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A Literal Translation, with Notes.
Studies
Aristophanes in Print
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96 pages - You are on Page 94
PISTHETAERUS. Here are birds already cut up, and very suitable for a nuptial feast.
HERACLES. You go and, if you like, I will stay here to roast them.
PISTHETAERUS. You to roast them! you are too much the glutton; come along with us.
HERACLES. Ah! how well I would have treated myself!
PISTHETAERUS. Let some bring me a beautiful and magnificent tunic for the wedding.
CHORUS.[372] At Phanae,[373] near the Clepsydra,[374] there dwells a people who have neither faith nor law, the Englottogastors,[375] who reap, sow, pluck the vines and the figs[376] with their tongues; they belong to a barbaric race, and among them the Philippi and the Gorgiases[377] are to be found; 'tis these Englottogastorian Phillippi who introduced the custom all over Attica of cutting out the tongue separately at sacrifices.[378]
[372] The chorus continues to tell what it has seen on its flights.
[373] The harbour of the island of Chios; but this name is here used in the sense of being the land of informers ([Greek: phainein], to denounce).
[374] i.e. near the orators' platform, or [Greek: Bema], in the Public Assembly, or [Greek: Ekklesia], because there stood the [Greek: klepsudra], or water-clock, by which speeches were limited.
[375] A coined name, made up of [Greek: glotta], the tongue, and [Greek: gaster], the stomach, and meaning those who fill their stomach with what they gain with their tongues, to wit, the orators.
[376] [Greek: Sukon] a fig, forms part of the word, [Greek: sukophantes], which in Greek means an informer.
[377] Both rhetoricians.
[378] Because they consecrated it specially to the god of eloquence.
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