Well, these might pass, as petty local matters. 
     But now, behold, some doughty drunken youths
     Kidnap, and carry away from Megara,
     The courtesan, Simaetha.  Those of Megara,
     In hot retaliation, seize a brace
     Of equal strumpets, hurried forth perforce
     From Dame Aspasia’s house of recreation. 
     So this was the beginning of the war,
     All over Greece, owing to these three strumpets. 
     For Pericles, like an Olympian Jove,
     With all his thunder and his thunderbolts,
     Began to storm and lighten dreadfully,
     Alarming all the neighborhood of Greece;
     And made decrees, drawn up like drinking songs,
     In which it was enacted and concluded
     That the Megarians should remain excluded
     From every place where commerce was transacted,
     With all their ware—­like “old Care” in the ballad: 
     And this decree, by land and sea, was valid.

     Then the Megarians, being all half starved,
     Desired the Spartans to desire of us
     Just to repeal those laws:  the laws I mentioned,
     Occasioned by the stealing of those strumpets. 
     And so they begged and prayed us several times;
     And we refused:  and so they went to war.

THE POET’S APOLOGY

From ‘The Acharnians’:  Frere’s Translation.

Our poet has never as yet
Esteemed it proper or fit
To detain you with a long
Encomiastic song
On his own superior wit;
But being abused and accused,
And attacked of late
As a foe of the State,
He makes an appeal in his proper defense,
To your voluble humor and temper and sense,
With the following plea: 
Namely, that he
Never attempted or ever meant
To scandalize
In any wise
Your mighty imperial government. 
Moreover he says,
That in various ways
He presumes to have merited honor and praise;
Exhorting you still to stick to your rights,
And no more to be fooled with rhetorical flights;
Such as of late each envoy tries
On the behalf of your allies,
That come to plead their cause before ye,
With fulsome phrase, and a foolish story
Of “violet crowns” and “Athenian glory,”
With “sumptuous Athens” at every word: 
“Sumptuous Athens” is always heard;
“Sumptuous” ever, a suitable phrase
For a dish of meat or a beast at graze. 
He therefore affirms
In confident terms,
That his active courage and earnest zeal
Have usefully served your common weal: 
He has openly shown
The style and tone
Of your democracy ruling abroad,
He has placed its practices on record;
The tyrannical arts, the knavish tricks,
That poison all your politics. 
Therefore shall we see, this year,
The allies with tribute arriving here,
Eager and anxious all to behold
Their steady protector, the bard so bold;
The bard, they say, that has dared to speak,