CLEON. Hah! the fine speaker! Truly, if some business matter fell your way, you would know thoroughly well how to attack it, to carve it up alive! Shall I tell you what has happened to you? Like so many others, you have gained some petty lawsuit against some alien.[42] Did you drink enough water to inspire you? Did you mutter over the thing sufficiently through the night, spout it along the street, recite it to all you met? Have you bored your friends enough with it? 'Tis then for this you deem yourself an orator. Ah! poor fool! SAUSAGE-SELLER. And what do you drink yourself then, to be able all alone by yourself to dumbfound and stupefy the city so with your clamour? CLEON. Can you match me with a rival? Me! When I have devoured a good hot tunny-fish and drunk on top of it a great jar of unmixed wine, I hold up the Generals of Pylos to public scorn. SAUSAGE-SELLER. And I, when I have bolted the tripe of an ox together with a sow's belly and swallowed the broth as well, I am fit, though slobbering with grease, to bellow louder than all orators and to terrify Nicias. CHORUS. I admire your language so much; the only thing I do not approve is that you swallow all the broth yourself. CLEON. E'en though you gorged yourself on sea-dogs, you would not beat the Milesians. SAUSAGE-SELLER. Give me a bullock's breast to devour, and I am a man to traffic in mines.[43] CLEON. I will rush into the Senate and set them all by the ears. SAUSAGE-SELLER. And I will lug out your gut to stuff like a sausage. CLEON. As for me, I will seize you by the rump and hurl you head foremost through the door. CHORUS. In any case, by Posidon, 'twill only be when you have thrown _me_ there first.[44] CLEON. Beware of the carcan![45] SAUSAGE-SELLER. I denounce you for cowardice. CLEON. I will tan your hide. SAUSAGE-SELLER. I will flay you and make a thief's pouch with the skin. CLEON. I will peg you out on the ground. SAUSAGE-SELLER. I will slice you into mince-meat. CLEON. I will tear out your eyelashes. SAUSAGE-SELLER. I will slit your gullet. DEMOSTHENES. We will set his mouth open with a wooden stick as the cooks do with pigs; we will tear out his tongue, and, looking down his gaping throat, will see whether his inside has any pimples.[46] CHORUS. Thus then at Athens we have something more fiery than fire, more impudent than impudence itself! 'Tis a grave matter; come, we will push and jostle him without mercy. There, you grip him tightly under the arms; if he gives way at the onset, you will find him nothing but a craven; I know my man. SAUSAGE-SELLER. That he has been all his life and he has only made himself a name by reaping another's harvest; and now he has tied up the ears he gathered over there, he lets them dry and seeks to sell them.[47] CLEON. I do not fear you as long as there is a Senate and a people which stands like a fool, gaping in the air.