by Aristophanes
SAUSAGEMAN: Scumbag, get out of mine.
PAPHLAGON: Ah, Demos, sir! I’ve been sitting here
for thousands of years—and all in vain
just to be your special attaché.
SAUSAGEMAN: And I’ve been sticking around
for a thousand thousand thousand . . . more than a billion.
DEMOS: Me? I’ve been kicking my heels for more than a zillion
and getting thoroughly bored with both of you.
SAUSAGEMAN: D’you know what you should do?
DEMOS: I know that if I don’t you’re going to tell me.
SAUSAGEMAN: Line us up at the post, that jerk and me,
and see which of us reaches you first to serve you.
SAUSAGEMAN AND PAPHLAGON: Ready, steady . . .
DEMOS: Go!
[SAUSAGEMAN and PAPHLAGON race towards the house.]
SAUSAGEMAN: Hey, he’s crossing my tracks!
DEMOS: They’re both so infatuated with me
that if I play it right I’m going to be mighty happy.
[SAUSAGEMAN and PAPHLAGON have reached the house and come back, each carrying something.]
PAPHLAGON: See, I’m first back,
bringing a stool for you.
SAUSAGEMAN: But no table. I’m first with that.
PAPHLAGON: Look, and here’s a cake
made with flour from Pylos.
SAUSAGEMAN: And here’s a brioche shaped and baked
by the ivory hand of the goddess.
DEMOS: With an elephantine touch, no doubt, dear Goddess.174
PAPHLAGON: Here’s a really savory pea soup stirred by the goddess
at Pylos.
SAUSAGEMAN: What I see with my own eyes, Demos,
is the goddess showing her care for you
by holding a pot of beef tea over your head.
DEMOS: I’m not surprised. How else could our city have survived
if she hadn’t done this in public view?
PAPHLAGON: This piece of fish is for Pallas-Striker-of-Armies-Dead.
SAUSAGEMAN: And for Pallas Athena-Strong-as-her-Dad175
is this beef Stroganoff, tripe, and belly of pork.
DEMOS: I expect she’s thanking us for the robe we gave her.176
PAPHLAGON: The Lady-of-the-Horrible-Helmet says you ought
to eat these specialities I’ve brought:
they’ll help our rowers to row better.
SAUSAGEMAN: Take these, too.
DEMOS: What do I do with all this stuff and the belly of pork?
PAPHLAGON: They’re for the triremes. The goddess has sent them to you
to show how much she cares. . . .
Here, have a drink: mixed a pint-and-a-half to a quart.177
Cheers!
DEMOS: [drinking] Good stuff, by Zeus!
Especially the pint-and-a-half.
SAUSAGEMAN: It darn well ought to be nice:
Athena-the-Whacker whacked it into a quaff.
PAPHLAGON: What about a slice of cake—first-class?
A present from me.
SAUSAGEMAN: And as a present from me, the whole cake.
PAPHLAGON: But you can’t get a hare for him—I can.
SAUSAGEMAN: [to himself ] Blast and damn!
Where do I get a hare from? Think,
soul, think! It’s time for a brain wave.
PAPHLAGON: [displaying a hare] Take a good look at it, you dumb cluck!
SAUSAGEMAN: To hell with it! The hare you can have
because here come ambassadors laden with silver
and wanting to see me.
PAPHLAGON: [dropping the hare] Where? Where?
SAUSAGEMAN: Why should you care?
You shouldn’t be messing with aliens.
[He picks up the hare.]
Dear little Demos, the hare’s for you—from me.
PAPHLAGON: What cheek! He’s filched my hare—most unfairly.
SAUSAGEMAN: I’m just doing what you did at Pylos
with the Lacedaemonians.178
PAPHLAGON: Lord above, I’m no match for his brass and glibness!
SAUSAGEMAN: Demos, why don’t you make up your mind about us?
Which is the better man for you and for your belly?
