Aristophanes

“ Are two men to fly from a woman?
BLEPSIDEMUS: But, you wretch, 'tis Poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath.
CHREMYLUS: Stay where you are, I beg of you.
BLEPSIDEMUS: No! no! a thousand times, no!
CHREMYLUS: Could we do anything worse than leave the god in the lurch and fly before this woman without so much as ever offering to fight?
BLEPSIDEMUS: But what weapons have we? Are we in a condition to show fight? Where is the breastplate, the buckler, that this wretch has not pledged?
CHREMYLUS: Be at ease. Plutus will readily triumph over her threats unaided. ”

“ CHREMYLUS: Then tell me this, why does all mankind flee from you?
POVERTY: Because I make them better. Children do the very same; they flee from the wise counsels of their fathers. So difficult is it to see one's true interest.
CHREMYLUS: Will you say that Zeus cannot discern what is best? Well, he takes Plutus to himself ...
BLEPSIDEMUS: ... and banishes Poverty to earth.
POVERTY: Ah me! how purblind you are, you old fellows of the days of Saturn! Why, Zeus is poor, and I will clearly prove it to you. ”

“ CHREMYLUS: Good gods! that old hag has fastened herself to her youth like a limpet to its rock.
CHORUS: [Missing.]
CARIO (opening the door) : Who knocks at the door? Halloa! I see no one; 'twas then by chance it gave forth that plaintive tone.
HERMES (to Carlo, who is about to close the door) : Cario! stop!
CARIO: Eh! friend, was it you who knocked so loudly? Tell me.
HERMES: No, I was going to knock and you forestalled me by opening. Come, call your master quick, then his wife and his children, then his slave and his dog, then thyself and his pig.
CARIO: And what's it all about? ”

“ But tell me, where is Plutus now?
CARIO: He is approaching, escorted by an immense crowd. The rich, whose wealth is ill-gotten, are knitting their brows and shooting at him looks of fierce hate, while the just folk, who led a wretched existence, embrace him and grasp his hand in the transport of their joy; they follow in his wake, their heads wreathed with garlands, laughing and blessing their deliverer; the old men make the earth resound as they walk together keeping time. ”

“ CHREMYLUS: 'Tis just what I am doing.
(They are just leaving when POVERTY comes running in; she is a picture of squalor and the two men recoil in horror.)
POVERTY: Unwise, perverse, unholy men! What are you daring to do, you pitiful, wretched mortals? Whither are you flying? Stop! I command it!
BLEPSIDEMUS: Oh! great gods!
POVERTY: My arm shall destroy you, you infamous beings! Such an attempt is not to be borne; neither man nor god has ever dared the like. You shall die! ”

“ CARIO: Ha! by Demeter! 'tis an informer. What impudence! He's ravenously hungry, that's certain.
INFORMER: You shall follow me this very instant to the marketplace, where the torture of the wheel shall force the confession of your misdeeds from you.
CARIO (with a threatening gesture) : Ha! look out for yourself!
JUST MAN: By Zeus the Deliverer, what gratitude all Greeks owe to Plutus, if he destroys these vile informers!
INFORMER: You are laughing at me. Ho! ho! I denounce you as their accomplice. Where did you steal that new cloak from? ”

“ CHREMYLUS: 'Tis in that way he shows that he clings to his wealth; he is sparing with it, won't part with any portion of it, only bestows baubles on the victors and keeps his money for himself.
POVERTY: But wealth coupled to such sordid greed is yet more shameful than poverty.
CHREMYLUS: May Zeus destroy you, both you and your chaplet of wild olive!
POVERTY: Thus you dare to maintain that Poverty is not the fount of all blessings! ”

“ CHREMYLUS: It is right that the good should be happy, that the wicked and the impious, on the other hand, should be miserable; that is a truth, I believe, which no one will gainsay. To realize this condition of things is as great a proposal as it is noble and useful in every respect, and we have found a means of attaining the object of our wishes. If Plutus recovers his sight and ceases from wandering about unseeing and at random, he will go to seek the just men and never leave them again; he will shun the perverse and ungodly; so, thanks to him, all men will become honest, rich and pious. ”

