MAIDENS,
daughters
of the Megarian.
Aristophanes
Other specially comic incidents are: the scene where the two young
daughters of the famished Megarian are sold in the market at Athens as
sucking-pigs--a scene in which the convenient similarity of the Greek
words signifying a pig and the 'pudendum muliebre' respectively is
utilized in a whole string of ingenious and suggestive 'double entendres'
and ludicrous jokes; another where the Informer, or Market-Spy, is packed
up in a crate as crockery and carried off home by the Boeotian buyer.
The drama takes its title from the Chorus, composed of old men of
Acharnae.
* * * * *
THE ACHARNIANS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
DICAEOPOLIS.
HERALD.
AMPHITHEUS.
AMBASSADORS.
PSEUDARTABAS.
THEORUS.
WIFE OF DICAEOPOLIS.
DAUGHTER OF DICAEOPOLIS.
EURIPIDES.
CEPHISOPHON, servant of Euripides.
LAMACHUS.
ATTENDANT OF LAMACHUS.
A MEGARIAN.
MAIDENS, daughters of the Megarian.
A BOEOTIAN.
NICARCHUS.
A HUSBANDMAN.
A BRIDESMAID.
AN INFORMER.
MESSENGERS.
CHORUS OF ACHARNIAN ELDERS.
SCENE: The Athenian Ecclesia on the Pnyx; afterwards Dicaeopolis' house
in the country.
* * * * *
THE ACHARNIANS
DICAEOPOLIS[147] (_alone_). What cares have not gnawed at my heart and
how few have been the pleasures in my life! Four, to be exact, while my
troubles have been as countless as the grains of sand on the shore! Let
me see of what value to me have been these few pleasures? Ah! I remember
that I was delighted in soul when Cleon had to disgorge those five
talents;[148] I was in ecstasy and I love the Knights for this deed; 'it
is an honour to Greece. '[149] But the day when I was impatiently awaiting
a piece by Aeschylus,[150] what tragic despair it caused me when the
herald called, "Theognis,[151] introduce your Chorus!
