Friends, success has crowned our plans. But off with these cloaks and these boots quick, before any man sees you; unbuckle the Laconian straps and get rid of your staffs; and do you help them with their toilet. As for myself, I am going to slip quietly into the house and replace my husband's cloak and other gear where I took them from, before he can suspect anything.
CHORUS: There! 'tis done according to your bidding. Now tell us how we can be of service to you, so that we may show you our obedience, for we have never seen a cleverer woman than you.
Wait! I only wish to use the power given me in accordance with your wishes; for, in the market-place, in the midst of the shouts and danger, I appreciated your indomitable courage.
BLEPYRUS: Eh, Praxagora! where do you come from?
PRAXAGORA: How does that concern you, friend?
BLEPYRUS: Why, greatly! what a silly question!
PRAXAGORA: You don't think I have come from a lover's?
BLEPYRUS: No, perhaps not from only one.
You can make yourself sure of that.
BLEPYRUS: And how?
PRAXAGORA: You can see whether my hair smells of perfume.
BLEPYRUS: What? cannot a woman possibly be loved without perfume, eh!
PRAXAGORA: The gods forfend, as far as I am concerned.
BLEPYRUS: Why did you go off at early dawn with my cloak?
PRAXAGORA: A companion, a friend who was in labour, had sent to fetch me.
BLEPYRUS: Could you not have told me?
Oh, my dear, would you have me caring nothing for a poor woman in that plight?
BLEPYRUS: A word would have been enough. There's something behind all this.
PRAXAGORA: No, I call the goddesses to witness! I went running off; the poor woman who summoned me begged me to come, whatever might betide.
BLEPYRUS: And why did you not take your mantle? Instead of that, you carry off mine, you throw your dress upon the bed and you leave me as the dead are left, bar the chaplets and perfumes.
'Twas cold, and I am frail and delicate; I took your cloak for greater warmth, leaving you thoroughly warm yourself beneath your coverlets.
BLEPYRUS: And my shoes and staff, those too went off with you?
PRAXAGORA: I was afraid they might rob me of the cloak, and so, to look like a man, I put on your shoes and walked with a heavy tread and struck the stones with your staff.
BLEPYRUS: D'you know you have made us lose a _sextary_ of wheat, which I should have bought with the _triobolus_ of the Assembly?
Be comforted, for she had a boy.
BLEPYRUS: Who? the Assembly?
PRAXAGORA: No, no, the woman I helped. But has the Assembly taken place then?
BLEPYRUS: Did I not tell you of it yesterday?
PRAXAGORA: True; I remember now.
BLEPYRUS: And don't you know the decrees that have been voted?
PRAXAGORA: No indeed.
BLEPYRUS: Go to! you can eat cuttle-fish now, for 'tis said the government is handed over to you.
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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