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Strep.
Oh, oh, my child! Huzza! Huzza! How I am delighted at the first sight of your complexion! Now, indeed, you are, in the first place, negative and disputatious to look at, and this fashion native to the place plainly appears, the “what do you say?” and the seeming to be injured when, I well know, you are injuring and inflicting a wrong; and in your countenance there is the Attic look. Now, therefore, see that you save me, since you have also ruined me.
Phid.
What, pray, do you fear? Strep.
The Old and New. Phid.
Why, is any day old and new? Strep.
Yes; on which they say that they will make their deposits against me. Phid.
Then those that have made them will lose them; for it is not possible that two days can be one day. Strep.
Can not it? Phid.
Certainly not; unless the same woman can be both old and young at the same time. Strep.
And yet it is the law. Phid.
For they do not, I think, rightly understand what the law means. Strep.
And what does it mean? Phid.
The ancient Solon was by nature the commons' friend. Strep.
This surely is nothing whatever to the Old and New. Phid.
He therefore made the summons for two days, for the Old and New, that the deposits might be made on the first of the month. Strep.
Why, pray, did he add the old day? Phid.
In order, my good sir, that the defendants, being present a day before, might compromise the matter of their own accord; but if not, that they might be worried on the morning of the new moon. Strep.
Why, then, do the magistrates not receive the deposits on the new moon, but on the Old and New? Phid.
They seem to me to do what the forestallers do: in order that they may appreciate the deposits as soon as possible, on this account they have the first pick by one day. Strep.
(turning to the audience) Bravo! Ye wretches, why do you sit senseless, the gain of us wise men, being blocks, ciphers, mere sheep, jars heaped together, wherefore I must sing an encomium upon myself and this my son, on account of our good fortune.
Aristophanes. Clouds. The Comedies of Aristophanes. William James Hickie. London. Bohn. 1853?.
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