[The Poet withdraws, gradually turning round and reciting. Peisthetairus does not appear to take notice, but watches till he is fairly gone.
"Seated on your golden throne,
Muse, prepare a solemn ditty,950
To the mighty,
To the flighty,
To the cloudy, quivering, shivering,
To the lofty seated city."
Peis. Well, I should have thought that jerkin might have cured him955
Of his "quiverings and shiverings." How the plague!
Did the fellow find us out? I should not have thought it.
Come, once again, go round with the basin and ewer.
Peace! Silence! Silence!
Enter a Soothsayer with a great air of arrogance and self-importance. He comes on the authority of a book of Oracles (which he pretends to possess, but which he never produces), in virtue of which he lays claim to certain sacrificial perquisites and fees. Peisthetairus encounters him with a different version composed upon the spot; in virtue of which he dismisses the Soothsayer with a good lashing.
Sooth. Stop the sacrifice!
Peis. What are you?960
Sooth. A Soothsayer, that's what I am.
Peis. The worse luck for ye.
Sooth. Friend, are you in your senses?[1]
Don't trifle absurdly with religious matters.
Here's a prophecy of Bakis, which expressly
Alludes to Nephelococcugia.
Peis. How came it, then, you never prophesied
Your prophecies before the town was built?
Sooth. The spirit withheld me.965
Peis. And is it allowable now,
To give us a communication of them?
Sooth. Hem!
- ↑ See l. 1024 of The Knights, where there is the same allusion to disputes on the authentic copies of Oracles.
