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DICAEOPOLIS. Peace! profane men![188]

CHORUS. Silence all! Friends, do you hear the sacred formula? Here is he, whom we seek! This way, all! Get out of his way, surely he comes to offer an oblation.

DICAEOPOLIS. Peace, profane men! Let the basket-bearer[189] come forward, and thou, Xanthias, hold the phallus well upright.[190]

WIFE OF DICAEOPOLIS. Daughter, set down the basket and let us begin the sacrifice.

DAUGHTER OF DICAEOPOLIS. Mother, hand me the ladle, that I may spread the sauce on the cake.

DICAEOPOLIS. It is well! Oh, mighty Bacchus, it is with joy that, freed from military duty, I and all mine perform this solemn rite and offer thee this sacrifice; grant, that I may keep the rural Dionysia without hindrance and that this truce of thirty years may be propitious for me.

WIFE OF DICAEOPOLIS. Come, my child, carry the basket gracefully and with a grave, demure face. Happy he, who shall be your possessor and embrace you so firmly at dawn,[191] that you belch wind like a weasel. Go forward, and have a care they don't snatch your jewels in the crowd.

[188] A sacred formula, pronounced by the priest before offering the sacrifice ([Greek: kanephoria]).

[189] The maiden who carried the basket filled with fruits at the Dionysia in honour of Bacchus.

[190] The emblem of the fecundity of nature; it consisted of a representation, generally grotesquely exaggerated, of the male genital organs; the phallophori crowned with violets and ivy and their faces shaded with green foliage, sang improvised airs, called 'Phallics,' full of obscenity and suggestive 'double entendres.'

[191] The most propitious moment for Love's gambols, observes the scholiast.
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/aristophanes/acharnians.asp?pg=14