SAUSAGE-SELLER. I denounce you for cowardice.
CLEON. I will tan your hide.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. I will flay you and make a thief's pouch with the skin.
CLEON. I will peg you out on the ground.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. I will slice you into mince-meat.
CLEON. I will tear out your eyelashes.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. I will slit your gullet.
DEMOSTHENES. We will set his mouth open with a wooden stick as the cooks
do with pigs; we will tear out his tongue, and, looking down his gaping
throat, will see whether his inside has any pimples.[46]
CHORUS. Thus then at Athens we have something more fiery than fire, more
impudent than impudence itself! 'Tis a grave matter; come, we will push
and jostle him without mercy. There, you grip him tightly under the arms;
if he gives way at the onset, you will find him nothing but a craven; I
know my man.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. That he has been all his life and he has only made
himself a name by reaping another's harvest; and now he has tied up the
ears he gathered over there, he lets them dry and seeks to sell them.[47]
CLEON. I do not fear you as long as there is a Senate and a people which
stands like a fool, gaping in the air.
CHORUS. What unparalleled impudence! 'Tis ever the same brazen front. If
I don't hate you, why, I'm ready to take the place of the one blanket
Cratinus wets;[48] I'll offer to play a tragedy by Morsimus.[49] Oh! you
cheat! who turn all into money, who flutter from one extortion to
another; may you disgorge as quickly as you have crammed yourself! Then
only would I sing, "Let us drink, let us drink to this happy event!"[50]
Then even the son of Iulius,[51] the old niggard, would empty his cup
with transports of joy, crying, "Io, Paean! Io, Bacchus!"
CLEON. By Posidon! You! would you beat me in impudence! If you succeed,
may I no longer have my share of the victims offered to Zeus on the city
altar.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And I, I swear by the blows that have so oft rained upon
my shoulders since infancy, and by the knives that have cut me, that I
will show more effrontery than you; as sure as I have rounded this fine
stomach by feeding on the pieces of bread that had cleansed other folk's
greasy fingers.[52]
CLEON. On pieces of bread, like a dog! Ah! wretch! you have the nature of
a dog and you dare to fight a cynecephalus?[53]
SAUSAGE-SELLER. I have many another trick in my sack, memories of my
childhood's days. I used to linger around the cooks and say to them,
"Look, friends, don't you see a swallow? 'tis the herald of springtime."
And while they stood, their noses in the air, I made off with a piece of
meat.
CHORUS. Oh! most clever man! How well thought out! You did as the eaters
of artichokes, you gathered them before the return of the swallows.[54]
SAUSAGE-SELLER. They could make nothing of it; or, if they suspected a
trick, I hid the meat in my breeches and denied the thing by all the
gods; so that an orator, seeing me at the game, cried, "This child will
get on; he has the mettle that makes a statesman."
CHORUS. He argued rightly; to steal, perjure yourself and make a receiver
of your rump[55] are three essentials for climbing high.
CLEON. I will stop your insolence, or rather the insolence of both of
you. I will throw myself upon you like a terrible hurricane ravaging both
land and sea at the will of its fury.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. Then I will gather up my sausages and entrust myself to
the kindly waves of fortune so as to make you all the more enraged.
DEMOSTHENES. And I will watch in the bilges in case the boat should make
water.
CLEON. No, by Demeter! I swear, 'twill not be with impunity that you have
thieved so many talents from the Athenians.[56]
CHORUS (_to the Sausage-seller_). Oh! oh! reef your sail a bit! Here is
Boreas blowing calumniously.