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A Literal Translation, with Notes.
Studies
Aristophanes in Print
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69 pages - You are on Page 21
CLEON. Hah! the fine speaker! Truly, if some business matter fell your way, you would know thoroughly well how to attack it, to carve it up alive! Shall I tell you what has happened to you? Like so many others, you have gained some petty lawsuit against some alien.[42] Did you drink enough water to inspire you? Did you mutter over the thing sufficiently through the night, spout it along the street, recite it to all you met? Have you bored your friends enough with it? 'Tis then for this you deem yourself an orator. Ah! poor fool!
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And what do you drink yourself then, to be able all alone by yourself to dumbfound and stupefy the city so with your clamour?
CLEON. Can you match me with a rival? Me! When I have devoured a good hot tunny-fish and drunk on top of it a great jar of unmixed wine, I hold up the Generals of Pylos to public scorn.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And I, when I have bolted the tripe of an ox together with a sow's belly and swallowed the broth as well, I am fit, though slobbering with grease, to bellow louder than all orators and to terrify Nicias.
CHORUS. I admire your language so much; the only thing I do not approve is that you swallow all the broth yourself.
CLEON. E'en though you gorged yourself on sea-dogs, you would not beat the Milesians.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. Give me a bullock's breast to devour, and I am a man to traffic in mines.[43]
[42] This was easier than against a citizen because of the inferiority, in which the pride of the Athenian held those born on other soil.
[43] When drunk he conceives himself rich and the man to buy up the rich silver mines of Laurium, in south-east Attica.
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