Page:Acharnians and two other plays (1909).djvu/43

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For this is the Lenæan festival,

And here we meet, all by ourselves alone;

No deputies are arrived as yet with tribute,

No strangers or allies; but here are we

A chosen sample, clean as sifted corn,

With our own denizens as a kind of chaff.

First, I detest the Spartans most extremely;

And wish that Neptune, the Tænarian deity,

Would bury them in their houses with his earthquakes.

For I've had losses—losses, let me tell ye,

Like other people; vines cut down and injured.

But, among friends (for only friends are here),

Why should we blame the Spartans for all this?

For people of ours, some people of our own,

Some people from amongst us here, I mean;

But not the people (pray remember that);

I never said the people—but a pack

Of paltry people, mere pretended citizens,

Base counterfeits, went laying informations,

And making a confiscation of the jerkins

Imported here from Megara; pigs moreover,

Pumpkins, and pecks of salt, and ropes of onions,

Were voted to be merchandise from Megara,

Denounced, and seized, and sold upon the spot.

Well, these might pass, as petty local matters.

But now, behold, some doughty drunken youths

Kidnap, and carry away from Megara,

The courtesan Simætha. Those of Megara,

In hot retaliation, seize a brace

Of equal strumpets, hurried force perforce

From Dame Aspasia's house of recreation.

So this was the beginning of the war,

All over Greece, owing to these three strumpets.

For Pericles, like an Olympian Jove,

With all his thunder and his thunderbolts,

Began to storm and lighten dreadfully,

Alarming all the neighbourhood of Greece;

And made decrees, drawn up like drinking songs,

In which it was enacted and concluded,

That the Megarians should remain excluded

From every place where commerce was transacted,