No, no, I only slipped on my wife's tunic to come out in.
MAN
And where is your cloak?
BLEPYRUS
I cannot tell you; I hunted for it vainly on the bed.
MAN
And why did you not ask your wife for it?
BLEPYRUS
Ah! why indeed! because she is not in the house; she has run away, and I greatly fear that she may be doing me an ill turn.
MAN
But, by Posidon, it's the same with myself. My wife has disappeared with my cloak, and what is still worse, with my shoes as well; I cannot find them anywhere.
BLEPYRUS
Nor can I my Laconian ones; but as I urgently needed to crap, Ipopped my feet into these slippers, so as not to soil my blanket, which is brand new.
MAN
What does it mean? Can some friend have invited her to a feast?
BLEPYRUS
I expect so, for she does not generally misconduct herself, as far as I know.
MAN
What are you doing, making well-ropes? Are you never going to be done? As for myself, I would like to go to the Assembly, and it is time to start, but I've got to find my cloak; I have only one.
BLEPYRUS
I am going to have a look too, when I have finished crapping;but I really think there must be a wild pear obstructing my rectum.
MAN
Is it the one which Thrasybulus spoke about to the Lacedaemonians?
BLEPYRUS
Oh! oh! oh! stopped up I am! Whatever am I to do? It's not merely for the present that I am frightened; but when I have eaten, where is my crap to find an outlet now? This damned McPear fellow has bolted the door. Call a doctor; but who is the cleverest in this branch of the science? Amynon? Perhaps he would not come. Ah!
Antisthenes! Let him be brought to me, cost what it will. To judge by his noisy sighs, that man knows what an arse wants, when it needs to crap. Oh! venerated Ilithyia! I shall burst unless the door gives way. Have pity! pity! Let me not become a thunder-mug for the comic poets.
(Enter CHREMES, returning from the Assembly.)CHREMES
Hi! friend, what are you doing there? You're not crapping, are you?
BLEPYRUS (finding relief at last)
Oh! there! it is over and I can get up again.
CHREMES
What's this? You have your wife's tunic on.
BLEPYRUS
It was the first thing that came to my hand in the darkness. But where are you coming from?
CHREMES
From the Assembly.
BLEPYRUS
Is it already over then?
CHREMES
Certainly.
BLEPYRUS
Why, it is scarcely daylight.
CHREMES
I did laugh, ye gods, at the vermilion rope-marks that were to be seen all about the Assembly.
BLEPYRUS
Did you get the triobolus?
CHREMES
Would it had so pleased the gods! but I arrived just too late, and am quite ashamed of it; I bring back nothing but this empty wallet.
BLEPYRUS
But why is that?
CHREMES
There was a crowd, such as has never been seen at the Pnyx, and the folk looked pale and wan, like so many shoemakers, so white were they in hue; both I and many another had to go without the triobolus.
BLEPYRUS
Then if I went now, I should get nothing.
CHREMES
No, certainly not, nor even had you gone at the second cock-crow.
BLEPYRUS
Oh! what a misfortune! "Oh, Antilochus! no triobolus! Even death would be better! I am undone!" But what can have attracted such a crowd at that early hour?
CHREMES
The Prytanes started the discussion of measures closely concerning the safety of the state; immediately, that blear-eyed fellow, the son of Neoclides, was the first to mount the platform. Then the folk shouted with their loudest voice, "What! he dares to speak, and that, too, when the safety of the state is concerned, and he a man who has not known how to save even his own eyebrows!" He, however, shouted louder than all of them, and looking at them asked, "Why, what ought Ito have done?"
BLEPYRUS
Pound together garlic and laserpitium juice, add to this mixture some Laconian spurge, and rub it well into the eyelids at night.
That's what I should have answered, had I been there.
CHREMES
After him that clever rascal Evaeon began to speak; he was naked, so far as we all could see, but he declared he had a cloak;he propounded the most popular, the most democratic, doctrines. "You see," he said, "I have the greatest need of sixteen drachmae, the cost of a new cloak, my health demands it; nevertheless I wish first to care for that of my fellow-citizens and of my country. If the fullers were to supply tunics to the indigent at the approach of winter, none would be exposed to pleurisy. Let him who has neither beds nor coverlets go to sleep at the tanners' after taking a bath;and if they shut the door in winter, let them be condemned to give him three goat-skins."BLEPYRUS
By Dionysus, a fine, a very fine notion! Not a soul will vote against his proposal, especially if he adds that the flour-sellers must supply the poor with three measures of corn, or else suffer the severest penalties of the law; this is the only way Nausicydes can be of any use to us.
CHREMES
Then we saw a handsome young man rush into the tribune, be was all pink and white like young Nicias, and he began to say that the direction of matters should be entrusted to the women; this the crowd of shoemakers began applauding with all their might, while the country-folk assailed him with groans.
BLEPYRUS
And, indeed, they did well.
CHREMES
But they were outnumbered, and the orator shouted louder than they, saying much good of the women and much ill of you.
BLEPYRUS (eagerly)
And what did he say?
CHREMES
First he said you were a rogue...
BLEPYRUS
And you?
CHREMES
Wait a minute!...and a thief...
BLEPYRUS
I alone?
CHREMES
And an informer.
BLEPYRUS
I alone?
CHREMES
Why, no, by the gods! this whole crowd here.
(He points to the audience.)
BLEPYRUS
And who avers the contrary?
CHREMES
He maintained that women were both clever and thrifty, that they never divulged the Mysteries of Demeter, while you and I go about babbling incessantly about whatever happens at the Senate.
BLEPYRUS
By Hermes, he was not lying!
CHREMES
