingers, they came to a great rock,
where their guides behaved in such a way as to
make them believe that they had reached their jour-
ney’s end. Hopeful gave a kick to the rock, calling
out at the same time, ‘“ Hoopoe! Hoopoe!”

“Who wants the master?” said the porter, who
turned out to be a sandpiper. The visitors did not
by any means please him. “A couple of bird-catch-
ing villains,” he said, when he had taken a look at
them. “You shall both be put to death.” They
roundly denied that they were men. Hopeful
declared that he was a bird from Africa; Plausible
professed to come from the river Phasis.! With
some unwillingness the porter consented to call his

1 The region from which we get the pheasant.