Oh! don't pull a poor sick woman about like that.
CLISTHENES: Tell me, who is your husband?
MNESILOCHUS: My husband? Do you know a certain individual at Cothocidae...?
CLISTHENES: Whom do you mean? Give his name.
MNESILOCHUS: 'Tis an individual to whom the son of a certain individual one day....
CLISTHENES: You are drivelling! Let's see, have you ever been here before?
MNESILOCHUS: Why certainly, every year.
Who is your tent companion?
MNESILOCHUS: 'Tis a certain.... Oh! my god!
CLISTHENES: You don't answer.
FIFTH WOMAN: Withdraw, all of you; I am going to examine her thoroughly about last year's mysteries. But move away, Clisthenes, for no man may hear what is going to be said. Now answer my questions! What was done first?
MNESILOCHUS: Let's see then. What was done first? Oh! we drank.
And then?
MNESILOCHUS: We drank to our healths.
FIFTH WOMAN: You will have heard that from someone. And then?
MNESILOCHUS: Xenylla relieved herself in a cup, for there was no other vessel.
FIFTH WOMAN: You trifle. Here, Clisthenes, here! This is the man of whom you spoke.
CLISTHENES: What is to be done then?
FIFTH WOMAN: Take off his clothes, I can get nothing out of him.
MNESILOCHUS: What! are you going to strip a mother of nine children naked?
Come, undo your girdle, you shameless thing.
FIFTH WOMAN: Ah! what a sturdy frame! but she has no breasts like we have.
MNESILOCHUS: That's because I'm barren. I never had any children.
FIFTH WOMAN: Oh! indeed! just now you were the mother of nine.
CLISTHENES: Stand up straight. Hullo! what do I see there? Why, a penis sticking out behind.
FIFTH WOMAN: There's no mistaking it; you can see it projecting, and a fine red it is.
Where has it gone to now?
FIFTH WOMAN: To the front.
FIFTH WOMAN: Ah! 'tis behind now.
CLISTHENES: Why, friend, 'tis for all the world like the Isthmus; you keep pulling your tool backwards and forwards just as the Corinthians do their ships.
FIFTH WOMAN: Ah! the wretch! this is why he insulted us and defended Euripides.
MNESILOCHUS: Aye, wretch indeed, what troubles have I not got into now!
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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