Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae
Eugene O'Neill, Jr., Ed.

Blepyrus
Then if I went now, I should get nothing.

Chremes
No, certainly not, [390] nor even had you gone at the second cock-crow.

Blepyrus
Oh! what a misfortune! “Oh, Antilochus! no triobolus! Even death would be better! I am undone!” But what [395] can have attracted such a crowd at that early hour?

Chremes
The Prytanes started the discussion of measures closely concerning the safety of the state; immediately, that blear-eyed fellow, the son of Neoclides, was the first to mount the platform. Then the folk shouted with their loudest voice, [400] “What! he dares to speak, and that, too, when the safety of the state is concerned, and he a man who has not known how to save even his own eyebrows!” He, however, shouted louder than all of them, and looking at them asked, “Why, what ought I to have done?”

Blepyrus
Pound together garlic and laserpitium juice, [405] add to this mixture some Laconian spurge, and rub it well into the eyelids at night. That's what I should have answered, had I been there.

Chremes
After him that clever rascal Evaeon began to speak; he was naked, so far as we all could see, [410] but he declared he had a cloak; he propounded the most popular, the most democratic, doctrines. “You see,” he said, “I have the greatest need of sixteen drachmae, the cost of a new cloak, my health demands it; nevertheless I wish first to care for that of my fellow-citizens and of my country. [415] If the fullers were to supply tunics to the indigent at the approach of winter, none would be exposed to pleurisy. Let him who has neither beds nor coverlets go to sleep [420] at the tanners' after taking a bath; and if they shut the door in winter, let them be condemned to give him three goat-skins.”

Blepyrus
By Dionysus, a fine, a very fine notion! Not a soul will vote against his proposal, especially if he adds that the flour-sellers must supply the poor with three [425] measures of corn, or else suffer the severest penalties of the law; this is the only way Nausicydes can be of any use to us.

Chremes
Then we saw a handsome young man rush into the tribune, he was all pink and white like young Nicias, and he began to say [430] that the direction of matters should be entrusted to the women; this the crowd of shoemakers began applauding with all their might, while the country-folk assailed him with groans.

Blepyrus
And, indeed, they did well.