Stasimon 1
[Lyric-Scene]
Keep quiet; and if you be puzzled in any one of your conceptions, leave it and go; and then set your mind in motion again, and lock it up.
Strepsiades.
(in great glee). O dearest little Socrates!
Strepsiades.
I have got a device for cheating them of the interest.
Strepsiades.
The next three exchanges are combined as one in the print.Now tell me this—
Strepsiades.
If I were to purchase a Thessalian witch,
and draw down the moon by night, and then shut it up, as if it were a mirror, in a round crest-case, and then carefully keep it—
750
Socrates.
What good, pray, would this do you?
Strepsiades.
What? If the moon were to rise no longer anywhere, I should not pay the interest.
Socrates.
Why so, pray?
755
Strepsiades.
Because the money is lent out by the month.
Socrates.
Capital! But I will again propose to you another clever question. If a suit of five talents should be entered against you, tell me how you would obliterate it.
Strepsiades.
How? How? I do not know but I must seek.
Socrates.
Do not then always revolve your thoughts about yourself; but slack away your mind into the air, like a cock-chafer tied with a thread by the foot.
Strepsiades.
I have found a very clever method of getting rid of my suit, so that you yourself would acknowledge it.
765
Socrates.
Of what description?
Strepsiades.
Have you ever seen this stone in the chemist’s shops, the beautiful and transparent one, from which they kindle fire?
Socrates.
Do you mean the burning-glass?
