Page:Acharnians and two other plays (1909).djvu/73

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Both Lamachus and the Gorgon family. Lam. Bring forth my trusty breastplate for the fight. Dic. Bring forth the lusty goblet, my delight! Lam. I'll charge with this, accoutred every limb. Dic. I'll charge with this, a bumper to the brim. Lam. Boys, strap the shield and bedding in a pack!

I'll bear myself my knapsack on my back. Dic. Boy, strap the basket with my feasting mess;

While I just step within to change my dress. Lam. Come, boy, take up my shield, and trudge away.

It snows!—Good lack; we've wintry work to-day. Dic. Boy, take the basket. Jolly work, I say.

[Exeunt severally.

Go your ways in sundry wise,

Each upon his enterprise.

One determined to carouse,

With a garland on his brows,

And a comely lass beside him.

His opponent forth hath hied him,

Resolute to pass the night,

In a military plight,

Undelighted and alone;

Starving, wheezing,

Sneezing, freezing,

With his head upon a stone.

The action of the stage, and even all allusion to it, are suspended during the following songs, which serve to afford an interval of dramatic time during which Dicæopolis may be supposed to have returned from his feast, and Lamachus from his expedition. The Chorus remain in possession of the stage, and of their primitive privilege of desultory individual satire. The latter is directed against Antimachus, who, it seems, had given offence to the dramatic powers by the scantiness of his entertainments. I do not know whether it would be refining too much to observe that even this capricious sally harmonises with what has preceded, as well as with the interval which is supposed to elapse; by the culinary images in the first part, and by the description of a person returning home late at night, in the second. Some circumstances in the original are omitted in the translation, as they seem intended to account for what does not appear unaccountable to a modern; namely, that a man should walk home at night without a stick. In the passage which immediately follows, the Chorus commence their remonstrance in a calm sober tone which they are unable to maintain. This effect is produced in the original, by the quiet prosaic methodical form of words by which Antimachus is designated—a nicety of tone which it was impossible to attain or at least to render obvious in a translation.