SECOND SERVANT Oh, scavengers, help me in the name of the gods, if you do not wish to see me fall down choked.
FIRST SERVANT Come, come, another made from the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. 'Twill be to the beetle's taste; he likes it well ground.
SECOND SERVANT There! I am free at least from suspicion; none will accuse me of tasting what I mix.
FIRST SERVANT Faugh! come, now another! keep on mixing with all your might.
SECOND SERVANT I' faith, no. I can stand this awful cesspool stench no longer, so I bring you the whole ill-smelling gear.
FIRST SERVANT Pitch it down the sewer sooner, and yourself with it.
SECOND SERVANT Maybe, one of you can tell me where I can buy a stopped-up nose, for there is no work more disgusting than to mix food for a beetle and to carry it to him. A pig or a dog will at least pounce upon our excrement without more ado, but this foul wretch affects the disdainful, the spoilt mistress, and won't eat unless I offer him a cake that has been kneaded for an entire day.... But let us open the door a bit ajar without his seeing it. Has he done eating? Come, pluck up courage, cram yourself till you burst! The cursed creature! It wallows in its food! It grips it between its claws like a wrestler clutching his opponent, and with head and feet together rolls up its paste like a rope-maker twisting a hawser. What an indecent, stinking, gluttonous beast! I know not what angry god let this monster loose upon us, but of a certainty it was neither Aphrodite nor the Graces.
FIRST SERVANT Who was it then?
SECOND SERVANT No doubt the Thunderer, Zeus.
FIRST SERVANT But perhaps some spectator, some beardless youth, who thinks himself a sage, will say, "What is this? What does the beetle mean?" And then an Ionian,(1) sitting next him, will add, "I think 'tis an allusion to Cleon, who so shamelessly feeds on filth all by himself."—But now I'm going indoors to fetch the beetle a drink.