CHORUS Oh, thou, whom men of standing desired and who art good to husbandmen, I have gazed upon thee with delight; and now I go to greet my vines, to caress after so long an absence the fig trees I planted in my youth.
TRYGAEUS Friends, let us first adore the goddess, who has delivered us from crests and Gorgons;(1) then let us hurry to our farms, having first bought a nice little piece of salt fish to eat in the fields.
f(1) An allusion to Lamachus' shield.
HERMES By Posidon! what a fine crew they make and dense as the crust of a cake; they are as nimble as guests on their way to a feast.
TRYGAEUS See, how their iron spades glitter and how beautifully their three-pronged mattocks glisten in the sun! How regularly they align the plants! I also burn myself to go into the country and to turn over the earth I have so long neglected.—Friends, do you remember the happy life that Peace afforded us formerly; can you recall the splendid baskets of figs, both fresh and dried, the myrtles, the sweet wine, the violets blooming near the spring, and the olives, for which we have wept so much? Worship, adore the goddess for restoring you so many blessings.
CHORUS Hail! hail! thou beloved divinity! thy return overwhelms us with joy. When far from thee, my ardent wish to see my fields again made me pine with regret. From thee came all blessings. Oh! much desired Peace! thou art the sole support of those who spend their lives tilling the earth. Under thy rule we had a thousand delicious enjoyments at our beck; thou wert the husbandman's wheaten cake and his safeguard. So that our vineyards, our young fig-tree woods and all our plantations hail thee with delight and smile at thy coming. But where was she then, I wonder, all the long time she spent away from us? Hermes, thou benevolent god, tell us!
HERMES Wise husbandmen, hearken to my words, if you want to know why she was lost to you. The start of our misfortunes was the exile of Phidias;(1) Pericles feared he might share his ill-luck, he mistrusted your peevish nature and, to prevent all danger to himself, he threw out that little spark, the Megarian decree,(2) set the city aflame, and blew up the conflagration with a hurricane of war, so that the smoke drew tears from all Greeks both here and over there. At the very outset of this fire our vines were a-crackle, our casks knocked together;(3) it was beyond the power of any man to stop the disaster, and Peace disappeared.
f(1) Having been commissioned to execute a statue of Athene,
Phidias was accused of having stolen part of the gold given
him out of the public treasury for its decoration. Rewarded
for his work by calumny and banishment, he resolved to make
a finer statue than his Athene, and executed one for the
temple of Elis, that of the Olympian Zeus, which was
considered one of the wonders of the world.
f(2) He had issued a decree, which forbade the admission of
any Megarian on Attic soil, and also all trade with that
people. The Megarians, who obtained all their provisions
from Athens, were thus almost reduced to starvation.
f(3) That is, the vineyards were ravaged from the very
outset of the war, and this increased the animosity.
TRYGAEUS That, by Apollo! is what no one ever told me; I could not think what connection there could be between Phidias and Peace.
CHORUS Nor I; I know it now. This accounts for her beauty, if she is related to him. There are so many things that escape us.