Aristophanes' PLUTUS Complete

A Literal Translation, with Notes.

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HERMES. It's about this, rascal! Zeus wants to serve you all with the same sauce and hurl the lot of you into the Barathrum.

CARIO. Have a care for your tongue, you bearer of ill tidings! But why does he want to treat us in that scurvy fashion?

HERMES. Because you have committed the most dreadful crime. Since Plutus has recovered his sight, there is nothing for us other gods, neither incense, nor laurels, nor cakes, nor victims, nor anything in the world.

CARIO. And you will never be offered anything more; you governed us too ill.

HERMES. I care nothing at all about the other gods, but 'tis myself. I tell you I am dying of hunger.

CARIO. That's reasoning like a wise fellow.

HERMES. Formerly, from earliest dawn, I was offered all sorts of good things in the wine-shops,--wine-cakes, honey, dried figs, in short, dishes worthy of Hermes. Now, I lie the livelong day on my back, with my legs in the air, famishing.

CARIO. And quite right too, for you often had them punished who treated you so well.[801]

[801] Wineshop-keepers were often punished for serving false measure. Hermes, who allowed them to be punished although he was the god of cheating and was worshipped as such by the wineshop-keepers, deserved to be neglected by them.

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