Chorus of Women.
What is this I see, ye wretched old men? Honest and pious folk ye cannot be who act so vilely.
Chorus of Old Men.
Ah, ha! here’s something new! a swarm of women stand posted outside to defend the gates!
Chorus of Women.
Ah! ah! we frighten you, do we; we seem a mighty host, yet you do not see the ten-thousandth part of our sex.
Chorus of Old Men.
Ho, Phædrias! shall we stop their cackle? Suppose one of us were to break a stick across their backs, eh?
Chorus of Women.
Let us set down our water-pots on the ground, to be out of the way, if they should dare to offer us violence.
Chorus of Old Men.
Let. someone knock out two or three teeth for them, as they did to Bupalus;[1] they won’t talk so loud then.
Chorus of Women.
Come on then; I wait you with unflinching foot, and I will snap off your testicles like a bitch.
Chorus of Old Men.
Silence! ere my stick has cut short your days.
Chorus of Women.
Now, just you dare to touch Stratyllis with the tip of your finger!
- ↑ Bupalus was a celebrated contemporary sculptor, a native of Clazomenæ. The satiric poet Hipponax, who was extremely ugly, having been portrayed by Bupalus as even more unsightly-looking than the reality, composed against the artist so scurrilous an invective that the latter hung himself in despair. Apparently Aristophanes alludes here to a verse in which Hipponax threatened to beat Bupalus.
