celebrate happy
Nephelococcygia
in your hymns.
Aristophanes
.
.
PISTHETAERUS. Stop! stop! you drive me crazy with your endless list. Why,
wretch, to what sacred feast are you inviting the vultures and the
sea-eagles? Don't you see that a single kite could easily carry off the
lot at once? Begone, you and your fillets and all; I shall know how to
complete the sacrifice by myself.
PRIEST. It is imperative that I sing another sacred chant for the rite of
the lustral water, and that I invoke the immortals, or at least one of
them, provided always that you have some suitable food to offer him; from
what I see here, in the shape of gifts, there is naught whatever but horn
and hair.
PISTHETAERUS. Let us address our sacrifices and our prayers to the winged
gods.
A POET. Oh, Muse!
celebrate happy Nephelococcygia in your hymns.
PISTHETAERUS. What have we here? Where do you come from, tell me? Who are
you?
POET. I am he whose language is sweeter than honey, the zealous slave of
the Muses, as Homer has it.
PISTHETAERUS. You a slave! and yet you wear your hair long?
POET. No, but the fact is all we poets are the assiduous slaves of the
Muses according to Homer.
PISTHETAERUS. In truth your little cloak is quite holy too through zeal!
But, poet, what ill wind drove you here?
POET.
PISTHETAERUS. Stop! stop! you drive me crazy with your endless list. Why,
wretch, to what sacred feast are you inviting the vultures and the
sea-eagles? Don't you see that a single kite could easily carry off the
lot at once? Begone, you and your fillets and all; I shall know how to
complete the sacrifice by myself.
PRIEST. It is imperative that I sing another sacred chant for the rite of
the lustral water, and that I invoke the immortals, or at least one of
them, provided always that you have some suitable food to offer him; from
what I see here, in the shape of gifts, there is naught whatever but horn
and hair.
PISTHETAERUS. Let us address our sacrifices and our prayers to the winged
gods.
A POET. Oh, Muse!
celebrate happy Nephelococcygia in your hymns.
PISTHETAERUS. What have we here? Where do you come from, tell me? Who are
you?
POET. I am he whose language is sweeter than honey, the zealous slave of
the Muses, as Homer has it.
PISTHETAERUS. You a slave! and yet you wear your hair long?
POET. No, but the fact is all we poets are the assiduous slaves of the
Muses according to Homer.
PISTHETAERUS. In truth your little cloak is quite holy too through zeal!
But, poet, what ill wind drove you here?
POET.
