Page:Comedies of Aristophanes (Hickie 1853) vol1.djvu/217

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446—466.
THE WASPS.
201

feet when it was winter-time, so as not to be always shivering with cold. But in these there is not, not even in their eyes, any reverence for the old slippers.[1]

Phil. (to one of the servants.) Will you not let me go, not even now, O beast most vile? not even remembering when I found you stealing the clusters of grapes, and brought you to the olive, and cudgelled you well and manfully, so that you were an enviable object. It appears then[2] you are ungrateful. But let me go, you, and you, ere that my son run out.

Cho. You shall speedily give us proper satisfaction for these things, at no distant period; that you may know what is the disposition of men passionate, and just, and looking sour.[3]

Bbel. Beat, beat the wasps from the house, Xanthias!

Xan. Nay, I am doing so; but do you also stifle them with smoke in abundance.

Sos. Will you not fly? Will you not to the crows? Will you not depart? Beat them with the lump of wood.

Xan. And do you add Æschines, the son of Sellus, and smoke him. [The Chorus give way and retire a few steps.] I thought I should drive you away some time at length.[4]

Bbel. But, by Jove, you would not have got rid of them so easily, if they had happened to have fed on the songs of Philocles.[5]

Cho. Is it not, then,[6] self-evident to the poor, how tyranny imperceptibly seized upon me, stealing upon me? if you, laboriously-wicked,[7] you Pride-Amynias, exclude us from the

  1. ἐμϐάδων. παρὰ προσδοκίαν for δεσπότων.
  2. "Very frequently the imperfect is used, especially in construction with ἄρα, (in poetry also accented ἆρα,) to denote that the speaker now recognises the truth of a proposition, which he was not certain of before." Krüger.
  3. Properly, "looking nasturtium." So βλέπειν ϑυμϐροφάγον, Ach. 254. βλέπειν νάπυ, Eq. βλ. ὀπὸν, Pax, 1184. Cf. vs. 900, infra. Hom. Il. ii. 269.
  4. Vide Nub. 1305, ἔμελλόν σ᾽ ἆρα κινήσειν ἐγὼ
    αὐτοῖσι τροχοῖς τοῖς σοῖσι καὶ ξυνωρίσιν.

    Ran. 268, ἔμελλον ἄρα παύσειν ποθ᾽ ὑμᾶς τοῦ κοάξ.

  5. Vide Thesmoph. 168; Av. 1295. Athen. lib. ix, 867, B.,

    καὶ πῶς ἐγὼ Σθενέλου φάγοιμ᾽ ἂν ρἥματα;
    εἰς ὅξος ἐμϐαπτόμενος ἢ λεπτοὺς ἅλας.

  6. ἆρα δὲτ᾽ οὐκ αὐτόδηλα . . . λάθρα γ᾽ ἐλάμϐαν᾽ ὑπιοῦσά με; Dindorf.
  7. Cf. Lys. 350.