upwards from the earth, stretch out your speedy wings and make straight for the palace of Zeus; for once give up foraging in your daily food.—Hi! you down there, what are you after now? Oh! my god! ’tis a man emptying his belly in the Piræus, close to the house where the bad girls are. But is it my death you seek then, my death? Will you not bury that right away and pile a great heap of earth upon it and plant wild thyme therein and pour perfumes on it? If I were to fall from up here and misfortune happened to me, the town of Chios[1] would owe a fine of five talents for my death, all along of your cursed rump. Alas! how frightened I am! oh! I have no heart for jests. Ah! machinist, take great care of me. There is already a wind whirling round my navel; take great care or, from sheer fright, I shall form food for my beetle. . . . But I think I am no longer far from the gods; aye, that is the dwelling of Zeus, I perceive. Hullo! Hi! where is the doorkeeper? Will no one open?
The scene changes and heaven is presented.
Hermes.
Meseems I can sniff a man. (He perceives Trygæus astride his beetle.) Why, what plague is this?
Trygæus.
A horse-beetle.
Hermes.
Oh! impudent, shameless rascal! oh! scoundrel! triple scoundrel! the greatest scoundrel in the world! how did you come here? Oh! scoundrel of all scoundrels! your name? Reply.
Trygæus.
Triple scoundrel.
- ↑ An allusion to the proverbial nickname applied to the Chians—Χῖος ἀποπατῶν, “shitting Chian.” On account of their notoriously pederastic habits, the inhabitants of this island were known throughout Greece as ‘loose-arsed’ Chians, and therefore always on the point of voiding their feces, There is a further joke, of course, in connection with the hundred and one frivolous pretexts which the Athenians invented for exacting contributions from the maritime allies.
