No More Learning

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
ropemaker 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,[263] 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.

SECOND SERVANT.