Bend over, and like well-armed soldier boys, put your spirit and your anger down. We’ll look into who these two men may be, where they come from, what their intentions are.
Hey, Hoopoe bird, I’m calling you!
You called?
What would you like to hear?
These two men— where do they come from and who are they?
These strangers are from Greece, font of wisdom.
What accident or words
now brings them to the birds?
The two men love your life, adore the way you live— they want to share with you in all there is to give.
What’s that you just said? What plan is in their head?
Things you’d never think about— you’ll be amazed—just hear him out.
He thinks it’s good that he should stay and live with me?
Is he trusting in some plan to help his fellow man or thump his enemy?
He talks of happiness too great for thought or words He claims this emptiness— all space—is for the birds— here, there, and everywhere. You’ll be convinced, I swear.
Is he crazy in the head?
He is shrewder than I said.
A brilliant thinking box?
The subtlest, sharpest fox— he’s been around a lot knows every scheme and plot.
Ask him to speak to us, to tell us all. As I listen now to what you’re telling me, it makes me feel like flying—taking off!
Take their suits of armour in the house— hang the stuff up in the kitchen there, beside the cooking stool—may it bring good luck!
Now you. Lay out your plans—explain to them the reason why I called them all together.
No. By Apollo, I won’t do it— not unless they swear a pact with me just like one that monkey Panaitios,
Frederick William Hall (1865–1948) was a classical scholar and Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Together with William Martin Geldart, he produced the Oxford Classical Text of several authors. Hall was a careful editor known for his thorough collation of manuscripts and his conservative approach to textual criticism.
The Hall–Geldart editions in the Oxford Classical Texts series provide reliable critical texts with selective apparatus criticus. The OCT series, established in 1894 as the Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, aims to present the best available Greek and Latin texts in a format suitable for both scholarly use and teaching. Each volume provides a clean text with the most significant manuscript variants recorded at the foot of each page.
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