Stasimon 3
[Episode]
Welcome, Cinesias, you lime-wood man! Why have you come here twisting your game leg in circles?
Cinesias
I want to become a bird, a tuneful nightingale.
1380
Pisthetaerus
Enough of that sort of ditty. Tell me what you want.
Cinesias
Give me wings and I will fly into the topmost airs to gather fresh songs in the clouds,
in the midst of the vapors and the fleecy snow.
1385
Pisthetaerus
Gather songs in the clouds?
Cinesias
'Tis on them the whole of our latter-day art depends. The most brilliant dithyrambs are those that flap their wings in empty space and are clothed in mist and dense obscurity.
To appreciate this, just listen.
1390
Pisthetaerus
Oh! no, no, no!
Cinesias
By Hermes! but indeed you shall.
I shall travel through thine ethereal empire
like a winged bird, who cleaveth space with his long neck ...
Pisthetaerus
Stop! Way enough!
1395
Cinesias
... as I soar over the seas, carried by the breath of the winds ...
Pisthetaerus
By Zeus! I'll cut your breath short.
He picks up a pair of wings and begins trying to stop Cinesias' mouth with them.
Cinesias
... now rushing along the tracks of Notus, now nearing Boreas
across the infinite wastes of the ether.
1400
Ah! old man, that's a pretty and clever idea truly!
Pisthetaerus
What! are you not delighted to be cleaving the air?
Cinesias
To treat a dithyrambic poet, for whom the tribes dispute with each other, in this style!
