Aristophanes, Knights
Eugene O'Neill, Jr., Ed.

Demos
[1335] Come, Sausage-Seller, come, my best friend; see the service you have done me by freshening me up on your stove.

Sausage-Seller
Ah! if you but remembered what you were formerly and what you did, you would for a certainty believe me to be a god.

Demos
But what did I do? and how was I then?

Sausage-Seller
[1340] Firstly, so soon as ever an orator declared in the Assembly, “Demos, I love you ardently; it is I alone who dream of you and watch over your interests”; at such an exordium you would look like a cock flapping his wings or a bull tossing his horns.

Demos
What, I?

Sausage-Seller
[1345] Then, after he had fooled you to the hilt, he would go.

Demos
What! they would treat me so, and I never saw it?

Sausage-Seller
You knew only how to open and close your ears like a sunshade.

Demos
Was I then so stupid and such a dotard?

Sausage-Seller
[1350] Worse than that; if one of two orators proposed to equip a fleet for war and the other suggested the use of the same sum for paying out to the citizens, it was the latter who always carried the day. Well! you droop your head! Why do you turn away your face?

Demos
[1355] I am blushing at my past errors.

Sausage-Seller
Think no more of them; it's not you who are to blame, but those who cheated you in this sorry fashion. But, come, if some impudent lawyer dared to say, “Dicasts, you shall have no wheat [1360] unless you convict this accused man!” what would you do? Tell me.