ir being
instantly confiscated. Thus far the evil was not serious and we were
the only sufferers. But now some young drunkards go to Megara and
carry off the courtesan Simaetha; the Megarians, hurt to the quick, run
off in turn with two harlots of the house of Aspasia; and so for three
gay women Greece is set ablaze. Then Pericles, aflame with ire on his
Olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to
roll, upset Greece and passed an edict, which ran like the song, "That
the Megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets
and from the sea and from the continent."(3) Meanwhile the Megarians,
who were beginning to die of hunger, begged the Lacedaemonians to bring
about the abolition of the decree, of which those harlots were the
cause; several times we refused their demand; and from that time there
was horrible clatter of arms everywhere. You will say that Sparta
was wrong, but what should she have done? Answer that. Suppose that
a Lacedaemonian had seized a little Seriphian(4) dog on any pretext and
had sold it, would you have endured it quietly? Far from it, you would
at once have sent three hundred vessels to sea, and what an uproar
there would have been through all the city! there 'tis a band of
noisy soldiery, here a brawl about the election of a Trierarch;
elsewhere pay is being distributed, the Pallas figure-heads are
being regilded, crowds are surging under the market porticos,
encumbered with wheat that is being measured, wine-skins,
oar-leathers, garlic, olives, onions in nets; everywhere are chaplets,
sprats, flute-girls, black eyes; in the arsenal bolts are being
noisily driven home, sweeps are being made and fitted with leathers;
we hear nothing but the sound of whistles, of flutes and fifes to
encourage the work-folk. That is what you assuredly would have done,
and would not Telephus have done the same? So I come to my general
conclusion; we have no common sense.

f(1) 'The Babylonians' had been produced at a time of year when Athens
was crowded with strangers; 'The Acharnians,' on the contrary, was played
in December.

f(2) Sparta had been menaced with an earthquake in 427 B.C. Posidon
was 'The Earthshaker,' god of earthquakes, as well as of the sea.

f(3) A song by Timocreon the Rhodian, the words of which were practically
identical with Pericles' decree.

f(4) A small and insignificant island, one of the Cyclades, allied wit