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

Trygaeus
Listen, good folk! Let the husbandmen take their farming tools and return to their fields as quickly as possible, but without either sword, spear or javelin. All is as quiet as if Peace had been reigning for a century. [555] Come, let everyone go and till the earth, singing the Paean.

Leader of the Chorus
To Peace.
Oh, thou, whom men of standing desired and who art good to husbandmen, I have gazed upon thee with delight; and now I go to greet my vines, to caress after so long an absence the fig trees I planted in my youth.

Trygaeus
[560] Friends, let us first adore the goddess, who has delivered us from crests and Gorgons; then let us hurry to our farms, having first bought a nice little piece of salt fish to eat in the fields.

Hermes
By Poseidon! what a fine crew they make [565] and dense as the crust of a cake; they are as nimble as guests on their way to a feast.

Trygaeus
See, how their iron spades glitter and how beautifully their three-pronged mattocks glisten in the sun! How regularly they align the plants! I also burn to go into the country [570] and to turn over the earth I have so long neglected. —