Parodos
[Agon]
Protect them with this dish or this vinegar-pot.
Euelpides
Oh! what cleverness! what inventive genius! You are a great general, even greater than Nicias, where stratagem is concerned.
Leader of the Chorus
Forward, forward, charge with your beaks! Come, no delay.
Tear, pluck, strike, flay them, and first of all smash the stew-pot.
365
Epops
Oh, most cruel of all animals, why tear these two men to pieces, why kill them? What have they done to you? They belong to the same tribe, to the same family as my wife.
Leader of the Chorus
Are wolves to be spared? Are they not our most mortal foes?
So let us punish them.
370
Epops
If they are your foes by nature, they are your friends in heart, and they come here to give you useful advice.
Leader of the Chorus
Advice or a useful word from their lips, from them, the enemies of my forebears?
Epops
The wise can often profit by the lessons of a foe, for caution is the mother of safety. It is just such a thing as one will not learn from a friend and which an enemy compels you to know. To begin with, it's the foe and not the friend that taught cities to build high walls, to equip long vessels of war;
375
and it's this knowledge that protects our children, our slaves and our wealth.
380
Leader of the Chorus
Well then, I agree, let us first hear them, for that is best; one can even learn something in an enemy's school.
Pisthetaerus
Their wrath seems to cool. Draw back a little.
Epops
It's only justice, and you will thank me later.
Leader of the Chorus
Never have we opposed your advice up to now.
385
Pisthetaerus
They are in a more peaceful mood; put down your stew-pot and your two dishes; spit in hand, doing duty for a spear, let us mount guard inside the camp
close to the pot and watch in our arsenal closely; for we must not fly.
390
Euelpides
You are right. But where shall we be buried, if we die?
Pisthetaerus
In the Ceramicus; for, to get a public funeral, we shall tell the Strategi that we fell at Orneae, fighting the country's foes.
395
[Choral]
Return to your ranks and lay down your courage beside your wrath as the hoplites do. Then let us ask these men who they are, whence they come,
400
