Peace

SCENE: A farmyard, two slaves busy beside a dungheap; afterwards, in Olympus.

FIRST SERVANT
Quick, quick, bring the dung-beetle his cake.

SECOND SERVANT
Coming, coming.

FIRST SERVANT
Give it to him, and may it kill him!

SECOND SERVANT
May he never eat a better.

FIRST SERVANT
Now give him this other one kneaded up with ass's dung.

SECOND SERVANT
There! I've done that too.

FIRST SERVANT
And where's what you gave him just now; surely he can't have devoured it yet!

SECOND SERVANT
Indeed he has; he snatched it, rolled it between his feet and bolted it.

FIRST SERVANT
Come, hurry up, knead up a lot and knead them stiffly.

SECOND SERVANT
Oh, scavengers, help me in the name of the gods, if you do not wish to see me fall down choked.

FIRST SERVANT
Come, come, another made from the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. 'Twill be to the beetle's taste; he likes it well ground.

SECOND SERVANT
There! I am free at least from suspicion; none will accuse me of tasting what I mix.

FIRST SERVANT
Faugh! come, now another! keep on mixing with all your might.

SECOND SERVANT
I' faith, no. I can stand this awful cesspool stench no longer, so I bring you the whole ill-smelling gear.

FIRST SERVANT
Pitch it down the sewer sooner, and yourself with it.

SECOND SERVANT
Maybe, one of you can tell me where I can buy a stopped-up nose, for there is no work more disgusting than to mix food for a beetle and to carry it to him. A pig or a dog will at least pounce upon our excrement without more ado, but this foul wretch affects the disdainful, the spoilt mistress, and won't eat unless I offer him a cake that has been kneaded for an entire day.... But let us open the door a bit ajar without his seeing it. Has he done eating? Come, pluck up courage, cram yourself till you burst! The cursed creature! It wallows in its food! It grips it between its claws like a wrestler clutching his opponent, and with head and feet together rolls up its paste like a rope-maker twisting a hawser. What an indecent, stinking, gluttonous beast! I know not what angry god let this monster loose upon us, but of a certainty it was neither Aphrodite nor the Graces.

FIRST SERVANT
Who was it then?

SECOND SERVANT
No doubt the Thunderer, Zeus.

FIRST SERVANT
But perhaps some spectator, some beardless youth, who thinks himself a sage, will say, "What is this? What does the beetle mean?" And then an Ionian,[1] sitting next him, will add, "I think 'tis an allusion to Cleon, who so shamelessly feeds on filth all by himself."--But now I'm going indoors to fetch the beetle a drink.

[1] 'Peace' was no doubt produced at the festival of the Apaturia, which was kept at the end of October, a period when strangers