Xanthias.
I always liked to follow some one else:
Suppose we join and dance?
Dionysus.
Why, so say I.
[They join the Dance.
Hierophant.
[These verses satirise Archedêmus, the politician, who has never succeeded in making out a clear Athenian pedigree for himself; Cleisthenes, who went into mourning for imaginary relatives lost at Arginusae; and Callias, the lady-killer, who professed a descent from Heracles, and wore a lion-skin in token thereof.
Perhaps 'twill best beseem us
To deal with Archedêmus,
Who is toothless still and rootless, at seven years from birth:
Chorus.
Yet he leads the public preachers
Of those poor dead upper creatures,
And is prince of all the shadiness on earth!
Hierophant.
And Cleisthenes, says rumour,
In a wild despairing humour
Sits huddled up and tearing out his hair among the graves.
