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A Literal Translation, with Notes.
Studies
Aristophanes in Print
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76 pages - You are on Page 12
BDELYCLEON. But you have no teeth.
PHILOCLEON. Oh! you rascal, how can I kill you? How? Give me a sword, quick, or a conviction tablet.
BDELYCLEON. Our friend is planning some great crime.
PHILOCLEON. No, by Zeus! but I want to go and sell my ass and its panniers, for 'this the first of the month.[34]
BDELYCLEON. Could I not sell it just as well?
PHILOCLEON. Not as well as I could.
BDELYCLEON. No, but better. Come, bring it here, bring it here by all means--if you can.
XANTHIAS. What a clever excuse he has found now! What cunning to get you to let him go out!
BDELYCLEON. Yes, but I have not swallowed the hook; I scented the trick. I will no in and fetch the ass, so that the old man may not point his weapons that way again....[35] Stupid old ass, are you weeping because you are going to be sold? Come, go a bit quicker. Why, what are you moaning and groaning for? You might be carrying another Odysseus.[36]
[34] Market-day.
[35] He enters the courtyard, returning with the ass, under whose belly Philocleon is clinging.
[36] In the Odyssey (Bk. IX) Homer makes his hero, 'the wily' Odysseus, escape from the Cyclops' cave by clinging on under a ram's belly, which slips past its blinded master without noticing the trick played on him. Odysseus, when asked his name by the Cyclops, replies, Outis, Nobody.
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