“ CHREMYLUS: 'Twas no fool. He knew how to drag drachmæ from a hot-blooded old woman.
OLD WOMAN: Ah! the god has done very, very wrong, saying he would support the victims of injustice.
CHREMYLUS: Well, what must he do? Speak, and it shall be done.
OLD WOMAN: 'Tis right to compel him, whom I have loaded with benefits, to repay them in his turn; if not, he does not merit the least of the god's favours. ”

“ Are these the mighty benefits with which you pretend to load mankind?
POVERTY: 'Tis not my life that you describe; you are attacking the existence beggars lead.
CHREMYLUS: Is Beggary not Poverty's sister?
POVERTY: Thrasybulus and Dionysius [35] are one and the same according to you. No, my life is not like that and never will be. The beggar, whom you have depicted to us, never possesses anything. The poor man lives thriftily and attentive to his work; he has not got too much, but he does not lack what he really needs.
CHREMYLUS: Oh! what a happy life, by Demeter! ”

“ CHREMYLUS: Does it not seem that everything is extravagance in the world, or rather madness, when you watch the way things go? A crowd of rogues enjoy blessings they have won by sheer injustice, while more honest folks are miserable, die of hunger, and spend their whole lives with you. Now, if Plutus became clear-sighted again and drove out Poverty, 'twould be the greatest blessing possible for the human race. ”

“ INFORMER: Well then, 'tis I who choose to be prosecutor; and thus all public affairs fall within my province.
JUST MAN: I pity Athens for being in such vile clutches. But would you not prefer to live quietly and free from all care and anxiety?
INFORMER: To do nothing is to live an animal's life.
JUST MAN: Thus you will not change your mode of life?
INFORMER: No, though they gave me Plutus himself and the silphium of Battus. [57]
JUST MAN (to the Informer) : Come, quick, off with your cloak.
(The INFORMER does not move.)
CARIO: Hi! friend! 'tis you they are speaking to. ”

“ CHREMYLUS: If it please the gods, he'll come there now.
BLEPSIDEMUS: Must we not go and seek a physician?
CHREMYLUS: Seek physicians at Athens? Nay! there's no art where there's no fee. [30]
BLEPSIDEMUS: Let's bethink ourselves well.
CHREMYLUS: There is not one.
BLEPSIDEMUS: 'Tis a positive fact, I don't know of one.
CHREMYLUS: But I have thought the matter well over, and the best thing is to make Plutus lie in the Temple of Æsculapius. [31]
BLEPSIDEMUS: Aye, unquestionably 'tis the very best thing. Be quick and lead him away to the Temple. ”

“ Because you have committed the most dreadful crime. Since Plutus has recovered his sight, there is nothing for us other gods, neither incense, nor laurels, nor cakes, nor victims, nor anything in the world.
CARIO: And you will never be offered anything more; you governed us too ill.
HERMES: I care nothing at all about the other gods, but 'tis myself. I tell you I am dying of hunger. ”

“ By way of answer the god only tells him that he is to follow whomsoever he first meets upon leaving the temple, who proves to be a blind and ragged old man. But this turns out to be no other than Plutus himself, the god of riches, whom Zeus has robbed of his eyesight, so that he may be unable henceforth to distinguish between the just and the unjust. However, succoured by Chremylus and conducted by him to the Temple of Æsculapius, Plutus regains the use of his eyes. Whereupon all just men, including the god’s benefactor, are made rich and prosperous, and the unjust reduced to indigence. ”

“ What an unhappy fate, great gods, to be the slave of a fool! A servant may give the best of advice, but if his master does not follow it, the poor slave must inevitably have his share in the disaster; for fortune does not allow him to dispose of his own body, it belongs to his master who has bought it. Alas! ’tis the way of the world. But the god, Apollo, whose oracles the Pythian priestess on her golden tripod makes known to us, deserves my censure, for ’tis assured he is a physician and a cunning diviner ”

“ CARIO: How pleasant it is, friends, to live well, especially when it costs nothing! What a deluge of blessings flood our household, and that too without our having wronged ever a soul! Ah! what a delightful thing is wealth! The bin is full of white flour and the wine-jars run over with fragrant liquor; all the chests are crammed with gold and silver, 'tis a sight to see; the tank is full of oil, [50] the phials with perfumes, and the garret with dried figs. Vinegar flasks, plates, stew-pots and all the platters are of brass ”

