PHILOCLEON. Will you let me go, you accursed animal? Don't you remember the day when I surprised you stealing the grapes; I tied you to an olive-tree and I cut open your bottom with such vigorous lashes that folks thought you had been pedicated. Get away, you are ungrateful. But let go of me, and you too, before my son comes up. CHORUS. You shall repay us for all this and 'twill not be long first. Tremble at our ferocious glance; you shall taste our just anger. BDELYCLEON. Strike! strike, Xanthias! Drive these wasps away from the house. XANTHIAS. That's just what I am doing; but do you smoke them out thoroughly too. SOSIAS. You will not go? The plague seize you! Will you not clear off? Xanthias, strike them with your stick! XANTHIAS. And you, to smoke them out better, throw Aeschinus, the son of Selartius, on the fire. Ah! we were bound to drive you off in the end. BDELYCLEON. Eh! by Zeus! you would not have put them to flight so easily if they had fed on the verses of Philocles. CHORUS. It is clear to all the poor that tyranny has attacked us sorely. Proud emulator of Amynias, you, who only take pleasure in doing ill, see how you are preventing us from obeying the laws of the city; you do not even seek a pretext or any plausible excuse, but claim to rule alone. 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?" XANTHIAS. Yesterday I went to see a gay girl about noon and suggested she should mount and ride me; she flew into a rage, pretending I wanted to restore the tyranny of Hippias.[63]