Patroclides[1] would not need to sit there, and befoul his seat;790
Flying off he might return, eased in a moment, clean and neat.
Trust me wings are all in all! Diitrephes has mounted quicker
Than the rest of our aspirants, soaring on his wings of wicker:
Basket work, and Crates, and Hampers, first enabled him to fly;[2]
First a Captain, then promoted to command the cavalry;
With his fortunes daily rising, office and preferment new,
An illustrious, enterprising, airy, gallant Cockatoo.800
The exclusive functions of the Chorus being now at an end, the persons of the Drama appear again upon the stage; Peisthetairus and Euelpides, having been both in the meanwhile equipped with a sumptuous pair of wings. They are supposed to have been entertained behind the scenes, with a royal collation in the palace of the Hoopoe. Peisthetairus is accordingly in extreme good humour, and being now in the height of his advancement, recollects that it will be right to behave to his former comrade with the hearty familiarity of an old acquaintance; he accordingly begins with a ludicrous simile[3] on his appearance (a species of raillery common among the Athenians, but which was considered as the lowest species of jocularity). He takes his friend's retort in perfect good humour, and Euelpides is admitted as a third person, to consult, with him and the King, upon some unimportant matters, such as the name of the new City, and the choice of a patron Deity, upon all which topics, his idle buffoonish humour is not misplaced: but a more delicate point is afterwards brought into discussion (nothing less than the choice of a chief commander for the Citadel) which Euelpides treats with the same silly drollery as before. Peisthetairus is irritated, or pretends to be so, and dismisses him in a tone of authority, which the other resents, and appears on the point of mutinying; upon which Peisthetairus smooths him down again, as briefly as possible, and having accomplished this point, immediately turns away from him to call a servant.
Peis. Well, there it is! Such a comical set out,
By Jove, I never saw!
- ↑ The posthumous celebrity of Patroclides is not confined to this single event. He survived the accident many years, and was the author of a very salutary decree upon the principles advocated by the Poet in the Epirrema of The Frogs, but (as in the instance before us) he was again fatally too late. The decree was not passed till after the destruction of the navy at Ægos Potamos.
- ↑ His property consisted in a manufactory of this kind, by which he had grown rich.
- ↑ This is the sort of raillery which Bacchus prohibits in the contest between Euripides and Æschylus, and of which we have a specimen in The Wasps, v. 1308. Some modern traveller has told us that abusive similes in alternate extempore verse, serve for an amusement, at this day, to the boatmen of the Nile.
