Lysistrata   

LEADER OF CHORUS OF WOMEN


I'm watering you, to make you bloom afresh.


LEADER OF CHORUS OF OLD MEN


Alas! I am too dry! Ah, me how! how I am trembling with cold!


(A MAGISTRATE enters, with a few Scythian policemen.)


MAGISTRATE


These women, have they made din enough, I wonder, with their


tambourines? bewept Adonis enough upon their terraces? I was listening


to the speeches last assembly day, and Demostratus, whom heaven


confound! was saying we must all go over to Sicily-and lo! his wife


was dancing round repeating: "Alas! alas! Adonis, woe is me for


Adonis!" Demostratus was saying we must levy hoplites at Zacynthus-and


there was his wife, more than half drunk, screaming on the house-roof:


"Weep, weep for Adonis!"-while that infamous Mad Ox was bellowing away


on his side.-Do you not blush, you women, for your wild and uproarious


doings?


LEADER OF CHORUS OF OLD MEN


But you don't know all their effrontery yet! They abused and


insulted us; then soused us with the water in their water-pots, and


have set us wringing out our clothes, for all the world as if we had


bepissed ourselves.