MEN
O botheration take you all! How you cajole and flatter.
A hell it is to live with you; to live without, a hell:
How truly was that said. But come, these enmities let's quell.
You stop from giving orders and I'll stop from doing wrong.
So let's join ranks and seal our bargain with a choric song.
CHORUS.
Athenians, it's not our intention
To sow political dissension
By giving any scandal mention;
But on the contrary to promote good feeling in the state
By word and deed. We've had enough calamities of late.
So let a man or woman but divulge
They need a trifle, say,
Two minas, three or four,
I've purses here that bulge.
There's only one condition made
(Indulge my whim in this I pray)--
When Peace is signed once more,
On no account am I to be repaid.
And I'm making preparation
For a gay select collation
With some youths of reputation.
I've managed to produce some soup and they're slaughtering for me
A sucking-pig: its flesh should taste as tender as could be.
I shall expect you at my house today.
To the baths make an early visit,
And bring your children along;
Don't dawdle on the way.
Ask no one; enter as if the place
Was all your own--yours henceforth is it.
If nothing chances wrong,
The door will then be shut bang in your face.
The SPARTAN AMBASSADORS approach.
CHORUS
Here come the Spartan envoys with long, worried beards.
Hail, Spartans how do you fare?
Did anything new arise?
SPARTANS
No need for a clutter o' words. Do ye see our condition?