Page:The Eleven Comedies (1912) Vol 1.djvu/186

182 Hermes, the Liberator; you will be loaded with benefits of every kind, and to start with, I offer you this cup for libations as your first present.

Ah! how golden cups do influence me! Come, friends, get to work. To the pit quickly, pick in hand and drag away the stones.

We go, but you, the cleverest of all the gods, supervise our labours; tell us, good workman as you are, what we must do; we shall obey your orders with alacrity.

Quick, reach me your cup, and let us preface our work by addressing prayers to the gods.

Oh! sacred, sacred libations! Keep silence, oh! ye people! keep silence!

Let us offer our libations and our prayers, so that this day may begin an era of unalloyed happiness for Greece and that he who has bravely pulled at the rope with us may never resume his buckler.

Aye, may we pass our lives in peace, caressing our mistresses and poking the fire.

May he who would prefer the war, oh Dionysus, be ever drawing barbed arrows out of his elbows.

If there be a citizen, greedy for military rank and honours, who refuses, oh, divine Peace! to restore you to daylight, may he behave as cowardly as Cleonymus on the battlefield.