A person exercising this lofty vocation is now seen approaching and is eagerly hailed, as sent at this moment by the especial favour of the gods. Their fated deliverer, however, is a modest man, and cannot easily be led to believe the high destiny that awaits him. I am a sausage–seller, he says; how should I become a man? Demosthenes assures him that the qualities belonging to his profession—impudence and cheating—are precisely those to which his greatness is to be owing: but still failing to overcome his scruples, he is led to suspect the sausage–seller of the unpardonable fault of having some taint of gentility in his extraction. Satisfied on this point, he proceeds to expound the oracles. The incipient statesman yields to their predictions, and readily receives instructions for his public life. “The oracles indeed do flatter me; but I wonder how I shall be able to take charge of the people.” The answer is addressed to his professional experience. _Dem._ Nought easier: model you upon your trade. Deal with the people as with sausages— Twist, implicate, embroil; nothing will hurt So you but make your court to Demus, cheating And soothing him with terms of kitchen science; All other public talents are your own: Your voice is strong, your liver white, and you are O’ the market—say, could Diffidence ask more To claim the reins of state? _Mitchell_, p. 180. Cleon now comes on the stage, with the usual cry, “The commonwealth is in danger,” and is immediately followed by the Chorus, who attack him in an indignant burst, which defies translation. A long scene of abuse and recrimination follows for near three hundred lines, in the course of which every art and trade is made to contribute to the contest of abuse, till Cleon at length accuses his rival of having received ten talents as a bribe. “What then,” he replies, “will you take one of them to hold your tongue?” “That he will, and gladly,” replies the Chorus: “see, the wind is going down already.” The satire was the keener, because Cleon had recently been fined five talents on a conviction for bribery.[96] At length, being somewhat worsted, he leaves the stage, with the threat of denouncing to the council “the nightly meetings in the city, and conspiracies with the Medes and Bœotians,” in which his tormentors are engaged. The sausage–seller follows to countermine him, and the stage is left clear for the Parabasis, or customary address of the Chorus to the audience. This was generally unconnected with the play, and served as an opportunity for the author to deliver his sentiments upon all things and all people. It was chiefly satirical, but in Aristophanes is usually intermixed with passages of a highly poetical cast, which strike the more from being introduced by a change in the metre. We cannot shorten or garble it, and the passage is too long, and would be too unintelligible, to be given entire.[97] At the close of it, the sausage–seller returns, to acquaint his anxious