First Servant.
No, I shall not be silent, unless you tell me where you are going.
Trygæus.
Why, where am I likely to be going across the sky, if it be not to visit Zeus ?
First Servant.
For what purpose?
Trygæus.
I want to ask him what he reckons to do for all the Greeks.
Second Servant.
And if he doesn’t tell you?
Trygæus.
I shall pursue him at law as a traitor who sells Greece to the Medes.[1]
Second Servant.
Death seize me, if I let you go.
Trygæus.
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.
Little Daughter.
Father! father! what is this I hear? Is it true? What! you would leave me, you would vanish into the sky, you would go to the crows?[2] ’Tis impossible! Answer, father, an you love me.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Go to the crows, a proverbial expression equivalent to our Go to the devil.
