SAUSAGE-SELLER. And you are a rogue.
CHORUS. Hit him hard.
CLEON. Oh, oh, dear! The conspirators are murdering me!
CHORUS. Strike, strike with all your might; bruise his belly, lashing him with your guts and your tripe; punish him with both arms! Oh! vigorous assailant and intrepid heart! Have you not routed him totally in this duel of abuse? how shall I give tongue to my joy and sufficiently praise you?
CLEON. Ah! by Demeter! I was not ignorant of this plot against me; I knew it was forming, that the chariot of war was being put together.[61]
CHORUS (to Sausage-seller). Look out, look out! Come, outfence him with some wheelwright slang?
SAUSAGE-SELLER. His tricks at Argos do not escape me. Under pretence of forming an alliance with the Argives, he is hatching a plot with the Lacedaemonians there; and I know why the bellows are blowing and the metal that is on the anvil; 'tis the question of the prisoners.
CHORUS. Well done! Forge on, if he be a wheelwright.
SAUSAGE-SELLER. And there are men at Sparta[62] who are hammering the iron with you; but neither gold nor silver nor prayers nor anything else shall impede my denouncing your trickery to the Athenians.
CLEON. As for me, I hasten to the Senate to reveal your plotting, your nightly gatherings in the city, your trafficking with the Medes and with the Great King, and all you are foraging for in Boeotia.[63]