If ever you have
eaten some young pig, sacrificed by us on your altars, with pleasure,
may this offering not be without value in your sight to-day.

TRYGAEUS Do you not hear them wheedling you, mighty god?

CHORUS Be not pitiless toward our prayers; permit us to deliver
the goddess. Oh! the most human, the most generous of the gods, be
favourable toward us, if it be true that you detest the haughty crests
and proud brows of Pisander;(1) we shall never cease, oh master,
offering you sacred victims and solemn prayers.

f(1) An Athenian captain who later had the recall of
Alcibiades decreed by the Athenian people; in 'The Birds'
Aristophanes represents him as a cowardly beggar. He was
the reactionary leader who established the Oligarchical
Government of the Four Hundred, 411 B.C., after the failure
of the Syracusan expedition.

TRYGAEUS Have mercy, mercy, let yourself be touched by their words;
never was your worship so dear to them as to-day.

HERMES I' truth, never have you been greater thieves.(1)

f(1) Among other attributes, Hermes was the god of thieves.

TRYGAEUS I will reveal a great, a terrible conspiracy against the gods
to you.

HERMES Hah! speak and perchance I shall let myself be softened.

TRYGAEUS Know then, that the Moon and that infamous Sun are plotting
against you, and want to deliver Greece into the hands of the
Barbarians.

HERMES What for?

TRYGAEUS Because it is to you that we sacrifice, whereas the barbarians
worship them; hence they would like to see you destroyed, that they
alone might receive the offerings.

HERMES 'Tis then for this reason that these untrustworthy charioteers
have for so long been defrauding us, one of them robbing us of daylight
and the other nibbling away at the other's disk.(1)

f(1) Alluding to the eclipses of the sun and the moon.

TRYGAEUS Yes, certainly. So therefore, Hermes, my friend, help us with
your whole heart to find and deliver the captive and we will celebrate
the great Panathenaea(1) in your honour as well as all the festivals
of the other gods; for Hermes shall be the Mysteries, the Dipolia, the
Adonia; everywhere the towns, freed from their miseries, will sacrifice
to Hermes the Liberator; you will be loaded with benefits of every kind,
and to start with, I offer you this cup for libations as your first
present.

f(1) The Panathenaea were dedicated to Athene, the Mysteries
to Demeter, the D