wearing an animal's pelt and no tunic." Do
you conceive my bent?

PISTHETAERUS I understand that you want me to offer you a tunic. Hi!
you (TO EUELPIDES), take off yours; we must help the poet.... Come, you,
take it and begone.

POET I am going, and these are the verses that I address to this city:
"Phoebus of the golden throne, celebrate this shivery, freezing city;
I have travelled through fruitful and snow-covered plains. Tralala!
Tralala!"(1)

f(1) A parody of poetic pathos, not to say bathos.

PISTHETAERUS What are you chanting us about frosts? Thanks to the tunic,
you no longer fear them. Ah! by Zeus! I could not have believed this
cursed fellow could so soon have learnt the way to our city. Come,
priest, take the lustral water and circle the altar.

PRIEST Let all keep silence!

A PROPHET Let not the goat be sacrificed.(1)

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 D