DEMOS: Then what kind of decision d’you think the audience
would consider snappy?
SAUSAGEMAN: Not another word!
Just pick up my basket
and see what’s inside.
Same with Paphlagon’s. . . . Cheer up! You’ll guess it right!
DEMOS: [opening SAUSAGEMAN’s basket] Yes, let’s see what’s inside.
SAUSAGEMAN: As you can see for yourself, Daddykins, it’s empty.
Why? Because I brought everything to the table.
DEMOS: Generosity itself—after my own heart!
SAUSAGEMAN: Now come and see what Paphlagon’s hoarded
in his.
DEMOS: Good heavens, it’s stuffed with goodies—
all for himself to gobble.
And think of the measly slice of cake he cut for me!
SAUSAGEMAN: It’s what he’s been doing all the time:
chucking a pittance your way
and heaping himself a mammoth pile.
DEMOS: You perishing sod, robbing me in broad day
when I was garlanding you and heaping you with presents!
PAPHLAGON: I only robbed for the public good.
DEMOS: Off with that wreath! I’m putting it on him.
SAUSAGEMAN: Right now, you scum!
PAPHLAGON: I won’t. I have a Pythian prediction that warrants
it’ll be clearly understood
who is to get the better of me.
SAUSAGEMAN: Namely, me. Quite clearly!
PAPHLAGON: If that’s so, I’ll have to question you
to see if you fit the prophecy.
May I ask what school you went to as a boy?
SAUSAGEMAN: The School of Hard-knocks-and-knuckles.
PAPHLAGON: No? Don’t say it! There’s a worry growing in my soul
about the oracle.
What were the holds you learned at the wrestling school?
SAUSAGEMAN: How to swear black and blue that I didn’t pinch a
thing.
PAPHLAGON: “Phoebus Apollo Lord of Lycia,
what art thou doing to me?”179
And when you grew up what was your career?
SAUSAGEMAN: Selling sausages and buggery.
PAPHLAGON: Well, I’m jiggered! “Any hope that I shall make the shore is waning.”180 Tell me, did you sell your sausages in the market square or at the city gates?
SAUSAGEMAN: At the city gates where the salted fish is sold.
PAPHLAGON: Dear me, that’s what I figured!
The god’s dread prophecy’s being fulfilled.
Wheel me within, me, this man of fate.
I leave. Goodbye to my crown!
Though that is not what I would have willed.
“Some other man will take you for his own:
No worse a thief perhaps than me but more fortunate.”181
[PAPHLAGON throws his crown to SAUSAGEMAN, then faints and is wheeled away on the eccyclema.]182
SAUSAGEMAN: Great Zeus of Greece be praised, the fight is won!
DEMOSTHENES: [appearing in the doorway]
Yes indeed! Congratulations to the champion!
But don’t forget I helped you to succeed,
and in return there is a trifle I would ask:
that you make me your notary the way Phanus was to Cleon
and that I be seated on your woolsack.¶
DEMOS: [to SAUSAGEMAN] Your name, please.
SAUSAGEMAN: Mark Inplace, because I learned my profession
in the marketplace.
DEMOS: Then I put myself in your charge, Mark Inplace,
and make you my Paphlagon.
SAUSAGEMAN: Me, Demos, you can depend upon. You’ll never find another man in Athens to surpass me, or a smarter, streetwiser smart
-arse.
[DEMOS and SAUSAGEMAN go into the house.]
STROPHE
CHORUS: The song of the charioteers
With their thundering horses
Begins and ends without jeers
At Lysistratus183 or by endorsing
Fun to be had with Humantis,184
Who’s homeless and hungry, or taunt his
Continually pouring out tears.
How he clings to your quiver, Apollo,
In the holy seat of the Pytho‡
Begging to be less hollow.
LEADER: There’s nothing shameful in showing up the shameful.
