SAUSAGE-SELLER. No, that is not it.
DEMOS. What is it then?
SAUSAGE-SELLER. 'Tis a gull with beak wide open, haranguing from the top
of a stone.[106]
DEMOS. Ah! great gods!
SAUSAGE-SELLER. What is the matter?
DEMOS. Away! away out of my sight! 'Tis not my ring he had, 'twas that of
Cleonymus. (_To the Sausage-seller_.) Hold, I give you this one; you
shall be my steward.
CLEON. Master, I adjure you, decide nothing till you have heard my
oracles.[107]
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And mine.
CLEON. If you believe him, you will have to suck his tool for him.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. If you listen to him, you'll have to let him skin your
penis to the very stump.
CLEON. My oracles say that you are to reign over the whole earth, crowned
with chaplets.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And mine say that, clothed in an embroidered purple robe,
you shall pursue Smicythes and her spouse,[108] standing in a chariot of
gold and with a crown on your head.
DEMOS. Go, fetch me your oracles, that the Paphlagonian may hear them.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. Willingly.
DEMOS. And you yours.
CLEON. I run.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And I run too; nothing could suit me better!
CHORUS. Oh! happy day for us and for our children, if Cleon perish. Yet
just now I heard some old cross-grained pleaders on the market-place who
hold not this opinion discoursing together. Said they, "If Cleon had not
had the power we should have lacked two most useful tools, the pestle and
the soup-ladle."[109] You also know what a pig's education he has had;
his school-fellows can recall that he only liked the Dorian style and
would study no other; his music-master in displeasure sent him away,
saying: "This youth in matters of harmony, will only learn the Dorian
style because 'tis akin to bribery."[110]
CLEON. There, behold and look at this heap; and yet I do not bring all.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. Ugh! I pant and puff under the weight and yet I do not
bring all.
DEMOS. What are these?
CLEON. Oracles.
DEMOS. All these?
CLEON. Does that astonish you? Why, I have another whole boxful of them.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And I the whole of my attics and two rooms besides.
DEMOS. Come, let us see, whose are these oracles?