PISTHETAERUS Won't you be off quickly? Come, stretch your wings or look out for squalls!
IRIS If my father does not punish you for your insults...
PISTHETAERUS Ha!... but just you be off elsewhere to roast younger folk than us with your lightning.
CHORUS We forbid the gods, the sons of Zeus, to pass through our city and the mortals to send them the smoke of their sacrifices by this road.
PISTHETAERUS 'Tis odd that the messenger we sent to the mortals has never returned.
HERALD Oh! blessed Pisthetaerus, very wise, very illustrious, very gracious, thrice happy, very... Come, prompt me, somebody, do.
PISTHETAERUS Get to your story!
HERALD All peoples are filled with admiration for your wisdom, and they award you this golden crown.
PISTHETAERUS I accept it. But tell me, why do the people admire me?
HERALD Oh you, who have founded so illustrious a city in the air, you know not in what esteem men hold you and how many there are who burn with desire to dwell in it. Before your city was built, all men had a mania for Sparta; long hair and fasting were held in honour, men went dirty like Socrates and carried staves. Now all is changed. Firstly, as soon as 'tis dawn, they all spring out of bed together to go and seek their food, the same as you do; then they fly off towards the notices and finally devour the decrees. The bird-madness is so clear, that many actually bear the names of birds. There is a halting victualler, who styles himself the partridge; Menippus calls himself the swallow; Opuntius the one-eyed crow; Philocles the lark; Theogenes the fox-goose; Lycurgus the ibis; Chaerephon the bat; Syracosius the magpie; Midias the quail;(1) indeed he looks like a quail that has been hit hard over the head. Out of love for the birds they repeat all the songs which concern the swallow, the teal, the goose or the pigeon; in each verse you see wings, or at all events a few feathers. This is what is happening down there. Finally, there are more than ten thousand folk who are coming here from earth to ask you for feathers and hooked claws; so, mind you supply yourself with wings for the immigrants.