PISTHETAERUS. 'Tis your bits of wings. D'you know what you look like? Like a goose painted by some dauber-fellow.
EUELPIDES. And you look like a close-shaven blackbird.
PISTHETAERUS. 'Tis ourselves asked for this transformation, and, as Aeschylus has it, "These are no borrowed feathers, but truly our own."[268]
EPOPS. Come now, what must be done?
PISTHETAERUS. First give our city a great and famous name, then sacrifice to the gods.
EUELPIDES. I think so too.
EPOPS. Let's see. What shall our city be called?
PISTHETAERUS. Will you have a high-sounding Laconian name? Shall we call it Sparta?
EUELPIDES. What! call my town Sparta? Why, I would not use esparto for my bed,[269] even though I had nothing but bands of rushes.
[268] Meaning, 'tis we who wanted to have these wings.--The verse from Aeschylus, quoted here, is taken from 'The Myrmidons,' a tragedy of which only a few fragments remain.
[269] The Greek word signified the city of Sparta, and also a kind of broom used for weaving rough matting, which served for the beds of the very poor.
Studies
