TRYGAEUS Oh! hateful soldier! your hideous satchel makes me sick! it stinks like the belching of onions, whereas this lovable deity has the odour of sweet fruits, of festivals, of the Dionysia, of the harmony of flutes, of the comic poets, of the verses of Sophocles, of the phrases of Euripides...
HERMES That's a foul calumny, you wretch! She detests that framer of subtleties and quibbles.
TRYGAEUS ...of ivy, of straining-bags for wine, of bleating ewes, of provision-laden women hastening to the kitchen, of the tipsy servant wench, of the upturned wine-jar, and of a whole heap of other good things.
HERMES Then look how the reconciled towns chat pleasantly together, how they laugh; and yet they are all cruelly mishandled; their wounds are bleeding still.
TRYGAEUS But let us also scan the mien of the spectators; we shall thus find out the trade of each.
HERMES Ah! good gods! Look at that poor crest-maker, tearing at his hair,(1) and at that pike-maker, who has just broken wind in yon sword-cutler's face.
f(1) Aristophanes has already shown us the husbandmen and
workers in peaceful trades pulling at the rope the extricate
Peace, while the armourers hindered them by pulling the
other way.
TRYGAEUS And do you see with what pleasure this sickle-maker is making long noses at the spear-maker?
HERMES Now ask the husbandmen to be off.
TRYGAEUS Listen, good folk! Let the husbandmen take their farming tools and return to their fields as quick as possible, but without either sword, spear or javelin. All is as quiet as if Peace had been reigning for a century. Come, let everyone go till the earth, singing the Paean.