PISTHETAERUS Of the entrails—is it so written?
PROPHET Read. "If you do as I command, divine youth, you shall be an eagle among the clouds; if not, you shall be neither turtle-dove, nor eagle, nor woodpecker."
PISTHETAERUS Is all that there?
PROPHET Read.
PISTHETAERUS This oracle in no sort of way resembles the one Apollo dictated to me: "If an impostor comes without invitation to annoy you during the sacrifice and to demand a share of the victim, apply a stout stick to his ribs."
PROPHET You are drivelling.
PISTHETAERUS "And don't spare him, were he an eagle from out of the clouds, were it Lampon(1) himself or the great Diopithes."(2)
f(1) Noted Athenian diviner, who, when the power was still shared between Thucydides and Pericles, predicted that it would soon be centred in the hands of the latter; his ground for this prophecy was the sight of a ram with a single horn.
f(2) No doubt another Athenian diviner, and possibly the same person whom Aristophanes names in 'The Knights' and 'The Wasps' as being a thief.
PROPHET Is all that there?