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A Literal Translation, with Notes.
88 pages - You are on Page 87
PLUTO. Enter my halls. Come, Dionysus.
DIONYSUS. What shall we do there?
PLUTO. I want to entertain my guests before they leave.
DIONYSUS. Well said, by Zeus; 'tis the very thing to please me best.
CHORUS. Blessed the man who has perfected wisdom! Everything is happiness for him. Behold Aeschylus; thanks to the talent, to the cleverness he has shown, he returns to his country; and his fellow-citizens, his relations, his friends will all hail his return with joy. Let us beware of jabbering with Socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic Muse. To pass an idle life reeling off grandiloquent speeches and foolish quibbles, is the part of a madman.
PLUTO. Farewell, Aeschylus! Go back to earth and may your noble precepts both save our city[538] and cure the mad; there are such, a many of them! Carry this rope from me to Cleophon, this one to Myrmex and Nichomachus, the public receivers, and this other one to Archenomous.[539] Bid them come here at once and without delay; if not, by Apollo, I will brand them with the hot iron.[540] I will make one bundle of them and Adimantus,[541] the son of Leucolophus,[542] and despatch the lot into hell with all possible speed.
[538] Pluto speaks as though he were an Athenian himself.
[539] That they should hang themselves. Cleophon is said to have been an influential alien resident who was opposed to concluding peace; Myrmex and Nicomachus were two officials guilty of peculation of public funds; Archenomus is unknown.
[540] He would brand them as fugitive slaves, if, despite his orders, they refused to come down.
[541] An Athenian admiral.
[542] The real name of the father of Adimantus was Leucolophides, which Aristophanes jestingly turns into Leucolophus, i.e. White Crest.
Aristophanes Complete Works
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