No More Learning

BDELYCLEON. Hold! A truce to all blows and brawling! Had we not better
confer together and come to some understanding?

CHORUS. Confer with you, the people's foe! with you, a royalist, the
accomplice of Brasidas! [61] with you, who wear woollen fringes on your
cloak and let your beard grow!

BDELYCLEON. Ah! it were better to separate altogether from my father than
to steer my boat daily through such stormy seas!

CHORUS. Oh! you have but reached the parsley and the rue, to use the
common saying. [62] What you are suffering is nothing!
but welcome the
hour when the advocate shall adduce all these same arguments against you
and shall summon your accomplices to give witness.

BDELYCLEON. In the name of the gods! withdraw or we shall fight you the
whole day long.

CHORUS. No, not as long as I retain an atom of breath. Ha! your desire is
to tyrannize over us!

BDELYCLEON. Everything is now tyranny with us, no matter what is
concerned, whether it be large or small. Tyranny! I have not heard the
word mentioned once in fifty years, and now it is more common than
salt-fish, the word is even current on the market. If you are buying
gurnards and don't want anchovies, the huckster next door, who is selling
the latter, at once exclaims, "That is a man, whose kitchen savours of
tyranny! " If you ask for onions to season your fish, the green-stuff
woman winks one eye and asks, "Ha! you ask for onions! are you seeking to
tyrannize, or do you think that Athens must pay you your seasonings as a
tribute?