STREPS. What! Vortex? that's something I own. I knew not before, that Zeus was no more, but Vortex was placed on his throne! But I have not yet heard to what cause you referred the thunder's majestical roar. SOCR. Yes, 'tis they, when on high full of water they fly, and then, as I told you before, By compression impelled, as they clash, are compelled a terrible clatter to make. STREPS. Come, how can that be? I really don't see. SOCR. Yourself as my proof I will take. Have you never then ate the broth puddings you get when the Panathenaea come round, And felt with what might your bowels all night in turbulent tumult resound STREPS. By Apollo, 'tis true, there's a mighty to do, and my belly keeps rumbling about; And the puddings begin to clatter within and to kick up a wonderful rout: Quite gently at first, papapax, papapax, but soon papappappax away, Till at last, I'll be bound, I can thunder as loud papapappappappappax as they. SOCR. Shalt thou then a sound so loud and profound from thy belly diminutive send, And shall not the high and the infinite sky go thundering on without end? For both, you will find, on an impulse of wind and similar causes depend. STREPS. Well, but tell me from whom comes the bolt through the gloom, with its awful and terrible flashes; And wherever it turns, some it singes and burns, and some it reduces to ashes: For this 'tis quite plain, let who will send the rain, that Zeus against perjurers dashes SOCR. And how, you old fool, of a dark-ages school, and an antidiluvian wit, If the perjured they strike, and not all men alike, have they never Cleonymus hit? Then of Simon again, and Theorus explain: known perjurers, yet they escape. But he smites his own shrine with these arrows divine, and "Sunium, Attica's cape," And the ancient gnarled oaks: now what prompted those strokes? They never forswore I should say. STREPS. Can't say that they do: your words appear true. Whence comes then the thunderbolt, pray?