Her belly is white,
Her back black as night!
From your rich house
Roll forth to us
Tarts, wines and cheese:
Or if not these,
Oatmeal and barley cake
The swallow deigns to take.”[[14]]
When the spring was late, Aristophanes’s peevish old man was probably not the only one to say: “Zeus! is the swallow never going to come?” Nor under a punctual March sun was his sneak thief the only one to talk about the weather:—
“Haunting about the butcher’s shops, the weather being mild,