Page:Acharnians and two other plays (1909).djvu/53

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Pleads in person, fencing, sparring, using every turn and trick;

Grappling with the feeble culprit, dragging him to dangerous ground,

Into pitfalls of dilemmas, to perplex him and confound.

Then the wretched invalid attempts an answer, and at last

After stammering and mumbling, goes away condemned and cast;

Moaning to his friends and neighbours, "All the little store I have,

All is gone! my purchase money for a coffin and my grave." Antistrophe. Scandalous and a shame it is,

Seen or told;

Scandalous and a shame to see,

A warrior old;

Crippled in the war,

Worried at the bar;

Him, the veteran, that of old

Firmly stood,

With a fierce and hardy frown,

In the field of Marathon;

Running down

Sweat and blood.

There and then, we were men;

Valorous assailants; now

Poor and low;

Open and exposed to wrong,

From the young;

Every knave, every ass,

Every rogue like Marpsyas.

The Thucydides mentioned in the following lines is not the historian (the son of Olorus) but a much older man, and in his time of much greater personal eminence. In the scanty historical notices which have reached us respecting the period in which he lived, he is distinguished from others of the same name, as the son of Milesius; and it should seem that he must have succeeded to Cimon, as the leader of an unavailing opposition to that system of innovation in domestic and foreign policy which Pericles introduced, and by which he secured for himself, at the expense of posterity, a life annuity of power and popularity.