EUELPIDES. What makes you laugh?
PISTHETAERUS. 'Tis your bits of wings. D'you know what you look like?
Like a goose painted by some dauber-fellow.
EUELPIDES. And you look like a close-shaven blackbird.
PISTHETAERUS. 'Tis ourselves asked for this transformation, and, as Aeschylus has it, "These are no borrowed feathers, but truly our own."[268]
EPOPS. Come now, what must be done?
PISTHETAERUS. First give our city a great and famous name, then sacrifice to the gods.
EUELPIDES. I think so too.
EPOPS. Let's see. What shall our city be called?
PISTHETAERUS. Will you have a high-sounding Laconian name? Shall we call it Sparta?
EUELPIDES. What! call my town Sparta? Why, I would not use esparto for my bed,[269] even though I had nothing but bands of rushes.