Bdel. Push the ass and yourself into the house.
Phil. O fellow-dicasts, and Cleon, assist me. [Exit Philocleon with the ass.]
Bdel. Bawl within, now the door has been shut. Do you shove many stones against the door, and thrust in the peg again into the bar, and put the great kneading-trough against the beam, and roll it quickly against it. [Exit Bdelycleon.]
Sos. (scratching his head and looking towards the roof). Ah me, wretched man! Whence in the world has the little clod fallen upon me?
Xan. Perhaps from above a mouse has cast it upon you from some quarter.
Sos. A mouse! No, by Jove, but some roof-haunting Heliast here, creeping from under the tiles.
Xan. (spying Philocleon upon the roof). Ah me, miserable! the man is becoming a sparrow: he will fly off. Where, where is the net? Shoo,[1] shoo! shoo, back again! [Re-enter Bdelycleon: Philocleon retires again.]
Bdel. By Jove, in truth it were better for me to keep guard over Scione,[2] instead of this my father.
Sos. Come now, since we have scared him away, and since it is not possible that he can ever give us the slip without our perceiving it, why don't we lie down[3] only a little bit?
Bdel. Nay, you wretch, his fellow-dicasts will come ere long, to summon this my father.
Sos. What do you say? Nay, it is now early dawn.[4]
Bdel. Yes, by Jove; for they have got up late to-day; since they always summon him at mid-night, with lamps in their hands, and humming dear old songs from Phrynichus' Phœnissae,[5] with which they summon him.
- ↑ Imperative of σοῦμαι, used as an exclamation to scare away birds.
- ↑ In Pallene. Vide Cramer's Greece, vol. i. p. 248. It revolted in favour of Brasidas from Athens; was besieged and retaken by Cleon, when, by order of the Athenian people, all the men were put to death, and the women and children reduced to slavery; the town was then given to the Platæans who had survived the ruin of their own city. Thucyd. lib. v. 32. Compare a very similar line in Eccles. 145.
- ↑ Vide Elmsl. ad Heraclid. vs. 805. Harper's Powers of the Greek Tenses, p. 41. Krüger, Gr. Gr. § 53, 6, obs. 2. Cf. Lys. 181.
- ↑ From this, and many other passages, we find that Salmasius "de Linguâ Hellenisticâ," was under an error when he said this word did not occur in approved classic authors.
- ↑ See Bentley's Phal. p. 263.