It’s a good foil for showing up the good,
though I shouldn’t have to add
a bad name to a man already bad
or contrast him with a friend of mine who’s careful.
And when it comes to music, I know the bad from good
and can tell an Arignotus from his brother Ariphrades.§
They couldn’t be more different: Ariphrades is slimy;
But he isn’t mere slimy, or I might have passed him by;
He’s gone much further and given “slimy” quite a new
dimension with shameful tricks like licking up the dew
in brothels till he sullies
his beard and upsets the hot-stuff ladies . . .
like a horny Polymnestus or Oenichus his crony.185
Anyone who doesn’t hate the guts of such a man
shan’t ever share a cup with me again.
ANTISTROPHE
CHORUS: So often in dead of night
Submerged in buried thought
I’ve asked myself how on earth
Does that Cleonymus manage
To wangle himself a bite?
They say, to tell you the truth,
He hangs about in the ménage
Of the rich, and round their trough
And though they beg him to beat it
They never can get him off.
LEADER: Apparently our triremes met the other day
and a senior dame was heard to say:
“Ladies, aren’t any of you bothered by what’s going on in the city?
Rumor has it that somebody,
in fact that crabbed old Hyperbolus,186
has proposed that a hundred of us
be sent on an expedition to Carthage.
We triremes were shocked at this
and declared it was an outrage.
Then a virgin vessel among us,
a young lady who’s never been manned,
piped up and said: ‘I’d rather rot away here
and fall to pieces than have that jerk as my commander.’
‘By every plank on my body, I swear,’ said another,
‘that if that man ever gets to command Miss Trireme Shapely,
the daughter of Shipley, it’s going to be up yours, mister.’
If this is the kind of thing the Athenians are after,
we may as well all sail away to never-never land
or take refuge with the Furies.
I couldn’t bear to see our Athens poltrooned
with him as our admiral. So if he’s
so set on sailing, let him paddle away on one of his lamp trays,
all alone, to cloud-cuckoo land.”
[SAUSAGEMAN enters in a jubilant mood.]
SAUSAGEMAN: The nicest thing you can say just now is—nothing at all.
That includes witnesses and courts of law—
which you Athenians have such a passion for.
Instead of that, let the audience give a joyous lip
to a paean of thanks for the reformation that has taken place.
LEADER: You shining hope of holy Athens!
You bulwark of her scattered islands!
What is the happy news you bring
that should make us make our air
savory with sacrifice?
SAUSAGEMAN: I’ve simmered Demos down for you
and changed him from disheveled to something quite engaging.
LEADER: Where is he now, you genius, who are able to renew?
SAUSAGEMAN: He lives in the Athens that was and is again the violet
crowned.
LEADER: How can we see him? What is he dressed in? What is he like?
SAUSAGEMAN: Like what he used to be when he dined
in the mess with Aristides, Miltiades, and people of that ilk.187
You’ll see him in a moment; the gates are opening.
Hurrah for the rebirth of the Athens of old!
So stunning, so sung of, so famous the home of
no less than Demos!
[A curtain parts and there are revealed the lineaments of a splendid city.]
CHORUS: O shining Athens,
violet-crowned showpiece of the world, display to us
the monarch of all Greece, the monarch of this land.
[DEMOS steps into view, sleek, young and good-looking.]
SAUSAGEMAN: Behold our hero!
And look at the golden grasshopper brooch188
he always used to wear,
and note the fragrance, not of slips for the vote
but of truces and treaties smelling of myrrh.
CHORUS: [to DEMOS] We salute you, king of the Greeks! We share
your happiness and triumph, so worthy of our city
and of the days of Marathon.
DEMOS: [to SAUSAGEMAN] Dearest hero of the market square, come here!
You’ve worked a miracle by melting me down.
SAUSAGEMAN: What, me? . . . Why, my dear fellow,
if you had the slightest idea of what you were like before,
you’d worship me like a god.
