We’ll take care of it. Thanks for telling us. Now those of you who were hungry earlier get going on this hare. It’s not every day you come across cakes going round unclaimed. So eat up, or I say you’ll soon be sorry.
You must speak fair words now, and let the bride come out here. And bring the wedding torches. Let all the people rejoice together and sing and dance with us. Now, too, we must take all equipment back to our lands once more,
once we have danced and poured out libations, kicked out Hyperbolus, and made our prayers
to gods to enrich the Greeks, and make us all harvest many barley crops together, with lots of wine, figs to eat, and may our wives bear children for us, and may we gather once again the good things we started with, all the things we’ve lost and set aside the glittering iron of war.
Come, wife, to the fields, and, my lovely one, may you lie
in such beauty at my side.
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
O thrice blessed man, you deserve these splendid things you now possess!
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
What shall we do with her?
What shall we do with her?
We’ll harvest her fruit.
We’ll harvest her fruit.
Those in the front, lift up the groom. Come, men,
let’s carry him off.
SECOND HALF CHORUS Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
You’ll have a fine home without any troubles, tending your figs.
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
His fig is huge and thick.
And her fig is sweet.
let’s carry him off.
SECOND HALF CHORUS Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
You’ll have a fine home without any troubles, tending your figs.
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
His fig is huge and thick.
And her fig is sweet.
You’ll say that when you’re feasting, when you’re drinking plenty of wine.
Hymen, Hymenaeus, O! Hymen, Hymenaeus, O!
Good bye, men, good luck, and if you follow me you’ll be eating flat cakes!
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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