“ Besides, to possess a rag in place of a mantle, a pallet of rushes swarming with bugs, that do not let you close your eyes for a bed; a rotten piece of matting for a coverlet; a big stone for a pillow, on which to lay your head; to eat mallow roots instead of bread, and leaves of withered radish instead of cake; to have nothing but the cover of a broken jug for a stool, the stave of a cask, and broken at that, for a kneading-trough, that is the life you make for us! ”

“ CHREMYLUS: 'Tis no doubt by starving them that you give them that waspish waist.
POVERTY: As for behaviour, I will prove to you that modesty dwells with me and insolence with Plutus.
CHREMYLUS: Oh! the sweet modesty of stealing and breaking through walls. [36]
BLEPSIDEMUS: Aye, the thief is truly modest, for he hides himself.
POVERTY: Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both State and people can only praise their uprightness ”

“ But if I find someone to join me, let him be as weak as he will, I will summon this god, who thinks himself so strong, before the Court this very day, and denounce him as manifestly guilty of overturning the democracy by his will alone and without the consent of the Senate or the popular Assembly.
JUST MAN: Now that you are rigged out from head to foot with my old clothes, hasten to the bath and stand there in the front row to warm yourself better; 'tis the place I formerly had.
CHREMYLUS: Ah! the bath-man would grip you by the testicles and fling you through the door ”

“ Notes
↑ Plutus, the god of riches, was included amongst the infernal deities, because riches are extracted from the earth's bosom, which is their dwelling-place. According to Hesiod, he was the son of Demeter; agriculture is in truth the most solid foundation of wealth. He was generally represented as an old blind man, halting in gait and winged, coming with slow steps but going away on a rapid flight and carrying a purse in his hand. ”

“ In the Olympic games, which he founded, and to which he convokes the whole of Greece every four years, why does he only crown the victorious athletes with wild olive? If he were rich he would give them gold. ”

“ I could not sleep; I was thinking of a certain stew-pan full of pap placed close to an old woman and just behind her head. I had a furious longing to slip towards that side. But just as I was lifting my head, I noticed the priest, who was sweeping off both the cakes and the figs on the sacred table; then he made the round of the altars and sanctified the cakes that remained, by stowing them away in a bag. I therefore resolved to follow such a pious example and made straight for the pap.
WIFE: You wretch! and had you no fear of the god?
CARIO: Aye, indeed! ”

“ Most people only decided to do this when they were full of holes and torn; it is because his visitor's cloak is in such a sorry condition that Chremylus takes it to be the cloak of an Initiate.↑ This Eudemus was a kind of sorcerer, who sold magic rings, to which, among other virtues, he ascribed that of curing, or rather of securing him who wore them, from snake-bites.↑ The merchants engaged in maritime commerce were absolved from military service; the Scholiast even declares, though it seems highly unlikely, that all merchants were exempt from imposts on their possessions. ”

“ It reminds us in many ways of the Socratic 'Elenchus' as displayed in the Platonic dialogues.↑ Corinth was the most corrupt as well as the most commercial of Greek cities, and held a number of great courtesans, indeed some of the most celebrated, e.g. Laïs, Cyrené, Sinopé, practised their profession there; they, however, set a very high value on their favours, and hence the saying, "Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum"—"it is not for every man to go to Corinth."↑ This was the mild punishment inflicted upon the adulterer by Athenian custom. ”

“ On the first day of the month the rich had meals served before these statues and invited the poor to them.↑ A verse from Euripides' lost play of 'Telephus.' The same line occurs in 'The Knights.'↑ And not the citizens of Argos, whom agriculture and trade rendered wealthy.—Pauson was an Athenian painter, whose poverty had become a proverb. "Poorer than Pauson" was a common saying.↑ There is here a long interval of time, during which Plutus is taken to the Temple of Æsculapius and cured of his blindness. ”

“ In the first edition probably the Parabasis came in here; at all events a long choral ode must have intervened.↑ The Athenians had erected a temple to Theseus and instituted feasts in his honour, which were still kept up in the days of Plutarch and Pausanias. Barley broth and other coarse foods were distributed among the poor.↑ He was an orator, who was accused of theft and extortion, and who, moreover, was said not to be a genuine Athenian citizen.↑ The serpent was sacred to Æsculapius ”