DEMOS: But what was I like? How did I behave?
SAUSAGEMAN: Well, to begin with, if someone in the Assembly
came out with “I love you so much, I think only
of your well-being and your good,”
and that sort of thing, you flapped your wings
and wobbled your horns.
DEMOS: What, was I that naive?
SAUSAGEMAN: The result was, he ripped you off.
DEMOS: You don’t say! I was that oblivious?
SAUSAGEMAN: You certainly were.
You opened and shut like an umbrella
to whatever they said. That was obvious.
DEMOS: Was I that dumb? That much of a goof?
SAUSAGEMAN: I’m afraid you were.
And if a couple of Senators were discussing whether
to build ships or spend the money on paying the crew,
the paying-the-crew man would win hands down, wouldn’t he?
Hey, why are you hanging your head?
DEMOS: I’m so ashamed of being so blind.
SAUSAGEMAN: You’re not to blame. . . . Don’t take that line. The blame lies with those who tricked you. . . . Now tell me if some smart-aleck lawyer says to you: “You jurymen in this case are not being paid unless you convict,” what would be your response to this smart-aleck-lawyer-prick?
DEMOS: I’d fling him from the top of the Acropolis into the ravine
with Hyperbolus round his neck.
SAUSAGEMAN: Now you’re talking! That’s absolutely fine! And how would your other policies go?
DEMOS: I’ll pay a ship’s crew the moment it docks,
and in full—whatever it comes to.
SAUSAGEMAN: You’re bringing joy to the squashed bottoms of a lot of
blokes.
DEMOS: And no infantry man
is going to get himself transferred to another division
simply by pulling strings. . . .
He’ll damn well stay where he began.
SAUSAGEMAN: That’ll put a dent in poor old Cleonymus’s buckler.189
DEMOS: And none of those beardless things
are to go celebrating in the market square.
SAUSAGEMAN: Then where are Cleisthenes and Strato going to go
for their cerebratin
g?190
DEMOS: I’m talking of those teenage eggheads at the drugstore
babbling away with: “Oh my dear,
Phaeax‡ is too too terribly clever:
the way he overturned that verdict and saved his bacon!”
“I know, m’dear,
he was so absolutely epigrammatically and glossologically
formidable,
so energetic and overwhelmingly spot-on
when he supererogatively terminated the intractable.”
SAUSAGEMAN: So you’re not sympathetic towards twaddle.
DEMOS: God, no! And I’m going to put a stopper
to their law-drafting obsession.
And send them all off riding to the hounds.
[At the behest of SAUSAGEMAN a SERVANT BOY comes in with a camp stool.]
SAUSAGEMAN: In that case, accept from my hands a folding stool,
and also this well-hung lad, who’ll hold it for you,
and when you want he’ll unfold his tool.
DEMOS: Great! I’m living again the good old times!
SAUSAGEMAN: You’ll say so without a doubt when I offer
you the two thirty-year truces. . . . Girls,191 come on out!
[Enter TWO TRUCES.]
DEMOS: Holy Zeus, they’re pretty! Yummy, yummy!
Can I consummate the deal on the spot? . . .
Where did you find them?
SAUSAGEMAN: The truces were in your house all the time. Paphlagon had them hidden so’s you wouldn’t get hold of them. Here they are. Take them: take them home to your farm.
DEMOS: What dastardly behavior on the part of Paphlagon!
What punishment do you plan?
SAUSAGEMAN: Nothing more than taking on my job. He’ll have a sausage stand all to himself at the curb of the city gates, with hot dogs and donkey hash instead of politics and fiddle mash.
DEMOS: Splendid! You’ve hit on the perfect retribution:
set-tos with sluts and bathhouse lackeys.
My reward to you is an invitation
to the city dining hall to sit where that scapegoat sat.
Here, don this frog green robe and follow me.
You others take Paphlagon
to his new business place,
where our foreign allies who suffered his abuse
