You villainous old men, what's this you do? O Goddess, suffer not, I pray, this harsh deed to be done,īut show us Greece and Athens with their warlike acts repealed!Īnd where they cast their fires of slaughter These wicked women or soon leave them charring into ashes there. Great brush-bundles in each palsied hand, What with tattling of tongues and rattling of pitchers in one jostling din I could scarcely get near to the spring though I rose before dawn, There, I'm all of a tremble lest I turn out to be too late. O is it something in a blaze? Quick, quick, my comrades, hurry! What's that rising yonder? That ruddy glare, that smoky skurry? How we did anciently this insane audacity quell! To kindle a brand, that I the first may strike the citadel.Īid me, Lady Victory, that a triumph-trophy may tell Is there no Samos-general to help me to unpack?Īh there, that's over! For the last time now it's galled my shoulder.įlare up your embers, brazier, and dutifully smolder, Phew, what a spluttering drench of smoke! Come, now from off my back. We'll set fire to the wood, and smoke will strangle their defiance. If they refuse to draw the bolts in immediate compliance, Hurl it at the battering-ram against the stubborn gate? Now why not first slide off our backs these weary loads of woodĪnd dip a vine-branch in the brazier till it glows, then straight
Thanked be the gods! The fire peeps up and crackles as it should. Laches, now or never the assault must be made! Or else it would not sting my eyelids thus. Or just as we reach the top we'll find it's died. How these logs bruise my shoulders! further still Shall I not smite the rash presumption then of foes like these,ĭetested both of all the gods and of Euripides- Įlse, may the Marathon-plain not boast my trophied victories! That was a siege! Our men were ranged in lines of seventeen deepīefore the gates, and never left their posts there, even to sleep. Pile and burn them all together in one vast and righteous pyre:įling with our own hands Lycon's wife to fry in the thickest fire.īy Demeter, they'll get no brag while I've a vein to beat!Ĭleomenes himself was hurtled out in sore defeat. In neat stacks beleaguering the insurgents all around Īnd the vile conspiratresses, plotters of such mischief dire, Like witless fools, with fostering bread,Ĭome, Philurgus, bustle thither lay our branch-bundles on the ground, How upside-down and wrong-way-round a long life sees things grow.Īh, Strymodorus, who'd have thought affairs could tangle so? With lugging uphill these lopped branches of the olive-tree. Make room, Draces, move ahead why your shoulder's chafed, I see, (The Chorus of OLD MEN enter to attack the captured Acropolis).
(LAMPITO and some go off the others go up into the Acropolis).
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