Page:The Eleven Comedies (1912) Vol 1.djvu/209

Trygæus.

You must offer pots of green-stuff to the goddess to consecrate her altars.

Chorus.

Pots of green-stuff^[1] as we do to poor Hermes—and even he thinks the fare but mean?

Trygæus.

What will you offer then? A fatted bull?

Chorus.

Oh, no! I don’t want to start bellowing the battle-cry.^[2]

Trygæus.

A great fat swine then?

Chorus.

No, no.

Trygæus.

Why not?

Chorus.

We don’t want any of the swinishness of Theagenes.^[3]

Trygæus.

What other victim do you prefer then?

Chorus.

A sheep.

Trygæus.

A sheep?

Chorus.

Yes.

1. This was only offered to lesser deities.
2. In the Greek we have a play upon the similarity of the words, βοῦς, a bull, and βοᾶν, to shout the battle cry.
3. Theagenes, of the Piræus, a hideous, coarse, debauched and evil-living character of the day.