f(1) Which the priest was preparing to sacrifice.
PISTHETAERUS Who are you?
PROPHET Who am I? A prophet.
PISTHETAERUS Get you gone.
PROPHET Wretched man, insult not sacred things. For there is an oracle
of Bacis, which exactly applies to Nephelococcygia.
PISTHETAERUS Why did you not reveal it to me before I founded my city?
PROPHET The divine spirit was against it.
PISTHETAERUS Well, 'tis best to know the terms of the oracle.
PROPHET "But when the wolves and the white crows shall dwell together
between Corinth and Sicyon..."
PISTHETAERUS But how do the Corinthians concern me?
PROPHET 'Tis the regions of the air that Bacis indicated in this manner.
"They must first sacrifice a white-fleeced goat to Pandora, and give the
prophet, who first reveals my words, a good cloak and new sandals."
PISTHETAERUS Are the sandals there?
PROPHET Read. "And besides this a goblet of wine and a good share of the
entrails of the victim."
PISTHETAERUS Of the entrails--is it so written?
PROPHET Read. "If you do as I command, divine youth, you shall be an
eagle among the clouds; if not, you shall be neither turtle-dove, nor
eagle, nor woodpecker."
PISTHETAERUS Is all that there?
PROPHET Read.
PISTHETAERUS This oracle in no sort of way resembles the one Apollo
dictated to me: "If an impostor comes without invitation to annoy you
during the sacrifice and to demand a share of the victim, apply a stout
stick to his ribs."
PROPHET You are drivelling.
PISTHETAERUS "And don't spare him, were he an eagle from out of the
clouds, were it Lampon(1) himself or the great Diopithes."(2)
f(1) Noted Athenian diviner, who, when the power was still shared
between Thucydides and Pericles, predicted that it would soon be centred
in the hands of the latter; his ground for this prophecy was the sight
of a ram with a single horn.
f(2) No doubt another Athenian diviner, and possibly the same person
whom Aristophanes names in 'The Knights' and 'The Wasps' as being a
thief.
PROPHET Is all that there?
PISTHETAERUS Here, read it yourself, and go and hang yourself.
PROPHET Oh! unfortunate wretch that I am.
PISTHETAERUS Away with you, and take your prophecies elsewhere.
METON(1) I have come to you.
f(1) A celebrated geometrician and astronomer.
PISTHETAERUS Yet another pest! What have you come to do? What's your
plan? What's the purpose of your journey? Why these splendid buskins?
METON I want to survey the plains of the air for you and to parcel them
into lots.
PISTHETAERUS In the name of the gods, who are you?