Aristophanes' PEACE Complete

A Literal Translation, with Notes.

Aristophanes Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristophanes in Print

70 pages - You are on Page 7

TRYGAEUS. No words of ill omen! Give vent to joy and command all men to keep silence, to close down their drains and privies with new tiles and to stop their own vent-holes.[265]

FIRST SERVANT. No, I shall not be silent, unless you tell me where you are going.

TRYGAEUS. Why, where am I likely to be going across the sky, if it be not to visit Zeus?

FIRST SERVANT. For what purpose?

TRYGAEUS. I want to ask him what he reckons to do for all the Greeks.

SECOND SERVANT. And if he doesn't tell you?

TRYGAEUS. I shall pursue him at law as a traitor who sells Greece to the Medes.[266]

SECOND SERVANT. Death seize me, if I let you go.

TRYGAEUS. It is absolutely necessary.

SECOND SERVANT. Alas! alas! dear little girls, your father is deserting you secretly to go to heaven. Ah! poor orphans, entreat him, beseech him.

[265] Fearing that if it caught a whiff from earth to its liking, the beetle might descend from the highest heaven to satisfy itself.

[266] The Persians and the Spartans were not then allied as the Scholiast states, since a treaty between them was only concluded in 412 B.C., i.e. eight years after the production of 'Peace'; the great king, however, was trying to derive advantages out of the dissensions in Greece.

Previous Page / First / Next Page of Aristophanes PEACE

Aristophanes Home Page ||| Elpenor's Free Greek Lessons
Aeschylus ||| Sophocles ||| Euripides

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/aristophanes/peace.asp?pg=7