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First Woman
By Aglaurus! you have lost your wits, friends! You must be bewitched [535] to suffer this plague to belch forth insults against us all. Is there no one has any spirit at all? If not, we and our maid-servants will punish her. Run and fetch coals and let's depilate her in proper style, to teach her not to speak ill of her sex.

Mnesilochus
[540] Oh! no! not that part of me, my friends. Have we not the right to speak frankly at this gathering? And because I have uttered what I thought right in favour of Euripides, do you want to depilate me for my trouble?

First Woman
What! we ought not to punish you, who alone have dared [545] to defend the man who has done so much harm, whom it pleases to put all the vile women that ever were upon the stage, who only shows us Melanippes and Phaedras? But of Penelope he has never said a word, because she was reputed chaste and good.

Mnesilochus
I know the reason. It's because not a single [550] Penelope exists among the women of to-day, but all without exception are Phaedras.

First Woman
Women, you hear how this creature still dares to speak of us all.

Mnesilochus
And, Heaven knows, I have not said all that I know. Do you want any more?

First Woman
You cannot tell us any more; you have crapped out all you know.

Mnesilochus
[555] Why, I have not told the thousandth part of what we women do. Have I said how we use the hollow handles of our brooms to draw up wine unbeknown to our husbands?

First Woman
The cursed jade!

Mnesilochus
And how we give meats to our pimps at the feast of the Apaturia and then accuse the cat ...

First Woman
You're crazy!

Mnesilochus
[560] ... Have I mentioned the woman who killed her husband with a hatchet? Of another, who caused hers to lose his reason with her potions? And of the Acharnian woman ...

First Woman
Die, you bitch!

Mnesilochus
... who buried her father beneath the bath?

First Woman
And yet we listen to such things!

Mnesilochus
Have I told how you [565] attributed to yourself the male child your slave had just borne and gave her your little daughter?

First Woman
This insult calls for vengeance. Look out for your hair!

Mnesilochus
By Zeus! don't touch me.

First Woman
slapping him
There!

Mnesilochus
hitting back
There! tit for tat!

First Woman
Hold my cloak, Philista!

Mnesilochus
Come on then, and by Demeter ...

First Woman
Well! what?

Mnesilochus
[570] ... I'll make you crap forth the sesame-cake you have eaten.

Leader of the Chorus
Stop wrangling! I see a woman running here in hot haste. Keep silent, so that we may hear the better what she has to say.

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