Page:The Eleven Comedies (1912) Vol 1.djvu/253

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Enough, enough, my dear; now let us all drink in turn to cement our friendship.

Hark! what do those cries mean?

’Tis what I was telling you; the women have just occupied the Acropolis. So now, Lampito, do you return to Sparta to organize the plot, while your comrades here remain as hostages. For ourselves, let us away to join the rest in the citadel, and let us push the bolts well home.

But don’t you think the men will march up against us?

I laugh at them. Neither threats nor flames shall force our doors; they shall open only on the conditions I have named.

Yes, yes, by the goddess of love! let us keep up our old-time repute for obstinacy and spite.

Go easy, Draces, go easy; why, your shoulder is all chafed by these plaguey heavy olive stocks. But forward still, forward, man, as needs must. What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life! Ah! Strymodorus, who would ever have thought it? Here we have the women, who used, for our misfortune, to eat our bread and live in our houses, daring nowadays to lay hands on