Page:The Eleven Comedies (1912) Vol 1.djvu/197

Rh

There is yet another question she has just put to me. Who rules now in the rostrum?

’Tis Hyperbolus, who now holds empire on the Pnyx. (To Peace.) What now? you turn away your head!

She is vexed, that the people should give themselves a wretch of that kind for their chief.

Oh! we shall not employ him again; but the people, seeing themselves without a leader, took him haphazard, just as a man, who is naked, springs upon the first cloak he sees.

She asks, what will be the result of such a choice of the city?

We shall be more far-seeing in consequence.

And why?

Because he is a lamp-maker. Formerly we only directed our business by groping in the dark; now we shall only deliberate by lamplight.

Oh! oh! what questions she does order me to put to you!

What are they?

She wants to have news of a whole heap of old-fashioned things she left here. First of all, how is Sophocles?