As we were preparing to come here, we were hailed by the Moon and were charged to wish joy and happiness both to the Athenians and to their allies; further, she said that she was enraged and that you treated her very shamefully, her, who does not pay you in words alone, but who renders you all real benefits.Firstly, thanks to her, you save at least a drachma each month for lights, for each, as he is leaving home at night, says, "Slave, buy no torches, for the moonlight is beautiful,"-not to name a thousand other benefits.Nevertheless you do not reckon the days correctly and your calendar is naught but confusion.Consequently the gods load her with threats each time they get home and are disappointed of their meal, because the festival has not been kept in the regular order of time.When you should be sacrificing, you are putting to the torture or administering justice.And often, we others, the gods, are fasting in token of mourning for the death of Memnon or Sarpedon, while you are devoting yourselves to joyous libations.It is for this, that last year, when the lot would have invested Hyperbolus with the duty of Amphictyon, we took his crown from him, to teach him that time must be divided according to the phases of the moon.
SOCRATES (coming out)
By Respiration, the Breath of Life! By Chaos! By the Air! I have never seen a man so gross, so inept, so stupid, so forgetful.All the little quibbles, which I teach him, he forgets even before he has learnt them.Yet I will not give it up, I will make him come out here into the open air.Where are you, Strepsiades? Come, bring your couch out here.
1But the bugs will not allow me to bring it.
SOCRATES
Have done with such nonsense! place it there and pay attention.
STREPSIADES (coming out, with the bed)
Well, here I am.
SOCRATES
Good! Which science of all those you have never been taught, do you wish to learn first? The measures, the rhythms or the verses?
STREPSIADES
Why, the measures; the flour dealer cheated me out of two choenixes the other day.
SOCRATES
It's not about that I ask you, but which, according to you, is the best measure, the trimeter or the tetrameter?
STREPSIADES
The one I prefer is the semisextarius.
SOCRATES
You talk nonsense, my good fellow.
STREPSIADES
I will wager your tetrameter is the semisextarius.
SOCRATES
Plague seize the dunce and the fool! Come, perchance you will learn the rhythms quicker.
STREPSIADES
Will the rhythms supply me with food?
SOCRATES
First they will help you to be pleasant in company, then to know what is meant by enhoplian rhythm and what by the dactylic.
STREPSIADES
Of the dactyl? I know that quite well.
SOCRATES
What is it then, other than this finger here?
STREPSIADES
Formerly, when a child, I used this one.
SOCRATES
You are as low-minded as you are stupid.
STREPSIADES
But, wretched man, I do not want to learn all this.
SOCRATES
Then what do you want to know?
STREPSIADES
Not that, not that, but the art of false reasoning.
SOCRATES
But you must first learn other things.Come, what are the male quadrupeds?
STREPSIADES
Oh! I know the males thoroughly.Do you take me for a fool then?
The ram, the buck, the bull, the dog, the pigeon.
SOCRATES
Do you see what you are doing; is not the female pigeon called the same as the male?
STREPSIADES
How else? Come now!
SOCRATES
How else? With you then it's pigeon and pigeon!
STREPSIADES
That's right, by Posidon! but what names do you want me to give them?
SOCRATES
Term the female pigeonnette and the male pigeon.
STREPSIADES
Pigeonnette! hah! by the Air! That's splendid! for that lesson bring out your kneading-trough and I will fill him with flour to the brim.
SOCRATES
There you are wrong again; you make trough masculine and it should be feminine.
STREPSIADES
What? if I say, him, do I make the trough masculine?
SOCRATES
Assuredly! would you not say him for Cleonymus?
STREPSIADES
Well?
SOCRATES
Then trough is of the same gender as Cleonymus?
STREPSIADES
My good man! Cleonymus never had a kneading-trough; he used a round mortar for the purpose.But come, tell me what I should say!
SOCRATES
For trough you should say her as you would for Soctrate.
STREPSIADES
Her?
SOCRATES
In this manner you make it truly female.
STREPSIADES
That's it! Her for trough and her for Cleonymus.
SOCRATE,"
Now I must teach you to distinguish the masculine proper names from those that are feminine.
STREPSIADES
Ah! I know the female names well.
SOCRATES
Name some then.
STREPSIADES
Lysilla, Philinna, Clitagora, Demetria.
SOCRATES
And what are masculine names?
STREPSIADES
They are are countless-Philoxenus, Melesias, Amynias.
SOCRATES
But, wretched man, the last two are not masculine.
STREPSIADES
You do not count them as masculine?
SOCRATES
Not at all.If you met Amynias, how would you hail him?
STREPSIADES
How? Why, I should shout, "Hi, there, Amynia!
SOCRATES
Do you see? it's a female name that you give him.
STREPSIADES
And is it not rightly done, since he refuses military service? But what use is there in learning what we all know?
SOCRATES
You know nothing about it.Come, lie down there.
STREPSIADES
What for?
SOCRATES
Ponder awhile over matters that interest you.
STREPSIADES
Oh! I pray you, not there but, if I must lie down and ponder, let me lie on the ground.
SOCRATES
That's out of the question.Come! on the couch!
STREPSIADES (as he lies down)
What cruel fate! What a torture the bugs will this day put me to!
(Socrates turns aside.)
CHORUS (singing)
Ponder and examine closely, gather your thoughts together, let your mind turn to every side of things; if you meet with a difficulty, spring quickly to some other idea; above all, keep your eyes away from all gentle sleep.
STREPSIADES (singing)
Ow, Wow, Wow, Wow is me!
CHORUS (singing)
What ails you? why do you cry so?
STREPSIADES
Oh! I am a dead man! Here are these cursed Corinthians advancing upon me from all corners of the couch; they are biting me, they are gnawing at my sides, they are drinking all my blood, they are yanking of my balls, they are digging into my arse, they are killing me!
